by Aaron Oster
There, barely visible over another pile of rubble, she could just make out the partial remains of a gate. It was still too far away to tell if it was the border marking their entrance to the next section of the city or not, but for their sakes, she really hoped it was.
Grace’s feet hit the ground, and she took off at a run once again, with Nathan hot on her heels. This had to be the single-most stressful mission she’d ever been on. Entering into enemy territory and fighting her way through was one thing, but all of this sneaking around, hiding, and trying not to be seen, was quite another.
It made their mission so much harder, and the knowledge that so many lives hung in the balance, that an entire war hinged on the success of this mission, was almost too much pressure to bear.
She skidded to a halt, placing her back to the corner of a building and motioning for Nathan to peek around. She’d already seen it with her Echolocation, but he needed to see this for himself.
Peering around, she saw him visibly stiffen, and having already sensed what was there, she could understand why. The gates of the next section were half caved in, leaving a clear path through. But they had a problem.
Standing between them and the gates was a beast that felt as though it were made entirely of stone. Worse, this was their only viable way through. It was already well past noon now, and they did not want to be here once night fell. The palace would only be around an hour on foot once they were inside the third section, so long as they remained undetected. But, with the beast blocking their path, all of their plans could be derailed right here and now.
Nathan pulled his head back, then pointed to the beast. He then placed both hands to the side of his head and closed his eyes. Grace blinked at him in confusion as he repeated the motion. She shrugged, and Nathan rolled his eyes. Then, he grabbed her by the shoulder and pushed her around the corner.
Grace started to put up a struggle, but when she saw the beast, she finally understood what Nathan was trying to say. It was out cold, sleeping soundly with its massive head tucked into its side.
Sneaking past the beast was even more stressful than hiding from the lizard had been. They needed to step over its tail and skirt its oversized shell to make it to the opening, and when the beast stirred in its sleep, Grace was sure they were done for. But, against all odds, they made it to the other side without the beast waking, leaving them a clear path into the last section and their final objective.
Of course, making it into this place had been hard enough, but as soon as they stepped in, Grace was given a stark reminder that the beasts in here were even more deadly than the ones outside.
She grabbed Nathan as he took another step forward and pulled him down to the ground. Taken off-guard, the man went down easily, and Grace motioned him to remain still. They remained hidden beneath a small protrusion of stone as the massive predator slunk by, its padded feet not making so much as a sound in its passing.
Her Aura Sense told her that this monster was somewhere in the rank 40 range, and the feeling of danger it gave off sent chills running down her spine.
Things had just gotten a whole lot more dangerous.
42
Morgan slowed to a walk as he approached the nearby garrison, feeling the cool breeze that had been whipping at his face and hair die down. He’d been running for several hours by this point, and although he wasn’t exactly tired, he found that he could really use a break. Getting into the Arcane Kingdom had been quite hard, and the smell of food had reached him several miles before he’d come across this camp.
His stomach growled as he watched the gnomes moving about their campfires, pots of bubbling soup and whole roasted beasts turning on spits sending up a tantalizing aroma that made his mouth water.
There were no walls around this garrison’s camp. Apparently, the border wall gave them quite a bit of confidence. Although, with the gathered gnomes numbering into the thousands, he could understand why they would feel so safe here.
Dozens of long buildings lined the camp, marking clear borders. Guards patrolled the perimeters, though not as carefully as the guards by the border had. Judging by how many flaws he could see in their gaits and how clumsily they held their weapons, Morgan could tell that they were greenhorns.
It seemed that there was a large batch of new recruits over here, and it was likely that they were pressed into service to bolster their numbers in the war they’d been planning.
He shifted in place, planning on moving away slowly, when one of the fires flared up and the smell of roasting meat intensified. Although Morgan knew it would probably be smarter to simply move on, the smell alone, combined with his growling stomach, assured that he couldn’t help but at least try and get his hands on some food.
There were several wards around this camp, which would prevent him from getting in using flight, teleportation, or tunneling. But, seeing as there was no wall, and the patrolling guards were all new, sneaking past their perimeter was child’s play.
Morgan waited until there was a gap between the guards, then dashed forward, covering the open ground in the span of a few seconds. By the time the next guard passed, Morgan was already up on top of the closest building and making his way swiftly to the nearest fire.
