“No help for it, then. Might as well do it like Gurgle!” Clara said. She stripped off her armor and rinsed it in the water, washing away the mud. Then she took a step back, hand her nose with one hand, and jumped in.
Sam watched until Clara surfaced. They were far enough away from the waterfall that she wasn’t too worried about her friend being carried over the edge by the current, but a river this deep could be deceptively strong. The worries were unfounded, though. Clara’s head popped back out bare seconds after she’d jumped in. She scrambled back onto the shore, shivering. Her teeth chattered, and her skin had turned pale from just a few seconds of exposure to the water.
“Oh, gods, that is cold!” Clara shouted. She stomped her feet.
“This, I can help with,” Sam said. She fired a flame bolt at a few rocks. The fire slammed into the volcanic stone. It didn’t shatter, instead absorbing much of the heat from her flame. Clara hurried over to the rock and held her hands over the warmth.
“Thanks, Sam. Better hurry and wash yourself, or this rock won’t be warm when you come back out,” Clara said.
She could always re-heat the thing if need be, and Sam wasn’t looking forward to the cold water. But the swamp muck stank enough that the cold felt like the lesser of two evils. Sam shed her armor and boots, then dove into the river.
It was as icy below as it had been on the surface. At first the cold was a brutal shock to her system. She wanted to gasp, to suck in air. But she was underwater. That would only fill her lungs with the freezing stuff. Sam held on to her breath as hard as she could, fighting past the momentary shock of the cold.
Once the initial jolt was done, she found she could think more clearly. Her limbs were already beginning to grow numb, and staying much longer was out of the question. But the river was an interesting place... She could see a long way into its depths. It looked like there were things at the bottom of the river-bed, curious objects that seemed to call to her...
Sam shook her head to clear it. Another few moments and she’d freeze for real down there. She forced herself up and out of the water, gasping for fresh air. Her body felt numb all over, and Sam knew she had to look much like Clara had. The warm rock was a welcome relief.
“You going to heat that rock again for the guys when they come to wash off?” Clara asked.
“I might, if they’re lucky,” Sam laughed.
It was good to be around people she could count on again. Even if Harald was acting out of sorts, having her friends with her made all the difference.
“Say, did you see anything strange down there in the water?” Sam asked.
“No, I didn’t open my eyes. Why? Did you?” Clara replied.
Before Sam could answer, she saw Gurgle soaring back toward them. His flight looked unbalanced, and it took Sam a moment to realize why. Someone had put an arrow into him! It jutted from his side, just under his left wing.
Gurgle came down for a landing, thudding into the ground in something less than a crash. He was panting, his eyes glazed with pain. Jorge rushed to the dragon’s side, arriving before Sam could get there.
“Easy now,” Jorge said. His hands glowed with pale golden light as he moved them over Gurgle’s scales. That was his healing magic at work. Then his fingers found the arrow shaft. With a quick yank, he pulled it free.
Gurgle howled in pain and snapped his jaws at the air.
“It’s OK, Gurgle! He’s helping. He got the arrow out,” Sam said.
“Poisoned. I’m going to need to work on this wound a little while to get all of it out,” Jorge said. “He’s strong to have made it back here to us at all.”
Sam’s vision flashed red. Someone had tried to kill Gurgle. She stared across the swamp toward Hel’s castle. Gurgle must have wandered too close and gotten tagged by one of the defenders there. Well, she was going to go repay them in kind.
“Gurgle found path. Down at bottom of slope. There is road,” the dragon said. “But road has defenders. Castle, too. Many, many dark elves.”
“Rest easy, Gurgle. We’ll deal with them,” Sam said.
She went back to fetch her armor and get ready for battle. It was time to take the fight to Hel.
18
The sloped route was much easier going than the cliff. It was still a steep incline to the bottom, but it was passable on foot. Sam glared at Harald, still frustrated over the time they lost in the swamp. He at least looked abashed. She really needed to take him aside and speak with him, but there hadn’t been a good chance to do so yet. Whatever his issues were, they would have to wait.
