“I’m not hiding,” she said matter-of-factly. To my surprise, she unsheathed the short sword I’d assumed was only part of the Hannah character.
“Since when do you know how to use a sword?”
“Since I was saved by a hero, who showed me how to defend myself.” She smiled at me, and damnit, I couldn’t help but smile back.
We stood side by side, weapons drawn, and anxiously awaited the demon. I had my pizza shovel cocked like a baseball bat, and Doughboy clung to the end, ready to be launched at the demon.
When the beast was close enough, I swung with all my might. Doughboy shot through the air toward the demon, but the creature veered. A doughy appendage snaked out and caught the beast by the leg, and Doughboy snapped toward it like a rubber band.
The demon barrel-rolled and flew erratically less than fifty feet above the ground. Doughboy was maneuvering toward its face, and when he covered it, the demon went absolutely nuts. The two of them crashed fifty yards away, but the demon managed to dislodge Doughboy, and flung him into the trees.
When the demon rose, its size became horrifyingly clear. The thing was like a bull with wings. Crimson skin stretched over impossibly large muscles, his horns were large enough to skewer a man with ease, and the eyes brought about a deep, primal fear when they caught me in their evil gaze.
I took aim with the crossbow and fired.
The demon was hit in the chest. He staggered and let out a pained wail. I reloaded, the monster less than thirty feet away. When I brought the crossbow to bear once more, Doughboy stretched out of the trees, his legs secured to the branches, and wrapped his arms around the demon’s horns.
I fired again, but the demon was flailing and trying to break free from Doughboy’s grip, and my bolt barely grazed its shoulder.
“Fuck!” I hurriedly reloaded, then heard the sound of an army of imps rising up the hill.
The demon grabbed Doughboy’s arms and ripped them in half. I fired again, hitting him square in the chest. He fell to one knee as I reloaded. A fiery sword in his right hand, he growled and sprang at me.
I shot again as the demon spread his wings and glided toward me. I didn’t bother watching to see if my bolt hit; I dropped the crossbow and pulled my enchanted weapon free. I blocked the blade, which came down on me like a massive pendulum. I had no idea how much weight was behind the demon’s strike, but if not for the power of the enchanted shovel, I would have been pounded into the ground like a tent peg. The pizza shovel didn’t so much as move when the sword slammed into the flat of the blade, and the two of us stood there, locked in battle, glaring at each other with murderous rage.
The imps crested the hill and raced toward us, pushing and pulling each other to get ahead. They may have only been about eighteen inches tall, but there were hundreds of them, which spelled certain doom for Eva and me.
As I fought the demon and the imps swarmed over me, I thought of only one thing: Earth.
How the hell had I gotten myself into a situation like this again? I should have told Celesta to go pound salt and send me back to Earth. I could have lived out my days with Becka. Why had I wanted to return to this god-forsaken hellhole?
I was going to die a million miles from home at the hands of a demon.
I’d take boring old Earth over Tarth any day. Too bad I learned that too late.
I hit the ground hard, the demon looming over me. I vaguely heard Eva screaming in the distance. Through blurry eyes I saw Doughboy tearing imps apart, but there were just too many. The demon was too strong. I couldn’t defeat him.
“Get up, Jake!”
Eva’s words were like a cold bucket of water tossed in my face, and I rolled away from the demon and sprang to my feet. The bastard was slowed by the bolts in his chest, but he was still strong as a bull. The blows to the pizza shovel had no effect, but when he applied his meaty fists to my flesh, it was like being hit by a bus. He put me on my ass with only a glancing blow, and if he connected with a well-placed punch, I was pretty sure it would kill me.
Imps crawled all over me as I tried to fend him off. It was like being attacked by cats while trying to avoid a moving train, and I came close to death with every blow. Eva was hacking and chopping at the imps as they danced around her tauntingly, and Doughboy was covered with the little devils. Soon we would be too tired to defend ourselves, while it seemed our attackers never tired at all.
