Too Young to Die

by Michael Anderle

  “Only briefly, though,” Justin responded. “Look on the bright side.”

  “Very funny.” She grunted, followed by the crack of wood. “Ow. And no, I didn’t fall.”

  “That’s good to know.” He sat cross-legged and drummed his fingers nervously on the floor. “Let me know when you’re down.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Are you waiting for something?”

  “I’m having an argument with my better sense,” she muttered in a rough and strained tone. From the sound of it, she was halfway through the hole and held herself up on her elbows. “This is beginning to seem like a very bad idea.”

  “Leaving on our own seems like a much better idea than letting them send us out,” Justin told her. “They’ll keep something we care about to make sure we come back, and I’m kind of worried that something will be you or Lyle.”

  “So the ‘we’ is you?”

  “In this case, yes. They did come to speak to me.”

  “For all you know…” Zaara panted and he waited. “They talked to Lyle too. Good gods, I wonder if he sold us out. I’ll stab him if he did. All right, here goes nothing.” The sound of ripping cloth preceded an oath, a thud, and another muttered expletive.

  “Zaara? Zaara!”

  “Ow.” He heard limping footsteps. “Ow, ow, ow. They couldn’t put pillows down, could they? Nooooooo…”

  Justin’s mouth twitched. He decided to focus on that as he inched toward the edge of the floor. While he’d asked Zaara what she was waiting for, the truth was that he was none too eager to do his part. He thought of asking her to sneak up the stairs and let him out, pictured what she would say in response to that, and decided to take his chances with the several-hundred-foot drop instead.

  Cautiously, he stuck his head over the edge. “Are you ready?”

  The area below their cells was one large chamber and she stood under where he lay. She took a careful step to the side and gave him a thumbs-up. One sleeve was ripped down the side and a nasty bruise was already visible but otherwise, she seemed fine.

  “Okay,” he said. “Right. Okay. Right. Okay.” He maneuvered his legs to the edge. “Right.” He lay on his stomach and stared at the grain of the wood. “Okay.”

  “Justin?”

  “Yep. I’m, uh…having an existential crisis.”

  “I don’t know what that is.” Zaara sounded exasperated. “Are you worried about falling off the tower?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, get over it.” She didn’t sound particularly sympathetic. “Now-ish would be good.”

  “Maybe this plan was a mistake.”

  “Right, I’ll jump through the hole in the floor again, then.” She came to peer toward the edge of the ledge. He couldn’t see her, of course, but he could feel the force of her stare. “Are you kidding me, you good-for-nothing, pot-lid-wearing—I don’t even know…useless, fireball-slinging donkey-wrangler?”

  Justin sighed. He was fairly sure he could hear the AI laughing and that annoyed him. “Right. I’m coming down. Grab my hand, right?”

  “Oh, you mean the goal is to stop you from going over the edge? Huh. I hadn’t understood that.” Her tone was as sweet as poison. “So help me, you will jump or I will come up there and make you wish you had.”

  “Right. Okay. Right. Okay.”

  “Stop saying that!”

  “Okay.” He wiggled his legs off the edge of the floor, listened to the wind whistling, and tried not to whimper pathetically. Stupidly, he told himself he should be glad she wasn’t real because if she were, he’d have sunk any chances he had with her. He wiggled back farther, inch by careful inch. With his arms braced on the wood and his fingers scrabbling for purchase, he let his body hang before he grasped the edge of the floor and exhaled as he let himself down. His feet dangled a meter or so above the floor.

  When Zaara began to back away, he knew the panic showed on his face because she sighed.

  “Listen, you dolt, I’ll grab your hand and pull you this way. Got it?”

  “Oh. That’s a good plan. Right.”

  “If you say ‘okay’ one more time—”

  Justin pressed his lips together, prayed deeply, and released the wood. He struck the floor, threw himself forward, and sighed when he realized he wasn’t still moving. Zaara had hold of both of his hands but the floor had held.

  Or so he thought. With a crack and a shudder, the boards under him splintered and he felt the sickening sensation of freefall.

