by Sam Ryder
“Go to sleep,” Beat said from her small hut. “I can hear you tossing and turning and thinking all the way over here.”
“You can hear me thinking?” I said.
“Loudly. And annoyingly.”
I snorted. “Okay, what was I thinking so loudly and annoyingly?”
“You know, heroic man thoughts. About the folks in the Circle and how you want to save them and build an army to fight the forces of evil. Oh, and about the luscious curves of Eve’s body.”
For once I was not thinking about the last thing, but now that she’d reminded me, all I could think about was the image of Eve bending over. Damn you, Beat! “Fine. So I think loudly. What else am I supposed to do?”
“Sleep.”
“You’re not sleeping either.”
“Because of all the noise you’re making.”
“You’re not worried at all about the new recruits?”
“I don’t know them. Plus, why worry about the things I can’t change? In the Black, I can help. I am strong. But the Circle is out of our hands. We are Warriors. Level 2. Let those above our paygrade worry about the bigger picture.”
It was probably good advice, but I couldn’t take it. It just wasn’t in my nature. I liked to understand things. For example, I’d needed to know the reasons why that pointless sales system at work had been so inefficient. I had torn it apart, inspected all the pieces, and then put them back together in such a way that it was better. Almost like the way the primordial ooze goddess-spittle stuff remade us. Then again, remaking the sales system hadn’t really worked out so well for me. “Maybe you’re right,” I said.
“Of course I am,” Beat said. “Hey, I’m guessing you’re not thinking about leaving anymore.”
Again, she was right. “No.”
“Good,” she said. “Neither am I.”
“I’m glad. Let’s kick monster ass together.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
~~~
I finally fell asleep but felt like I was awoken thirty seconds later by Beat’s strong hand shaking my shoulder. “It’s time,” she said.
I blinked, immediately transitioning to alertness. The sky had darkened. The Black was coming. It felt almost like Christmas morning, except instead of running downstairs to open presents we’d be checking to see if Santa had burned down the house without even eating the cookies and drinking the milk.
Eve was waiting for us. Lace and Millania were already standing nearby. “Even now, the new…Warriors are awakening…and emerging from their cocoons,” Eve said. She was looking less exhausted now. Her rest had worked wonders. Still, she spoke slowly and took breaths at strange places mid-sentence. She wouldn’t be going out recruiting for a long time. Which made tonight’s Circle even more important. Please let some of them survive, I thought. I knew I was being greedy, so I rephrased the prayer in my mind. Please let one of them survive.
I wanted so badly to rush off and join the new recruits in the Circle. We could fight together. They would still get the early training and experience they needed, and we could ensure more of them survived.
Beat nudged me and shook her head. Reading my mind again. “Don’t do anything dumb,” she said.
I took a deep breath. I would follow Eve’s orders, like I had the last time when we got Millania.
This time, everything went exactly the way it was supposed to. We walked to the Circle while there was still an hour or so of dim light left. The Circle of boulders stood before us, packed so tightly the only way out was to climb them, as I had done with Vrill’s help. I searched the tops of the boulders for her dark, strong form, but the area was empty.
There was no troll, a fact that gave me great relief.
There were, however, inhuman screams.
At first I thought it was pain and fear, the sounds of the new recruits dying. But the more I listened, the more I realized it was something else. Something darker and more sinister. The cries of monsters. But what type? “What is that?” I asked Lace.
There was no amusement on her face now. “Vostra,” she said. “Burrowers. They move through the ground at speed. They eat their way through. They have no heads but many mouths. Their bodies are covered with gnashing teeth. I’ve fought them twice. They are rare and deadly. Deadlier than anything you have faced. They are the worst of the monsters who can survive during daylight. Bad luck.” She turned from the Circle and walked away.
The others did the same, Eve included. None of them had any hope that one of the Warriors could survive such monsters on their first attempt.
I stayed. I watched. I waited. Hoping against hope. I knew I needed to leave, the daylight waning. If I was caught out here in the Black on my own, I’d be toast too.
I waited another few minutes. Finally, I gave up. I was about to turn away when I saw something. A shadow cresting the cliff. Hauling itself up inch by inch. The blue lioness stood atop the cliff and roared, causing my heart to leap within my chest.
And then she was dragged back down into the Circle, her roar trailing away into deafening silence.
All the new blood had been spilled.
NINETEEN
TIME
No one could deny it. The Blacks were getting longer. They were at least double the usual length now.
The only good thing was that the last few attacks had been milder. There were no glowing rock-bombs. No direct attacks on the wards. None of us had died. We were all beating the averages. Except Millania, who still had two Blacks to go to make it to twelve.
Then again, it felt like the calm before the storm.
Eve hadn’t fought with us for a while as she needed to recover so she could do her blink-and-teleport thing again. Tonight, however, she joined us. She’d been quiet ever since the disaster during the last Circle.
I tried not to be angry with her, but I was. The loss of life felt like such a waste.
Not that I had any better ideas.
Despite my life being extended another day each time I survived the Black, I felt time running through my fingers, like primordial ooze through a fresh cocoon.
