by Noah Layton
‘Know what was down here?’ Evelina asked, crossing to the crate and looking in before quickly stepping back. ‘Lord… Is that… Dynamite?’
‘So it is?’ I asked. ‘You’ve got dynamite in your world too? That’s comforting.’
‘I don’t know how it would have gotten down here,’ Ariadne said, edging to Evelina’s side and peaking in. ‘I don’t remember these being put here…’
‘They were probably here while you were using it as a hideout… They could have been hidden down here this whole time.’
‘That’s not something I want to think about…’
I headed over, and all three of us peered into the crate.
‘Remember the part where we get to Wildak and make it up as we go along?’ I said. ‘That’s the part that I’m worried about. That’s the part where I think we end up getting killed. So why don’t we use this?’
Again, the girls shot me a look.
‘It’s Ariadne’s turn to carry you,’ Evelina said. ‘I took an arrow last time. If you want to bring this stuff then you’re carrying it, but Ariadne needs to agree to carry you.’
I looked down into the crate again. There were hundreds of sticks, enough to blow the entire of the island to hell and then straight back again. Dynamite became temperamental the older it was. It would have been here for a few years.
I would just have to make sure that I didn’t drop it.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’m good with carrying it.’
‘You freaked out a minute ago,’ Ariadne exclaimed.
‘Because I was holding a flame over it. I can do it. We can use them for something, even if it does mean going down in a blaze of glory.’
‘Glory, pieces of flesh and bone…’ Ariadne said. ‘Basically the same thing. Fine, let’s do it.’
Five sticks were more than enough; I don’t know what the fuck I was thinking in taking them, but by this point we were through the looking glass. This was balls to the wall, the last resort. We either found the Core and got back to Queen Athina before the poison took her, or…
I didn’t want to think about the alternative.
We waited at the entrance, huddled together by the hole in the ceiling. The shrieks and the shouts had ended long ago, but we had to be sure before we made our way to Wildak.
Armor and weapons secured, dynamite stashed securely in the satchel wrapped in heavy cloth…
All that was left was for Ariadne to wrap her arms around me – and then we had kicked off from the ground, hurtling from the cave and into the darkness of the night.
It was a cloudy night, and the moon was nowhere to be seen. Even as I opened my eyes to look out across the ocean and the islands, I could hardly see anything as the harpies skirted the waters, the tips of their wings occasionally hitting the surface. They drove them hard against the air, moving us faster and faster. The island was only minutes away across a long stretch of water, but the more time we spent out in the open, the more chance there was that an enemy lookout would spot us.
But that wasn’t my biggest worry – that award went to the pack of explosives that I was holding tightly but gently between my chest and Ariadne’s.
God, I wished that I had wings.
Wildak loomed ahead. We reached the shore of the island, Ariadne landing us deftly on our feet alongside Evelina before we all hurried to the forest, keeping our heads low.
We huddled in the darkness, quelling our breathing and listening for any sign of the droves of drakes that inhabited the island. Snatchers may have given off those feral sounds that meant they could be heard from miles away, but this enemy was superior.
We could hear nothing, but that didn’t matter. They could be anywhere.
Light and fast. No provisions, no unnecessary extras – just weapons, armor and explosives.
The three of us moved at a steady jog through the tree, not stopping for anything. Occasionally a rustling would occur but we veered away, pushing on hard through the shrubbery and keeping our heads low. The forest was strangely silent save for the rustlings of the plants, but I didn’t need that explaining to me.
The drakes had killed everything that wasn’t on their side.
We were well into enemy territory before I saw the glow of the fires a few hundred yards off. Blackness had been our only companion amongst the bushes and trees, and the orange light ahead began to seem the only thing that existed. It was followed by grunts and muffled voices and no more than fifty yards ahead a silhouette laughed hysterically.
The three of us halted immediately, dropping low to the ground behind a large tree.
‘We’re too close…’ I whispered quickly. ‘Why did they need to be right here?’
‘They’re right there,’ Ariadne said, ‘but where we need to go is that way.’ She pointed leftwards of the drake camp. ‘It’s close to them… Not too close, but close.’
We doubled back, retracing our steps to a point further away from the camp before approaching our destination from a different direction. While the roaring flames from the drakes’ camp was still undeniable, we could still see a smaller fire at the space we were heading towards.
Getting as close as we could before the shrubbery and undergrowth began to give out, we once again halted in the bushes and observed what laid ahead.
Ancient, chipped marble ruins were lit haphazardly by torches, and two drakes stood lazily on guard. They looked just like the ones that had attacked us, their blackened wings folded behind their backs as they drank from brown bottles, their spears leaning against nearby columns.
They were drunk on the job.
‘We can take them,’ Evelina said. ‘This is the place, but it looks like they’re guarding it just like any other post… They’re none the wiser that there’s a Core nearby.’
‘So what do we do?’ I asked. ‘We need to keep them quiet. If they get a chance to scream then the drakes from the main camp will come running.’
