by Dante King
“With your powers, my people, the trolls of Umanur, could become like they once were: the greatest practitioners of magic in all the worlds!”
“Done!” hissed Enwyn.
I felt the magical resistance locking my muscles disappear, but for a few seconds longer we all pretended to be stuck in place.
They’re waiting for my lead, I realized.
“That sounds like a blast,” I said. “But, there’s a problem.”
“A problem?”
“Yeah,” I said, “that ego of mine.”
My Fireball hit the shaman square in the face—or would have done, if the slippery little feathered cocksucker hadn’t got some sort of shield up in time. It was all good though because it distracted him enough for me to release my own Lightning Skink.
“Sic him,” I said.
I would have loved to sit with a tub of popcorn and watch my Lightning Skink tear that troll into pieces, but Enwyn had already grabbed a handful of my jacket and steered me toward the temple entrance. We all made it safely inside, but as we crossed the threshold the shaman dissolved my Lightning Skink with a swift chopping gesture and then fired a triple Fireball of glowing green flames in our direction.
I tackled Janet and Cecilia into the cover of the temple tunnel as the triple green Fireball hit the stone entrance like an RPG. For a few seconds I lay on top of them, as the sound of sliding earth and the thunder of rock filled our ears.
After a few long moments I raised my head and looked about. We were in the tunnel—safe, as far as I could make out. I got off of the two prostrate girls and helped them to their feet.
“You certainly know how to seduce a woman and sweep her off her feet,” Cecilia said, dryly, as she took my hand and got up. “No wonder these two hopped into your bed.”
Before I could answer Janet asked, “Where’s Enwyn?”
“Here,” came the reply from further down the tunnel. “And I have good news.”
“Well, fire away,” I said, dusting off my torn clothing.
“We’re trapped,” Enwyn said.
“And that’s good because…” Janet said.
“Because, for the moment, we are safe from that shaman, and he’s a powerful adversary,” said Enwyn. “But also, because of this.” She held something up to us in the dim light.
“Is that more crap?” Cecilia asked.
Enwyn nodded. “There are more Cockatrices in here—a nest most probably.”
“Which means that we can still fulfill our task,” I said. “We can still get back to the Academy.”
Enwyn looked back toward the ruined entrance. She seemed worried, if that were possible in such a kick-ass chick.
“Let’s hope we find a Cockatrice before the shaman finds another way into this temple,” she said. “He knew what you were, Justin. I suspect you are the sole reason why he was in this world. And he won’t be leaving until he has you.”
Chapter Ten
The exit was blocked by about two-hundred tons of shattered rock and broken masonry behind us, so it was a no-brainer as far as figuring out our next move.
Enwyn led the way, down the stone corridor that stretched in front of us for only ten or so yards before being lost in inky darkness. We were not wholly in the dark by any means. Enwyn had conjured an impressive little globe of flickering fire, which floated slightly in front of and above her head, moving whenever she turned her head to one side of the other. Always wanting to feel like I was bringing something to the table, I’d looked at the stone set into the tip of my staff and muttered, “How about a light?” and the globe had put forward a soft, illuminating light.
The temple’s interior walls were made of the same dark gray stone as the outside. The same wrist-thick deep purple ivy crawled across the walls but, without the sun shining down on it, it now became extremely apparent that the vines were glowing. They pulsed with a hypnotic aquamarine light—a bioluminescence of some sort, I couldn’t help but hypothesize, having studied at the National Geographic Channel University under the famed professor, David Attenborough. The pulsing light was as steady and as constant as a heartbeat, and the flow of energy or magic or whatever it was that thrummed through the vines seemed to be flowing from the inside of the temple outward.
“It’s like we’re walking through the passageways of some giant golem,” Janet murmured, her voice echoing off the rocky walls, her words mirroring my thoughts.
“Yes,” Cecilia said softly, “and we’re heading for the heart.”
Enwyn indicated more clumps and piles of Cockatrice dung as we went along. It was after she had pointed out one enormous pile of shit that I suddenly realized that I hadn’t asked what should have been the most pressing question in my mind.
“Allow me to address the elephant in the room then,” I said.
The light over Enwyn’s head bobbed to the right, casting stark shadows across the pulsing walls, as she gave me a sidelong glance.
“What the hell was that crazy troll bastard talking about back there?” I asked. “What was all that stuff he was spouting about these Dark Ones? About my parents? About me?”
Enwyn carried on in silence for a while. I was a perceptive dude, and I could tell when someone was shuffling their mental cards and getting their hand in sequence, in order to play their best hand. However, I could also be a fairly impatient man, especially when it came to things that I thought I should know.
“Come on, Enwyn,” I said, “I can tell you know something.”
“What I know won’t help you, Justin,” Enwyn said, in that infuriatingly cryptic way that people were prone to do at times like this. “Chaosbane has the answers you seek, and he is a rather tough nut to crack.”
“He’s a nut all right,” I said under my breath.
I sighed. It was lucky that we had more than enough on our plates at the moment, what with the hunting of the Fern-tail Cockatrice, the navigating of this labyrinthine temple, and the escape of that powerful troll shaman.
