by Eric Ugland
I looked at Ragnar, then at Skeld, then at the retreating form of the guard.
“Holy shitballs,” I said, not able to hide the smile on my face, “I can’t believe he came through!” I purposely avoided using Philomon’s name.
“It is quite a stroke of luck,” Skeld said. “I admit to being a little fearful we were at our end.”
“Not yet,” I said. “Not by a long shot.”
Unfolding the paper revealed a bunch of directions and a cell number: 6. Cell 6. In crap handwriting, the note explained that the directions would lead us past all the patrols, provided we followed it exactly. Down, down, right, left, right, left, down, down, left, left, down, left, down, right, down, right, down. Fourth door on the left.
Notably, our friendly guard didn’t bother to lock our door, or even close it. And he definitely didn’t look behind it, thankfully. Which meant our grey robed guest didn’t get a look at the guard.
I pulled the knapsack on, and Skeld tossed me a robe. It was a tight fit, but better than walking around like I was. The two Lutra pulled on their robes, which were comically large, and I took a last look at the rolled up man in the corner, his eyes wide.
“Dude,” I said, “I’m not really one for leaving you here like this, because most likely you’re going to really get hurt. But you refuse to come with us. And even though your people are the ones who will hurt you, you’re probably going to do the dishonorable thing and start yelling as soon as you think I can’t hear you. So what I need to know is, are you a man of honor?”
The man nodded immediately.
“You boys think that was a little too quick?” I asked.
Skeld nodded and Ragnar spit at the man’s feet.
“You’re gonna have to chance surviving on your own then,” I said, shoving some more hay into the man’s mouth. “Maybe think about a career change, bud.”
Then we left, the man inside screaming through a mouth full of disgusting hay.
Chapter Twelve
We moved down the hall as quietly as we could. But despite our best attempts, all the prisoners in the cells we passed seemed keenly aware of us. Some called out to us harassingly. More often, we heard the scuttling of feet away from the doors, clearly broadcasting their fear that someone might come into their cell. Finally, we reached the end of the hallway, where there was a door. It took a few tries, but one of the keys worked and we opened the door to reveal a stairwell.
The stairs spiraled in both directions, but our little crib sheet had instructed us to go down. Round and round we went. But the time we got to the next doorway, I definitely couldn’t tell which direction was which, in a cardinal sense. Thank god for the directions. We moseyed out of the stairwell and headed down the next hallway. It was functionally identical to the prior hallway, but at the far end was a guard station. A few guards stood at something that strongly resembled a nurses station in a hospital, talking in muted voices. They were way too far away to give us much notice though.
Otherwise, the brick was the same, the doors were the same, and the candles were in the exact same positions as above. With three ways we could go, we would definitely be lost without directions, but we followed our notes and it almost seemed easy.
One thing we noticed: as we got deeper, the ceilings got lower. The stone bricks had moisture on their surfaces, moss growing in the cracks. It seemed much older, or like the place had been largely ignored over the years. The floors were dusty, muddy along the edges where rivulets of moisture finally ran to ground. The candles and their holders seemed more rudimentary, still magically smokeless, but without the finery there’d been upstairs.
Somewhere in the middle of some random floor, I heard footsteps. The hard boots of guards tromping about. We’d been following the directions even though ofttimes seemed ridiculous, and we’d only seen the backs of guards so far. I’d heard guards moving away from us a few times, either up the stairs when we headed down or down the hall when we crossed over, but this time, it sounded like we were going to run right into them.
Thing was, if we ran back or tried to hide, I was almost 100 percent certain we’d get lost. It was just too easy to lose track of where we were going. Sure, we had the cell number, which meant we’d be able to find Nikolai eventually. But the directions made it much faster. And up until now, much safer.
“We stand and fight,” I said. “But no killing.”
I reached into the bag and pulled out the macuahuitl. I was ready for blunt weapon bashing.
“Ready?” I asked.
“You realize we have no weapons, right?” Ragnar asked.
“Shit,” I said. Into the bag, and then my mind froze. Weapons. Preferably non-lethal. Clubs. I thought of clubs.
Nothing.
At the end of the hall, a door opened, a creak echoing off the brickwork.
We were out of time.
Armed men and women tromped through.
“Behind me,” I hissed, and stood up straight. I kept my arm holding the macuahuitl down at my side, and pulled up the grey hood.
“They’ll never buy it,” Ragnar whispered to me. He had a point. The robe didn’t exactly fit. In fact, it would probably be more truthful to say that it didn’t fit at all. The fabric stretched to its absolute limits trying to cover my body, several seams already having given up the fight sending tendrils of thread out into the world. Then, there were the two Lutra. They were smaller than any human, and their robes were massive on their tiny frames. Like kids playing dress up. I realized I should have told them to stand on each other’s shoulders to make one skinny dude, but now I had to hope my tiny otters in their giant robes would pass unnoticed.
I started walking as if I was exactly where I needed to be. My goal was the door they’d just come through, so by necessity, we would cross paths.
The guards stopped when they saw the grey-robed figure coming towards them, moving to the side and getting out of my way.
