Two, I couldn’t let them leave.
I ran into the nearest sleeping quarters and grabbed a cushion. Then, back in the latrine room, I rolled up the cushion and stuffed it into the hole where I’d removed the rock obstruction.
There were sixteen rats now, and the floor itself almost seemed like it was moving, there were so many scurrying around. Their squeaks seemed almost deafening, there were so many.
I guessed I learned one thing about myself then. There had been a lot of things in the new world that had scared me, but I wasn’t scared of rats.
Time to get to it, I guessed.
Taking the rock from my pocket, I advanced on the nearest rat.
An hour later, sixteen rat corpses were lying all around the pit building. After seeing me slaughter the first one, the other rats had fled, scurrying down the hallways and into any room that might offer an escape.
I had bellowed for Harrien, Judah, and Adi-Boto, and the three of them had helped me slaughter the vermin. Even Willi helped, though I could see he was more amused by our vermin murder than finding any benefit in it. Maybe he just loved killing stuff, but that didn’t seem right. He hadn’t given me the impression he was like that.
The ogre and elves hadn’t moved an inch. The ogre had slept through the whole thing, while the elves stayed in the corner of the first room, talking to each other. They barely took a breath, keeping up a constant stream of babble in a foreign language.
Now it was time to see if this had all been worth it.
I approached the first rat corpse, where a tiny pile of ash rested on its bloodied body. I took it.
[Minor] elemental received.
I smiled now. If there’s one thing a guy wants to know after he’s stuck his hand in a latrine and then wasted energy killing rats, it’s that there was a point to it.
My only question was about the elemental. I hadn’t expected a fire or ice elemental or anything like that. These seemed like regular, pain in the ass, dirty rats. But a minor elemental? What did that mean?
“Harrien,” I said.
The teenager approached me. Of all of us, he’d been the most useful in our rat slaughter. He was wiry and small, and combined with having to help Siddel on his hunts from time to time, this meant he was fast. Not only that, but he was brutal. He killed the vermin with one strike each, never flinching. I guessed that was an attitude that life in the wilds gave you.
I showed him the elemental.
“Ah,” he said. “Minae elemental, yap?”
“What spells can I use them in?”
And then I braced myself.
So far, every time I asked a Lonehill mage about elementals, I was met with the “a mage must walk his own path” bullcrap. Only Kaleb and Rosi had ever helped me much. But now wasn’t the time for that, and I needed to get answers from Harrien.
Luckily, it seemed he realized that our situation meant that old customs wouldn’t help.
“Minae elemental. Can use them in every spell, Isaac. But, must collect them.”
“We have sixteen corpses.”
“Ged. Four minae elementals can mean one elemental for any spell.”
One elemental for any spell.
Until now, the only elemental I had found that was useful for any spell was one gained from a human. I guessed that if four minor elementals could do the same job, then rats and humans weren’t too far removed on the ladder of usefulness.
Furthermore, it just reinforced a belief that had become strong in me. Everything was worth killing here. Even a rat.
We were starting to get somewhere. I could feel the excitement building in me.
“How do I combine them?” I asked.
“Isaac, it is like using other elementals. Cast spell, and minae elementals will combine. Just focus on stance and will work.”
Okay. Sixteen minor elementals meant I could cast four spells. Four chances to actually do something in the upcoming battle.
Harrien looked at me expectantly now.
Oh, right. He wanted me to share.
So far, I guessed I had been pretty selfish. It was the only way to get by, I had realized. Take everything for yourself, worry only about yourself.
But, if survival was the end goal, then I had to do what would boost my chances of it. We weren’t fighting each other in tonight’s battle, which meant we had to work together. Harrien was loyal to me. I could maybe even call him a friend. Two of us using spells at the same time was better than me casting them alone, since my casting time was a drawback.
I gave Harrien eight elementals, keeping eight for myself.
Next, I used the sharpened metal to open a rat and cut off a piece of flesh. Again, cursing that my life had taken me to stoop to this kind of thing, I popped a sliver of raw rat into my mouth.
Holy hells, it was disgusting. Cold, foul-tasting, and disgusting. Almost immediately, my stomach protested but I forced the feeling away.
Buff Received: Jugular
You can sense where a creature’s weak points and vulnerabilities.
Woo hoo!
I resolved from that moment on, I would always give rats a little more respect. If killing and eating rats saved my life tonight, then I owed the little critters one.
I mean, I’d still kill them. A world like this, I’d be stupid not to. But at least I’d honor them a little.
CHAPTER 34 – Turtle Chef
“Ah, Erimdag. Take a seat. You have a report for me?”
“Yes, my liege.”
“Enough of that liege nonsense. You know how much I hate titles.”
“But…forgive my insolence, but ain’t Duke a title?”
“Duke is my name, Erimdag, and I also happen to be a duke. Confusing, I know. Now, what about your report?”
“Well, the tunnel I found, my lieg…Duke. We blasted it open as much as we could without risking collapse. We found a door at the end.”
“Interesting. And what was beyond it?”
“That’s just it. We can’t open the bugger. It’s solid and made of metal.”
“Then blast it open. Gods, you are a gnome, aren’t you?”
