by Sam Ryder
The sextuplet of red eyes followed us.
Fire shot into the air in a blaze of sparks when another large monster corpse was dumped into the center pit. The demonfire was changing, morphing, its flames transitioning from red to orange to blue to green to an eerie black-light purple. Instead of spewing smoke like normal fire, shadows poured from the pit. Darkness. The Black. It wafted toward the ceiling and then up through a chute, heading for the outside world, feeding the ever-lengthening nights.
We were in the presence of the dark magic, but how could we stop it? We could kill all the monster workers, but that would only pause the magic. More monsters would come. We couldn’t kill them all, could we? No, we either needed to disturb the dark spell or destroy the Morgoss. I wasn’t sure which task was more formidable.
“What now?” Beat asked when I stopped, eyeing the pit.
“What’s that?” I asked. The question was directed more to the universe than to Beat. I’d spotted something glowing across the room, near where the six eyes were watching us from.
Beat followed my gaze. “An artifact,” she breathed.
As soon as she said it, I knew she was right. This was the sort of thing the Seekers came here for—what Vrill had once lived for, until her friend had been killed on just such a mission. I knew Vrill’s armor was badass, but what other sorts of artifacts were there? Were they really worth all the effort and risk to obtain them?
Vrill didn’t think so, but maybe she was wrong. The Three seemed to want them pretty badly. That had to count for something.
“I’m going for it,” I said. “Cover me.”
Beat snorted. “I left my assault rifle in my other loincloth.”
“Just…kill some monsters, yeah?”
“Now that I understand. Be careful.”
“You too.” With that said, I took off running, still tight against the wall, tracked the entire way by the three sets of eyes, which presumably belonged to the Three’s archenemies.
Behind me, I heard the telltale sound of Beat’s spear being hammered against her shield. “Dinnertime boys!” she called. “Come and get it.”
In my peripheral vision I saw every single monster turn toward her, which made me want to turn around and go back to help her. I couldn’t lose another friend on this mission.
Then again, I needed an advantage or I might lose everyone and everything I had left on this desolate planet.
I refocused on that glowing object on the far side of the room, finally breaking away from the wall. The monsters were fully distracted—none gave chase. I heard growls behind me and then Beat’s war cry. If I was fast enough, I could get back before she had to face too many of the monsters on her own.
That’s when the three sets of eyes emerged from the shadows.
Except they weren’t three sets of two eyes each. It was one set of six eyes.
I was only facing one of the Morgoss, which should’ve been a relief. At the moment, however, all I could feel was a suffocating sense of dread as I stood before the six-eyed architect of the defeat of goddesses.
The creature peeled itself away from the wall. I couldn’t make out the shape of its body, its form amorphous, shifting, like spilled ink on a flat surface. It moved like smoke, roiling, twisting, painting the air.
Shit. How do you fight something without a concrete form or body?
I didn’t have much time to contemplate the question, because the Morgoss swooped toward me with a speed that defied its prior slow, methodical movements.
Swinging my hammer at smoke felt pointless, so I pretended I was on fire.
Yep, that’s right. I stopped, dropped and rolled.
I felt the coldest of cold sensation as the Morgoss whipped past, like an icy wind in a Chicago winter. I clambered back to my feet and spun around.
Holy holy holy…
The Morgoss was no longer smoke, having solidified into a bipedal creature of darkness that stood about four heads taller than me. Its legs were thick, knotted with muscle and bone and dark red veins, all of which were on the outside. The creature had no skin. Which meant I could see its organs and skeleton and even its heart, pulsing back and forth between bright red and shadowy darkness. With each beat, a puff of the Black shot up, following the demonfire’s emissions into the shaft in the ceiling.
The Morgoss had not only created the Black, they were the Black. The dark magic they’d created was only furthering it, taking the night to a whole new level.
Its face was haunting—its eyes empty black pits, its nose twin slits directly in the bone, its mouth devoid of teeth. Despite its lack of chompers, I sensed this creature could devour me with a single bite if I let it get too close.
