by Simon Archer
As soon as I saw the first one, I made my best effort to unload a magazine magically without a final bullet to unload. They were just outside of my accurate range and clear vision, but that didn’t quite matter when you filled the air with bullets. I had to admit, the lightning bolts coming out of the gun made it feel like laser tag. War was serious, but lightning bullet light shows were fun.
They were coming in one at a time, which I thought was going to make this easier, but I underestimated how many bullets each one was going to take, which was much more than one. Out of the seven that came up in this wave, two were floored early, another three were slowed to a crawl by the shock, and the last two were just injured by them. Damn. Most of the regular grunts were down for the count with one of the electric bullets, even on flesh wounds. Elites were tough sons of bitches. Seven would have been a pain, but five spearmen were manageable.
Two teams of two, Scooby and Snoopy, tackled the first elite to charge, and Hopper helped Toby with the second. Walking past the two of them, I slashed at Hopper’s foe with my machete and shot Scooby’s, leaving them to handle the rest while I took on the crawlers.
I couldn’t have told you how great it was to never worry about reloading in a fight. The first of the three just couldn’t handle so many lightning bolts to the face. The sparks flew from the gun, tearing up his maw as he fell to the ground. The other ones took the hint to hoof it away from my line of sight, trying to strafe me on their injured legs. With that thankful handicap, I kept my eyes on both of them, keeping a blade between one of them and me while I shot the other.
Once he was down, the last one took the split-second opening to get in close with his spear. The blade scraped against me, sliding against the chainmail as it tore a gash in the side of my overalls. Ripped clothes aside, it gave me the chance to pin the spear in my arm and side, using the pistol in the other arm to make a charred hole in his neck.
Turning to the others, I saw the end of the fight as the others surrounded the surviving elite. Hopper kicked the elite’s head upward an instant before Scooby smashed his fists over the wolf’s head, slamming him into the floor. Then Toby and Snoopy skewered him with their spears, and the elite was dead. Hopper gave a victory hop.
“Good work, boys!” she congratulated the Wolves. “That went well. Although I think it’ll be easier if we start low with our strikes. They usually start out with those twirling attacks, going high to low, when there’s a bunch of us, so we can get him in the gut early.”
“They’re so fast, though!” Snoopy debated. “I’m always trying to keep my face out of the way before they’re going for the legs.”
“If I’m helping out, I’ll try to get that low hit to the leg, you block the top hit, and then I can get that gut,” Hopper suggested. “Maybe, if you have the top of your spear to help block, you can use that position to force the spearhead down into their lower body.”
“Sounds good, I guess,” Snoopy said. “Thanks, Hopper.”
“Pshaw!” She bounded over to me. “It’s just a suggestion.”
“Are you giving Wolves pointers in combat?” I sassed to the bunny sensei. “They’ve been fighting each other for centuries. You fought in your first battle ever less than a month ago. Against this guy.” Toby waved when I gestured at him.
“I’ll have you know that I’ve been in this world for around fifty years, and I’ve spent most of that time in combat, my lord.” Hopper submitted her false credentials with a huff. “I’ve got all the experience I need to teach. You’re never too old to learn a new thing. And Toby’s a great fighter, thank you very much. Beating him is a trophy.”
“You were literally in, and then out, of this world around those fifty years.” I chuckled at her pouting. “Literally around them. We circled around those fifty years and avoided them entirely.”
“I’ve been winning my fights every time since then.” She outsassed me with the classic ‘side-to-side head shift and the accusing finger’ move. “Just ask Toby.”
“She’s pretty good, boss,” Toby agreed. “You should have seen her in the fight in town. She beat six guys in a second one time. She trounced a noble while she was hopping around, but then she kicked all of the grunts that were trying to swear their loyalty to her.”
“They snuck up on me!” She justified herself as she blushed. “I spook very easily!”
“So, that’s the secret to fighting.” I scratched my chin. “Just getting really freaked out! Of course! I’ve been going about it all wrong! I’ve only been freaking out on the inside.”
