by Galen Wolf
But it’s no use. I’m blank. I’m the spinning wheels of a Las Vegas slot machine — just a blur of possibilities that never ends with me winning. I cough. I rub my brow. I’ve got nothing to give. I’m going to end up Level 9. Then I put up a pleading hand. ‘Can I have three tries?’
She frowns. ‘This is most unorthodox. I didn’t give Merlin three tries.’
I wish Merlin had warned me about this lady. He could have even given me the answer. She can see I’m struggling.
‘Very well. Three tries.’
I sigh. That’s a break. A small one. Quietly, I say, ‘Is it a puppy?’
She shakes her head.
No, of course that was wrong. I take more time over my next answer.
I say hesitantly, ‘Some kind of luxury pampering sessions where they get rubbed down in rose oil or something?’
‘No.’
I’m sweating. My throat is dry. She’s grinning now. She can see my doom as clearly as I can.
And then it comes to me suddenly. I remember the story now and I remember what Dame Ragnelle asked Gawain. I laugh. ‘I know!’
She suddenly frowns. ‘You do?’
Nodding, I grin. ‘Yes, all women want is power over men. Which of course they have anyway.’
She nods gravely. ‘Well answered, Sir Gorrow.’
A notice flashes up on my HUD.
She waves at me as I walk past her, guided by the flames of my sword. I glance over my shoulder when I’m well up the stairs to see her staring at me with her weird blue and gold lapis lazuli eyes.
31
The Top of the Ziggurat
Vivian, the blue-eyed virtual hottie, vanishes, and I go up on the staircase again. Eventually, I come to a ring of fire. The staircase goes up through it, ivory and ebony, apparently unscorched by the flames. But I’m not. As soon as I step into the fire, I get a damage message.
I jump back, but I’m aflame and I keep getting fifty damage ticks. Fire covers my armour. I sip a healing potion to get the health back because it would be a real bummer to die here and have to do all of this again. Eventually the fire dies down. I was taking the hits even with fire resistance built into my armour; if I hadn’t had that, I would have died for sure.
I step back and regard the firewall with disdain. The only way is through it. I’ll just have to pay attention to my health and keep healed up. I hold the potion bottle up against the light from the dancing flames and waggle it to make the blue healing liquid slosh around. There’s twenty-five sips left, and at two hundred healing a sip — that should get me through the fire.
I snap down my visor and sheathe my sword because I can see well enough in the yellow firelight. I jump through the wall of fire and I’m alight again. I’ve got the potion bottle in my hand and though I get down to six hundred health even by getting three sips in. Mathematically, I would be almost a goner without Bernard’s healing potion.
But I emerge victorious through the firewall. I walk forward taking another sip as soon as cool-down allows me. Another flight of stairs climbs in front of me.
I must be near the top of the cavern now but as I peer up into the dimness, I can’t see the ceiling. I sigh, come to a turn and take the left. This time there’s a moat of silver liquid blocking the path. It’s about eight feet wide. I step up to it and watch it glistening there all quiet. It’s not as bright here, so I take out my sword. The metal glows eerily in the multicoloured light of my blade. It looks harmless enough. I dip my toe in.
I snatch my foot out of the liquid mercury. It’s poisonous and twice as deadly as the fire. I bet it’s deep too, and it’s too far to jump comfortably. If I’d been a rogue or something, or a monk, I could have jumped eight feet, but I’m a heavy knight in plate armour. I will fall into that liquid metal without a doubt. I look left and right, but there is no sign of a bridge. Of course there isn’t. Time is a wasting, so without further hesitation, I step back, build up speed, run and jump. And land in the mercury.
It’s waist deep, which is a blessing. I begin to wade through the mercury.
I sip on the healing potion.
Now, I’m at the edge. It’s like pulling yourself out of a swimming pool, except the water is liquid metal and sucks at you like a kid sucking a toffee apple, and you’re wearing a steel suit that weighs more than fifty pounds. I take more damage. The potion is on cool down while my health is bleeding away in the moat of liquid mercury, but I struggle and strain and finally drag myself out until I’m lying across the black and white stairs, beads of mercury all around. I sip potion and see that I only just got out by the skin of my teeth. I’m at 300 health. I wait and heal up to 500 then climb the stairs wondering what is next.
A mound of salt is next. Yes, a big heaped wall of salt, cutting across the face of the ziggurat from side to side. The black and white staircase leads up to it and starts again the other side. But I still have to get over it. But what harm can salt do? I take a sip of health until I’m 700 health and go at a run, to try to over leap the salt mound.
I’m not over the salt wall, I’m on my hands and knees, scrabbling to get out of this biting stuff.
I sip health and finally fall forward out of the salt. I’m at 300 now and I’m my hands and knees, staring back at the wall of salt where I see that in my haste and hurry, I’ve dropped my flaming sword in the salt. I’m going to have to go back and get it. I wait and sip and wait and sip and then my impulsive nature tells me that’s enough and I should go get the sword now on seven hundred, and I almost get up and run for it then the one sensible part in my head says: wait, and I wait and take two more sips, going for the sword as a compromise at 1100.
