by Max Anthony
“Oh dear,” said Jera.
“That’s not very good,” said Viddo.
The openings looked down into and across a circular pit, some two hundred yards in circumference. The walls of this pit were solid obsidian, smooth and polished, yet somehow dull. Light globes shone everywhere, giving them an adequate view of what lay below. The pit ended about one hundred yards beneath, giving way to a smooth, flat floor. There were tall statues of black glass all around the perimeter, each depicting an armour-clad humanoid with broad shoulders and a barrel chest. The light cast shadows in strange ways and it was hard to make out the details of the statues’ faces, other than that there was something undeniably evil about them.
In the centre of the floor was another hole, this one only about thirty yards across, but with no light inside. Indeed, it seemed to absorb whatever light reached it, giving no clue at all about its depth or if there was anything inside. Rasmus shivered when he saw it. There was something about this place that made him feel small and insignificant. Gathered around this central hole were familiar grey-fleshed creatures. They were crowded together – thousands of them - as if it were important for them to get as close to the inner pit as they could. Not wishing to be spotted from below, the trio ducked away from the windows in order to discuss what they’d seen.
“We saw a similar hole to this before, beneath that prison when we came here last,” whispered Rasmus, bringing Jera up to speed. “This one feels different though. Worse.”
“This is where it’ll happen,” said Viddo. “Whatever it is that is meant to happen. I can feel it - Him Without Name is in that pit and I’ll bet that large room below is where his supplicants waited until they were permitted to worship.”
“Or to be sacrificed, in order to satisfy his thirst for blood.” said Jera grimly.
“We need to find this artifact, wherever it might be,” Viddo said. “It could be anything from a strip of cloth to a piece of metal.”
“It must be large enough to be able to house these two diamonds,” said Rasmus. “Now that I have seen this place I am reluctant to explore, but I fear we have no choice.”
“Wait!” said Jera. She’d just had a flash of inspiration.
“What is it?” asked Rasmus with sudden concern.
“I think we’ve already found the artifact,” she said, allowing their blank faces to persist for a few seconds. “All of this vibration we can feel. The numbing effects we’ve felt as we approached. What if this entire mass of obsidian is the artifact?”
Rasmus and Viddo looked at each other and then looked at Jera.
“It’ll be a load of balls if it is,” said Rasmus finally.
“I think Jera is correct,” said Viddo. “I read something about a never-ending wall of darkness in the library before we left Gargus. It was predictably vague and looked to have been added as something of an afterthought to the text. Yet here we are, in a seemingly endless block of obsidian that might go thousands of miles down into the earth.”
Jera almost didn’t have the heart to let them in on the bad news. “You’re going to have to destroy the diamonds,” she said quietly.
Rasmus sighed and Viddo sighed. “You’re right, of course,” said the wizard.
“We’d have never found a buyer for them anyway,” continued Viddo, trying desperately to look on the bright side.
“Life is boring with too much money,” Rasmus said.
“How are we going to break them?” asked Jera. “Diamonds are very difficult to break, I am told. Not that I’ve ever been wealthy enough to try shattering one.”
“It’s the same as with anything. If you hit them hard enough with a heavy object, they’ll eventually smash into pieces,” Rasmus told her.
Viddo reached inside his clothing and pulled out the diamonds. He looked at them for a few seconds, noting again how perfect they were. “I can’t do it,” he said, dropping the fist-sized stones onto the floor. “You’ll have to do it. With your hammer.”
“Here? Won’t the noise alert those creatures below?”
Viddo threw her his ground sheet. “Put that on top of them. It’ll muffle the sound.” Once Viddo had decided on a course of action, he didn’t like to delay. As Jera arranged the stones so that they wouldn’t skitter off under the first blow, Rasmus and Viddo turned away as if they’d already forgotten about their lost wealth, or it was so unimportant that they couldn’t be bothered to speak about it. They looked out of the window into the pit again. Behind them came the first muffled thump of metal hammer on cloth-bound diamonds.
