Into the Hells

by Christopher Johns

  I lost count of how many skeletons fell around me, but the music playing in my ears saw to it that I just didn’t give a shit. I swung and kicked and even clotheslined a few of the undead with my nub in my rush to kill them. I wanted—needed—them to die as brutally as possible. I held my nub up at the far north wall and released Phoenix Burst.

  The soundless cries of the dead sweetened by the shattering of bones and the purifying fire they fed urged me on. I cast it again to the east away from my friends, then waded into the group of skeletons that had surrounded the group of them. They slashed and stabbed while Muu pummeled the skulls with his counterbalance.

  Eventually, the skeletons were all decimated. All of us fell to the ground, exhausted. I leaned over, my breath coming in great, heaving gasps that made me vomit twice. My head pounded fiercely.

  I assumed that it was Bokaj who had played the song, and sure enough, he was standing at the ledge to the cavern above us strumming a soft melody on his guitar. It looked just like one of the ones he had at home. I wasn’t much of a musician, so I didn’t know the name, but it had damn sure been useful.

  “Good,” huff, “shit, man.” I collapsed on to my side next to the others and just rested. My mana was closing in on full recovery, and I hadn’t taken much damage during that fight. I was simply a wrecking ball of hate and rage with a shiny sword.

  “The fuck is that sword, man? That one of the spells you made?” Yohsuke pointed to Falfyre.

  It took me a minute to catch my breath enough to speak correctly, but when I did, I answered, “It is, and it's called Falfyre. I made it using my tinkering ability with my flame blade as the base and Purify to augment it. I sure as fuck wasn’t expecting this though.”

  “That’s fucking awesome!” Yohsuke whispered as he leaned closer to the spell weapon. “It’s still hot.”

  I shoved it into the ground, the dirt parting for it with a musky stench of burning iron. True enough, the somehow-still-slick blood boiled and began to evaporate around it. Rather than dismissing the sword, I left it. Who knew how much time we would have between now and the next fight.

  “Inventory, how are you guys doing?” I grunted to the others. I was fine, my natural healing bringing me to full health rather quickly.

  “Little bumped and bruised, but okay,” Muu admitted. “I used that ring you made me a couple times in that fight. My mana is recharging slowly.”

  “I get that you were out there kicking ass and all, I don’t know what the hell all that was,” James grunted looking pointedly at Bokaj, “but you’re the best healer we have right now. You gotta pay attention to us in a fight, man.”

  I watched Bokaj drop from the lip of the floor. He landed and, even with his high dexterity, slipped and fell on his ass.

  “Ow.” He stood and rubbed his ass. “That was kind of my fault. While I was training for buffs, I figured out that if I tailor the song to who I’m buffing, it’s stronger. When Zeke pulled out that sword, and it was working really well, I figured he was our best bet at making them dead again. My bad, guys.”

  Aside from a good sixty damage, the worst of it was to his pride it seemed, Muu was the first to offer him a hand up.

  “You keep falling like that, sweetheart, and maybe, next time I’ll catch you.” The Dragon-kin waggled his eyebrows provocatively.

  “What’s with the tunnel?” James asked as he stepped a little closer to it. “I don’t know what’s down there, but it could be a way out.”

  “We can recon it and see if it's a viable way to get the fuck out.” Yohsuke stepped next to him. “Be cautious, stealth-like steps. Lights on. We can’t afford another ambush like that.

  The tunnel we went down was clear, easy to follow, and most importantly—clean. There was no blood or viscera here to be seen. The ground was bone dry, and nothing seemed to be out of the norm. Seeing was easy enough thanks to Coal’s constant glow, Falfyre’s dull radiant light, and our combined night vision.

  After twenty minutes of constant, cautious travel forward at a moderate downgrade, we found a large, twenty-foot wide fissure in the ground that led far below us, and the roof to the cave was outside sight range as well. Across the fissure was a crudely-made bridge of bones strung together and secured by thick cut leather. I didn’t think much of it until I saw a lump that looked suspiciously like–

  “Is that an ear?” I asked the others softly before pointing to my find.

