Necrodruid

by Adam Witcher

  Soon we could see the ground. What started as faint glowing orange dots eventually revealed themselves to be torches. Then the odor hit us. The air was suddenly so thick with the sulfurous stench that we had to stop to gag. Though we couldn’t make out the shapes on the floor far below, we could anticipate the operation Tholen had set up here.

  Though my senses detested it, we kept descending toward the orange lights. Soon we reached them, and we could make sense of what they were illuminating. Giant vats lined the floors. Though shorter than us, they were extremely wide and spread out through the cavern. They were open, the tops of them heaping with krokum. There must have been thousands of pounds of the stuff. More than the city of Gragos could possibly consume.

  “Good gods,” I said. “He must be planning to spread this shit all over Iggoroth. How in the hell is he producing all of this?”

  Then I remembered Izmira’s words in the forest. She told me that there were no more forests anywhere closer to Gragos than where she’d met me. My eyes followed a line of torches that led to another section of the chamber. Thousands upon thousands of trees were chopped and piled up so tall that the torchlight couldn’t reveal the top.

  “Gods help us,” Camilla said, seeing the same thing. “If he’s already made that much, imagine…” She didn’t need to finish.

  Then, we heard a slithering sound. It was distant, but it echoed from the shadows. My bow was still at the ready. Lily conjured an ice spear and tried to point it toward the sound. Seeing Camilla unarmed, she made another and handed it to her. The three of us stood back to back and stared into the darkness.

  The slithering continued. It came to us from different directions, and I couldn’t tell if Tholen was really circling us, or if the echoes of the cave were playing tricks on my ears. There was no way to tell if he’d attack me head on or from behind.

  Adrenaline had my ears particularly attuned, and I heard Camilla chewing something from behind me.

  “Is now really the time to be snacking?” I turned to her and saw the Druella in her hand. “Oh gods, I forgot. Chew faster! How long does that take to work?”

  “I have no idea.” Her voice was shaky, but she managed to swallow it down.

  Fifteen seconds passed, then thirty. The slithering sounds continued as we stared helplessly into the darkness. Then suddenly it stopped. The dead silence was more menacing than the slithering.

  A tentacle shot from the darkness right toward my face. If I hadn’t already had the bow strung and pointed forward, I would have been a goner. My arrow met it when it was no more than a foot away from the bow. It pierced the mutated flesh, the oozing end of it still resembled a man’s hand. He screamed from the darkness, and I heard him retreat a little into craggy rocks.

  Lily threw a few ice daggers in the direction of the sound. Camilla did the same, then rubbed her hand on her shirt. Lily threw up her hands as if to say really?, but she made her a new one anyway.

  “Sorry,” Camilla said. “My hand was really cold.”

  I closed my eyes for a moment and tried to channel any spirits I could find. A part of me dreaded the prospect of this. We were so deep underground, surrounded by such hard minerals, that it was hard to believe I could resurrect anything. I had to try, though. With one hand on the bow, I stroked Izmira’s pendant and searched as deep as I could.

  Her face appeared to me in the darkness. She mouthed something, but I could not make it out. Her angelic face eased my mind for a fleeting moment. I focused hard, but there was nothing. No creatures heeded my call. Izmira kept mouthing that same something.

  My focus was shattered by the sound of a giant rock collapsing somewhere in the cavern. I heard it smash into many pieces, but I couldn’t see them. A low growl accompanied it. Tholen sounded like he was getting closer, then suddenly, it sounded as if he went off to a distant part of the chamber. I closed my eyes and tried to find Izmira again.

  There was a great creaking of rusted iron in the direction we’d heard the monster run. Then the patter of many small footsteps, low groans and gurgles. More rocks crumbled. The low sounds grew both louder and angrier. Sniffs echoed into our eardrums. Then the cries became unnatural shrieks and bellows. It was hard to imagine the throats that could produce such sounds.

