The Failed Fellowship

by Michael R. Underwood

  Roman tied the key to a strip of hide and hung it around his neck. Another token to ward away the demons of worry and sorrow.

  This key was more proof that he had made a difference, that he'd gotten to help on his own terms. Every time he leaned into his origins, it threw him for a loop. He sometimes regretted leaving, but was haunted by his memories. He still wondered what he was doing pretending to be something he wasn’t, questioned his right to use that power away from his home.

  He couldn’t help for worry about Mallery, about all of them. He’d come through more lethal scrapes than he had any right to. But the rest of them didn’t have his gifts.

  Roman rubbed the key and kissed it for luck. Another reminder that they’d made a difference. Not just because it was what the story wanted, but because they’d chosen to step in, to save lives.

  That pride steadied him. It’d have to be enough. The story was far from over. There would be other tests, and he’d have to be prepared for them.

  ———

  Roman held a hand up to block the sun as they rode into Karn-Du. It was the largest aboveground dwarven city in the continent. A whole city built of limestone, carved into the hillside at the edge of a glacial drift.

  Stone towers and pyramids rose high, tiered and stacked and arranged by the intricacies of dwarven craft and municipal planning. The dwarves in this region were craftspeople, all of them. No dwarven child grew their first chin hair before they'd reached at least adept status in some craft—sewing, smithing, cobbling, or one of another hundred pursuits. The kings and queens ruled with statecraft; the warlords perfected the art of battle.

  Inside the walls, the city unfolded a whole new level, like a fractal. Designs on walls, murals, ornate carts and bags. Every brick, every cobblestone, every garment was made with passion and personality.

  The bustling dwarven markets reminded Roman at times of the ramshackle markets back home, where sunburned survivors hawked half-broken technology and shriveled produce. But those comparisons disappeared as soon as anyone opened their mouth and out came the broadest Scottish accent anyone on any earth had ever heard. Genrenauts researchers had traced the Dwarf Equals Scottish meme to Ralph Bakshi's Lord of the Rings, and it had been the law of Fantasyland as long as Roman had been on the job.

  "Our first job is to figure out where to look for the Hammer. Then we'll need a guide that can take us there. If we're lucky, we can find a guide that knows where the Hammer is. We'll need a guide either way. My Dwarven is rusty."

  "And mine isn't much better," Mallery added.

  Leah's expression was once again set to Gawk. "So, how do we do that? Troll the bars until we find a dwarf with Looking for Group plastered to his head?"

  "Basically. The normal fantasy tavern rules apply, but we don't just need any dwarf. We need someone daring enough to plumb the depths, smart enough to lead us where no one has been in centuries, but not so ambitious that they'll demand to keep it for their family or to avenge some ancient slight."

  "What could possibly go wrong?" Leah asked, and they set about their task.

  His heart rate spiked several times when he saw one or another tall woman with dark hair. But neither was the dimensional traveler they were looking for. She could be in disguise, now that she'd been seen in a second location. They couldn't be sure how much she knew that they knew in this game of cat and mouse.

  But neither of the women that surprised him moved the same way the woman in the Western World had. As he approached them, both looked Roman right in the eye without so much as a blink. They were just background characters.

  Per Mallery's lead, the pair cooled down their couple-ish instincts in the city. Most civilizations in this world were fairly homophobic, and Karn-Du, largely informed by dwarven social mores, was light on public displays of affection even for heterosexual pairings. Roman knew from experience that people here swung both ways as frequently as anywhere else; they just kept it out of the public eye. More than a handful of taverns with suggestive names served the same coded purpose as gay bars back on Earth Prime had in decades past. Not that he'd been around for those years, but he'd picked it up from Mallery and other queer friends he'd made acclimating to Earth Prime.

  After the second tavern, Leah switched from ordering ale for herself first and settled for the task of just buying drinks for the potential guides.

