Protector

by Sam Ryder

  Buying me some time, as she’d promised.

  I lowered my head and barreled into Lace, grabbing her around the waist and throwing her over my shoulder like a carpet. I shoved off the pad, slipping away from the multiple sets of hands that tried to pull me back down.

  Pain flashed down my back as Lace clawed at my skin.

  I ignored it, running right at Beat, whose jaw was set, a growl emerging from between her grinding teeth. Her muscles were bulging. Despite all her efforts, however, her back was slowly bowing, her legs forced to bend. The door was halfway to the floor, threatening to crush Beat in the process.

  The smart thing to do was to ram right into Beat, sending all three of us safely into the next room so the door could slam behind us, forming a barrier from all that temptation.

  But in the back of my mind I knew we were missing something.

  Weapons. I’d dropped my hammer somewhere and Beat her spear. At least Beat’s shield was strapped to her back still. Similarly, Lace’s bow and arrows were on her back, rattling as I ran with her clawing me.

  I reached Beat and said, “Gimme three seconds.” Then I slung Lace off my shoulder and tossed her through the gap between Beat’s underarm and her wide stance.

  “Hurry!” Beat snapped, but it was unnecessary. I’d already flung myself back the other way, slapping aside a faery that reached for my groin. I spotted the glow of my hammer, which, fortuitously, was resting on the floor right beside Beat’s spear.

  I grabbed the weapons in one swift motion, cut back the other way, dodging both flying and running and very naked faeries. This time, I took advantage of my original plan. Beat was faltering, her knees bent too far, her back on the verge of breaking. Her face was red with effort as she roared like a lion.

  I dove, smashing into her and sending her flying backward.

  The door slammed behind us.

  We were safe.

  Stairs led upward into the dark.

  SEVENTEEN

  CAN WE GO BACK TO THE SEX ROOM?

  Lace wasn’t angry anymore. Quite the opposite. Sitting on the ground with her arms on her knees, she looked…ashamed. Even her tail was drooped, curling around her body. I knew why. She wasn’t used to needing help of any kind. She’d been lost in that room, past the point of no return. It was only Beat and my efforts that had dragged her back from the abyss.

  I could only see her because the pure white light from my glowing hammer had intensified, casting a halo that seemed to wrap around the three of us.

  “You would’ve done the same for us,” I said, placing a hand on her shoulder, which was bare. At least she’d managed to fix her loin bikini to cover herself. She deserved that much dignity.

  She shrugged my hand away from her. “No,” she said. “I wouldn’t have. If I had been the one to keep my head, I would’ve left you both.”

  It was a major thing to admit. For a second, I thought she was being too hard on herself, but then I realized it was the truth. She would’ve left us to spend the rest of our days in oblivion.

  I didn’t know how I felt about that, but this wasn’t the time or place to explore complex feelings.

  Beat, however, had something to say. “You bitch,” she said.

  Lace took the hit, casting her eyes to the ground.

  I looked at Beat, trying to send my thoughts her way. We couldn’t divide ourselves now. We needed Lace’s help if we had any chance of finishing this mission.

  I could see the anger roiling beneath the surface of her skin. But then, in a flash, it vanished. She rolled her eyes. “Listen, Lace. You can be a real selfish jerk sometimes, and arrogant to a fault, and downright nast—”

  “Beat,” I said.

  “Anyway…” Beat continued. “You’re one of us. You’re a fucking Warrior. Probably the best we have. So maybe you wouldn’t have saved us back there—so what? It’s not about what you would’ve done before, it’s about what you will do in the future.”

  Lace’s chin lifted and she met Beat’s eyes, then mine. She looked even more confused than she’d looked when I’d first shoved the faeries away from her. It struck me that I knew so little about Lace’s life before Tor. We were outcasts, all of us. She’d erected a fuck-you barrier between her and everything else in this world, and perhaps the world she’d been a part of before too, but that didn’t mean it needed to define her.

