by Ben Wolf
But Garrick was used to foes dodging his vicious swings, and he’d adapted his fighting style over the years accordingly. He used his momentum to spin all the way around, and he drove the battle-axe even harder and faster at the duotaur.
CLANG.
The hammer completely stopped Garrick’s momentum yet again, sending painful tremors through his hands once more, but this time, Garrick was ready for the block. He stepped in closer to the duotaur and slammed the pommel of his battle-axe into the duotaur’s exposed nasal bones with a loud crack.
The duotaur’s head snapped back, but its other head remained unfazed. Two of its arms grabbed Garrick by his shoulders, and a third grabbed ahold of the shaft of his battle-axe. They pulled on him hard, so Garrick adjusted and drove his knee into the duotaur’s pelvis.
Normally, he would’ve aimed for the duotaur’s gut, but it had no flesh or organs under its ribs. Its pelvis rocked backward, and Garrick used the moment to try to wrench free from its grasp. But the duotaur refused to let go.
Garrick tried to knee it again, but as he did, the duotaur swept Garrick’s foot out from underneath him. He landed hard on the obsidian floor with the duotaur hunched over him. Neither of them released their grasps on the battle-axe, but the duotaur’s hammer rose from the side for another strike.
If Garrick didn’t let go, the hammer would bash his face in. If he did let go, he’d have no weapon to fight with.
But being dead meant he couldn’t fight at all. He needed to let go.
A light blue vial smacked into the duotaur’s side, and an eruption of ice encased the duotaur’s shoulders, holding its arms—and the hammer—in place. Another timely throw from Irwin.
The duotaur groaned, and Garrick yanked his battle-axe free from its grasp. He wriggled away along his back, then he took a swing at its ankles.
The duotaur hopped over the swipe, and when it landed, it hunched over, shuddered, and then straightened its back fast and hard. The ice on its shoulders shattered, freeing its arms once again.
Garrick cursed under his breath and yelled, “Hit it again!”
“I’m out of ice!” Irwin called back.
The duotaur raised its hammer over its head and brought it down at Garrick, who hadn’t had time to get up from the floor. He shifted to the side, and the hammer cracked the floor once again.
The duotaur reared back for another blow, and Garrick jerked to the other side. The hammer shattered the stones just to the left of Garrick’s head, temporarily deafening his left ear.
He twisted his hips to the left and kicked the hammer’s shaft as hard as he could, hoping to pry it free from the duotaur’s hands. Instead, the duotaur maintained his grip but lurched forward, catching himself with his left leg.
Another red vial hit the duotaur’s body, this time against his back. It burst into flames, and the duotaur unleashed another low groan.
Garrick abandoned his battle-axe, sat up, and grabbed the shaft of the hammer with both hands. He clung to it and wrenched it down toward the floor. To his surprise, the duotaur released its grip on it.
As the duotaur dropped to its back and started scraping the fire out against the floor, Garrick rose to his full height with the hammer in his hands. It weighed a lot more than his battle-axe, and fatigue from the fight had settled into his muscles, but just one good swing would cave in one of the duotaur’s skulls.
So Garrick hefted it over his head in a wide arc and whipped it down at the duotaur. The hammer smashed the duotaur’s left head into an unrecognizable mass of bone and decayed flesh, and its other head roared in response.
One of its hands hooked behind Garrick’s heel and yanked, taking him to the ground. He released his grip on the hammer, slapped the floor with his palms as he hit, and kept his chin tucked so as not to bash his head into the hard stone. He tried to turn toward the duotaur, but it rolled on top of him too quickly.
Garrick grunted both at the duotaur’s weight and at the sight of its pulverized head lolling back and forth while it pressed him down. It got all the way on top of him and glowered down at him with one cloudy eye and one gaping eye socket.
Then it straightened and methodically punched all four of its arms at Garrick’s body and at his head, which he tried to protect with his forearms.
The blows kept coming, kept pummeling him. He’d taken plenty of punishment his entire life, especially from his father as a child, but never anything like this. And no matter how much Garrick writhed and strained and tried to buck the duotaur off, he couldn’t change his position or counter any of its punches.