  Just focus on her face. I thought. What are you saying? Then suddenly I made out the words “all around.” Izmira, I thought, is it really you speaking to me? Or just my imagination? If this apparition of her knew the answer, she kept it quiet. All around? I thought. There’s nothing beneath… Then it hit me. All around. How could I not have seen it?

  I redirected my summons upward. There was so much earth above us, so much dead below the city of Gragos. The creatures were close. I could feel the girls shaking at my back.

  “Rahm,” Camilla said. Her voice was thick with fear. “If you’ve got any tricks up your sleeve, now would be a great time.”

  “I think I have something,” I said. “Give me a minute.”

  I figured that I would need something big. More horses perhaps? Something else from the Colosseum? I tried to channel anything I could get. But when I began to feel my energies connect, it was nothing of the sort. Whatever was hearing my summons must have been tiny. But there were many of them, and more by the moment.

  “Rahm,” Lily shouted, “they’re here!”

  Come. I left them that one message, then turned to fight. It was all I could do. But they did come.

  The hybrid creatures revealed themselves by entering the lamplight. They all came at once, and I could barely process what I was seeing. Third and fourth eyes on sheep with leather wings. A chicken with long muscular legs and jagged teeth. Stumbling rabbits with razor sharp horns that glistened in the low light. All of them cloaked in the rage and power that only krokum would provide. I let my arrows fly, and they were crowded so thickly that I couldn’t miss. Lily unleashed a fury of ice crystals that made a few of them stop and swipe at their eyes with malformed limbs.

  But we were not alone with these monsters for long. Buzzing filled the chamber as the dead insects entered. In the sparsely dappled light, I saw the cave’s walls disappearing beneath the writhing masses.

  The darkness of the room was replaced by the sickly bioluminescence of a swarm of flame beetles, glowing intensely even in death. It was a relief to feel the weight of darkness fade, but my relief dropped away once we could see what we were truly up against.

  Tholen was completely naked, standing at the back of the chamber admiring his creations. If not for his head, he’d be unrecognizable as human. Each of his tentacles stretched ten feet long, and they held up his body in the center of the chamber. He swatted at some of the bugs as they descended the walls, but even as they began to crawl up the slimy grey flesh toward his torso, he stayed where he was.

  There must have been a hundred of Tholen’s creations, but those far away had already begun fighting the insects. The ones near us charged furiously. They were too close for my bow. I extended my dagger, flipping it over the top of a scorpion-pig hybrid and jabbing it into the flesh of his back.

  Lily dual wielded ice daggers and squared up against some reptilian bear. Blackened ooze dripped from its maw. Camilla looked around wildly. There was a cloudiness in her eyes as if she wasn’t seeing properly.

  I skidded into the legs of a lanky giraffe-grasshopper and crushed its feeble legs with my boot. It fell down and I finished it off before its head met the floor.

  “Lily,” Camilla shouted. “Get over next to Rahm!”

  Confused, Lily turned to her after making another kill.

  “I can see,” she said. “You only have a few seconds.”

  Lily understood. The two of them ran over and latched onto me, dodging attacks from a few clumsy creatures along the way. It quickly became clear why Camilla had warned her. The insects arrived and swept the makeshift battlefield. They crawled up the arms and legs of the deformed creatures, who swiped at them uselessly. Wasps swarmed their faces and stung them all over.
The creatures cried out in pain.

  The insects didn’t touch us. They all seemed to realize who had summoned them, and the girls took advantage of my presence to keep themselves safe, too. Dead ants ran up the bodies of the hybrid creatures and entered their eyes and mouths. There was nothing for us to do but watch in disgust.

  Some of the creatures continued to attack us despite the bugs. I shoved my dagger through the long snout of a seal-horse, leaving its powerful slick tail flipping. It screamed out an alien sounding neigh and collapsed under a pile of cockroaches.

  Across the chamber, Tholen smashed every bug he could get his tentacles on, but they were quickly overpowering him. Frustrated and enraged, he turned his attention on us. His tentacles carried him over the rocks and across the vats of krokum, a few of which tipped over and spilled out. He didn’t seem to care.