  Roman ended up doing a fair amount of the talking, being the one of the three that could parse the dwarven dialects most easily. Leah and Mallery watched his back and shot down drunken dwarf after drunken dwarf's awkward advances, attempts at “accidental” groping, and one marriage proposal from a dwarf Leah caught falling off his chair.

  Five taverns into their search, they found what Roman hoped was the real deal. Qargon stood tall for a dwarf, nearly four-feet five inches.

  "The Hammer? Aye, I know where it is. At least, where the legends say 'tis. But there are giant ants, fungal blooms, and a hundred other terrors 'tween here and there. Not as if others haven't gone to find it. Most gave up a hundred years ago when the Skull King returned and caved even more tunnels in."

  "The cave-ins won't be a problem," Roman said. "Mallery here is a priestess of Felur. And she has blessings that will let us pass through the rubble."

  "If she can do it, why haven't they done it before?" Leah asked, butting into the conversation.

  "Blessings are not as simple as arcane magic. You ask, and Felur generally grants her favor. But they are not guaranteed, not universally dependable," Mallery said.

  "Aye. And my people don't care much for uncertainty when we're planning great works. The expeditions that tried to reclaim K'gon's hall have been trying to take back the whole kingdom at once, or not at all. We're just looking to use the Hammer. Legend says that to claim it, ye must face a test of skill and sway the spirit of K'gon himself. And since K'gon was the greatest craftsman in ten generations, not many have had the stomach to face the spirit's wrath should they fail."

  "So, how are we supposed to win when we get there?" Leah asked.

  Roman cracked a sly smile. "We have crafts that K'gon has never heard of."

  "When does your expedition depart?" Qargon added.

  "As soon as possible. Gather what supplies you need; we mean to set out first thing tomorrow." Roman stood to get another round while Leah tested out jokes about Karn-Du and the particularities of dwarven culture.

  ———

  Shirin learned quickly that Xan'De's mood was permanently set to “gregarious but cryptic”. One of his four hands was permanently holding a wine flask, but he never seemed to get drunk. He didn't make very much sense even before he started drinking for the day.

  The trio crested another hill on the southern road bound inland, which would turn toward Hammet, Nolan's likely hiding place.

  Just beyond the base of the hill, an old tree lay astride the road, truck cleaved from its roots by a lightning strike or high winds. Several smaller trees were scattered around the larger deadfall.

  "A storm the likes of this I've not seen on this fair-weathered land," Xan'De said. "Nothing like the Matok storms, which would tear the roof off of a stone house were it unwarded."

  "Not a problem," King said. "We'll lead the horses through the woods and get back on the road.”

  "By my memory, the woods are thick in this part of the kingdom," Shirin said.

  Sure enough, it took no little bit of doing to pick their way through the woods. They had to get down off and lead the horses, Xan'De clearing the brush ahead with his machete-like blades.

  King's holy symbol started to glow, reflecting off his polished armor. He took it in hand, squinting.

  "I can't tell where it's coming from," clearly frustrated by the lack of clarity.

  They hacked and wound their way onto the road, Xan'De wiping the sap off his blades as they prepared to remount.

  Shirin cast a spell of protection on the group, which would turn aside several minor blows.

  The brush on the
far side of the road exploded, revealing a pack of shadow wolves, each standing over five feet tall at the shoulder. Smoky blackness rolled off them as they moved, like a living motion blur.

  "To arms! A blood day!" Xan'De said, leaping from the horse, blades in his hands in a flash.

  Shirin sighed. She'd been hoping for a quiet day. Relatively quiet. If such a thing was possible with Xan'De around. She raised her staff and started chanting as King took a step forward to cover her.

  There were eight wolves and only three of them.

  An aura of blessings passed over the heroes.

  "Cover me," Shirin said. This fight would take up most of her spells, but if need be, they could camp down early for her to rest. If these wolves were controlled by the Night-Lord, leaving even one of them alive could spell disaster for their plans.

  King slashed at a shadow-wolf coming in to flank, pushing it back toward he pack and away from Shirin.

  Shirin began casting a Blinding spell. Both King and Xan'De were facing away, the wolves in. The positioning was perfect.