“What’s with the shaman, anyway?” I asked as we turned a sharp corner, only to find the tunnel stretching ahead of us into the gloom. “I thought trolls were meant to be, well, hideous dumb-asses. That old boy on the saber-toothed tiger might have been about as attractive as someone who was inside a public toilet when the lightning hit, but he wasn’t stupid.”
“A common misconception, perpetrated—on your world—by children’s tales and popular fantasy fiction,” Enwyn said. “Troll shamans are not stupid. Far from it. They are some of the most adept magic practitioners to be found anywhere. There are very few of them, but those that still exist should not be trifled with. Even the soldiery, those that we made such short work of, are not actually stupid. They are just instilled with a sense of duty and purpose by the shamans that is so strong that they don’t think twice about sacrificing themselves—or, sometimes, even defending themselves—when they have an objective to complete.”
“He seemed to know a lot about me,” I said.
“I wasn’t just stroking your ego when I told you that you would be the point of focus for many people in this world, Justin,” Enwyn said.
“Yeah, not really that freakin’ surprising that he knew who you were,” Janet said as we passed a series of archways that branched off from this main passage. “You’re a Creation Mage! When were you planning on telling us that?”
“I very much would have liked to know that beforehand,” Cecilia said.
I shrugged. “It didn’t seem all that relevant.” I turned to Janet.
The Storm Mage’s eyes suddenly widened. “So that’s why you have a lightning affinity and have such similar spells to mine. And. . .” She cast a look at Enwyn. “And it’s also why you’re a dual-mage who can cast both fire and lightning spells.”
“You, my friend, are a remarkable sleuth.” I gave her a grin. “Now that little bit of my character profile is dealt with, can I ask you something?”
“Sure,” Janet said, still reeling from the revelation I’d just tol
d her.
“You said the shaman would have known who I was,” I said. “Do I leave some kind of magical imprint behind that he can track or something?”
“The coming of a Creation Mage leaves ripples in the fabric of the magical world,” Janet explained. “If people are actively keeping an eye out for the patterns and disruptions that the appearance of a Creation Mage leaves in his wake, then they can follow these in the same way that someone can follow a single thread to find the ball of yarn.”
“You sound like you really know what you’re talking about,” I said.
“My dad is a hard man to please, what can I say?” she said in a flippant voice. “I read everything that I could get my hands on when I was a little girl, and Dad had always been interested in anything dark, rare, and mysterious.”
“Yeah, I hear your old man’s a real charmer,” I said.
Cecilia laughed and put a slender hand on her friend's shoulder. ”Oh, yes, Idman Thunderstone is just the man that you want over as a guest of honor at a banquet.”
Janet laughed at this.
“Was it your father who got you into the Academy?” I asked.
“I mean, sure it doesn’t hurt when your dad is the High Warden of the Eldritch Prison,” Janet said. “But I got into the Academy on my own merit. That’s why I’m there. I want to show my dad that I’m not just some helpless little girl, that I can get along fine without him. Ironically, I think breaking away from him and doing my own thing is the only sure way I have to secure the respect and admiration of a man as hard as he is.”
“Tough nut, is he?” I asked.
“Oh Justin, babe, he’d gobble you up for breakfast.”
“I think he’d find I’d stick in his throat if he tried,” I said, with a challenging smile, “and give him a hell of a case of indigestion.”
“You know what?” Janet said, reaching up, smoothing a lock of brown hair out of her face and giving me a coquettish half-smile. “The more I get to know you, the more I think that you might be the only man I’ve ever met tougher, stronger, and more motivated than my father.”
I grinned back at her. It was good that she thought that. I had a feeling that only by being tougher, stronger, and more motivated than everyone else was I going to succeed in becoming the most badass wizard this world had ever seen.
We seemed to be following the pulsing tangle of vine veins as we moved deeper and deeper into the maze-like temple. It was crazy quiet, so that the sounds of a scuffed boot or someone clearing their throat became loud noises. The passageway that we were following seemed to be a main thoroughfare of sorts. It was the only one lit by the effervescent, glowing, creeping ivy, and the floor was smoothed, polished, and slightly sunken in the middle, as if by the passing of hundreds of feet through the eons.
“Do you think other things than Cockatrices could live in this place, Enwyn?” Cecilia asked.
“They must feed on something,” Enwyn replied. “But I thought that you might know more about this place than I do. I hear that the library on the Chillgrave estate almost rivals that of the Academy itself.”
Cecilia gave a fluting, airy laugh. It somehow epitomized, in my ears, the very sound of the privileged and wealthy. However, I also detected a very faint bitter modulation.
“Oh, yes,” Cecilia said, “our library is vast, but it wasn’t as if I could ever read whatever I liked. That’s the problem about coming from such an imminent family as the Chillgraves; most of my days were arranged and planned well in advance for me. I was always bereft of that element of caprice—I always had to do what was expected of me.”
I turned around to see what sort of expression was on the young woman’s face and caught her looking right at me. There was a gleam in her eye that, had I been a gambling man, I would have staked a couple of grand on being of the salacious variety.
“I was never able to act on a whim,” Cecilia continued, not breaking her gaze with me. “Never able to do anything at all...inappropriate.”