  “Elven,” James murmured.

  Out of nowhere, flames burst to life on the other side of the crevasse.

  “It’s been soooo long since I had visitors,” a voice cooed. “Leaves me here for so long to hunt and feed on bats and other undesirable things, tending the well for centuries while he sleeps.”

  “Fuck me…” Muu grumbled.

  A bent over figure hobbled into view. Their form was grotesque, twisted beyond all belief. Lights flared above us, illuminating the whole area. The roof to the place was high up above, and there was a thick-looking liquid in the crevasse, but they didn’t stop walking closer to the bridge.

  They were isolated on the other side of the bridge. The creature looked worse in the glowing light. Her green skin, marred with boils, scars, pustules, and gore shifted with movement.

  “That’s a hag of some kind,” James spat. “Expect more magic and some terrible shit. She’s probably the only thing here. Hags hate other living creatures, but she said something about the lich, so she may be serving him or a slave.”

  “You speak as though I cannot hear you,” she said sweetly. Her voice didn’t match her features as she spoke and kept hobbling toward the bridge to get to our side of the moat-like barrier.

  “Stay there,” Yohsuke barked at her harshly.

  Hag level 43.

  “No, no,” she cooed again. “You want me to come over, don’t you?”

  This cloying scent reached toward us, and I found myself feeling more relaxed. The others were slack-jawed and looked dazed as well, but the creature was still ugly as sin, her thin, scarred face with a large bulbous nose protruding like an elephant’s trunk. The worst thing was that she was much, much closer. Almost completely across the bridge.

  Rather than instantly crossing to meet her, I let her keep coming. Coal was growling at my side, leaning against me. I let my left arm droop with my sword and stood there, hoping I looked sufficiently dazed. I wanted to lure her closer so I could kill her swiftly.

  “Poor Lagran has been so, so lonely all these years.” She was close enough that she reached out and stroked Yoh’s chin almost tenderly. “So lonely. So hungry. I think I will skin the lizard first, then make a stew of his bones while I keep the others for company. Then the fox after that. His tails will make a fine scar– OOF!”

  Damn it! I growled in my mind. There goes my surprise. I can save this.

  An arrow pierced her cheek the same time Coal lunged forward and shoved her away from me. As she backpedaled to regain her balance, I burst forward and kicked her as hard as I could. She flew across the fissure, hit the edge of it, and shrieked as she fell into whatever was below us with a splash.

  The others came out of the stupor and blinked.

  “What happened?” Muu asked groggily.

  “She rolled you guys, but somehow Zeke and I resisted it,” Bokaj spoke up.

  “I could see the real her,” I admitted as I picked up Falfyre. “Truesight.”

  The sound of liquid beneath us began to grow louder and louder until there was a blood-red wave coming over the side. Black orbs floated to the side facing us, and the same huge nose and thin features came with them.

  “You cannot drown me, new scarf.” The hag cackled.

  “Scatter!” Muu shouted over his shoulder as he took his position as tank.

  The others were moving instantly. In my hurry, I stupidly dropped my sword as a hand of blood came crashing down where I had been.

  “Ahhh!” the hag screeched. Where she had touched the blade, the blood had turned solid, like a scab or a
clot.

  The sword itself was unsullied by the blood and lay still on the ground. I would need to go get it as soon as I could. That would help a lot.

  As I watched for the next attack, the sword lifted into the air and shot toward me hilt first. I snatched it out of the air in wonder and was instantly reminded of the last line of the spell description—it answers to the caster’s will wholly. I tossed it into the air and willed it to stay there. It did. There was a small drain on my mana, 1 MP per second, but this was amazing!

  I focused on keeping it in front of me like a shield and began to charge Phoenix Burst. The double mana cost of 500 MP would suck, but the damage would be worth it, I hoped.

  I sent the sword out to distract her with my friends running interference by firing arrows and spells as best they could. James was firing Ki blasts where he could, and Muu was trying to spear her face by launching his weapon at her. The mana cost rose by a point every ten or fifteen feet per second, but it was worth it at sixty feet and 3 MP a second. I could hold it for at least a minute, and that was way more time than needed.