“Look below. The undead appear to be swarming out of the pit,” said Rasmus. “No doubt they have picked up the nearby signatures of our diamonds and are coming to look for them. Jera, you had best make haste. They’ll not know where to look for us when the stones are destroyed.”
Jera didn’t reply, so focused was she on striking at the diamonds with as much force as she could.
“Didn’t you say you’d picked up a new spell at that undead wizard’s house?” asked Viddo.
“Yes, I did say that. ‘Boom’, it might be called. ‘Bang’ is another interpretation of the spell’s title.”
“What do you plan to do with this spell?”
“I hadn’t really given it too much thought,” lied Rasmus. “I might test it out in a remote location somewhere, purely in the interests of discovery.”
“I know you,” said Viddo. “You’ll hoard it for years and years, not quite willing to cast it because the moment will never be right. Then one day you’ll get aggravated by something banal like a tree chimp that steals your lunch and you’ll waste it on something silly.”
“I can’t imagine what you mean,” said Rasmus innocently.
“Instead of wasting it on a chimp, why not hurl the spell into yonder room, so that we can see how much the undead minions of a death god enjoy having their wizard’s spell turned against them?”
Rasmus was not a man who usually needed much in the way of persuasion on these things and within moments he was on his feet, looking below. “There’re lots of them still in the pit,” he said. He concentrated on the spell he’d learned, mentally checking off the requirements needed to cast it. “Range – unlimited, cast time – at least twenty seconds, spell level – unknown. Ooh, this is a big one. I’m not surprised the undead wizard wasn’t capable of learning it. I’m not actually sure it’s meant to be used by mortals.” He paused as he considered this conclusion. “Stuff that,” he said. “I’m going to give it a shot.”
Rasmus began to mumble and wave his arms. Viddo sidled away a step or two. Jera looked up from her attempts to crush the diamonds.
“It’s not going to work,” she said, red-faced from the exertion. “My hammer isn’t heavy enough to break them.”
“Oh dear,” said Viddo, though it wasn’t clear if he was replying to Jera or if he uttered a general-purpose ‘oh dear’ in relation to Rasmus’ upcoming spell.
“Does it normally take that long for him to cast spells?” asked Jera. “I’m sure I’ve seen him cast them with a wave of his hand.”
“Yes, that’s normally how it happens,” agreed Viddo. For some reason, he wanted to laugh.
Thirty seconds passed and Rasmus stopped mumbling. He wobbled on his feet for a moment and looked as if he might fall. He didn’t fall and put out a hand to steady himself.
“Did you cast it?” asked Viddo.
“Yes, I ca...” the rest of the sentence was spoken but not heard.
There were several effects, all of them catastrophically powerful. They heard an explosion, tremendously loud and with a sharp, harsh edge to it. The sound was like an inferno of fireballs, overlaid upon a thousand bolts of lightning. On top of this was another sound – a screech of vast, unfathomable anger and the hint of pain, reluctantly conceded.
At the same time, the ground shuddered and lurched to one side. Jera stumbled and thought the entire wall of the pit might be about to collapse inwards. There was nothing nearby that she
could use as support but her fighter training came to her aid, allowing her to retain her balance. Viddo had adopted a crouch, while poor Rasmus fell to the floor. The lurch stopped and they had the peculiar feeling that the earth shifted back to resume its former position.
Outside the window, a fountain of orange and blue flames surged upwards, expanding greedily in a roiling cloud of fiery death. The flames surged through the window, though each of the trio had been alert enough to drop to the floor in time. The fire licked over them, scalding their exposed skin. Luckily, the force of the blast was almost spent by the time it reached them and the flames receded at once, leaving them with only minor injuries. With some pride tinged with regret, Rasmus noticed that even Viddo had suffered a few slight burns – usually the thief managed to avoid anything magical that came his way.
Slowly, they got to their feet and looked out of the window. There was nothing much left below that could be identified as the remains of undead. Really, there was hardly anything left at all that hadn’t been reduced to particles of carbon.