From the base of the hillside, a beaten dirt path wound through the mire. It cut back on itself several times, affording defenders of the castle ample time to be alerted to an attack and move to defend the place. But it was a path. They could walk right up to the gates and not worry about getting wet. That was the good news.
The bad news was that Gurgle was right.
“See? Many, many dark elves,” the dragon said.
The keep was bristling with soldiers. They patrolled the walls and stood watch from the tops of towers. If the party came anywhere close to the castle they’d end up looking like pincushions. Well, Harald might not, but he wasn’t big enough for all the rest of them to hide behind.
“If only we’d come this way in the first place,” Benson said, echoing Sam’s own thoughts on Harald’s rash actions earlier. Where she might have used a biting tone, Benson somehow made it sound like a gentle teasing instead.
“You needed a bath anyway,” Clara said.
“In mud?” Benson asked.
“It’s supposed to be good for your skin, to take a mud bath, isn’t it?” Grimalf said, joining in.
“Right now, I’m more worried about those guards,” Jorge said. “Too many for us to fight, I think?”
Sam looked over at him and nodded. On an open field, they could take down a lot of enemy fighters. But this battlefield favored the defender far too heavily. They’d never even get close to the walls before they were picked off.
“This might be time to use the invisibility spell,” Sam said. If she could maintain the spell on all of them, they could sneak into the keep right past the guards.
“That still leaves all the dokkalfar to deal with,” Harald said. “Plus we don’t know how often they open the gates. What if your mana runs out while we’re still stuck outside the wall?”
He was right. She could maintain the spell on all of them for a short while, but not indefinitely. Eventually, she’d run out of mana to power the magic, and then they’d be exposed again. If they were still sitting right outside the gates when that happened, they’d be easy prey.
“Can you break down the doors?” Sam asked Harald.
“Maybe. Especially if they were weakened, say by a frost blast first,” he replied.
“Gurgle can do,” the dragon said.
Sam looked over the walls again. The plan was workable. Unless Hel had some sort of special protection on the doors, her arrows could disintegrate them, too. The party would sneak up to the door, then blast it open. They’d still have to fight everyone inside, but at least it would be a toe to toe battle.
That was a lot of troops in the castle. Sam wracked her brains, trying to come up with some clever way of dealing with them all. Fighting them was an option, but it would give Hel plenty of time to get involved in the battle. She’d rather take the AI as much by surprise as possible.
“I think there’s another way,” Sam said. “It’s a little risky, but no more than fighting all of that lot. If it works, we might not have to fight any guards at all.”
But it would take excellent timing. Everything had to be just right, or she would end up squished like a bug. Sam grinned. The idea was bright, maybe even a little too much so, but she was going with it. Let the gods give luck where they would.
This plan seemed a lot better when she was surrounded by friends. Out by herself without backup and headed directly toward a large enemy force, it seemed a hell
of a lot less a sure thing. But Sam couldn’t back out now. The others were counting on her, and besides, Jorge had already tried to talk her out of doing it. Even Harald had stepped in offering to take her place until Sam pointed out that he was too slow in his present form to manage it.
“Go find some Svartalfar, get their attention, and get them to follow you,” Sam muttered.
It wasn’t hard to find them. Ten minutes on foot and she saw a large battalion of them clustered about, scavenging the remains of a battle. Looks like they’d handed the dokkalfar their heads this time. Hard to complain about that.
Things would be easier if she could just go ask them for help, but by entering as they had her team wasn’t flagged friendly to either side in this endless war. Both sides were out to kill them. But now maybe there was a chance to use that to her advantage.
Sam was invisible as she approached. Maintaining the spell on just herself was easy enough. Much simpler than casting it on the entire group! Still, she wished Gurgle was with her at least. It would be good to have an easy airborne escape if things got tight. His wing muscles were still too injured to fly well, though. It wasn’t worth the risk.
