“What?” Ermolt asked, the assurance with which the old man spoke jarring him. “Who?”
“Um, I was talking about the bandit camp outside.” Elise glanced from Ermolt to the old man, and then back again. “But this seems like a way more interesting story. King Ludowika? Do you mean the King of Feldhok, Ludowika?”
“The King of Feldhok?” The old man scoffed as he climbed over another pile of rubble. “He won’t be King of Anything by year’s end if he doesn’t shape up. If the Lublis Council doesn’t do something, the Lorenz family of Gloder is going to handle it, and I’m sure not even Dietrich wants that outcome.” He drew a thumb across his throat, and shivered. “Not after the last time, that is.”
Ermolt looked to Elise in confusion. He wasn’t sure who these people were.
“There hasn’t been a King in Feldhok for centuries,” Elise said. “Not since the assassination of King Ludowika.” She paused for a moment before jumping up and climbing after the old man. “So, who were the Lorenz family?”
“Merchants. Opportunists. But not even opportunists. Worse. The children of opportunists.” The old man shrugged. “Their great-grandma won a dozen horses in a card game, and used them to start a wagon train around Neuges. She grew fat off nothing more than buying cheap and selling dear in the next town over.” He waved a hand dismissively. “They’re clinging to a dying empire. If the money lasts one more generation, it’s because they started producing things other than wagons running laps around Grunith and paying off the Kings to tax the carts out from under any budding competitors.”
Ermolt frowned. “You speak of them as if they are contemporaries. There hasn’t been a King in the southern lands for a hundred and fifty years. What are you talking about?”
“I think that’s what he’s talking about,” Elise said, her voice full of amusement. “Are you a historian? A scholar? Is that why you came here?”
“No,” the old man said as he slid down the other side of the pile of rubble. “Yes? Maybe. I’ve been here always, and these are things that happened just yesterday.”
“It’s worse than I thought if he thinks his studies are recent events.” Ermolt grimaced and followed Elise across the pile of rubble. “I feel bad about not getting him out of here.”
The ex-Conscript sighed. “We don’t have a choice,” she said wistfully. “If he doesn’t want to be brought out, we can’t force him.”
They both climbed down the pile at the far end of the rubble-filled room. The old man waited for them next to a doorway that looked like a familiar sight. It was choked with wood and stone, just like the pile of rubble past the dining room on the first floor. The room above had entirely collapsed, crumbling into this one. Only this collapse was so bad, a chunk of the exterior wall had fallen out, and they could look out over the ocean.
“Is this a trick?” Ermolt asked, frustration boiling in a way that made his skin feel chilled. “There’s no way through here.”
“Hah. Of course there is. Just this way.” The old man walked to the hole in the wall and climbed up the rubble. He skirted the edge, just as they had on the missing interior wall, earlier.
Ermolt looked to Elise, and the ex-Conscript motioned for him to follow. With a shrug, he climbed out onto the ledge, keeping one hand on the rubble to the left side as he watched his footing.
Below his feet, the tower dropped away to meet the ring of stone and its base. On this side of the tower, there wasn’t even enough bare ground between the stone and the sand of the ocean for grass to grow. Ermolt couldn’t tell if the tower had been built so close to the ocean originally, or if the tides had spent the last centuries eroding away at the soil, with no groundskeepers there to fight back the elements.
Elise brought up the rear of their group at a slower pace. But ahead, the old man climbed along the edge of the rubble like it was nothing. He was almost moving as fast as he had been on solid ground. Did he hold no fear of the drop?
They climbed that way for a while, and Ermolt began to grow nervous when he didn’t see another opening in the stone to get them back into the Temple. But it became obvious that he was looking in the wrong place. The old man stopped walking along the ledge and climbed up the rubble, scrambling into a gap between the rubble and the top of the missing section of exterior wall.
Ermolt followed behind, carefully testing his footholds as he went, since he weighed significantly more than the bony old man. It also meant that they were strong enough for Elise, who climbed behind him with an eagerness for solid ground.
