Battleborne Book 2: Wrack and Ruin

by Dave Willmarth

  With a little extra effort, he managed to get the lid all the way open. Nothing exploded, no gas was visible, and the chest didn’t spout teeth and charge at him. Placing the halberd back against the door as he exhaled, he walked over and knelt next to the chest.

  Inside was a jumble of brown leather bags, atop which sat a large book. Max lifted the book carefully, worried that it would disintegrate in his hands. The chest must have preserved its contents, because the book was solid and undamaged. Opening it to a random page, he saw two columns on each page. The first, on the left, featured writing he couldn’t read in a long list of entries. The second column was clearly numbers. “Must be a log book for people coming through the portal? And the numbers are what they paid? A toll, or maybe a tax?” he mumbled to himself, flipping a few pages and finding more of the same.

  Setting the book on the floor, he lifted one of the sacks, which jingled encouragingly. It was heavy, weighing several pounds, and when he stood and dumped it out onto the table, a hundred or so odd-looking square silver coins tumbled out. They were thick, and much heavier than the silver coins he was used to seeing in this world. Each one featured a face in profile, but Max couldn’t determine a race based on the crude etching. Grabbing another bag, and another, he found many more of the same. Max began taking the bags out by the armful until he had emptied the chest. When he was done, the table was covered in a few thousand of the same silver squares, as well as a hundred or more round gold coins, and a few dozen platinum. There were also a few bags that held rubies and diamonds, most of them very small stones, or just chips.

  “Dylan and Smitty are gonna be so jealous.” Max grinned to himself as he swept his storage ring over the table, sucking all the coins into his inventory. A quick check showed him he’d just picked up three thousand eight hundred of the silvers, one hundred thirty gold, and twenty nine platinum coins. He didn’t know the value of the silver squares, but he was excited to find out.

  As an afterthought, Max tossed all the empty leather bags back into the chest, closed it, and stuffed that into his inventory as well. He briefly considered breaking open the dozen chests at the foot of each bed, but decided to keep exploring. He could always hit them on his way out. The back of his neck was itching, and he had the feeling he didn’t have a lot of time left.

  Grabbing his halberd, he opened the squeaky door, stepped through, and closed it behind him. After a short pause to listen for any approaching problems, he reactivated his fade ability and headed down the long corridor. For nearly a hundred yards it was just plain stone walls and floor, no intersections or doorways. The floor sloped upward, and Max found himself wishing Dalia were with him. Her dwarven sense of direction might have been able to tell him how deep underground he was.

  Finally the corridor opened up into a cavern. It was huge, similar in size to the one in which Stormhaven and its mushroom forest resided. The ceiling soared high overhead, and the far wall was farther away than Max could shoot an arrow, even with his steel bow. In front of Max the floor leveled out for maybe twenty feet, then descended down a long, gradual ramp. At the bottom of that ramp was a road that led to a stone bridge over a wide crevasse. Beyond that bridge was a walled town, smaller than Stormhaven, but not by much. Max studied the buildings and streets that he could see from his elevated position, but saw no movement. There were no lights, not so unusual in the underground.

  “This must be Deepcrag.” Max whispered to himself. After a few more minutes of observation, he started down the ramp. On either side of the road there were fallen stalactites and boulder-sized chunks of the ceiling scattered about. As he passed one, he heard a skittering sound, and a rat-like chittering, but no movement. He switched out his halberd for his bow, and nocked an arrow just in case.

  He paused atop the bridge, looking over the edge into the crevasse below. As far as he could see, it was just jagged walls and empty air. The bottom was nowhere in sight. On a whim, Max produced one of his empty alchemy vials. Using his arrowhead to prick his finger, he squeezed some blood into the vial until his finger healed. Then he stuffed a small scrap of cloth inside, shook it to soak the cloth with his blood, and cast Spark on it. The moment he cast, he let go of the vial. It caught fire as it fell, and he watched the burning improvised flare fall, and fall, and fall until it was just a tiny speck of light.

  Skill level up! Your Alchemy skill has increased by +1!