The demon changed course in the blink of an eye and brought the sword down on my head. I parried the blow with the handle, spun the weapon around, and chopped off the demon’s right arm. His sword fell with the severed hand, but I had no time to celebrate. As I spun around for another strike, the demon backhanded me in the chest.
I woke up face down in the dirt, and pain kept me there.
“Goddess Celesta!” I heard Eva bellow, her voice rolling across the valley like thunder. “Bless me with your strength!”
I rolled over. The demon stalked toward me, sword in his other hand.
Eva was between us, arms and head raised to the sky. “Goddess Celesta! Give me your strength!”
“Get out of here!” I screamed as the demon prepared to chop her in half. But he never got a chance to swing the blade.
Lightning ripped through the clouds and hit Eva’s hands, and the crashing of thunder that followed shook the ground around me. She thrust her hands toward the demon, and the power she had absorbed blasted from her palms in the form of snaking electrical tendrils.
The demon was lifted off his feet. His body swelled as the crackling lightning surrounded him, then he suddenly exploded. Eva turned her attention on the imps and turned them into barbeque as she created a swath of lightning around us.
When she stopped, our enemies lay in burnt heaps.
“Holy shit,” I said as the thunder continued to roll through the valley.
She gazed upon me with glowing, electric blue eyes. Around us the smoke from our charred enemies rose into the still air.
“Sweeeet,” said Doughboy, drunkenly shaking his head.
“When the hell did you learn magic?” I struggled to my feet and stared in astonishment at the decimation.
“There are perks to being a priestess of Celesta.” She glanced at my dented armor. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. So you could have done that the entire time?”
“Are you seriously berating me right now? I just saved your life.”
“But you could have stopped them before our lives were hanging by a thread!”
Her eyes fluttered in annoyance, then she took a steadying breath. “One does not use the power of a goddess lightly. I can’t go around throwing lightning bolts at everything that threatens us. That’s not how it works.”
“Why the hell not?”
She rolled her eyes and walked over to our horses, which, I realized with horror, were dead.
“Shit!” I said, feeling bad that we had led the animals to such horrible deaths. “If you had acted sooner, we’d still have horses. Now we have to walk.”
“And you think I complain a lot?” She sneered. “Take a look in a mirror sometime.”
“Whatever. Grab what you can carry and let’s get the hell out of here.”
We continued on for a few hours until we came to a high bluff that would make a suitable camp. On one side were red birch trees that reached at least fifty feet into the air, and on the other was a long, wide valley with patches of woods that spread for miles. Far in the distance I thought I saw the black monolith, but when I asked Eva about it, she said she didn’t see it.
Monsters are a lot like wild animals; they hate fire. Unfortunately, demons and imps aren’t afraid of fire. They were born from it, so Eva discouraged me from starting one. It was cold that night, but we had our field tents and blankets, and we were completely bushed from the encounter with the demon. We ate our food in silence, then I told Doughboy he was on watch for the night and hit the sack.
In the morning, I felt like I’d been hit by a Mack truck, rolled down a
n embankment, and tossed into a dumpster full of bricks. My chest was bruised from where the demon had backhanded me with his gnarly knuckles, and my armor was dented so bad I had to spend the better part of an hour pounding it out with a rock.
Eva was in a weird mood. She didn’t talk at all, which was strange, and I wondered what was on her mind. I didn’t ask, though. The silence was nice.
Midday came and went. We only stopped for a few minutes to drink and eat a bit of jerky. I lived in the Lake George area of northern NY, and I was used to hiking, but Eva kept up with me easily.
The land was hilly and thick with trees, but there were plenty of game trails to follow. We made good time that day, considering we no longer had horses.
Hunger and fatigue finally got to me, and when we reached a high shelf overlooking a valley, we stopped to eat our dinner. Eva was still quiet, and I’d remained intent on not talking to her. That left Doughboy sitting between us, looking like a bored teenager hanging out with his divorced parents.