  The incantation came first, then the somatic component. Then an act of will to bring it to life.

  Shirin closed her eyes, and a burst of light erupted from her staff.

  Magic was exhilarating but not intoxicating. Shirin never felt out of control, never swept away in anything. It was work, hard work, but it was still wondrous, even years later.

  The wolves whined, and both King and Xan'De struck. Xan'De cut with a one-handed sword and cleaved through the head of one wolf with a massive axe held in his upper two hands, stabbing another with a sword held in a lower hand. At the same time, King impaled one through the neck with his longsword.

  The Wolves pulled back and spread out, trying to surround them.

  "I have the flankers!" Xan'De said as he dashed to the side. "We must fell one more immediately!"

  Shirin prepared a spell to create a wall of force to cut off one angle of attack.

  To her left, King hacked at the other wolf, sword glowing with righteousness and humming a resonant major cord.

  "Speed, friends!" Xan'De said behind them.

  Xan'De impaled one of the flanking wolves.

  The wolves regrouped, just four of them left.

  Shirin threw up a wall to cut off their escape, and from there, the fight ended quickly.

  "That," King said as they stood in a trio, back-to-back-to-back, making sure there wasn't a second wave, "was a trap. The wolves couldn't have felled the trees that way."

  "Agreed."

  "Many things are possible, but not all are likely."

  "What do you think it was?" Shirin asked the foreigner.

  "The Night-Lord's servants were dangerous enough to lay this trap. We felled not a few of these things on our journey back with the Sun-sword. But now we must retrieve our horses and lay many leagues between us and this trap, lest the wolves' keepers return to this trap and catch us up."

  Shirin called out to the horses. They'd tried to scatter but hadn't made it far through the heavy brush. Her horse had some cuts where it had crashed through underbrush, but a simple blessing from King closed those quickly.

  Xan'De's injuries took a full five-minute prayer, depleting King's limited healing capabilities from his granted paladin powers. But then they were off, making good time for Hammett.

  ———

  After several days together, Mallery, Leah, and Roman found that Qargon was a skilled guide and far more attentive on the road. He limited himself to one or two small drinks in the evenings. Once they got away from the prying ears in the city, he also went on at length about the skill and handsomeness of his husband, a famous (according to Qargon) tailor who had made garments for the nobility from Ag'ra to Serana and beyond. She was honestly glad that their hyper-macho warrior guide was queer. In past trips to this story region, she’d learned that this world was as homophobic as you could expect from an imagined pseudo–Middle Ages. She and Leah didn't have to tiptoe around him for anything other than the general politeness of avoiding blatant PDA.

  Once you saw past the Drunken Dwarven Adventurer exterior, there was far more to Qargon than expected.

  The three of them politely grilled Qargon about his history and views on the world, from the best way to sharpen an edge to dwarven views on homosexuality (not pretty, unless you kept it very secret; propagation of the clan was very important, which meant children).

  "There's more than a few times when dwarven nobles married at near the same time and were very, very close, you see. Bit of fertility magic and some discretion, and ye can live something close to a happy life. For commoners like me and Derjin, it's not near as complicated. We've made peace with our clans. His wealth'll pass to his niece, mine to my brother, and we're left to our own devices as long as we don't make pretensions of upward mobility. With his skills, Derjin could aspire to the high merchant class, buy his way to a family legacy. But we’ve made our choice."

  "I wish loving as your heart guided you was as easy with my people," Roman volunteered. "We suffered long and hard, and with survival a daily struggle. Most anyone would kill for water or food. They didn't need any other excuses. One man loving another was taken as weakness in the eyes of the strongest and most aggressive. So I kept my head down, carried on my affairs in the shadows, until I was strong enough not to face all challenges with force.”

  Mallery put a hand on Roman's shoulder. He didn't often share stories of his home, his old life in the Post-Apocalyptic story world. Even in this way, framed to avoid breaking concealment protocols. It was a display of trust.

  Qargon nodded, compassion written across his face.