The space they entered within the tower was cavernous.
At about Ermolt’s head height, there was a ring around the wall of broken stone and wooden beams, showing where the floor of the third floor was, where this room had fallen in. The ceiling was high above that, and the room was lit from outside by tall windows along the exterior wall.
The rubble in here was at an angle. It sloped up on the left, and then back down on the right. At the far end of the room, the top half of the doorway was exposed, and the old man made his way that way.
As soon as Elise’s feet found a stable balance on the rubble, without the long drop at her side, she resumed talking to the old man. “Alright. If you were holed up in here to hide from the bandits, they’ve been scattered. You don’t need to stay here.”
“Where else would I go?” the old man asked as he ducked through the choked doorway. “You can’t hide from me that Marska is dead. I can see it from here. Where else is there?”
“Your home? Wherever you came from?” Ermolt threw his hands up in frustration. He dropped to his knees to fit through the half-filled door. “Surely some family might miss you. Or at least some colleagues might be happy to hear of what you discovered here?”
“There is no family. No colleagues. I told you, this Temple is all I remember.” He shook his white-topped head as he walked down a narrow hallway, ignoring the rotten wooden doors to either side. “I don’t know any home but this one.”
“This can’t be your home,” Elise said as she too scooted under the rubble. “Who taught you about King Ludowika? Where did you learn about his assassination?”
“I don’t remember. My father? No, no, that’s not right. He wasn’t my father, not by blood. But he was the one who took care of me. Doesn’t that make him my father?” The old man made a frustrated sound. “I don’t know who taught me. I just know that King Ludowika is going to get what he deserves.” He paused, and blinked at Elise. “Not my words, in case you happen to be loyal to the King. It’s just what I’ve heard.”
“From who? The rocks?” Ermolt gestured around them. “The rats? The undead? Surely, someone must have said it for you to have heard it.”
“Of course,” the man said, his head bobbing up and down. “And as soon as I remember, I’ll let you know.” He paused and looked to Elise. “I remember coming here as a boy. Looking up at the tower from the outside. But then all of my memories are of being inside the tower. And never leaving.”
“You came here as a boy?” Ermolt stared at him a moment. “Were you abandoned here?”
“No, no, nothing like that.” When he reached the end of the hallway, he pushed his shoulder against the stone door. “I was much older than a boy. And this was the only place that would take me in.”
Ermolt growled in frustration. Talking to the man was like trying to build a campfire in the howling winds of a blizzard. Every bit of progress, every step closer you made to finally getting somewhere, were all for naught. He wasn’t sure if it was insanity, hunger, or just a joke. But he was absolutely tired of it.
And so instead of pressing for more information, Ermolt clenched his jaw shut.
In the silence, the old man giggled to himself, before pushing open the door.
Beyond the frame was the metal disk and ring of the teleporter. It was inert now, but he knew they only needed to find the gearbox to activate it.
“Finally,” Elise said as she slipped past him. “And no sign of the Champion
either.” She pointed to another break in the interior wall, where they could see out into the pit. Ermolt glanced around, but confirmed the lanky undead wasn’t waiting for them. “We might be able to stay ahead of it now, if it doesn’t realize we’re already on the next floor.”
“How do we activate the teleporter?” Ermolt asked the old man. “Where’s the control panel?”
“Show some patience, tall one.” The old man rolled his eyes, and then giggled in a way that grated Ermolt’s nerves. “It’s just this way, in the next hall.”
He led them across the room, to another stone door. The old man struggled for a moment to yank it open before Ermolt stepped up and opened it easily. Beyond, the hallway was a little wider, with stone doors instead of wooden ones. The old man made straight for the third door, yanking the door open to reveal a supply closet full of moth-eaten robes.
“It’s behind here,” he said, diving face-first into the threadbare and near rotted cloth, heedless of whatever insects or fungus might be living there. “This gear is the one for the teleporter.” His voice was muffled by the robes, and further obscured, since they couldn’t actually see what he was looking at. “This one is a tricky one, you see, since the upper floors were off-limits to Conscripts and visitors alike. There’s one for the lights, but then all others are traps.”
