Forgotten Ruin: An Epic Military Fantasy Thriller

by Jason Anspach

  The sergeant major seemed dubious.

  Almost every answer from Vandahar was basically the same. “For now, you are safe and under the protection of the forest. And of course, I will be with you.”

  Once all the sergeant major’s questions were answered with the same answer, I was released to refill my own canteen and get ready to move forward with the scouts who would be the first to depart.

  Spacing between elements would be tight. Vigilance was being emphasized despite Vandahar’s assurances.

  There were only a few teams left near the fountain in the center of the ancient ruins when I got there. Tall forest giants grew up through the ruined marble and into the hazy blue sky above. The air was cool and quiet. And as I wove through the remaining walls and cracked halls of what must have once been a wide airy temple, I heard the tinkling, almost melodic notes of the fountain burbling out of an ornate well set in the floor and surrounded by a recessed amphitheater littered with statues. Carved haughty elves in full plate armor who held spears and stood at attention, many broken or cracked or fallen, but a few still in complete condition. Scroll-worked dragons curled across their impressive breastplates. They wore helms like ancient Spartans and kilts that seemed to be made of leather and metal if the carved stone was any indication.

  Kurtz and his team were the last to top off from the fountain. Jabba had been left out near the gear saying “No like scary place” or something to that effect. Apparently this tranquil, almost spa-like meditative space of peace and quiet, like a real-world visual representation of an ambient music group’s album cover, counted as “scary” to goblin-kind.

  “You trust him?” I asked Tanner, nodding my head toward the gear and weapons. “You trust Jabba?”

  Tanner, who was guzzling another canteen of water, laughed almost insanely for a second before checking himself and returning to hard Ranger. Then he burped. He actually apologized, which was uncharacteristic, and said, “Sorry, Talk. But man… this stuff tastes like the best 7 Up you’ve ever had, and it makes you feel like the first shot of really top-shelf tequila does, but without all the stupid that follows. Or at least I hope so, ’cause as far as I know there ain’t no strippers to marry here.”

  He took another big drink as I bent down to the fountain set in the marble floor and stared transfixed at the clear water. Its tumble and bubble had a hypnotic quality that was fascinating to just stare at.

  “Yeah,” said Tanner, distantly. “We trust the little guy. He’s nosy. But we got him trained. Soprano is like his new best friend.”

  I heard all that. But still I stared into the well trying to see the depth of it… and I could see nothing but what felt like an endlessness down in there. And to be clear, not an endlessness like the oblivion I’d felt near the thing in the crack back in the last temple I’d had the pleasure of hiding in so as not to get killed by centaurs and goat men. No. This endlessness was different. This was like an oasis that was everything. Like a vacation on that first day you arrive in paradise. When it seems like you have all the time in the world and you’re nowhere near the last days when you must think about packing, getting ready, checking out, and going back to the airport to leave for reality once again.

  I held my canteen under the water until it had filled. One of my fingers dipped into the well, and the water was cool but not cold. My finger, which had been cracked and dried, dirty and caked with cordite and dirt, felt… suddenly… refreshed. New. Like it had just gotten a massage and spent the day at the ladies’ spa. I pulled it out and looked at it, turning it around in the warm light of the morning and the quiet ruins.

  It wasn’t like my finger had been washed clean, though it was that. It was more like it had been restored. Lines were gone, and the scar I’d gotten when I was a kid on some barbed wire I’d been hopping over… that was gone now. Strange. Maybe that scar was on the other finger? So I checked, pulling off that glove. No scar there. But dirt and baked-in cordite.

  So it had to be this finger. And I was sure there had once been a scar there. I remember my mom seeing it once and tsking like she did because it was something that had happened when I was with my father. After they’d parted ways. I remember her saying, “You’re no longer perfect now.”

  I remember being mad about that. And then, one day… I wasn’t anymore.

