Forge of Ashes

by Josh Vogt

  Thinking of making people bleed brought her mind around to Gromir again. She supposed she ought to ask Ondorum to make sure she didn't kill the bastard outright once they found him. She wanted plenty of explanations, and pounding answers out of a corpse never worked too well. Akina dragged her thoughts away from pleasant images of vengeance and shackled them in the back of her mind, to be released at a better time.

  Selvia hadn't budged. Craning her neck, Akina realized the youngling leaned up against the limestone column at her side, head resting on its rippled surface. Ah. Poor kid had fallen asleep on watch—must've been far more tired than she let on. Akina smiled to herself, thinking of all the times she'd fallen asleep on watch during her first few months away at war. One night, she'd jerked awake to see a goblin skulking toward her, rusted dagger in hand. She'd never so much as yawned on duty again.

  She stood and popped the cricks out of her neck, sending a dozen little echoes scurrying into their holes. Then she plodded over to Selvia and gave her shoulder a gentle shake, trying not to startle her too much.

  "Hey, how about you—"

  Selvia moaned and slumped off the rock, flopping onto her back. It took a stretched moment for Akina's gaze to flick from the bloody gash across Selvia's temple to realize the other thing wrong with the scene. Selvia's features had changed. Oh, they remained in all the right places—her hair even looked the same. But her skin appeared smudged and darker than usual in spots. Bruising?

  Akina bent over and wiped a thumb across the other woman's cheek. The normal skin tone smeared off, revealing an ashen pallor beneath.

  A duergar.

  Akina turned to alert Ondorum, only to see a pale, spindly figure flip down from the jagged ceiling of the cave. The size of a halfling, the creature had bulging white eyes, and held a bloodstained sickle in one four-fingered hand. Spiky white hair covered its skull, which bobbed on a skinny neck. The teeth in its maniacally grinning mouth appeared filed to points. What armor it wore was cobbled together from random leather scraps.

  Akina's maulaxe lay out of reach, so she roared and charged, intending to squash the interloper to pulp. It giggled disturbingly as it pranced away from the attack. Something whistled through the air and her feet tangled, sending her crashing to the ground.

  Ondorum's eyes snapped open and he leapt to his feet. Even as he reached to help her up, two darts sprouted from his neck. He slapped them away, but his arm wavered, and he stumbled and slammed against a wall. Two feet landed on Akina's back, and a sharp edge pricked under her jaw. The cut burned. Poison? She rolled, and the feet jumped off. As she sat up, her vision blurred and swam. Her breathing slowed, lungs and heart feeling compressed by giant fists. She tried to stand, but collapsed, helmet scraping on gravel. Her position let her see Ondorum, who'd slid down to the floor. His eyes had gone dull, staring at nothing, and his mouth hung agape.

  With each breath and heartbeat, the following one came harder. Slower. Until she felt the next must be her last. She tried to lock the air in her lungs. Tried to keep her pulse from drumming one last time.

  Pale feet scampered before her. Bulbous eyes lowered into view.

  She worked her lips to spit in the creature's face. The final exhalation escaped and her eyes flickered shut.

  Chapter Ten

  Den of Madness

  Black turned to gray turned to white turned to blue in Ondorum's mind. Had the eyes of his soul opened? Did he see beyond the curtain of the physical world? He struggled to make sense of anything. Shapeless shadows became shuffling figures about him. Others? With him? Who did he share this enlightenment with? As he tried to make sense, all the elements shattered and reformed at random.

  Hope turned to confusion turned to despair. Not enlightenment. Chaos.

  A cry of pain threatened to escape from his throat, but an unknown part of himself locked it down. Focus became memory became awareness. He had... vowed. Silence. He mustn't break the vow, and for some reason it felt doubly important not to make any noise here and now.

  Where was here? When was now? To know, he must observe. To observe, he must gain control of his faculties.

  Foremost, he assembled the components of his body, ignoring all else except the sensation of their existence. Hands, feet, legs, arms, hips, abdomen, chest, neck, head. All in place. Then he envisioned the golden ball of ki at his core and let lines of light twine through him. They bound his awareness tighter to the present moment, to the immediate predicament.

