“I’m saying I’m not here to understand the world better. Just to understand how to help my friend. Somewhere in this crater, four people were murdered. I’m sure of it.”
“Or are you just hoping that’s true?” said Shadow.
“I wish people would give Gary the benefit of the doubt.”
“I never thought I would kill…” she began and then stopped.
I knew what she was thinking. Redjack.
Funny. Shadow had killed plenty of heroes on my orders. Orders she couldn’t refuse, because I had created her.
Then Anna had seized control of her mind and forced her to kill Redjack, a fellow kobold.
Anna and I had both controlled Shadow’s mind, in a way. Me with my creator-creature link, Anna with her powers. Could I really say I was any better than Anna? After all, we both gave orders. We both denied monsters a choice in the matter.
“Looks like we aren’t alone,” said Eric.
A bunch of Yondersun children were playing on the crater. Two little gnomes boys and an orc girl. They were on their knees, scrabbling in the dirt. They’d made a pile of rocks beside them, almost taller than they were.
“Seems dangerous,” I said. “They’re a long way from town.”
Eric shrugged. “At their age, I was fighting bears.”
“If anyone else had said that, I’d have called them a liar.”
“They were teddy bears to be fair,” said Eric.
I floated on ahead, reaching the children before Eric and Shadow. Up close, I saw that it wasn’t a game. They were digging as if their lives depended on it. Scooping great handfuls of pebbles and rocks and mud. Piling it next to them.
One of the gnome boys kept talking to the ground.
“We can hear ya! We’re coming for ya!”
“You kids shouldn’t be so far from town,” I said.
“It’s the core!” said a gnome boy, pointing. An adult town person might have been pointing in fear, but this was different. The kids were happy to see me.
I didn’t like that one bit. Demons below, I was really losing my touch if I couldn’t even scare children anymore!
The orc girl beckoned me over. She had a big steel spike through her earlobe, as was orcish tradition. Course, real orc tradition dictated that the tip be coated with poison. So the wearer always had the means to end their own life if they were captured by their enemies. Back when that custom was relevant, their enemies were various gnome tribes.
Yondersun was living proof such things belonged in the past. Wars like that were over. The tradition was more symbolic than anything. By making her wear it, the orc girl’s parents were saying, ‘We’re glad the wars of the past are over, but we won’t forget tradition.’
“Come here, Mr. Core,” the orc girl said. “You can help her.”
“Her?”
The girl pointed at the hole.
“She’s stuck. Down there.”
The hole was just about big enough for a kid to fit through if they sucked in their belly. I couldn’t see how far it went. Only that it was dark. There were cavern systems spread throughout the wasteland, right under everyone’s feet. I didn’t need to be a geologist to know that. In fact, being a core put me at a distinct advantage. I spent most of my day directing mining operations under the ground.
“Right,” said Eric as he and Shadow caught up. “What the bloody hell are you kids messing with?”
“We heard a girl in the hole.”
“In the what, now?”
“Down there, Mr. Barbarian! There’ a girl down there.”
Eric got on his knees. He pressed his ear to the hole.
“Can’t hear a bloody thing.”
“She’s there! We promise.”
It would have been easy to dismiss the children. Think they were playing games or just hearing things. But too many adults treated children like they were imbeciles. As if they weren’t just like adults only younger, but instead were idiots who would walk into a burning lava pit if you didn’t stop them.
“Hello?” bellowed Eric. “Little girl?”
Like most barbarians, Eric had a voice that could knock over an elephant if he shouted loud enough. It was a barbarian thing. Something to do with their vocal cords, I supposed. There was probably mana involved too, though I’d never heard of a barbarian being attuned enough to access it at will. Mostly, their voice powers seemed to work only when they were in battle.
“Keep it down,” I said. “If there is a girl down there, you’ll get her killed.”
“Killed how?”
