by Sam Ryder
“Shall I ring the dinner bell or do you want to?” Beat asked.
“Be my guest,” I said. Under Kloop’s leadership, we would generally wait in unnerving silence until the monsters inevitably came. But I wasn’t Kloop, and why delay the inevitable?
Beat lifted her spear high in the air, letting it hover for a moment, the tip catching the red-orange light from the demontorches, reflecting tongues of flame. And then she brought it down with a clang! She repeated the motion several times: Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!
“Idiots,” Lace hissed.
I couldn’t argue with that. But then again, sometimes being idiotic when faced with monsters was the only thing that prevented my nerves from uncoiling like a dropped spool of yarn. Still, I gripped my hammer’s shaft harder, feeling adrenaline begin to course through my veins.
A sound arose from somewhere in the distance. Like a gruff cough. It was answered from the other direction. Then from another direction still.
“Fucking bludgeons,” Beat said. “I hate bludgeons.”
It was Beat’s standard comment when facing any monsters. She hated them all. Then again, so did I.
“Better than the six types of monsters Mill and I faced last night,” Lace growled, a not-so-subtle reminder that Beat and I hadn’t been around to help during a crucial moment.
“There were at least that many at the black-magic pit,” Beat fired back. “And one of the Morgoss. So maybe you should shut the fu—”
“Not the time,” I said, cutting my friend off. “We’ve all faced dangers. Our only hope is to stand together now. Hold your positions. Survive two Blacks and then we’ll have reinforcements.”
“I’ve heard that before,” Lace muttered, but the four of us reasserted our positions, back to back to back to back, a tight knot in the center of the lighted space.
Heavy footfalls approached, the stomp stomp stomp of creatures who didn’t know the meaning of the words sneak or tiptoe.
That was the good and the bad thing about bludgeons: they came at you fast, with no surprises. It was scary as hell, but at least they were predictable.
The first one burst from the darkness at a gallop, hunched over with its flat, hard head trained forward like a battering ram. It was heading right for Millania, the one least equipped to take on this particular monster in a one-on-one showdown.
For a split-second, I almost expected to hear Protector Kloop’s familiar musical voice call out a command. My hesitation almost cost at least one life.
But this was my show now, and I needed to prove to Lace—or maybe to myself—that I was the right choice for Protector. Or at least a good choice. “Gap the circle!” I shouted, taking one large step forward.
The others acted just as quickly, separating from each other. The out of control bludgeon plowed forward with reckless abandon, passing through our midst without stopping. Millania, who was the closest to the monster, was not idle. After obeying my command, she stepped into a lunge, planting her feet and jabbing her trident between the bludgeon’s feet as it passed.
Like a stick shoved into the spokes of a bike tire, the weapon caught, almost getting yanked from her hands as the stone beast fell. Beat stabbed at its hard flesh as it tumbled to the ground, but penetrating a bludgeon’s hide was almost impossible.
There were two ways to kill it: through the eyes or through the mouth.
Lace, who had stepped out of the path of the falling bludgeon, calmly fitted an arrow to her bowstring, took aim, and fired. Her magical arrow split into three, although she didn’t need the assistance this time. One arrow flew into the monster’s gaping mouth, while the other two each penetrated one of its eyes.
Overkill.
“Get clear!” she shouted, though it was an unnecessary warning. We’d all seen what happened next when Lace shot her arrows.
Millania was forced to drop her weapon, which was still tangled in the bludgeon’s legs, as she scrambled away. Beat barged into me as we both dove for the ground, covering us with her massive shield. I didn’t see what happened to Lace, but she was the most agile of all of us, and was likely well out of range of the—
BOOM!
All three arrows exploded while still embedded in the stone monster’s head. For a few seconds after the blast there was an eerie silence, but then the rock shrapnel began to rain down on us. Tink tink tink! Beat’s shield deflected most of the projectiles, but wasn’t large enough to prevent several heavy, rough-edged stones from slamming against my legs.
