by Dante King
The hellhound turned, saw me standing just to its right, cocked its head at me, and shrieked in defiance, enveloping me in a hot gust of putrid breath.
“Fuck a duck, somebody’s been cleaning out their asshole with their tongue again!” I yelled.
The Flame Barrier spell that I had shaped into an axe swept upward. It sliced neatly through the hellhounds neck and sent its surprised-looking head tumbling. It rolled away and splashed into the pond. The dog’s body thudded limply to the ground.
I breathed a sigh of relief. Not too tough, all things considered.
“Now, where the hell is that relic?” I asked my tiny-ass self.
The body of the hellhound shuddered. The skin around the severed stump of neck wrinkled and puckered. With a gross speed, like the most repugnant flower blooming in fast forward, the dog’s head reformed. It bulged out; bone solidifying, flesh knitting, skin stretching.
And, alongside that first head, another grew.
“Ah, not a hellhound then,” I said. “A… hydrahound?”
The rumbling growl emanating from the dog’s throat spoke of an animal that was really pissed.
“Great,” I said.
The left head darted out, mouth open wide, hoping to make a snack out of my pint-sized ass. I rolled to the side and felt the head whisk over me. Hot saliva rained down, pattering around and over me. I gained my feet but immediately had to roll out of the way of the right head as it lashed out.
I activated the Flame Barrier spell again. In my haste, I only had time to form the fiery spell into a crude spear. I caught the hydrahound square in one of its four maniacal eyeballs. A viscous goo gushed out, and the right head reared back in pain, the beast snapping and growling with annoyance.
If things had been hard fighting a one-headed hellhound, they became doubly so with two heads. I needed all my reactions and all my skill to ensure I didn’t end up as mush in the hellhound’s colon.
I managed to keep the two-headed dog at bay through a combination of spells and quick feet. As the fight went on, it became all too evident that my magic potency had been drastically reduced by whatever charm had rippled out of the pond.
A thick, muscled paw whipped out of nowhere and caught me squarely in the chest with the force of a battering ram. I was clubbed through the air and landed hard on my back, but I used the impact to roll myself backward and away from another paw that smashed downward, sending up stone chips.
I fired off a series of Frost Shards, one spell after another, as I backed away from the massive two-headed dog, and tried to gain myself a little breathing room, a little time to think. The shards punched into the hydrahound’s beefy chest but did not penetrate to anything vital. I had a feeling that I could stick the thing with enough shards to make it look like a porcupine and still not bring it down.
The hydrahound was clearly losing the little patience it possessed. The two heads kept lunging at me, forcing me back. The obvious solution to their continued assault would have been to blow or cut their heads off, but I knew what that would mean. I wasn’t going to fall into the same trap as fucking Hercules. I wasn’t going to let the red mist come down and then end up with a twenty-headed hydrahound. No, thanks.
The beast had backed me up against the parapet. It thrust one of its heads toward me once more, going for the kill. I used my Telekinesis spell, straining to the max, launching a rock right into the side of its thick head and sending the whole creature lurching sideways.
I took the opportunity to glance over the side of the tower’s waist-high wall. There was only darkness down there. No sign of Manafell, no sign of anything.
No escape.
Running out of ideas, I activated Flame Flight and, wreathed in ghostly flames, I boosted up into the air, over my tenacious enemy. I landed in a fighting crouch on the other side of the garden. Staff at the ready, mind fizzing as I thought of some way to get out of this jam.
The problem that faced me was the same one that had probably faced every bounty hunter and adventurer in Avalonia, ever since the first one had strapped on armor and weapons and dipped into their mana reserves with action at the forefront of their mind. The problem was this: how was I going to kill this fucking thing?
That’s what it boiled down to. I needed the hydrahound dead and out for the count. How the hell was I going to do that when my magic was proving less efficacious than usual, I couldn’t slice or explode its head off, and I was the size of a loaf of bread standing on its end?