“The hole looks like it drops way too far to climb down through, so she got down there another way. There are miles of caves under the wasteland. The slightest noise could disturb them, bring the whole thing crashing down on her head.”
“Can you help her, Mr. Core?” said the orc girl.
“I’ll try.”
“I knew you would! You’re not as cruel as Dad says.”
“Your dad is an idiot.”
I used my core voice now, so the kids couldn’t hear. No point scaring them. “Shadow, while I deal with this, I want you to make a lap of the crater. Try and find any sign that someone was killed here.”
“Got it.”
“Look for blood, a weapon, that kind of thing.”
“Thank you for the clarification. When looking for signs of murder, I was going to see if I can find any discarded picnic baskets.”
“Get out of my sight, you bloody rogue.”
Shadow stalked off, head bent and taking soft steps. Not that she needed to be quiet. I supposed it was just ingrained into her to sneak. All rogues were like that. I’d heard a story of a rogue who was delivering food to his grandmother’s house. He couldn’t help sneaking inside, and ended up scaring her to death.
I turned my attention to the children. While Shadow checked out the crater, I saw an opportunity. If a girl was stuck underground, then odds were that she was the kid who’d gone missing recently.
I could get her back, find out why she’d gone missing, and maybe put a stop to it. Then, when I proved to everyone that Gary hadn’t killed those people, all my problems would be solved.
“How sure are you that a girl’s down there?” I said.
“We heard her!”
“Okay, stop moving stones. We need to be very careful here. First, you all need to get back.”
“You’re going to help?” said the orc.
“I told you I’ll try.”
“I knew it! Ma and pa were wrong!” said a gnome boy. “He isn’t evil after all!”
“I am,” I said. “But there are different flavors of evil. Some are more palatable than others.”
“What’s a palate?”
“Forget it. Eric, can you keep an eye on these three?”
“Babysitting, Beno? I’m a bloody barbarian.”
“And?”
“We haven’t discussed terms of service. Wages. And I’ll need a room in the Scorched Scorpion paid for by my expenses. Last time, I slept on your dungeon floor. I don’t know if it was the stone or the cold, but my back was playing up for weeks.”
“I never asked you to come here, Eric. I seem to remember that you left my employ because a monster scared you.”
“Not to mention I broke my bloody leg and didn’t get a single coin in hazard pay!”
“I paid for Cynthia to use a web casting on your leg. Without it, your leg would have healed cock-eyed, if it healed at all. Way I see it, injuries are part of a barbarian’s job. You don’t see stable boys asking for more pay because they had to touch a horse.”
“I really need to start building a retirement pot,” said Eric. “I’ve had enough of this. Fine, Core. We’ll work the details out later. Kids, come over here. I’ll show you my scars. Each one’s got a story worse than the last.”
The hole was big enough for me to float through with an inch to spare. A lone ray of sunlight lit the way for a good twenty feet, and by then I was too deep for the light to p
enetrate. Luckily, as a core forged for life underground, I didn’t have much of a problem with the dark.
As I’d thought, there was a cave system under the crater. I emerged into a cavern almost as big as my loot chamber. Various tunnels sprouted off in all directions. Ten of them. Some so small a rat would struggle to get through, others large enough for a man to walk into.
There was a sense of age down here. Of lots of time passing by completely unnoticed. These caves wouldn’t have heard the noise of a footstep in millennia. Until today, that was. If the kids were right.
I looked around, but there was no sign of a girl. I amplified my core senses. I smelled dust. Chalk. A hint of water. And then sweat.
Something was here. Whether it was a girl or not, I didn’t know. But it was there, and it was sweating.
“My name is Beno,” I said, quietly. “I’m from Yondersun, just like you. You’ve probably seen me around. You don’t have to be afraid, despite what your stupid parents might have told you about me. I’m here to get you out.”
My words echoed away, before trailing into silence.
And then something stirred in one of the shadowy tunnels.