  “Whoa—whoa!” She threw herself back, her boots braced on the floor. “Justin, throw your leg up over the edge. Now! I’m sliding. Justin!”

  His hands slipped in hers but he managed to hook one foot onto a stable piece of a beam and wrenched both himself and Zaara sideways. She grimaced with the effort of hauling him up and tried to brace her boots on the weather-beaten wood flooring. The beam gave them enough space for them to gain better purchase and for him to scramble to safety. With one hand still clasped around his forearm, she wrenched the door open and the two of them tumbled into the hallway as the rest of the floor crumbled behind them.

  A long pause followed.

  “Do I want to look behind me?” his companion asked. She was close to hyperventilating.

  “I don’t think so.” Justin looked cautiously over his shoulder and saw wind whistling and far too steep a drop. Bile rose reflexively. “Oh, God. You definitely don’t want to look. I regret that.”

  “Okay, this way.” She crawled toward the stairs. “Shut the door.”

  He shut it behind him, latched it, and pushed to his feet. His hands and legs were trembling and he began to laugh.

  “Holy shit. Oh, God, that was such a bad idea.”

  Zaara laughed too. “Yeah, probably.”

  “Hello?” a voice called.

  The teammates froze.

  “Marco?”

  Justin grimaced and only narrowly avoided saying, “Polo.”

  “Marco, is that you?”

  He buried his face in his hands and tried not to laugh. The struggle continued when Zaara grabbed him by his shirt and began to drag him up the stairs.

  “Now is not the time,” she snapped in his ear.

  Although he nodded, between the adrenaline and the name, he couldn’t seem to stop. The two climbed the stairs as quickly as they could. He stumbled sometimes when he laughed too hard to lift his foot properly and she continually darted worried looks behind them.

  Two floors up, she stopped to rest her ear against a door. She peered through the latch, nodded, and motioned him up the stairs.

  “If you can’t be useful, hide.”

  “I’ll…I’ll take care of him. By way of apology.” Justin gestured for her to hide instead. He waited and bounced on the balls of his feet until the guard’s footsteps drew closer. With the wind outside the tower and the creak of stone and wood, he wasn’t surprised that the man wondered whether he’d heard something or not.

  “Marco?” the guard called. “Marco, is that—” He stepped around the corner and stared at Justin, open-mouthed.

  “Polo,” he said cheerfully and punched him in the face. The man fell like a sack of bricks and he caught the front of his vest and dragged him onto the landing. When Zaara opened the door into a room that was fully enclosed, they took the opportunity to drag the unconscious body in before they began to strip him as fast as they could.

  His armor, luckily, fit Justin well—or maybe that was merely the video game auto-sizing things. Given how tall the werewolves seemed to be, that was probably the case. It meant that he now had greaves, wrist guards, and a helmet, as well as a leather buckler and two knives for Zaara, although she gave him one for now.

  They snuck out of the room, closed the door, and used a piece of loose wood to wedge the handle closed.

  “We should go down,” she mouthed and gestured to illustrate the point.

  Justin gave a thumbs up and they descended. Given that he was now dressed as a guard, he went first. T
wo floors down from their cells, the corridor divided, straightened, and wound into utter blackness, punctuated only by flickering lanterns.

  “It must be cut into the rock,” Zaara said quietly. “What now?” She pointed at the stairs. “Down, or in?”

  “If the tower’s crumbling and they have treasure, it’s probably in here,” Justin said, after a moment. “Like that potion and…well, my sword, which I need if we fight werewolves. It’s the only thing that hurt the last one, remember. So let’s try this way.”

  They set off as quietly as they could. She moved purposefully, but her fingers constantly moved to where her knives should be and she looked surprisingly small without her breastplate and cloak. Funnily enough, however, with a white blouse and black leather pants, she could pass for someone in the real world. He hid his smile and didn’t mention that to her.

  They were halfway down the hall when they heard something that made both of them prick up their ears.

