Blood Mercenaries Origins

by Ben Wolf

  “You have no idea what it took for us to get to you.” Even as Garrick said it, his muscles reminded him of their fatigue. “So just be thankful we made it at all. Otherwise you’d still be fighting it—and losing.”

  Noraff scoffed. “Whatever. Are we going to claim your precious treasure now, or is there something else waiting for us beyond that arch?”

  “Just the door.” Garrick glanced at each of them. “Ready?”

  They all nodded.

  With both keys at the ready and led by the light from Irwin’s vials, they headed through the arch and stopped at the huge steel door. Noraff inserted his key into the left keyhole, and Irwin pushed his key into the right.

  Garrick stood in front of the door and motioned for them both to turn their keys. They did, in unison, and two ancient locking mechanisms clanked and clunked within the wall.

  Garrick grabbed ahold of two bars mounted to the heavy door and pulled. It swung open slowly, and metal groaned against metal.

  They’d made it.

  Together, they ventured inside.

  Garrick relished the familiar rush of having completed a mission. It meant, first and foremost, that he’d get paid, and so would Irwin and Coburn. But more importantly, he’d done what he’d set out to do for Lord Valdis. And he’d also achieved something no one else ever had by conquering this dungeon.

  His eyes feasted on the contents of the room. Piles of gold and silver coins lined the walls, all of them stamped with the seal of the ancient Aletians from what Garrick could see. The seal wouldn’t fetch any more money than they were worth for being solid gold, but it would make for interesting conversations whenever they made purchases.

  Two chests overflowing with rubies, sapphires, diamonds, and emeralds sat near the back of the room, one on either side of a towering bookshelf crammed with worn, leather-bound books and yellowed parchments. Golden goblets, pearl necklaces, and bejeweled icons and idols lay scattered throughout the room.

  And none of it was what Lord Valdis had sent Garrick to retrieve.

  Oh, they’d take as much of the treasure back with them as they could carry, of course, but the real prize, the real mission, wasn’t among the shiny objects in the room. Garrick just had to find it, and then they could go.

  “Take what you can carry. Anything you can haul out of here, you can keep,” Garrick said. “We’ll leave when everyone is satisfied with their take.”

  Irwin let out a whoop, and Coburn headed straight for the nearest pile of gold. Noraff went to one of the treasure chests full of jewels, and Phesnos strolled through the room as if he didn’t need any of it, or as if he were touring a gallery of fine works of art.

  Garrick headed back to the bookshelf, his eyes scanning its contents for anything out of the ordinary. From what he could tell, the books and parchments were written in ancient Aletian runes. Then again, he was the furthest thing from a scholar, so he couldn’t be sure.

  As he studied the bookshelves, a small, black statue caught his eye. It sat on the second highest bookshelf, just barely within Garrick’s reach, but high enough that he couldn’t get a good look at it. He pulled it down and held it in his hands.

  It was a dragon, clearly, but something different from the common wyverns flying around the continent of Aletia. This reptile had two wings and four legs, a slightly shorter neck than that of a typical wyvern, and a narrower face. A spike tipped its tail, and bony horns and ridges trailed down its back.

  The most striking difference was the statue’s intricate depiction of the dragon breathing fire. To Garrick’s knowledge, common wyverns couldn’t breathe fire. They were just huge, smarter-than-average, flying lizards. On some level, this statue suggested that actual dragons existed—or had existed—in the time of the Aletians.

  But the statue wasn’t what he’d risked his life and the lives of four others to find. It indicated he was close, though.

  Garrick held the statue in one hand and reached up to the second bookshelf again. He patted its wooden surface with his fingers until they found a piece of metal jutting out of the wood. It felt smooth and rounded. Maybe a button or something?

  He pushed it down.

  Click.

  Metal scraped and squealed and churned behind the bookshelf. Garrick stepped back, and the bookshelf inched forward and then started to slide to the side. It stopped when it hit the chest full of jewels, and the gears behind it wailed in protest.

  Garrick yanked the chest away, scattering jewels across the floor, but something snapped behind the bookshelf, and it stopped moving. A whirring sound continued, but the bookshelf stayed still.

