Death Flag

by Richard Haygood

  The troll turned and shambled forward with its rolling gait, lifting a hand up high in another attempt to smash him. Madison threw himself forward this time instead of to the side, dodging under the massive arm before it came down. He skidded to a halt and then spun on his heel once he was behind the creature, reversed his blade, and shoved it forward in a fast, two-handed attack. The sharp edge slid along the inside of the troll’s leg, cutting through the thick flesh and drawing blood. The troll whipped around just as it had earlier with a backhanded attack, but Madison was ready for it this time.

  He let go of his weapon since there was no way to hang on to it, dropped low to the ground in a crouch, and simultaneously pulled the knife from his boot that he had stashed there earlier. He jumped up and vaulted onto the creature, slamming the knife down into the crevice where its neck met its shoulder with both hands. The blade sank in to the hilt, and the troll instinctively started thrashing about from the pain and the desire to get Madison off of its back. Madison was thrown clear in its fit of rage, and he scrambled back several more feet in order to put some distance between himself and the enraged creature.

  He watched as it twisted around, thrashing its arms back and forth wildly and trying to connect with anything it could do damage to. Madison eyed the weapon he had dropped on the ground as it bounced around underneath the monster’s feet. It was clearly a weapon the troll had used before since going for it had been the troll’s first instinct, and Madison was worried about his odds without it. As it stood, he was barely able to hold his own by using the purloined weapon, and he didn’t have any realistic way to keep doing damage without it. Thankfully, the troll didn’t even seem to notice it was there as it hammered away at anything and everything within its reach. He doubted he’d be able to lure the creature away a second time, and if it calmed down enough to sensibly follow him, it would also calm down enough to find the dropped weapon. That meant he had to come up with another solution—and fast.

  Throwing caution away completely, Madison sprinted forward just as the creature turned away from him and vaulted up onto its back. He hit hard, driving his knee into the middle of its back while wrapping one hand around its thick neck and the other around the hilt of the dagger that was still buried there. The troll spun around and reached back with its gangly arms, trying to grab ahold of Madison, but it was too late. Madison ripped the dagger free and then drove it back down into the troll’s spine, right at the base of its neck. He shoved it in as far as he could and then let go with his other hand. He shifted all of his weight onto the dagger as he fell away, twisting the buried blade around so that it would do as much damage as possible on the way out.

  Madison hit the ground hard and rolled away. He came up into a crouch with the dagger held up in front of him just in time to see the troll collapse onto its knees and then fall over onto its side at an awkward angle. Madison waited where he was, panting hard as he tried to catch his breath and watching for any reaction from the troll. The rattled wheezing continued as the creature sucked in fast, shallow breaths for a time, and then its chest collapsed as all of the air left its lungs, and it fell silent.

  Finally, after a long and tense moment, Madison warily circled around until he could see the troll clearly. It stared up at him, unblinking, through glossy eyes. Madison watched for another minute, just to make sure it wasn’t going to suddenly come back to life, and then walked forward and stabbed the dagger down into the side of its head. It wasn’t the honorable thing to do, but he was determined to make sure the thing was dead, and he wasn’t going to take any chances. There was never anything wrong with a solid double-tap just to be certain.

  He cleaned up Shayna’s dagger as best as he could, shaking away the blood, and then stuck it into his belt before repeating the process and returning his own dagger to his boot. He retrieved the strange black blade and gave it a once over as he picked it up. The once-sharp but nicked edge had been badly abused. The blade was broken off in several places, leaving dull gaps in its length, and it was chipped in a dozen more. Still, it was the best thing he had in terms of a weapon, so he resigned himself to carry it with him.

  He stumbled over to where he had left Shayna’s body when he finished and stared down at it dumbly. He was too tired to think at the moment, and a cold, emotionless state had settled over him the moment the fight ended, but some subconscious part of his brain knew that everything would catch up with him eventually. All he could do for the moment was press forward and keep moving. Every moment he spent down here was another that someone else might die somewhere else. He felt like he was responsible for every single person that had come along with him—and it was his pride and his failure that had put them in this horrible state.

  He crouched down beside her and pressed two fingers against her neck and waited, hoping against all hope that he was wrong and that he would find a pulse. He waited for a long time and then questioned whether or not he was actually feeling in the right spot, so he shifted his hand and tried a second, and then desperately, he pressed his fingers against her wrist. At long last, he thought he felt a faint heartbeat. It was low and weak and was likely his brain playing tricks on him, but it was enough to make him bite back a rapidly swelling sense of urgency and anticipation. Holding his breath, he pressed his other hand against her chest and watched for any sign of breathing. His fingers were numb from the cold and the abuse of gripping that strange weapon so tightly during the fight against the troll, and he didn’t trust them. He materialized the strange rod again, willed its magical light into existence, and then watched. The soft and strange illumination from the moss wasn’t sufficient—but this was. Ever so faintly, he was able to make out the rise and fall of her chest and she slowly breathed.