‘So we cut their throats,’ Ariadne said resolutely. ‘We do it fast, and then we-’
A brutal, husking growl cut through the nearby clearing that the ruins occupied. It wasn’t loud by any means – it was a raw, animalistic sound that could only come from the lungs of a predator.
But the drakes relaxing on the job didn’t run. They stood quickly, grabbing their spears in one hand and dropping their bottles from the others. One bottle rolled away, but the other smashed on the worn, stained marble, its body splitting from its neck into a hundred pieces.
The guards stood to attention with their shoulders back, remaining fixed on the spot as their master appeared.
At first I thought that we were in the presence of a huge, lean bear. The figure that emerged from the woods in the direction of the camp stood well over six-feet tall, his hunched body giving the impression of a defined musculature, ditching his true height of what was likely closer to seven feet for a broad-shouldered, hunched, judgemental pose.
His body was draped in armour that had once been chrome in appearance, but was now scattered with scrapes, stains and scuffs, and his head was draped in a heavy hood, leaving only a hint of the patchy stubble around his mouth visible.
Two things stood out above all else, though; a huge claymore at his waist, which his forearm was draped across, and the wings that spread from his back. They stretched out enormously as he arrived, and in the firelight that surrounded the ruins I got a brief look at their shade. They were unlike any others that I had seen thus far – one was a stained, greying white, while the other was a patchy, scattered mix of black and white, the two colours wrapping and intertwining like that of a dalmatian, as if they were warring for dominance over the feathers.
We remained silent in the shrubbery, watching as the huge figure confronted the guards.
At first he said nothing, moving between the two drakes and staring them down from beneath his hood. They didn’t move, but the fear on their faces was beyond evident. They may have been soldiers, but they couldn’t hide the slight shuddering
of their fingers.
As the figure moved left there was the sound of scraping against the marble. He looked down to see the smashed glass from the bottle that the drake had dropped. As he knelt to examine it, the drake responsible clenched his eyes shut with immediate regret.
The master examined the glass, brushing pieces aside with the tips of his slightly clawed fingers before standing with a particularly large shard in his hand.
‘Who is responsible for this?’
He spoke slowly, his voice a deep, gravelly growl that put an animalistic fear into me.
The drake before him, the one responsible, shot the other a look.
‘Don’t look at him,’ the master continued, causing the drake to whip his head back into line. ‘He’s looking to save his own skin. Who was it?’
‘It was me,’ the drake said, his voice shaking.
The master looked down on the drake, who continued to look straight ahead. He toyed with the glass shard in his claws, nodding slightly to himself.
‘Mm…’ He responded, ‘You know… During the war, if a grunt drank on duty, we would make him finish the bottle… Then make him force it all back out of his guts. Seems you’ve already finished the bottle, so I could make you do that… Or…’ He raised the large shard of glass, looking between it and the drake, ‘You could swallow this, and try and force it back out… I’m sure it’d be much more interesting to watch you try that…’
Back on Zakthos the drakes had been fearless. They had stared us down and hunted us like animals. To be honest, they had scared the crap out of me.
And yet now, here was this drake caught drinking on duty, being stared down by his boss… And he was whimpering. It escaped him like a hurt animal, the forest so quiet that we could all hear it, even from twenty yards away.
‘Mm…’ The master continued. ‘But then I’d be missing a man to attack Aries, and right now we need all the power we can muster. The harpy presence operating defensively on the island has increased enormously, which tells me our attack was successful. We take them tomorrow. But mark my words – if I find you drunk on the job again, you can go and fight for the harpies tomorrow, and you will be treated with the same ferocity as all of those bitches…’
I and the girls shared a terrified look. Tomorrow. By sun-up there would be a fresh attack on Aries. They had taken Queen Athina, and with the fear inflicted and the morale low, they were going to launch their attack.
The master looked between the two guards once more, dwelling just long enough to deliver another piercing, domineering glare that convinced the guards that glass might still be on the menu. Then, after several long, drawn moments that gave the ground beneath our feet a booming heartbeat, he turned and headed back through the forest towards the main camp, brushing through the trees and out of sight.
All the while, even after his harsh footsteps had disappeared completely, the guards remained frozen in place out of a mixed sense of duty and primal fear.
‘We need to get this Core now,’ I whispered. ‘You’re sure this is the place?’
‘Definitely,’ Evelina replied. ‘At sunrise they’ll attack the island. This is a full-scale assault… Even if Queen Athina survives…’
‘She will,’ Ariadne said quickly.
‘But even so… Even if she does live, we’ll still be facing an attack on all fronts. What do we do?’
‘You hold fast on your duty as the heir, and as a harpy,’ I whispered back. ‘And you lead.’
‘Right,’ she nodded. ‘We can do this.’
‘We can’t take them all on,’ Ariadne said, ‘The moment we start fighting we’ll make too much of a ruckus, and every drake from the main camp will be on us like flies on manure. We need to take them out silently.’
‘And if we don’t?’ I said. ‘We could arc around and take them out from behind, but one wrong move and everything’s lost… We need a diversion. Something that will pull them all away from this spot and give us enough time to get down there and find this thing.’
