by Mike Wild
She yelped as the minotaur roared and tugged directly beneath her, and she was almost pulled into its grip. She could see the beast through the smoke now—a flaming, charring, blistering thing—and as red eyes glared at her, she fired her crossbow into the top of its head. The bolt skimmed one of the beast’s horns and embedded itself in its skull but proved unlucky in the one percent chance it had of finding its brain. Goddamnit, this thing took some putting down.
Trix leapt again, and the minotaur came after her like a thing possessed. It swept at the vines with both arms, tearing them away until half the wall was bare. Its actions fanned the flames engulfing it, and it became an inferno fuelled by itself, all but consuming everything that was left to burn. Trix shielded her face from the heat as it began to stagger some, but still it came on. It became a question not only of how long it could keep this up, but how long she could, too—she was running out of safe perches, and those left were spaced increasingly farther apart. Case in point—five yards or so to the next clutch of vines—she’d need a little agility boost to sort that out.
Trix reached for her potion belt—then froze. The leather pouches on her hip were soaked through, the vials within a shattered mess. Shit—she must have landed on them when she’d fallen. Either way, she was on her own. She reassessed the leap. Given enough momentum, she could make it. As the minotaur continued tearing away at the greenery, now almost gone beneath her, she fired a bolt to distract it, then swung on the thick vine to which she clung, once, twice, three times, before launching herself across the gap. Her concentration was fixed so firmly on making the leap that she failed to notice the minotaur was swaying badly and had changed tack. Its sheer rage at its fate possessed it with enough strength for a desperate and defiant gesture of revenge for the agony she’d caused it, and it hurled its massive axe at her through the air.
The weapon spun in an arc and smashed into the wall just above and ahead of Trix, blinding her with dust and shards of stone. She flailed, knowing the jump was fudged, and instinctively grabbed the only thing she could – the haft of the axe. But her weight wrenched the weapon from the wall, and she and it dropped to land in a tangle of fallen foliage. They hit a half-second apart and Trix cried in pain as the axe’s eye punched into her side, breaking a rib, maybe two. She lay beneath the haft, gasping for breath, clutching her side, once more unable to see a damn thing. Instead, she listened, for movement, for breathing not her own, for the rustle of vines—anything to tell her where the minotaur was. Then, there—heavy footfalls some yards distant, but slow, four or five seconds between each, as if each movement was a struggle. Between them, low grunts and snorts, the sounds of a creature surprised and a little uncomprehending of the fact it was on its last legs.
It was trying to find her still, its homicidal imperative undulled even near death. But it wasn’t going to find her. The footfalls had become slower still, the grunts and snorts weaker, and then, inevitably, they were followed by the thrashing of a collapsing body and a thud.
Trix gave it a full minute before cautiously extricating herself from under the axe’s shaft, wincing in pain. The floor of the nursery had itself become a jungle, torn vines forming a thick carpet through which she had to wade. The ribs made it painful work. Thankfully, it wasn’t hard to find the minotaur. It was on its knees some yards in front of her. Upright, with arms hanging limply by its sides, head bowed. Smoke drifted in small plumes from a few still-smouldering tufts on its charred and blistered form, but otherwise it was burned alive. Its chest was still. It had ceased its grunts. It had ceased its snorts. It didn’t move at all.
Still, Trix approached cautiously, crossbow trained, stopping every foot to watch for the tiniest sign of life. There was none. At last she moved to the thing’s side, nose wrinkling at its barbecue smell, and circled it fully before finally touching it. Grabbing one of its horns—carbonised, hot to the touch—she tipped back its head. The collapsed remains of eyes whose vitreous had boiled away stared up at her, opaque and sightless. Satisfied, Trix let out a sigh of relief, then yanked the horn down to send the thing falling flat on its face.
Job’s a good ’un.
Now, where was that bloody quarterstaff?
