“Thank you,” she whispered. Melkora couldn’t shake the feeling that she was about to die. As a thief, she had gotten herself into dangerous situations plenty of times, but her life had never seriously been at risk. She thought of Cobblestreet and her small shop. She had seen fire on the horizon shortly after the dragon flew away from Kanebullar Mountain. None of it mattered. All she had truly loved was already gone.
“I’ll never see her again…” Melkora accidentally muttered under her breath. In the still cavern, her words echoed with embarrassment and grief.
“Who?” Gideon asked tentatively. He strode to the chamber’s only exit with Maelstrom and Regret in his hands.
“My daughter,” Melkora began, but abruptly stopped. “Forget I said anything.”
Gideon didn’t have time to pity the woman. “The child you sent with the refugees?” he asked unsympathetically. Melkora nodded. “She is dead.”
Melkora nodded again and brushed a solitary tear from her face. She held Roisin so tightly that her knuckles turned white. “Let’s go,” she said defiantly.
Gravlox and Vorst joined the two humans at the exit of the feeding chamber. In front of them, they heard the rumblings of Lady Scrapple’s massive maw. The sounds of running goblins echoed through the passageway behind them. “What lies beyond?” Gideon asked. He couldn’t see a thing through the darkness of the tunnel.
“I have no idea,” Vorst said.
The four of them, Gideon and Melkora in front, walked down the tunnel until they reached the heart of the mountain.
The air was hot and sticky with lingering moisture. The walls were rough and bore thousands of tool marks. Covering it all was the stench of stale blood and centuries of decay. Gideon stood at the edge of the feeding tunnel and stared into the deep chamber in front of him. Twenty or more feet below, the creator of the goblin race peered up at the human intruders with a mixture of curiosity and unbridled madness.
Her eyes shone like flecks of pure evil amid the sea of her pale flesh that filled the cavern from wall to wall. Her mouth, a circular structure the size of a tavern door and filled with thousands of teeth, opened and closed rapidly beneath her beady eyes. Lady Scrapple rose up slightly in her chamber and produced a hissing sound like steam pushed through a furnace.
Instinctively, Gideon stepped back and waited for an attack. He wasn’t sure how Lady Scrapple would come at him, but he knew she would. He thought of leaping from the edge and landing with Regret held underneath him. Such a large, fleshy target would be impossible to miss. But with her extreme size, would the sword cause enough trauma to be effective? Would he be able to cut enough of her away before she swallowed him whole?
A subtle rumbling started in the chamber far below Gideon’s feet. It grew and grew until it shook the feeding tunnel and knocked bits of stone from the ceiling. “What’s happening?” Gideon shouted.
“The mountain is coming down on top of us!” Melkora shouted. A huge chunk of rock dislodged from the ceiling and crashed into her back, knocking her to the ground to be pelted again.
“Run!” Gideon yelled. He didn’t wait for the others to respond before jumping off the ledge. Gideon soared through the air with his legs folded beneath him and Regret pointing downward below his feet. The chamber began to crumble all around him.
Gideon landed with a wet thud and drove Regret through Lady Scrapple’s gelatinous body to the hilt. For a dozen feet in all directions, Gideon was surrounded by the goblin matron’s flesh. He slashed with Regret and the skin responded by spurting thick blood onto his arms and face. The sword cut a path of destruction through her body several feet wide.
A particularly violent tremor shook the chamber and a dislodged chunk of stone fell from the ceiling and hit Gideon in the chest. He flew backward and rolled from the top of Lady Scrapple’s body to a small clearing of ground. To his right, Gideon watched in horror as a protrusion came to life and ripped through the stone tunnel to reveal a thick tentacle covered in milky bulbs containing unborn goblins.
Gideon hacked at the tentacle madly, but before he could land more than two cuts, Lady Scrapple ripped another tentacle free from the stone and brought them both high above her gaping mouth. The two tentacles slammed down hard enough to crack the stone underneath Gideon’s feet. He rolled to his side and the wind from the tentacle hitting the ground where he had just stood was enough to jostle his braided beard. Gideon spun and made to strike with Regret, but Lady Scrapple was quicker. By the time he turned, the tentacle had already lifted from the ground for a second pulverizing attack.