  Madison let out the breath he had been holding and allowed the relief he so desperately wanted to feel to surge through him. It was like a cleansing wave passing over him, and it did some good to help the fatigue he felt. Now that he had his answer, he stashed away the small light source. Without knowing how long it would last, he didn’t want to use it if he didn’t have to. Plus, he was afraid that it might draw even stranger creatures to him. He very much doubted that there were more than one of those trolls anywhere close by, but he wasn’t willing to take the chance of attracting others. After all, it had to have been feeding on something in order to stay alive down here all this time.

  Madison held out his hand and the mostly-used bottle of healing liquid appear there as he summoned it from his storage unit. He uncorked the flask and then lifted Shayna’s head just slightly, tilted it back, and then slowly poured the rest of the liquid into her mouth. She didn’t reject it, and she didn’t fall into a coughing fit, so he had to assume that she had somehow swallowed it, though he didn’t see any outwardly visible sign that she was doing so.

  He made the bottle disappear back into his inventory when he was finished and then took a breath to steady himself. He had no idea what was wrong with her, and he didn’t know if the medicine would actually help or not. He hadn’t used enough last time he administered it to her, and Burke had given her more once he saw the extent of her injuries. At the moment, however, he was playing a dangerous game. He couldn’t just pour the liquid down her throat and still provide her with someplace safe to recover. The more he gave her, the healthier she would be, and the better her odds of surviving were; but, conversely, that also meant that he was knowingly tacking on time that she would have to sleep away in order to recover. Burke had forcibly woken her out of a state of medicine-induced slumber less than a full day ago, and Erin had been hesitant to do so even then. He hadn’t read the instruction booklet on powerful magic potions, but he was willing to be that repeating a dangerous process twice in a row upped the risk factor rather significantly—and that wasn’t even accounting for the fact that she would be completely helpless until she woke up.

  Clenching his teeth together and setting his jaw, he made a decision. He materialized the small bottle of Rush he had pilfered from the
infirmary and stoppered the cork. He hesitated for a brief moment, staring at the small vile, and then turned it up, swallowing a huge mouthful of the fiery, cinnamon-flavored liquid. It had been faintly reminiscent of a candy before, albeit one with a kick. This time, however, it felt like he was swallowing molten lead. It burned against his tongue, the roof his mouth felt like he had taken a huge bite of oven-hot pizza, and his already-raw throat felt like it was being peeled back from the inside.

  The liquid hit his stomach like a bolt of lightning, and he involuntarily doubled over, squeezing his eyes shut against the pain and bracing himself against the cold cavern floor with one hand. His breath started coming in short, rapid spurts, and he was hammered with a wave of nausea as his body rejected the foreign substance. Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead, his face became flushed and turned red, and his skin felt like it was trying to crawl away. Madison reached up and rubbed his face with a shaky hand, wanting to scratch his skin off. Forcing himself to take a deep breath, he pushed down the sick feeling and made himself to focus on where he was and what he was doing.

  He gingerly scooped up Shayna’s small body into his arms, lifted her up and held her against his chest. Then, putting one foot in front of the other, he marched out of the room and into the darkness of the tunnels once again.

  Madison had been warned that there would be side effects from using the potion by Rae when he first discovered it—especially too much and too often—and Burke had administered only the smallest amount before when he gave it to Shayna to wake her him. The problem was that no one had bothered to explain what those side effects were. Regardless, he was willing to bet that making it out alive was worth taking the risks for whatever might happen. Like the warning label on a bad infomercial, he could hear the fast-talking announcer read off ‘May cause nausea, vomiting, irritability, and uncontrollable movement due to excessive energy. Do not take with other unknown magical substances. Consult with your local healer first.’

  Madison smirked at his own humor, a joke that no one else in the entire world would understand, and started paying more attention to where he was going. Just like before, the tunnel was straight and narrow and didn’t branch off. There was only a single passageway for him to travel along, and it didn’t really require very much thought to do so. The floor was relatively smooth, so he didn’t have to worry about tripping over anything, and there weren’t any stalagmites except in a few places along the edge of the wall. The troll creature had either cleaned them away long ago, or it had inherited this passageway from something else when it took over that had done away with them. The cave system had a rather natural look to it, but Madison couldn’t forget those strangely hewn steps near the river that he had climbed over.

  The thing that bothered him was that he didn’t seem to be making any progress toward finding an exit. If anything, the cave system seemed to slope down more than it went up. He followed along through the tunnels, taking each twist and turn for lack of any other direction to go, but he never found anything to give him any indication that he was moving in the right direction. He moved ahead at a steady pace for about an hour before finally stopping to rest.

  In truth, he wasn’t any more tired than he had been before, and carrying her body hadn’t really done much to drain him. If anything, the Rush was doing its job: he wasn’t bouncing off the walls, but he was wide-awake and alert. Strangely, however, he was also keenly aware of the fact that he needed rest. His muscles were tired, and he felt fatigued as if he had tried to stay up all night studying for a test after working a double the day before. He knew that he was pushing his body beyond its normal limits, and that’s exactly what it felt like. But, at the same time, it wasn’t enough to bother him. As long as he could swing a sword and put one foot in front of the other, he wasn’t going to stop.