“Tried it. Bugger won’t shift. And there’s something weird on it, some kind of rune mark, shaped like a circle.”
“Shaped like a circle, or an actual circle?”
“I guess it is a circle.”
“Interesting. Keep blasting, Erimdag. See if it shifts. In the meantime, I will think on it. I have to go now.”
“Ah. The pits.”
“Yes. We have new pitmen. I hate the brutish sport, but I wouldn’t be a ruler for long if I didn’t give my people what they want.”
***
I spent another two hours cutting away as much rat flesh as I could. From sixteen rats I got a decent amount, easily enough to keep my buffs going through the battle.
I divided the surplus between Harrien, Judah, and Adi-Boto. But the ogre and the elves? Screw ‘em. They got nothing.
I had considered offering the ogre some meat to try and enlist his help later, but I was skeptical. After discussing it with Judah, we decided we couldn’t trust him yet. Same went for Willi; I needed to foster a healthy distrust until I found out otherwise. Willi was still a question mark in my mind, yet less a question mark than the ogre and elves. I’d have to see.
After that, I tried to coax more rats out of the latrine, but they didn’t come. Maybe we had wiped them all out.
I heard a door open deeper in the pit pen. Crossing through a hallway and back into the first room, I saw Glum Rabert and the armed gnomes waiting for us.
The ogre was sitting up now, and the elves had finally broken their seemingly unending conversation.
“I hope you have rested,” said Rabert. “It is time to fight.”
And through the open doorway, beyond the pen and out in the city, I was sure I could hear people chanting and singing.
Hundreds of gnomes watched us enter the stadium. The structure was impressive, and much larger than it had see
med now that I was actually standing in it. Lamps filled with luminous goo hung from metal fixtures, casting glows on the spectators.
I saw a range of emotions writ into their faces. Excitement. Laughter. Anticipation. But most of all, I could see hunger. I looked at them, at gnomes of all sizes, ages, genders, and I saw the hunger in their eyes.
It was then that I knew I had been right; this was nothing but a release valve for them, a way to shed their tension. They ached to see something happen tonight. Something to happen to us. Cheers, guys!
The noise was deafening. Gnomes sang, shouted, and pounded on their metal seats. The sound seemed to vibrate over the ground of the stadium. My boots thudded as I walked into the center, following Glum Rabert and his guards’ lead.
Harrien looked a little nervous. It was most likely about our upcoming, almost weaponless battle, but it could easily be something else. Harrien had lived in a tightknit clan all his life, and it was probably disconcerting to see so many people in one place.
Adi-Boto and Judah were walking together. Adi-Boto studied the arena, perhaps looking for weapons, routes of escape, anything that might help. I’d already looked around, there seemed to be nothing but another door on the opposite side, which was oval-shaped and made from metal.
Willi walked with a casual stroll, no tension showing on his face. Was that a forced confidence, or just naivety? I remembered the thrill on his face as he’d helped us kill rats. I was beginning to doubt his whole lone wanderer story.
When we all reached the center of the stadium, the din died down until the place was silent.
Glum Rabert took a metal tin from a satchel on his shoulder. He opened it and smeared blue goo on his throat.
“Ladies and gentle-gnomes,” he said.
His voice was so loud that it shocked me. It filled the whole of the stadium with ease, hushing the last few talking spectators into silence.
It must have been the goo he had rubbed on his throat. Man, what was this stuff? And how could I get some?
“I thank you for coming today, as does our fair Duke.”
He motioned now to a section of the spectators’ area that was raised above the rest. There, in a small boxed section, was the duke.
And he was a human!
I couldn’t believe it. At first, I thought I must have been mistaken, and that Rabert was pointing somewhere else, but no. The duke was in his own private box, and he was standing against the edge with his arms resting on it. He gave a wave, and the crowd cheered.
The duke was a small, podgy man. He wore a pure white suit, comprised of a shirt, waistcoat, and a thick, white-furred coat. I guessed he also wore white trousers, but the edge of his box obstructed his lower half from view. Who knows? The dude could have been naked from the waist down for all I knew.
I stared at him as he basked in the cheers of the crowd, as he waved at those who chanted his name.
A human, here in the gnome city. The second human I had seen here in fact, though this man’s situation could not have been any different from the woman’s. She was a prisoner, sent to work in their shopping container temple, and the duke was, apparently, the ruler of all the gnomes.
Who was this guy? How had he achieved his status? Had he come through a portal, like me?
And why did the gnomes let him rule?
Damn, I didn’t need these distractions right before a battle, but I couldn’t stop turning the questions over in my mind.
“And now, without delay, our battle will commence,” boomed Rabert.
Applause rose among the spectators. Some cheered, others hollered things. Insults, yells of good luck, I don’t know what. There were too many voices to pick out. I liked to think they were shouting good luck, pitmen! We want to see you live through this, we hate the barbaric sport we are forced to pretend we enjoy.
Yeah, right.
Rabert and his guards exited the arena, leaving us poor pitmen alone. Way across from us, the metal door began to open.
The sound of gears and clanking metal drew the crowd into a hush, and the door opened achingly slowly, inch by inch.