There wasn’t time to nurse our injuries, however, because the other three bludgeons arrived. “C’mon,” Beat said, shoving to her feet. One of the bludgeons was already upon us, swinging a huge fist made of stone. Beat ducked the attempted haymaker and slammed the butt of her shield into its gut, the clang resounding through the Black like a struck gong. If the bludgeon felt the blow at all, it didn’t show it, merely dropping to all fours and charging headfirst into her midsection, rocking her backwards.
I was in the direct path and only managed to avoid getting trampled by rolling to the side.
I came out of the roll with my head up, taking stock of the situation. Shit. We were in trouble. Though bludgeons were extremely dumb, the equivalent of a sample of Middle Earth orcs with the lowest IQs possible, they were also unbelievably powerful. Unfortunately, we were short on power in our squad right now. Beat and I might be able to go toe to toe with the heavyweight monsters, but Lace and Millania were less effective in this particular situation.
I watched as Millania shoved her trident into one of the bludgeons, aiming for its eyes but catching the side of its face. Two of the three prongs bent to the side. Her eyes widened and she barely had time to duck as the monster swiped at her. Even still, she was too slow, the punch catching her on the shoulder. She flew…literally…her feet leaving the ground as the force of the impact picked her up and tossed her aside like she was made of air. She landed hard, groaning, clutching her shattered shoulder.
Lace was in an equally dire situation. Though she was extraordinarily quick, when she’d dodged the exploding bludgeon she’d gotten too close to the edge of the Black and another bludgeon had emerged from the gloom just behind her. She’d been knocked over, losing her bow in the process.
This was the bludgeons’ strategy. Get their opponents on the ground and then squash them like a Mediterranean winemaker stomping grapes in a barrel. What they lacked in brains they more than made up for in brawn.
Two of my three remaining Warriors were about to be flattened. And Beat had her hands full with the third bludgeon, which meant I had an impossible choice to make and less than a second to make it.
It turned out the impossible decision was the easiest choice of my life.
I fought to my feet and bolted directly into the path of one of the rampaging bludgeons, turning sharply, squaring my shoulders with my feet set the same distance apart, my massive hammer gripped in two hands.
I waited for the pitch and swung. The bad thing about bludgeons was how freaking huge they were. In this case, however, it was a good thing. I couldn’t possibly miss its head, which was the size of a Costco watermelon.
I didn’t miss.
There were only two ways to kill a bludgeon: through the eyes or the mouth.
But I was Level 3 now, my strength sufficient to win any number of Olympic weightlifting competitions back on Earth. I created a third way to kill a bludgeon, turning their own name back on them.
My hammer shattered the monster’s face, twisting it around as it crumbled under the weight of the impact, which rattled my bones and sent shockwaves up my arm.
I heard the clatter of stones as the dead bludgeon fell, but didn’t see its demise because I was already turning in the direction of where Lace had been about to be trampled, hoping against hope that my calculated choice had been the right one.
The jury was still out.
The good thing was that Lace wasn’t dead. She’d managed to squirm far enough out of the danger zone to avoid hav
ing her chest or head caved in. The bad news was that the bludgeon had stomped on one of her arms, pinning it to the ground. Now it was trying to use its other leg to squash the rest of her as she dodged each time it slammed its huge stone foot into the unforgiving terrain.
At the same time, she reached over her shoulder and grabbed an arrow from the satchel strapped to her back.
The dumb beast tried to headbutt her and she struck, jamming the arrow into its eye.
The monster’s body went limp and it sprawled overtop of her, its weight dead now.
She screamed and then the bludgeon’s body exploded as the arrow ignited.
~~~
I felt horrible, and I wondered if this was how Protector Kloop felt on an almost nightly basis, each time one of his Warriors were killed or badly injured because of a decision he’d made.