  It was a good move, executed well. Qargon had shown vulnerability, and Roman matched it. Roman pretended to be a novice at the social maneuvering, but for anyone compatible with his background as a warrior of the broken roads, Roman was a social force just by being himself. More than Mallery could fake even on her best days.

  Sometimes truth was better. Even it was fiction.

  Leah took notes the whole time, sometimes with pen and ink, sometimes just filing things away. Mallery was learning to read when something was being tossed around in the Stand-Up Material tumbler of Leah’s mind.

  As the quartet made their way into the mountains, they traded roads and forest for tunnels and torches.

  "I was expecting that Roman here would have to hunch," Mallery said as they walked through the outer tunnels.

  Qargon harrumphed good-naturedly. "The builders of these tunnels weren't of a mind to make the passage easy for humans or elves. But this section was carved not long after the second Gergian war, and what they were keen on was leaving room for siege weapons, to help keep the war on the side of the surfacers. Meant that the warlords commissioned more ballistas and siege towers, fewer drills and cave collapsers.”

  Roman hunched anyway. "I'm not interested in opening a gash on the top of my head if I put a hair too much spring in my step. If I'm getting a scar from this quest, I'd like it to mean something other than clumsiness."

  "We'll come to a bottleneck with high ground ahead, natural resting point. You'll be able to relax your neck, giraffe-man."

  They reached the divide some minutes later and took a break. Roman's neck cracked and crunched as he stretched it out, kneading the bunched muscles as he sat and gnawed on some tack.

  Qargon gestured with his axe. "We head left here, then the path spirals down a ways and levels out for a few miles. There's an abandoned outpost where we can bunk for the night, then two days’ travel to the cave-in at Ru'kal, where things start to get tricky."

  "And that's where I'll come in," Mallery said. "I can get us through the rock, as long as you can scout us pockets of air for when the spells wear out."

  "Not a problem," Qargon said. "Dwarven construction can handle minor problems like hundreds of tons of rockfall collapse."

  Leah practiced her ballads as they marched down from the Y-split, cycling back and forth from songs using the
Greensleeves theme until Roman suggested she take a break to “rest her voice.” Better he ask than she. Mallery got that Leah had to practice to get confident with the bardic spells, and wanted nothing less than to nag her significant other. She'd been that girlfriend in the past, and it had gone poorly for everyone.

  She started up again an hour later, but Qargon called, “Quiet. I see something ahead.”

  Something glowed light green in the tunnel below.

  "What is that?" Leah asked.

  Mallery answered. "Luminescent fungus. Grows in the under-roads. It's really quite pretty in those big caverns. Lights up the geodes like a permanent fireworks display." She'd never seen a colony quite this big. Their last quest underground had shown her plenty of glowing fungus, but in smaller chunks, mostly for lighting tunnels and small caverns.

  "Who uses it for light, aside from dwarves?"

  Qargon lowered the torch, stopping for a moment. "Oh, any number of a myriad monsters that wander these under-roads, now that the dwarven kingdoms don't patrol anymore. Most are opportunists, not likely to attack an armed group, especially with a dwarf in the lead. Best have someone watch our backs, regardless."

  Roman drifted back to rear position, leaving Leah and Shirin in the middle.

  Leah stayed quiet, her practice forgotten.

  They reached the first fungal blooms, misshapen mushroom stalks and caps glowing with a sickly green light, color somewhere between mucus and moss.

  Qargon halted. "Something is wrong. This fungus is not the ones from the songs. They're hive blooms. Very dangerous."

  Mallery wrinkled her nose. "Up close, they're not nearly so nice to look at. More of a stench-ridden mound of decay."

  "Aye, that they are. And where there are hive blooms, the dregs of the old Fungal Lords' armies cannot be far away. Best stay on your guard, all. Ready your blades, blessings, and ballads."

  "I need to write that down," Leah said. "That would be an amazing title for something."

  Branching pathways opened up to the tunnels, large enough to crawl through, like an ant colony.