Trix turned to pick up the weapon she’d discarded during her vault. And fell flat on her own face as something tugged at her ankle from behind. Her first thought was that she’d caught her foot in a vine, but the pull was far too strong. Her heart thudded, suspicious of something that couldn’t be. She flipped herself onto her back and found that she was in the grip of the minotaur. No, no, no, that wasn’t possible—the thing was dead. The thing was fucking dead. But for something dead, it did a pretty good job of getting back on its feet. With a couple of thuds, it rose back to full height, lifting Trix with it until she dangled upside down, head three feet from the ground. She struggled to gain release, bashing the minotaur’s hand with her quarterstaff, and, when that failed, pressing another stud to deploy a bayonet from its end. She stabbed desperately into its flesh, again and again, before the weapon was swatted from her grip. It had absolutely no effect. It wouldn’t, would it? The thing was dead.
Trix’s mind raced. What the hell was happening here? Necromancy? But from what? Where? She felt no magical field, sensed no presence other than her own. Her mind was still racing through possibilities when, without a sound other than the stomping of feet, the minotaur slung her around by the ankle, slamming her like a flyswatter into a wall, back first. A new wave of agony surged through her broken ribs, likely breaking more, and every ounce of breath was punched from her. Her head whiplashed and cracked hard against stone, then rang and sang. She was dimly aware of blood running down the back of her neck. Even had she been able, she had no time to react to any of this, as the minotaur slung her again, this time releasing her to crash and bounce across the floor, leaving her doubly stunned amidst another tangle of vines. Her heart pounded as much as her head, her vision came in vibrant, sickly waves, and when she tried to right herself, her arm collapsed, snapped at the wrist. She fell onto her back, groaning, as the floor shook beneath her—the pounding of dead feet—and then suddenly, vines and all, she was snatched up by the neck and driven against another wall. The impact knocked her sick, unable even to think, but she instinctively lashed out with feet and hands, kicking and clawing for release. None of it did any good—the minotaur’s grip tightened, and she began to choke. It would be mere seconds before her neck was crushed completely, no time at all if the beast decided to close its grip right now, on a whim.
Either way, this was it. She was going to die. As her breath drew short and her vision began to fade, she stared into the face of her deliverer, with its cracked black flesh and its melted eyes, and it seemed to her that despite an unseeing gaze it was regarding her with some curiosity. The curiosity of a vivisectionist with a lab rat. An arrogant malevolence that reminded her of her mysterious visitor back in the Grimrock.
Trix felt a surge of hope.
The ring. She’d forgotten about the ring.
She slapped at her side, searching for the artefact pocketed earlier. She tore at Velcro, fumbled with fingers gone numb. Where? Where? Then, she had it, in finger and thumb—and dropped it. She let out a gurgle of frustration. She had neither the time nor coordination for shit like this. Feet scrabbling for purchase on the wall beneath her, other hand striking the stone to keep conscious, she clenched the ring in her palm—then paused. The ring. It went against everything she knew to use it. But with not a potion to her name it was the only chance she had. She wasn’t the client, right? She knew what to expect from cursed artefacts, right? She could control it, right? There was no fucking choice, right?
There wasn’t. The minotaur seemed, somehow, to know what she planned, began punching her in the stomach even as it held her aloft. Each blow seemed not to stop until it reached her spine, breaking more ribs and mushing the organs between. Trix screamed in agony, though all that came out of her constricted throat was a kind of flubbery splurt
. The darkness nearly had her and there was no more time. She flipped the ring in her palm and slid it onto her finger.
She felt it instantly. Something in the metal. Hiding, waiting to assert its dominance on an unsuspecting mind. She couldn’t afford for it to lurk, to be insidious, as it might have been with the client, so she offered no resistance. She opened her mind, invited it in, at least partway. Suddenly she wasn’t just being punched from the outside. Visions, so brief they could not be processed, came at her one after the other like physical blows. A voice, as fast and fleeting, whispering sibilant, untranslatable things. Shadows. Sounds. Darkness. Flashes of levels she’d never seen. Blood and shrieks and cries. Amongst them all, her own blue and battered face, right here, right now, transposed with the minotaur’s, over and over and over and over again. She had no time to question why as her heart began to pound, her blood rage, her muscles tense then harden like rocks. Nausea swept through her and vomit filled her throat. But, despite it all, her eyes snapped wide with murderous intent.
