by Peter Last
He finally stood, turned his back on the door, and walked toward the marsh. He knew that he would choose this eventually. This was, after all, the headquarters of Molkekk. Nothing was pleasant here without a purpose, and even so, the hillside seemed too pleasant.
Jothnial made his way to the bridge that spanned the marsh. It appeared rickety and was broken down in many places, but somehow he knew it was the only way across. He carefully stepped onto the first plank of the structure and tested it before putting his whole weight on it. A splash sounded off to his right, and he jerked his head around. Ever-expanding rings rippled in the water, originating from a spot on the marsh only a dozen yards from him. He eyed the water suspiciously before taking another cautious step. As he continued to navigate the bridge, the conviction that he needed to reach the other side of the marsh grew.
Fifteen minutes passed as Jothnial hopped from plank to plank. The bridge was in a greater state of disrepair than he had thought, and he sometimes had to leap over gaps that spanned up to ten feet of empty space in order to reach the next plank. He had to stop to catch his breath, and he did so while leaning against one of the posts that supported the bridge. The gap he faced next was the largest yet, spanning possibly fifteen feet, but only a hundred yards beyond it was land.
He carefully sized up the gap, took a flying leap, and landed with only his toes on the plank. He was off balance and stood there for several long moments struggling to regain his footing. He might have had a chance if this were anywhere else, but here the wood was all slick with mold. His feet slid off of the board, and he tumbled backwards into the sticky mud of the marsh. His first thoughts were for the baby which he held up with one hand. The mud was so thick that he sank into it slowly, giving him time to reach for and find purchase on the slimy planks of the bridge. The baby was now about even with the bridge's surface, so he thrust her onto the timbers. Moments later his face submerged and for a moment he began to panic. This was no ordinary mud; he was almost overcome by the malicious magic that was behind it, trying to pull him down and suffocate him. Gripping the bridge with both hands, he pulled as if his life depended on it. After what seemed like an eternity under the mud, his head forced its way out and he took deep gasping breaths of the rancid marsh air.
Even in the small amount of time that he had ceased to pull his body upward, the mud had begun to suck him back downward. With a groan, Jothnial began to pull again causing every muscle in his body to scream at him. With unhappy squelching noises, the mud slowly gave him up. Hand by hand he clawed his way up onto the bridge, fighting the mud the whole way. Finally he was able to pull his feet free and crawl forward a few more feet just for good measure. Exhausted, he dropped face down on the bridge, gasping for breath.
It was several minutes before he trusted his limbs to hold his weight. When a small amount of strength had returned, he pushed himself to a sitting position and looked around for the baby. She was laying on the bridge a foot or so from the edge, unaware of what was going on around her. The bottom of her dress and her legs were covered in mud, but on the whole she was not hurt. Jothnial looked down at his clothes and as he had expected, saw that he was covered in the foul smelling mud of the swamp. It was already starting to dry on him, creating a hard shell on his skin that pulled at him when he moved, and it was time for him to move if he had any intentions of getting out of here alive. He had already spent a good amount of time here, and every second more was one closer to something that he couldn't deal with catching up to him. With a groan he picked up the baby and pushed himself to his feet.
The thought of dry land only a hundred yards away made Jothnial want to get there as quickly as possible, but he forced himself to proceed cautiously. After all, it was not only his life at stake, but the life of the baby in his arms as well. The next step was all that he focused on until, suddenly, he found himself standing on solid dirt. He looked up and saw for the first time a large, plain looking structure blocking his path. An observer might call it a house, though that description would have been generous. It was simply a large, white cube with a single door in the exact center of the wall facing him. Jothnial walked around the back of the house, examining the wall as he moved. He wasn't sure what material it was made out of, but it certainly wasn't wood.