Coburn leaped onto its back and plunged his knife into the duotaur’s neck. But the duotaur just kept punching Garrick with three of his arms, grabbed Coburn’s leg with the fourth arm, and tossed him aside. He rolled to a stop near Irwin.
“I’m going to use the black vial!” Irwin shouted from somewhere in the distance.
“Are you insane?” Coburn yelled.
Garrick’s instinct was to yell for Irwin to stop. He knew what the black vial would do, but at this point, Garrick had no better options. Either the duotaur would beat him to death, or the black vial would kill them both. And if it destroyed the key, so be it. At least this abomination would be gone, too.
“Do it!” Garrick shouted between punches.
His arms and ribs ached from the repeated strikes, and despite Garrick’s guard, the duotaur had delivered several stunning blows to his face. It hurt, but the pain wasn’t the worst part—it was knowing that eventually, the duotaur would break through his guard entirely and land something too devastating, and that would be the end. With no guard, the duotaur would kill him quickly.
Amid the pummeling, Garrick glanced over at Irwin and Coburn.
With the black vial in his left hand and a red vial in his right, Irwin started forward, but Coburn grabbed his shoulder to stop him.
“Give it to me,” Coburn demanded. “And hit it again. I need a distraction.”
Irwin handed both vials to him and dug in his pack again. He removed one of the glowing yellow vials and raised it to throw it. “Ready?”
“Now!” Coburn yelled as he lit the fuse on the black vial with a drop from the red vial. It sparked to life and spiraled down toward the vial’s cork stopper.
Irwin hurled the yellow vial at the duotaur’s head.
Garrick clenched his eyes shut and covered his head with his forearms, pointing his elbows up at the duotaur.
Pop.
The duotaur groaned and stopped punching Garrick.
Even with Garrick’s eyes closed and his arms over his face, the flash of light still scarred his vision. But when he opened his eyes, he still saw Coburn bury the black vial in the duotaur’s empty eye socket.
Chapter Six
No time. Garrick had to do something now, or else…
As the fuse burned down to about two inches from the cork, Coburn scrambled away and took cover behind the remains of the sarcophagus with Irwin.
With the duotaur still distracted, Garrick braced his hands against the duotaur’s knee and shoved himself out from under its weight. Then he planted his feet in the duotaur’s chest and kicked hard.
The duotaur launched backward, and as it did, its other head burst apart in an explosion of brilliant purple light that shook the entire room and extinguished the flames burning from the metal ring.
The force of the blast flung Garrick back, and he tumbled end over end until his body smacked against the nearest wall, painfully stopping his momentum. A wave of purple light washed over the room and then faded to nothing, leaving them in total darkness once again.
Garrick lay there with his eyes closed, utterly exhausted and miserable. He wasn’t sure which had done him more harm—taking the beating from the duotaur or the explosion from the black vial. Either way, he had no intention of getting up any time soon.
Then a yellow light threatened to break through his eyelids. He forced his heavy limbs to move, peeling them out from under him, an
d covered his eyes with his forearm.
“Garrick?” Irwin’s frantic voice asked. “Are you alright?”
Garrick just moaned. It didn’t feel like he’d broken anything, but the duotaur hadn’t done him any favors, either. He managed to ask, “Is it dead?”
“Oh, he’s dead, alright,” Coburn’s voice responded from beyond Irwin’s. “There’s not much left of him.”
“Key?” Garrick asked.
“Intact, somehow. Perhaps a mercy from the gods,” Coburn replied. “We have it here.”
“Can you stand?” Dust clouded the edges of Irwin’s spectacles. “Do you want the pink vial? I only have the one, but—”
“No. Save it.” Garrick sighed. “Just give me some time.”
His body was healing itself at its usual accelerated rate, but he was still nowhere near ready to do any kind of moving.
“There still doesn’t seem to be any way out aside from the opening above the sarcophagus,” Coburn said. “It looks like we may have to climb out of here.”
