by Noah Layton
I didn’t have time to reach for my sword. If they were a half-decent shot with a bow, they would be able to put me down in an instant.
There was no way.
I hadn’t even heard my assailant approaching.
I clenched my eyes shut in frustration and raised my hands, stepping back from the entrance.
‘So is this it?’ I asked. ‘Another part of the challenge? What are you, complex mechanical men designed to awaken and test any intruders that they detect?’
‘Not exactly.’
I turned slowly to face the owner of the voice.
The moment I laid eyes on the grey skin of the archer, I knew that I was screwed.
Dark-elves.
Three more were emerging from different sections of the forest, each of them with bows drawn and an arrow at the ready.
I had seen one of their kind fire an arrow before back at The Market – the same place where I had first met their master.
They were all keen, expert shots.
I didn’t stand a chance.
‘Start walking.’
They all kept their bows trained on me as I returned back towards the entrance to the clearing. I could see more figures standing there.
The four ranged dark-elves closed in on me as I moved, their arrows aimed straight at me.
Three other dark-elves were emerging from the trail, heading straight towards me, two being led by the one between them.
I recognized the one at the front immediately.
‘That’s enough, Kali.’
Garrison’s voice rang in my head.
It was one of Garrison’s personal guards, but not just any of them – the very same that had cut down the fleeing warrior in cold blood back at The Market.
‘You…’ I barely whispered.
‘Me,’ he smiled sardonically, resting his grip on the handle of his sheathed rapier, the pair of melee-armed dark-elves either side of him keeping their gazes fixed on me. ‘I take it that you are not pleased to see me, tribe master.’
‘Not since you killed a running man,’ I said.
‘A running asset,’ he replied. ‘Although he quickly became a liability when he moved from classifying as a person to a body.’
The six dark-elf guards around me chuckled at Kali’s words, their focus still directed at me.
‘How the hell did you find me?’ I asked through gritted teeth.
‘Our kind are adept at trailing silently and in an unseen fashion,’ Kali continued. ‘Though, admittedly, we did have some help in tracking you to this place.’
‘Help? What do you mean help?’
Kali grinned psychotically and stepped aside. A smaller figure emerged from the darkness of the trail. He looked uncharacteristically out of place among the tall, slim figures of the dark-elves, but the moment I set eyes on him I felt a rage seething in my gut the likes of which I had never felt before.
Morok smiled at me with unmasked confidence.
‘A pleasure to make your acquaintance once more, tribe master.’
Chapter Fourteen
‘You son of a bitch.’
I knew that one wrong move right now could get me killed, but I didn’t care.
I practically threw myself at Morok, sending him crashing to the ground.
I managed to deliver a single, brutal punch to his face before the dark-elves pulled me from him roughly.
Morok yelped at the strike and groaned in pain. Blue blood dripped from his huge nose – now broken thanks to my handiwork.
One of the dark-elves delivered a hard, calculated punch to my stomach.
It wasn’t only calculated in humiliating me, but in the nature of the punch itself. From the brutal pain that rushed through my solar plexus, I could tell he had likely practiced this move over the course of his entire life.
Fuck me, that hurt.
Still, it was worth it.
I was beyond outnumbered with Kali and his six dark-elves keeping their weapons trained on me. I couldn’t do something that stupid again.
But I wasn’t focused upon them.
Hell, I couldn’t even focus on them if I wanted to.
Every ounce of my rage was now fixed on Morok.
‘I said I was going to kill you if I ever saw you again,’ I growled at him. ‘I just didn’t think it would be under these circumstances. Did you think I was bluffing or something?’
‘I…’ Morok groaned, straightening his nose with a few cringing cracks, ‘… Believe that you mean what you say, tribe master. You are an honest man. But you were foolish enough to let a goblin such as me go.’
‘I try to draw a line between mercy and foolishness,’ I replied, raising my arms again and spitting at the ground. ‘There’s a difference.’
‘Yes, well, evidently that line was not firm enough, was it?’
I clenched my teeth with rage, so hard that they felt like they would shatter.
‘Evidently not,’ I croaked slowly.
‘After leaving that godforsaken ship that you threw me onto I needed to find a new way to survive,’ he continued. ‘I have no companions in this region, no allies – and my only hope of survival was with the tribe master that had handed me to the rivers in the first place - you. I knew the location of your land, so I decided to return to it once I had secured my freedom from that wretched river captain.
‘I watched for a time from the south, managing to stay out of sight in the forest. At one point I climbed into the trees to watch you go about your lives. Fed, clothed and warm beings living under the protective eye of a tribe master. And I just felt so… Sick.’
‘Sick?’ I repeated. ‘What the hell did you have to feel sick about? That you missed the chance of being welcomed into a tribe that didn’t get run like some fucking slave system? Maybe you shouldn’t have tried to fucking kill me!’
Morok smirked and shook his head.
‘You misunderstand me, tribe master. Not only that, but you misunderstand this world. You see, in my time tallying the assets of the many masters that I have worked for over the years, I have come to truly understand this world. Everything moves through transitions; an eye for an eye, gold for gold, trade for trade. You do not operate like this. You gratify the needs of your people like some… Charity benefactor. I thought you were detestable when we first met, but after seeing your ways first-hand… I was sickened. So I decided to follow you.’