Talk about a pickle.
What I needed was something that could completely annihilate this creature. Annihilate it either so completely, or keep working on it so continuously, that I would have time to find and grab the relic and get out of there. I was betting a lot on the assumption that, as soon as I had the relic in hand, I would be able to flee back through the crack, but a guy needed something to hope for.
I tossed down some Arcane Mines, as far as my little gnome-like arms could chuck them, while I waited for inspiration to strike.
“Come on, genius lightning bolt, strike me in the fucking head, why don’t you?” I hissed to myself.
The hydrahound was still on the other side of the garden. It was bucking like a mustang now, which I guessed was another after-effect of the Compulsion spell. I cast Rain of Toads, and little amphibians started to fall from the sky. Because they had also been shrunken, they were no larger than flies, but there were a good number of them. The hydrahound scratched at them, like it had the worst case of fleas imaginable. The toads didn’t look like they were doing any damage, but at least they were distracting it, but it would not be long before—
Both heads, as one, snapped around to look at me. The growling, which had been an ever-present soundtrack to this little dance we had been enjoying, raised in pitch and grew in intensity. There was blood in the hydrahound’s stare, death in its heart.
“Whoa Nelly, this is it,” I said to no one.
The beast came on, the toads apparently having disappeared. It seemed to happen in slow motion, so I was able to make out every muscle bunching under the thick, bristling fur. I could see every drop of foaming spittle as it flew from the quivering, snarling jowls.
And then, finally, inspiration flowered in my mind. In a cold, hard moment, a path fell into place in my head, laid out before me, gleaming with possibility.
The dog came on, a mess of teeth and claws and destruction.
It bounded over the pond this time, so enthusiastic was it to peel the skin from my flesh and use me as a chew toy. Its eyes were fixed on me, unwavering orbs of hate.
As the hydrahound hit my proximity sensitive Arcane Mines, I used my Crystalize spell to transform my right arm into an unyielding crystal club.
The Arcane Mines went off under the hound’s feet like firecrackers. They didn’t cause much damage, only blowing a couple of its claws off in bursts of Earth and Storm magic. It checked its stride though, making it falter in its charge, which was my intention.
Thrown off-balance, the hydrahound skidded to a halt in front of me. Its heads reared above me, as big as a pair of bull elephant heads. The left head, the one with the busted eye, came in, snapping ferociously. I kept my composure and dodged it, sidestepped a lunge from the right head, and smacked the right head with my crystal arm-club before it could withdraw. The right head’s red eyes crossed at the force of the blow, and it ceased its movements for a second, allowing me to leap up and onto its snout.
“Don’t mind me!” I said as I clambered agilely up the wide, meaty face, between the rolling, dazed eyes and onto the hydrahound’s bony forehead.
I ducked as the other head snapped half-heartedly at me, but the thing was still smarting from the mess I’d made of its eye, and obviously struggling a little with its depth perception.
I was just about to continue with the next devilishly cunning part of my plan, when the left head came launching unexpectedly in again. I was forced to roll over its snout like a guy rolling onto a car bonnet to avoid
being run over. I found myself on the top of the left head. I smacked the hydrahound again with my crystal club-arm, but was then obliged to break the spell so I could use both hands to hang onto the hound’s head as it shook and tried to dislodge me.
“Fuck it, this’ll do!” I muttered.
And, flying in the face of commonsense, I summoned the Abomination into the world.
The Abomination was a creature from the depths of the void, from the place of pure, undiluted magic. It was chaos incarnate. It was a creature that had no allies. A monster that would consume friend and foe alike given half a chance.
Happily, as I thought it might be after seeing the Frostfire Golem, it was also much smaller than it usually was—about the size of a tennis ball, in fact.
I didn’t dare touch the thing so, holding onto one of the furious hellhound’s eyelids with one hand, I used my Telekinesis spell to levitate the tentacle covered, stinking, slimy jellyfish nightmare of an Abomination into the ear canal of the head onto which I was currently clinging.
