“There’s something weird about it,” Billy noted, his neck muscles twitching as he gazed at the structure through the treeline. “I can’t quite place it, but this thing is trouble. It’s out of place.”
Audelia shrugged, unimpressed. “If you say so. What is our plan of attack?”
“We’re just observing to see if anything strange happens. Two men were sent here before me, and they never returned.”
“A boring task, but very well,” the warrior maiden said, inspecting her sword idly as she waited for the time to pass. “And if something happens, shall we attack?”
“I’d say that depends a lot on what the ‘something’ turns out to be. You know what I mean?”
Audelia flashed him a mischievous grin. “I never met so calculating a barbarian as you. And so dull.”
“Is that how you felt last night?” Billy said, thoughtfully stroking his chin as he returned a wicked grin.
“I, uh—” she stuttered and stumbled to answer him quickly, but her pale cheeks flushed red at the reminder. She couldn’t play tough with him, she knew; he’d seen her at her most... out of sorts. He’d seen her at her lewdest—and brought her past her breaking point of pleasure. She dampened slightly from just the memory.
She was saved from further embarrassment by a crunching sound coming from behind them. They both whipped their bodies to face what they thought might be their assailant but saw nothing.
“You heard it, too, right?” she said, but Billy only nodded. To Audelia, the sound had come and gone, but to Billy, his senses still flared, stoked by continuous invasive stimuli. True, it was silent now, but the smell of something noxious seemed close, though just out of reach—an odor that simply hadn’t been there before. Something was near, on the prowl, and they were the intended prey.
“Stay close, Audelia,” he said, giving warning to the warrior woman.
“As you wish,” she said, taking a step in his direction.
With the sudden introduction of Audelia’s footfalls, a series of events was set into motion.
First, with the sound of her steps, a subterranean vibration could also be felt brimming beneath the surface of the earth underfoot. Billy witnessed as tiny ripples appeared in the grass and soil with enough force to snap a twig or overturn a rock, no doubt.
Something lurked beneath their feet. Something that had just pegged their location.
“Run,” Billy said quietly, and they did. They immediately retreated in the direction of the tower, their plan for stealth and observation thwarted by cruel circumstance. As they fled, they felt the tremors below them growing closer and more daunting. Now soil and grass were erupting behind them with each step as the burrower beneath sought them unrelentingly.
Fifty paces from the tower and well within the lakeside clearing that it rested in, they knew they had to take some chances soon, or they’d be monster food.
“Run,” Billy repeated, adding, “Split from me, head toward the tall tree, and climb it.”
“What about you?” she asked with fear for him glistening in her eye.
“Go!” he pushed her lightly, not enough to knock her down but enough to force her to adjust course. She followed his directions to the letter, darting toward the tree. As Billy had suspected, the worm didn’t follow her—it instead opted to continue pursuing the barbarian. But Billy spotted his salvation, or at least a faint glimmer of hope—a bed of stone that seemed to suggest rocky ground beneath that might prove too much for the burrowing beast.
With remarkable speed and grace, he fled to the stones, leaping atop the largest. Sure enough, the burrower slowed its pace upon approaching the stone, and all was still for the moment.
“Are you alright?” Billy gripped his hand ax and shouted over to the tree where the buxom Audelia now straddled a thick branch.
“I’ve been better,” she replied, hand to mouth to amplify her shouts. Whoever was in the tower, they were well aware of the barbarian and his companion now. “Now what?”
“Now I press our advantage,” Billy said. “Watch this.” With a leap, Billy gripped his hand ax and landed on the soft soil outside of the rocky patch. He carefully kept his legs spread to the width of the ripples that he saw coming, readying himself for the test of his lifetime.
Within an instant, the burrower emerged, mouth open. It was something like a tremendous earthworm, slimy and pink, but it bore terrible wriggling spikes all over its skin that likely helped it to carve its path through the soil, and it had a hideous gaping maw that now stretched open beneath the barbarian’s feet, trying to consume him.