“This is stupid,” I said. “We’ve got a long road ahead of us, and we can’t keep on ignoring each other.”
“Huh?” said Eva, like she’d been pulled out of a trance. “I’ve been praying to Celesta all morning. Did you think I was ignoring you?”
I couldn’t tell if she was bullshitting or not. She kept a straight face, even raising her brow expectantly.
“What? No. I’ve actually been praying to one of my gods too. I just didn’t want you to think I was ignoring you.”
“Oh. What is the name of the god you were praying to?”
“Uh, Joe.”
“Joe?
“Yeah. Joe Pesci. God of revenge.”
“Whom do you wish vengeance upon?”
“Gorrcon, who else?”
“I didn’t know you were a religious man,” she said, looking pleased.
“Yeah, well, when you’re summoned to another world by a goddess—twice—you tend to rethink your beliefs.”
She smiled kindly at me. “Jake, I’m sorry about how I acted. I don’t know what came over me. I was so nervous to see you again, and I just got carried away. I didn’t mean to deceive you, believe me.”
“It’s water under the bridge,” I assured her with a wave of my hand.
She leaned toward me with yearning in her eyes. Her pink lips were irresistible, and her beauty enchanting.
I closed my eyes.
Our lips met.
Three rock trolls crashed through the trees into our makeshift camp.
I snapped to my feet and grabbed my weapon. The trolls had erupted from the hills behind us, and they charged down the slope like an avalanche. The bastards were twenty feet tall, and their heavy footfalls shook the ground.
“Time to start praying,” I said to Eva and maneuvered between her and the trolls.
They had dusty gray skin that blended well with the large boulders around us. Their eyes were small and beady, their mouths were grotesquely wide, and their noses were bulbous and full of warts. Their naked bodies were covered in a layer of jiggly fat, but their arms and legs were as thick as telephone poles.
“Sling shot time, D!” I extended my shovel toward him.
He got on, and I swung hard, launching my face-loving friend through the air toward the center troll. Doughboy landed with a splat and instantly took control of the troll’s mind, forcing it to tackle the one beside it.
The third one kept on coming like a freight train, and I took careful aim with my crossbow. I fired when the monster was less than fifteen feet away, hitting him square in the forehead.
Either there wasn’t much going on up there or my bolt hadn’t penetrated the troll’s skull, because he didn’t stop. He swiped at me with a big hairy mitt. I dodged, swung my weapon, and severed two of his fingers.
The troll reeled back and howled, and I buried my blade in his cinder block-sized big toe. He kicked me with the other foot, sending me spinning into the branches of a thick pine tree. I hit hard, landing in the crook of two branches, and somehow held onto my pizza shovel.
About twenty feet away, the troll was stalking Eva. Behind them both, Doughboy and his mind-controlled troll were still battling the second beast.
“Through here!” I yelled to Eva.
She glanced back worriedly, saw me up in the tree, and ran for the base. The troll laughed and limped after her, swatting small pines and birches aside like they were weeds. I waited until she ran beneath my tree and dropped.
The troll looked up at the last moment and caught me in his big hand before I landed on his face. I swung my weapon down, burying it in his head. The troll released me, and I landed in a crouch at his feet. I slowly backed up as he teetered, the pizza shovel embedded in his head.
“Timber, motherfucker!” I said as he fell over backward.
When the dust settled, Eva and I saw Doughboy’s troll lift the second attacker over his head and pitch him over a cliff. I retrieved my pizza shovel and crossbow bolt from the felled troll and we approached Doughboy’s mental captive.
“Do you have full control, D?” I asked.
He was stretched across the troll’s face and grinning. “Sweeeet!”
“Awesome. Take a knee and let us on.”
“You intend to ride this thing?” Eva pinched her nose. “It smells like death.”
“You’re going to have to suck it up. This thing must have a ten-foot stride.”
Doughboy forced the troll to bend a knee, and I helped Eva climb up and onto its shoulder. I settled on the other shoulder, and the troll’s hands secured us in place.