Eve stood beside me on the hilltop while we waited for the right time to head out. Her monstrous panther prowled nearby, radiating nervous energy, like a caged beast looking for an escape route. “I’m willing to talk about change,” Eve said softly.
I cocked my head in her direction, genuinely surprised. “Good,” I said. “We should all discuss it. Us, you, the goddesses.”
She shook her head. “The goddesses shouldn’t be involved. They are too distraught at what the enemy is doing. Ever since their hearts were taken, they’ve had an uncanny connection to the Morgoss. It drains them day by day. I fear the end is approaching.”
“Is it really that desperate? It’s been bad for years, right? Is this really any worse?” I hoped she would laugh and tell me it’s been like this for a decade or more. That we’d hit a bump in the road and things would flatten out again soon.
She didn’t. “The five of us might be the last chance to save them,” she said.
Super. I didn’t ask any more questions after that.
Without any of us needing to say anything, we started down the hill. Lace ran, always having to be first to the bottom. Beat and I walked side by side, her presence always a comfort. Millania stayed a distance away, as usual. Though she felt like a part of the group now, she kept us at arm’s length, rarely speaking. Eve rode Souza, the panther bounding with long strides, the air swirling Eve’s dress around her hips just as it had when I rode behind her on the motorcycle on the night that changed my meaningless life in so many ways.
Tonight, however, I felt a sense of dread. It wasn’t the usual sense of dread, stronger, palpable, like the air had a thickness to it. The landscape was already dark, the sky barely light enough for us to see where we placed our feet.
We lit demontorches just as the Black arrived like a vice of darkness clamping us between its shadowy prongs. I gripped my torch tightly, my knuckles turnin
g white.
In my other hand I held my hammer. The weapon felt like an extension of my arm now. When I swung the mighty weapon, it was like swinging my fist. I could hit the precise spot I intended to hit. I was finally beginning to think of myself as a Warrior.
And yet I knew surviving another Black was like slapping a Band-Aid on a mortal wound. You might stem the flow of blood for a while, but eventually it would spill anyway. And then you would die. There had to be more we could do. More I could do.
With the others, I tossed my torch to the ground, creating our circle of light.
We waited.
There were sounds in the night, faraway. Howls. Screams. Shrieks. Unholy sounds that spoke of limbs being torn from bodies. I hoped the monsters were fighting each other. Then again, that would give the Morgoss more monster corpses to add to its dark-magic stew. The Black would lengthen until that’s all there was. And then it would be over. We needed to stop it somehow, but according to Minertha only a Protector would be able to. And the Three had been unable to agree on the new Protector. It was a vicious logic cycle.
I knew what I had to do—what I had to try.
The attack came in the middle of my thoughts. Not from the loud monsters in the distance, who couldn’t sneak up on us no matter how hard they tried, but from the ground, right beneath our feet.
The Vostra, I thought as a claw slashed my ankle. Dread washed over me but was swiftly combated by a surge of adrenaline through my veins. It was game time. Time to mash buttons and perform combination attacks until our enemies were laid low.
I almost ran away screaming when I saw my first Vostra. Lace—and some of the others too, before they’d been killed—talked of the Vostra often, describing them as waking nightmares, creatures you wouldn’t wish upon your worst enemy. As the first one emerged from the ground, crumbling dirt and stones falling away from its muscular body like water dripping from one stepping from a bath, I understood. Really understood.
Well, except for my old boss, Patricia Martin, I might make an exception for her. I wondered if UPS would deliver a Vostra to her house if I had it sedated and gift-wrapped.
The monster in front of me had at least a dozen mouths, each bristling with double rows of razor-sharp teeth. It had no head, just a weird neck-stump. The first mouth was just below the stump, with a cluster of two more on its chest. There was a row of mouths across its abdomen, and another where its private parts should’ve been. And when it swung a hand at me…
You guessed it. Another mouth, right there in its palm. Small but vicious, the teeth chattering at me like a deranged chihuahua hopped up on caffeine.
I bobbed low and to the right, the mouth-punch grazing my shoulder. My knees now bent, I sprang, driving my body into its chest like a nail from a nail gun.
Which, in hindsight, was stupid.
Even as I drove the Vostra backwards and to the ground, the damn thing’s chest-mouths were gnawing on me, shredding the flesh of my shoulder and burrowing into the muscle.
“Fuck!” I shouted, rolling away and off the creature even as its mouths continued to snap at me. It shoved a foot in my direction and I had to scramble back because, yeah, another fucking mouth gnashed at me from its heel.
This was seriously messed up in a world that had a lot of that kind of shit.
I managed to fight to my feet and the Vostra did the same. I kept the creature in my peripheral vision while I did my best to survey the rest of the area. Around me was carnage. Beat grappled with one, her powerful hands holding it at arm’s length while it snapped at her. Luckily, she’d found a place on its arms to hold onto without being chewed up. Still, she’d been bitten at least once, a nasty bite wound dripping blood down her arm. Millania, who was an impressive warrior in her own right, had been forced to back away right up to the edge of the Black. Tendrils of darkness seemed to reach for her, preparing to drag her into the shadows. Two Vostra stalked her. Even Lace was in trouble. Though her catlike quickness allowed her to dodge most of the attacks, there were dozens of Vostra now, and more were still dragging themselves from their underground burrows. One grabbed her ankle as it emerged, biting down hard. She screamed and stabbed at it with a dagger and it released her, but the damage was already done. She hobbled away at half-speed.