  “Aaaaaand the miners heaved, and the miners hauled—”

  Lyle might not have a future as a singer, but his voice was certainly distinctive. The friends exchanged a hopeful glance before they snuck closer to a door, which they found locked and heavily barred. It didn’t look as if the dwarf was held in luxury.

  A second later, both of them jumped when he said, “Whoever’s sneaking around out there, I can hear ye.”

  Justin gestured to the door and motioned for Zaara to pick the lock. She folded her arms at him, sighed, and retrieved the set of keys the guard had carried.

  “Oh, right. That is better.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, it is.” She tried a few keys before one slid in and turned, then pushed the door open and motioned for him to go first.

  The room inside was pitch-black. He came up short and looked around as she ran smack into him.

  “Aren’t ye a little short for a werewolf?” Lyle asked.

  “Huh?” He stared in the direction of his voice. “Oh, the helmet.” He took it off. “It’s us. We’re here to save you.”

  “Are ye now?” The prisoner hopped down from where he’d been seated—a boulder, judging by the shape. “About time. I was getting bored, you know.”

  “Yes, yes.” Justin gestured dismissively. “Do you have any idea why they didn’t have you out with us on the outside of the tower?”

  “My guess? They assume I know enough about masonry to have escaped.” Lyle looked around the hallway and pointed farther into the mountain. “There’s gold thataway. Anyway, they put me in a room with no joins and no hinges. I have to say, it was well-done. I went over that thing three times and never found so much as a crack to work with.”

  Justin made a mental note to learn more about Dwarven magic and led the way down the hallway. In whispers, he and Zaara caught their teammate up on what was going on.

  “I don’t see why we don’t kill all of ʼem,” Lyle said when they were done.

  “Because we don’t know who’s to blame yet.” He gave him a horrified glance.

  “They’ve all got the look to ʼem,” he retorted. “Every one of ʼem has dirtied their hands, let me tell you.”

  “So we simply kill them?”

  “Why not?” Lyle sounded quite self-assured. He stopped at a door that blended into the rock. “This is the treasure.” He ran his fingers around the edge, found the hidden catches, and pushed it open with a kick. As he took a torch from the wall, he said, “They’d kill you straight off. You know they wouldn’t even hesitate.”

  “That’s not the point!” he protested as he followed him into the room.

  “If that’s not the point what the hell is?” The dwarf gave him a confused look.

  Justin had no idea how to respond to that, so he looked around the room instead.

  His jaw dropped at what he saw. Not only was their armor and weaponry in a neat pile in the center of the room, but his friend had also been correct that there was gold. It wasn’t Aladdin’s cave levels of gold, but there were coffers that didn’t close properly, more suits of armor lining one wall, and whole racks of weaponry.

  The group scrambled to arm themselves. Zaara sighed with relief as she donned her armor once more and flashed him a sunny smile.

  “It doesn’t feel right not to have some protection.”

  He snickered internally and managed to not make a joke about that as he pulled his plate armor on. Lyle sifted through handfuls of jewelry and once in a while, flung a piece toward one of them with an explanation of why. One ring set with a ruby apparently increased one’s ability to strike true, and a silver chain granted the wearer strength. Zaara got a bracelet that made her “light of foot,” in Lyle’s words, and she paused to stare at the young man’s wrist.

  “I wonder why they didn’t take your amulet,” she said and pointed to where the blue amulet was still on his wrist.

  Justin looked down in a panic. He was also confused but he hadn’t thought how difficult it would be if he were to lose this now when he couldn’t exactly return to Riverbend easily and find another. “I don’t know why they didn’t take it off,” he responded after a moment.

  “Oh, they tried,” the AI told him. “Four of them were full-on electrocuted. It was hilarious—I mean…sad.”

  He bit his lip to keep from laughing when something moved in the shadows and he stumbled back. His feet caught and in an effort to stay upright, he upended a suit of armor nearby and wasn’t able to catch it in time. Everyone in the room covered their ears as it clanged.

  “Justin?”