The back of the house looked exactly as the front had: a solid wall with a single door cutting through it. Jothnial might have ignored the structure altogether if it had not been sitting on a small plot of land surrounded on all four sides by the marsh. It appeared as though the bridge was the only way to the island and the only way off. The magician decided that as long as he had made the dangerous and useless trip out here, he might as well see what was inside the building. Cautiously, he opened the door and peeked inside. The entire inside of the house was empty, so he stepped through the door. There were no furnishings or subdivisions of the house; it consisted of one large, empty room. No windows looked out of the house, and it had only two doors.
Jothnial stared in bewilderment. Previously, he had been certain that he needed to cross the marsh, but now he was positive that he had made a mistake. Behind him, the door creaked, and he spun around to face this new development. In the doorway stood what could only be described as massive, black, and ugly. It was at least fourteen feet tall, two feet taller than the tallest ogre Jothnial had ever seen, but didn’t resemble one at all. It looked like a pile of mud with arms and legs. It didn’t appear to have a head, and Jothnial didn’t spend too much time looking for one. He figured that even if he took it off, the thing would not die.
The monster slowly advanced from the door and made its way toward Jothnial. By now the elf could tell that it reeked of magic. He reached for one of the silver throwing knives on his belt and flung it at the blob. The projectile hit the monster dead center and disappeared into it. For a second nothing happened, and Jothnial started to panic.
“That thing has to be magic,” he told himself, “and the knife I threw was silver. Everyone knows that silver destroys magic.”
Before Jothnial had time to finish convincing himself, the blob exploded and threw him across the house. He almost lost the baby, but managed to keep hold of her. The warning bells in his brain were working overtime, and he landed on his feet and spun to face the front door of the house. A man with blood-red robes stood in the doorway. His eyes were completely white, and it was obvious that he was blind. He seemed to rely on his sense of smell to navigate, and it led him straight toward Jothnial. The magician reached over his shoulder, pulled his sword from its scabbard, and began to circle to the man's right.
The man seemed to immediately sense the change in Jothnial’s behavior and withdrew a sword from the folds of his cloak. He approached Jothnial slowly and sank into a fighter’s crouch. Jothnial wondered how the man could tell where everything was even though he was blind. He raised his sword to block a blow from the blind man and was surprised at how powerful it was. With a quick, twisting move, he thrust his blade at the blind man’s stomach. The blade sank in up to the hilt, and Jothnial jerked it down and then up, causing the man to fall in half.
Jothnial started to turn away from his victim, but was stopped short. The man fell in two pieces, but not a drop of blood spilled onto the floor. Instead, the two halves of the man’s body began to grow. In no time, two exact replicas of him stood in front of him. They both clenched swords in their fists and began to circle Jothnial. The elf began to turn in a circle, trying to keep both opponents in his sight, but they continued to circle further apart. Soon one of them would be behind him and ready to attack. Thoughts rushed through Jothnial’s head as he tried to decide what to do. Could one of the men be an illusion? That was an easy trick for even an inexperienced magician. Then again, maybe the first attacker was an illusion as well. After all, he didn’t bleed when he had been split in half.
There were too many options to consider and Jothnial knew that if he didn’t move quickly, he was going to be vulnerable. Gripping the baby more tightly in h
is left arm, he turned and bolted toward the man who had maneuvered behind him. He went to his knees at the last second, sliding underneath the man's blade and past him. In one smooth motion, Jothnial rose to his feet and spun, bringing his sword in a wide, vertical slash toward the man’s neck. The sword met next to no resistance as it cut, and the man’s head fell to the floor. Again, no blood issued from the cut as the man's body quickly grew another head. Meanwhile, the head on the floor morphed shapes and grew into a tiger.
Jothnial looked at his three opponents, carefully sizing them up. It appeared as though wounding them would do nothing but create more enemies. This had to be magic.
“What’s happening?” Jothnial wondered in panic. “The silver in my sword appears to have no effect on them, and yet they have to be magic.”