It didn’t work. The barbarian’s wide stance made it impossible for the worm to get him in its mouth, and instead, it merely pushed him upwards with its incredible momentum. The worm emerged, suddenly ten feet above the ground. Billy flipped backward off of its mouth and swung his ax with a vicious chop as he descended. It almost failed—the wind blew his messy, greasy hair in his face, and a patch of it got stuck beneath his glasses, so he was forced to calculate the location of the beast using the direction of the wind to his advantage as the noxious scent of the worm was blown into his nostrils.
His ax cleaved cleanly through the neck of the worm, but the blade wasn’t wide enough to decapitate it, so the creature’s stalky body merely hung from a thick flap of internal tubing as green blood pumped from the wound. Billy landed as gracefully as a panther and immediately went to work dealing as much damage as he could to the rest of the worm. It was dying, but before falling limp, it screeched and writhed in its death throes. Billy almost felt sorry for the thing.
With a resonant thud, the monster landed on the ground. Billy didn’t let his guard down, however. The thing still twitched, and he needed to be sure. He finished removing the monster’s head, and only then did he feel secure in calling back Audelia from the branch.
“Excellent work,” she said. “But I could have done some damage, as well.”
“No doubt,” Billy acknowledged with a smile. “I should have let you have my back.”
Audelia crossed her arms, eyeing him and smiling. “I get the next kill,” she proposed.
“Deal,” Billy agreed.
They looked at the tower, now looming directly before them. Audelia was the first to speak after a moment of silence followed the killing of the worm. “We no longer have the advantage of surprise,” she noted. “Perhaps it’s best if we leave.”
Billy shook his head vigorously. They’d come too far to leave empty-handed. And besides, he had it on divine authority that he was on the trail of a core. Thinking of that, he decided boldly, “Maybe you had the right idea the first time,” he noted.
“Tear down the door and investigate?”
“We would likely be walking into a trap,” he acknowledged. “They’d be ready for us. But they aren’t counting on how badass we are.”
“Bad...ass?” Audelia’s face contorted at the unfamiliar expression. “Our asses are of low quality?”
“Certainly not,” he said, stealing a glance at the warrior woman’s shapely rump. “The point is we are more than they can handle, prepared or not.”
Audelia pulled her flowing black locks behind her shoulders as she flashed Billy a pleased look of agreement. “You speak true, outlander.”
“So, what’s the plan?” he asked.
Audelia thought carefully. They retreated into the woods, almost surprised not to be pursued by anything or anyone, but they chose to take it as a small blessing rather than an ominous signal of foreboding danger, which it almost certainly was.
“We wait until nightfall—tomorrow night. Let them think we’ve left. Then, when their guard is down, under cover of darkness, we strike.”
Billy nodded in agreement. “It sounds good. How do we get in, though?”
“The first floor has a front door. We won’t take it. There are staircases on the exterior wall of every other floor. You saw it, yes?”
Billy nodded.
“So, we scale the wall and enter
in through the second-story window or doorway,” she said.
“And we go in hot, with some kind of distraction,” Billy added.
“Yes. But what?”
The barbarian considered the words, mulling them over before speaking, but words didn’t come. No doubt they were being watched even now, so on some level, he dared wonder what good a distraction would even do, and would it prove to be necessary at all? To that end, he wondered, might the entire expedition be pointless without the element of surprise? And did it even make sense for them to invade the tower? After all, they didn’t know who dwelt there, their purpose, or their capabilities. By all indications, they could be walking into an elaborate trap, even if there was a core in there.
Still, he was no coward. Maybe in his past life, but not now. Having died once, the fear of death did little to impress him, but he did fear for Audelia. Still, he knew that she would follow him into the tower—worse yet, she might view him a coward for backing down, and for whatever reason, her respect meant something to him. Foolhardy, maybe, to place the opinion of a pretty woman above the value of both of their lives and well-beings, but men were like that, and Billy was a man after all.