I take one more hit of salt, but that’s fine and I even laugh as I sheathe my sword, turn and look up the staircase. There’s a glow at the top and I do at last appear to be nearly at the top of the Ziggurat. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the top of the Ziggurat is not the roof of the cave. I had hoped there would be a neat little way out of the dome of darkness, but there’s nothing like that — just the top of the Ziggurat. And that means I will need to walk all the way back down through the salt the mercury and the fire to get back to where I started.
Well, that’s just Jim Dandy.
I sigh heavily. What’s even the point climbing to the top of the Ziggurat? If I have to come down, I might as well save myself a few steps and start down now. I look up to the top, see the glow and turn down, setting off on the staircase on my return journey. How the heck am I going to get out of the Smoke Worm caves?
But maybe Bernard will have found a longer rope that will reach all the way down the hole. Maybe. I heal up to full with one last sip.
But something makes me stop. I glance over my shoulder at the white glow at the top. It would be nice to see what was up there, even if I do have to come down. Something about the sense of completion.
I check and my potion bottle’s empty. No more healing for me. If I run into more damage on the way up, I’m finished. I sigh. I look back down the staircase then I look back up the staircase. I almost start to walk down, but I stop.
‘Aw, blow it,’ I say. ‘Let’s go see.’ So I turn and make my way up the twenty or so steps to the top of the Ziggurat. Wasting time, I know, but at least I can say I was there.
As I approach, I se
e that there’s a little altar like thing about three feet high. The glow emanates from a small object on the altar. I walk up. The altar top is square. In the middle is a big quartz crystal. That’s what’s giving off the light. Around the quartz crystal is a snake-like coil of silver. It looks like a necklace made of close silver links, so delicately made that they are like the scales of a snake. And as I study it more closely, I see that it has a catch. The catch is in the form of a snake’s head and jaw’s biting its own tail. Nice.
Written in small silver runes on the altar is a simple message.
What? Smash the necklace?
It must mean the crystal. Then what will happen? This place is tricky. It’ll probably kill me in a flash of energy and because of that, I pause. I have no more healing. I pause a long time.
Oh hell. I get the pommel of my sword and smack it down on the clear crystal.
There is a massive bang and a flash of light and suddenly I’m falling through the air and there are shards of black obsidian all around me, falling like in blizzard of dark glass. I didn’t take any damage though. Everything is in slo-mo like we’re under the influence of a Featherfall spell. I see the silver snake necklace falling too and on impulse, I snatch it.
Hooray! That’s nice gear. As we slowly tumble through the air, I put on the necklace then I hit the ground hard.
I take a second to realise what’s different. I’m no longer in the dome. In fact there is no dome.I’m sitting in the open air under a grey sky. There are blackened hills to the east with woods and a burned-out village. I’m near a rutted, muddy road that looks like lots of troops have gone this way. But there’s no dome.
The dome has gone.
And most amazingly and horrifyingly at all, I see a walled city to the west. It’s a huge city, with walls maybe fifty feet high all made of red sandstone. A heavily defended city, but a city in flames. A city that has been set on fire. The outer curtain wall lies in heaps in places and there are breaches, at least three that I can see. About three hundred yards from me are massed ranks of evil forces marching to the breach as if to reinforce their comrades who have already penetrated the outer city. This is Caer, and it looks like it’s about to fall forever.
Then I see that it’s not just evil troops. In front of me, let in by the collapse of the dome are several hundred men, both infantry and cavalry, that I recognise. They’re led by knights in shining armour. I recognise the silver serpent livery of Sir Mercurius. Sir Luc is there also, and overhead, on a multi-coloured Turkish carpet is a bearded man in a gold lame trouser suit with a floppy gold lame Gandalf style hat. He’s casting spells into the enemy.
The troops led by Mercurius hit the rear of a regiment of orcs. I see the blue flash of the vorpal weapons and it gladdens my heart as much as it terrifies the orcs. Then I hear a cry behind me.
‘Hey, Gorrow! You did it!’
I turn and see Tye, running across the ground towards me. He’s hitching up his blue robe as he runs, his flame-coloured hair, bobbing as he runs. With him, on Henry the Mule, leading Bessie rides Bernard and Fitheach is behind them following by twenty or so running halflings and a grinning Josh Maggs-Rimmer. ‘We better get into the city,’ Bernard yells at me as he rides. ‘Looks like shit’s going down.’
I turn to see where he’s pointing. A monstrous dragon has appeared from the north, huge and black and red. I’ve seen it one time before, at the fall of Camelot. It’s Lord Satanus himself come for single combat with the King.
32
Under The Walls
I watch the walls of Caer burn and see the huge black dragon Satanus hover above them directing his hordes. Black painted siege engines pound the inner walls of Caer with a tremendous din. The shouts of the enemy are deafening, but Mercurius’s charge has hit them and forced them to turn, but there are lots of them.