  Ignoring the notification, Max continued across the bridge and walked up to the open town gates. Pausing to look around carefully, he strained his elven ears looking for any sound at all. There was no wind in the cavern, no sound except a slow dripping of water somewhere off to his left, and his own breathing.

  Max ventured forward through the gates, examining each building as he advanced toward a central square. The buildings were all made of stone, and as Max looked closer, he saw no sharp corners or mortar, as if the buildings were shaped from stone instead of constructed. The windows, those that weren’t shuttered, open to the street, with no glass. Max stepped closer to one on his right, peering through a window to see rotted wood furniture and rusted metal pots, pans, and eating utensils.

  Moving along, Max entered the square. In the very center was a fountain, topped with an ebony statue of a humanoid male with a slender but muscular build, long hair, and a sharp nose. Taking one of the silver squares from his inventory, Max held it up in front of the statue. “Could be the same face, I guess.” Max mumbled to himself.

  The moment he spoke, he heard a shuffling sound to his right, Spinning in that direction, he focused on a two-story building with wide windows. The shuffling sound repeated, and Max raised his bow. Before he could identify a target, a low groaning sound echoed from inside a building behind. He spun again, then again when he heard the clatter of metal against stone back toward the gate.

  Gritting his teeth, Max turned back toward the first sound, just in time to see a shuffling creature emerge through the door. He fired an arrow into its chest even as he cast Identify.

  Undead drone

  Level 15

  Health: 1,650/1,700

  His arrow had struck the thing squarely in the chest, and only taken fifty points of health! Taking a deep breath to avoid panicking, Max reminding himself that undead needed to be killed with head shots, decapitation, or fire. Drawing another arrow, he put it into the approaching zombie’s face. This time it went down, and didn’t move again.

  Spinning toward where he’d heard the groaning, Max froze. Half a dozen of the undead had emerged from that building, and dozens more were shuffling out of the buildings around the square. Others had exited the buildings he’d passed on the way in, and the street was becoming crowded with them. Undead were slowly but surely shuffling into the square from every direction.

  Max found himself surrounded.

  Chapter 16

  Cursing to himself, Max put his back to the fountain and fired several arrows into the faces of the nearest undead. They were a mix of races, some looking human, others were dwarves, a few elves, but he was too busy trying to kill them to observe them all. Like the one he’d already killed, they were levels fifteen to twenty five, for the most part.

  Lowering his bow for a moment, he cast Zap! at one of the undead to his left. The lightning slammed into the head of that zombie, then transferred to the three nearest shufflers, making them all seize up and smoke as their bodies fried. All of them dropped to the ground, lifeless.

  Still, the hundred or more other undead were slowly but surely closing in. He didn’t have time to kill them individually, or four at a time, even if he had the mana to do so. Already several were working their way around the fountain behind him, reaching out with skeletal fingers, the flesh worn away and the bone tips sharpened into claws.

  Max was drawing his battle axe and preparing to try and rush through them, when they all came to a sudden halt. Raised hands were lowered, and all eye sockets focused on him. As one, they opened their mouths, and a long, agonized moaning pou
red forth. After a moment, it began to form into words.

  “Ooooooooaaaaaa yooouuuu tresssspassss.” Max’s spine tingled, and he resisted the urge to shudder. This was without question the creepiest thing he’d ever experienced.

  “Yoooouuu will come wiiiith usssss. The maaasssster awaitsss.” The undead hive mind each raised a single arm and pointed toward an inner gate at the opposite end of the market from where Max had entered.

  “Walk deeper into an undead slumber party? I don’t think so. I mean, the smell alone…” Max shook his head, focusing on the nearest zombie as he spoke.

  The entire crowd let out a growling howl and turned from the gate back toward him. Both arms up again, they began to close on him from every direction. “Folloooowwww, or dieeee.”

  “Yeah, no.” Max focused on the spot at the top of the ramp where he’d entered the cavern, and cast Jump. In a flash, he found himself standing up there, wobbling slightly, looking into the long corridor that sloped down toward the portal room and guard barracks. A quick look over his shoulder showed the mob in the square shuffling around, searching for him. He turned to jog up the tunnel, when his ears picked up more moaning.