“The supplementation of flexibility and balance paired with both her insubstantial weight and proportions that allow the full utilization of the impossibly titanic force she’s able to exert upon objects and opponents constitutes a combination for martial potentiality unrivaled unilaterally by any governed by conventional physical limitations,” Scooby added.
“Does he do that a lot?” Snoopy asked us.
“I think it builds up if he doesn’t talk for a while,” I answered.
“Sorry,” Scooby excused his outburst of words.
“It’s worked so far.” She hugged my side in her embarrassment. “I apologize for my arrogance, my lord.”
“You’ve got nothing to apologize for.” I rubbed her arm. “You kick ass. End of story.”
We traveled further down the catacombs, which were just tremendously huge. Just walking and walking and walking and walking. It felt endless. Thankfully, the exciting new development of a straightening of the path was able to keep our excitement just long enough for the slight bend to curve the other way, woo. I figured we killed most of the guards, so the exciting part was mostly over.
“Do you want to ride on my back, boss?” Toby asked. “You don’t seem to run as fast as we do. It might make things go along quicker.”
“You know, I was going to ask, but it seemed degrading to both of us,” I confessed. “A grown man asking another grown man for a piggy-back ride just ain’t right.”
“But I’m a Wolf,” Toby insisted. “It’s a Wolfy-back ride.”
I didn’t have anything to say to that.
“Alright.”
I hopped onto his back and just tried not to think about it. As a big guy, there weren’t enough times to count on one hand that I’d felt like a kid since elementary school. Riding on the back of a giant, shaggy monster man, only taking up the upper part of his back as I clung on, rushing through the stone halls like they were a roller coaster, that counted on the hand.
Rounding a corner, Hopper stopped, prompting the others to a sudden skid and all jumping to the side, out of sight by the edge of the chamber exit.
“More of them up ahead,” Hopper reported with a wiggling of her nose. “A lot more than last time.” Glad we had a super sniffer. But if we could smell them, they could smell us.
“Can you smell them, boys?” I quietly hopped off his back, pulling out the pistol and machete.
“Nothing, boss.” Snoopy tickled the air with his nose. “This whole cave’s got a weird smell, makes it all blurry. You sure they’re close?” Actually smart, keeping the place cloaked so that every fight is blind for any Wolf who might try to break in.
“They’re here, my lord,” Hopper affirmed. “There’s a big group.” Guess they didn’t account for Hopper, though.
“How many?” I asked her.
“A lot more.” Hopper gave a vague amount. “A lot a lot more.”
“How far away?”
“Fairly quick for us, pretty far for you,” Hopper answered. Another blush came to her face. “Not to imply that you’re slow, my lord. I just meant that, um, you’re just specialized in other areas besides--”
“I’ll flat out say that I am.” I looked inside my pack for supplies, coming up with a plan. “Just spent ten minutes playing horsey because I couldn’t keep up with y’all. Guess that makes me the Tortoise to all of you Hares.”
“We’re Wolves,” Toby stated the obvious. “And she’s a bunny. Yo
u’re the only hare.”
“Maybe he’s not a hare, but actually a ‘tort-us,’” Snoopy theorized. “A superior breed of animal that sacrifices speed for strange abilities and the brains of the most powerful nobles. He’s just a smaller one that’s taken his shell off to fight better. That’d explain why he’s able to beat all the other nobles so badly all of the time.”
“Do tortoises have hair?” Hopper scrunched her nose up with her lips. “Timberpine always called them lizards, and they had scales when he ate them.”
“Biological oddities compromise vast quantities of unexplainable mysteries beyond contemporary understandings of biomechanical--” A shotgun butt to his nose shut Scooby up. “Ow! Sorry. Do you know what I said?”
“I’m not actually a Tortoise.” I nipped that crazy conspiracy theory in the bud. “I’m just slow. Let’s focus.” One of those days, that misinformation would have spread like wildfire.
With all of my gear reevaluated and a plan formed, I put back the pistol and machete in favor of the shotgun. Time to stop dicking around with elites.