  I pulled out my bow and fired a few shots. One of them clipped a tentacle, but his advance continued.

  “Run to the lumber!” I cried. The girls didn’t let go of me for fear of the swarms. We charged across the room, and they spread apart before us and allowed for a path. I wasn’t sure how helpful being among the logs would be, but it was the only area with any sort of refuge that I could see.

  He reached us just as we dove behind a pile of wood. His arm tentacle picked one up and cast it in our direction, and I had to dive away from the girls to dodge it. The log smashed into pieces in the spot where we had been standing only moments ago. Away from my protection, a swarm of ants started to crawl up Lily’s leg. Her scream pierced through the cacophony of buzzing and mutant animal cries. She kicked them off, but they kept coming. I ran over to her and grabbed her arm, and they scattered.

  Leave the girls alone. I tried directing the thought at the mass of insects, but I wasn’t sure if they got the message.

  Tholen struck again, but this time he picked up Camilla in his slimy grasp. She screamed as he brought her closer to his body and stared at her maniacally.

  “Why are you fighting it, necrodruid?” He said with a cackle.

  I froze, unsure if I’d imagined it. His voice barely carried through the chorus of buzzing and Camilla’s screams.

  “Neptos is here to usher us into a new age,” he said. “He’s going to transform Iggoroth into something new, something greater.”

  “You’ve lost it, Tholen!” I yelled. “You’ve turned yourself into a monster and you don’t even know it. Not all change is good, you disgusting freak!”

  “Freak?” He growled and propelled his body forward until he was face-to-face with me. The insanity in his eyes was gut-churning. “I am no freak. I am a visionary. I am more than human.”

  “You have no idea what you are.” I swung my blade from behind my back. It sliced open a deep gash in his cheek.

  The calm that had temporarily pacified him disappeared. He opened his mouth to scream, and his jaw opened into a freakishly wide void that emitted an inhuman screech. He flung his tentacles around aimlessly, and we had to step back to dodge them. Blood flowed freely from the gash.

  “Lily,” I yelled, “Get him now! Distract him!” I ducked around a pile of lumber and ran downward to the bottom of the chamber. Tholen raged above me. I turned to see if the bugs were sparing the girls, and to my great relief, they parted for them. Lily conjured thin rings of ice from the air and hurled them at Tholen like throwing stars, and he contorted his body an attempt to dodge them.

  A mass of ants surrounded me, and I looked around at them in a panic, trying to think of a plan. Then I heard Camilla shout.

  “Rahm!” My eyes whipped toward her. “Ride them up!”

  Ride them? I thought. I didn’t yell back for fear of my position being noticed. How? They’re ants!

  My plan was to try to take down Tholen by severing the tentacles holding him up, but I remembered the nature of the plant she’d eaten, and knew I had to listen. When I focused on the energy that connected me to the ants, I realized something strange. Though they were thousands of resurrected creatures, they worked as one. They had a hive mind, and they were listening and await instructions.

  Come together, I thought. They did. They formed a pedestal large enough for me to stand on. I jumped onto it and willed them to take me up to where Tholen’s torso was suspended, dodging blows from Lily.

  They did. They lifted me so quickly that I nearly lost my balance. I surfed toward Tholen stealthily, and he was none the wiser. Just a moment before I struck, he turned and saw me. There was something left of the man, but it was nearly gone. Even on his face, his skin had turned a sickly grey. It pulsated with what was more than human. In his eyes, hollowed out and dull with rage, there was some trace of the mad scientist. I wondered if he ever even snorted that devastating product of his, or if all the anxious rage in him was a result of his metamorphosis. These were questions that would never be answered. My dagger made sure of that.

  Even the furthest extremes of his deformed body jolted to a stop when I shoved the blade upward through his chin and into his brain. There was a loud gurgle as blood and slime dripped from the wound. Then he collapsed. His torso fell twenty feet to the ground and thudded onto the hard rock. His tentacles fell on top of him. We could only see him for a moment before the bugs consumed his body. Grinding sounds came from the dead mass, and we watched as they ate the unholy thing that had once been Alastair Tholen.