  As he gazed through the darkness, bodies shuffled toward him down the tunnel. Packed tightly, they filled the space from wall to wall, bumping into each other as they advanced.

  “Shit.” Max cursed loudly. “Where did they even come from? This is why you never split the party. I shouldn’t have come down here alone.” He turned and looked back down the ramp, which was still clear for the moment, though the instant the undead in the tunnel had spotted him, those in the square had all turned and began to head his direction. Whatever mind was controlling them, it was determined to drive him into the inner keep.

  Max knew he couldn’t defeat them all, even with his speed advantage. But with his escape route cut off, he figured his best bet was to give them what they wanted.

  Sort of.

  If he could find whomever was controlling the mob and kill them, he might have a chance. Without the overmind forcing them to act as one, the undead might begin to wander about, or even fight each other, and give him a chance to take them down individually. Or even just avoid them.

  The square had cleared now, all of the shufflers having moved toward the ramp. The undead were emerging from the tunnel behind him, and advancing out of the town gate toward the bridge. That gave Max an idea. He jogged down the ramp, eyeing the advancing horde as he went, trying to get the timing right. He slowed to a walk, then actually stopped and rested for a few moments, letting his mana recharge as he watched the undead come for him. The bottleneck at the gate had caused them to bunch up a bit, which was good for him. When they reached the bridge, they clustered up a little tighter.

  “Perfect.” Max rushed the last twenty yards or so, drawing his halberd and holding it horizontally in front of him with both hands. Picking up speed, he crashed into the horde as they were nearing his end of the bridge, using his momentum and body weight to shove the bodies aside with his weapon. The tactic worked, several of the corpses were pushed over the edge of the bridge to fall silently into the crevasse. Max changed his direction, pushing as hard as he could, and sent several more over the opposite side.

  He took some hits doing this, sharp fingers and even teeth cutting at his arms, penetrating the leather bracers he wore. Max worried that bites or scratches might turn him into an undead as well, like it did in most of the movies. But he kept pushing, alternating between one direction and the other, moving forward across the bridge at a forty five degree angle each time, shoving the crowd in front of him like he was herding livestock. Dozens of the creatures fell to their doom, and still more pressed at him.

  When the group from the tunnel began to catch up from behind, Max decided it was time to go. Choosing one of the single story buildings near the square, Max focused on the roof and cast Jump again. The zombies fell into the space he’d just left behind, stumbling over each other.

  Not wasting any time, Max hopped down off the roof and sprinted across the square. Not seeing any new corpses emerging from the inner gate, he ran through and turned around. As he’d hoped, the ironwood gates were mostly intact, their dwarven steel bindings only slightly rusted. He quickly pulled and pushed both doors closed, then slid across the four inch thick steel bar that served as the lock. The metal squealed in protest, but it slid through its brackets without too much trouble.

  “There, now you guys just wait outside while I deal with your master.” Max turned toward the keep and advanced across a small courtyard. He kept a wary eye on every door and window in view, waiting for more undead to emerge at any second. As he approached the door of the donjon, he equipped both axe and sword. He was about to move into tighter spaces, where his halberd would be less effective.

  Stepping through the door, Max found an empty entry hall, maybe twenty feet wide and thirty deep. Toward the back the floor was scattered with rubble around a gaping hole. It looked as if something had exploded upward from below. Something about the size of an elephant, based on the hole. He advanced slowly, scanning the room and the corridor beyond as he drew closer to the hole.

  Finding nothing, Max sighed. “This is gonna suck, I just know it.” He stepped to the edge of the hole, and looked down. Instead of the straight drop that he expected, there was a sort of ramp rising up from below. He could see where whatever had dug the tunnel had burst through three lower levels of the keep on its way up to the main level. Max could see bent and broken cell doors, collapsed walls, and scattered bones.

  Shaking his head, he stepped down onto the ramp. The tunnel, once it cleared the dungeon levels, was circular, maybe ten feet in diameter. There was a sort of melted look to the walls and floor, almost as if something had burned its way through.