The holy tattoo on Gideon’s back burned with energy. He drew Maelstrom from his hip and set to work dodging the falling tentacles and attacking Lady Scrapple’s body from a distance. With every lash, Maelstrom tore chunks of bloody flesh from the huge body and hurled them all over the cavern. When Lady Scrapple’s tentacles smashed down, Gideon was forced to twist and turn his body at odd angles to avoid being crushed in a single blow. Above him, the cavern still trembled and the ceiling broke apart.
Gideon thought he saw Gravlox looking down from the crumbling feeding tunnel, but he couldn’t afford to let his gaze linger. He slashed again with Maelstrom and latched the blade’s shadowy tendril around one of Lady Scrapple’s flailing tentacles. With unnatural strength, the goblin matron ripped her tentacle upwards and jerked Gideon from his feet. She flung her arm violently sideways and Gideon, holding the sword tightly, was slammed into the cavern wall twice before he was able to break Maelstrom’s magical connection.
His back blazed with pain and he rolled to his side to try and suck air into his deflated lungs. His vision blurred and he barely saw a tentacle headed straight for him. Rolling feebly over, Gideon only avoided half of the tremendous blow. Lady Scrapple’s huge arm crashed down across his lower legs and he knew in an instant that they were both broken. His right ankle was twisted underneath his shin and his left femur protruded grotesquely from the skin above his knee.
“Vrysinoch…” Gideon humbly prayed. “Let me rest…” His blood spilled over the cavern floor in jolting waves of agony. He let his eyes shut and waited for a tentacle to crush the last bit of life from his chest.
Lady Scrapple did not waste the opportunity. With both tentacles held together like a giant club, she smashed them down upon Gideon’s head and chest and crushed him several inches into the stone.
No, Vrysinoch’s avian hiss echoed through Gideon’s corpse. It wasn’t a voice of sadness, but one of defiance. Gideon’s soul drifted above his disfigured body as Lady Scrapple tore his remains to oozing tatters.
I will join you now, Vrysinoch, Gideon’s ghost whispered as it ascended above the goblin monstrosity. You have my soul, as you have always wanted.
No! Vrysinoch yelled through his incorporeal consciousness. The god raged with fury and Gideon felt his physical body begin to reform. His ghost watched as Vrysinoch’s energy surged into the room and latched onto every remnant of Gideon’s human body that it could find. His legs were magically lifted from the floor and his bones straightened and retreated back into the skin. His head inflated and drifted back to the rest of his body, reattaching itself with a quiet pop. Lady Scrapple thrashed her tentacles at the reassembling body hovering several feet above the floor, but Vrysinoch’s magic turned Gideon’s skin to molten lava. She shrieked and pulled her arms back, suddenly afraid for the first time in her entire existence.
You are my champion, Gideon of Talonrend, Vrysinoch whispered into Gideon’s reformed body. I may fall, but you will live. Gideon’s body floated above the stone for another second before the magic ended and dropped him to the ground.
Gideon was naked. His armor, clothing, and weapons were still scattered about the chamber as a result of his dismemberment. Gideon flexed his arms and his upper body ignited with holy fire. The flames raged all around him, but their warmth brought him strength. Gideon crouched and flexed his legs. When the muscles tightened, his lower half turned to forged steel. One foot after the other
, Gideon pounded his way toward Lady Scrapple. She slashed at him and tried to crush him again, but she might as well have been a maggot trying to topple Terror’s Lament.
When he reached her body, Lady Scrapple arched backward and oriented her circular maw forward in an effort to swallow Gideon whole. Her tentacles slammed into Gideon’s back over and over.
The paladin smiled. With Vrysinoch guiding his steps, he lifted a foot over the edge of Lady Scrapple’s mouth and pulled himself inside.
VRYSINOCH DOVE UNDERNEATH a blast of dark flames and scraped against the ground. With a flurry of feathers, the god sprang back into the air and snapped at the bone dragon, ripping the undead beast’s tail off and scattering hundreds of bones to the ground.
As it had done hundreds of times before, the dragon recoiled and sent out of a wave of telepathic magic that brought the bones back to its body and in second later, it was restored as if Vrysinoch had never touched it. The dragon spiraled high above the clouds and bid Vrysinoch to chase it.