I also realized something else:
It was vulnerable in this form.
When it was the amorphous smoke I couldn’t hurt it. But it couldn’t hurt me either, or it wouldn’t have transformed. Like this, it could hurt me—kill me—but maybe I could also kill it.
Something was happening around the area of its fist. Lightning roiling around a dark center, growing, elongating. Forming something. A weapon. A blade forged of shadows.
Oh fuck, I managed to think just as it swung the shadowblade. I ducked and simultaneously brought my hammer up to block the blow. Which, in hindsight, was a mistake.
The impact was like being punched by a hurricane itself, rocking me back and lifting me off my feet. I landed hard on my ass and skidded several feet. My hammer was torn from my grip and tossed somewhere behind me.
I didn’t have time to contemplate the throbbing in my hind parts or the location of my missing weapon, however, because the Morgoss was advancing with a speed that belied its ten-foot height and surly disposition.
I did my best impression of a crab as I scooted on all fours back and away, before colliding with a solid wall of rock. Black poured from the Morgoss’s mouth as it roared, sensing victory and stabbing its sword directly for my heart.
I dove to the side, scraping my elbows on the unforgiving floor. This time I managed to fight to my feet, glancing back to find the monster’s shadowblade stuck in the wall. It growled as it tried to drag the weapon back out. Which gave me enough time to search for my hammer. Which, of course, was on the opposite side of the Morgoss, which might as well have been on another planet.
Somewhere beyond the demonfire pit, I heard Beat’s war cry. Good. She’s still fighting. Still alive.
Still, she couldn’t last forever on her own. I needed to either end my fight with the Morgoss or die trying.
I whirled, searching for anything I might be able to use as a weapon.
The glowing artifact caught my attention. I’d forgotten about it in my haste to not die. It hovered in midair, spinning slowly. Is that a…
It was. A boomerang. It was like I’d taken a trip Down Under, except instead of kangaroos and koalas there were less-than-cuddly monsters. I didn’t know how to throw a boomerang, and such a small weapon didn’t seem like something that could fight off an enemy like the Morgoss, but I was out of options.
I ran for the artifact, chased by the sound of dozens of fist-sized stones being torn away from a rock wall, clattering across the floor. The Morgoss had pulled its sword free. Heavy footsteps pursued me just as I reached for the boomerang.
There was a bright flash of light as my fingers closed around the artifact and I spun, preparing to throw it with everything I had.
I stopped.
The Morgoss was gone.
Thud!
Ohcrapohcrapohcrap! I thought as I turned. The Morgoss must’ve done its smoke-flying thing before returning to physical form behind me, its sword already reforming.
It swung. This time I didn’t have the time or energy to dodge, so I whipped the boomerang overhead like a tomahawk.
It spun from my grasp with a mind of its own, whistling as it displaced the air.
The magical artifact connected with the shadowblade in midair with an explosion of dark and light, each object hurled back
. Instinctively, I reached up to catch it, the impact stinging my fingers. The boomerang was warm to the touch, but still intact.
The Morgoss stared at me, darkness trickling from its lips.
I liked my new weapon.
I wound up and threw it again, sidearm this time.
The Morgoss’s body went all smoky and the boomerang cut right through it, twisting around the room in a long, slow sideways arc. And then right back into my hand, as if I knew what the hell I was doing.
Which, just for the record, I didn’t.
The smoke monster soared overhead before ploughing into the ceiling, which immediately began to shake. Damn. I didn’t like my foe’s new strategy, which seemed to be destroy-its-own-fortress-to-bury-me-alive.
An apple-sized hunk of rock clipped my shoulder, sending spikes of pain down my arm and almost causing me to drop the boomerang.
“Beat!” I shouted. “We gotta go!”
“You think?” she replied. “Kinda busy here!”
I watched her launch her spear into the troll’s eye, the lumbering creature releasing a roar of anger and pain as it yanked the spike out and tossed it aside. Beat ran to retrieve her weapon, and I dodged falling rocks to grab my hammer.
