Into the Storm

by Christopher Johns

  “Dragoon armor, guys!” Muu cackled as he lifted his legs to stomp his way into the boots on the floor before him. “Finally, dragoon armor for li’l ol’ me!”

  I shook my head, unsure of whether to be mad at him for it or just surprised that I hadn’t suspected this would happen sooner.

  “Maebe had me choose a ring for her, though she’s making me wear it for now since she had to return to the Fae realm.” The dwarves nodded almost knowingly but seemed to be waiting, so I held my hand out and called. “Hubris!”

  The scepter appeared in my hand, and I closed my fingers, grasping it. The wood no longer looked old and gray, but bright white like ivory with the runes shimmering and shining.

  You called to me?

  I ignored the question, I would need to sit and look at the weapon soon to see what it did.

  “You kept that thing?” Yohsuke hissed at me, clearly angry.

  “It was my fault that I died, and it seems to be tied to me somehow.” I shrugged off the hateful glares from the others. “Magic is where I want to take my progression for now, so why not have a weapon that can amplify my magic?”

  Is that what it did?

  I will explain if you ask me.

  I thought, Later, and it seemed to take that at face value, falling quiet.

  “I will not require you to leave it behind, but you will be careful using it,” Vrawn stated wearily. “I support you trying to better yourself, but if that thing almost kills you again, I will throw it into the ocean, and it will rot there.”

  No threat, just promise. Got it.

  “Well.” Farnik cleared his throat and clapped his hands to get our attention. “Then, all we would like to do now is ask if ye wish to truly be part of the Mugfist clan in more than just honor?”

  “I thought that the party was to do that?” James shifted his feet a little bit and came forward.

  Farnik blushed furiously. “So taken were I with the crowd an’ their adoration that I forgot to do the ceremony to induct ye, if ye be willin’.”

  Yohsuke perked up and seemed to blanch a bit. “Does that mean we have to do the bath thing again?”

  “No!” Gerty laughed at his discomfort. “That were to prepare ye for the clans to witness yer ascendancy into the histories as heroes. All we need to do is ask the questions an’ yer to give yer honest heart’s answer. The Mountain will name ye clan if it be so.”

  “Brawny, ye start us off, lad,” Farnik ordered, and his son stepped forward and closed his eyes.

  “Be yer heart true?”

  “Yes,” All of us answered aloud. Vrawn stood close to me, silent but interested.

  Roslyn stepped forward, her hands loosely clasped before her. “Will ye stand with the clan in its brightest moment, an’ darkest hours?”

  “Yes.” No hesitation from any of us.

  Gerty tread forward, her daughter stepping aside. “Should a brother, or sister of the clan come to ye for aid, will ye give it? Should a person in need ever call out in fear, will ye rise to stand against the threat?”

  “Yes.” Chills swept down my body, my fur standing on end as my adrenaline spiked.

  Finally, Farnik stepped toward the members of the clan and motioned toward the others. “Should ye dishonor the clan, these are the ones whose pride will pay. Should yer heart be false, an’ yer stride along the Way falter, their lives could be forfeit.” He walked toward us slowly, arms out to his sides. “Know’n tha’, could ye walk with us?”

  The others seemed at a loss for words, but this was my family, these dwarves had done so much for us, that I couldn’t not be part of something like this.

  I spoke softly, but firmly, “The Way is long and winding, but never are we alone. I will walk with you as your brother. And I know I speak for my wife when I say that she would, as well.”

  Pride swept over Brawnwynn, Roslyn, and Gerty, but Farnik turned to the others and waited.

  Muu nodded. “Aye.”

  Yohsuke did the same. “Yes.”

  “Never doubted I would.” Balmur grinned. “Yes.”

  “You guys are too cool not to want to hang with.” Bokaj winked. “I’m in.”

  “Yup.” James crossed his arms with a wink.

  Jaken grinned at the smaller man. “Brawny’s my brother, of course, I’ll stand with the clan.”

  CONGRATULATIONS!

  You are now a member of the Mugfist clan! You are one of a proud line of soldiers, generals, and protectors. Your standing with the Mugfist clan has greatly improved. As a clan dwarf in name, your honor reflects on the clan’s honor. Be careful!

