by Ben Wolf
Garrick tried to cover his head to protect it from potential falling rocks, but fresh pain seared his insides like a hot poker. Ultimately, it didn’t matter, because the quaking subsided just as quickly as it began.
Whatever had happened, it wasn’t good. But it wouldn’t matter at all unless Garrick could get out of the vault. And first he had to tend to his wound.
He looked down to see blood drenching his trousers and soaking into his leather armor. If he didn’t make a choice soon, the knife would decide his fate for him. It had to come out anyway for the pink vial to do its work. He set the glowing yellow vial on Irwin’s hip and braced himself.
With a series of quick breaths, Garrick curled his fingers around the knife’s hilt and yanked it from his torso. Blood burbled out of the wound, and he dropped the knife to the floor and pressed his hand against his bleeding side.
He pried the cork out of the pink vial, careful not to spill any of it as he did, and slowly poured about half of its contents onto the wound. Then he used his fingers to spread the wound open wider. The pain spiked, and he winced, but he tilted his body to the side and poured the rest as far into the wound as he could.
The pink liquid started to work by numbing his pain to a dull gnawing. Irwin had explained that it not only numbed pain but also worked to enhance and accelerate the user’s own healing process. Garrick hoped his troll blood would help rejuvenate him entirely, even if it meant he’d have to linger in the vault.
But he couldn’t just lie around. He had to try to break out and follow Noraff and Phesnos before they escaped the dungeon entirely. He wanted to leave their wretched bodies here in the dungeon, the same as they’d done to Irwin and Coburn.
The pain had numbed enough by that point that Garrick felt he could try to stand, but the bleeding hadn’t yet stopped. He’d need to find a way to bandage it, at least, before he tried to get out.
He stripped Irwin’s sleeves from his shirt, sorry he had to do it, but Irwin would’ve given him the entire shirt if he’d asked for it. Garrick tied them together and wrapped them around his torso. Then he tied them together again, cinching them tightly against his side.
It wouldn’t be enough. He reached down and tore the rest of Irwin’s shirt off of his body in two pieces. Blood stained the top of it, by the collar.
He folded one of the strips into a square and slid it under the shirtsleeves, then he did the same with the other, careful to position them for maximum coverage. He cinched the sleeves tighter, and the fabric pressed against his wound firmly.
Next, he pulled the black vial out of Irwin’s pack, and then the red vial. But he wasn’t ready to light the fuse. Not yet.
He set them aside, careful not to risk breaking either of them, and he rummaged through the remainder of Irwin’s supplies. He took some food and a few other vials, most of them filled with clear liquid. Apparently Irwin had heeded Garrick’s comment about needing more vials of fire-suppressing solution.
Then he picked up Noraff’s knife, the one with the green hilt. Noraff had told him he could keep it, and he would—at least until Garrick could properly return it to Noraff in the same manner in which he’d received it.
Garrick tucked the knife and the other supplies into his pack. He rifled through Coburn’s pack next but didn’t find anything of significant value, so he left it alone, paid his respects to Coburn, and then headed back toward the black and red vials.
He stopped halfway there at the sight of the flames still burning in the hidden room, and he turned for a final look. That sword and shield—he could make use of those, especially in his weakened state. If he had to deal with any of the Crimson Flame cultists on his way out, the added protection of snow steel weapons would help him far more than his battle-axe would.
So Garrick slipped into the secret room once more and pulled the shield and the sword off the wall, claiming them for himself. They both still radiated cold, and the white metal chilled his skin whenever he touched it.
He hooked the shield onto his back and sheathed the sword in a scabbard that was mounted just behind it, and he strapped it to his belt. He didn’t want to leave his battle-axe behind, but he decided he’d better. The less weight he had to carry, the more likely he’d find a way out.
And besides, if he couldn’t catch up to Noraff and Phesnos and get the map back, he’d need money to survive while looking for other jobs, so he had to leave some room in his pack for that. If Lord Valdis didn’t have him killed for failing.
Garrick shuddered at the thought. The idea of Lord Valdis killing him wasn’t nearly as vexing as the thought of having to face him and admit his failure to deliver the map. What would happen to his reputation? Would he even be able to get more mercenary work after a blunder this severe?
Now was not the time to think about that. Garrick couldn’t grant such thoughts any quarter in his mind. He had to get out, first. If he made it out of the vault—and the dungeon, and the temple after that—alive, then he could worry about his future. But for the time being, he needed to focus on the here and now.
Garrick dropped several gold coins in his pack along with the glowing yellow vial, slung the pack on his back next to the shield, and held the two vials in his hands once again. Satisfied with his efforts and with the ever-diminishing pain in his side, he decided it was time.
He hated to leave a fortune of this size behind, but catching Noraff and Phesnos was more important than anything else, so he positioned the black vial at the base of the vault door. A drop from the red vial ignited the fuse, and Garrick hurried away.
The only place he could reasonably take shelter was within the secret room, so he squeezed past the bookshelf, braced himself against one of the interior stone walls, crouched low, and waited with his hands covering his ears.
A deafening boom rocked the vault. The bookshelf blew apart, snuffed the fire in the pit, and the force of the blast threw Garrick against the back wall.
