by B G Mitchell
Lucinda smiled and nodded and handed Mayli a couple of healing potions. “Please take this up to the second floor room on the left.” Mayli grabbed the potions and ran up the stairs.
There she found the room and inside on the bed was the grey elf sorceress Lathenia laying on the bed, barley conscious, and a very concerned looking Sylvania cradling her head. Mayli tapped Sylvania on the shoulder, who turned to her and looked at her with teary eyes. Mayli handed her the potions without a word. Sylvania nodded her thanks and brought one of the bottles up to Lathenia’s lips. Mayli was glad to see her start to drink the potion. That was a good sign. She left quickly.
Gary stood next to what he understood to be a temple to their new goddess. As he watched a couple of prisoners of war moved the bodies of their former comrades onto carts. Any dark elf or dwarvern bodies were put on a separate cart for identification, and the dwarvern bodies were to be returned to Blindstone to be entombed with full honours, and any dark elf bodies turned over to their families for burial. From what he learned from Bloodhammer is that they normally ended up entombed in the cavern wall closet to their family home. The bodies of the enemy were to be put into a massive grave at the edge of the city next the farms once they had been stripped of anything useful. The orcs themselves regarded it best to leave the dead where they stayed if they fell in battle, to allow the spirit to relive its last glory (dying from old age is very rare for an orc), and the humans did not seem to care about the dead. They were tough mercenaries, and many had faced death before. As he watched the carts being loaded, he heard a voice from the temple call his name.
He turned to Bloodhammer. “Did you hear that?”
“Hear what, lad?” replied Bloodhammer quizzically.
He heard the voice again and stepped into the temple, as he replied to Bloohammer, “I won't be a minute.”
As he stepped in, a sudden white light appeared in front of him. “Greetings far travelled human. I am Mikiria, goddess of the dark elves. Thanks for your help. I hope your tome has run well with the power I provided it.” So that was how his laptop managed to keep power, an odd little magic trick and one that could make a fortune in his world. “The link between your world and mine is ancient and was open millennia ago by our creators, who studied this land with glee and taught men many things. The men in return worshipped them as gods. We were created to watch over men as the creators left this realm to find many more discoveries, but there were others on your planet, ancient even by our creators’ standards. They had lay hidden until our creators left and entered our world. They are known as the dark minds. They could feed on humanity’s emotion. We did not know of them until it was too late and fought our first war with them. In order to defeat these feeders, we changed humanity, and some gods created a powerful warrior known to you as the orc. Another god created the dwarves to mine the land and a third group of gods created the Elves who were strong in both magic and intelligence. We found a way to harness their beliefs and won the war, but many dark minds went into hiding and were biding their time. One of those seems to have managed to give one of the demons one of our most powerful weapons, a task beyond our normal magic. I have been watching you since you left the damn plain and have been successful in stopping my sister, Zateria, grab for power, but the dark minds are still out there. Be prepared. I know the city of Gar has some answers.” With that, the light vanished, and Gary found himself in the temple, looking at a statue of a beautiful female elf.
Bloodhammer tapped him on the shoulder and said, “You okay, mate? You have been in here a while. Come, we have work to do.”
The city still smoked from the battle. It seemed most of the skeletons crumbled into dust, and now the slow effort of reconstruction had begun. Already Arderan had ordered food for the growing tent city outside. He was one of the palace guard towers. The palace had been taken over and was now the headquarters of what remained of the city guard, and the elven enforcements. The dungeons of the palace had a few of the former wizards in place mostly for their own protection. Those that did not get lynched had fled the city, leaving it rather without leaders.
Only the king remained, and he had locked himself in his room where he had his favourite concubine frozen in a time spell. He had refused to eat at all. The royal guards themselves had been drafted, and a few of them ended up in the cells as well when they refused to follow orders. He looked to his left and saw more caverns from the elven lands. He looked to the right and saw the tent city being set up for refugees. The flow of the displaced had stopped with about three thousand extra people entering the city. The stories they told were horrifying, many were from towns captured by Zateria who had started implementing a religious dictatorship and had started a campaign of tearing down any and all temples and destroying all priesthoods that did not praise her name.