HOW … DARE … THIS … THING.
She began to punch back. The minotaur staggered beneath her blows, first left, then right, left and right again, snapping its head from side to side. It felt nothing, but that didn’t matter because sheer force drove it back. She punched its neck, its shoulders, its arms, and it staggered more, released its grip, dropped her. She gave not a second’s pause, rising from where she’d fallen to deliver a spinning kick that sent it reeling backwards. Though a dead thing, a grunt escaped it. Unused air. Before it regained its balance, she’d moved and spun again, the second kick lifting it off its feet, sending it crashing to the floor. She leapt on its chest, straddling it, and pounded its face. Images of the mushed features of the client in the Grimrock flashed in her mind, but this time they did not disturb her—they pleased her. They amused her.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. That part of Trix that was still Trix knew that the ring was getting too much of a grip on her, and she forced it down. But only so far. It was a desperately fine balance. She needed the power it gave her to survive this, but give it too much rein and she’d be gone, possibly for good. She’d just have to make sure she finished this fast.
The minotaur unwittingly gave her a helping hand, grabbing her by both arms and throwing her off its prone form, back into the undergrowth. Where lay its axe. Under normal circumstances, Trix would not have been able to lift the weapon, let alone wield it, but these were not normal circumstances. The voice and the visions were louder and stronger now, half as real as real, her thoughts and feelings only partially her own. Her blood surged within her, strengthening, her, flooding her with fury at this pathetic creature that presumed to do her harm. Her world turned a roaring red. She snatched up the axe, bellowed a war cry in a tongue she’d never learned, and ran at the beast.
It was only when it was done—the minotaur lying cleaved wholly in two—that the blood surge abated some. But only some. Trix crouched above the split and mutilated remains with a feral snarl on her face, gaze whipping from side to side, hungry for further prey. The chatter in her head urged her on, louder and faster, and her gaze turned towards the corridor where she’d ordered the boffins to stay. The snarl curled into a grin, and she started to rise—then snapped back to reality as she realised she was dying. She stared at the blood dripping copiously down the heft of the axe on which she leant, at the broken wrist with which she’d somehow still managed to half wield it, and at the shattered body armour and cloth beneath, through which a curve of white bone protruded.
This was what the ring had done to her. Saved her—and saved the boffins, yes—but at what cost? She moved to rip the ring from her finger, then stopped. Wearing it was likely the only thing keeping her alive. The voice whispered in response to her realisation; seemed, even, to laugh. As it did, she saw again the face of the mysterious visitor, or, at least, the client who had fleetingly been its host, and for the first time in all her years on the levels shivered from the touch of something not just monstrous but monstrously corrupt.
She left the ring on her finger, devoted every ounce of her will to fighting its effects. She had a job to do—get the boffins home. She rose, staggering and weaving, clutching the back of her skull and her exposed rib lest her insides be loosed, and returned to the corridor. The boffins tensed as they saw her coming.
“No … don’t … be … afraid …”
But they were afraid. And who could blame them? Her voice was a bloody gurgle, she all but unrecognisable, and there was without doubt still madness in her eyes. She stretched out a hand, but the boffins turned to run. They ran the only way it was possible to run, the one way that without her to guide them they shouldn’t run. Back into The Faze.
The boffins gone, Trix groaned, collapsed to her knees, then onto her side. A red sea began slowly to flow from her, and a black sea to carry her away. She was far from shore when things grew darker still.
When the shadow loomed over her.
IV
Board Game
She couldn’t hear herself think. Not above the shouting, the shooting, the roars and the screams. Most of all, not above the drums, the never-ceasing, always-pounding drums.
Their sound was all around—and below—rallying the beasts from the depths. So many monstrous things. No chance to plan, only to react, fire, duck, run. Shoulder to shoulder, back to back, turning, twisting, fighting, fleeing. The world was chaos, flickering torch beams and muzzle flashes in the dark. Weapons backfired, arms and heads vanished in cloud puffs of blood. Faces loomed, sometimes human, often not. Glaring eyes, dripping fangs, roars of hot, foul breath. On a flash of green or a flash of flesh, a hiss or a cry, decisions had to be made. Friend or foe. Live or die. God, the panic—everywhere people falling; falling over bodies, or to friendly fire, or the slash of a blade or thud of a club or slice of a claw from nowhere. Escape was the only option. Scrabbling, slipping, sliding in blood. And all the time, the drums. Those damned orc drums.