Sam steeled herself for what was coming. She’d dropped her armor and sword. Benson carried them. She still had her bow and the hacked arrows. They would have to be enough if she got embroiled in a fight. That, and her magic.
She limbered up, getting ready to sprint like mad. If this worked, there were going to be a hundred angry dwarves rushing after her in a minute. Satisfied she was as prepared as she could be, Sam drew up mana from her reserves and readied the biggest fireball she could cast.
The invisibility spell snapped off as soon as the fireball appeared. Seemed like she couldn’t stay hidden while she unleashed an attack. Disappointing, but she’d expected something like that. Besides, she wanted them to see her. That was the entire point.
Sam threw the fireball into the middle of the camp. One dwarf was fried by the blast. A dozen more were thrown into the air, and twice that many were scorched a bit. They rallied fast, though, forming ranks facing toward her.
Seeing only one opponent, they didn’t bother with a slow advance. The dwarven army gave a roar and rushed toward her, each soldier running at break-neck speed.
“That looks like my cue to leave,” Sam said.
She turned and ran, sprinting for all she was worth back toward the others. A quick glance over her shoulder now and then told Sam they were still on her tail. In fact, they were gaining on her as she dashed down the slope toward the marsh.
Horns sounded from the castle ahead. The dokkalfar must have spotted the svartalf army approaching. Sam grinned savagely as she stepped out onto the path. She cast a shield spell over herself as she ran. Just in time. An arrow fired from the castle bounced off her shield. Then another was deflected. She reinforced the spell, but it wasn’t going to hold out long against a real rain of arrows.
The horn sounded again, and the castle gates swung open. A horde of dark elves poured out through the gate, rushing toward their hated foes. It looked like there were at least as many dokkalfar coming out of the keep as there were Svartalfar running behind Sam.
This was the tricky part of her plan. Sam hadn’t quite figured out how to extricate herself from between the two armies. Both forces were thoroughly distracted by one another. They were barely paying attention to her at all anymore. But that wasn’t going to help her if she was sandwiched between them!
19
Sam poured on the speed, racing headlong toward the castle. There was a tree up ahead with a branch just low enough that she ought to be able to grab hold with a running leap.
But that wouldn’t be enough to get her out of danger. She needed to be unseen as well. A quick invisibility spell later and she had hopefully vanished from view. If either side had magical means to detect her, well, she’d have to deal with them.
The tree loomed closer, but so did the dokkalfar army. Sam panted, each breath ragged. That was the simulation’s way of telling her that her stamina was just about gone. She’d burned everything she had on the run. Still, she drove her body onward as best she could. It might be virtual, but it was all she had.
Her health meter dipped as the continued stress took its toll on her. But she was almost there! With a last leap Sam cast herself into the air and grabbed hold of the hanging branch. She hauled herself up, exhausted arms struggling to lift her tired body.
She was just in time. The dokkalfar ran past moments after Sam got her lets wrapped around the branch. Inching her way back toward the trunk, she watched as the force slammed into the dwarven battalion head-on. The noise from their clash resounded like an explosion, a great crash of steel against steel.
They were going to be too busy to worry about her for a little bit, and clearly the invisibility was still holding. Time to get into the keep before those doors shut. The short rest had replenished a bit of Sam’s strength. She dropped to the ground and took off for the gates at a run.
The castle hadn’t fully closed the doors yet. Maybe they were hedging their bets in case their troops had to retreat quickly. Certainly, they felt secure that the mire protected them from attack. Anyone who wanted to walk through those gates would have to walk right up the path, and some archers still waited watchfully in the towers above.
None of them could see Sam, though. Her invisibility was working. She rushed through the open gateway into the space beyond, nocking an arrow to her bow as she ran. Two guards waited between the gates. The arrow flew with almost no thought at all, taking down one elf.