Shadow had circled the crater once and was beginning her second lap. Eric was way across from her. The kids were sitting in front of him and smiling at the gentle giant. He was pointing at a big scar on his left bicep. Telling a story that seemed very animated, and had the kids looking enthralled. He’d told the real story to Shadow; he’d cut himself falling through a shop window when he was drunk.
So far, she’d found nothing but yellow pebbles. Interesting, in a way. Beno seemed like he didn’t care about the world’s past, but she would have liked to have spoken to the geologists and asked a few things. Like if different parts of the world had different rocks, and why that was so.
The furthest she’d been away from the dungeon was the town Hogsfeate, but there wasn’t much to see there. And she hadn’t had time, what with being sent to murder someone. There was a whole world, and she’d spent most of it in a dungeon.
She heard stones shifting.
“That her! That’s the bloody rat who got me walloped!”
The voice came from her left.
A group of people were approaching. Geologists in their dirt-smeared smocks. A party of guards, one of whom had an enormous purple lump on his head. And then a tall man with a tidy beard and oil-groomed blonde hair. The one they called Riston.
“Where’s Beno?” said Riston.
Shadow shrugged.
“The geologists say they’re being harassed. They pay good money to study in the wasteland. They don’t expect to be harangued by a core and his monsters.”
Shadow was going to answer with a cruel barb. Something really sarcastic that she hadn’t thought of yet, but it would come. Those comments always did.
Before she could, the lumpy-headed guard pointed. “She’s the one I told you about. Skulking around the bakery. Trying to get in to see the corpses. Probably to perform some kind of ritual. And that big bugger over there is the one who hit me and Ste!”
“You’re sure about this?” said Riston.
“I didn’t see him too clearly. He’s faster than he looks. But he’s with her, and I’d know her wolfish face anywhere.”
Riston looked pale now. “And they’ve brought three children with them. This gets sicker and sicker.”
“Now just wait for a second, well-groomed human. The brats were already here,” said Shadow.
Riston pointed. “Seize her.”
“The wolf?”
“The kobold,” said Riston. “Not wolf. If you’re going to mess around with monsters, have the sense to learn about them.”
“What about the big brute?”
“Surround him. Don’t let him get close, but don’t hurt him. Send a barbarian into battle mode, and they start shouting, and then all hell breaks loose.”
Something moved in the tunnel, but it ran away from me. I didn’t know if it was the girl. I also didn’t know this series of tunnels. For all I knew, they might fork off in dozens of directions. If I rushed after her, I could easily get lost if I took a few turning without thinking.
But if it was the girl, and if I let her go, she’d be lost, too.
I made my decision quickly, floating across the cavern and following her into the darkness. I couldn’t see her, but my amplified hearing fed the sound of her footsteps to me. Plodding ones. Heavy, but panicked. Running without coordination. It was a child, no doubt about it.
Following the sound of her steps as quickly as I could, I made a note of every turning I took.
Left.
Her steps got louder.
Left, right. Straight. Left. Left.
They were louder still.
Right, right, left…
Something crashed into me. It caught me off guard, sent me hurtling into the wall. Stones fell from the roof. There was a low rumbling sound. Rocks shifting, perhaps.
Cave systems like this, they weren’t like my dungeon. The tunnels weren’t reinforced by expert miners.
“Little girl,” I said. “If that was you, you need to come with me now. I know you’re scared. I know that I look strange. But this place is unstable. Hear it? If you don’t come with me right now, it’ll collapse on top of you.”
No answer.
I was going to have to be a little nastier. It was the only way.
“The tunnel will collapse, and you’ll be stuck. You’ll wander around in the darkness. Getting hungrier by the second. Thirstier. Weaker. You’ll be alone. Scared. You’ll hear noises, and you’ll wonder what they are. Even your own mind will start to turn against you, and you’ll walk around and around, getting more terrified, feeling more alone, until you die of thirst. After that, the rats will feast on your flesh.”
Too much?
I felt like I’d gone overboard.