  All across the chamber, the hybrid monsters eked out their last breaths as they succumbed to the insects. The ants carried me down to the floor and dispersed around me. The chatter of the giant mass slowed to a stop. I silently thanked them for their help as they slowly disappeared into cracks in the walls and ceiling where only their bodies would fit.

  As the flame beetles left, so did their illumination. Away from the torches, Camilla and Lily disappeared into the darkness.

  “Go back to the center!” I called out to them. “I’ll meet you there.”

  I blindly stumbled through the darkness, weaving around the corpses of dead monsters as I encountered them. Soon I saw the familiar faces of my companions, more beautiful than ever, and I met them with a huge embrace.

  “Everyone okay?” I said.

  They nodded.

  “What a nightmare,” Lily said. “I’ll never be so happy to see daylight again. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  “Just a minute,” I said. “We may have stopped Tholen, but Neptos is going to find out about this. Now that we’ve cut off the flow of krokum to the city, he’s gonna be on us in an instant. I hate to say it, but I think we need to strike soon and end this.”

  The girls looked at each other.

  “We still don’t know how to get to the tower.” Camilla said. “This certainly didn’t lead us there.”

  I thought about that for a moment.

  “Wait a minute,” I said, my stomach churning. “I hadn’t thought about that under the circumstances. If Neptos is making krokum here, what in the gods’ names is he doing in that tower?”

  Nobody had an answer for me. With the adrenaline wearing off, we began to notice the awful stench. The room felt sticky and uncomfortable. It was hard to breathe.

  “Let’s search the place, fast,” I said. “Maybe we can find something useful.”

  “Where do you suppose he let those monsters in from?” Lily said. “Something must be over there.”

  We headed toward it, stepping over more corpses along the way. I grabbed one of the torches and took it with us. Eventually we found an opening in the rock where a tunnel led away. We went through it. Along the way, we found a staircase that led back up to a different part of what must have been Tholen’s lab. We guessed this was where the hybrids came from, but the pathway continued onward past it.

  We turned a corner in the dark tunnel, and suddenly it wasn’t dark anymore. We were in another tiled passageway with lamps lining it. At the end, a sparkling chartreuse light glowed, and I couldn’t take my eyes off of it as we moved toward it magnetically. The light swirled before us in
a powerful but soothing pattern, greens and yellows mingling together like a vortex in a great ocean. I had never seen anything like it.

  “It’s- it must be a portal…” Lily said.

  “A portal to where?” Camilla asked. I walked closer to it and traced my fingers along the flowing colors.

  “There’s only one way to find out.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  We were lost, drifting through the beautiful yellow and green lights of the portal, for what felt like hours. I couldn’t tell which way was up or down. Suddenly Izmira’s face appeared before me, but there was something different about it than before. She looked more real, more tangible, and perhaps even more beautiful than before. Her body materialized in glittering swirls.

  “Necrodruid,” she said, her voice drifting as if from far away. “Is that really you?”

  “In the flesh,” I said. “I think so, anyway. Is it really you? How can I see you if we aren’t in a forest?”

  “I do not know,” she said. “Perhaps you are in the forest. There is no other way for me to perceive you.”

  “I’m in some kind of portal.” I looked around. The girls were nowhere in sight. “I was thinking about you when I went through it. You must just be my imagination.”

  “Perhaps not,” she said. “If you are in a portal, that means that you are in a space in between the world of the spirits and the world of the mortals. It is possible that the pendant I gave you brought us together.”

  “What timing! I have to tell you what’s happened to us.”

  I filled her in on the current state of our adventure.

  “Gods, no. What could this monster be planning? You’ve done well, Rahm, but I fear for what you will find on the other side of this portal.”

  “My gut tells me this will take us to the tower,” I said. “And if it does, we are going to bring that thing to the ground.”