  It happened when I was sitting in a coffee shop in New York City studying Italian one rainy fall afternoon. I was there for an advanced program at NYU. Some young mother was bouncing her new baby on her knee while she waited for the baristas to make her coffee. I could tell it was maybe the first time she’d been out since the child had been born, and she’d decided to take the both of them out for a coffee. Like the two friends she hoped they’d always be. Her and her child. I remember her bouncing the baby, a chubby little boy, on her knee and saying over and over again, “You’re so perfect.”

  That’s how real mothers are. They see us as perfect when the rest of the world isn’t going to, not long after we’ve stopped being new babies. I understood my mother that day. How she’d felt about me since the very beginning. That I was perfect. To her. And that, to her, for life to scar me… that was an incalculable loss. I was hers. And we’d once had that very same moment when there were no scars. When she’d dandled me on her knee. Dandled is an old-timey word for bounced.

  But scars… scars were some of my best memories. Fun often came with a good scar. Ask any of the Rangers around me.

  So there’s that. Staring into that endless well that seemed to whisper all the good things life might offer and that’s what you think about. Everything. Or at least, as much of everything as the human mind can process.

  I heard someone laugh above me and turned to see Chief Rapp.

  “It do have some kind of properties, don’t it, PFC Talker?”

  I nodded and lifted the canteen to my lips, holding it before taking a sip. Hesitating. Would there be a scar? How much does this cost? How much further from perfection this time?

  “Is it safe?” I asked the SF operator as I held it there for a second.

  He smiled and nodded, pulling out his own canteen.

  “Safe as I can tell. I’ve already topped off three times. Seems to produce some endorphin boost and generally positive feelings. That’s good. Nothing bad there, PFC Talker. And it’s definitely loaded with some kind of alkalizing electrolytes, so that’s another benefit. Just using field techniques and observation it seems vastly superior to my IVs, which is a good thing because there ain’t too many of those left.

  “But I’ll be honest. I’ve had an ongoing medical condition that leaves me in a certain amount of pain every day, PFC. Picked it up somewhere we were never supposed to be, if you know what I mean. Was told I’d need to live with it for the rest of my life. And after the first canteen of this stuff… thirty-seven minutes ago…”

  He’d checked his giant high-speed SF watch. All the Super Friends, as some of the Rangers like to refer to special forces when not calling them Green Beanies, wore one. Usually they were super-expensive. Rangers on lower enlisted pay weren’t ever going to have watches like that. Most of them were content to covetously eye Oakley tactical gloves and considered even their lower price prohibitive. Watches by elite foreign makers were orders of magnitude more expensive than Oakley gloves.

  “… I can’t feel that pain anymore,” continued the chief. “Also, I have scar tissue from an old gunshot wound. And that, too, doesn’t seem to hurt as much thirty-eight minutes after my first canteen from this water source. My muscles feel stretched and limber, though right now we should all be hobbling like we just came off a hundred-mile road march. Not dancing around like I just gave everyone vitamin B shots.” The chief gave a big, wide grin. “There’s something to this water, PFC. But it’s safe. Drink up. Good Lord send us a gift, I ain’t gonna say no. I’ve asked Dr. Van Strahnd to come and take some samples. Maybe we can analyze and even… wh
o knows…” He laughed to himself and filled his canteen one more time. “Possibly even synthesize its chemical structure if we get the Forge back any time soon.”

  I took a sip from my canteen. It tasted sweet and clear without being sugary. I didn’t get 7 Up. This was nothing like a mass-produced soft drink. It seemed like the most natural thing in the world. I felt some kind of flush happening for an instant, and that flush seemed to… purge something dark and unhappy from inside my mind, my guts. I burped, and I felt like I could breathe better. My lungs and nasal passages felt clear, and the air all around me tasted sweet and dreamy.

  That’s the only way I can describe it. Good vibes. Dreamy.

  “PFC Tanner says it hits like the first taste of really top-shelf tequila,” I said after I drank some more.

  The chief laughed at that.

  “Well… that’s a bit of an overstatement. He’s probably never had the really good stuff. But yes, I see the comparison. It do make you feel kinda invincible.”