“I don’t fucking know,” Billy said at last, piercing the silence. “But we’ll take all night to figure it out if we have to.”
Audelia nodded, satisfied with the barbarian’s reply. Her lips curled in a smile that demonstrated her thirst for the adventure ahead. She, too, was at a loss for ideas, but she believed that the barbarian was capable enough to hatch a plan with her assistance. Audelia couldn’t understand why she had such faith in him, but the faith was there, all the same, and she followed it despite the nagging doubts of her better instincts. Her connection to him seemed beyond instinct. It overwrote instinct. It was fate.
They sat in the silence for a time, but surely enough, ideas flowed, and the beginnings of a plan were made and set. A camp was made, and the makings of a rudimentary strategy seemed to burst from its flames into their eager minds even as the tower glowed in the distance with a malevolent quality.
Chapter 5
◆◆◆
They deliberated for the remainder of the day and the following morning and afternoon, hunting for food and making battle plans, sparring with one another and spending the evening in fits of passion and each other’s warm embrace. Time passed, and the so-called plan was agreed upon. Before they knew it, it was dusk again, and they were making final preparations.
The top of the tower was lit, flickering strange colors in patterns of light lasting for short and long durations, but no sound was emitted. The strange lights didn’t cease, and they were the same the night before when they had lasted until just an hour before dawn.
“What do you think they mean?” Audelia asked of them.
“Maybe we’ll know soon,” Billy shrugged, “But at the moment? No freakin’ clue.”
Each of them smeared and lathered themselves with clay and mud to make their approach as hard to detect as possible. Billy noted that the large and beautiful eyes of his gorgeous companion almost seemed to glow in the darkness, so he wondered how effective the camouflage would be. Even covered in mud, she was a beacon, every inch of her radiating with perfection.
But he had to get his head in the game. There would be time for that later if all went well. Now, Billy needed to focus on the reason he’d come here. He needed to uncover the truth of what the hell was going on in that tower, and he was prepared to find out one way or another.
When the sky was only lit by moon and stars, and the earth was dark again, Audelia and Billy crossed the grass toward the exterior of the building. There were no guards out, but torches were lit outside the front doors, and neither could escape the sense that they were being watched.
“Sorcery,” hissed Audelia. “Dark magicians scry on us even now.”
“I feel it too.”
They stuck to the plan, nonetheless, for it was all they had. They scaled the exterior wall, and it was easy, for the creases between the oddly-shaped bricks were smooth but soft, and Billy dug his fingers into them effortlessly. In doing so, he forged a path up the wall for Audelia to follow, using the same indentations he’d created to guide her up the wall. She was no amateur climber either. In her bag she also kept a rope that she’d brought on the mission, but she hoped to save it for a more desperate moment—perhaps an escape.
Billy pulled himself onto the stone ledge leading to the second floor and reached his hand down to lift Audelia onto the platform. Easy enough. The two of them stood just a few feet from the closed wooden door. It was ornately carved with patterns that seemed alien next to the rest of the cultures in the region that Billy and Audelia had come across, but there was no time to concern oneself with anthropological matters.
They’d rehearsed this. There was no question about what to do next. Still, Billy felt the pinching nerves of anticipation and anxiety come alive in his gut as he acted.
He kicked down the door. It flung open, the lock mechanism shattering and breaking free from the wood as the force of his assault echoed through the night. The two warriors poured through the door, their trained eyes looking for any movement, but the room was dark, its walled torches unlit, and it stank of rot.
“A trap, surely,” Audelia seethed, and she retreated out the door to grab the torch that lit the exterior wall of the second story. Rushing back into the room, the fire’s light certainly helped. They could now see a pile of bodies on the floor—men, women, and children, wrapped in something white and glistening like fine silk. They could see a web extending across all corners of the room. And they could see eight malevolent eyes glowing hot with the reflected light of the torch in Audelia’s hand.