“Hopper, you’re with me.” I laid out their parts of the plan. “Boys, get their attention but don’t fight. Draw them back here. Group them together if you can. When you jump through the smoke, immediately move out to that back wall and wait. Do not lean towards that wall before you clear the smoke. Give yourself a lot of space between you and them. I repeat, do not let them get ahead of you when you’re coming back here. Do not engage them alone. And don’t touch them directly when they’re on fire. You have spears for that.”
“Sure thing, boss,” Toby acknowledged, and they went out.
“What about me?” Hopper asked. “Am I supposed to still kick the on-fire elites?”
“You’re my backup plan,” I told her. “The not-on-fire elites will be the real problem which you are the solution to.”
Cracking a few of the road flares I still had, I handed a couple to Hopper, and we set them up on the exit to this chamber of the tunnel, flooding the large opening with smoke. With a few smoke bombs I had packed just for safe measure, I felt confident the wall was obscure enough. Pulling Hopper back with me, we hid back in the corner, ready for the Wolves to start coming in.
I limbered myself up as I heard the rumbling paws scratching the rocky floor, lining up my spot to get the best spread out and catch the most elites. As the roaring echo built up, I loosed the shoulders a bit before tensing them for the kick of the shotgun.
Three Wolves jumped through first. My trigger finger twitched, but they were all my boys, who all masterfully obeyed my orders, jumping to the wall opposite us as soon as they landed in the chamber. Last time I’d used the fire shotgun, the last Wolf was immortal, and just pissed off by the flames. Now we’d see how well it worked on mortals.
“They’re getting away!” I heard one of the elites express what was happening in front of him, in true and traditional evil henchman fashion. And like an evil henchman that wore his bunny-eating pride on his uniform, he and his friends were going to get a little crispy.
Spreading the smoky veil apart, the Wolves clambered ahead to hunt down their supposed prey, and I started unloading. Now that we were in a more spacious area than a street alleyway, the fire of the shotgun had a little more room to stretch its way out, filling a third of the whole chamber with blazing heat. The elites crumpled over themselves as their blue armors and furs were engulfed by red flame that crashed into the floor and slammed into the bottom edge of the entryway to the next chamber. Like a bonfire of bodies, the elites piled up in a heap, with every new flying dog making the pile that much bigger. My boys skewered the elites in the burning pile that was still twitching, standing at an angle to let the bodies pile up freely.
But the shotgun didn’t have the infinite ammo that the pistol had, so the fun had to end at some point. If I hadn’t left the endless powder horn with the mansion, there would have been a lot more fire here. I might have been tempted to fill the bottoms of every chamber here with powder if there was time, or if the ventilation in here wasn’t sketchy. Eh, indulging the crazier part of my pyromania would have had to wait.
Now we had elites who weren’t immediately getting set on fire but were still landing on the pile of bodies, so fire was still applied generously. I thought that nine instantly dead elites was a fine way to start a battle, with more than half of the rest who jumped in catching fire from the burn pile.
See, Timberpine? That was how you died properly to fire! Immediately when the fire cooked your insides. Excellent form, elites! Perfect ten. That cheating white cannonball, on the other hand, wouldn’t stay down and kick the bucket like God intended. Two out of ten. Not that I’m still bitter.
The last four to jump through the smoke caught themselves quickly enough to bounce off the elites not quite fully burning on the pile and landed outside the zone of hellish death I had set up. Far less than I was expecting, honestly.
Hopper immediately went into action, not giving her first opponent any room to breathe as she directed his attention forcefully with her kicks. I had already taken the sword-and-gun combo I was so accustomed to, putting two rounds in each leg of another elite, keeping him on the ground long enough for me to stab him in the roof of his mouth.
As I slashed the next elite trying to crack his musket over my head, I realized that I didn’t check the backs of the others for musket rifles. And if I had to hazard a guess, I would have said that they were all loaded with gunpowder, and more than half of them were inside a giant pile of fire. I may have accidentally created the universe’s biggest and meatiest splinter bomb. A prestigious category of bomb, I know.