“All right, D, let’s get moving. See what this bad boy’s got.”
The troll sprinted toward the ledge, and Eva screamed in terror.
“Not so fast!” I yelled as I held on for dear life.
Doughboy laughed giddily as he forced the troll to leap over the ledge. We fell thirty feet, but the landing was surprisingly smooth, and soon we were speeding down the side of the long hill toward the valley below.
We raced across fields, through forests, over hills, and made incredible time. I don’t know exactly how fast we were going, but the troll must have topped thirty miles an hour in the clearings.
“At this rate we’ll reach the Black Keep a few hours after sunset,” I said to Eva, who was still plugging her nose and holding on to the troll’s ear for support.
When sunset arrived, we were traversing an open field of pink flowers bordered by red birches. Eva and I were in the middle of a conversation about the many monsters rumored to be in the Badlands when the troll suddenly turned to stone, freezing in place.
“Doughboy?” I said, but he had turned to stone as well.
“Oh no!” She hesitantly touched Doughboy’s face, but pulled her hand back quickly. “He’s rock hard.”
“What the hell is going on? Have you ever heard of a troll turning to stone at night? I thought that happened in the sunlight, if it happened at all.”
The stone troll’s weight slowly shifted, and a moment later it tumbled onto its side, sending us rolling through the flowers.
“What do we do now?” she asked as I helped her up.
“I guess we wait until sunrise for Doughboy to return to normal.” I surveyed our surroundings, wondering what creatures might be lurking in the dark forest. I would have preferred not sleeping in the field but hoped that the sheer size of the stone troll would deter monsters and wild animals.
We made camp next to the troll and lit a fire to cook some of the provisions the dwarves had given us, which included elk steaks and yellow potatoes. I skewered the meat and taters, and set them over the fire.
Eva sat facing west, legs crossed and hands open. She murmured her prayers to Celesta, but I couldn’t hear what she was asking for. I gave her space and walked the perimeter of the camp, staring at the deep shadows under the tall red birches. Being in a field of flowers with an exotic forest around me should have been blissful, but I couldn’t shake the feeling I was being watch
ed.
When I returned to camp, I found Eva turning the food over the fire. The steaks looked like they were almost done, but I knew the potatoes would take a lot longer. I was starving, however, and wasn’t about to wait for them.
“You hungry?” I asked as I riffled through my backpack in search of the tin dinner plates.
“Famished,” she said with an exaggerated hungry expression.
I plated the steaks, and the smell of the juicy meat made my mouth water. She pulled a small leather sack out of her pouch and sprinkled its contents on the meat.
“Want some?” She offered it to me.
“What is it?”
“Salt and degron. You’ll like it.”
I sprinkled some on my meat and thanked her, then cut a nice thin piece off and popped it in my mouth. The hot juices were exquisite, and a low grown escaped me as I closed my eyes and chewed the delicious meat.
“So good,” Eva said with a mouthful.
“Right?”
We shared the wine skin and ate to our heart’s content. We took our time, eating and talking leisurely under starry sky. The Eye of Thodin was just over Eva’s shoulder, giving her an ethereal appearance that made my heart ache.
God, how I had missed that woman.
“What?” she said, covering her mouth and smiling shyly.
“I’m sorry, was I staring?”
She chewed and grinned, nodding.
“It’s good to be back, you know?”
She drank more wine and handed it to me. “Good to be back in the Badlands fighting monsters?”
“Not exactly. Back on the road with you and Doughboy, you know? I mean, it’s dangerous as hell, and it seems like everything is out to get us, but the danger kind of puts things into perspective.”
She tossed back her head and laughed. “Yeah, almost being killed every day really puts things into perspective.”
“Being chased by a monstrous troll reminds you what you have to lose.”
“It makes you realize what’s important.” She held my gaze, and the Eye of Thodin looked like a halo around her head.
I moved closer. “Things come into focus.”
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