I walked along, head held high, looking out the side of my eye at the guards. They wore heavy armor, small plates of metal over thick leather, with swords hanging off their hips on the right and non-spiked maces on the left.
Their eyes were all glued to me, and I could almost hear their cogs turning as they tried to parse out the truth of the situation.
I counted four of them. A man with a busted nose, a man with a scar down the side of his face, a woman with a missing ear, and a man with a single blonde ringlet peeking out from under his helm. All human. Which seemed a little odd until I remembered how Osterstadt was largely a human city, and that they tended to view non-humans as beneath them. In that light, it made sense that all the guards of their jail would be humans.
As we walked by, both Ragnar and Skeld slipped along the outside of the hall, mostly able to blend into my robe.
I heard the intake of breath first, and then the tell-tale noise of someone in armor moving. I’d just failed my bluff check. It was game time.
As fast as I could, I got the macuahuitl up in the line I figured would be where my opponent was swinging.
There was a sharp sound as the guard’s mace smashed into the macuahuitl, followed by the hard sound of the volcanic glass breaking. The obsidian hit the walls, making an almost pleasant tinkling noise.
I pushed back, stepping away to give myself room and survey the scene.
Two of the guards were looking away, their hands in front of their eyes. Scarface and Nose. The one closest to me, Ringlet, had his sword out, swinging it my way. That left Missing Ear, the lady, with her mace against my macuahuitl.
I had just enough space to lean back, feeling one of the Lutras squish against the wall as the guard’s sword swooshed by. But the tip caught my robe and cut through. I brought the macuahuitl up, tilted it down to force the lady’s mace down, then I whipped the macuahuitl across, smacking the woman with the flat of the weapon. There was a deep thud, and the woman stumbled a few steps.
With my left hand, I grabbed Ringlet’s sword arm and slammed it into
the wall. Pain blossomed across my back, and I got my head around to see Scarface’s face covered in blood and smiling big.
“Gonna enjoy gutting you,” Scarface snarled, “boy.”
Pro-tip for fighting in confined spaces when you’re outnumbered: let your opponents fight themselves as much as they fight you.
Nose hauled back his mace, which hit the wall behind him with a solid bong.
I let go of Ringlet and got my leg up on the wall. I shoved back, smashing Scarface between my back and the wall. Missing Ear swung her mace, managing to both miss me and get in the way of Nose. She didn’t exactly hit him, but they tangled each other up, giving me just enough time to haul Scarface over my shoulder and slam him into the wall in front of me. A wall where Ringlet had been just a moment ago, but my two comrades had pulled him down to the ground and were busy tying him up.
Scarface made a disconcerting noise when he hit, and another when his face met the ground. A sort of low moan. I left him for the Lutra.
Ear and Nose finally got untangled, and squared off against me.
I had the macuahuitl out, waiting for them to make a move.
A moment of sizing each other up.
Nose bolted. He just turned and burned.
Ear looked stunned, snapping her head to see her wingman leaving her behind.
I whipped the macuahuitl out as fast as I could, spinning it through the air. It smashed into the back of the sprinting coward, the heavy wood weapon making a really tasty thunk as it hit. The man’s body sprawled across the floor, sliding a surprisingly long way before coming to a stop when his helmeted head hit a door.
Ear looked back at me.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” I said. “But do I look like the type of man who will?”
She nodded at me, eyes a bit wide.
“So how about you put your weapon down, and open up this door here,” I said, pointing to a random door on my left.
She set her mace on the ground, walked the few steps to the door, and opened it up. It wasn’t locked because it was the medieval equivalent of a broom closet.
“Shit,” I said. “Any of these cells here.”
She pointed to a door that looked just like all the other doors.
“Okay, open that one.”
A cell like the one I’d spent time in, but somehow a little worse. There was more water leeching off the walls, the straw in the corner was somehow dirtier and more repulsive, and the hole in the corner for waste was big enough I could see the waste water, ie mostly liquid poop and other horribles, running along at quite a clip. Anyone placed in this cell had a literal shit river as a companion.
"In," I said.
She hesitated. I had a very bad feeling about things. Just the way she was operating, the way she was looking at the cell, it was too much for her. However intimidated she felt, she wasn't going to go inside. She drew her sword and swung it around wildly, fast and with power, but without aim.
Her strike sailed past me with room to spare, and it left her way off-balance.
These people were guards — they'd mostly trained to intimidate, to overpower with numbers and unfair tactics. In a straight-up fight, they were pretty garbage.
I took a strong step forward, and brought my manacled wrist down with an overhead chop, slamming it into the poor woman's shoulder. There was a sharp crack as her collarbone broke. She cried out in pain, and brought her sword up, but I was already moving, going down this time, stomping into the side of her knee.
Her leg buckled, and she started to fall to the ground. I put my foot into her, and she went sliding into the room. She started to get up, but as soon as she put weight on the leg, she crashed right back down.
Working together, my hirð pulled in the two guards that I'd left behind. I went and grabbed the coward, Nose, and dragged him back. He wasn't altogether conscious, so while he made an attempt to struggle, he didn't have much fight left to give. I shut the door, locked it, and opened the small hatch.