It was the work of a moment, which was good, because a moment later, the hydrahound flicked me loose from its noggin and sent me cartwheeling through the air.
“Shit,” I managed to say, before I splashed down into the icy water of the pond in the middle of the garden.
I came up gasping, spitting water from my mouth. In my shrunken state, I was up to my neck in the pond that turned out to be quite shallow. Wiping water from my eyes, I saw that all was not well with the hydrahound.
The two-headed hellhound was shaking its head in anguished fury, no doubt trying to dislodge the parasitic Abomination that was doing gods-knew-what inside of it. The beast lumbered over to me, pawing blindly at the air, biting and roaring at nothing, at the thing inside itself that it could not reach.
I threw myself out of the way of a swipe from the hydrahound’s foreleg, climbed quickly up, sprang off the already severed head that was lying half-submerged in the pool, and tossed a couple of Crystal Magma Bombs at my enemy. I landed on the edge of the pool as the grenade-like spells went off and knocked the hydrahound over backward.
“Please, please be dead,” I said, getting to my feet and willing the creature to stay down.
The hydrahound moaned, legs thrashing and then, with a suddenness that would have gained Ridley Scott’s approval, the Abomination burst out of the center of the hydrahound’s chest in a spray of blood and gore and buckled ribs.
Small it might have been. Slow, certainly. But, fucking deadly nonetheless.
The body of the hydrahound went limp, while the disgusting little Abomination continued to feast on and dissolve the corpse.
Water was running off me in rivulets, pooling in the stone around me. I felt pretty beat, I’m not going to lie. It had been a tough fight, and I hoped more than anything that it was over.
I looked over at the blocked exit, but the horizontal portcullis was still drawn across the opening.
There was a soft, bubbling noise from the pool. Being careful to keep one eye on the miniature Abomination, I glanced over at the shallow pond and saw that a small podium had risen out of the waters.
“You fucking good thing, you,” I said.
On the dais was what surely must have been the second relic—it certainly tied in nicely with the first.
It was a bottle of red writing ink, complete with a cork stopper and sealed with wax.
I was still of gnome height, and so hopping back down into the pool, picking up the bottle of ink, and lugging it on my shoulder back to the edge of the pool was actually a fairly arduous task. But I managed it, and was able to carry it all the way back across the Garden of Ward and Curse to the exit, from which the metal vine portcullis had been withdrawn.
I did not relish the walk back through the stony passageway in my new height. Despite the corridor now resembling the Siq Canyon rather than a narrow passage, I could barely squeeze through. With legs only a couple of inches long, it promised to be quite a long walk. Thankfully, on stepping over the threshold and into the shadows of the corridor, I was hit by a rolling wave of nausea and shot up to my usual height and build.
“Thank the gods,” I muttered, waiting for the blurry vision and sickness to pass.
By the time that I had wended my way through the claustrophobic corridor and reached the exit that led to that goddamn staircase, I was feeling almost as fit as I had been walking in there in the first place.
“He lives!” Leah cried overdramatically as I rounded the final jagged corner.
“You sound like you doubted it would happen,” I said.
“Do you have the relic?” Mallory asked, running her eyes over me. “I don’t see it.”
I pulled the bottle of ink from a pocket and held it up. “Got it,” I said.
Mallory let out a breath that might have been a sigh of relief.
“Why are you so wet?” Leah asked.
I tucked the bottle back into my pocket and laughed drily. “Man, I would love to relive that again, but I think it’s going to have to wait. Suffice to say that the garden had a pond and I got to enjoy it on a couple of occasions.”
“Lucky for some,” Leah said absently. “I wouldn’t have minded a quick dip.”
I eyed the stairs with deep dislike, then scanned the faces of the other two women. They looked about as exuberant to tackle the eleven-hundred and eleven steps as I felt.