  Garrick cursed.

  “What’s happening?” Noraff asked from behind him.

  “Pay it no mind,” Garrick grunted. “Focus on your newfound riches.”

  The whirring stopped, but the bookshelf still refused to move. Garrick got his hands on the other side of it and yanked, and it scraped along the floor, slowly sliding open with each of his hefts. Books tumbled off of the bookshelves and smacked his shoulders as if they meant to keep him from further moving the unit aside.

  The more he pushed, the more the bookshelf screeched, but before long, he had it moved enough to be able to squeeze through the opening into the room that lay behind it.

  “Irwin, light,” he called.

  Irwin slipped through the opening without having to squeeze at all, and he held up a glowing yellow vial to illuminate the room.

  It was a small, circular chamber with a shallow pit in the center. The whole room reeked of pitch, so Garrick had Irwin drip a drop of his red vial into the pit. Sure enough, the pit caught on fire and splashed the room with yellow-orange light. Irwin tucked his vials back into his pack.

  The room only contained three items: a sword with a white blade, a matching white shield, and a parchment. Each of them hung on the circular wall, with the shield on the left, the sword on the right, and the parchment in the center.

  Lord Valdis was a wealthy man with an entire army under his control. He was a sorcerer, and thus he had little to no use for the physical implements of war, so Garrick approached the parchment.

  It was a map. Aletian runes lined its perimeter, and it showed the entire continent of Aletia. He recognized it from other maps he’d seen.

  He noticed a large X somewhere in the center of the Xenthan, but several smaller X’s marked other locations across the continent in what would now be Muroth, Inoth, and Govalia.

  What any of it meant, Garrick didn’t know, nor did he care. But this was clearly what Lord Valdis wanted. Why else would the Aletians have placed it in a secret room, inside a vault, within a dungeon, and under a mountain?

  Even if Garrick took nothing else from this vault, he would make sure this map went with him, and he would ensure it got back to Lord Valdis fully intact. “Irwin, grab me a string from one of the parchments out there.”

  “Will do.” Irwin returned a moment later and handed it to him.

  Garrick carefully removed the parchment from the wall, rolled it up, and tied it with the string. It was too large to fit properly in his pack, but he’d carry it anyway to make sure it stayed in pristine condition the whole time.

  “I think I saw a parchment tube out there,” Irwin said. “Should I go get it?”

  “Yes, definitely.” A case for carrying the map would make Garrick’s return trip far easier.

  While Irwin searched for the parchment tube, Garrick approached the sword. Based on the bright white coloration of its blade, Garrick guessed it was made of snow steel. As such, it was one of a handful of enhanced types of metal that could do him harm where normal steel, iron, and other non-enchanted metals couldn’t.

  Furthermore, snow steel was effective against beasts and species that relied on fire to give them strength. As such, Garrick found it ironic that such a fine weapon was housed under a temple belonging to a cult of fire-worshippers.

  As he looked closer at the sword, he noticed runes etched into its blade, presumab
ly ancient Aletian characters or numerals, none of which he could read. Even more interesting, the cold exuding from the blade itself actually cooled Garrick’s face. Definitely snow steel.

  Its ornate hilt was colored a brilliant blue, and milky white gemstones—maybe opals?—adorned the ends of its cross-guard. Black leather grips wrapped around the handle, and a crystalline spike extended from the pommel. Impeccable craftsmanship.

  Garrick considered taking the sword with him as his own personal prize. He enjoyed his battle-axe, but he’d had plenty of training with swords over the years as well. A blade designed to fell fiery foes might come in handy on his way out.

  Speaking of out, Irwin had left awhile ago for that tube. Where was he?

  Garrick turned back and glanced through the opening between the bookshelf and the wall and saw Phesnos crouched near a pile of gold with a sack next to him. “Irwin? Where is that tube?”

  “We’re still looking for it,” Noraff’s voice replied.

  Garrick leaned the parchment against the wall, careful not to let it roll toward the pit of fire. Then he headed toward the opening and squeezed through it.