Lace wasn’t dead—at least not yet. She was in an ooze bath, fully submerged because of the extent of injuries she’d sustained. Her arm had been crushed by the bludgeon’s heavy trod, but that was the least of her wounds. The exploding arrow that had saved her life had also almost ended it. When I had rolled the bludgeon corpse off of her, my breath had caught and my heart had skipped a beat. Half the cat-woman’s beautiful face had been missing, one of her eyes bulging out, her teeth and jaw visible from the side where her skin was gone. Blood leaked from her neck and chest, which was also ripped open. Thankfully the heat of the blast had cauterized enough of the injuries to prevent all her blood from pouring out.
Still, as I’d carried her back to camp, run up the hill, and clambered down the vines into the gully, I could feel her heart slowing, her breaths weakening. I could sense the final grains of sands running through the hourglass of her life.
It had freaked me the hell out.
Now I sat by the stone tub she was submerged in, silently praying to all the gods of Earth and the Three goddesses of Tor that she would make it through, that her body could still be repaired.
Beat had left a little while ago to get some food, offering to bring some back for me. I declined. I wasn’t hungry in the least. My first Black as Protector had almost ended in disaster. And Lace wasn’t out of the woods yet.
I was holding my head in my insanely big hands when the earth goddess awoke from her slumber. It was the first time I’d seen any of the Three awake since they’d Leveled me up. They’d even been oblivious as I’d stumbled into their domain, trying to save Lace’s life. Persepheus, the sea goddess, continued to sleep on her mossy rock, while Airiel, goddess of the sky, was absent as usual.
Minertha spoke now, her gravelly voice soothing despite its rough texture. “Protector,” she said.
I didn’t respond, my teeth gritted together.
I want to talk to any of the Three right now.
But Min was a goddess, so she already knew that. “You don’t have to say anything. Just come to me. I can make you forget the pain of the Black.”
I knew she could. As weak as she’d become, she was still a goddess, and had a vibrancy about her that dwarfed that of any other person I’d ever met.
For a while she could give me a reprieve from my dark thoughts. Once, she’d asked the same of me and I had refused her for her own good. But now that she was offering it to me, I wanted desperately to accept her offer.
And yet I said, “No.”
I needed to feel this. I needed to feel the pain of near loss, of fear for the life of one of my own. Else how could I serve my Warriors to the best of my ability? Their lives needed to be my number one priority. Kloop had taught me that. Time and time again. If I could become one half of one percent of the Protector he was, I’d consider it a small victory.
“You are an enigma, Protector Ryder,” Minertha said. “Not much surprises me anymore, but you have a knack for it. What happened out there?”
“You don’t already know?” I asked, finally peeling my hands away from my face to look at her. My breath caught, as it always did when I laid eyes on the rock goddess. She sat cross-legged on her stone mount, her smooth, hard skin endless. Her feminine parts were barely covered by rougher stone “clothing” that she seemed capable of creating or removing at will.
“We can sense things,” she said. “But we aren’t all-knowing. If we were, we might not be so helpless. I know it was the cat-woman who was badly injured, and I know you think it was your fault.”
“Do you know if she’ll survive?”
“Yes,” she said, and I couldn’t tell if it was an answer to the question or if she was actually saying Lace would survive. “Do you want to know?” she asked, clearing things up.
I took a deep breath, then shook my head. Again, it was my duty to not know, to feel the pain of not knowing all the way until Lace recovered or her heart stopped beating.
“Enigma,” Min said, her voice barely above a whisper.
I told her everything, pouring out my feelings to a being that in her prime had more power in her toenail than I had in my entire leveled-up body. When I finished, she said, “You chose to save Millania because you trusted Lace to save herself.”
I didn’t need to answer because it wasn’t a question, but I nodded anyway.
“You made the right choice,” she said.
I already knew that, but it still helped to hear it from her. The temptation to fall into her grace and forget the last several hours was stronger than ever.
I steeled myself and turned away, focusing on the tub of primordial ooze.