“Cease fire!” someone shouted. “You’re bringing the bloody roof down!”
“We stop firing, they’ll be all over us!”
“They’re already all over us!”
Then, more people lost as the corridor cracked, collapsed about them. Coughing. Retching. Arms outstretched to help those who’d made it through. From farther back, the cries of the trapped. Trying to get out. Trying. Their cries didn’t last, silenced in squelching of flesh or cracking of bone or gnashing or tearing of teeth. Bullets were pumped into the dark.
“I ordered you to cease fire!”
“But, sir, we—AAAARRGH!”
“Christ. Aimed fire only! Stay together! Make for the stairs!”
The stairs. Back to level two. As always, so near yet so very far. And more of the things behind them. Other things, different things, stranger things. Drawn by the drums. Drawn from chambers yet unfound, passages untrodden, hidden places behind grating stone and clanking metal gate. Christ, who could have known? Who could have known what lay down here? That what they’d fought on the surface was only the start?
So—get out. Seal them in. Stupid to think we could win down here. Stupid to try to make another world our own.
“Elly? Elly, where are you?”
“Here. Here. Right here.”
“Where’s Ian? Sergeant Hunter, report!”
“On your six, sis. The Major’s down. Hell of a dance, eh?”
A dance? She supposed it was. A frantic dance of mismatched partners joined in flashes of blade and bursts of point-blank fire. Ammo tore into bark flesh, jelloid flesh, glistening flesh, dead flesh, until clips emptied or weapons blew. More faces loomed—war-painted faces, lizard faces, faces that weren’t really faces at all. Blood all over. Rainbow blood that hissed and burned.
Then, suddenly, the stairs up. The way off the level. This damned level too far. She and Elly dragging the injured by the scruff of their necks, hunkered down to avoid the bullets hammering over them from above. Had to hurry. They were going to bl
ow the arch. Seal off the stairs. If they didn’t make it, they were on their own.
But Ian. He’d just checked in, and she’d already lost track of him. Where was he? Still down there. Down there alone.
“I’m going back.”
“What? No, Trix, you can’t!”
“I’m going back.”
Back. Back through the horde to save him. To try. But then she saw him lying where he’d fallen, a thick green tentacle wound around his ankle, dragging him off into the dark. Slow at first, enough for him to stretch out an imploring hand, but then he was gone. Gone, with a snap and a scream.
Trrrrrriiiiiiiiiixxxxxxx …
Her name echoed in her mind, and part of her expected to awake. For this was how her dream always ended. But this time it didn’t end. Instead, she began to run after her brother. Run after him into the dark. And as she did, the laughter began. Laughter that followed her down endless corridors. She ran and ran and ran, but there was no end. Each time she saw an end, a cascade of stone slabs tumbled into her vision to advance the corridor on. Trix realised she was running deeper and deeper into the levels—she needed no stairs—and she was no longer sure why. She no longer cared about Ian. Ian was unimportant. Ian could die. She was where she was supposed to be, deep down in the dark. It was her home. She was no longer running now but swooping through chambers—vast, vast places unlike any she’d ever seen—approaching her goal. There it was before her—the dark, swirling maelstrom, the welcoming maelstrom, the source of the laughter, the source of her name. She entered it, joined it, and the world began to spin. Faster. Faster. All the levels through which she’d run spun with her, spun away from her, expanding into infinity and then exploding there. The levels were everything. She began to laugh with the laughter. Laugh and laugh and laugh. Then, suddenly, there was no more laughter, only pain. She saw a red puddle around her and knew something had broken her and made her bleed. But that was okay because Ian was there. Ian kneeling beside her. She no longer needed to find Ian because Ian had found her. Ian would quieten the laughter and help her and heal her and show her the way home.