  She opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. “In the future, I will defend both of you to the death. I will never leave you behind if there’s a chance to save you.” Gods, the naked truth in her voice… It was even more beautiful than she was on the outside. Maybe she still had a barrier—maybe that was what she needed to survive—but she’d lowered it just enough for us that we could peek over and see the real Lace. Vulnerable. Chewed up and spit out more than once in her life. But still strong. She was one of us. And we’d finally earned her loyalty.

  “Good enough for me,” Beat said. “But you’re still a bitch.” This time, her tone was light, and Lace grinned a catlike grin.

  “Right back at you,” she said.

  We stood as one, facing the staircase ascending into the dark. The rise was steep as hell, each step the equivalent of three or four ‘normal’ ones. Some were crumbling and broken, weathered by time. They curved up and away, vanishing into the shadows.

  “I’ve heard of this place,” Lace said.

  “What?” Beat and I said at the same time. “You have?” I said. “How?”

  “How quickly you forget that I’ve been here for much longer than you have. You may be Protector, but leveling up doesn’t add experience to your history.” She was right. I might’ve forgotten that she was the seasoned veteran, not me.

  “Tell us,” Beat urged.

  “They’re known as the Thousand,” Lace said, “though no one has actually counted them. Supposedly they go all the way to the top of the tower. The summit of Annakor.”

  Which, of course, was exactly where we needed to go.

  “Has anyone ever tried to ascend to the top?” I asked.

  Lace shrugged. “There were rumors of Seekers who’d bragged about making it partway. Others had set out with the goal of climbing to the top, but they never returned.”

  If Vrill was one of those Seekers, she’d never mentioned it to me. Then again, she’d been here a long time and I hadn’t exactly requested an accounting of every day she’d spent on Tor.

  “I’ll look for the Wonka-vator,” Beat said, grabbing for my hammer. The moment her fingers touched the shaft, sparks flew and she withdrew. “Damn,” she said. “Didn’t know your weapon had a security system.” She sucked on her fingers as if they’d been burned.

  I stared at my glowing hammer. “Neither did I. Sorry about that.”

  “It’s nothing,” Beat said, though I could tell she was hurting, sucking in a sharp breath.

  “If either of you want to turn back…” I said. Even though I already knew what their responses would be, I had to ask.

  Beat said, “Shut the fuck up, asshole.”

  Lace just growled.

  Yep. As expected. “I’ll lead the way then,” I said, holding my hammer in front of me and slightly upwards. “Stay close.”

  “Yes, daddy,” Beat said.

  We started up the narrow steps, single file. It was slow going at first, partly because the stone kept crumbling under our feet and we had to be careful to place each step carefully, and partly because the staircase had more twists and turns than a murder mystery novel.

  Soon, however, the darkness began to dissipate, and we became less reliant on the glow from my hammer. Windows passed by on one side intermittently, providing a view of the mountain range. The steep terrain was blanketed with shadows, but it was clear the Black was yet to arrive. The windows were frequent enough to provide lighting for the Thousand steps, which meant we could move somewhat faster.

  Which wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Even with my Level 3 body, my calves and quads were burning already and I wa
s huffing and puffing enough to blow the three little pigs’ house down twice over.

  Lace seemed unaffected by the climb, eventually passing me, her tail batting across my face playfully. “Oops,” she said. “Sorry. Hard to control her sometimes.” I could tell from her poor attempt at hiding her smile that she’d done it on purpose.

  Beat said, “Hey, who’s counting the steps?”

  I’d started out with every intention of keeping a tally for future reference but stopped at around three hundred. I suspected the number of steps changed from time to time anyways, just like the rooms.

  “Ninety,” Lace said at the same time as I said, “Three thousand.” Yeah, some help we were.

  “Thanks,” Beat said. “I’ve got four-sixty. Sixty-one. Sixty-two…” At least one of us was taking this seriously.

