by Sam Ryder
The smell of burnt meat lingered.
The paint oozed—more than three quarters of the picture was blotted out now.
Begin anew.
Vrill and Beat had raced across the room and thrown themselves upon the slithers from behind, splitting the army of snakes’ attention in two directions.
More snakes dropped from the ceiling. One landed on my head and it’s possible I squealed like a little girl who’d dropped her ice cream. I used my hammer like a catapult, shoving the head into the snake’s bulk and flinging it across the room where it slammed into another wall. A wall that now seemed to be moving.
At first I thought it was a trick of my eyes, but then I saw something beyond. A light.
“Vrill! Beat! There!”
I glanced at the painting as I pointed, except there was no painting, just a pillar blotted with a patch of white paint. The next artist could literally begin anew, creating their own artwork from scratch, free to use their imagination to mold the world in any way they chose.
I’d solved the fucking riddle. Eat your heart out, Bilbo Baggins! I wanted to scream, but at present I had bigger concerns than taunting one of my favorite childhood fictional characters.
I backpedaled rapidly, looking for a gap in the ever-growing ocean of hissing serpents. I took two big steps to the right to reach the side wall and then raced along it, tiptoeing like a wide receiver trying not to step out of bounds. The slithers came at me on an angle, trying to catch me before I could speed past them, instinctively knowing their prey was about to escape.
The demontorch, however, was enough of a deterrent to prevent any additional strikes. Beat and Vrill had waited for me, holding their own hissing opponents at bay until I could reach them. We stepped backwards through the gap in the wall, which slammed shut behind us, crushing several slithers as it locked back into place.
TWENTY-THREE
LET’S GO FOR A BLOODY SWIM
We stood with our backs to the wall, panting and laughing. We’d made it.
“Good job,” Beat said, using her spear like a walking stick to lean on. The tip was covered in slither blood and even a few tattered scales. I realized my hammer was coated with similar ichor. Which was gross, but also satisfying.
“Thanks,” I said. “Why didn’t you know how to solve the riddle?” I asked Vrill. After all, she said she’d been here before. Hell, she’d opened the big ass door like she was walking into her own house.
“The fortress changes every time,” she said with a shrug.
“Information that would’ve been useful…”
“Yesterday,” Beat finished. Which was scary and funny at the same time. Maybe we really did share a brain.
“How?” I asked. “And why?”
“The Three’s security system,” Vrill explained. “Their palace fortress had magical defenses, ever-changing, ever-shifting. But when the Morgoss finally overthrew the goddesses, they managed to modify the traps for their own use. The tasks remain those created by the Three, but the consequences are different.”
“Like a herd of slithers falling from the ceiling?”
She nodded. “And worse. That was rather tame compared to some of the tasks I’ve had to complete.”
Thanks for diminishing my accomplishment. Beat snorted. Vrill didn’t seem to realize her words might’ve been offensive, moving into the next room, scanning it while maintaining warrior stance.
The light we’d seen through the wall came from candles rimming a chandelier hanging from a chain from the ceiling. I squinted, because neither the chain nor the chandelier reflected the light, as you would expect from something constructed of metal.
Frickety frack.
It wasn’t made of metal. “Are those…bones?” Beat said, having followed my gaze.
They were. The chains might’ve been tendons, long and sinewy, braided together. The central portion of the chandelier was formed of several sets of ribs tied together, each branching out with arching spinal vertebrae before ending in hands, the bony fingers curled to hold the flickering candles.
It was frigging morbid, like something you might find at an elaborately decorated Halloween party. Except there was no doubt those were real bones.
The rest of the room was empty, save for a break in the floor, like a narrow canal. Whatever had flowed through the channel had dried up long ago, leaving behind a coppery residue.
This time, at least, there was a way out, a set of stairs winding up and out of sight. The only problem:
The exit was blocked by iron bars.
I was tired and injured, my shoulder wound aching. I was ready to get to wherever it was that we needed to go. Thus, I stormed toward those iron bars and swung my hammer so hard it made a whistling sound as it displaced the air.
The impact reverberated through my arms, causing my shoulder to scream out in agony. The hammer shook in my hands and it was all I could do not to drop it on my own foot.
“Fuuuuck,” I groaned.
“Males,” Vrill said, and Beat nodded, as if that single word explained everything. “You can’t smash your way through this place. You have to think your way through. Like you did before, with the riddle.”
“Fine. Where’s the clue for this room?” I asked, my eyes roaming across the featureless walls as I tried to take my mind off the pain coursing through my body.
“The last room was unusual,” Vrill said. “The clue is rarely spelled out so clearly.”
Clearly? It was a godsdamn riddle. Still, I tried to focus on what was around me—which wasn’t much. There was the flat, unadorned walls and ceiling. The floor. The barred exit leading to the set of stairs. And the stained trough running down the center. I peered into the trough and swiveled my head to look down its length in either direction. There was no piping or holes leading into the canal, which meant it could only be filled by manually dumping stuff into it, like feeding time at a pig farm.
“I don’t get it,” I said.
“Neither do I,” Beat agreed.