He curled up and covered his head. He’d managed to survive everything else in this dungeon—and Noraff’s betrayal. Falling rocks were nothing.
When the room finally stopped rattling, Garrick looked up. He removed the yellow vial from his pack once again and used it to look around.
Almost nothing remained of the bookshelf or the books and parchment on it except for the shards of wood that lay around him and on top of him. The walls that had framed the entrance to the secret room on that side had broken and crumbled, leaving an opening nearly the size of the vault door itself.
Garrick stood and approached the vault’s main room. Gold, silver, and jewelry lay scattered across the floor and in the fire pit within the secret room, but the closer to the vault door he walked, the more molten gold and silver he found hardening on the floor, along with chunks of rock and steel mixed in.
It sickened Garrick when he realized that Irwin and Coburn’s bodies were totally gone, probably turned to ash by the blast. But he couldn’t have either buried them down here or hauled them out anyway; the best he could’ve hoped for was burning them, and the black vial had done essentially that, only far quicker.
Nonetheless, Garrick would carry their memories with him until he delivered them the justice they deserved, and he would remember them far beyond that, too.
Most importantly, the black vial had worked. Aletian construction and architecture were unparalleled, even by elves and dwarves, but Irwin’s alchemy had trumped it nonetheless.
The explosion had ripped a hole into not only the steel door and the frame but also into the rock wall adjacent to it. To the Aletians’ credit, the vial hadn’t managed to carve a large hole, but it was still big enough that Garrick could crawl out, so he crouched down to his hands and knees and wriggled his way out of the vault.
He was free.
Noraff and Phesnos had a solid fifteen-minute head start on him, but if Garrick pushed himself, he could catch up. He started toward the archway on the left—the archway he’d come through after defeating the duotaur—but sto
pped short.
It was caved in.
Garrick cursed. That explained the quaking right after Noraff left. Phesnos must’ve somehow brought down the archway and part of the ceiling with his magic.
He turned back and glanced at the other archway. Harsh orange light still poured in through the archway where he’d finished off the golem.
Garrick had a choice: he could either heft rocks and boulders off the pile and eventually dig his way out or he could attempt to traverse a more unknown path along the lava river.
In the end, the choice was easy. Even if he did manage to break through the cave-in, it would delay him too much. Plus, he’d have to swim across the pool again, and that had been a slow, arduous process as well.
Trying to go back the way he’d come would not help him catch Noraff and Phesnos, so he headed for the lava archway.
The alternate path had wound down a steep, curving cliff face, at times only wide enough for Garrick to safely walk, but it was wider than when he’d traversed the temple’s rock wall, so he counted himself lucky.
The tradeoff was the oppressive heat generated by the lava river flowing below and the occasional globs of molten rock it flung up at him as he progressed. One of them almost hit Garrick’s left shoulder, but it hit the snow steel shield instead.
The lava hissed and steamed and hardened to black rock within seconds, clinging to the shield, but one solid whack against the wall shattered it and cleaned off the shield. Garrick checked the shield for damage but found none. The snow steel had completely negated the lava’s heat and thus remained intact, and it even still radiated cold onto his back.
The curving path ascended again by several hundred feet and terminated at yet another cliff face, and Garrick recognized the landscape before him. The lava river flowed below him, punctuated by several rocky platforms jutting out of it.
In the distance, he saw the rock ledge and the hole in the wall where they’d first discovered the lava room. And to the left, he saw a familiar-looking archway. Garrick watched two forms scamper out of it and toward the opening in the wall.
Noraff and Phesnos.
Chapter Eight
Part of Garrick wanted to shout at them, to bellow a war cry and curses. They might not hear him anyway, and even if they did, he’d forfeit any advantage of surprise he might still have. Instead, he focused on climbing down.
Climbing down proved even harder than climbing up, especially given Garrick’s size. The only advantages he had were increased strength and a longer reach, but his added weight all but negated his strength, and finding suitable grips for his thick hands and ledges for his large feet still proved challenging despite his height.
It took longer than he’d wanted, but he managed to make it to the bottom alive and intact nonetheless. He faced the platforms jutting out of the lava.
Not a single one of them was straight up and down or had a nice, flat surface. They all tilted one way or another. Garrick stepped to the edge and peered down at the base of the first one. Unlike some of the others he’d seen on the opposite side, this one looked thick and sturdy, but he couldn’t tell for sure.
Whatever the case, there was no going back, and he needed to move forward as quickly as possible if he stood any chance of catching up to Noraff and Phesnos. So he backed up a few steps from the edge, ran forward, and leaped.
Garrick’s boots hit the uneven surface of the first platform, and he grabbed ahold of a rock protrusion to steady himself. If he fell back, he could slip into the lava below. He climbed up to more level footing on the platform, then he ran toward the next platform and jumped.
Crossing the platforms went faster than the climb down the cliff face had gone, but it took more of a toll on Garrick’s nerves. Nonetheless, none of them crumbled beneath him. He made it across, through the oppressive heat, and landed on the rock ledge where he’d just seen Noraff and Phesnos.
Without hesitation, he charged toward the opening in the wall.