“Very impressive,” said Viddo, clapping Rasmus on the back.
“I’ve just cast an immortal-level spell!” exclaimed the wizard. “No wonder it was so tricky to cast. I hope there’re no gods or deities in the vicinity who realised it was me.” He looked furtively over his shoulder, as if he expected the long arm of the celestial law to be reaching out to feel his collar.
“Apart from the one in the pit?” asked Viddo.
“Yes, apart from that one. I think he got burned by it though.”
“But not killed.”
“Angered, I should guess.”
“Vengefully angered?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised. Still, there’s no sign of anything emerging, so I think we can safely assume that whatever is down there remains trapped.”
“You mean you didn’t know?” asked Jera. “You went and cast that spell without being certain that it wouldn’t free Him Without Name?”
“I wouldn’t put it quite so bluntly,” said Rasmus, elbowing Viddo in the ribs for some support.
“What the wizard is trying to say is that only the diamonds in combination with this artifact could possibly free the trapped god. All we did was push a metaphorical stick through its bars and poke it in the eye.”
Jera didn’t look convinced, as well she might not have. She wasn’t a woman to scratch away at something unnecessarily and therefore she changed the subject.
“We need to do something with these diamonds,” she said. “My hammer won’t break them. They haven’t even been chipped.”
“It’s probably time we escaped from the bowels of the artifact. Since it doesn’t appear to have been badly damaged by Rasmus’ Boom spell, it seems that we have no choice other than to take the diamonds away from it.”
“What about that room with the squashed adventurers in it?” asked Jera. “If we triggered that falling ceiling, would that be able to break the diamonds?”
“I think that’s an excellent idea and in the absence of a better one we should make haste in that direction,” said Rasmus.
“We can’t all get over the chasm,” said Viddo, shining light upon an obstacle to this plan.
“Not all of us, no,” replied Rasmus, putting the objection to bed.
Viddo scooped up the diamonds, still wrapped in his ground sheet and pushed them into his pack. With that, they entered the stairwell again. They had no idea how many of the undead had escaped the pit before Rasmus cast his spell and they didn’t know how long it would take until swarms of the creatures came upon them. All things considered, it seemed best to run, which they did.
Rasmus found himself in the lead, with Viddo and Jera close behind. He took the steps two at a time, rueing the lack of a bannister. He reached the first landing and turned, then descended rapidly to the second landing. As he made the turn to begin on the third flight of steps, his eyes saw a wreath of swirling darkness, as black as the stone around it. Rasmus knew what it was, but his brain couldn’t slow his feet in time to prevent him coming face to face with the creature that was approaching on the stairs from below.
“Lich,” Rasmus said, staring into the empty sockets of its eyes from a distance of less than three feet.
22
Rasmus and the lich faced each other. The undead was a little taller than Rasmus, and it had a shroud of darkness about it, leaving only its skeletal face and bony hands visible. It clutched a six-feet metal stave, upon which a glowing orb had been mounted. This was no low-level skeleton – Rasmus and Viddo believed it had once been the high priest of Him Without Name and instrumental in the efforts to bring about the god’s return. Powerful it was, but it had already proven that it wasn’t immune to surprise and its split-second pause suggested that they’d caught it unawares. The adventurers hadn’t been silent in their descent and when he thought about it later, Rasmus wasn’t sure if the lich had thought them to be some of its acolytes, rather than the party of interlopers that it was hunting.
The encounter was short. With no weapon at the ready, Rasmus grabbed at the lich’s staff with both of his hands and pulled. Viddo had been only two steps behind the wizard and he used his momentum to land a thunderous punch into the lich’s face. His other hand vanished briefly into the creature’s cloak of darkness as he steadied himself. Without knowing it, he triggered a protective rune of instant death, which would have stopped his heart at once had his body not resisted the effects. The lich fell three steps back, leaning at an angle that seemed impossible to maintain without falling to the landing below. The lich didn’t fall, but it did disappear, winking out of sight as if it had never existed. Finding himself still holding the lich’s staff, Rasmus cackled.