  He knew that voice.

  “Mom?” He scrambled to his feet. Again, it was jarring to see her not looking like his mother but he knew it was her. “What’s going on? Why are you here?”

  “I…came to see…you.” She looked around. “Is something wrong?”

  “Well, for one thing, I heard an alarm bell go off,” Lyle said.

  “Fuck,” Justin said furiously.

  “Justin! Language!”

  “Mom?” He looked at her. “We’re about to have a whole crowd of angry werewolves in here.”

  “Oh,” Mary said. “Fuck.”

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  “Mom!” Justin called. “Find something to fight with.”

  “Oh. Right.” Mary looked around, then at the ceiling. “Oh, thank you,” she said to no one.

  “Was that the AI?” he asked wearily.

  “Yes.” She smiled. “It’s very helpful. It told me I’ll want something made of silver and also how to throw something called a death-coil.”

  “You have to be kidding me.”

  “Try being pleasant for once.”

  He glared upward to the imagined location of the AI. When this was over, he would find who had created it and they would have to answer some serious questions.

  The clatter and clang of feet very quickly changed into the pound of paws and the howling of wolves.

  “Fuck,” Zaara said under her breath. She stood in the corner of the room.

  “What are you doing?” he demanded.

  “Looking for something silver,” she told him. “I can’t find anything.”

  “Take this.” Mary threw a silver ring at her. “Unless you want this. Yes, you’d probably better have that.” She tossed the dagger and Zaara lobbed the ring back.

  He looked on, shook his head at the bizarreness of it, and looked at the door. “Are you ready to do this, Lyle?”

  “Yeah. Are you? Last I heard, you didn’t think people trying to kill you was a good enough reason to kill them.”

  “That is not what I said. You said they would kill me if they had the chance. When someone’s actively trying, all bets are off.”

  “That doesn’t make any—”

  “Later, Lyle!”

  The first wolf skidded through the doorway and Justin swung his sword overhand. An animal scream was quickly cut off as the beast was pushed out of the way by the momentum of the others behind it. Justin wrenched his sword free and slashed sideways.

&nbs
p; Lyle charged into the fray, silver flashing at his knuckles, and pounded his fists into his first target. Yips mixed with battle cries and Zaara leapt into the battle from overhead.

  “Justin!” Mary dragged him out of the way and launched a bolt of something black and deadly looking out of one palm. “Stay behind me.”

  “Are you crazy, woman? I’m the one in the plate armor.”

  “I’m invulnerable,” she told him. “I hope.”

  “You hope—Mom!”

  A wolf reared and lashed out with both claws, only to slide off her as a blue shield illuminated across her skin. The beast snarled and danced back and she threw another bolt of black magic at its face. “See?” she shouted at her son.

  “I hope Dad’s watching this,” he muttered. He slid around her side and stabbed a wolf directly in the chest but retreated hastily when its jaws snapped dangerously close to his face. “Oooof, that was a slim margin. Fuck.”

  “Justin, you know how I feel about you swearing.”

  “Mom, you’re throwing death bolts.”

  The last remaining wolf snarled, adjusted its shoulders, and screamed as Zaara rolled under its belly and sliced it with the silver knife. It collapsed and she waved a hand at the other three. “Come on!”

  They sprinted out of the room and into the hallway.

  “Will we make it?” Justin asked breathlessly as they ran. His muscles were on fire.

  “I gotta be honest, I have no idea, and—oh, shit!” Zaara skidded to a halt when they heard the sound of boots on the stairs. “That is way too many—run! The other way.”

  “We don’t know what’s the other way,” he protested.

  “Is there a way out?” Mary asked.

  “Mom, I don’t—you’re asking the AI, aren’t you.”

  “She says it’s this way.” His mother caught his wrist and yanked him along.

  “You know, I don’t think I’ll tell my YouTube subscribers about this part,” he said contemplatively. Snarls and yips grew more frenzied behind them, mixed with the clangs that suggested the soldiers were bursting out of their armor as they transformed.