Vrill ignored us, walking across the room, probing at the walls with her sword. Checking for weaknesses. Beat and I followed her lead, using our own weapons to poke and tap. After a few minutes, we met back in the center by the canal, as stumped as before.
“So we eventually die in here from dehydration,” I said.
Vrill shook her head. “That’s not the way Annakor works. The Morgoss didn’t modify the Three’s security system for their own protection—they did it for their own entertainment.”
I frowned. “You think they’re watching us?”
“Observing,” Vrill said. “Waiting. Hoping we’ll find a way to make it to the next room and then the next. Hoping we’ll get all the way to them, so they can destroy us.”
Suddenly I wasn’t so keen to escape this room, its four walls and ceiling feeling like my own personal shields.
That’s when the trough began to fill.
With blood.
It started as a trickle, but soon turned into a steady flow, gallons of crimson life rising up the sides. “What the actual fuck?” Beat said, which echoed the thoughts in my head.
“There were no holes into the trough,” I said. “I checked.”
“With your hands?” Vrill asked, a small smile telling me she already knew the answer.
“I looked. There was nothing.” Even as I said it, I knew I was being naïve. “My eyes deceived me.”
“This place is hard to get used to,” Vrill said. “The barred exit must be a decoy. The real way out is somewhere in the trough. The blood must be coming from somewhere.”
Which meant…yeah. Damn. Time for a bloody swim. I wasn’t an Englishman with an accent. I meant literally bloody.
“Sometimes I hate this planet,” Beat muttered, though I knew her well enough to know she didn’t really mean it. Even forced to swim in blood, she would choose this life over the meaningless one she’d come from. Which was sad, in a way. Then again, I was in pretty much the same boat.
&
nbsp; Right now, I wished I had a boat.
There was nothing for it. I took a couple of steps back, preparing to launch myself into a bloody cannonball. Ha, I thought, even as I told myself to stop with the bad puns. I charged forward, but suddenly both Vrill and Beat grabbed one of my arms and held me back. “What?” I said, hoping they’d figured out another way to escape.
They said nothing, just pointed at the rising blood. My own blood, which was happily hidden inside my skin, ran cold. Dark lines intermittently broke the blood’s surface before vanishing once more.
Fins. Like sharks. Except on Tor, I knew they wouldn’t be just normal sharks, which would’ve been bad enough. I’d been told about these monsters, which were called shreek.
“We can’t swim out of here,” I said.
“If you’ve got a better idea…” Vrill said.
The blood was more than three-quarters of the way to the top of the canal, and the dark forms of the blood-breathing monsters were appearing more frequently, as if whipping themselves into a frenzy.
Oh gods.
A face appeared, almost human but grotesque, not unlike the faces on the winged gargats I’d faced before. It snarled and dove again, powerful tail sending a wave of blood over the edge, washing across my feet.
It would’ve been bad enough if all we had to do was swim through the monster-infested blood. Now, however, there was a time limit, the blood spilling over the edge. The red fluid wasn’t content to fill up the trough, now determined to flood the entire room.
We backed up as a group, avoiding the spill of blood as it swarmed across the floor.
One of the monsters leapt from the trough, its body spraying bloody droplets in all directions. Its skin was dark and smooth, like that of a sea lion, its face that grotesque snarl I’d seen before. On its back was an elongated shark fin, which ran all the way down to its dolphin-like tail. It also had fore- and hindlegs, each clawed like those of a crocodile but with webbing between each toe to help propel it through the water—blood.
It landed with a wet slap in the blood, snapping its deformed head from side to side before settling on us. More precisely, on me. It charged, making a weird and frightening gurgling sound from the back of its throat.
“Jump,” Vrill commanded.
I hesitated for a second. I was white, for one. Plus, I’d never really played basketball or anything else that would require me to go airborne on a regular basis. You know, on account of my lack of coordination.
Then again, I wasn’t that guy anymore. I’d slayed monsters. I’d bedded gorgeous women. Jumping? Piece of cake.
I bent my knees and leapt as high as I could, bringing my hammer to bear, fully prepared to slam it down on the shreek’s head.
The creature reared up like an angered bear, snapping at my legs.
And exposing its underbelly, which Vrill and Beat attacked simultaneously, stabbing through its soft flesh. It squealed like a pig and fell backwards awkwardly, smacking the bloody stone floor with a sound akin to that of a fat dude jumping off the high dive belly first. I’d made that sound before. Once. In sixth grade. My chest had been red for weeks. The not-so-creative nickname I’d earned—Bellysmacker—had lasted through all of middle school, until I turned invisible in high school.
But I digress.
The new Bellysmacker flopped around like a fish out of water, black blood mixing with the red kind, creating hypnotic swirls as it squirmed, eventually going still. Dead.
Like a fish out of water. Although the term didn’t really apply to these creatures, it still made sense. They could attack on land, but they were far more dangerous in the blood, where they could use their powerful tails and fins to their advantage.
The only problem: The other shreek seemed to have learned from their overeager predecessor’s mistake. We still saw the dark flashes of their fins from time to time, but none of them emerged completely.