  Pain flared brighter as he came to fuller consciousness. Muscle and bone screaming. Cords of fire painted across his chest and back. A choking bond around his neck, and tighter ones around his waist, wrists, and ankles.

  Imprisoned. Which meant capture. Which, at last, revived the startled memory of the cave. Surging awake to see Akina fallen before him and a pale monster on her back. Then a spike of fire in his neck before hideous weakness stole his ability to stand, to see, to think.

  Drugged, then. And brought where? For what purpose?

  When his eyelids first failed to move, he feared them sewn or pasted shut. Flickers of light inspired him to force one eye open a crack. A harsh blue gleam speared straight into his mind, making him tear up and squeeze the eye shut. When he peeked again, though, both eyes opened, and the light dimmed to bearable levels. Each slow breath raked pain along one side of his abdomen. At last, he managed to focus and make sense of what he saw.

  He lay bound on a rock slab at the far end of a winding room, at least a hundred feet from end to end. The light emanated from a strange bluish-white mold covering the ceiling and walls of the chamber. The mold illuminated ten other slabs set at random spots across the floor, with their surfaces tilted at awkward angles. Ondorum's happened to be angled up and to the right, as if he'd been put on display. He remained secured in place by ropes, his body stripped bare.

  Most other slabs had creatures strapped to them as well, many of which he couldn't identify and most of which appeared unconscious or dead. There lay a lizardlike creature, with a scaly snout and talons. It had been flayed, and knotted organs dangled from its belly. There, a person wrapped all in black rags lay bound facedown. A brightly glowing crystal hung inches from their back by a silver string. There lay a human male whose chest had been carved into, revealing swaths of muscle, bone, and guts; his exposed organs continued to pulse and convulse, while his head twitched from side to side.

  And there Akina lay, stripped of her armor and bound upside down to a slab halfway across the room. Eyes shut, breathing labored, hair dangling—yet she lived.

  Across from her, Selvia had also been bound to a slab, looking unharmed except for her skin having turned dark gray. Lighter lines tracked around her neck and ears, but she appeared to have been made to look like a duergar, except for the hair.

  The last wisps of fog blew from Ondorum's mind. His ears unclogged, and he became aware of a chorus of moans, screams, burbles, hisses, and a persistent scraping. The stink of raw meat and sewage jammed up his nose, along with another smell he couldn't quite identify, but which made him think of ice mingled with blood. At the same time, he realized other beings moved freely about the chamber. Four of the creatures that had ambushed them in the cave darted here and there, clutching pieces of glinting metal and glass. The mold cast everything about them—from their frizzes of white hair to the leather and cloth scraps that barely covered their stick-thin forms—in a blue light.

  One appeared to be ordering the other three around as it stood over a slab. This table held a gnome woman covered in bleeding incisions from the neck down. The head creature held up a finger, which had a metal shard connected to the tip. He jabbed this into the flesh above one hip and sliced a ragged line across to the other. The gnome shuddered and, seeing her open-yet-glazed eyes, Ondorum realized she must be partially aware of the torture.

  Her mutilator stuck several fingers into the gash he'd made and peeled it wide. The gnome's scream cut into Ondorum's ears. He trembled, straining against his bonds. T
he leader peered into the wound and then chattered at the others, waving a four-fingered hand in an impatient gesture. One darted over to a wall and tore off a fistful of mold. The leader took this and packed it into the cut until the gnome's gut bulged. He stepped back and turned to the others, pointing his bloody fingers at the gnome as if showing off a prized possession.

  The other three creatures danced about, clapping and chirping. Then one raced over, drew a dagger from its belt, and jammed it into one of the gnome's eyes. The gnome went limp. The leader shrieked and lunged at the one who had destroyed his work. The remaining two ran out of sight at the far end of the chamber, while the mutilator and his offender clashed. They fought with vicious speed, darting and weaving as they slashed and cut. The fight devolved into a tangle of limbs and attempts to bite one another's ears and noses off. At last, the leader got his arms around the other's neck and snapped it with a noise like cracking glass.