  “I think there’s been some sort of mistake.” I turned to see Vrawn visibly shaken and on the verge of panicking.

  “What’s wrong?” Roslyn stepped forward to stand near the other woman and froze, a look of equal parts fascination and confusion on her face. “Yer clan, lass.”

  “A full-blooded orc is clan?” A loud voice rang out from the far side of the group of dwarves. A grizzled dwarf with scars all over his body swaggered through the dwarves around him. His muscles made the rest of the dwarves around him look small and likely would’ve given Rowland a run for his money on bulk. “How can it be possible?”

  Roslyn glanced up and reached out to take Vrawn’s hands. “Did ye answer the questions, Vrawn?”

  She shook her head, then stopped. “Not out loud.” Grunts and cries of wordless sound came from the dwarves. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. Vilmas had been telling me so much about what it was like to be in a clan, and when she spoke so highly of the Mugfist clan that you all had been so involved with, I couldn’t help wanting to be a part of something so grand.”

  “The words need nae be spoken fer the Mountain to hear what be in the heart, lass.” An elderly dwarf, his mouth working where his teeth were missing as he shook his way forward out of the crowd. “The Mountain know’d ye be earnest child.”

  “Earnest or not, an orc has no place in the clan!” The same grizzled warrior snarled. “Jaken be enough, and I be proud to call the others clan, but that one don’t even belong!”

  “Yer steppin’ on yer beard, Vlegen!” Farnik growled dangerously. “Ta say tha’ be nigh on blashpemin’ the Mountain!”

  “Then I’ll be the one to be sure tha’ the Mountain knew what he were bein’ offered!” Vlegen’s face split into a menacing grin. “I challenge the length of her beard!”

  “No!” Brawnwynn shouted and bolted forward before the dwarf could move too much further.

  “What does that mean?” I muttered to Roslyn.

  “It’s a challenge to a duel, by the old way, almost like challenging the head of the clan, but the loser has to shave.” Roslyn’s entire body was rigid, and her scowl grew progressively worse.

  “That doesn’t sound so bad.” Vrawn shrugged and stepped forward. “I accept.”

  Roslyn spat a stream of curses so virulently that I had to stop and make sure she was okay. “What?”

  “If the loser doesn’t have a beard, they can be killed for the dishonor!” She plodded forward and stood in Vlegen’s way. “She has no beard to challenge!”

  “Were she a dwarf, we would settle for cutting her hair, but the norm donae apply, an’ she hasn’t much anyway.” Vlegen sneered, and drew his own double-headed axe. “The challenge be accepted. Step aside, lass.”

  “Can anyone stop this bullshit?” Muu smacked Farnik on the shoulder urgently. “You’re the clan head, can’t you?”

  Farnik shook his head. “Only Fainne can stop a challenge of this sort.” Farnik plodded forward, his jaw set and ticking as he faced Vlegen. “Ye survive this, an’ I’ll personally see ye thrown into the hole.”

  “Once I win, I mean to take the clan. I were fine with ye leadin’ when she were to be leavin’ hopefully ne’r to return. I’d have said me piece once she left and been done with it, but this? To be made clan with a beast? This be a travesty I cannae bear anymore.” Vlegen winked and turned to the others. “Too long we been dealin’
with the soft heart o’ Farnik an’ his ilk. It be time real warriors like the ones what we celebrated last eve be leadin’ us to glory again!”

  Not a single dwarf with the clan raised a cheer or even a voice of agreement. This guy was alone in a sea of enemies right now, and the only way to keep from being killed was to be the leader.

  “Can we use any weapon we want?” Vrawn asked Farnik quietly.

  “Aye, do ye be needin’ one?” He offered her his axe, but she smiled and shook her head. “Then good luck, lass.”

  Gerty and Farnik waved the clan to two sides of the training grounds to spectate, and then Gerty stepped back out. “The rules be simple, yer not to kill each other, an’ anythin’ goes as for ability. Once one o’ ye falls to a fourth o’ yer health, then ye stop an’ the winner be declared.”