Ten gnomes were gathered around this fire, while an eleventh worked on their food, slowly turning a spit and occasionally checking on a bed of glowing stones where several loaves of flatbread were baking.
Crouching on the edge of the roof, Morgan settled in to wait for the moment when they would all be distracted so he could steal some food.
“How much longer will it be? We’re starving over here!” complained one of the gnomes.
This earned him several shouts of agreement from the others, while the gnome cooking their food looked about ready to strangle them.
“You’re lucky to be getting anything at all!” he roared, rounding on the one who’d complained. “After what you lot did, I’d have had you running laps until the sun came up!”
“Hasn’t it?” another of the gnomes asked, earning him a round of chuckles from his companions.
Morgan had to agree with the sentiment of the other gnomes. It was well into the early hours of the morning, so why were they only now getting to eat? They weren’t the only ones, and judging by the number of fires relative to how many gnomes were here, he could tell that most of the soldiers were asleep.
As any sane person would be, he thought.
“If you’d like,” the cook threatened, “I can always fetch Corporal Unger and have you all doing death sprints again.”
“Come on,” the gnome said, now sounding a bit scared. “We were only joking around. No need to go do something like that.”
The other gnomes were quick to agree, though the cook kept glaring at them. He probably wasn’t happy to have to be up at this time of night, and judging by how worn-out the gnomes looked and by picking up the context clues, they’d clearly done something to piss someone off.
It didn’t take the cook too much longer to finish, and when he called them to line up, there was a mad rush as they each pushed and shoved to get to the front. The cook grumbled as he cut hefty slabs of the roast meat for them, placing a single flatbread on their plates and sending them scurrying back to reclaim their spots so that they could start eating.
As soon as the cook served the last of them, Morgan saw his opportunity. There was still plenty of meat left, and with the soldiers occupied with their food and the chef stomping off to clean his hands, it left him the opening he needed.
He soared from the roof, turning a flip in the air and landing lightly on the ground near the adjoining building. The gnomes were speaking quite loudly, so any sound of his landing was blocked out. Retrieving a hefty slab of meat and placing them between two flatbreads, Morgan crouched, his muscles coiling up powerfully beneath him, then he jumped.
Landing lightly on the building behind him, he backed up a few steps and leaped across the gap between buildings, easily clearing the distan
ce and landing lightly once more. He was about to make his way out of the camp to enjoy his meal in the relative safety of the wild, when something one of the gnomes said caught his attention.
“Why are they working us so hard when we’re shipping out in less than a week?” she grumbled. “You’d think that with a war on the horizon, they’d let us rest a bit more.”
She received grumbles of agreement, and Morgan decided to settle down to listen for a bit. After all, if he could enjoy a delicious meal and spy at the same time, why not?
Morgan bit into the flatbread and had to resist letting out a moan of appreciation. The flatbread was hot and had the perfect mix of crunchy and doughy. The explosion of flavor from the juicy meat, both hot and smokey, set his stomach rumbling again, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten since his visit to the first troll town he’d visited more than four days ago.
He chewed slowly, relishing the meal in all its meaty and delicious glory as he listened to the gnomes below.
“Why exactly are they shipping us out so soon anyway?” another of them asked. “We barely started basic training a week ago!”
“I think I heard something about the Council having to meet the other race leaders in person,” another gnome piped up through a mouthful of meat.
“Yeah, same here,” another one said. “Something about a period of mourning for the elves? I could be wrong, though.”
“No, that makes sense,” said the female gnome who’d started the conversation. “I had a cousin who used to work pretty closely with some elf merchants. He told me that he once lost two weeks of business when one of their family members died. Apparently, they’re a bunch of wusses who need fourteen days to process death.”
The other gnomes snickered at that while Morgan continued enjoying his food. This information was extremely useful, as it finally highlighted why his mission had needed to be completed within such a specific timeframe. If the elves believed Elyssa was dead, they would have a two-week period of mourning, after which they would officially start the war.
Of course, on the eve of such a momentous occasion, all of the leaders would want to meet to officially get it started. He still wasn’t sure exactly what Gold had in mind for that particular meeting, but he had a feeling it would have something to do with the resurrection of the supposedly dead elven queen.