Garrick moaned again. The thought of trying to climb in his current condition repulsed him.
Several minutes later, Garrick felt well enough to sit up. When he did, he found Coburn and Irwin seated in front of him, gnawing on strips of dried meat from their packs. Between them lay one of Irwin’s glowing yellow vials and the golden key.
“I don’t know what kind of metal it’s made of, but it didn’t get a scratch from the black vial,” Irwin said. “It’s quite remarkable.”
“Pass me some jerky,” Garrick said more than asked.
Irwin handed a piece to him, and he bit off a huge chunk. As he started to chew it, his loose teeth and the missing tooth on his right side reminded him of the blow he’d taken from the duotaur. He touched the empty space with his tongue then shifted the meat to the other side of his mouth and chewed it there instead.
“We’re going to need you to lift me up into the shaft. Hopefully from there I can reach the top and feed a rope down for you and Irwin,” Coburn said.
Garrick nodded. “Just give me a few more minutes, and I’ll be ready to go.”
“How do you think Noraff and Phesnos are faring?” Irwin asked.
“Probably worse than us. I can’t see how they would’ve made it this far had they gone through the archways,” Garrick replied. “I think we need to count on backtracking to find their key also.”
Within three more minutes, Garrick pushed himself up to his feet. Aches and pains still racked his body, but he knew if he didn’t get mobile, he risked his body stiffening up. He needed to stay loose for whatever awaited them beyond the climb—not to mention the climb into the shaft itself.
As Garrick started toward the sarcophagus, he glanced at the remains of the duotaur lying on the obsidian floor. Not much had endured the blast—its legs barely remained connected, and a chunk of its torso jutted up in a sort of triangular shape from its hip, but its arms and legs and heads were nowhere to be found.
Even more impressive, the blast from the black vial had blown a huge chunk out of the wall behind the duotaur’s body, and it had blown pieces out of the walls adjacent to that spot as well.
Garrick huffed. The power in Irwin’s vials never ceased to amaze him. But more incredible still was that the key had somehow survived it all.
Before long, Garrick felt well enough to help Coburn up into the shaft. He managed to find purchase with his footing and grips, and he soon reached the top and sent a rope back down.
Irwin climbed up first with the key in his pack, then Garrick retrieved his battle-axe and his pack. Finally, he took hold of the rope, ready to climb out as well.
Garrick glanced back at the duotaur’s body, just in case. It lay there, motionless.
The hammer still lay next to the carcass. It was a mighty weapon, but only a being at least as strong as Garrick could wield it, if not one much stronger. Even though it could’ve fetched some decent coin, leaving it behind made the most sense. He couldn’t hope to bring it with them for the remainder of the journey, not when his own battle-axe already felt too heavy on his back.
He climbed up the rope, his body burning from the strain, and left the circular room behind.
“I think that’s the door we’re looking for.” Irwin pointed to a massive, vault-like metal door with two large keyholes on either side of it.
After climbing out of the shaft, they’d navigated a series of dark tunnels and pathways inclining farther upward. The journey ended at another carved archway that fed them into another high-ceilinged cavern that curved to the right and was wide enough for a brigade of soldiers to march through shoulder-to-shoulder.
Across from their archway, about two hundred feet away, stood another archway. A metal, vault-like door lay to the right, set into the inner wall’s curve. They approached it and stood before it. As so many other places in this dungeon had, the vault door bore the four-pointed star-and-eye symbol of the ancient Aletians.
“No Noraff or Phesnos. Maybe they didn’t make it?” Irwin said.
“I’m betting they would’ve come through that archway.” Garrick nodded toward it.
Now that they were closer, he could see a translucent, quartz-like rock covering its interior, but it didn’t appear to be very thick. It had a red-orange tint to it, probably from the lava on the other side.
He also noticed a keyhole in the wall next to it.
“Irwin, try the key in there,” Garrick ordered. As they’d made the rest of the journey up here, he’d taken it as easy as he could to allow his body more time to recuperate. That included letting Irwin and Coburn handle more of the mundane tasks he’d normally insist on doing himself.