  “He can’t win if he’s dead.” I shifted into my ursolon form and padded forward, but Gerty stepped in.

  “She accepted the challenge lad,” Gerty tried to reason, pressing her palms to my chest and slid back in the dirt as I pushed on undeterred. “Do ye not trust her to hold for herself?”

  That stopped me cold. I’d seen Vrawn fight once before, and I knew she was capable. But the thought of her risking her neck for something like this? I shifted back and felt a hand on my shoulder, Muu stood there and stared into my eyes.

  “She’s going to fuck him up.” His soft-spoken support meant a great deal to me, but how about Vrawn? “She signed up for this when she asked to come along. She’s got this.”

  I nodded once, then turned to the orc. “Hey, Vrawn.” She turned around and motioned for me to speak. “We’re on a timetable, dear. Don’t go too easy on him.”

  Her fierce expression from there gave me the confidence I needed to step away from her side and watch with my brothers around me.

  “Ye may begin!” Gerty snarled, the look of frustration and acceptance she had more telling than not.

  Vrawn withdrew a sword from her inventory, crudely made with bars attached to it by welded strips, but the sharp tip of it was still there, and if anything, it would act like a club with how many bands were around it.

  “Is she really using a training weapon in an actual fight?” James frowned and crossed his arms while observing.

  “That’ll bring a good deal of shame on his head to boot,” Jaken observed loudly with a smirk firmly set on his face. “Not that he has much, to begin with.”

  Vrawn stood in a loose, ready stance and watched Vlegen closely as he paced forward with his axe clasped in both hands. The sneer he had as he watched her in return seemed cemented.

  Finally, he roared impatiently and sprinted at her with his axe held in a high guard. Vrawn lifted her arm as if to block and Vlegen just shouted again wordlessly as he brought the weapon down short and used it to pivot and drive his left foot into a sweep aimed at her legs.

  Vrawn widened her stance, and instead of letting the sweep take her leg, or lifting it to get out of the way, she drove her practice sword into the stone on the outside of her leg and used the limb to support it as Vlegen’s shin crashed into it.

  A meaty thud and a slight crunching sound echoed from it, the small man grunting but making no other sound as he tried to recover by hobbling away from the orc with a hateful glare.

  Vrawn lifted the sword into an easy guard, her left hand held casually to her side as she began to pace around him counterclockwise. The sword tapped a rhythm with each step, bobbing up and down and side to side as if pointing to a few spots but never seeming to fall out of that same easy guard.

  The dwarf fiddled with a gourd at his hip that I hadn’t noticed before because it had been tucked under his beard, then took a mighty draft of it.

  “That’s no fair!” One of the dwarves called from our right, his face paling.

  “It be an ability he has, an’ has the right ta use in the challenge.” Gerty sounded more than pissed off, but she remained where she was as she quipped, “Though to see him pull out this lit’le number on someone he thinks be inferior is most tellin’, aye Vlegen?”

  The dwarf simply drank on, his cheeks growing flushed, and his eyes glazing over. Finally, he finished whatever it was and belched loudly before stumbling over to where Vrawn was.

  Vrawn set her guard as the drunken man threw a haphazard fist in her direction that she caught easily. She brought her sword down where his head should have been in an overhead chop. Vlegen fell where he was and used her grasp to swing himself out of the way of her strike and had somehow managed to get himself caught up in her legs where he beat the limbs with the haft and butt of his axe. Small portions of her HP bar began to fall away as he did so, but Vrawn remained in control of herself.

  “Some drunken master type fighting?” Muu whispered excitedly so as not to alarm Vrawn. “Is she going to be able to figure that out?”

  “I couldn’t tell you, but she has to, or I have to be okay with dishonoring us and killing him before he can do the same to her.” I looked at the others, their own grim countenances giving me a clear guess as to what most of them would likely be okay with. They liked Vrawn, and seeing her die over something like this wouldn’t sit well with any of them.

  Vrawn seemed to have decided that enough was enough and reached down to grasp the slippery little shit by his beard, eliciting a gasp from some of the dwarves in attendance. “It be fair!” Hollered one of the ones across the circle, only being met with mutters of assent.

