by Noah Layton
There were no enemies that I could see. The place was deserted.
The land was three times as large as that of the sun-elves, sprawling massively in a rough circle. Wooden shacks, the same size as the one in which Morok the goblin was being held back at my land, were scattered about the land with no discernible pattern or system.
There was no sign of crops and the grass was trampled and short, but to the east I could see a larger structure, its outer walls smeared with blood.
I had no doubt that that was the slaughterhouse.
Already my heart was pounding at the thought of the fate of Santana and Mariana in this nightmarish place.
But that nightmare hadn’t even begun.
The land of the wood-elves wasn’t lit up by the moonlight. There was no way that that would have been strong enough to allow such a clear view of the bloodstains.
Everything, the houses, the buildings, right down to the last withered blade of grass, everything was lit by the huge fire burning near the centre of the land.
Its flames licked at the sky ten yards above the ground, moving higher than the upper reaches of the tree that stood at the centre of every tribal land.
The fire was feeding on a huge array of tree trunks and branches, enough to clear a small patch of forest.
This wasn’t a daily event. This was a ritual, and it signified something special, at least to the feral bastards that had taken my wife.
But then where the fuck are they?
In the dancing glow of the fire, a flicker of movement suddenly caught my eye.
I ducked down slightly in reaction to it, but the figure was moving away from me.
A lone wood-elf emerged from one of the homes and headed straight for the fire. He moved swiftly towards it, showing no sign of slowing, even as he was close enough to be struck by the flames.
And, just like that, he ran into the fire and vanished.
I listened. There were no screams of pain. Just the crackle of the fire and the rustling of the leaves on the trees as a light breeze swept by.
Then, beneath the earth, the drumming began.
‘What is that?’ Elera asked from behind me. ‘It feels as if it is coming through the ground.’
She was right. This whole situation was only becoming more bizarre.
‘It’s safe to move,’ I said. ‘Let’s get inside.’
The girls moved up the log ramp, and together we dropped down onto enemy territory.
Keeping low, I led us to the nearest row of houses. We moved into the darkness, the smell of festering wounds and dead grass hitting me like a stone wall toppling down onto my head.
In our hiding place, we halted and kept low, looking towards the fire.
‘Where are they all?’ Lara asked.
‘I saw one run into the fire just a minute ago,’ I replied.
‘A ritual suicide, perhaps?’ Elera said.
‘I doubt it. There are enough houses here to house a thousand citizens. If they were all doing something like that they wouldn’t all fit in the fire. But it was like he… Disappeared into it.’
‘Watch out!’
Lara spoke with a loud whisper, then pointed to the left.
Another wood-elf had appeared. He was running towards the fire, arcing around, then sprinted straight to the spot where the other had.
He disappeared into the fire too, but didn’t hit the fuel that it was burning through, just like the first,
There was nothing blocking his path.
‘There’s something in there,’ I said. ‘Something beneath it. A tunnel or a door or something.’
‘A secret entrance?’ Elera said. ‘That must be where they are holding Santana.’
My nymph was right. There was no other possibility.
‘I have no idea what they’re doing down there, but if we want to have any shot at saving the girls I have to go now.’
‘But there must be hundreds of them down there,’ Lara said. ‘Wait… Did you just say I?’
‘Yep. I need to go alone.’
‘I love you, husband, but this is no time to be a hero.’
‘This is the only time to be a hero,’ I replied, checking my weapons and supplies. ‘But that’s not the only reason you two are staying here. If the entire tribe is down there then one wrong move and our cover will be blown. If I go on my own there’s last chance of me being caught.’
‘And what if you are caught?’ Elera asked.
‘Then you’ll hear a lot of noise, because I’ll be taking down as many of the bastards as I can. If that happens, get out of here. Just run.’
‘This can’t be the only way.’
‘Stop being such a fucking martyr,’ Lara said firmly. ‘I’m coming with you.’
‘No, you’re not.’
‘Are you going to stop me?’
Lara stared me down hard.
She had once professed that I had tamed her, but there was a wild heart within her that couldn’t be stopped.
‘Fine,’ I relented. ‘Elera, can you hold things down out here? I might need a distraction if things start to go badly.’
‘If I must,’ Elera said. ‘I would prefer to join you, but my powers would wane with so much fire nearby.’
‘Take these,’ I said, handing her ten of the Infernal Fire Explosives. ‘If you need to use them, don’t hesitate.’
My wives both looked at me warmly. Lara’s purple hair fluttered over her shoulders as a breeze blew the heat of the fire in our direction, lighting up her eyes and her sun-kissed face. Elera lowered her head, her blue skin growing darker in the firelight, then looked up to me intensely.
‘I have never been more glad to have met a man than you,’ she said.
She pulled me to her and we kissed for what might have been the last time.
‘Go,’ she said quietly, nodding to me resolutely.
Elera turned and hurried back to a more secluded spot among the houses.