Vrysinoch sped toward the back of the bone dragon and reached his mighty talons forth, latching onto the dragon’s underside. Vrysinoch began digging through the center of the dragon and raining bones down upon the city far below. The dragon curled down on itself and unleashed a torrent of black fire over Vrysinoch’s back. The bird reared in pain and had to push off. Vrysinoch’s entire body had been burned by the magical fire several times over and the skin beneath the feathers boiled and bled. Rebuilding Gideon’s body had taken too much energy—Vrysinoch had nothing left to fight the dragon.
You must kill the source, Gideon of Talonrend. Vrysinoch projected his vast consciousness over the plains and into the heart of Kanebullar Mountain. He found Gideon’s soul and attached his own mind to it. Kill her, my champion, and end this war…
The dragon dove after Vrysinoch and bit into the larger creature’s side. Vrysinoch tried to pry himself free from the dragon’s mouth, but his will to fight had all but disappeared, as had his strength. The dragon beat its powerful wings and soared higher into the air. It carried Vrysinoch hundreds of feet above the clouds until Kanebullar Mountain and Talonrend were nothing more than small dots on a distant landscape.
With a ferocious bite, the dragon tore one of Vrysinoch’s burned wings from his body and spat it out. The deity’s body plummeted. The dragon pursued, descending directly behind the fallen god and roasting Vrysinoch with magical fire.
My champion… I will live… through you… Vrysinoch sent a final message to Gideon’s soul before crashing into the ground with a violent explosion of blood, bones, and holy light.
YES, GIDEON MENTALLY responded. His flaming body burned and destroyed Lady Scrapple from the inside. Her mouth was much larger than the paladin needed to stand fully upright. He strode deeper into the matron’s innards, making a path with his flaming hands and solid steel legs. The beast writhed around him and convulsed desperately. Gideon drove a flaming hand into the bloody flesh above him and ripped open the roof of Lady Scrapple’s mouth. Blood poured from the wound and sizzled into steam when it touched his holy fire.
Another step forward brought Gideon directly under Lady Scrapple’s hideous eyes. He reached up and relished the feeling of his fiery fingers working their way through the back of her head. When his hand hit something hard, he clutched it and let it burn for a moment before ripping it toward him. He brought the obsidian eye up to his own eyes and looked into it with a calmness that only comes from impending victory. With a roar, Gideon dove into Lady Scrapple’s immense gullet and set her entire body ablaze.
Lady Scrapple’s skin bubbled and the blisters exploded, peeling her skin away and reducing her to an ashen husk until Gideon could see the cavern around him once more. The goblin matron’s body liquefied in the heat and left Gideon standing amidst several stone pillars that had served as her skeleton of sorts. Gideon looked to the feeding tunnel for any sign of his companions, but found none.
In that moment, gazing up at the crumbling stone ceiling, Gideon felt Vrysinoch die. His soul, magically entwined with the god’s, witnessed the fatal impact of Vrysinoch’s body upon the hard ground. Gideon’s magical tattoo flared once before falling still. The fires surrounding his body went out with a puff of oily smoke. His legs returned to flesh and bone and at once, the exhaustion of his battle overcame him.
Gideon’s mind fell into unconsciousness and his body collapsed against a stone pillar.
BATTLE-HARDENED GOBLINS FLOODED the feeding tunnel shortly after Lady Scrapple’s chamber began to collapse. Melkora shrieked as she watched Gideon dive from the tunnel to the goblin matron’s huge body below. Before she could leap from the ledge to help him, a boulder shook loose above her head and blocked her path.
Gravlox and Vorst turned to face the oncoming horde. In the small tunnel, they stood shoulder to shoulder with little room next to them. The close quarters bottle-necked the attackers and gave the pair comfort. Behind them, Melkora gasped for breath—she wasn’t used to the chaos of combat and panic threatened to destroy her.
The first big goblin, standing a full head taller than Gravlox, charged through the tunnel with a long spear aimed for Vorst’s chest. The goblin jabbed with the spear, deftly executing several feints in the process, and nicked Vorst’s forearm. She took a step back and Gravlox lunged, skewering in the goblin in a single stroke. Before they could catch their breath, another goblin was upon them.
“Get behind me!” Gravlox yelled. He pushed Vorst back and stepped in front of her with his sword. She took aim above Gravlox’s shoulder and fired her small crossbow. The nearest goblin tumbled down with a bolt stuck in his chest and Gravlox darted forward to finish it.