‘If you were so angry about me handing you over to the ship captain you could have come knocking on the gates. I’d put you in a cell, maybe, but I’d keep you warm and fed, just like the rest of my people. Any other tribe master would have killed you the moment they found you in that damned basement.’
‘My kind are not often the sort to hold grudges. Possessing grievances is illogical. But after you tossed me onto the rivers like that, I could not forgive you. My honor was tarnished. I would have preferred you to simply kill me.’
‘That makes two of us,’ I replied.
‘Indeed. Well after I followed you to the land of the dwarves, I overheard that you were seeking something of great value. I did not have the means to recover it from you, but I did have the means to make a deal with the ones who also sought this treasured object that you seek. The dark-elves took me to meet their master, and we made a deal. Not only did he spare my life, but he offered me a place within his tribe – head of acquisitions.
‘I elected to keep the location of your land a secret, of course. These men know the value of information like that, as do I, and I needed something to leverage against my circumstances… Until now, of course. Now this whole group you see before you knows where your land is. I knew you had found the final clue, and that following you on this recent journey would bring us to the prize that we all seek.’
Shit. Every one of these guys knows where my land is.
The rest of Garrison’s tribe wouldn’t, but once they returned to their land, he would know.
But something else didn’t add up.
‘Wait,�
�� I cut in. ‘If the dark-elves never knew the location of my land before now, how did you all trail us so quickly to this location? There was no way that you could have informed them in time and then met up while keeping up with me.’
Kali chuckled to himself.
‘You and your rudimentary technology,’ the dark-elf guard smiled with a shake of his head, before bringing up his inventory. ‘My master can afford items that mongrels like yourself cannot, such as this.’
An transparent orb suddenly landed in Kali’s hand. A needle was spinning at its center, hovering in mid-air and rotating complacently like some kind of three-dimensional compass.
‘Summoning orbs,’ Morok cut in, presenting his own. ‘Simply utter attendro-’ The needle within Kali’s orb pointed towards Morok’s- ‘and the paired orb will be directed to attend the presence of your own.
‘Powerful when it comes to anonymity,’ Kali commented. ‘Not that anonymity is needed any longer…’
Shit.
I changed the topic quickly.
‘So, acquisitions,’ I laughed, trying to hold my nerve. ‘You’re fucking middle-management.’
‘What I am,’ Morok barked, his high, malicious voice practically reaching a squeal as his façade of calmness suddenly fell, ‘Is a goblin of great importance. And what’s more, is I am going to deliver the agrarium that you are seeking to the feet of my master, after which he will bestow much gold upon me. I have been watching you for days, waiting for the moment to arrive… And now that it is here, you will bring it to me and place it before my feet.’
‘Our feet,’ Kali corrected.
‘Indeed, our,’ Morok said, lowering his head fearfully as he was reminded of his place.
‘If you think that I’m going to hand that agrarium over to you,’ I replied, ‘then you’re out of your collective fucking minds.’
‘Jack,’ Morok laughed. ‘Dear, dear Jack… I know that you are a brave man. The way you confronted me back at the land on which you found me during our first meeting? You were ready to be blown to smithereens, or to take a bolt right between the eyes. You do not fear death.’ Morok took a long pause, before smiling contentedly to himself. ‘Of course, your women might…’
Even in the unforgiving cold of this climate, a sudden prickle of heat managed to claw its way up my spine and sink its claws into my neck.
‘What did you just say?’
‘Bring them out!’ Kali shouted.
From the tree nearby a pair of dark-elves emerged, bringing the total to eight, plus Kali and Morok.
But they weren’t alone.
Dragged by their sides, their wrists bound behind their backs and their mouths gagged with tight ropes, were Ariadne and Talia.
‘No…’
‘Both possess something of a fighting spirit, you would say,’ Kali smiled. ‘Alas, it was not enough to avoid capture. And if I’m not mistaken, human...’ Kali crossed to Talia and brushed a finger over her cheek that was dangerously delicate. ‘This catgirl is the very one that Master Garrison had been desiring for so very long.’
‘Don’t lay a fucking hand on her,’ I growled at Kali. ‘I swear to god, I’ll fucking kill you.’
‘Your god is not here,’ Kali said. ‘We are alone. Only us. Granted, I have no desire to harm this catgirl. Just as Garrison wishes for the goblin to return the agrarium to him, so too does he desire a woman of this… Nature. She will be returned to him unharmed.’
‘This foxgirl of yours on the other hand? My master has plenty of such beings in his stead, and has no need for another. I doubt that he will find much use for her. In fact… I doubt that he would mind at all if I cleaved her head from her shoulders at this very moment.’
Ariadne’s eyes locked with mine, speaking two things.
The first was a look of love – she knew that I would do anything to keep her alive.
The second was one of shock. We had both heard Kali say it.
Garrison had more of her kin, more of her tribe.
Kali swiftly produced a knife from his belt and spun it expertly around his finger like a gunslinger.