The Vostra in front of me was joined by another. Then another. My heart sank.
I should’ve known based on what I’d been told and what I’d experienced thus far that this adventure wasn’t going to last forever, but something about this end felt wrong. And not just because I was about to be eaten by many-mouthed monsters. Because of the Three. They were ethereal beings of remarkable power, now drained of all hope and energy. It wasn’t right.
Not that the Vostra cared. They circled me, faking attacks and making me flinch. Seeming to relish the chase itself.
I took a deep breath and gripped my hammer, preparing to kill as many as I could before they killed me, which I hoped would be enough to give the others a chance.
That’s when I realized I hadn’t seen Eve and Souza when I’d surveyed the scene.
A glint of eye-shine on the edge of the Black caught my attention, hope springing up like a clogged fountain breaking through the muck. I swung toward the set of panther eyes and then swung back, attacking a different Vostra at the same moment as Souza leapt from her haunches, mauling the first monster from behind.
Instead of aiming my hammer blow high like I usually would—they had no head to hit—I targeted my enemy’s legs. Mobility was key here. The Vostra knew it, which was why they attacked from beneath, trying to injure our legs to render us immobile.
Well, two could play at that game.
Even as the Vostra tried to drive both its palm-mouths into the sides of my head, I ducked and brought my hammer across its knees. I heard bones snap as I followed through, the monster flipping over the top of me. I spun, seeing the aftermath. Its teeth were snapping wildly in all directions, but it couldn’t pull itself back up. It tried to use its powerful arms to drag its body toward me, but it was as slow as a slug now—its legs dead and useless.
Fuck yeah.
“Go for their legs!” I shouted, hoping the others were still alive and could hear me. I couldn’t risk looking for them, as the next Vostra was already coming at me, furious at what I’d done to its buddy.
Now that I understood the strategy, I felt invigorated. Confident in my ability to take these nightmarish creatures down.
First, I used my hammer like a spear, shoving the Vostra back. It tried to eat my weapon, but…metal. I almost chuckled. No head equaled no brain. These things were mindless killing machines with certain instincts that usually allowed them to emerge victorious. But that didn’t make them smart.
I faked left and went right, grinning as the many-mouthed monster fell for the feint, lunging in the wrong direction. I slammed my hammer down on the backs of its legs and it toppled over with a dozen simultaneous shrieks. As it sprawled face first, I noticed the mouths set into its back. Ugh.
For good measure, I pounded my hammer into its ankles, hearing a satisfying crunch of shattered bones.
The others were having more success now too. Astride Souza, Eve was almost untouchable, bounding around the lighted area and slashing her longsword across legs and ankles. Millania, who was drenched in her own green blood, had turned the tide against the two Vostra that had cornered her, using her favored three-prong trident to pierce their legs again and again until they lost strength and toppled over.
Beat, being Beat, had created a pile of four or five Vostra corpses, lighting them on fire with the demontorches. They screamed as their flesh sizzled and spat, eventually going silent.
A couple of the injured monsters tried to burrow back underground, and I finally got to see how they did it. They used their mouths like drills, chomping at the dirt to break it up before they swallowed the earth whole. The broken-up bits shot out from the mouth on their behinds, like a car spouting smoke from its exhaust.
&nbs
p; Interesting to observe, but not so much that I hesitated before slamming my hammer down again and again on their bodies before they could escape. Eventually they stopped wriggling. Dead.
All counted, the six of us had taken out twenty-two of them (counting Eve’s massive panther). Pretty badass.
Still, it was a close call. The tide had felt moments away from turning against us, resulting in the massacre of the only ones left between the Morgoss and the Three.
I knew wars could be won and lost by a single battle. The next time we might not be so lucky.
As we helped Lace and Millania tie tourniquets on their many wounds until Eve could get them to the ooze, I resigned myself to the choice I’d made earlier. Protector or not, I’d need to go face the Morgoss’s dark magic before time ran out on all of us.
And I would need to go alone.
TWENTY
BLOOD AND DIRT
The others were sleeping.
Lace and Millania were both down in the gully, undergoing ooze treatment, as I liked to call it. They would need to be repaired all the way up until the next Black. We were all hoping they’d be ready by then, or else we’d be down another two Warriors.
Beat had taken three bites, not enough to require a full ooze bath, so Eve had wrapped her wounds with ooze-soaked bandages. She too was slumbering, snoring slightly in her hut.
My shoulder was still raw from being chewed, but I could feel my own ooze bandage working, knitting the mangled muscle and skin back together.
I planned to wait another hour or so, and then set out to find the Morgoss.
Eve found me watching the bronze sun climb the smoke-colored sky.
“Will Lace and Millania be okay?” I asked.
She answered without speaking, a single nod. She sat beside me, pulling her legs against her body, wrapping her arms around them. “You should sleep,” I said.