  The Baroness, or Dr. Van Strahnd as she was officially known, came in with her ruck and case and began to take samples in vials. I left her and the chief to their work and rejoined the scouts. But I studied her for a moment from the recess of the temple-amphitheater-well of good vibes that was this place. She was one of only three civilians that had come along on this trip. One was…

  … gone.

  The other two had hung in right beside the Rangers and were still alive. The Forge technician and the Baroness. The Baroness was quirky and enigmatic, even bookishly sexy. And she’d made it. There was something strange about her, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

  Minutes later, as the sun began to climb toward noon, the Rangers started out for the last leg of their march. By dusk we would reach our destination, the Hidden Cave.

  Along the way there were many conversations. And what would happen next soon became clear.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Regardless of what the old wizard said, Captain Knife Hand and the sergeant major weren’t having any of this “Let’s Take a Hippy Walk,” as the command sergeant major had bluntly termed Vandahar’s guidance for the next phase of the march.

  It was still a combat patrol. Noise discipline and good Rangering skills would be applied and practiced at all times. Except you couldn’t get the scouts, usually grim and determined even for Rangers, to shut up and stop making jokes.

  “I feel Rockstar, man,” said one of ’em. And then they all started regurgitating their favorite Air Force memes and laughing.

  That was the first time Sergeant Hard yelled at them to “get it together.” Apparently Hard was immune to Good Vibe Well Potion. I was betting Kurtz was too.

  Then the scouts started whispering about surfing in Mexico next time they were on leave and that they should take some of their canteen water then so they could hit the cantinas all night long and be up by dawn to hit the waves.

  This may seem stupid. But the Ranger scout section of an endless summer via thirty days of leave sounded rational and sane compared to the If I die this is how I’d spend my Army life insurance money conversation I’d once been forced to listen to on a long road march during Basic. That one still hurt my brain to think about. Tanner told me it was called “the SGLI Sweepstakes.” SGLI is Servicemember Group Life Insurance.

  I’m sure there were still waves in some place the map had once called Mexico. There had to be waves somewhere. Still, the experience the scout section was all excited about was about ten thousand years cerrado. Which means closed in Spanish. I said nothing and listened to the general good vibes they couldn’t contain until Hard showed up from the op order for the march and told them to once more “get it together.” And even then, they could barely stop whispering about surfing, fish tacos, and tequila.

  Gandalf, or rather Vandahar the Wise or whatever, sidled up next to me as I watched the vibing Rangers get themselves fanned out and scouting. Sergeant Hardt running them with no small amount of vitriol.

  “’Tis the old Well of Illathor that does cause them to behave so. Its power is deep and old in a world long gone to ruin.”

  We were speaking in Gray Speech. Grau Sprache. Germanic. But my version. Meaning Vandahar was speaking fluently in what I would call “modern German” and anyone from this time would call ancient. His vocabulary was a little on the fancy side, but otherwise he would have blended in perfectly in the Berlin or Stuttgart I had left behind.

  The mysterious old man was full of surprises.

  “They will feel that way until the morrow. Tell your war captain not to worry. It does not dull the edges. They are more ready for battle now than they were in the days leading to your company’s battle with the Guzzim Hazadi.”

  I knew from Jabba that the Guzzim Hazadi were one of the tribes of orcs that had attacked us. It seemed they’d had some kind of leadership role in the opposing forces. It was time for me to start collecting more intel about this world, and walking next to the wizard should provide that. So I stayed close and followed him as he wandered behind the scouts.

  I looked behind to see Last of Autumn leading her horse away from the other Ranger teams already rucking up for the last hump. I waved, but she didn’t seem to see me. She seemed lost in thought. Or maybe it was fatigue. She’d been fighting and sneaking as long as we had. Now she seemed tired and content to just walk her horse while not being too concerned about enemies.