It landed in his firm, controlling grip, and he brought the tip gently to Ariadne’s throat.
She closed her eyes and stemmed a whimper.
‘Get away from her,’ I growled. ‘Get the fuck away from her!’
‘You know what I want, tribe master. So tell me how to acquire it…’
Ariadne shook her head at me.
My wife was ready to die to keep it out of their hands.
The blade pressed harder.
Blood appeared at her neck.
‘I’ll do it,’ I said quickly, insistently. ‘I’ll get you the agrarium.’
Kali turned his head slowly to face me, as if struggling to drag his eyes away from his fascination at the thought of slitting Ariadne’s throat.
He pulled the knife away by an inch.
‘Oh, so now you change your path, tribe master. This is all it takes – simply threatening that which a man holds dearest. You put yourself at too much risk by placing value in these women. Such weaknesses have been your downfall. Still, why should I not send my men down there to find what I want? They are dark-elves – more agile, more skillful, more battle-trained than yourself. What chance do you stand against them?’
‘Because you don’t know what’s down there,’ I replied in a knowing, foreboding tone. ‘I’ve solved the clues, I’ve read the riddles, and I’ve completed the first two challenges. They both told me how to survive the final challenge. I’m the only one who knows how to retrieve it safely.
‘Now, if you think that you can outdo me, please, be my guest. I’ll be right here while the traps down there slice you to pieces and the agrarium is caved in on by a thousand tons of rock.’
Kali glared back at me. The dark-elves were emotionless in their expressions, possessing savage, cold eyes that were completely analytical.
The sun-elves’ skills for people-reading were similar, but they possessed compassion.
Behind Kali’s eyes there was nothing but a searching, scanning machine.
I didn’t let my face falter once, didn’t allow myself a twitch or a flex or even a blink.
I wasn’t going to give anything away.
I was lying through my teeth, of course. I didn’t have a damned clue what awaited down there in the depths of the ruins. The final obstacles standing between me and the agrarium were completely unknown to me.
But there was no way that I was going to give it up.
‘I could always make you tell me, human,’ Kali said.
‘You could. I’m sure you’d love to threaten my wives in order to make me give you it. But if you lay another finger on them, you might as well kill me, because I’m not going to say a word.’
Kali’s mouth stretched into a wide, arrogant smile.
‘Another finger, hm?’ Kali repeated, returning to Talia. ‘Interesting…’ Kali raised his finger before Talia’s cheek, bringing it closer and closer, inch by inch.
The silence in the clearing was deadly.
I could practically sense him making minute contact with her before he withdrew and laughed lightly to himself.
‘I jest, tribe master. Very well. You two-’ Kali pointed to a pair of dark-elf guards nearby, one wielding a bow and the other a rapier. ‘Escort the tribe master into the ruins. If he attempts to disarm you, simply alert us – his foxgirl wife shall pay the price.’
Ariadne shot me another look, forcing strength up within herself.
She had seen her tribe captured once before, had escaped slavery and lived free for months.
And now here she was, her life threatened, a trickle of blood dripping down her neck, trailing its way to her chest.
The dark-elves holding me captive let me go suddenly. I collapsed forward and struck the ground with my hands, spitting a mouthful of blood into the snow.
From the ground I glared over at Kali with just a hint of disdain. It was all I would allow him to
see.
He did nothing but smile.
If I was going to ensure that my wives weren’t brought to harm, I had to enter the ruins, and with the approaching dark-elves accompanying me.
‘Fine,’ I said, climbing to my feet. ‘Let’s get moving.’
I made the long walk back to the ruins with the pair of dark-elves in tow right behind me.
Before long I realized that the entire group was following behind.
They would be ready to greet me upon my return from the depths of the ruins, where they would likely pry the agrarium from my hands and kill all three of us.
But right now I had no other plan.
Stalling was my only option.
I turned to the mouth of the ruins, the tunnel of darkness awaiting, and stepped forward with the two dark-elves in tow, ready to confront the final challenge.
Even if it would cost me my life.
Chapter Fifteen
The overbearing darkness of the tunnel shrouded us within seconds of entering the domain.
This time no door closed behind us and no threats emerged, but just ten yards down the steps the path suddenly began to spiral, forming a staircase that quickly circled back on itself, revolving over and over in a worrisome descent.
It didn’t take long for the light outside to be extinguished completely. Just behind, the two dark-elves that were escorting me lit a pair of torches.
Our footsteps echoed off the stone steps until they suddenly ceased, and a short passage awaited ahead.
We walked the narrow, dusty passage slowly.
‘Where are we going, human?’ One of the dark-elves asked aggressively. ‘Where does this passage lead?’
‘You’ll see,’ I said in a knowing tone.
Truth be told, I had no freaking clue what awaited this time.
But if it was anything like the others, the threat would present itself in no time.
I had two companions with me this time, if they could even be called that – companions who would be happy to see me dead, sure, but they would have a common desire to stay alive either way.
‘Hmmmm…’
There it was again – that strange whirring sound, only louder this time.
The end of the passage came into view. It opened up into a chamber, the proportions almost exactly similar to that which had resided beneath the iron skull.