  He lowered her body to the ground, carefully propping her up against the wall of the tunnel, and pulled out a small piece of jerky from his supplies to chew on while administering another small dose of the healing brew. A small amount of color had returned to her face, but it wasn’t nearly as much as he had seen before. Her pulse was still incredibly weak when he was actually able to find it, and he couldn’t tell that she was actually breathing any easier either. Sighing, he put away the medicine, swallowed the last mouthful of dried meat, picked her up, and started moving again.

  He pushed himself into a brisk walk, which was as fast as he felt he could move without jostling her around too much, and started taking chances. He had been somewhat cautious so far, focusing on listening for sounds that might indicate trouble and straining his eyes against the dim light as he watched for anything dangerous, but he disregarded that now. Rather than slowing down at turns and creeping around corners, he simply pushed ahead as quickly as he could. He was willing to face whatever he came across head-on if it meant being able to make it out in time to save her. The one thought he couldn’t stand was that she might die because he had been too slow.

  Madison pushed ahead like that until he lost track of how long he had been moving. There was nothing to give any indication of the passing of night or day, and everything was just one long, continuous blur of pale-blue light and cold stone walls as he hustled along through the tunnel. The further he went, the more he became convinced that he was slowly traveling deeper into the earth and not up and out like he had hoped. Still, he didn’t have any other option. He didn’t feel safe wasting the extra time it would take to return to the river, and even then, he wasn’t certain that he could keep Shayna safe while floating downstream. He had no idea if there was another waterfall, where it came out, or how far downstream he would be when he did. If there was another series or rapids or a sharp drop-off like the one he had passed over getting down here, she’d be toast.

  The ground shifted abruptly, sloping downhill at an aggressive slant, and he almost tripped forward before he realized what was going on. Bending his knees and leaning back to maintain his balance, he clutched Shayna tightly to his chest for fear of losing his grip on her and slid down something resembling a long shoot. He sat back on his heels as he skidded down the stone slide, using his weight to slow his rate of descent, and then quickly came up into a trot when he hit the bottom.

  He exited out into a cavernous space that was so massive and empty that he was hit with a fleeting sense of agoraphobia after being in the tightly-cramped tunnels for so long. The ceiling of the cavern was somewhere high above him, and he only had a vague sense of where it began due to the luminescent moss. The lichen had been thinly spread until then, growing in sparse and seemingly-odd patches that were rarely bigger than a foot across, but the entire ceiling seemed to be covered in massive waves of the plant. He could also see several other colors that cropped up in the room as well, and they seemed to grow up from the ground in random places. He assumed that they were clinging to some type of rock formation since he couldn’t come up with any other reasonable explanation, and the orange and green-tinted light gave him a reasonable view for the first time since he had extinguished the magical torch.

  More startling, however, was that everything he could see was covered in some type of plant. There was a thick carpet of grass that began a few feet in front of him and extended out as far as he could see in paths that were lined with trees and plants of various shapes and sizes. Everything he could possibly imagine—and some he couldn’t—seemed to have been gathered here, giving it the look of a strangely-lit and well-tended garden from a fairy tale rather than a bleak cavern buried in the belly of a mountain. Madison hesitated, caught off-guard by what he was seeing, and vaguely wondered if vivid hallucinations were one of the possible side effects of Rush.

  He stepped forward cautiously, slowly setting one foot onto the grassy path as if it were a trap that might give way the moment he transferred his weight to it. When he was convinced that it was actually just plain grass, he pushed ahead, quickly moving along the pathway. Before long, he realized that it was likely leading him toward the center of the
cavern. His natural instinct was to run across as quickly as he could, but he didn’t want to risk hurting Shayna by doing that. The eerie sight set him on edge and left him feeling nervous for a reason he couldn’t quite put his finger on. It wasn’t just the fact that it was so strange of a sight with no actual occurrence, but something else. Someone had to be tending to this garden. It was too perfectly manicured to simply exist in the wild. Trees and flowers didn’t naturally grow in rows, and they didn’t naturally grow underground: that meant that they had been planted and then tended to without being allowed to grow wild. Something, or someone, was inevitably going to still be close by, and given that the only living creature he had seen in hours was a hulking troll, Madison wasn’t exactly keen on the idea of venturing out and meeting new people at the moment.

  The uneasy feeling grew stronger, pressing down on him like a weight from above. He felt as if there was another presence towering over him, some monolithic intelligence that was scrutinizing him and his every action, looking for faults. It was akin to the same feeling he got whenever a Guardian looked at him while at K’yer Utane, only stronger. It was as if he were being judged for some unknown reason, yet he also knew that the outcome was entirely inconsequential.

  He heard a noise from high above him, and he watched as a dark shape detached itself from the roof of the cavern high above. The dark figured swooped around in a circle, and Madison tracked its movement by watching as it blotted out the illumination from the moss behind it. He was certain that it was watching him at this point. Whatever this being was, it accounted for the anxiety he felt building within him. It knew that he was in its garden, and it didn’t want him there—which was fine by Madison: he would have been happy enough passing through without ever having to meet up with whatever it was that could blot out that much space at once.