by Hugo Huesca
Maybe it was true. Klek glanced past Drusb. Most of the batblins there weren’t fighters—they had been manning the Brewery and the kitchens when the fighting began. Up until that horned spider came, alerting them of the incoming attack, they’d been perfectly content for the first time in many years. They were safe, well-fed, and warm. Wolves weren’t eating their families and loved ones during the night.
But now they were finding out the downside of being a Dungeon Lord’s minion.
“We’re armed too,” Klek said softly. He nodded toward the iron-tipped spears near the walls. There were enough to arm five or six of them, and the rest could improvise. Batblins were very good at winging it.
What would Lord Edward do in my place? Klek thought. He wished his own Mind attribute was higher. How was he supposed to figure out the Dungeon Lord? He’d push some Objectivity rule to the very limit, Klek guessed. But Klek had no magic to abuse—his father, Virp, had been the shaman. Klek was but Klek. He’d build something… perhaps dig a big hole and lure those nasty men inside… That was useless. Klek had neither the time nor command of the Haunt’s drones.
“Enough!” Drusb screeched. “You’ve grown stronger, Klek, but you ain’t stronger than Drusb! And I says we hide!” Drusb pushed him down, trying to drag him away from the entrance.
Klek stood there, paralyzed. He lifted an ear. For a second, Drusb just scowled at him. Then the cloudmaster realized what he had done.
Voices came from outside. “Did you hear that, Brondan?”
“Yes!” the elf’s voice said. “Batblins, unless my ears are tricking me. Easy pickings, boys, prepare to rack up some sweet experience points!”
The people out in the hall cheered.
Evil, Klek thought with utter horror. They’re evil to the core. At least the wolves saw batblins as food. To these people, they were less than that.
“Quick,” Klek exclaimed. “Everyone, take arms!” He pushed Drusb away and barely had time to grab a weapon. Some batblins—too few—did as he ordered. The rest cowered in fear.
One of them tried to run away, but he ran to the tunnel, just as the elf—a Thief, judging from his sheet—entered the tunnel. Without even looking at the scared batblin, the elf ran him through with his rapier—Klek saw the red-tipped point come out of the batblin’s dotted back and nail him to the ground.
Deathly wounded, the batblin’s screams came gargled. They filled the room, loud enough to hurt Klek’s ears. Then the elf pressed his boot against the wounded batblin’s belly and withdrew his rapier. The screams reached a terrible high point, then left only the gargling.
“Excellent,” said the elf. “Five experience points, just like that!” He looked at the rest of the batblins. His gaze regarded Klek with a calculating stare. Klek knew the Thief was trying to figure out how many points he was about to earn for killing them all. “Maybe storming this dungeon wasn’t such a bad idea after all.” The rest of the cultists came right behind him.
“Klek!” Drusb whispered next to him, as the elf and his cultists closed the small distance to them. “What do we do?”
Klek’s only combat talent was echolocation. What seemed like a long time ago, he had used it to help Lord Edward escape an ambush. Because humans can’t see in the dark, he realized.
Without thinking, he reached for the walls and took one of the magical torches there. It had a small magical crystal at the top, very fragile. “We fight,” he said, then brought down the torch hard against the ground, where it shattered with an intense flash. “In the dark, batblins! Quick!”
The batblins screamed in confusion. The elf scowled, raised his rapier, and stepped toward Klek, who had no choice but to raise his short spear and hope for the best. Whatever happens, I won’t scream, he decided. Virp hadn’t screamed when his time had come.
A thick strand of web shot over Klek’s shoulder. The elf saw it coming, cursed, and dodged by jumping back and away. The web struck one of the men behind him instead, gluing his legs to the floor and making him fall flat on his face.
“You heard him!” Tulip hissed—she was running along the length of the wall, breaking the torches with her mandibles as she went. With every flash, the light dimmed more and more. “We’re creatures of the night, so let’s fight in the darkness!”
Horned spiders were a batblins’ natural predator. Something about the prospect of fighting alongside one gave the rest of the batblins more courage than Klek ever could. While the cultists were busy trying to hit Tulip, the batblins rushed the few remaining torches.