  Sending a charged spell at her, mind your heads! I growled to the others through our earrings, then remembered that they couldn’t hear me that way. Fuck a warning, she could hear it too.

  I felt the first pulse of energy in my palm signaling the double of the spell and released it at the base of her body. Time seemed to move to a crawl as the projectile careened toward her.

  I saw a flash of light above her head from one of the others, and she shrunk down away from it with a cry of pain. I worried that she would sink too far, but Yohsuke shot a spell toward her right flank that made her pull her midsection tight together. I cried aloud in victory as time returned to normal and the spell hit; the detonation was a golden implosion of light that burned, then burst from the center in a red supernova that cut the bloody hag in half.

  Her blood-curdling shriek almost deafened me, then she—her actual body—plummeted to the ground near the lip of the crevasse and landed with a sickening crack.

  “Fire damage hurts her the worst!” James shouted. His fists burst into flame, using his elemental fists if I recalled, and he leaped the distance between them.

  I sent Falfyre forward with a flex of my will and stabbed it toward her head. It almost took her out, but she was just able to move it out of the way in time. Coal worried at her legs as she tried to kick him away. As I walked toward her, I noted the cut and burn mark that it left behind on her disgusting face.

  She held her hand up, and a lance of blood leaped from the crevasse and shot into James’s body. His health dropped by half, and he stopped punching and kicking the downed hag and began to struggle visibly with himself.

  He gritted his teeth, started to sit back away from her, and slowly reach for Coal with one hand and his own throat with his other.

  An arrow struck her in the jugular while she motioned for another of the bloody spears to come to her aid. The spear, already arcing toward me, dropped limply to the ground and splattered the earth in crimson. She growled and spat, but no sound left her throat. So, there was that question answered.

  If a muting arrow hits a spellcaster who uses non-verbal spells—can anyone hear her scream?

  No. But the look of impotent outrage as I snatched Falfyre into my only hand and stuck the blade through her throat, cutting her head off, was pretty damn mean. Actually—it was a permanent grimace of hatred I don’t think I’d forget for some time without booze.

  Once we finished looking over James, we began to cast our gazes elsewhere. There didn’t seem to be any more enemies around.

  “Let’s go see what’s on the other side of this bridge.” Yohsuke started the trek across the bridge. It held him easily, but we all went one at a time just in case.

  The other side was fifty feet by fifty feet but a more rounded area. There was a tent made of leather. I would only think of it as leather and not what it probably was, but I sure as hell wasn’t going near there.

  Muu had no problems outright, then seemed to notice something that made him jump away from the structure in fright.

  “There’s a face!” He shrieked. He stabbed at it with his spear, and the tearing that came about, as a result, seemed to relieve him.

  Eventually, we found a stone that had runes carved on to it that looked slick in the low light. I picked it up carefully, and my hand came away drenched in blood.

  “Damn it,” I gagged. The spot I touched seemed to grow slick once more. We left it and searched some more.

  There was a hole in the ground that we found in the exact same shape and size as the stone. I grabbed an old, frayed cloth I found in my inventory and grabbed the stone to take back to the impression.

  “I’m pretty sure she was here guarding something important,” I muttered to the others. They seemed to agree, and I grimaced. “I already lost a hand being stupid. Wanna see what’s in there?”

  I looked at the others, and James made to go before Bokaj smacked him.

  “Hey!” He gave his arm a half-hearted rub. “I was only kidding. Put the stone in, man.”

  “Yeah.” Muu sighed. “Could be treasure. Could be more souls. It could even be back up. Either way, we need to open that up so that we can be sure and not have an even more fucked up situation at our backs.”

  I blinked at him; the others blinked at him. They looked at me and nodded before Yohsuke put a hand on my shoulder, “Well, looks like we open the damned thing. We’re right here with you.”