I watched her vanish, then Lara and I looked out towards the fire. I scanned left and right, checking for any more running wood-elves, then upped and dashed forwards with my archer-wife at my side.
The fire was only fifty yards from where we began. We sprinted hard, intending to stop before we reached it to gauge our entrance.
The closer I came to the pyre the larger it seemed. The flames licked at the sky, growing higher and higher as I approached its intense heat.
I covered my face with my forearm and located the entrance. The path led into the fire several yards, then descended sharply into the earth along a tunnel. There were stone steps matted with soot, disappearing into the darkness below.
Every second the most powerful flames at the base lapped against the path.
There was no timing this. If the slightest of breezes caught the flames we would be burnt to cinders.
It felt like we were walking into hell.
Maybe we are.
I looked over my shoulder at the world behind me. Even if this was wood-elf territory, it might have been the last time that I would look at world above-ground.
I turned to Lara, and she nodded back at me.
Even if hell awaited us, there was no way that I wasn’t walking straight into it and lighting up every demon that tried to take us out.
Returning to the entrance, I stared the flames down and rushed forwards with Lara right behind me, journeying into whatever hell awaited us.
Chapter Fourteen
Par me si va ne la cita dolente.
Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.
Those were the words in Dante’s Inferno that were inscribed over the gates of hell.
I lowered my head and covered my face with my arms as I rushed forwards.
The heat was unimaginable. In seconds my mind descended into a primitive panic that told me to get the fuck out of here, but I pressed on.
Just as the descent below the earth began, a wave of flames encased me. I threw myself forwards, flying through the heat and smashing down a series o
f rough mud steps that had dried to a rocky texture.
I landed heavily in the tunnel, my arms and chest bruised.
No more than a second later, Lara crashed down by my side, coughing wildly.
‘Are you okay?’ I asked.
‘Only these savages would make it this hard to get down here.’
We had had no time to dwell on our injuries. Our clothes were smouldering with embers.
We patted at them rapidly until they were reduced to wisps of smoke. Clasping one hand against the stone floor and the other on the handle of my sword, I pushed up from the ground and looked ahead.
The tunnel descended on a slight decline deeper into the earth. The path was lit occasionally by torches stamped into holsters in the walls. It sank deeper and deeper below the surface above.
Breathing in the soot-stained air, I thought back to the first time I had gone mining for ores with Santana at my side in the land of west of my tribal land.
There are worse things that lurk in the land below Agraria.
The drumming that I had heard outside continued.
We proceeded down the tunnel, the screams and chants and drumming becoming louder the closer we got.
Suddenly the tunnel levelled out, and for fifty yards there were no torches until an entrance opened up onto a dimly lit area that I couldn’t make out the features of.
I moved through the darkness, creeping closer until I was ten yards from the tunnel’s exit.
Either side of the exit was a spear jutting out, indicating the presence of a pair of wood-elf guards. If I could get close enough then I would be able to take them both down.
Going for the neck was the only logical way to take them out without giving them time to alert their kin, and this occasion was no different.
I turned to Lara, pointed at the guards, then at my sword.
The tunnel was too narrow for us both to take them down. I would have to do it on my own.
I crept forwards slowly, pausing just a few yards from the opening.
‘Backstab.’
Magic had no place in what I was doing now, but the blade that appeared in my left hand alongside the broadsword in my right was ideal; it wasn’t the specific function that it was designed for, but it would work just fine.
I counted my approach under my breath, then-
The Dagger of Concealment swung in a small arc and slammed into the left wood-elf’s neck, destroying his vocal chords and dropping him to his knees.
Before the one on the right had a chance to respond, I swung the sword in my right back into the other guard’s neck, slicing through flesh before I ripped it free.
He went down onto his front, writhing uncontrollably.
Finishing them off, I plunged the dagger into the backs of their necks, one after the other.
Once their bodies were unmoving, we dragged them both clear of the entrance and into the shadows of a hanging rock nearby. Even if anybody came this way, they would likely be moving too quickly to notice the blood.
With the guards disposed of, we checked our immediate surroundings. We were standing on a platform with a small rock barrier that framed a series of stone steps descending deeper into a gigantic cavern.
We dropped to a crouch and approached the rock barrier. The drumming was growing louder.
I raised my head and looked out over the scene below.
The cavern was bigger than I could have possibly imagined.
Wood-elves numbering in their hundreds stood among a series of scattered fires burning on podiums. They were perched on a series of rocky platform levels like the audience of a theatre, all looking down to a space below.
Several figures stood at the lowest level. There were four guards standing to attention with spears, two on either of a large simple stone structure consisting of several flat vertical slabs.
To the left of the structure was a throne, upon which the tribe master of the wood-elves was seated. His position among the people said enough, but his demeanour and appearance seemed no different to any of the others save for the large feathered headpiece mounted atop him.
But he was nothing in comparison to the goliath of a structure at his side, because the thing to his side wasn’t a statue or a monolith, but another throne.