  Following the tunnel downward, Max became more and more nervous. Anything powerful enough to tunnel through solid rock with such ease was going to be able to eat him for lunch. Twice he halted, considering a retreat. He could wait until all the undead were pressed against the gate above, then teleport himself past them and haul ass back to the portal.

  But that was assuming there weren’t more of them waiting farther up the tunnel.

  Plus, this whole thing screamed quest to him. He’d basically been told to come here by Regin himself, and the mention of the lich by the caretaker, combined with his quest to find the heart of his mountain… Max had to go on.

  The odd tunnel continued downward, curving occasionally and seemingly at random. Here and there the walls were broken when the borer crossed a natural tunnel or chamber. Max paused each time, looking and listening for any signs of life. He’d learned from Dalia that most areas in the underground were home to life of one type or another. From simple moss and plants to large predators that required whole platoons of soldiers to take down. He had a feeling he was following one such predator straight to its lair.

  “Step into my parlor, said the… giant… stone-eating monster thing to the tasty little chimera.” Max whispered to himself. When he’d actually said stone-eating out loud, his mind conjured up an image of the giant sand worms from one of his favorite books. Looking at the roundness of the tunnel, and the hardened liquidlike surface, his sphincter puckered. “Oh, great. Didn’t need that image in my head.”

  Red appeared on his shoulder. “I feel this would be a good time to remind ya… next time ya find a cross tunnel or chamber, take a good look. Secure it in that undersized brain o’ yours, so that if a giant wormy things starts chasin’ ya, you can teleport to a safe spot out of its way.”

  “Thanks, Red. I think.” Max appreciated the advice, not so much the snark.

  “Happy to help!” She grinned at him. “As funny as it might be to watch, I’d not like to have ya digested by a beastie.”

  Continuing downward, Max pulled out one of the square silvers. “Does this look familiar to you?”

  “Nope. We fae are not fond o’ silver. Tend to avoid it when possible. Same with i
ron… really any metal other than gold. And if ya remember, I arrived in this world the same time you did. Been everywhere you’ve been, seen what you’ve seen, and no more. So how would I know about some really old silver coins ya found a couple hours ago?”

  “Alright, alright. Just thought I’d ask. That’s kind of what you’re here for, isn’t it?” Max grumped at her, putting the coin back in his inventory. “Can you at least tell me what race that statue in the fountain was?”

  “Looked human to me.” Red shrugged. “But again, beyond that I can’t help ya.”

  Max pulled out the log book from the chest and held it open for her to see. “How about this? Can you read this writing?”

  Red looked down from his shoulder, then leaned a bit closer. “Oh, aye! It be a list o’ names and payment amounts. Some o’ the names look like persons, others are company names, I’d guess. Like that one there says Stonewalker Mercenary Guild, and this other one says Nogroz Merchants Association. Oh!” She covered her mouth. “Nogroz! That might be a clue. Maybe this place traded with them before the whole turning-to-evil thing happened?”

  “Let’s hope so. That might get us closer to finding his tomb.” Max agreed. The conversation had distracted him enough that he almost missed the side tunnel he was passing. Red cleared her throat and jerked her head toward the opening. “Oh, right. Thanks Red.”

  Max stepped into the side tunnel, taking a long look around. It was more of a wide crack in the stone that ran about twenty yards before narrowing significantly. Across the worm tunnel, it continued on a good bit farther. Not the ideal location to retreat to, as there was only one way out. “This’ll work until we find a better one.” Max finished his inspection of the area, memorizing as many details as he could, then stepped back into the tunnel and continued to follow it.

  Twenty minutes later, he reached its end. A large cavern with a low ceiling, maybe fifteen feet high, that spread out through a series of arches and short tunnels that all seemed to be interconnected. Like a giant ant farm, only built horizontally. Toward the far end of the cavern the rock glowed with a pulsing reddish orange light. Max couldn’t see the source from where he was, but assumed that was where he needed to go. Standing where he was, he focused for a moment on his immediate surroundings. This location was much better than the crack he’d memorized before. Besides, he didn’t think that location was still within range.