Merlin zooms up higher on his carpet, and he seems to have charmed a bunch of trolls to turn on their comrades and assault them with iron-spiked clubs. But still: so many of them, so few of us.
I look up to see King Arthur’s warriors on the battlements, taking cover from the missiles of the enemy but also shooting at the chimeras, pterosaurs and cockatrices that plague them from the air, ducking between the gaps in the battlements to get shots off. One of the warriors, distant and high as he is, sees us and waves down.
‘We need to help them,’ Bernard says.
Spirit feels eager to fight, I almost have to hold him back. Henry the Mule has his teeth bared and his eyes rolling. Bernard draws his sword and Fitheach nods grimly at me. I turn to Josh Maggs-Rimmer. There is no safe place for the halflings and their cargo is too precious to lose out here.
I say, ‘We have to protect the crystals and poop. We can’t afford to lose them now when we’ve brought them so far.’
Bernard scowls and points. Mercurius’s men are cutting through the enemy — I see blue flashes of the vorpal and see the hole they’ve cut through orcs and trolls and dwemmers. But there aren’t enough of them to prevail.
I say, ‘We have to use Mercurius’s assault as a diversion. We need to get into Caer.’
Bernard scowls.‘How can we? If Satanus can’t get in, then how can we? We need to help Merlin and Mercurius fight.’
The mention of his name makes me look up to where Merlin is hovering in the air above the burning walls of Caer. The whole scene is pandemonium. I shake my head. ‘No, we’ve got to be smarter than this.’
‘Smells like cowardice,’ Fitheach says. ‘I never thought it of you, Gorrow.’
‘We need to keep the halflings safe,’ I say, trying to reason with them, but both Bernard and Fitheach are frowning deeply. Their desire to help is drowning out their good sense. I am about to order them to move so we are right under the wall, a part that doesn’t have an enemy battalion with scaling ladders on it, then I’m half aware of Tye turning in his saddle and shooting a fireball to our right at someone I haven’t noticed.
‘Maligon!’ Tye shouts and I turn to see a bunch of the Fangs of Koth. I recognise Maligon the Black, Reza the Cruel, Gearhart the Brigand and Elizabeth Bathory the treacherous Heretic. That would be enough, but there are others.
They’re running at us. I pull on the reins and Spirit wheels right to face them. Tye unleashes a huge roiling fireball and I lose sight of them in the smoke as it explodes. ‘Bernard!’ I yell, ‘Take the halflings away.’
He looks like he’s going to argue, but for once he doesn’t. He barks a command to Josh and the lot of them jog off towards the walls of Caer across the burned and blasted ground.
There is Tye, Fitheach and me to face a whole load of the Fangs of Koth. We’re bound at Tarvin, so if we die it’ll likely be all over by the time we get back to Caer. Simple then: we can’t die. We also need to buy time for Bernard and the halflings to get away.
I roar, ‘For my God and King!’ level my crystal lance and charge.
Beside me Tye cries out, ‘Yee haw!’ and I hear Fitheach yell, ‘Die you filthy unbelievers, die!’
The next bit is a blur. I’m aware of exploding fireballs to the right of me and blasts of pure holy light coming from Fitheach to the left but I’m focused on the tip of my crystal lance. I select my target and kick my heels and Spirit runs full pelt towards Maligon the Black. He sees me coming, tries to go right, but I follow and correct and we hit him, the full weight of man and horse behind the lance. And we crit. Born lucky.
One down, plenty to go.
I didn’t see that coming and I turn and pull up my shield to block the next blow. I take a blast of necrotic energy in the che
st from Elizabeth Bathory, my old enemy. That has me down to 600 health but luckily Fitheach sees what’s happened and heals me up to 1000 again. Then he casts another spell I haven’t seen before and the glowing icon of the Shield spell appears in front of me. The next necrotic blast hits the shield and fizzes. No damage gets through but the shield icon flickers. I’m guessing it will take so much damage and then vanish.
‘New spell I learned,’ Fitheach yells from the back of his mare. I can’t listen. I need to attack. I turn fully towards Reza and switch to my sword. I jab and hit him and he reels back, but comes at me with a wicked riposte with his sword and I take damage.
I take stock of the situation quickly and see there are lots of them left. We can’t win this. At least Bernard and the halflings have got a little distance away. Though if we’re killed, these bad guys will soon catch up with them. There’s nothing to do but fight on.
I think Tye is going down at one point, but Fitheach saves him. I don’t know how much mana Fitheach has, or how many mana pots, but he can’t heal forever. Then I see something flying in from the north. I look up, half expecting it to be enemy airpower, but it’s Merlin on his carpet. He casts a spell and Gearhart acts like he’s covered in snakes and creepy crawlies, dropping his two swords and batting at his body as if to get rid of the critters.
‘Gorrow,’ Merlin yells. ‘Fall back. There’s a lot more of them on the way.’ I look over the heads of our seething enemies and see more black-clad forces approaching. We definitely can’t win this. I don’t even know if we can break off successfully without being vulnerable to autocrits in our backs as we run.