He noted another cannon in the coming convoy. The battle may be over, but it looked like a war was to carry on. He sighed and hoped his daughter was doing better.
Lathenia was feeling better. Her body still ached, but she was awake. So far Sylvania had attended to her every need. She was glad to hear a demon had been slayed and the city was returning to some sort of normalcy, or as normal as a city of dark elves could be. She had heard word that the human from another realm had a sighting from the goddess, Mailika, and it told them to head to Gar. She had convinced them to wait until she was better so she could come with. It was another adventure.
She heard footsteps and lifted her head. It was Sylvania who wore a simple dark blue dress and the sandals she had, with her a tray of food. No doubt mushroom based, thought Lathenia. It was another reason to go to Gar: the food. Sylvania passed the bowl over to her, and she was rather pleasantly surprised to find it was a soup that had bits of lizard meat in it, instead of mushroom. She smiled at Sylvania and got a spoon ready, only to find Slyvania standing close to her. Sylvania then gently grabbed her chin and kissed her gently on the lips. Reluctantly, Lathenia broke the kiss and moved the food tray onto the table. She then beckoned Sylvania on to the bed. She was feeling a lot better and was not that hungry anyway, she thought to herself as one of her arms cradled Slyvania’s waist.
Bloodhammer sat at his table and looked at the weapon and tools Gary had brought, many of them were finely crafted and well used. They even had information on how to use them written in common. The bullet press was an interesting one. It gave Gary the chance to make ammo for his own weapons rather than running out. All he needed were the little brass canisters, gun power and lead, and he had a bullet. The dwarves themselves had set up in an abandoned family compound and quickly changed the decor to suit their tastes and turned it into a foundry and ore refinery, and Bloodhammer was sitting there at the moment. It also contained the tools he used as Mayli the captain of the newly formed Narderba guards also had a weapon from Gary's dimension.
In the past, Bloodhammer would have worried about such a weapon in Dark Elf hands, but now the worry was, did they have enough. He checked his supplies again. They had much to carry up the northwest passage. Nataylia had decided to turn Gary's vision into a trade mission with both Dwarf and elven guards. He looked at the packs on the giant spiders. They contained ingots, tools and weapons for the city state. Bloodhammer himself was looking forward to the journey. It had been years since he had seen Gar.
Gary sat on the giant tarantula and cradled his gun. He hated the dark tunnels, but at least he was with Bloodhammer, Lathenia, and Sylvania as well as Althenian, as well as a couple of Dark Elf and Dwavern warriors, and the tarantulas were surprisingly good mounts and had a rather good nature. So far, they were halfway through the tunnel and encounters had been small. There was evidence that humans and orcs had been here before, but they were long gone and it seemed they did not get along here and there would be signs of a scuffle with the odd human or orc corpse left behind with an arrow sticking out of it for good measure.
The front spider suddenly stopped, causing the rest of the convoy to halt. Gary jumped off his gia
nt spider and gave it a reassuring pat as he went to the front to see what the cause was. In front of the convoy was a rather large cavern where it dropped slowly on the righthand side of him where Bloodhammer and a couple of guards stood in front of the dip. Here, there where forty corpses. Gary would have guessed this would be a good site for a large battle between orcs and mercenaries. The odd thing was they were all in one pile and had no arrows in them. Another thing that struck him as odd was the lack of blood and the fact that the corpses looked like desecrated mummies.
Bloodhammer shook his head. Gary turned to him. “I am going to assume they did not kill each other then practice their mummification skills.”
Bloodhammer shook his head. “No, this is something else. There are old creatures that roam these tunnels. This looks like possibly a Vampire Bug, but I suspect that they have fed and left.”