“Traps?” Elise glanced at Ermolt. “Like a high-pitched sound that would draw guards?”
“Oh, no, nothing as simple as that.” Ermolt heard the scrape of metal-on-metal, from deep within the closet. “The downstairs traps are just like that because it’s hidden in plain sight. Anyone could blunder in to it, and they didn’t want any tragedies with a curious child going missing.” There was a click, and the old man began to wiggle his way out of the pile of robes. “These traps here will kill whomever trips them. Fire, blades, falling rocks… all that and more. And not enough to kill right away. Enough to ensure death, sure, but little enough to make it a long and unpleasant passing.” He struggled a moment more, his own robe tangled in the pile before he finally escaped. Once he was out of the closet, he sat on the floor, shaking his head. “Anyone messing with this one would understand the risks, if they knew to find it here.”
“Why would Conscripts be banned from the upper floors? Were the Priests trying to protect the Favor?”
“Ugh.” The old man kicked his feet to push back against the nearest wall. “Don’t mention that… thing. I can’t stand thinking of it up there. Just… being there. It’s horrible.”
“Why?” Ermolt asked. “What’s so horrible about it?”
“The Favor is part of a corpse, is why. Gross and festering and nasty.” He shuddered, and when he looked up at Ermolt, he could see a large amount of the whites of the old man’s eyes. “But it’s not something that rots away. Then it would be clean by now. Flesh long gone, leaving just bone behind. But it’s… filthy. Disgusting. A chunk of a God left to rot in the sun, but never rot away.” He turned his head and spat on the ground. “Ask me anything. Anything else. Just don’t make me think about that… thing.”
“Alright, fine,” Elise said, her brow furrowed in frustration. “What sort of traps will there be to deal with once we’re on the third floor?”
“Nothing more past here,” he said with a shake of his head. “You realize people lived here, right? This was the only teleporter with dangerous traps. It was just to keep the uninitiated from wandering into the Priest’s quarters. And the High Priest’s office. And from the platforms above.” He pointed upwards, and Ermolt remembered the slowly rotating platforms they’d seen suspended above the pit in the center of the Temple. It’d been so long, and they’d come across so many dangers, he honestly forgot they lurked there.
“Alright, so once we’re on the third floor, there will be nothing to worry about?”
“Hah, no, not at all.” He chuckled darkly. “At least one of the guardians should still be put-together enough to be dangerous. And, of course, as soon as you stop worrying about your much-feared Champion, that’s when he’ll strike.”
Ermolt frowned. “But no traps? Fire, blades, falling rocks? None of that past here?”
“Of course not.” The old man struggled to his feet. “Like I said, people lived here. Imagine if you had to negotiate a passage filled with tripwires and pressure plates if you had to empty your bladder in the middle of the night?” He brushed his hands along his robes. “What a nightmare that would be.”
They went back to the teleporter as a group. Enough time had passed that the room was alight with the shimmering blue light of the teleporter. It was a beautiful sight.
Or, it would have been, if not for the hulking figure standing between them and it.
The cane was a dead giveaway to who the silhouette belonged to.
“Mercy! Mercy!” the old man shouted. His cry was thin and tinny, much like his battle cry had been just a half-bell ago. “I did your bidding! They’re here just as you wanted! I want to live! Please, spare me!”
Without another word of warning, the old man sprinted forward at the Champion. For a moment, Ermolt thought he was going to throw himself at the creature’s feet to continue begging. But that wasn’t the case.
The old man ran past the walking corpse and hurled himself into the blue portal.
Elise cried out, frustration and fear clear in her voice.
The blue light faded with an eruption of motes, and the Champion stood up straight. He took a step forward, towards Elise and Ermolt, leading with the metallic click of his cane.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
In the silence between the ominous click of the monster’s cane as it approached, Elise swore she could hear the shrill scream of the old man from across the Temple. A very large, very bitter part of her hoped he fell into the pit.