Minertha didn’t speak again after that, and eventually when I looked back, she was asleep again.
~~~
I’d fallen asleep when Lace finally emerged from the ooze.
The sound of the displaced liquid drew me from my dreamless slumber. I closed my eyes and then opened them to confirm I was actually awake and seeing reality.
Lace was gasping and coughing, dispelling the ooze from her lungs and throat, the goddess spittle dripping off her chin and ears. She turned to the side and threw up what was left of the ooze.
Her face, shimmering with the fluid, had been reconstructed. Her damaged eye was intact. From what I could see, the injuries to her neck and chest had also been repaired, the bones of her shattered arm knitted back together.
On Earth people would’ve called it a miracle and come to worship the Three, asking them to spit in their hands. Here, it was just another night.
I said nothing, waiting for Lace to finish vomiting. Her head slowing turned toward me, our eyes locking across the short space between us.
“You chose Millania over me?” she said, her voice full of accusation.
I nodded.
“Fuck you,” she said. I accepted her words because I deserved them. I was, however, shocked by her next words. “I would’ve done the same thing.”
“Really?”
“Of course. You know I don’t need help. Millania is a good Warrior, but she was outmatched by that bludgeon. Me, on the other hand, had the bastard right where I wanted him.”
I thought it might be too early for a joke, but that was the only way I knew how to handle these kinds of situations. “On top of you?”
She glared at me. “If you must know, yes. I’d dropped my bow, so I needed to stab it with the arrow by hand.”
“You knew it would blow up in your face and you did it anyway?”
“I’ve been here almost a hundred Blacks now. I should be the godsdamn Protector, not you. But that’s not how things went down. But I already told you I would keep fighting. Not for you, or even for the Three, but for myself.”
She was the same old Lace, and I couldn’t help but grin, especially because I knew at least part of her selfish words was a lie.
“Wipe that grin off your face.”
I did, because I thought if I didn’t she might scratch my eyes out.
A moment later, Eve appeared nearby, her legs crumpling beneath her. She fell into a pile of bodies, having brought back at least four others with her. Her massive panther, Souza, also appeared, la
nding on all fours and springing clear. Blood leaked from a long gash on the panther’s side. All the newcomers were unconscious, except for Souza and Eve, who was holding her midsection, trying to prevent her intestines from falling out.
Our Finder had returned a day early.
And she’d been attacked.
THREE
BRING ON THE NEWBS
“Uhhhh!” Eve groaned between clenched teeth.
“We’ve got to get her into the ooze!” I said, not that Lace needed any urging—she was already clambering from the tub, dripping all over the place.
Eve’s eyes were wild, her teeth grinding together so hard I thought they might shatter. Her little black dress was torn and bloody.
I could see into her stomach.
I knew I needed to hurry, but I forced myself to be gentle, picking her up gingerly under her knees and in the small of her back. If I jostled her too much the stuff on the inside might spill out and there might be no chance of saving her.
As I maneuvered her toward the tub Lace had just vacated, my mind churned through the possibilities of what might’ve happened. A horrible accident—had to be.
Still, something about the answer didn’t feel right. Eve didn’t have accidents. She was as sure-footed as anyone I’d ever met, and never did anything she didn’t plan to do. Plus, her panther had a slash down its side that looked anything but accidental.
Slowly, carefully, I lowered her into the ooze, holding her head above the surface. Her eyelids fluttered over her almond-shaped eyes.
She gasped, her eyes widening suddenly and locking on me. Her pink lips parted and she only managed a single word before losing consciousness:
“Trap.”
~~~
“This has never happened before,” Persepheus said. The sea goddess was perched on her mossy stone, arms folded around her knees, which were tucked to her chin. Like this, she almost looked childlike and innocent, rather than the immortal being who was missing the very heart in her chest.
“What did happen?” I asked, hoping the sea goddess would have a logical explanation. I’d sent Lace to get Beat and Millania when Persepheus awoke, sitting up on her rock.