Irwin inserted the key into the keyhole. “It fits.”
“Give it a turn.” Garrick nodded toward him.
Irwin had to leverage almost his whole body to twist the key, but he did manage to twist it. Something clanked inside the lock, and the quartz inside the archway began to lower. Harsh orange light streamed in from the top, and heat comparable to when they’d first entered the lava cavern belched out at them as well.
And inside, Garrick saw Phesnos and Noraff battling a golem.
He cursed. So much for resting his worn-out body. Now he’d have to help them take it out.
“C’mon,” he said to Irwin and Coburn. “We’ve got another monster to slay.”
“I’ve only got one more black vial left,” Irwin said as he pulled the key out of the lock.
“Stow it. One was enough for today.” The last thing Garrick needed was to get blown across yet another room—especially one with lava in it. “And stash that key, too.”
They stormed inside the room with Garrick in the lead. He noticed his battle-axe felt heavier than usual, but he refused to let it slow him down.
The battle raged on a ledge overlooking a canyon. A river of lava carved through it a few hundred feet below. The golem moved far slower than the duotaur had, but what could they do against a monstrosity comprised entirely of rocks and boulders?
Garrick’s battle-axe wouldn’t do much. He regretted not bringing the duotaur’s hammer after all.
He stopped short as Coburn and Irwin rushed to join Noraff and Phesnos in engaging the golem, which stood near the edge of the rock ledge. Irwin hurled vials of green acid at it, and Coburn circled around in front of it, waving his knives as a distraction.
Meanwhile, Noraff leaped and swung from the walls, occasionally swiping at the golem with some sort of sword that Garrick had never seen before. His attacks did next to nothing to the golem. The green knife in his belt swayed with his movements but remained in its sheath, and as he scurried along the walls, he shifted a large silver key from his hands to his feet and back again.
Phesnos, for the first time since Garrick had met him, seemed useful—possibly the most useful one of the four. In one hand, he held a handful of mostly-green leaves, and with the other he launched green vines that coiled around the golem’s legs and arms, slowing it dow
n substantially, but not inflicting a lot of damage.
And at that moment, Garrick recognized the solution.
“Phesnos!” he called. “Lock his ankles together!”
Phesnos looked back at Garrick with a blank, expressionless face.
“Do it!” Garrick shouted.
Phesnos turned back toward the battle, readjusted his aim, and hurled a bunch of vines at the golem’s ankles. The green leaves in his hand shriveled to dead, brown husks, and he let them go, but the vines did their work in binding the golem’s legs together.
As Garrick had expected, the golem tried to step out of the vines as it had before, but this time it couldn’t move, so it bent over and reached down to pull the vines free. That’s when Garrick started running toward it.
At about five feet away, he leaped at the golem, leading with his legs. He landed both of his feet on the golem’s shoulders and pushed off hard. Garrick landed on the hard ground and reignited all the aches and pains he’d been working through, but the golem got it far worse.
With the golem’s balance off and with it bending over, Garrick’s weight and momentum knocked it backward. The vines kept its ankles restrained, and it couldn’t take a step to adjust. Instead, it teetered back, toward the edge, and then it toppled over with a low roar. It tumbled down the rocks into the canyon below.
Noraff shifted the key to his free hand, dropped from the wall onto the rocky floor, and looked over the edge next to Garrick. Irwin, Coburn, and Phesnos joined them. Below them, the lava river consumed the golem’s body even as its stone fingers scraped against the rocks lining the canyon.
“We’ve been fighting that thing for nearly an hour,” Noraff said between ragged breaths, “and you show up and knock it into the lava like it’s nothing? Like it was just some random thing in your way, so you moved it?”
Garrick cracked his knuckles. “Yeah. Basically.”
Noraff shook his head and muttered, “Big bastard.”
Garrick bit back his words. The word “bastard” had never sat well with him, ever since his father had tried to kill his mother so many years before. But Noraff had no concept of what Garrick’s upbringing had been like, so he let it slide.