There came a last magical flash, and then the darkness was total. Klek could only see a hint of a red glint in Tulip’s many eyes. The chamber was filled with the confused screams of the cultists. Through his echolocation, Klek knew they were stumbling blind in the dark, their weapons striking empty air in front of them.
He smelled fear.
“Easy pickings, boys,” he said, and charged forward.
FOR AN INSTANT, the Laboratory trembled as if under an earthquake; then she felt a soft breeze exiting through the crack in the door. Someone outside cursed and pounded at the reinforced wood with heavy fists.
“Alita’s tits,” Lavy muttered. She cursed herself, then, because mentioning Alita’s name in the middle of a Dark ritual probably wasn’t the best idea. She studied the tiny magical feedback sparkling above her. Not nearly enough time. Had she been more skilled, had she earned the correct talents… she had no doubt she could’ve raised an army of spirits to fight for her.
But now—now she had failed.
“Stand aside!” someone screamed, past the door. The pounding subsided.
Before Lavy could react, there came a great impact that bent the doors inward, cracking wood and sending iron nails flying in all directions.
“Oh, dunghill—”
Another impact, close after the other. The doors broke down in an explosion of splinters and noise. Someone kicked at the remains and tore them out of the hinges. Lavy crouched behind her table, trying to shield herself from the dust and the sharp shards.
This saved her life, because two cultists ran inside the room and shot ice bolt runes at her general direction. The bolts smashed a rack filled with vials behind her. The Witch heard the glass shatter against the floor.
“Assholes! Crow familiar!” she croaked, pointing right at the middle of them. Arcane energy throbbed inside her, not an unpleasant sensation—with the exception of current circumstances.
Three crows made of purple fire swam through the air and headed for the cultists. One for each, and the third for whoever was just coming in—a giant of a man, wearing mail armor, and dragging an axe dirty with blue ichor and chitinous remains.
The two cultists behind the man barely had time to react—they had entered the room blind and were taken by surprise by Lavy. One of them wasn’t fast enough, and the crow exploded in flames against his face. The other cultist was faster, and countered the crow with a fire bolt, coming from his own spell reserves. Hopefully he was out of spells after that.
The third crow headed straight for the giant. Instead of dodging, the man punched at the purple creature with a fist as big as Lavy’s head, and smashed the crow against the wall. Then he calmly used his cape to put out the flames on his gauntlet.
“Not fair at all,” said Lavy, mouth hanging open. That had been a spell reinforced by her spell penetration talent, and her hex focus.
“Life, as a rule of thumb,” the man said, “isn’t fair.” He strolled into the Laboratory while the three cultists behind him helped put out the guy rolling and screaming on the floor. The last cultist covered the giant’s flank and rummaged through his own belt, probably looking for a new rune. “Sadly, life is also fleeting. I won’t give you the chance to hurt more of my men. Surrender now, Witch, and I’ll grant you a quick, merciful death.”
Lavy considered the offer. He’s jacked up to the ears in Endurance-related talents. She glanced down at her half-built magical circle. No help was coming that way.
Unlike Ed, she wasn’t insane enough to roll the dice and hope Objectivity was in a forgiving mood.
Still, I have to wonder. What would he do in my place? I mean, it isn’t that difficult to guess… He’d cheat—do something unexpected. The question was… what? She was surrounded, with only two spell slots left, and the giant didn’t look like the kind of man that’d lose the Endurance contest against her witch spray. Not against one casting, at least. Certainly not against two.
“Time’s up,” the giant told her sternly. “I can see you’re young. I regret it has to be this way. Any last wish? As long as it’s reasonable, I give you my word I’ll carry it out.” Somehow, the giant’s insane attempt at chivalry pissed her off more than the prospect of dying.
Well, Lavy thought. At least I know what I wouldn’t do in my place. She wasn’t about to stand and get herself killed without objecting—it just wasn’t her style. Her hands darted down to the table, and she scooped up all of her new runes. She held about four in each hand. Everyone began shouting at her and taking aim. She felt like cackling madly. “You want me to bend the rules? Well, how’s this for a try? Witch spray!”