The meaning of Cecilia’s last word could not have been any more obvious had it been dressed in thigh-high leather boots, a crotchless PVC outfit, and holding a whip.
Speaking of thigh-high boots, she most definitely has the legs for a pair of those.
“Well, you’re your own woman now,” I said. “The world is your oyster.”
“Quite,” the leggy blonde elf replied, “and we all know what oysters are known to be good for.”
In the pulsing, futuristic aquamarine light of the throbbing ivy, I spied something up ahead. The reply that had been forming on my lips withered away as I strained my eyes to see further along the dimly lit stone corridor.
“What was that?” I said aloud.
“What was what?” Enwyn shot at me.
“I thought I saw…”
I peered forward, dropping the end of my staff down so that some of my night-vision was restored. I walked a little way ahead of the group and told them to give me a moment. I crept softly up the tunnel a way, then crouched down and stared avidly up the corridor.
There it was again.
A flash. A sparkle. A glint of light refracting off something shiny.
I couldn’t tell in the rhythmic pulsation of the vine lights what it was that I had seen. It might have been the end of the corridor for all I could make out. I took a few more steps. Then, I caught sight of it again. It wasn’t a Cockatrice—it wasn’t big enough, or the right shape.
Another pulsation of light.
That’s humanoid, I thought. Definitely.
The next question was the one that I needed to answer as quickly as possible: was it a troll up ahead? If it was, and the big blue bastard had seen us and was going to dash off and warn its pals, then it was imperative that I chase it down and relegate it to the past-tense.
A few more steps. Another throb of aquamarine luminescent, and I saw, quite clearly, a figure loping along up the tunnel. It was too agile to be a troll—at least any kind of troll that I had seen thus far on this little field-trip—and its skin had been glittery and faceted. In the next burst of phosphorescence, the bounding figure had disappeared around a corner in the tunnel.
I walked back to the group and reported what I’d seen.
“And its skin was glittering?” Enwyn asked.
“That’s what it looked like to me. If an orangutan fucked a disco ball you might end up with the thing I saw.”
Cecilia laughed and nudged me with a shoulder. “Now, there’s an image I never thought I’d imagine.”
I looked at the elf. Her ice-blue eyes periodically glowed like radioactive sapphires in the light of the throbbing vines. With those hinting eyes and this nightclub lighting, I found myself imagining quite a few things that I’d like to do with her…
“Well,” Enwyn said, cutting into my musings, “all we can do is continue on this course.”
“So, you don’t know what sort of creature it is?” Janet asked.
“It sounds like nothing I have ever encountered,” Enwyn replied.
“I guess there’s only one way to find out,” I said, hefting my staff and smiling with anticipation down the tunnel. “Might be safe to assume though, that we’ve found whatever it is the Cockatrice feed on.”
“Perhaps,” Enwyn said.
“By the way,” I asked, “I notice that we’re sticking to this one illuminated passage. Haven’t branched off of it yet. Do you know where you’re taking us, Miss Emberskull?”
In the sporadic light, Enwyn’s glasses flashed opaque white. “I’m following a hunch, if you want to call it that.”
“A hunch?” I asked incredulously. “I mean, I’m all for rolling the dice, Enwyn, but I wouldn’t mind seeing daylight again.”
Enwyn smirked. “Call it an educated guess, then. These plants are all heading in the same direction, along this main thoroughfare. What’s more, this path is also—”
“Heading slightly downward, yeah,” I said.
“Exactly,” Enwyn said. “I’m willing
to bet that this path leads to the center of the pyramid. From there, we should be able to find another one of these main paths leading out. If my memory of the exterior of this place is correct—and it is—there should be four main routes running into the center of the temple. One from each side of the pyramid.”
I nodded. The logic was irrefutable.
“So,” I said, “presumably that shaman is also going to be riding that awesome saber-toothed tiger down one of those other tunnels.”
“That would be my guess,” Enwyn said.
“Well,” I replied, giving the staff a little pat, “if we meet that fucker again, I’ll tell you one thing; I’m taking his goddamn ride.”
We followed the tunnel on and on. It only deviated a few times and, when it did, it would correct itself the next time it turned so that it was always heading toward the center of that vast temple.
After I had sighted the strange, shining figure, we had extinguished our conjured lights and continued on by the sporadic, organic light of the enormous vines. These grew thicker and more clustered as we marched on, and I got the impression that Enwyn was right, and that we were most assuredly heading toward the center of this complex. Every time the light of the otherworldly ivy faded, we were plunged into a darkness so complete that you could almost taste it on your tongue. It was so thick that it pressed on you, in the same way that the weight of water presses on you the deeper into the ocean you descend.
After what felt like an hour or two, we noticed that the light was growing brighter. Whenever the glow of the ivy faded now, the darkness that flowed in behind it was not complete—it was diffused with a pale glimmer.
Ahead of me now, Janet stumbled and would have fallen if I hadn’t reached out and steadied her.
“What the hell?” she said.
I looked down. The passageway had been perfectly smooth, without even a crack in the floor to show where slabs or stones might have been laid, ever since we had started on our journey. Now though…