  Vandahar lit his pipe, and for some time we walked in the old forest and he murmured to himself or pointed out various trees using Tolkien words to name them. This was Elven High Speech. I listened and tried to learn what I could learn. Autumn had been feeding me some of the more basic words, and while I certainly wasn’t fluent yet, I was picking it up, starting to understand what I needed for rudimentary communication.

  The walk was quiet for the most part. But if the Rangers were expecting a patrol through the bush, a creep up onto an enemy objective or movement to contact, what they got instead was something much closer to what the wizard had said it would be. A Hippy Walk.

  A peaceful walk with nothing to fear.

  And the part Vandahar didn’t mention was… with much to be amazed at.

  That was the best part of the long march through the mysterious forest.

  “The Upper Charwood is an old forest. As old as the time when the stars fell and cleaved the Ruin into what it is now,” mused the wizard as we walked along, passing strange stones and twisting trees that smelled of sandalwood. The scouts were out and forward. “It’s truly another realm altogether. It was once called The Green Walk, in another language long lost to the current age of darkness. In those days the Dragon Elves ruled the west and rivaled even the growing power of the Saur in the south. But in the time since, the spreading evil of the Southern Charwood has almost enveloped the Old Green Walk, and now most who still study the ways of the great forests consider the separate parts a whole.”

  He stopped to examine a cluster of beautiful mushrooms that seemed made of gold and smelled like fresh laundry. He bent and scratched at them. Then sniffed.

  “Not ready just yet. One more moon and they’ll be fine for a good meal.” He stood and sighed. Then we continued on into the emerald halls of the forest.

  The wood around us grew tall, the trees reaching higher, the canopy slowly enveloping the whole world. Soon the sky was lost and it seemed like we were moving through a vast vibrant green gem of a hidden cathedral. Unfamiliar birds cried out happily, calling to one another musically as they flapped through the invisible upper reaches of trees that were even taller and stronger than the redwoods of ten thousand years ago.

  An hour later we stopped at the remains of an old stone bridge that crossed over a lake laden with giant lily pads. There was no scent of death or decay here, like in swamps. Instead the air was heavy with the scent of magnolia and jasmine, and fish swam and jumped in the lake.

&n
bsp; “Sit here for a while, lad,” said the wizard. He’d found a couple of old stones carved with ancient runes, long overgrown by moss. Vandahar pulled out his pipe once more and began to make it ready. When he had it to his liking, he turned to Autumn, who still followed along behind us.

  “Lead on with the scouts, girl. And make sure the Fae do not give them a hard time or pull the finer-looking ones of these… Rangers… down into one of their secret holes. We’ll never find them again. They’ll never give those up.”

  “Who are the… Fae?” I asked.

  The old man worked at his pipe and muttered, “They’re worse than a jealous woman when they find one they like, mind you.”

  “Are they friendly?” I asked, prompting a more coherent response. If there was some kind of danger here, then I needed to make sure the captain knew about it.

  “Dangerous?” The old wizard guffawed as his pipe came to life. “Yes. Quite dangerous. ’Tis they who have guarded this old forest since long before the Dragon Elves. I can see you love the old languages—do you know what Fae means in Eld Ruin? Do you know Eld Ruin? No? It means from. It means they are from somewhere… how shall we say… other. In my long experience they are things you do not wake lightly. But they are also, to be honest, they who keep the Eld asleep, which is generally the best for all of us if you know the history of the Ruin.

  “Yes,” he said to himself, staring off into the emerald-green canopy as the next team of Rangers passed by, following the trail of the scouts. “Yes, that is for the best if we consider the consequences of what waking an Eld would portend. We don’t need them mucking about just yet, going to war on one another. Bad enough Cloodmoor is now under the sway of the Black Prince.” At this the wizards brows furrowed. “He’s from those Eld days. He should know better. Though… he’s the least from those Eld Days.”

  Vandahar’s voice trailed off. He was speaking to himself more than to me, it seemed. “Why… imagine if Bothmaug the Devourer were to be set free from his prison beneath the remotest regions of the Dire Frost? Where no living man has tread? It would mean an age of war few still living could remember. It would crack the foundations once more.”