And she activated them all at the same time.
25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
OTHERWORLDLY POWERS
Her enemies were drowned under a barrage of purple orbs. More than fifty of them, saturating the air in every direction. Many struck Lavy point-blank, but she shrugged them off as if they were caresses. After all, she was a Witch, and this was a hex spell. She could’ve swallowed a rune and triggered it on its way to her stomach and she wouldn’t even have gotten indigestion.
The cultists, on the other hand, weren’t as lucky. Lavy heard, more than she saw, the impacts of the orbs against their bodies, overwhelming their Endurance resistance by sheer numbers.
Mirrors shattered, racks collapsed, the egg on the experiment table broke and sprayed her in yellow goo. The floor was slick with preservative liquid, and its stingy stench was overwhelming. Smoke engulfed the Laboratory as the witch sprays found a target or exploded in magical feedback. Lavy coughed, her eyes watering and causing mascara to run down her face like tears of tar.
She darted under the table so she could breathe, and saw four cultists convulsing on the floor.
But the giant warrior was still standing. “Witch! You’ll pay for this!” He came toward her like an avalanche and kicked the table away from her. Lavy heard the wood splinter and break and disappear into the smoke. “Where are you? Come here, face me!” the giant roared.
No, thank you, Lavy thought. She crawled away frantically, ruining her tunic. Bites of pain struck her knees, hands, and elbows when she passed through a field of glass shards. She knew she was leaving a trail of blood behind her.
“Where are you?” the man roared again, followed by the sound of something big and sturdy breaking like it was nothing. The mental image of her being on the receiving end of one of such strikes was enough to ignore the pain.
The smoke was thinning—fast, like it had never been there.
“Witch!” Footsteps, coming behind her.
“Blazing whip!” A whip made of magical fire materialized in her hand. Lavy screamed as she turned and ran for her quarters. She glanced behind her, saw the giant getting nearer. She flicked her whip at him, a long line of fire blazing through the air.
The man stopped, extended his hand, and caught the lash with his vambrace. The flaming whip encircled his forearm with a sizzle, and despite the armor the man winced in pain. Then he smiled, grabbed at the extended line of the whip with his gauntlet, and pulled with all his might.
Lavy realized what was about to happen, but she was too slow to do anything about it. It was as if the man had tried to pull her skeleton out of her body, starting from her arm. The whip flew away from her hand—otherwise she would’ve been pulled straight into the giant—as numbness spread through her wrist. She stumbled, left long bloody streaks on the floor as she fumbled back up, and saw her whip disappearing as her connection with it ended. There was a scorched circle on the giant’s vambrace and, judging from his expression, he wasn’t in the mood to be merciful anymore.
“Enough!” he said.
“Shut up already!” Lavy screamed at him. She ran like a terrified rabbit, but instead of heading to her quarters, where she’d be trapped, she headed for the exit which the man had left unguarded.
“No, this ends now!” he bellowed behind her. She heard him attempt a lunge, slip on the floor, and crash against one of her shelves.
She ran down the tunnel, too scared to think of a plan. Maybe she’d find someone, or reach the exit and hide in the forest. She passed by the barely recognizable corpses of some spider warriors, blue blood and gray insides strewn all over the tunnel. This won’t happen to me, she told herself. It won’t. It won’t!
But she could hear the giant already exiting the Laboratory. She knew he was faster than she was—she had seen him sprint. For the first time in her life, she wished she had had more time to train under Kes. If I make it through tonight, I’ll become your best student, Kes, I promise!
Something to her left claimed her attention. She almost passed it by in her panic. It was a wide archway carved into the rock, with two reinforced iron doors at the end, and a plank holding them closed. There was a field of spiky iron strings strewn between the doors and Lavy, with a sign hanging by the entrance.
She glanced behind her shoulder—the giant was already halfway to her and gaining.
She knew the best path through the iron strings—Ed called them barbed wire. They weren’t designed to keep things from coming inside, but from coming out.