  Flinging the dead one on the ground, the winner jumped on the loser's corpse and stabbed it over and over, shrieking laughter. While it celebrated its victory, Ondorum redoubled his efforts to break free. The cords were roughly braided rope that looped through holes chiseled in the stone slab, no doubt knotting underneath. Ondorum gritted his teeth and flexed his left arm, curling the hand in while bracing at the elbow. The rope didn't snap, but when he relaxed, he found it loosened just enough to slip his hand through. Keeping his eyes on the cavorting creature, he reached across to grab his other hand and used the extra leverage to loosen that bond as well. With both hands freed, he dug fingers under the cord around his throat and snapped it like straw.

  The creature froze. Ondorum dropped his arms back to his sides and closed his eyes to slivers. The creature's head swiveled from side to side, and then it turned around to scan the other specimens. Its gaze swept past Ondorum, making a full circle until it fixed back on the dead gnome. With a little wail, the creature ran over and hugged the corpse, weeping and caressing it.

  Horror and disgust roiled in Ondorum's stomach like maggots. He reached down and jammed his hands through the rope around his waist, turning his forearms so the crystalline ridges on the outside ripped through the cord. This released his weight fully onto the ropes across his ankles, tightening them even more. Bracing, he reached down and raked his forearm ridges across these, cutting them quick enough. He dropped to the floor, and caught himself on one hand and knee. His legs tingled with renewed blood flow.

  Pushing the pain to one side, he forced himself upright just as the creature raised its head and looked his way. It shrieked and gibbered, baring sharp teeth. Ondorum ran at it, dodging slabs. The creature grabbed a vial from a nearby ledge and flung it. It smashed a few feet in front of Ondorum, and when he passed by it, the rising vapors dizzied him for a second. He shook off the effects and closed the distance as the creature picked up its fallen opponent's dagger and slashed at him.

  Ondorum slapped the weapon from its hand and brought a knee up under the monster's chin hard enough to drive it two feet into the air. Before it fell, he snapped an elbow out into its skull, sending it crashing into the wall. It slumped, head caved in, white eyes filming over.

  Ondorum steadied himself, still not fully recovered from whatever these creatures had used to drug him. The concoction must not have affected his oread nature as they expected, though, letting him awaken faster than anticipated. He breathed deep, and cold agony lanced through his side. Looking down revealed the source—several rows of crystals had been gouged from his ribs, leaving puckering wounds. He cast about for some sort of medicine or magical healing, but though vials of liquids and powders lay scattered on ledges around the chamber, he didn't trust any of them, given what he'd seen of these creatures' poisonous natures.

  Two of the creatures—perhaps the same two that ran off earlier—bounded back into the chamber. They halted, taking in the freed prisoner. Ondorum grabbed the two monstrous corpses near him and threw them at the others. As they ducked, he snatched up an assortment of vials and whipped the glassy missiles across the room. The creatures cried out, dodging the splashes and sprays. One ran screaming from the chamber, while the other drew a tiny crossbow from its back and took aim. A second later, a vial shattered in its face, and it went down clawing as fumes rose from its oversized eyes.

  Pressing a hand to his wounded side, Ondorum hurried back to Akina's slab. He found a scalpel and sliced her bonds, then caught her before she hit the floor headfirst. She groaned in his arms as he shook her. At last, her eyes fluttered open and her voice rose muzzy.

  "What brew was that again?"

  He helped her sit up. She blinked about until she locked onto the eviscerated lizard-thing on the slab across from her.

  "That's not right." She staggered to her feet, shaking her head as she took in the chamber's horrors."Where are we?"

  Ondorum pointed at the dead creatures lying at the far end.

  She pressed a palm to her forehead."Right. The cave. Heard of these things before—weird little blue people who live in the deepest tunnels and kidnap surface-dwellers for bizarre experiments. Of course, the folk who claim to have been taken by them always seem to be addled or unhinged, so most reasonable people assume their stories are just ramblings. Crack and shatter, this must be some kind of warren." Her eyes widened as she spotted Selvia."Not a dream either; she's a duergar."

  He frowned over at their guide. Had illusion magic or some other form of disguise cloaked Selvia's true nature? Or was this some transformation caused by their captors? Did this mean she was linked to Gromir's plot, whatever it involved? How had the wards at the gate not detected her true nature?

  Akina ran her hands over herself, realizing she'd been reduced to smallclothes."My gear. Got to find it."