  We passed another window, which was basically just a square hole in the stone walls. The mountains were growing darker. Was the next Black approaching already?

  When we reached the next window, my fears were confirmed. It was definitely darker again, which made my hammer’s glow appear brighter. Lace recognized the same thing and had stopped to wait for me to catch up.

  I paused to catch my breath.

  Beat, also breathing heavily, said, “Five hundred exactly. Halfway there.”

  “Assuming the Thousand is meant to be taken literally,” I said. “It could be more.”

  “Or less, douche bag,” Beat said. “Why you always got to be so glass-half-empty?”

  “Just trying to keep our expectations low. If we get to one thousand and there are more steps, I don’t want it to affect our spirit.”

  “This isn’t Disneyland and we’re not hobbits,” Beat said.

  While my brain tried to figure out how those two thoughts might be related, Lace shushed us, her ears twitching, angled toward the window, which was barely visible now—a gray square against a black backdrop.

  Lace said, “Fuck.”

  At first I didn’t hear it, but then I did.

  A distant shriek. One I’d heard several times on this planet, the first time being right after I’d separated from Vrill for the first time in an attempt to be heroic.

  My first kill had been a gargat, one of the winged gargoyle-like demons who could only survive during the Black. I had been lucky that first time. Since then, I’d killed other gargats using skill and strength.

  My past victories, however, didn’t make their hunting cry any less chilling. Especially because the first shriek was followed by a second, and a third, and then more. Dozens of shrieks fought for dominance of our ears.

  Worse than the sheer number of gargats required to make such a cacophony, they were getting louder, closer.

  They knew we were here.

  And they were coming for us.

  Another sound thundered. Doom-doom! Doom-doom! The drumbeats were distant, but it was obvious where they were coming from. Down the staircase.

  Beat and I looked at each other. “Great, the fucking Mines of Moria,” she said.

  Lace screwed up her face. “We’re in a tower. Mines are underground.”

  As usual, Beat and my secret language of LOTR might as well have been a foreign language to those not from Earth. “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “All she means is we’re being pursued.”

  “No kidding,” Lace said.

  We had choices. One: Stay at this window and fight the gargats. Two: Flee back down the steps and hope the demons didn’t pursue us to the bottom and that any monsters climbing the steps to meet us weren’t too great in number. Three: Climb higher and fight the gargats only if necessary.

  Option two was out of the question. I was pretty sure we were all in agreement about that. None of us were the retreating type, especially not after having come this far already. Plus, I didn’t like the sound of those doom-doom drumbeats.

  We had the mettle for option one, which was Beat’s choice. “We can control how many we face at once if we stay here,” Beat said. “I’ll go down a little to the previous window. Lace can go up to the next one. We’ll kill them. We’ll kill them all.”

  I didn’t doubt her ability. Or Lace’s. Or mine, for that matter. But I’d already caught a glimpse of what was coming. It was hard to see in the gray light, but I’d spotted the gleaming eyes catching the last dying rays from the sunlight, which wasn’t strong enough to hurt them anymore. There weren’t a few dozen gargat, which would’ve been bad. There were a few thousand. Not to mention there could be thousands more monsters mounting the steps at this very moment.

  Lace, whose vision was far better than mine, said, “That’s not going to work.”

  “We go up,” I agreed. “Now!”

  Even though we were disagreeing with Beat’s plan, she didn’t argue, perhaps sensing the urgency in our tones. Since I was the one with the glowing hammer, I led the way, a silvery, bobbing halo skating up the steps just ahead of us. The steps were so steep I stumbled twice but Beat and Lace were right there to catch me before I did much more than bang my knee.

  The shrieks were all around us now, piercing my brainpan. I heard a thud behind us and turned my head to see one of the large, scaled creatures right itself after flying through the window and slamming into the wall. They weren’t the smartest monsters, but that wouldn’t necessarily help us. Their reckless abandon would make them more dangerous, not less, especially because of the sheer number in their flock.