Gary looked at the corpse again. He wondered what on earth was a vampire bug. Before he could ask, he heard a couple of stones up in the ridge and turned. Before him was a monster he had not seen before. It stood about eight feet tall and was a humanoid shape, but had no head at all, its arms ended in claws and its body was covered in a hard brown chitin. In the centre of the body from the legs to the top of the torso was a sideways mouth crossed by interlocking sharp looking spikes.
The beast was not alone. Another two Vampire bugs were following it. He heard a shout and saw a shot strike the chitin of the armour where he heard the beast cry in pain, but it did not stop. He heard a sudden whoosh and felt a great sense of heat as a fireball intersected one of the creatures, causing it to burst into flames and drop. Gary lifted his gun and aimed towards the top of the creature and pulled the trigger. The creature stumbled back, and a hole appeared on the top of its torso, spewing green ichor. The creature raised its arms in anger and charged towards him.
He took another shot and was rewarded by the creature stumbling back. It looked wounded. He heard gunshots hitting the other two vampire bugs. He pulled the trigger again and was rewarded with another hit, but the creature did not stop, determined to turn him into another mummified corpse. It was now a mere ten feet away. Suddenly a heavy spear slammed straight into the creature’s mouth, causing it to stop. Gary saw it was Althenian holding the spear. She shot Gary a smile as she tried to pull the spear free from the now dead Vampire bug.
Gary looked. There were at least another five bugs behind the first three. He heard more shots and felt more heat as another fireball shot past him into the fray. No doubt launched by Lathenia. He then saw one of the creatures grab a dark elf guard and open its mouth to its fullest. Before it had a chance to start its gruesome meal, a dwarvern battle axe smashed into the side of the creature, causing the Chitin to crack and leak green Ichor.
Gary grabbed his sword and swung at another creature as he noticed Althenian knocking one back with the end of her spear. She then turned the spear over and plunged it into the knocked down beast. Gary swung at another creature right where the head should be and felt the sword hit the solid chitin body. It bounced off, he then pulled the sword back and stabbed right at the soft mouth part and was rewarded with a spray of ichor. He then pulled his sword out and swung to a shoulder joint where the sword manged to penetrate chitin and sent the claw flying off and landing on the ground. His opponent collapsed as he looked for another creature.
He then saw that the remaining creatures had turned and run away. Gary turned to Althenian who gave him a nod, one warrior to another, as the all clear shouted. They packed their weapons away and carried on.
Eventually they reached the exit of the cavern, and Lathenia looked over a plain, featureless dessert and a hot, burning sun next to an unassuming rock outcropping. She felt a tap on the shoulder. It was Althenian who had claimed she had done this journey before.
“Rest now, and grab some water down below. We will travel at night as not to burn out our mounts or ourselves. It is just a day journey away.” She stepped back into the cavern and found the dwarves and dark elves sitting down around a small rock pool. She looked at the water. It did not look up to standards, so she rolled up her sleeves and mumbled a spell. Suddenly the water turned crystal clear. She got her leather water container out and began to fill it up. Soon the rest of the camp was doing the rest. She then sat down as Sylvania sat down next to her and rested her head on her shoulders.
To call it a fort was an understatement. Arderan looked out from the battlements at the construction next to Merdith. it had been decided that Merdith was now a republic and an independent city state. The fact that no one knew if the king was dead or alive was not a problem at all. The room where the king was holed up in was still locked, and the general feeling was that it was best to open the room when it started to smell.
The elves had been allowed to build a fort to help defend Merdith as everyone expected this to be the first place attacked by Zateria. The elves had helped by building a fort right in front of Merdith’s main city gate, and the direction Zateria forces would arrive. It basically served as an extension to the main city walls but was thicker and had two massive diamond shaped guard towers at each end, which doubled as watchtowers, about twice as high as the city wall. On top of the guard towers, plans were underway to attach special heavy double-barrelled cannons covered in a steel armoured shell that would be able to turn, enabling the cannons to shoot in any direction.