“Come on,” I said, “let’s get going. Only one more relic to get our hands on now. Then we can head back to the ranch for some lunch and some time by the fire.”
“Or the hot tub?” Leah said casually.
I made a face of pained keenness. “Or the hot tub,” I agreed.
We descended the stairs more quickly than we had ascended them, but with the same amount of puffing and sweating.
We were just about to sneak out of the door and into the hallways beyond, when I grabbed Mallory by the elbow. My brain, probably coaxed into a supreme effort after having to face all those fucking stairs, had coughed up an unexpected idea.
“Mallory,” I whispered, “something happened back with the second relic that has got me thinking… Are you able to use your Holy Magic to shrink us by any chance?”
Mallory gave me a surprised look but said, “Yes, I should think so. Why?”
I outlined my plan to her. After I was finished, the Holy Mage smiled radiantly.
“Clever, Justin Mauler,” she said approvingly. “Very clever.”
A few minutes later, the door to the staircase of eleven-hundred and eleven steps creaked open. If there had been any guards about to see, they would have watched as three miniature figures, riding on the backs of a trio of undead wolverines the size of hares, raced out of the cracked door and pelted up the corridor and out of sight.
Chapter 16
To my profound disgust, the location of the third relic was at the top of yet another lengthy staircase. Thankfully, it was not as long as the last one and switched back and forth in short lengths rather than spiraled. Having been transformed back into our usual sizes by Mallory’s clever Holy Magic, we ascended and soon found ourselves outside yet another door.
“This is more what I would have imagined if someone had told me we’d be hunting three relics,” I said as the three of us caught our breath from the climb and stared at the doorway looming in front of us.
“How so?” Leah asked dreamily.
“How so?” Mallory repeated. “Come, Leah, simply look at it.”
The doorway must have been all of fifteen feet high and was shaped in the Gothic design—the top curving up to meet at a rounded point at the pinnacle. Constructed of dark wood and rusted metal, it was carved in the likeness of some horrifying creature, one that I could not identify no matter which way I tilted my head. Even so, the purpose was clear: to invoke a sense of inescapable dread in whoever was standing in front of the door.
“I kind of like it.” Leah cocked her head to first one side and then the other. “It’s… invigorating.
It conjures up all the sorts of feelings that someone should feel when they’re standing outside my bedroom door.”
Mallory turned to look at the slighter woman and arched a blonde, stately eyebrow. “Dread, despair, and overwhelming feeling of ominous doom?”
“No, silly,” Leah breathed. “No. The very real and tangible feeling that you’re about to step into something else’s domain. Something that shouldn’t be taken lightly. Something that should be respected. The feeling that you’re taking your future in your own hands and tossing it up in the air like a coin, unsure of what side it’s going to land on.”
I snorted. “You might have a point there,” I said, thinking of how domineering the pink-haired woman probably could have been back in Gertrude’s bedchamber, had it been just a bit bigger.
Mallory tucked her shining bright golden hair behind her ears and took a deep breath. She faced the door, her cobalt eyes running along yet another inscription that was worked in rusted metal over the arch. She pointed it out to Leah and me.
THERE ARE NO GREATER DEMONS THAN A PERSON’S OWN
THERE ARE NO FOULER MONSTERS THAN THOSE WE BECOME
“There’s another nice cheerful one that you can put on a bumper sticker,” I muttered, scanning the writhing metal words.
“Who wouldn’t want to go inside after that?” Leah asked enthusiastically. Her tone did not change, but I figured she was probably being sarcastic. I hoped she was, at any rate.
“Monsters and demons,” Mallory said. “It would be a dull world without them, would it not?”
I was about to hit her with a sardonic retort, but then I perceived that she was right. When it came down to it, if we did not have the monsters, we would not have their direct opposites, we would not have the flip side of the coin.
“We would not have the angels without them,” Mallory said softly, almost to herself.