“Or you can come with me right now. Take a chance that I might hurt you, might not. Either way, it won’t be as bad as if you stayed here.”
A shape crawled out from the shadows.
The sight shocked me a little. I felt like I’d been hit with another rock.
“Demons arses…what the hell happened to you?”
One spear was pressed against Shadow’s throat, the other against her back. The guard facing her wore a grin as if he was daring her to move.
Riston walked past her. She couldn’t turn to look because the guy behind her jabbed her spine every time she moved. She heard his boots crunching over the pebbles.
Way behind, Eric was arguing with the guards. Shadow supposed they’d circled him, just like Riston asked. Who was this guy, anyway? Why was he ordering guards around all of a sudden? Had he become chief before the vote had even begun?
She hoped not. Shadow would be the first to say that Core Beno had his faults. There was a time when she and Beno argued like two dogs scrapping over a steak. But there was a good amount of integrity sitting alongside his evil parts. He wasn’t cruel for the sake of it. He didn’t lie. If you were part of his dungeon, he’d do whatever it took to protect you. If he was chief, Yondersun would be like his dungeon. He’d protect everyone. The townsfolk were just too stupid to see it.
But Riston? With his beard that was too tidy to be anything but a spell? With his stupid oiled hair? She just didn’t see the appeal.
“Get off me! I swear to god, you oiled chump, I’ll smash your nose through the back of your head!” shouted Eric.
Shadow turned to look. Felt the spear tip press against her.
“Give me an excuse,” said the guard facing her.
Knowing she couldn’t turn round, she had to listen. As a rogue, that wasn’t hard.
“This doesn’t look good for you, barbarian,” said Riston. “Caught kidnapping three children.”
“He didn’t kidnap us!” said the orc girl.
“Quiet. Someone take the kids away.”
More footsteps crunching over gravel. Shadow saw a guard and three ki
ds walked past her.
“Turning up to Yondersun in the dead of night,” said Riston, “Attempting to murder two guards. Assisting a monster in her corpse ritual. Kidnapping three children. There are places that would see you hang from a noose for that.”
“Ain’t a noose strong enough to snap my neck, lanky. Even my neck muscles have muscles of their own,” said Eric.
“I see you have the barbarian’s confidence. You’re all the same.”
“Know us, do you?”
“Once. An old girlfriend. Named after a weapon, if you can believe it.”
“Axe?” said Eric.
“No, her name was Sword. Enough about the past. Let’s focus on the now. Better still, let’s focus on your future. The way things are, I don’t see you leaving Yondersun alive, barbarian.”
Shadow waited for Eric to give a response full of bravado. To make a threat.
He said nothing. That was when Shadow really started to get worried. Because Eric was a pillar of strength. Now it seemed like that pillar was crumbling.
“I just need one thing from you, and all this can go away,” said Riston. “I’ll need to you to swear, in front of my guards here, that the core kidnapped the children. That you tracked him here because you suspected he was responsible for the recent disappearances.”
Eric said nothing.
“Swear that, and I’ll know that you weren’t a part of it. I’ll be able to tell Chief Galatee what really happened, and you can leave.”
Shadow felt her heart thumping. Eric was a barbarian. A mercenary by trade. He’d already left Core Beno’s employ once, giving up the promise of gold because the working conditions were too dangerous even for him. He had no ties to Beno.
It would be so easy for him to accept Riston’s offer and walk away. There was a time when Shadow would have accepted it if she was in his shoes.
“Well?” said Riston. “What’s your answer?”
I could barely describe her as a girl. Weaker than a pond reed battered by a storm. Skin paler than chalk. Her hair was dirty and tangled. Holes in her trousers and scabs on her hands from where she’d been crawling.
But that wasn’t all.
Her eyes were soulless and almost fully black. Her skin had begun to corrupt. It had probably started at her feet, like most corruptions, but it had spread to her neck. Not long until it covered her completely, and then she was lost.
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