But she had no time for thoughts of revenge, and no time for anger.
The creature approached slowly. It was taking its time—almost playing with them. Hoping to cause fear and panic.
Instead, Elise took a deep breath and drew her sword. She stepped away from Ermolt to give him the room he needed to ready his hammer. Her shield was already on her arm—and had been almost permanently since they entered Isadon’s Temple—but her arm tensed in anticipation. The corpse had easily pinned her shield and gotten past her guard before. And there was no way for her to stop it from happening again.
Every click of that cane was maddening.
“We only need to stall,” Elise said, trying to distract herself from the sound. She still flinched when the cane came down as if to punctuate her sentence. “The portal will open again in less than a quarter of a bell. We just need to stay alive that long to escape.”
“You know that’s a long time to fight, right? And besides, he won’t let us.” Elise could see the grimace on Ermolt’s face, even though neither of them turned to the other. “The only way we both get through at once is very close together. He’ll separate us. Keep one of us away.”
“What do we do then?”
“Avoid him as much as possible. When the portal opens, you go.”
“What? No!” Elise turned to look at Ermolt, but only for the briefest moment. She knew what the Champion liked to do when her attention was elsewhere. “I refuse!”
“You have to.” Ermolt rolled his shoulder, still looking forward at the encroaching Champion. “If one of us is going to hold out for a full half a bell against him, it’ll be me.”
“There has to be another way. I won’t leave you behind.”
Ermolt said nothing in response, and Elise knew he had made up his mind. A lump formed in her throat. He was going to try to sacrifice himself. Not that he wouldn’t try to survive, but if he failed, he wanted her to continue on without him.
He’d do that over her dead body.
She appreciated the sentiment, she really did. But the whole reason they were here was because of noble sacrifices against monsters who didn’t deserve the life they took.
The Nether had already ripped
Athala from her. It wasn’t going to have Ermolt too.
With a ferocious growl, Elise banged the pommel of her sword against her shield. She didn’t exactly want to engage the Champion prematurely. They were hoping to stall, so if he wanted to continue to play his mind games, that was fine by her. Every moment it spent clicking its way across the room towards them was a few more glowing runes in the disc that lit up, charging the portal. But there was a rod of tension between her shoulders, threatening to snap and cause her to rush to meet her doom.
Like Ermolt was, presently.
The barbarian let loose a bellow and charged before Elise could stop him.
Dutifully, she followed his lead.
The Champion ripped the blade from its cane as soon as Ermolt took a step forward. It took a low stance to prepare for the oncoming charge. Ermolt tried to fake out the Champion—lowering his shoulder as though looking to accept a hit in exchange for a tackle—but stopped short at the maximum reach of the hammer, sweeping the weapon around in an arc to catch his opponent off guard.
It should have worked. Ermolt was fast enough, and the Champion’s stance was low. The intent of its stance was to catch Ermolt’s weight, not dodge the blow.
Just the same, the creature’s unnatural strength let it block the strike. Both of its lanky arms circled up and it caught the head of the hammer against the crisscrossed pattern of sheath and sword. Together, the weapons were able to oppose Ermolt’s raw power directly.
Elise lunged it at Ermolt’s side, taking advantage of the momentary opening to drive her sword at the creature. The tip of her weapon lanced out at its chest. With Ermolt occupying both of its weapons, it had few options to deal with her.
It turned its body to maximize the effectiveness of its leather armor, and accepted the blow to the ribs. Though the ancient leather cracked and flaked away from the impact, tearing a hole in the armor, the blade left no damage on the tiny sliver of bared flesh beneath it.
Elise growled in frustration and prepared for another attack. The Champion shoved Ermolt’s hammer up and away, and once its weapons were free, it swept them both out in an arc in front of itself. Both Elise and Ermolt were forced to dance away, but Ermolt hissed in frustration as the sheath the creature wielded like a baton caught his elbow.
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