The thing that would be seated there, if it existed, would stand at least six times the height of your average human. It would likely dwarf the wood-troll that we had brought down in the forest, and that was only while seated.
I dreaded to think what it would look like standing.
Before the throne was a darkened hole that led deeper into the ground. Either side of it, hanging by chains, were a pair of empty stone slabs hanging from chains.
I traced the path of the chains. They were rigged to a system nearby that would lower them into the pit.
‘What the hell is supposed to sit there?’ Lara asked, nodding to the throne.
‘I have no idea,’ I whispered, scanning the space below for the girls. ‘Do you see Santana anywhere?’
‘No. Not Mariana, either. Wait…’
The chants of the crowd and the unseen drumming began to speed up, and at the very front of the swaying masses, the figures began to part.
From the space two stone slabs came, carried by two groups of wood-elves.
My whole body shuddered when I saw who was tied to them.
‘Oh my god…’
Santana was tied to the one on the left, Mariana the one on the right.
Neither of them were moving.
Rage ignited within me, one that made the killing of Werger feel like nothing in comparison. I wanted to storm down from our hiding space, throwing bombs and exhausting my power stones to take out as many of these pieces of shit as I could.
But this time I had my wife at my side.
I felt Lara’s touch on my shoulder.
‘Calm yourself, husband,’ she whispered. ‘We must keep control.’
‘I know,’ I growled quietly. ‘But…’
‘Just wait. When hunting for something sometimes you have to have patience.’
The girls remained unmoving down below. As the wood-elves that had carried them into view moved away, a lone one of them moved towards their sides carrying a stone basket.
He plunged his hand into the dark innards, smearing something on his skin, then splashed it onto the girls.
They both stirred violently, waking and groaning
In the oldest story, eight circles of hell had to be crossed to reach the ninth.
I wondered if this was what the centre looked like.
He backed away, and the tribe master moved to the space between them.
He raised his arms, and the chanting quickly fell silent.
‘Arahandi-mui kala-tor, vashkee… Zagor… Zagor!’
The chanting and drumming escalated once again, in a faster and deeper rhythm than ever.
‘They’re going to send them down into the pit,’ Lara said.
‘That’s not what I’m worried about. I’m worried about whatever it is that’s down there. There’s got to be another way to get in…’
As the wood-elves prepared the girls for their descent into the pit, the tribe master ignited a huge torch with a fierce, flickering flame.
No… He wouldn’t…
I waited in terror for him to ignite the liquid covering the girls.
But he didn’t. Instead, the torch was thrown down into the pit. The light from the flame bounced against the walls of the hole.
Something else caught the corner of my eye, though.
There was another light that begun to stem from a crevice on the left side of the cavern.
No, not another light – the very same light.
‘There,’ I said, pointing it out to Lara. ‘There’s another way down.’
‘You think you can get down there without being seen?’
‘It’s my only chance. Stay here from a vantage point and keep watch. There’s no sense in us both getting trapped down ther
e if it comes to that.’
I set my eyes on the crevice and moved to go, but Lara grabbed me and spun me to her. She kissed me hard, then pressed her forehead to mine as she caressed my cheek.
‘Don’t lose yourself.’
‘I won’t.’
She didn’t need to tell me that she loved me. I already knew.
I pocketed my sword and sheath into my inventory and crept to the wall. Getting a decent foothold, I began to traverse the wall to the crevice below.
The entire time I was conscious of the wood-elves in their endless ranks. All it would take was one of them to turn their head to see me, to notice my shape moving in the darkness, and I would be swarmed upon.
Thankfully the light, and their eyes, avoided me as I dropped to a lower ledge, took hold of a firm piece of rock, and descended another few yards towards the gap.
I finally reached it. I lowered myself to my waist, feeling the rock vibrate around me with the chanting of the hundreds of voices and the banging of the unseen drums, some just a few yards away from me.
Only then did I realize how narrow the gap was. I would barely have enough room to shimmy down.
I wasn’t claustrophobic, but being trapped in a rock wall was a pretty terrible way to go.
I glanced over to the chains hanging from the ceiling, watching them shudder as they took the weight of the stone slabs on which the girls were tied.
When the wheels turned and the chains rolled down, I knew I had no choice.
I struggled into the gap and shuffled down through the darkness, forcing my body down like it was a tool.
Rocks jutted sharply into my front and back with every movement, scuffing my face even with my head turned to the side.
I could hardly afford to breathe. With every expansion of my chest, my ribs felt like they were going to break against the rocks.
Keep moving.
The chants above were the only motivation I needed.
I stifled a grunt, pushing down another yard, moving my arm before it snapped from the pressure as it became stuck between two badly-placed jutting stones.
Then I felt my foot drop. There was nothing below.
I had reached the pit.
I lowered myself until I was hanging by a single hand. Glancing over to the torch that had been dropped, I found that the floor was only a yard away.