“Boys, on the ground!” I shouted, hitting the floor as the musket swung way above my head.
Obedient to the last, my Wolves were busy fighting the still-cooking elites that could only partially save themselves from roasting but took my words straight to heart. They all fell as if they had their off switches pressed, falling limp in stupidly hilarious ways. Snoopy and Toby were in mid-strike positions, pulling strangely brilliant feints as their blocking opponents failed to stop them from falling straight over. Scooby was deflecting hits with his spear but had to take one to his side deliberately to prioritize getting to the ground exactly when I told him to. Not quite what I meant, but I’d take it.
Hopper danced and whirled around her opponent’s head, having two elites on her. With her victim indisposed and her other opponent too confused to help, Hopper locked an arm in one of hers, pinning the elite’s neck as she threw them both down on the ground. While the second opponent saw his chance to skewer the bunny to the ground, Hopper kicked the grounded elite back up as he still recoiled, pushing him in the way as the spear dug straight into his side, right in the bare part of the armpit and into his heart.
I was Champion of Time-calling right then, as the bullets popped out of the pile of bodies in one huge bang, shooting out randomly and ricocheting off the walls, hitting the on-fire elites as well as the last two unharmed ones, dropping all of them to the ground one by one. As the last few shots popped out, and only the sound of the fire charring the bodies was left, I gave the all-clear.
“Good work, boys,” I congratulated the hard workers. “Brought them in like lambs to the slaughter. Yes, I know they’re Wolves, it’s a figure of speech. Just take the compliment.”
“Thanks, boss.” Toby accepted.
“Holy shit, Hopper.” I turned to the bunny. “Where did you learn some of those moves?”
“Oh, uh, well,” she blushed as she twisted side to side nervously, “It’s easy. You just move your legs around and just… do the moves. I guess. Keep moving all the time. They can’t really hurt you if they can’t get a good hit on you.” She had no clue how much of a natural she was. “My lord.”
“Very pleasing.” I congratulated her, to which she smiled. “I shouldn’t say I’m surprised, considering who I’m talking to, but I’m still impressed, nonetheless. Do we have anyone else to worry about?”
“The burnt bodies are making everything smell, boss.” Snoopy twitched his nose. “I can’t get nothing except that and the weird cave smell.”
“Five more.” Hopper tweaked her little nose a few times. “Plus a bunny. We’re close. There are more grunts than Wolves up there. Not as much blue-stain smell as here.”
“Boys.” I looked at them, disappointed, as I gestured at an invisible snout of my own with my hands. “This whole thing you’ve got here is supposed to be designed to make your smelling top-tier in the animal kingdom. How are you losing to the bunny with the tiny sniffer?”
“It’s above a top-tier smeller, then, boss,” Toby concluded.
“Must be.” I started walking towards the last stretch of the tunnel chambers. “Head on back, boys, see if you can’t see what’s happening up above. We’ve moved a bit far away, and I don’t want to come back to a bunch of dead Wolves up there just because I can’t hear them calling. Scooby will come back and report the situation to me if there’s a problem.”
“Yes.” Scooby, very tight-lipped, peeped out. “Sir. Yes.”
“Big word buildup?” I guessed.
The spotted-fur doped nodded.
“Get it out while you run back.” I let out a laugh. “Boys, just ignore him.” They rushed out, Scooby soliloquizing about how long the tunnel was as they echoed off into the distance. “Let’s get moving so we don’t leave them out any longer than--”
“Of course, my lord.” Hopper was prepared to act.
And, as if this tunnel ride hadn’t been humiliating enough, Hopper got under my legs, picking me up with her powerful legs, holding my lower back as she zoomed towards the goal at lightning speeds. I could feel my upper body bending us from side to side, steering us far too close to the catacomb walls. Keeping upright when I made us so top-heavy was a pain in the abs. Then, the next moment later, I was set down at the last chamber of the tunnel, next to a steel door in the side of it.