The reports he got from beyond the city wall were interesting. The land between Merdith and Zateria-controlled city of Murahim was a free for all, as the remaining wizards had started to build their own private armies and had fallen into the wizard habit of fighting each other. At Murahim, Arderan’s spies had told him much construction was going on, mostly setting up houses and forts for the new dark elder, as well as the building of a grand ziggurat, no doubt to honour Zateria. From what Arderan had been told, business still carried on as normal except now the oppressors were the Dark Elves rather than the wizards of norm.
The Gate to Gar was a huge moment, about forty feet tall that connected to a large wall and was made of large, red brownish bricks, sculpted on top of the arch of the massive gate was a relief that looked like a bunch of soldiers facing off another group of soldiers. It looked rather like a building done by the Sumerians or the Akkadians, thought Gary to himself. In fact, it had a feel of the fertile crescent to it. With the guards dressed in a plain skirt and wearing a metal helmet with a cone shape on the top, they each had a spear and a shield, although they wore no beards. Next to the city gate ran a river that seemed to enter the city through a heavy grate. No doubt some attacker in the past had tried to use that as an ingress route.
It was early in the morning when they had reached the city, the sun was starting to rise. The guards on top of the gate seemed to be at the end of their shift. One was resting rather lazily on his full length reticular shield. He looked up when he saw the convoy and kicked someone below the barricade who popped up rather quickly, and looked over the wall. He turned to the other side and shouted, “Trade convoy, open the gates.”
The huge, heavy wooden gates swung inside, and Gary saw a large avenue marked by trees with a river on one side and double story clay brick houses with a flat roof on the other, as well as a couple of market stalls that had not yet been open. As they entered, the guards gave them a weary look as they walked up the street to the dwarvern embassy.
The embassy itself had the dwarfs’ anvil symbol on it as well as heavy wooden doors that looked locked. There was one guard outside who was lying next to the doors, clearly asleep. Bloodhammer gave him a gentle kick, and he stood up suddenly, rather shocked to see the trade cavern. He fumbled with the lock and without a word managed to get the doors open. As the doors were being unlocked, Gary looked down the main road and noticed that it led to a massive ziggurat, no doubt the centre of the city.
He could already hear the merchant calling out their wares down the path but was keener to find out what the goddess Mikiria was talking about. Like most gods, she was
not entirely specific when sending one on a mission. It had to be some sort of go to this city and seek the scared token, no first take a right here than once you come to traffic lights, take a left, and if you’ve gone past the house with the water fountain in front, you know you have gone too far, thought Gary to himself.
“Well, best to settle in,” said Bloodhammer, interrupting Gary’s thoughts. They did not have to wait long for the official welcoming party to appear as Gary finished Bloodhammer’s help in pulling the covers off the furniture. They approached the gate’s huge double doors. It was a long, blond-haired woman wearing a long, simple, white dress with a large, black belt and a simple silver diadem with a red jewel in the middle. She was accompanied by a couple of spear and shield holding guards.
She nodded to Bloodhammer and then spoke, “Greetings, I am Almay, high priestess of the iron lady. I welcome our visitors.”
“Greetings too,” replied Bloodhammer in his somewhat gruff voice. “I am here with a represented of Lerwyn and one from Narderba.”
“Ahh,” replied the priestess as if something had just clicked in her mind. “We have heard rumours of the dark elves leaving their harsh goddess.”
From the tone, Gary could not tell if the priestess approved or disapproved.
She continued. “So what brings such a diverse group to our fair city?”
Lathenia cleared her throat, causing Gary to jump a little. He did not realise she was behind him. “We are for trade mostly, but we have been tasked by the new goddess of Narderba to seek possible remnants of the Dark ancients.”
The priestess smiled what Gary felt was an insincere smile before continuing, “Of course there are ruins about a day’s march away, and I can get you a guide, but by law, none of our citizens can enter the ruins. You do so at your own risk.”