Her invisibility spell went away in the same moment, but the second guard spent a precious few moments staring first at the fading mist where his friend had been, and then at the woman who’d suddenly appeared before him. It was all the time Sam needed to fire another arrow.
The whole fight had taken seconds and been almost soundless, but Sam had to hurry. No telling when someone else might come down and find the guards missing. She needed to secure the gatehouse for her friends. She cast invisibility on herself again and slipped deeper into the gloomy castle.
Its walls were carved from a black stone that looked something like a cross between black marble and obsidian. Torches lit the walls, more decoration than actual sources of light. The rock seemed to almost seep the illumination away, absorbing it rather than reflecting it. Finding her way was difficult at first as her eyes adjusted. The walls were hard to spot. Sam almost crashed into one.
Then she found a flight of stairs going up. That should get her into the gatehouse itself. The castle had a massive set of double doors and a portcullis gate as well. Either would potentially block her friends from getting in. Sam wanted to take out the guards waiting there before they could bar the way.
She nocked another arrow as she ascended the stairs, hoping there wouldn’t be too many of them. Without her armor she wasn’t prepared to fight an intense battle.
But she rounded the final corner of the steps and came almost nose to nose with an elf beginning his descent. There wasn’t time to get out of his way. He’d crash right into her if she didn’t do something. Sam fired. The arrow took him in the chest, turning him into vapor before he even had time to scream. She grabbed another shaft. The invisibility was gone again, and she had to deal with whoever else was up there.
Sam sprinted up the last few steps, bow at the ready. She fired at the first elf she saw, but her shot went wide and snapped against a wall. There were three more guards! All had their swords out and at the ready. She fired another arrow. This one hit, taking out the guard.
The other two understood the danger her bow represented a little better after that. Fighting at a distance wasn’t to their benefit. They both rushed her at the same time.
Sam dropped her bow. There wasn’t time for more arrows. Instead, she held both hands in front of her like a pair of fans and willed magic into them. Fire plumed from her fingertips, arcing toward her attackers. It washed over them. One dove t
o avoid most of the fire. The other was caught in the flame. He dropped to the ground, rolling to put the fires out.
Backing away to buy time, Sam readied another spell. That was when she heard noise in the stairwell behind her. More troops, coming up. From the sounds of it, there were a lot of them.
She fired a massive flame bolt at the still-standing dark elf. It blasted him backward into the wall. He sank to the ground, unmoving. The elf’s friend was still rolling out the fire when Sam hit him with another blast of magic, putting him out of his misery.
All the spellcasting had taken a toll. Between the invisibility spells and the fire magic, Sam was running low on magical reserves. She had enough for a few more spells, but from the sounds of the tromping feet on the stairs, she was going to need more than that.
She readied what reserves she had and cast about for a weapon. The downside of those arrows was immediately apparent. They erased everything the target was wearing or carrying, too. No weapons or armor left on laying on the floor for her to grab.
But the controls for the portcullis and gate were there in front of her. Sam blasted them with fire, melting the chain and winch together.
“Have fun trying to shut the gate now,” Sam said.
The first elf sprang from the stairs, rushing toward her with sword outstretched. Sam lashed out with more fire, throwing him back through the doorway. She heard a crash as he collided with more guards. That would delay them, but not for long. It was time to go.
Sam pulled magic in to cast another invisibility spell, but a red flash in her vision told her that she’d used too much magic. She didn’t have enough left! It would come back, given another minute or so, but by that time the elves would be all over her.
She grabbed her bow and readied an arrow. All she really needed to do was buy a little more time.
The same guard appeared in the doorway, heavily singed and a little more cautious in his approach this time. Sam’s arrow slammed into his sword arm and the magic did the rest. She drew another arrow as more guards spilled forth toward her.
Valhalla Online 4: Hel Hath No Fury: A Ragnarok Saga LitRPG Story Page 8