I’ve gone insane, Lavy realized. She laughed, tears still falling down her face. Her nose caught the faint scent of manure and sulfur past the doors. She laughed harder, and with all her strength, lifted the plank away and stepped inside.
ROLIM REACHED the passageway just as the door closed. He stared at the barbed wire, read the sign hanging above the door. With a smirk and a roll of his eyes, he reached for the door—his armor protecting him from the wire.
He closed the door behind him, hard, making the sign rattle against the good.
Keep out, the sign read. We’re fucking warning you.
THERE WAS a face in front of him. Alder groaned. His eyes stung, his entire body hurt, and he was sure that his hair was smoldering.
He blinked, forcing his stunned brain to focus. The face belonged to Kes. The mercenary looked like hell. She was ashen gray, covered in bruises, and she had a nasty gash in her forehead gushing blood. Her hazelnut eyes, though, were focused on Alder.
“Thank the gods,” she muttered. “I thought you broke your neck—you fell on your head.”
Alder passed a hand over his temple and found blood. “Ouch.”
“You tell me,” she tried to laugh, then groaned. “I knew we should have measured that damn dust trap better. Almost killed us.”
“At least you killed him, right?” Alder asked, thinking of Nicolai.
Kes threw a worried glance behind her, at the misshapen figures that lay in the hall. “I’m not sure, Alder. That man… he isn’t fully human. Somehow, I think he’s using a mindbrood to heal himself.”
“What? No way.” Alder fixed his gaze on the unmoving shape that was Nicolai. His cape was torn to shreds, and a broken, badly burnt arm covered his face. He was missing several fingers as well as chunks of flesh. “No way, a mindbrood? So he had his brain eaten on purpose? Are you sure, Kes?”
“Yes. I know what I saw.” She held her left hand and showed Alder her missing fingers. “It’s his arm, you know. It bit me.”
As if Nicolai could hear them, the man stirred and gave a faint groan. His broken arm began to shift and melt, oozing pus through the burns and shedding scabbing all over.
“Wetlands!” Alder forced himself to stand and was almost overpowered by an instant of dizziness. With his back against the wall, he took deep breaths until he recovered. Ni
colai’s wounds were closing, clear as day. Some faster than the others, and the man seemed to be in agonizing pain. “Kes, we need to hide!” She was in no condition to fight him, and Alder wasn’t a warrior.
Kes groaned, and she lifted her arm from her belly to reveal a long, ugly wound that bled slowly all over her waist and legs. “I’m not going anywhere far,” she said, then pointed at an empty flask lying next to her. “But I can hold on, I think. You have to reach Ed, Alder. He needs those weapons.” She nodded at the tray with the potions and the blessed knives, which Alder had forgotten. Most of the potions were broken, their contents wetting the stone floor, but the knives and the smoke bombs were thankfully intact.
“I can’t leave you here,” Alder told her. “And there’s no way I’m getting past him!” Behind Kes, Nicolai was up on his knees, staring at the broken visage of one of his cultists. He passed an inhuman hand over the face of the fallen cultist and closed her eyes. Then he fixated his broken face on Alder and Kes.
“You have to,” Kes told him. “If Ed doesn’t come back in time, Nicolai will reach the Seat. Then we’ll have to hide in a dead dungeon while he kills us at his leisure.”
Nicolai’s arm coiled around him like a serpent. It had far more fangs and pointed teeth than any arm had a right to have.
“No way! I’m not a warrior like you, Kes. I’m a Bard,” Alder said with desperation. Look at what he did to you! “Can we get a spider to do it, or a drone?” He glanced around hopefully.
“Alder,” Kes said softly. “There’s no one else. It has to be you.” She forced herself up to one knee, almost like a knight facing her King. “You don’t have to be a warrior, you don’t even have to fight him. Just get past him. Be a Bard, Alder. That’s all I’m asking.”
Last time that Alder had seen one of his friends hurting this much, it had been during the invasion of Kael’s dungeon. He had been as useless during that time as he was being tonight.