The tiger waited for the two men to come even with it, and all three enemies started to surround Jothnial. He backed up in order to keep all three in his sight. In only a few steps he felt a wall against his back, so he slid sideways along the wall until he had moved into a corner. With his back now safe from attack, he waited for his assailants to move in. The men advanced together, but the tiger didn’t wait. Magic shot from Jothnial’s right fist and hit the tiger as it jumped, flinging it across the house and into the other wall. It immediately rose to its feet and began to bound back toward him.
The second that Jothnial threw the tiger with magic, he rammed his sword into the floor and reached for a silver throwing knife. With a flick of his wrist, he buried the knife in the shoulder of one of the identical men. The weapon began to glow and shake violently, and Jothnial watched, holding his breath. What happened next was something that he had never seen before, something that he had not thought was possible. The knife continued to glow brighter and shake more violently until it exploded into a thousand slivers, all flying directly at Jothnial. He had no time to avoid the missiles and was just able to block the baby with his body and raise his arm to defend his own face. The silver slivers hit him, stopping only where they met metal. In all the gaps of Jothnial’s armor, they had a devastating effect, smashing into his skin and leaving a million tiny cuts. The blind man paused only momentarily as the skin of his shoulder grew back and hid the hole where moments ago a knife had been buried. When the healing was complete, the man removed a throwing knife of his own from his belt. With a motion so fast that his hand appeared as a blur, he hurled the weapon across the room.
A stream of magic blasted from Jothnial's fingers, making the air around it glow a faint green. This was a bit like killing a cockroach with a mace and chain, but Jothnial had had enough of this battle. The magic met the knife halfway between the combatants flipping it to the side and continuing straight toward the blind man. The man was oblivious to the stream of magic and it hit him in the chest. In that moment, the only thing that Jothnial could think of was his lessons in school about wave motion. The magic bounced off of the blind man and rebounded back like a wave hitting a wall. Before he had time to react, the pulse of power hit Jothnial and would have thrown him into the wall had he not already been pressed against it. He flew through it instead, landing outside on his butt and sliding several more feet on the packed dirt.
The magician rose to his feet, still gripping the baby in his left arm. She was crying now and he wondered why she had chosen right now to start. Or maybe she had been crying the whole time and he had just now noticed. He also wondered exactly how he had managed to keep a grip on her for so long and through so much. He had managed, but it was hindering his ability to fight; he would have to do something. Dropping to one knee, he laid the girl on the ground and yanked the cloak from his shoulders. While keeping one eye on the hole in the building's wall, he used a few deft twists of the cloth and some creative finagling to secure the bundle to his back with the baby facing outward. Now these unholy creatures would see exactly what he could do.
The tiger burst through the hole first and Jothnial rose to his full height. This beast might be faster and stronger than he was, but he could certainly out think it. He watched in a detached manner as the animal bounded towards him. He could see the saliva dangling off of its teeth and the look of pure evil in its eyes. There was a lot of rage focused behind this creature and not much else. The tiger came within striking distance and without missing a stride leaped at Jothnial. The elf held fast, spinning away and down at the last possible second. A well timed spell created a concussive force that threw the tiger a dozen feet off of the island and over the marsh. For a moment it seemed to be suspended in the air, then it fell into the mud below. Jothnial could have been imagining things, but it seemed as if the marsh gave gleeful sounding gurgles as it sucked the screaming tiger down to its demise.
Jothnial felt more than heard the whistling of the air to his left and spun just in time to catch the blind man's blow on his bracer. The blade skidded off of the hardened leather, and he leaped away from the attack. He pulled the last of his throwing knives from his belt and held it in his right fist, the blade pointed toward the ground. He brought his hands up towards his face in a fist fighter's defensive stance and shifted his weight forward to his toes. He might be facing an armed opponent when he had only a short knife, but it was something that he had been trained for. The next blow from the blind man was low, and Jothnial blocked it out with his left bracer. His right fist flashed forward, dealing a smashing blow to the man's jaw. The punch would have staggered the stoutest of fighters, but it didn't seem to affect the blind man who immediately countered with an over-handed slash. Jothnial stopped the blow with his knife and captured the sword blade with his leather clad left fist. In a movement faster than the eye could follow, he stabbed the man three times in the throat and face with the knife and stepped back. The man wasn't even shaken by the attack, but brought his sword up to deal another blow.