The two bulky corpses slowed the other goblins behind them and gave Vorst enough time to reload. Her crossbow clicked and another big goblin hit the ground with a groan and a thud. Gravlox leapt from his crouch and sliced the back of the goblin’s neck as it tried to rise. Two more goblins scrambled over the growing collection of corpses with swords in their hands.
Vorst spanned her crossbow and fired, taking one of them down, but not before the other goblin attacked Gravlox. He ducked out of the blade’s path, rolled across the top of a dead goblin, and came up swinging. The larger goblin anticipated the maneuver and soundly parried Gravlox’s strike. Gravlox sidestepped and let his blade swoop down, moving with the parry to get behind the larger goblin.
“You’re too far out!” Vorst shouted at him, trying to line up another crossbow shot. Gravlox pushed the bigger goblin in the back and knocked him over a corpse. The attacker tried to get to his feet, but Gravlox brought his sword down across his back and ripped him open with a shower of blood. More goblins kept coming down the tunnel and from the sounds they made, there were thousands. Only the tightness of the feeding tunnel prevented them from swarming the trio and easily killing them.
Vorst fired another shot over Gravlox’s head that struck the skull of an approaching goblin and killed it instantly. “Get back,” Vorst urged Gravlox. He shambled over the mounting corpses and made his way back to Vorst slowly. One of the goblins several paces from Gravlox held a bow and pulled the string taught.
“No!” Vorst yelled, trying to pull Gravlox down to the ground. Fortunately, the goblin archer was poorly trained at the arrow only grazed Gravlox’s hip. A small line of blood trickled from the wound, but it was largely superficial. Vorst began cranking the crossbow once more and aimed at the archer.
A second bow-wielding goblin appeared next to the first and a handful of other goblins slid around the archers to make a wall of crude shields. Vorst fired, aiming high to try to send her bolt above the shield wall, but the small missile clattered into the top of the tunnel harmlessly.
The shield wall advanced slowly and with purpose. The goblins measured their steps and made sure not to trip on their fallen kin. At once, with the flawless coordination granted by a shared consciousness, the shield wall broke apart and two arrows sailed down the tunnel. As quickly as the shield-b
earing goblins had split, they reformed again and continued walking.
The two wooden arrows hurtled down the small tunnel with alarming accuracy. Vorst grabbed the closest corpse and attempted to use it as a shield, but an arrow blasted through the dead goblin’s chest. The arrowhead protruded far enough out of the corpse’s back to hit Vorst in the top of her chest and knock her down.
Gravlox dove to the ground to avoid the arrow, but pain flared in his wrist that told him he was hit. He crawled back to Melkora’s feet with an arrow stuck all the way through his wrist. Vorst threw the corpse from her chest and held her wound to stem the bleeding. There was nowhere for them to run.
Melkora, seeing the two goblins severely wounded, steeled her resolve as best she could and stepped in front of them. She thought of her daughter and let her grief turn into rage. Rather than wait for the three goblins with shields to descend upon her, Melkora rushed at them. The center goblin attempted to block her strike and Roisin cleaved through the wooden shield as though it was thin as silk.
The center goblin slumped to the ground. Roisin had mercilessly torn its throat from its neck. Melkora spun and slashed at the goblin on her left. She cleaved the beast’s shield arm from its chest and carved through its side with ease. The goblin to her right jumped on her back and smashed her spine with a studded wooden club. Melkora screamed and thrashed, stabbing blindly behind her with Roisin.
The goblin took several hits from the sharp dagger, but none of them were deep enough to be immediately fatal. Melkora grabbed at the goblin’s arm latched across the front of her body. The pale-skinned creature was too strong. She took another hit to the back of her head that brought spots to her vision. Melkora brought Roisin slowly in front of her and tried to steady her hand. Careful not to prick her own skin and die to her dagger’s poison, she stabbed into the goblin’s arm and began to saw. Carefully, taking hit after hit to the back of her neck and head, she carved her way through the arm and shook the goblin away. The creature twisted as it fell and Melkora jumped on top of it. She drove Roisin cleanly through the beast’s head just above its upper jaw. It died with a squeal.
The Goblin Wars Part Two: Death of a King Page 26