Really, it was like they did this so slowly just to make our joint tensions bubble to the point we were ready to pop.
Harrien edged closer to me, while Willi watched the doors with his arms crossed and a smirk on his face.
When the doors opened completely all, I saw was darkness behind them.
And then two figures emerged.
Gnomes, each of them holding chains. Big, thick chains that looked like they could be used to chain down a komonaut.
Please don’t be a komonaut.
As the gnomes walked out their chains spread behind them and trailed along and the ground.
I heard a thud. Then another. They were so loud they made the ground shake. I felt my stomach turn to water, but I forced myself not to show any fear. With all the gnomes watching, with the podgy duke eyeing us, I wouldn’t give them an ounce of nerves.
A few thuds later, and our enemy finally emerged, and the gnome chain holders fled to the side of the arena.
First, a giant head poked out from the darkness. One easily bigger than a komonaut’s, with bulging eyes and a sharp, beak-like mouth.
And then came its body.
Or, more accurately, its shell.
When the beast finally emerged into the arena, I saw a great turtle, taller than five men standing on each other’s shoulders, wider than ten men lined up horizontally.
A strange description, sure, but this was a strange beast. It moved toward us, its great, scaly legs pounding on the ground. Lights from the myriad of goo torches in the arena glowed on its shell, revealing a pattern of squares and circles.
“Oh na,” said Harrien.
I feel you, buddy, I thought.
This was what we had to face? A turtle bigger than a komonaut, with a beak that looked like it’d take a chunk out of a mountain?
With no weapons?
I had never felt so screwed in my life. At least, I assumed that in my life before this world, I had never felt quite as in trouble as now, when I faced this freak with only a piece of metal, a rock, and a few spells.
But I’m an inquisitive guy by nature, and when I’m nervous, my brain fills the gap with questions. A few stuck out as pertinent right now; number one, what the hell was with these gnome bastards?
More relevant to my current situation, what was the deal here? Rabert had made it clear that, as pitmen and prisoners, we were resources. They weren’t just wasting us; we had a purpose to fulfill. Namely, entertainment.
Then again, surely a creature like this was even more useful than us? Not to downplay my own importance, but come on!
Something wasn’t right.
For once, I had the idea that this something not right might actually be in our favor.
Firstly, turtles had a reputation for being slow. Even normal-sized ones. Or was that tortoises? I didn’t know the difference, being honest. But, I guessed something this big would be extra slow. That was the way things worked, right?
Secondly, there was something strange about this creature, besides the obvious.
The more I looked, the more I saw that its scaly skin looked worn, pale, and rather sickly. It was covered in green mold, and its shell was cracked in places.
The turtle began to advance on us now, and as it did, I realized something; when a giant, slow-as-hell turtle has to cross an arena to get to you, it leaves you with some thinking time.
I took some rat flesh from my pocket and ate it, chewing as little as possible to spare my taste buds from the onslaught of disgustingness.
Buff gained: Jugular
You can sense where a creature’s weak points and vulnerabilities.
I felt a glow in my stomach, and it spread through me, rising through my body until I could sense it in my mind. I focused on the turtle, and I saw beams of light crossing over it now. They hadn’t been there before, so it must have been the jugular buff.
The lights
crisscrossed over the turtle’s body, before finally making an arc and disappearing underneath it, where they concentrated and gave five quick pulses.
Its underbelly. That was its weakness.
This thing was huge, but it was slow, maybe old, and definitely looked diseased. That must have been why the gnomes were wasting it on this spectacle; it was dying already.
And to cap it off, it had a weakness.
I looked at the spectators with a grin on my face now. This wasn’t going to be quite the show that they were expecting.
I turned to the others. “Distract it. Head to its left flank and force it to turn around.”
“Getting close is not wise,” said Judah. “This thing is slow. Distance is our friend.”
“Ordinarily, maybe, but you don’t have any kind of projectiles. Just trust me.”
While the others headed to the creature’s left side, I waited. Once they got closer the turtle started to move around to face them. It was like watching a ship try to turn in the ocean.
I made an arc around it, walking around the edge of the arena until I was facing its giant turtle ass.
This was way too easy.
Satisfied that it was focused on the others, I sprinted to it. I could hear the spectators holler behind me, but I turned them out. I ran until I reached the turtle, and then I walked underneath it.
There, standing beneath the monster, I felt like I had been plunged into darkness. The thing smelled even worse than the latrines, and I could hear its stomach gurgling above me.
Underneath the beast, I cast hrr-chare, aiming my fireball upwards where it throttled straight at the turtle’s belly. I quickly got out of the way so that loose flames didn’t rebound on me.
The beast screamed. It was a monstrous sound, and hearing it up close was like standing next to an explosion. My ears were ringing, and flames illuminated the darkness around me.
I stumbled out from the creature, ran a safe distance away, and then I stopped and watched as flames devoured it, tearing through its skin.
It was a pathetic thing to see, that of a creature like that burning alive, flames tearing through its insides. It flailed its legs, but even in its panic and pain and terror, its movements were achingly slow.
Everything Is Worth Killing- Isaac's Tale Page 34