  What had always disturbed me the most about gargats, however, was how their faces resembled that of humans, but more grotesque, like a reflection in a funhouse mirror.

  In this case, there was nothing fun about it.

  Beat’s spear flashed out and she caught the winged demon in the throat. Blood spurted from its mouth and it fell back, the spear tip sliding out. It tumbled down the steps and out of sight.

  We’d drawn first blood.

  Doom-doom! The drums were more urgent now, but still distant. Something to be feared later. The gargats were the present concern.

  “Go,” Beat said, when I hesitated.

  Thump-thump!

  Two demons slammed through the window just ahead of us, and then a third shot through, rebounding off its comrades and twisting toward us, claws extended. I swung my hammer on instinct alone. When the hammer’s head collided with the gargat, there was a flash of silver light and the monster flew back into the other two. When my eyes adjusted to the dimmer lighting once more, I saw that all three were dead.

  “I want one of those,” Beat said, eyeing her spear like one might look at a rubbery overcooked asparagus stalk.

  “Time for talk later,” Lace said, urging us forward. We started climbing once more, chased by the doom-doom drumbeats. Trying to get ahead of the stupid gargats was a good strategy. Otherwise we would’ve already been overwhelmed. For the most part, the dumb birds came at us as we passed windows. That allowed Beat to hold her spear out and let their momentum skewer them one at time. Or I might jab with my hammer, releasing that powerful silver killing light.

  Lace had even bigger ideas. “Hold up,” she said as we reached another window. I was tempted to ask Beat how many steps we’d climbed, but I was pretty sure she’d finally stopped counting.

  Beat took out a gargat that came at us through the window, and then turned to Lace and said, “This better be good.”

  Lace only grinned and strung an arrow to her bow. “Cover me,” she said.

  She stood at the window and aimed while Beat and I made sure nothing could attack her from above or below. She fired, her bowstring humming. At first there was nothing, and I thought she might’ve missed her mark, but then the Black lit up like a fireworks display. Winged demons, now on fire, fell from the sky, shrieking. Out of the corner of my eye I watched them, finally gaining an appreciation for just how high up we were.

  We climbed higher and higher. Every so often Lace would request we stop so she could do her exploding arrow thing and take out another dozen from the massive flock.

&n
bsp; DOOM-DOOM!

  The drumbeats were so loud now they made my teeth chatter. While we’d been methodically climbing higher, our pursuers from below had been catching up. I glanced back and thought I saw the edge of a demontorch, the red light splashing the ground like a pool of blood and shadows.

  “Hurry!” I said, though we were already moving at maximum speed.

  Three gargats shrieked through the next window, cutting off our escape. I was about to hammer my way through them when another three entered the staircase, then three more.

  Past them, I could hear more shrieks. They were getting smarter, learning from their mistakes. Blocking the way forward to stall us while—

  “Shit,” Beat said.

  I turned back. Demons filled the staircase below us. Some wielded demontorches while others bore crude weapons. Others relied only on their claws and teeth, which were almost worse. The group was comprised of many types of demons, breaking the general rule that demons didn’t get along. For the chance to dine on us they were making an exception.

  There were the many-mouthed vostra and several of the Maluk’ori. Hellhounds growled at us, their fiery eyes blazing. Bludgeons with stone fists the size of my hammer’s head towered over the others.

  They even had a troll, the creature so large it had to stoop and turn slightly sideways to fit up the staircase.

  It was the worst-case scenario times a thousand.

  Lace fitted an arrow to her bow, and Beat and I said at the same time, “No.”

  Lace frowned. “There are too many to fight individually, but they’re clustered together.”

  “You’ll destroy our way down,” I said.

  “Better than being dead.” She was right, I knew. We were playing a game of chase that would end badly ninety-nine times out of a hundred. We needed to change our odds. Lace could do that for us.