“You mazed it again?” asked Viddo. The wizard hadn’t delayed and was already galloping off down the steps.
“The last one I had,” confirmed Rasmus over his shoulder.
“Quickly, quickly,” Viddo said, so that Jera would be aware that their opponent wasn’t going to be missing for long.
The urgency of the situation fuelled their lungs and powered their feet. They completed this first descent and entered the longer stairwell at a run. In the distance, they could see figures approaching and Rasmus slowed just enough that Jera and Viddo could get ahead of him. Jera proved invaluable – she crooked her arm and held her shield before her. The first of the undead struck the shield as if it had purposefully run into it. The creature cascaded down the steps, causing Rasmus to stumble as he pushed his way past, noting as he did so that Viddo had already stabbed the creature to death.
More of them came, their brown and yellow teeth bared in menace. Jera was not merciful and batted them aside. She was not heavy, nor broad, but she was a natural fighter and already possessed a few of the skills that Rasmus or Viddo had seen displayed by masters in the field of armed combat. They reached the bottom of the long flight of steps, leaving ten or twelve of the undead in their wake. The obsidian walls of the artifact were left behind and they entered the huge room, wherein they supposed that supplicants had once waited.
There were more undead here. They did not sit upon the benches with their heads bowed. Instead, they hurled themselves bodily at Jera, who in turn crushed hands and faces with powerful blows of her hammer, taunting them all the while to ensure that it was she they attacked, instead of her companions. Viddo’s sword darted in and out, slicing away hands, feet and other, smaller appendages from their foes.
“Do you really have to try and cut off their penises?” asked Rasmus, laying about him with his appropriated staff. Used as a weapon, it was surprisingly light and did far more damage than he’d have expected it to.
“It’s purely coincidental,” said Viddo, driving his sword into the crotch of another undead.
Although there had likely been hundreds or even thousands of undead who had escaped the pit, it looked as if there was no quick or direct route from there to the place where the trio continued with their escape. Either that, or the
re were many different routes, causing a dilution of the numbers who had got to them soon enough to attack. Rasmus looked over his shoulder several times as they crossed the waiting room and was relieved to see that there was no sign of the lich. Maze spells could be a bit unreliable in their duration and the most intelligent creatures could escape them in only a few seconds.
They made good progress along the way they had originally come, leaving a trail of bodies and body parts behind them in a not-too-subtle clue as to the direction they were going. After a time, the quantity of attacking undead diminished until the adventurers found themselves no longer constantly assailed.
“Looks like we’ve got away from them,” said Viddo. “Hopefully they’re all heading in the other direction now – towards the artifact.”
“Until they realise that the diamonds are heading in the opposite direction,” said Jera, not slowing at all.
They entered the residential area again. Rasmus found that the details of their route had begun to blur in his mind and he was grateful that Viddo gave every impression of knowing where they were going. They turned left and right, passing the side rooms without a glance. They reached a place where the corridor ended at a solid wall, giving the option only of going left or right. Viddo stopped here and scratched his head.
“Are we lost?” asked Jera.
“Not lost, hungry,” said Viddo. He unslung his pack and reached within. “Cheese sandwich anyone?” he asked generously.
“How fresh are they?” asked Rasmus, unmistakeably keen. He’d finished the last of his own sandwiches when they’d stopped for sleep, some hours ago.
They did not get a chance to find out. There was a shimmering in the air nearby and Viddo found his pack snatched out of his hands. They caught the faint outline of the lich - the magics it used to cloak itself became partially unravelled as a result of its hostile actions. Jera was first to react and she clanked her shield against the swirling form of the creature’s body, little realising how fortunate she was that Viddo had already triggered the instant death ward that the lich had used to guard itself. Her blow did little damage and the lich became almost transparent again as it sped away along the corridor. It moved fast, clearly under the effects of magic to increase its speed.