‘Give you enough time to get down there,’ Evelina said. ‘Ariadne and I will arrange the diversion. You need to get the Core.’
‘Get down where?’
‘Under the ruins. That was where it was on Zakthos, and I’ve little doubt that that’s where it will be this time.’
‘But how are we going to-…’ I trailed off, retrieving my satchel as the realisation hit me.
Carefully reaching in, I retrieved the five sticks of dynamite.
‘Guess I should kick myself for bringing this, huh?’
‘Not just yet. Here’s the plan.’
Minutes later I had retreated into the forest a further twenty yards, shrouded amongst the shrubbery and the silhouetted, overgrown greenery.
The silence of the island haunted me like a lost spirit. I thought back to that house in Wintermoss that I had inherited from out of the blue, and how it had swept me to this foreign world almost as soon as I had wiped my feet on the welcome mat.
It seemed like an age away… And that was because, well, it was. What I had been through since arriving in the archipelago had seasoned me more than anything had in my entire life. My body had changed. My mind had adjusted to the terror of battle. I had learned how to wield a weapon, how to fight creatures, met the queen of a kingdom and bedded two of the hottest women I had ever met in my life, not to mention going on a half-assed adventure to save the very same queen.
But it would all be for nothing if this final plan didn’t work. If we didn’t retrieve this Core, the Core that would somehow save Queen Athina from a terrible death, then the mantle would fall to Evelina.
Even if we were successful, the drakes would be attacking in mere hours, and even if the queen lived, we would still be faced with a huge attacking force.
A twig snapped somewhere nearby, and I shook my head back into the moment.
I was waiting – waiting for a sound that would send a shockwave through the woods.
Through the trees I could vaguely make out the two guards, still standing to attention even now, long after their master had disappeared.
Then-
BOOM.
I began to count to sixty.
To the north-east there was a sharp, sudden rumble. Vibrations swept through the ground, darting past my feet and into the beyond. There was a sudden yelp from the guards in reaction.
‘What was that?!’
In the direction of the main camp, screams and shouts bellowed. I moved forward through the bushes to get a better look at the guards. No sooner had I set my eyes firmly back upon them did they exchange garbled words that I failed to hear before readying their weapons and setting off running through the forest, abandoning their post.
Twenty seconds had passed since the explosion. Evelina had set off the first stick of dynamite.
I sprinted into the clearing, still counting obsessively even if the back of my mind was being clawed at relentlessly by the prospect of being so exposed to a potential attack.
But that was a risk I had to take, that I needed to take.
In one hand was my sword, but my shield was strapped over my back – in my other hand was a stick of dynamite, waiting at the ready.
Thirty seconds.
I scrambled atop the platform at the base of the ruins, smacking the base of my heel through my boots against the tiles. They were all solid and unyielding.
All but one.
Fortyy seconds – it had taken me more time to find the correct spot.
I threw my weapon down, holding the dynamite’s fuse up to one of the flaming torches nearby until the fizzling started. Steadily and surely, the sparks ticked down the line, getting closer to the stem.
I set it down on the weak tile.
Ten seconds.
I had made it, and it would explode exactly at the right moment – more or less.
I stepped back, taking a breath. I had been building up these moments in my mind ever since the plan had been laid bare, calculating every one
of my movements until my thoughts drifted into the past…
So when everything was accomplished, with ten seconds remaining, all I did was step back – but for some reason it was only then that it clicked what I had done.
I had just lit a stick of dynamite strong enough to blow through a thin marble slab – and it was literal seconds away from exploding, that little sparkling fuse laughing at me as it reached zero.
‘Oh, shit…!’
You complete fucking idiot.
I turned and ran, making it ten yards from the stick before it went off.
Diving forwards, half with my own strength and half being thrown by the force of the detonation, I crashed into the bushes amongst the trees headfirst.
The dynamite may have left a ringing in my ears, but that wasn’t what struck me the most – and it wasn’t the ground, either.
Somewhere in the distance to the east, another much louder explosion had triggered. It was so powerful that as I looked up from my spot on the ground, another shockwave this time almost sent me falling back onto my ass.
Through the ringing and the crumbling, more shouts began to erupt.
Evelina had set off the initial bomb, drawing the guards away from the ruins and giving me a chance to set my own.
Ariadne had triggered not one but three sticks exactly sixty seconds later, in tandem with my own.
The blast had to be powerful enough not only to draw the drakes further away from the ruins, but to distract from the explosion that would open up the ruins where we had been led to.
With no time to waste I pushed myself up from the ground, smacking myself on the ears with the palms of my hands before approaching the ruins. Smoke rose slowly, which I batted away fruitlessly, drawing my hands from my ears.
It finally cleared, and looking to the spot I saw the collapsed marble, the broken slab leaving a gap that led down onto darkness.
A gap just big enough for me to drop through.
I knelt and peered into the hidden chamber that lurked beneath the ruins.
There was something down there, that was for sure. The map hadn’t led us on some half-assed wild goose chase.