The entire room was shaking now, as if tectonic plates were moving past each other just below where we stood.
The troll was making matters worse, stomping about half-blind and smashing its fists into the walls and ceiling. I glanced at the demonfire, which continued to spit tendrils of Black. The flames were dying down now, no longer fed by monster corpses. If this room caved in, would it break the dark magic’s spell? Would it be enough to reverse the effects, shortening the Black periods back to their normal duration?
There wasn’t time to run any experiments or test any theories. If we stayed here, we’d be crushed. I could only hope that filling in the pit with rocks would mark the end of the magic’s power.
“Come on!” Beat said, dodging a kick from the troll and motioning for me to head for the only way out of the room: up the staircase. The other surviving monsters seemed to have the same idea, fighting with each other to escape the collapsing cavern. A bludgeon landed a stone punch on a Vostra, which hissed in response, snapping at its arm. The troll stumbled, its heavy feet tangling together. It fell, crashing into the wall near the exit.
Something cracked. The wall or the creature’s skull or both.
Definitely the wall, I thought, watching as the dark slash grew, running from base to ceiling, before branching out. The structural integrity of this place was swiftly devolving into cheesecloth.
I caught up to Beat, who grabbed my elbow and pulled me toward the exit.
“Look out!” I shouted, jerking back hard to stop her forward momentum. We collapsed in a heap as a massive chunk of ceiling was torn from its moorings by gravity. It landed with a thunderous crash, just missing Beat’s outstretched leg.
And blocking the exit.
We were trapped.
The remaining monsters seemed to realize the same thing, which sent them into a frenzy, snapping and clawing at each other as they tried to climb the walls. A few of the Maluk’ori managed to clamber up and across the ceiling, vanishing into the vertical shaft.
There was no way we would be able to fit into such a small opening, not unless some of Santa’s chimney-climbing ability was magically passed onto us.
Two of the monsters were locked in a grapple, spinning around and accidentally hurling themselves into the demonfire pit, which surged with flames once more, creating another cloud of Black.
It also gave me an idea.
“Change the status quo,” I said.
“What?” Beat said, covering her head with a forearm as several small stones glanced off her skin.
“The Morgoss’s dark magic,” I said. “It’s fed by monster corpses. We are not of this world. We can’t create the Black. Only creatures born of darkness can.”
“Get to the point, Ryder!” Beat said, dodging another stone. I dipped my head to avoid another. She was right. We were out of time.
“The pit,” I yelled above the roar of the shaking room. “It’s the only option. If we jump in it, we might screw with the dark magic and break the spell.”
“Have you gone mad? We’ll be burned alive!”
“Maybe,” I said, grinning and holding up my glowing boomerang. “But I also got myself a magical artifact, so I’m feeling rather lucky. C’mon.” I stood, gripping both my hammer and boomerang in one hand, and hauled her to her feet, keeping one eye on the ceiling for any large chunks of rock that might knock me senseless and ruin any chance I had of going through with my insane plan.
My heart skipped several beats as we ran hand in hand for the pit. The flames had died down once more, giving off an eerie red glow. “Shit!” Beat shouted, pulling me sharply to the side just as a pumpkin-sized rock landed in the direct path I’d been on a moment earlier. I was losing count of the number of times we’d saved each other’s lives.
And then we were there, staring into the pit, which was slithering with snake-like flames. I couldn’t tell how deep the chasm was, or whether it had a bottom. All I knew was if we were going to die in this place, I wanted to die in a way that might stop the infernal lengthening of the Black night. If that improved the chances of people like Lace, Millania, Eve and the Three dying goddesses, it’s what I needed to do.
“I’ll go first,” I said. “If I don’t die, you can follow.”
“Screw that, Ryder. You wanna play hero? Well two can play that game. We go together or we don’t go at all.”
It was such a Beat thing to say that it made me grin. “Fuck it. On three.”
“One…” Beat said, her hand gripping mine harder.