  I looked at the others and put the stone into the depression. There was a dull glow, then a ring of sickly-green light burst from it with symbols radiating from the center like chains. All five of us backed up as far as we could to get away from that light. Every foot for twelve feet, the chains clanked against a new line of a circle.

  Once the circle of glyphs and lines stopped growing from each other, they rotated first left, then right and then began to ebb into the portion before it toward the center stone. As they went, the circles stripped away the stone beneath them and left a pool of brackish liquid that stank of… I have no idea how to describe the stench.

  If I had to try and relate it, I’d say it was the scent of despair, broken dreams, and uncle Jeff’s gym socks after leg day. It was putrid.

  I heard retching to my left and right. That made me dry heave, but I held my shit together. I was a Druid. A Primal Warrior. I wouldn’t lose my shit over this.

  I puked—shut up already. You come smell this shit and not throw your cookies all over the damned ground.

  Once the rock beneath them had been taken away, the liquid began roiling as if alive—the moans and groans of tortured souls buffeting us as if they were crying out in our faces.

  It was heart-wrenching. I hated it. It made me want to jump from the side of this rock in the center of the earth. I reached out and beckoned for the others to back off.

  “Get on the other side of the bridge. Bokaj, as soon as you see the ball of fire pass you, cast purify on it. Okay?” He nodded and put a hand out. “Guard your eyes, boys.”

  I charged Phoenix Burst again, and as the flaming ball of golden fire sped past him, Bokaj purified it; it grew larger, seemingly stronger for the added holy aspect. The spell landed in the center of the pool, and the same thing as last time happened. The whole thing evaporated, and I felt a chill rend my body.

  I fell to my knees as a sourceless voice of rage and anguish shouted in pain. Then the voice changed.

  “You think you can stop me? Soon I will take your precious friend from you, and there will be nothing you or anyone else can do! You had better hurry.” The lich’s voice was hoarse and furious. With a cackle, he added, “His mind is already falling apart!”

  I looked at the others and grimaced. “Think he was mad?”

  The others nodded together, but Yoh offered me a hand up. “I think that was a large source of power for him. We need to get to Jaken.”

  We all looked toward the exit to the cavern and s
miled. It was a straight shot back to the hole. I looked at my friends, and the race was on. It was difficult sprinting with the sword in hand, but that’s how I did it. No sense in wasting the mana to make it float or dismiss it.

  Thanks to our high dexterity and no need for caution, we made it in a quarter of the time it had taken to reach the hag’s den.

  Once we reached the end of the tunnel, Muu laid on his back and gave each of us a lift up with his feet. Like playing a game with a toddler, but this one would hurt if you smacked into the side of the wall or cave. I brought T’ up in my collar and summoned Coal the same as I had earlier.

  Once we were all up top, Muu leaped up himself. He made it look easy.

  “Hey man, what’s your strength at now?” I asked him curiously. He hadn’t seemed to struggle with being our boost up, and each of us had made the transition relatively easily.

  “Oh, my strength is at eighty-five, bud.” He flashed a huge, reptilian grin at me. “Figured since we’ll be fighting a Dragon sometime soon, it would be a good idea to be able to hit things harder. Ya know?”

  I whistled at that. That was thirty-three points higher than mine. Fuck, man.

  “Yeah, I hear you. Let’s get out of here then.” We exited the room and came face to face with a group of maids and butlers—five of each—sweeping the halls and dusting as we went to leave the room.

  We looked at them, their outfits pristine black and white; they looked alive. Several of them looked like they were malnourished, sure, but they seemed alive.

  They saw us, curtsied and bowed before beginning to move on.

  “Excuse us,” Bokaj tried to get their attention, but they kept moving. “Well, I guess I’ll just go fuck myself.”

  We stepped on to the red carpeting and immediately the butlers and maids turned with a shriek. Their once-pink skin turned gray and drawn. Their teeth elongated, and their mouths opened so long they could have eaten my entire foot. Clawed hands flashed in the light of the hall, and the fight was on.

  “These vampires or something?” Muu yelled. “I sense vampires!”