“I fucking hate spiders,” Billy whined. “Shit.”
“This one is mine anyway,” Audelia said, and she used the torch to ignite a patch of spiderweb, which quickly burned through a large part of the webbing in their sector of the room.
The spider descended menacingly, patiently, unintimidated by the flames. It skittered on eight hairy legs toward Audelia, and Billy readied an attack but didn’t move as the monster skittered past him. “It’s all yours,” he said. “Let me know if you want me to tag in.”
Audelia needed no such assistance. She calmly placed the torch on the ground, drawing her weapons. With her sword and dagger, she lunged at the spider faster than it could lunge for her, and she reaped the benefits of her initiative, with the shorter of her two blades finding a new home in the head of the beast, while the other sliced through two of its legs.
With a bloodcurdling cry, the spider recoiled and flailed in anger, pushing Audelia back, giving itself room to pounce. When it leaped toward her, the fangs in its mandibles flared wide and dripped with venom, and for a moment, the barbarian worried for his companion, his legs readying an intervention.
The only thing the venomous mandibles of the gargantuan spider found, though, was the length of Audelia’s blade as it plunged into the thing’s mouth, but the force of its assault managed to knock the Zer-Kali battle maiden off her feet.
She rolled and dodged several attempts of the spider to pierce her gut with the clawed tips of its eight—no, six—hairy legs, but now she was unarmed, her dagger lodged in the thing’s face, and her sword stuck in the place where its cephalothorax met its abdomen. She performed a backward somersault, pushing her legs against the head of the spider for added momentum, and she landed adjacent to the still-lit torch that rested on the floor. Picking it up, she wielded it now with both hands and a bloodthirsty grin.
The spider was now perceptibly hesitant to get close to her. The damage it had suffered would surely kill it eventually, regardless. The monstrous nature of the creature, however, still seemed to compel it to fight.
Billy watched with admiration for his partner as she faced down the beast fearlessly. He doubted even he would fare better—especially since he was more than a little put off by certain eight-legged combatants.
Wit
h a battle cry, Audelia hurtled toward the spider once again, but it dodged backward. Still, it looked as though it had an attack on its mind despite knowing this was a losing fight. Audelia pounced again, this time striking the lodged dagger’s hilt with a flying kick, driving it further into the spider’s head, and it skreiched in pain. Its legs twitched. It was slowly dying.
Still, Audelia didn’t let up on her assault. Her bloodlust was inspirational as she repeated her attack, again and again, driving the dagger and the sword deep into the spider, which was now attempting to climb up its own webs to escape. She torched the web, and it slumped to the floor, landing on its back. It didn’t have the strength to turn itself over, and it merely twitched its fiendish legs in desperate agony as it waited out its own demise.
“Pathetic,” Audelia said with a grin, reclaiming her weapons from the head of the beast as its legs fell still.
“Looks like you let me off easy when you were pissed at me this morning,” Billy remarked in awe.
The battle maiden beamed proudly at him. “Have I earned my right to be your travel companion, barbarian?” she asked with a mock curtsy.
“I think I should pose the same question to you,” Billy laughed.
But their celebratory chatter was interrupted by a rustling. The pile of dead bodies was moving.
“Oh for fuck’s sake—”
And one hand emerged, smaller than many of the rest.
Audelia looked at Billy in alarm. “Should we kill it?”
“I mean, probably,” Billy said with a shrug, already gripping his hand ax with both hands.
And then a head appeared, pulling itself out of the pile. It was a girl!
“A little assistance, please?” a high voice said, waving a hand in request.
Audelia stayed put, gripping both of her blades tightly, but Billy rushed to help the girl out of the pile.
“What the hell happened to you?” Billy asked.
Billy the Barbarian 1: The Heights of Dread: An Isekai Sword and Sorcery Harem Lit Adventure Fantasy! Page 4