“How many?” I asked, trying to count. It was hard to tell whether each fin that emerged was a new one or the same two or three popping up repeatedly. I’d dropped my demontorch when I’d jumped, the ever-burning fires sizzling and spitting and finally being snuffed out as the blood covered them, but the bone chandelier was bright enough to illuminate the entire room.
“At least four,” Vrill said, casting her own torch aside. They were useless here and to escape we would have to get rid of them anyway. She was concentrating hard, trying to count in her head like me. We were now about ankle-deep in the blood. By the time the fluid got to our midsections, the shreek would have a major advantage.
Being the typical male that I was, I said, “I’ll distract them while you make for the exit.”
“We don’t even know where the exit is,” Beat pointed out, but I’d already thought of that.
This place wasn’t exactly predictable, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t narrow it down. The blood had started on the side of the trough opposite to where the barred gate stood. “That end. I bet the trough wall isn’t really a wall.”
Vrill nodded in agreement. “Makes sense. But how will you get there after you distract the shreek?”
“I’ll figure something out,” I said. Translation: I don’t have a fucking clue.
Beat and Vrill exchanged a look and then seemed to decide something. Vrill said, “Okay. But we’ll do what we can to draw the shreek’s attention after we locate the false wall.”
It sounded like a damn good compromise. “Deal.” Before I lost my nerve, I took off at a run. Speed was key here, especially with the blood halfway to my knees. I high-stepped to reduce the drag from the blood, but it slowed me down. I was hoping it wouldn’t be enough to prevent me from completing the maneuver I’d planned in my head.
I heard the telltale sounds of Vrill and Beat splashing through the blood in the opposite direction, angling for the suspected exit.
At this point, the blood was so high I didn’t know exactly where the stone floor would give way to the trough’s depression, so I was forced to guess based on memory alone. Still, I gave myself a small margin of error as I approached, planting one foot and propelling myself toward the wall right above where I thought the trough began.
A dark fin appeared below me and then a hideous face emerged, its mouth spewing blood as it snarled. The rest of its powerful body burst from the crimson surface, launching itself toward me.
I might’ve been slightly reckless, but I had also expected the monster’s counter maneuver. Thus, my hammer was already whistling through the air, defending the space on my right side, exactly where the shreek was heading. My heavy weapon slammed into the side of its jaw, knocking it off-kilter, its tail whipping around toward me but falling short. At the same time, I kicked off the wall like Jackie Chan, adding much-needed distance to my leap and allowing me to clear the shreek-filled trough.
I splashed onto the opposite side, the blood now knee-deep.
The shreek I’d hit had vanished back below the surface, but another monster quickly took its place, throwing caution to the wind as it burst over the trough’s edge. The blood level wasn’t high enough that it could swim toward me, but it could half-swim, half-crawl, which made it far faster than the first one we’d killed.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Vrill and Beat dive into the blood at the opposite side of the room.
I could only hope all the shreek’s attention was on me.
I galloped through the blood, drawing the shreek further away, but sensing it gaining on me with each step. When my instincts told me I was out of distance, I threw myself to the side, feeling more than seeing the monster’s lunge as it tried to clamp down on my feet.
I came up half-blind and sputtering, blood flowing down my face. I scrubbed at my eyes, hoping my sense of direction was working as I blindly waded to the right and back toward the trough.
My vision cleared, bringing me face to face with another shreek. I swear it smiled at me.
I rabbit-punched it in the face, which erased its smile and made it ang
ry.
It attacked, but this time I didn’t dive left or right, but straight down, plunging all the way to the floor, my belly scraping along the stone. I raised my free hand and ran it along the monster’s sleek underbelly, feeling its clawed feet kick past, puncturing my back in several places. But then I was free, emerging from the blood without vision but not needing it, seeing the shreek’s moves in my mind as clearly as if I could see through the waterfall of blood.
I spun and struck. The shreek’s face was right where I expected, right where I needed it to be, my hammer thudding with the impact. I followed through, ensuring maximum effect, a lumberjack’s final swing through a tree ready to fall.
Timber! roared through my head. I felt energized and powerful, as capable as I’d ever felt in my life.
Adrenaline is a powerful force, allowing hundred-pound mothers to lift cars off their children.
Friendship didn’t hurt either, however, and both Vrill and Beat were true to their word. A sound rose up from the opposite side of the room, a clanking as Beat banged her spear on her shield and Vrill tapped her sword against the wall. The blood was up to their chests now.
All I could hope for was that the two shreek I’d hit were still seeing stars and that the other two—if Vrill’s count was correct—were distracted enough not to eat me.
I dove, bringing my feet together and kicking like Michael Phelps swimming the hundred-meter butterfly. Unable to see through the blood, I relied on my sense of direction, hoping I’d get close to where my friends were, and that they’d still be alive when I resurfaced.
I felt something, but it was rubbery and slick. A shreek. I screamed but only a rush of bubbly blood came out, the coppery taste invading my mouth.
Without thinking about it, I grabbed the flesh in front of me, my hand wrapping around the shreek’s tail, propelling me forward, the blood rushing around my body. I’d never swam with dolphins, but I suspected the experience would’ve been similar, except the dolphins wouldn’t be trying to eat me.