  She lifted him and head-butted him across the face, his head turning somewhat with the force, allowing him to minimize the damage and use the momentum to drive his knee into her solar plexus. What would have left a normal person stunned and gasping for air just pressed the air from her lungs harder as she forced the air out in a concentrated burst and flung the dwarf into the air.

  With nowhere to go and no way to dodge, she took her sword and used it like a major-league batter and swatted the dwarf in his already damaged leg, breaking it completely and stealing more than 15% of his total HP.

  He landed ten feet away in a heap and grunted painfully as he sat up, tugging the leg straight with both hands and his other leg, pulling the milky white and pink bone back through the skin with a sickening squelching sound. He pulled out a small red vial and downed it, his health replenishing and the bone healing with it.

  “You little cheater,” Balmur howled stepping into the circle, his rage making his hands shake with the beginnings of one of his murderous episodes. “Using a potion in the middle of a duel is the lowest thing anyone can do.”

  “But it ain’t against the rules.” Vlegen grinned as if he had no worries. “I had the ability to drink it.”

  Fuck this, I sighed to myself. “Vrawn?” She looked back to me, and I stopped what I was going to say instantly.

  There was a look of absolute, cold fury and determination on her face.

  I gave her a small nod, and she walked over to me, staring down at me, “Your support is appreciated, but I have been fighting a long time. I will be fine. And he has worn down the last of my mercy.”

  I almost found myself grinning, and if it hadn’t been for the fact that she looked ready to seriously beat the hell out of someone, I might have. “Fight hard, then. And know that we have your back.”

  She turned without a second thought and marched back into the circle where the crowd booed and cajoled the dwarf, but Vlegen would hear none of it.

  “Balmur,” Vrawn’s voice was tight, but cordial. “Please leave the circle. I have a fight to win.”

  “He cheated, this shit show is over.” Balmur insisted, but Vrawn shook her head, making the rogue growl in frustration. “We have shit to do!”

  Vrawn stopped and regarded him coldly. “I am well aware of that, Balmur. But I have been accepted by something far greater than me, and that acceptance has been challenged. I will defend myself because I haven’t been able to before. I will not ask again—leave the circle as my friend. Please?”

  Vlegen made to act on her momenta
ry distraction, but a dwarf nearby stuck his foot out and tripped him, the sneaky little bastard falling on to his face from the sudden slight interference. His calls of cowardice and rage buying us more time.

  Balmur paused, his hands still shaking as he took a deep breath, let it out, then another one before looking up at her. “I’m sorry. I hate it when people cheat during duels. My time in the Hells was rife with it, and it still drives me nuts.”

  “I will see that he pays for it, dearly.” Vrawn reached out and brushed a hand over Balmur’s. “We will talk later. Go now.”

  Balmur returned to his spot, Tmont coming out of her hiding spot to purr at him like a small motorboat. “I’m okay, T’, just not in my face, I have a fight to watch.”

  The cat mrowed angrily but laid on his shoulders in a way that allowed her to see what was happening as well.

  Vrawn pulled her weapon close to herself and set her legs before adopting a different style of fighting stance. Her weapon held above her head in her right hand, the arm behind her body with her left side presented to Vlegen. “Come.”

  The dwarf had all the encouragement he needed and bounded forward, less wobbly than before, but rather than attempting to drop her onto her back again, he attacked full tilt. His axe whipped out, aimed straight for her head in a tight pass as he lifted his knee toward her sternum. Vrawn stepped into the swing, the haft of the axe bouncing harmlessly off her thick neck, and her sword whipped forward like a scorpion’s tail. The score across the dwarf’s face carved away a small chunk of his beard, leaving a bloodied mess where it had been.

  Vlegen bellowed in outrage. “Beard cutter!”

  “And I mean to shave you completely by the time this fight is over, Vlegen.” Vrawn grinned savagely as she settled into the same stance. “Come at me, coward.”

  Vlegen looked to the rest of the clan, all of them watched in a mixture of horror and fascination at the fight that was taking place before them. No one raised a voice to stop them. This was their fight.