  As he fully emerged, lightning stabbed into his left side, and he grunted and clutched at the spot. Hot, sticky blood coated his hand, and the familiar green handle of a knife protruded from his torso. He looked over at his attacker.

  Noraff stood beside him, wearing a smirk.

  Chapter Seven

  Garrick slumped against the bookshelf, struggling to stay on his feet. The knife wound was deep. He could tell that much. It might even be fatal, but he wouldn’t let Noraff get away with this if he could help it. So he marshaled his strength and swung his right fist.

  Noraff easily ducked under it, and the punch overextended Garrick. He caught a hard elbow to his jaw from Noraff in response—harder than he would’ve expected from an Onni. It knocked him over, and he lay on his back, still holding the area where the knife stuck out of his flesh.

  Unable to get back up and fight, he glanced around for Irwin and Coburn.

  Irwin lay in a pool of blood atop a pile of gold and silver coins, clutching at his slashed neck and writhing. Blood dotted his spectacles, still on his face. He was still alive but wouldn’t last long.

  Phesnos stood up from his crouching position, and when he moved, his brown robes moved with him, revealing Coburn’s body lying on the floor, impaled upon several golden spikes—the result of Phesnos’s magic manipulating the gold itself.

  A glowing yellow vial lay next to Coburn’s head, illuminating his vacant eyes staring up at Garrick. Coburn was no longer there. He was already dead.

  “You traitorous bastard,” Garrick growled. Rage burned inside of him. Coburn and Irwin were good men—good friends—and they’d been killed as if they were merely stray dogs.

  Garrick tried to sit up, but pain from the knife stabbed him anew, and he only made it up to his elbow. He glowered at Noraff, wishing he could reach out and snap his twig of a neck.

  “Why are you so far away?” Garrick asked. “Don’t you want your little knife back?”

  “Nice try, but you can keep it.” Noraff crouched down in front of him but still out of reach, holding one of Irwin’s glowing yellow vials. “That’s mage steel in your belly. Steel forged with magic. It’s stronger than regular steel, and it’s sharper, too. Sharp enough to pierce even your thick hide.”

  That explained how Noraff had managed to stab him so easily. “Yeah. It’s not like you have enough skill to stab me with conventional steel.”

  “Go ahead, insult me. But you’re the one lying on the floor, bleeding out with his dead friends.” Noraff corrected himself, “Or soon to be, in the case of your alchemist friend.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Garrick grunted. “You can’t even carry all of this out of here on your own.”

  “It’s not about the gold. Well, not specifically this gold, anyway. We’ll certainly get paid for our efforts, though not by you.” Noraff motioned to Phesnos with his head.

  Phesnos picked up the glowing yellow vial lying on the floor near Coburn’s body and walked past Garrick into the hidden room and emerged with the rolled-up map in his other hand. As Garrick watched, Phesnos produced the parchment tube from inside his brown robes and started to stuff the map into it.

  “Our employer—our actual employer—wants this map very badly,” Noraff continued. “He told us exactly what it was and that your Lord Valdis was looking for it. And then he hired us to bring it back to him so Valdis couldn’t get his greedy hands on it.”

  “So you latched onto our mission and used us to get you to it.” Garrick spat at Noraff’s feet, and a bit of blood tinged his saliva. “You’re a conniving little prick.”

  “And you’re a big, dumb ingrate. Let’s not forget that you asked me to join you. All I did was make it known that I was available for work. You hired me,” Noraff countered.

  “First mistake I’ve ever made,” Garrick quipped.

  “And that right there is why I have no qualms about doing this.” Noraff pointed at him. “I’ve despised you since the moment we met. You’re arrogant, stupid, and yet too strong and capable for your own good. You don’t deserve your strength and your abilities, yet you flaunt them in front of everyone you work with.”

  “You have no idea what I’ve suffered because of them,” Garrick grunted. “But you don’t see me whining about it or complaining that I can’t climb or do magic. I’m working with what I’ve been given, with what I’ve earned. If you’re jealous, that’s on you.”

  “You won’t be working with anything for much longer. Phesnos and I are leaving, and we’re going to seal you in here with your useless friends.” Noraff sneered at him. “And now, at the end, you finally realize not even your great strength or your thick skin can save you.