"Dudes," I said into the hatch, looking at the guards. Two were tied up using belts taken off themselves and the grey robes. One had a clearly broken leg, and the other was nursing a serious concussion, and was vomiting all over himself. “I’m sorry to have done this to y'all, and I'll make it up at some point. Maybe. Keys are here in the lock, so, you know, once we're gone, you can get out. Again, I had no desire to hurt y'all."
Then, we motored, racing down the hallway towards the stairs.
Chapter Thirteen
We got to the hallway where the directions ended. It was depressing. For one thing, the stairs had finished. It seemed we were at the lowest level possible. The ceilings in the hallways had shrunk until my head was basically rubbing against the top. Sure, I was a tall dude in Vuldranni, but I wasn't the tallest thing I'd seen. Darius the minotaur would definitely have to duck down to make it through there.
We counted four doors down, and stopped. I opened the little hatch.
Whomever was inside scuttled back from the light pouring in. I frowned — this wasn't the behavior I was expecting from Nikolai. I wondered if it was an elaborate trap. Though, the dude who gave me the note with the directions was also the dude who gave me the Unfillable Knapsack. Didn't make sense that he'd have given me such an object if it was just going to end in a trap. Slight advantage knowing that at least some others knew the value of the bag I carried.
"You think it might be a trap?" Skeld asked.
"That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard," Ragnar said.
"Prep in case," I said, pulling spears out of the bag and handing one each to Skeld and Ragnar.
They took up positions by the other wall, spears extended and ready. Anyone charging out of the room would get a nice impaling as a welcome.
I had to test a few of the keys before I found the correct one, but I got the door open.
Light spilled around me, and I walked in, trying to portray confidence and hide my trepidation.
"Nikolai," I said, "you feeling groovy?"
Chains rang out as someone crawled across the floor, and then a face that might have been Nikolai's at one point came into view.
"Montana?" came a rough whisper. "How— I told you to leave!"
"You look like shit," I said. And he did. His face was beyond gaunt, it was pale skin stretched tight over bones. All of his fat and muscle seemed to have disappeared. His clothes had been replaced by what I had to assume were burlap sacks. I itched just looking at them.
"I feel worse than you can possibly imagine."
"Can you move?"
"I am in chains."
"Yeah, that much is clear. But can you move?"
"Not well."
I pulled out the keys, unlocked Nikolai from his chains, and helped him to his feet. It was bizarre, because the dude was beyond light. Even that bit of movement caused him to wince in pain, but he did not cry out. He took a tentative step, his legs wibbling and wobbling underneath him, barely able to support the man.
The hirð boys' jaws dropped open when they saw Nikolai. In the light of the hallway he looked even worse. He only managed a few steps before he had to lean against a wall. Nikolai closed his eyes.
"What the hell happened to him?" Ragnar asked.
"A fate worse than death," Nikolai answered, his voice barely above a whisper.
“Glad you’re being so clear with us,” I said.
“They took my levels,” Nikolai snapped.
I shot my spell at him, needing see what he was talking about.
Nikolai Petroff
Human
Lvl 1 - Nothing
“That’s possible?” I asked, suddenly feeling remarkably vulnerable.
“I did not know it was,” he said.
“Stats?”
“Barely there. My strength is down to one. As is my constitution. He said he left my intelligence alone because he was going to attempt to drain my spells tomorrow… then he would finish absorbing everything else from me.”
“Holy shit.
This is some bad news.”
“Yes. It is.”
“I’m guessing you have very little in the way of hitpoints?”
“Four.”
“Four. Well, that’s fucked.”
“One of Skeld’s crawfish farts would kill him,” Ragnar said. His statement was quickly followed by the sound of Skeld’s smack.
“What’s the play here?” I asked.
“The play? You take my spells then kill me.”
“That’s stupid. You’re much more useful to me alive. And you kinda promised me you’d be my mentor, so, I’m holding you to that promise.”
“Then you are a fool.”
“You’ve got me there,” I said with a smile. “Now, how about we make a plan to get out of here?”
“You do not have a plan for our escape?”
“Sure I do. Just, well, I think it might need to change ever so slightly. Given, you know, your current condition.”
“Was it fighting our way out?”
“No, it was going through the dungeon.”
“There is no dungeon.”
“I think there is.”
“I assure you—”
“Agree to disagree for now. I doubt we have time for an in-depth discussion about this.”
“Also there is the girl,” Skeld said. “You have yet to save her.”
“Okay, we, we have yet to save her,” I corrected. “I’m not—”
“A girl?” Nikolai interrupted to ask.
“Yeah,” I said, “I was thinking of that as a more optional part of the quest.”
“You said you would do it,” Ragnar countered. “That means you need to at least try.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be the devil on my shoulder?”
Everyone looked confused. Too many of my idioms fell flat here. I should have felt fortunate most of my slang seemed to translate.
Finally, Ragnar seemed to come up with a possible interpretation. “Are you offering to carry me?”
“Not what that means in the slightest, and no, you walk on your own. I’m probably going to be carrying our level one nothing here,” I pointed to Nikolai.