Pitch black enveloped him, so he pulled out the glowing yellow vial from his pack and used it to light his way. As soon as he did, dozens of scorpers poured out of the holes and crevices in the walls and the cave’s floor and scurried toward him.
Garrick cursed, and he ran. He didn’t have time to fight them, nor did he have time to dig out the red vial and light them on fire. He just had to get past them.
He dodged the same low-hanging stalactites and rocks that he’d encountered on their trek inside, but this time in reverse. The scorpers snapped their pincers at his ankles and heels as he ran, and his boots stomped on several of them along the way. Their screeches and shrieks punished his ears in the small, confined space.
The cave gradually widened, and he saw the staircase ahead. Garrick danced out of reach of the scorpers, kicked a few aside, and bolted for the stairs.
Garrick was catching up to them. He could feel it.
He also felt the scorpers skittering after him, nipping at his heels as he ran.
The journey back had exhausted him, and the pain from Noraff’s knife had returned—albeit duller and less debilitating than before—but Garrick let his drive to exact vengeance on Noraff and Phesnos propel him forward.
That, and he had an army of scorpers chasing him up the stairs and along the walls. If Garrick stopped, they’d overwhelm him in no time.
He fought through straining muscles and fatigue, but he made it up the stairs and emerged in the temple’s secret room once again, only to find that the secret door was open. Noraff and Phesnos might still be in the temple, or they might be outside by now. Either way, Garrick had to keep going.
Instead of peering into the grand hall to check for threats, he just barreled inside without any consideration of consequences, but they all hit him the instant he cleared the secret door and emerged from behind the huge curtain that covered it.
A trio of Crimson Flame cultists stood around the altar, each of them as bald as the ones he’d faced back in the pub run by Falna. They wore familiar black and red robes, and each bore a tattoo of a fireball on their bare chests.
A pair of iron candelabras held candles that burned with calm flames, illuminating the cultist’s faces. They noticed him immediately.
The four of them shared a silent moment of mutual surprise. Then the cultists reached toward the candelabras and pulled the candles’ fire into their hands.
Garrick still held the glowing yellow vial. He wouldn’t need it anymore, so he hurled it at the altar and then shielded his eyes from the ensuing flash.
Pop. The vial detonated, and the cultists yelped.
Garrick drew the snow-steel sword, pulled the matching shield from his back, and charged toward the cultists. Before they had the chance to recover, he felled them all. The sword hissed with every impact against their bodies.
A screech sounded behind Garrick, and then a cacophony of other screeches echoed it. The scorpers had reached the top and started to ooze out of the secret room. He left the cultists’ bodies behind as fodder for the scorpers and kept running, but this time he stopped just inside the grand hall’s doorway.
He’d been too loud. Footsteps and shouts sounded in the hallway beyond, so he pressed himself against the wall adjacent to the doors and slid behind a red tapestry emblazoned with the black fireball symbol of the Crimson Flame.
Gods, he hated that symbol. And he hated the cultists behind it even more.
Because of his size, the tapestry bulged out along his body, and anyone who looked at it would immediately realize he was there, but with the scorpers chirping and shrieking as they fed on flesh on the opposite side of the grand hall, Garrick hoped the approaching cultists wouldn’t even bother to look in his direction.
Sure enough, a dozen cultists burst into the grand hall and shouted commands and directions at each other as they moved to battle the encroaching scorpers.
Garrick watched, amused. He couldn’t have planned that any better. And considering that he hadn’t planned it at all, he grinned at thi
s small modicum of good fortune in spite of how wrong everything had gone at the end.
While the cultists battled the scorpers with weapons and with fire, Garrick slipped from behind the tapestry and snuck out the grand hall doors.
Instead of heading back to the secret entrance, Garrick made his way to where he expected the temple’s main entrance to be. The encounter with the cultists had slowed him down again, but perhaps if Noraff and Phesnos had taken the side route along the temple walls, he might be able to catch up to them this way.
A huge, square log lay in iron holders across the doors, barring them shut. Garrick hefted it up and let it drop to the stone floor with a thud. Then he brandished his sword and shield once more and burst through the temple’s front doors and into the courtyard.
A dusting of snow covered the ground, and the first rays of morning sunlight glowed from just below the horizon. As the cold air hit Garrick’s face, the sword and shield in his hands gave off a faint ringing sound, and then the runes on each of them began to glow with teal and blue light.
At first, Garrick didn’t understand, but then it made sense: He’d stepped into a cold environment with two snow-steel weapons. They would naturally have more power because they could draw from the colder conditions.
But Garrick had neither the time nor the desire to further test the weapons’ power. He just needed to catch Noraff and Phesnos.
As he bolted out of the courtyard and beyond the temple’s perimeter walls, Garrick scanned the landscape beyond for any sign of them. He saw two sets of footprints in the fresh snow leading away from the side of the wall where they’d snuck in hours before. One set was clearly a pair of boots, and the other looked almost like a misshapen hand—an Onni footprint.
He chased their path into the trees where it became obfuscated thanks to the tree canopy blocking some of the snowfall, but he managed to stay with it. The trail ended a half-mile from the temple at a clearing that overlooked the valley below.