  Funneling his focus into the scalpel he held, Ondorum aligned himself with its earthen composition. Responding to his touch, the metal flowed and stretched into a solid quarterstaff.

  Akina looked under slabs and in piles of jumbled rubbish. He joined in the search, seeking to clothe himself, and checking if any victims could be saved. He found another dwarf who'd been shaved from head to toe, but otherwise appeared unharmed. Ondorum cut the dwarf free and propped him up, but he just sat there drooling. Moving on, Ondorum freed the mutilated human, who wept, saying he"wouldn't fall for their tricks again." Two more dwarven prisoners proved to be corpses.

  While hopes of saving others dwindled, he found a wide strip of filthy gray cloth crumpled in a corner. Better than nothing. As he tied it around his waist, Akina whirled about, throwing up her hands."Shattered stone, none of it's anywhere!"

  "I... know... where kept... treasure."

  They turned. The rustling voice spoke in broken Taldane, the common trade language of the Inner Sea, or at least its surface nations. It came from the humanoid covered in strips of black cloth, who had turned its head to them. Strips wrapped around its head and lower face, leaving two black eyes squinting in a crease of white flesh as the only visible features. It made a hacking noise and waggled fingers.

  "Please... I help..."

  Ondorum strode over and had it freed in moments. Instead of sliding off the slab, it rolled over and raised bare palms, white as bone, to grab the glowing crystal above it. Its eyes closed, and it shuddered.

  "Yes..."

  "Who are you?" Akina asked."How can you help?"

  The creature drew its hands away from the crystal, which had lost its light and now hung as a dull chunk. The creature stood then, maybe a foot taller than Ondorum, but skeletally thin, like a distorted shadow peeled off a wall. Its tightly wrapped clothing seemed to be made entirely of strips of fine black cloth. When it spoke, its voice had gained substance.

  "Better." It tapped its chest."Here is Izthuri, mother of caligni tribe." She pointed at them."There is?"

  "People who need their armor and weapons back so we can get out of here."

  Ondorum bowed, and Izthuri inclined her head in return."Yes. Escape." She went to one of the ledges filled
with vials and plucked up a selection.

  "What're you doing?" Akina crossed her arms."Those aren't our things."

  Izthuri raised a vial."Poison. Acid. Explosives. Weapons, yes?"

  "How do you know?"

  "Some used on me. Some I used on others."

  "Oh."

  Izthuri turned and held out several for Akina, who took them tentatively. She offered one to Ondorum, who abstained, indicating his staff.

  "Throw in faces. On skin." Izthuri raised a slender finger."Do not swallow."

  Akina eyed the vials with trepidation."Hold up a moment." Setting the vials down, she stalked over to Selvia and backhanded the woman."Wake up."

  Selvia groaned and shook her head. Then she jerked awake. She noted their surroundings first and then her revealed nature."Ah."

  Akina glowered."So this is your real face, hm?"

  The duergar sneered."Isn't it lovely? Didn't you enjoy helping a young dwarf get her first glimpse of such a big, scary world? Must've been nice to comfort someone in need. You've got true motherly instincts."

  A second blow snapped the duergar's head to the side. Selvia licked blood from a split lip and chuckled."Make me bite off my tongue and I won't be able to whisper naughty secrets in your ear."

  "No whispers. You're going to scream them."

  "Get me out of here first."

  "Why should we?"

  Selvia huffed."Try to be intelligent for once. Leave me here and you don't get answers. Even if you go off, planning to return, I'll be dead before you make it back. Your choice, of course."

  "As if I'd trust a duergar's answers."

  "Pity. I'm after Gromir as much as you are. I know where he's going and could show you a few shortcuts." Selvia smiled again."And that's all I'll say until we get out of here."

  Snarling, Akina used a jagged chunk of crystal to cut the duergar's hands free and then re-bound the wrists behind her back. After freeing her the rest of the way, Akina tied a length of rough rope to the wrist cords and gave the free end to Ondorum. Duergar in tow, they headed for the chamber exit. Ondorum tried once more to get the drooling dwarf and weeping human to join them, without success. Akina peered around the corner and waved them on. Izthuri hunched along on silent feet, her head almost brushing the ceiling.