Jothnial's brain was working overtime. The man before him appeared to be indestructible and his twin had just stepped out of the building. It didn't appear as if there was any way to defeat them except for the mud. It had taken the tiger and might do the same for the men. He would have to get a better position for that to work, since he was currently between both of them and the swamp. All of his thoughts went to the wind and his instincts took over when he saw his opponent's sword raise for another blow. Moving forward to crowd the blind man, he drove the dagger in his fist into the man's stomach while capturing his wrist with his left hand. He left the dagger buried where it was and used his right fist to concentrate a punch on the blind man's elbow. The arm buckled under the force and the sword dropped into Jothnial's waiting hand. He spun left and delivered a back kick to the man's chest, throwing him off balance. The magician pounced on his opponent and drove him to the ground. He lifted the sword high and slammed it down into the man's stomach and the dirt beyond.
Jothnial didn't know if the blade would keep the man pinned or for how long, but at least it gave him a slight head start. He turned back to the building and ran towards it. His gut told him that the structure held the way out of this god-forsaken marsh, but getting in would be a problem. The other blind man stood in the hole in the wall; he would have to go around to one of the doors or... Jothnial flung a spell at the wall about fifteen feet from where the blind man stood, blowing another hole through the thin barrier. He squeezed through the makeshift door and broke hard to the left to retrieve his sword from where it still stood, stuck into the floor. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a section of the wall at what would have been second story level shimmering as though heat waves were rising in front of it. He grabbed his sword and sprinted toward the shimmering wall. He couldn't make the jump, but magic might be able to do the trick. Timing a concussion spell to throw you upward was dangerous, but he had done it successfully before. The timing had to be perfect, but perfection was nothing new to Jothnial. The blast somersaulted him up and through the shimmering wall so fast that he almost flew straight through it into whatever was beyond. As he catapulted toward the shimmering surface, vague ima
ges began to materialize on the other side of it though he was moving far too quickly to process them before he found himself flying through a window that hadn’t been visible until now. He twisted around, clawing for something to grab onto and was just able to seize the window sill. He almost lost his grip as his momentum tried to tear his fingers loose, every tendon in his arm stretching. For a moment he was suspended horizontally, sticking straight out from the window, then time caught up with him and he swung down, slamming into a wall.
Jothnial immediately recognized that he was hanging from a second floor window of the castle that he had infiltrated almost an hour ago. He pulled himself up and peered through the window, not knowing what to expect. He saw nothing but an empty room and pulled himself through. He was prepared to find himself in the house that he had just left, but the room on the other side of the window remained the same when he tumbled inside. He had no time to figure out what had just happened because the doors on the far end of the room shook from a blow. Jothnial looked toward them just in time to see them burst open and a mob of soldiers rush through. Without a second’s hesitation, Jothnial formed a large ball of magic in his right palm and used it to create a whirlwind. He clutched his sword to his chest and wrapped the other arm around his back to secure the baby as they shot upward. The whirlwind shattered each floor as they approached and in seconds they burst through the castle's roof. Jothnial killed the whirlwind and dropped back onto what remained of the castle roof.
“Ebenezer!” he shouted to his dragon. “Get over here now! I've got a bunch of soldiers after me that really want to kill me!”
Standing exposed as he was on the castle roof, the few minutes that followed were an eternity for Jothnial. The baby on his back was screaming again, but at least that meant that she was alive. The soldiers could be heard below, shouting to each other as they tried to work out a way to get onto the roof. For a moment the world stopped and nothing happened. Despite the baby's cries and the shouts of the soldiers, silence seemed to govern the night. The stars twinkled overhead and time stood still.