“Two…” I said, sucking in a deep breath and closing my eyes.
As it turned out, we didn’t get to three, because the ceiling collapsed. All of it. We tumbled into the pit amidst falling rock, the heat of the flames all around us. Now I knew what it felt like to be a turkey on Thanksgiving.
Even if I ever made it back to Earth, I might never celebrate the holiday again.
To my surprise, we didn’t hit bottom after one second, nor two. Instead, the flames died away and we plummeted into darkness. My heart was in my lungs, my stomach full of air. Everything went quiet as we fell.
And fell.
And fell.
“Whatthefuckishappening?” Beat managed to get out. I couldn’t see her, but her voice was close, her hand still entwined with mine.
“No clue,” I breathed. “But we’re still alive, so that’s something, right?”
At least another minute of freefall ensued, displaced air rushing over our exposed skin.
We stopped falling. There was no impact. No collision. No breaking of bones. Just…silence.
“Holy…” Beat said.
“Yeah,” I said, breathing heavily, like I’d run a great distance.
“Where are we?”
The darkness was unfathomably deep. “A hole?” I said, a bad attempt at a bad joke.
“Great. Let’s start climbing.” Gods, it was nice to have someone around who actually got my sense of humor.
That’s when I spotted a patch that was less dark, a smudge of gray against the blackness. No, I thought. Not a smudge. A rectangle. Tall and wide.
Like a door. “There,” I said, lifting Beat’s arm to indicate the direction I was referring to.
“A way out?”
“If we’re the luckiest couple of Warriors on Tor,” I said. We headed in the direction of the gray rectangle, which grew brighter the closer we got. Through the door, I saw a stone bridge. Beyond was the mountain we’d hiked around to reach the fortress of Annakor.
We stopped just before the exit, which was also the entrance we’d originally come through. Vrill had been wrong when she said we wouldn’t be leaving the same way we’d entered. I had no idea how we’d gotten here, but couldn’t help the sense of relief that filled me.
> Just as quickly, it was replaced with a sense of dread.
“What about Vrill?” I asked.
“We’re no good to her if we’re dead,” Beat said, tugging at my arm. This time I let her pull me through the door, because she was right. If Vrill was still alive, there was still hope. But we needed to take care of ourselves first.
Still, I hated myself for leaving her behind, trapped somewhere in the dark, monster-infested fortress.
Once outside, we ran across the narrow, winding bridge. We ran through the canyons and along the trail that led past the front of the mountain before descending into the foothills. We ran across the cracked plains. We ran and ran, all the way into the silver sunrise.
We ran until we came within view of the familiar hills that were home to the Three, the goddesses we were sworn to protect.
We stopped cold. We could see the ward-shields. All of them, spread around the safe zone like the walls of a fortress. They were cracked from top to bottom, side to side. The equivalent of a white picket fence missing most of its planks, standing by sheer will alone.
One particular section was even worse off, where the monsters had exploded the glowing rock bomb. There was a gap in the shield, like a door blown off its hinges. Clawed footprints depressed the ground, leading through the gap and toward the hill.
“Oh shit,” Beat said.
The ward-shield had been breached.
TWENTY-SIX
PROTECTOR
My skin tingled as the ooze bath worked its magic.
The small cuts where my skin had been pierced by glass shards or jabbed by monster claws had already healed. The worse wounds, like where my shoulder had been gnawed to ribbons, were pretty much healed too, the new skin glossy, pulled tight across the areas where raw skin had been a few moments before. Even my nose felt straight and whole again. I sucked in a sweet breath of air through my nostrils.
Thank the goddesses for the ooze, I thought. Even if it is their spit.
Beat had left a while ago, her own healing bath finished. She said she wanted to check on Millania and Lace, both of whom were apparently back on their feet and resting in camp. While we were gone, they’d had the fight of their lives too…and they’d survived. They’d saved the Three every bit as much as we did, fighting off the monster horde that had breached the ward shield while we were trapped in Annakor.