  “I expect you’ll die a slow, painful death,” Noraff continued. “Bleeding out, starvation, or maybe those scorpion-spider terrors will claim you. It doesn’t matter how you go; what matters is that you will. Tell me, Garrick, what good is all that strength now? Where is your bravado? Your bluster?”

  With a scoff, Noraff stood and started to leave, but Garrick called after him. “Noraff.”

  Noraff, still holding the glowing yellow vial, looked back at him.

  “I’m going to find you one day, either in this life or the next, and I will make you pay for your betrayal here, for murdering my friends and for trying to kill me,” Garrick said. “And that’s not bravado or bluster. It is my solemn oath before whatever gods or goddesses can hear it. I will bring a reckoning to you one way or another.”

  Noraff chuckled. “Yet again, your overconfidence shows the depth of your foolishness. And that’s how you’ll die—as a fool, powerless and alone. Goodbye, Garrick Shatterstone.”

  As Noraff headed out of the vault, Phesnos looked back at Garrick with the same expressionless face he always wore.

  It enraged Garrick more than if Phesnos had leered at him or shown some lewd gesture. It demonstrated precisely how apathetic Phesnos was about the whole situation, how little he cared that they had just killed Coburn and Irwin.

  Worse still, Garrick had saved both Noraff and Phesnos from the golem only minutes earlier, yet they still saw fit to betray him.

  “I’ll come for you, too, Pheasant,” Garrick rasped. “Have no doubt about it.”

  Phesnos just blinked at him and turned away. He exited the vault with Noraff, and together they shut the vault door. Two distinct clanks sounded, and the door locked Garrick inside.

  The only light now came from the fire burning in the secret room, so Garrick could hardly see anything. But he didn’t need to see to know what he had to do. It was too late for Coburn, but Garrick had to get over to Irwin to try to help, if he could.

  Garrick rallied his waning energy and forced himself up to his knees. He didn’t pull the knife out—not yet. For all he knew, it might’ve been the only thing keeping the majority of his blood in his body. Then he crawled
over to Irwin.

  He found Irwin’s pack and dug inside it for another glowing vial. One more left. He pulled it out, careful not to drop it from his shaking hand, and held the vial up to Irwin’s face.

  Irwin lay still, but his wide eyes blinked. He held his bleeding neck with both hands and struggled to breathe.

  “Hold on, Irwin.” Garrick started digging in Irwin’s pack again. “I’ll use the pink vial on you. It should—”

  Irwin’s bloody right hand latched onto Garrick’s wrist, and he shook his head slightly. His voice burbled, “Too… late.”

  Garrick didn’t want to accept that. Irwin had been with him for close to a year, and he’d seen the contents of the pink vial work some incredible healing magic—though Irwin would’ve insisted it was science. “Irwin, I’m sorry. I let my guard down.”

  Irwin blinked again, let go of Garrick, then looked at him. “You can… get out.”

  “What? No, I can’t. We’re sealed in.”

  “Black… vial. Door.” Irwin sputtered and winced, and then went still. Garrick thought he’d died until Irwin blinked again. “Use pink… vial on yourself.”

  Garrick hesitated. But Coburn was already dead, and Irwin wouldn’t make it. “Fine.”

  Irwin’s right hand found Garrick’s wrist again, caking it with fresh blood. “Get… out. Find them and… justice.”

  Garrick nodded. Irwin didn’t have a vengeful bone in his body, but Garrick had already promised to punish Noraff and Phesnos for their betrayal. “If I can get out of here, I’ll lay waste to them.”

  Irwin blinked, long and slow, and gave a faint nod. “You… can get… out…”

  Then Irwin’s grip on Garrick’s wrist went limp, and his eyes stopped blinking.

  Garrick leaned back on the pile of gold next to Irwin’s body and pulled the pink vial out of Irwin’s pack. He exhaled a shaky breath. He couldn’t ever remember enduring this level of pain before.

  Out of nowhere, the ground trembled beneath him, then it began to shake and quake. Books dove out of the bookshelves and smacked the floor, and the coins and trinkets throughout the vault rattled and clinked and jingled.