He could imagine the look of shock on the gnomes’ faces as they realized they’d been caught with their hands in the proverbial cookie jar, and he had to suppress a grin.
Speaking of cookies, Morgan thought as the scent of the pastries in question wafted toward him.
“I don’t know who you had to bribe to get these,” the cook said, trundling back into their small clearing, “but I helped myself to some. I don’t want to hear a word from the lot of you!”
The gnomes let out a cheer as he dropped a tray of still-steaming cookies to the ground, then spun in place and left, still munching on several of his own. Morgan watched them leap upon the tray, all scrabbling to grab as many as they could. The smell was so overwhelming that just for a moment, he debated leaping from the roof and joining in the fight for the pastries. In the end, he decided that getting caught over a cookie would probably make Sarah angry.
Still, as the gnomes sat back, cookies clutched triumphantly in their hands, he felt the urge to slaughter them all so strongly that he had to physically restrain himself.
He tortured himself a bit longer as he watched them eating the cookies, smelling the mix of peanut spread and cocoa butter wafting up to him. It was one of the cruelest things to happen to him since this mission started, and Morgan was including the re-witnessing of Sarah’s death.
He remained as he was, watching as all of the cookies – and any hope of getting to have one himself – vanished down the greedy throats of the evil gnomes. When this all blew over, Morgan decided that he would come here and hunt these bastards down first. They would all die for this if it were the last thing he did!
“You seriously need to get over yourself. They’re just cookies,” Sarah said, though her voice was tinged with amusement.
“They’re not just cookies,” Morgan shot back, taking another bite of his flatbread and meat sandwich. “They would have been the perfect dessert, and now, I’ll have to leave without ever having tasted those crunchy, delicious treats.”
“If they really mean that much to you, I promise to get you some cookies when you restore me to my body,” she laughed.
“That won’t exactly help me now,” he grumbled.
Still, the idea of getting cookies with Sarah sounded much better than scrabbling in the dirt with these gnomes.
Let them keep their dirt cookies! he thought. Mine will be a hundred times better, and they’ll have ten times the amount of cocoa butter and peanut spread!
With that thought in mind, Morgan turned and headed out of camp, the thought of an outing with cookies and Sarah spurring him on to greater speeds once he hit open land.
Now that he knew why the deadline was in place, he could feel the urgency of his mission even more. And now that there were cookies on the line, there was no way he could fail!
43
Grace let out a long, slow breath, trying to calm her racing pulse. She slid a hand through her sweat-soaked hair, tucking several strands behind an ear to keep them out of her eyes. Fixing her hair after this mission was going to be a job and a half, and the worst of it was that she knew she wouldn’t be able to get a proper bath until after the others had been rescued.
Still, if that were the worst thing to come from this mission, Grace would be grateful.
Nathan prodded her shoulder, then gave her a questioning look. Unlike her, he looked just as fresh as when they’d started. Seeing as he was so much stronger than her, it was hardly a surprise that he was barely fazed by what she considered to be her maximum effort. She held up a finger, signaling that she needed a minute, and he pointed up to the sky.
Although it had been cloudy and overcast all day, it was becoming darker, and their time was starting to run short. It was fortunate that they were nearing the palace, as the rumbling thunder overhead foretold that rain would soon be falling heavily.
Grace allowed herself only thirty seconds to catch her breath before moving out again. She was moving far slower than she had been earlier in the day, but that was to be expected. They’d set a breakneck pace and had kept to it since they’d entered in the early morning. By her estimate, it was between five and six in the evening. With the sky darkening further by the second, visibility would soon start to seriously diminish, especially once they got inside the palace.
The gate was right up ahead. Grace dropped to her stomach, crawling beneath a warped rail and entering the palace grounds.
She poked Lumia several times as they approached the shattered front gates, waking the drake from a deep slumber. Grace honestly had no idea how Lumia had managed to remain asleep through everything, but she envied her. Still, knowing that Lumia was going to have to do the bulk of the fighting once they were inside alleviated a lot of that jealousy.
The drake woke up, yawning widely, her long tongue curling upward and the row of tiny, daggerlike teeth showing as she did. Her nostrils flared several times, then she placed her head back down on Grace’s shoulders, though her eyes remained open.
Grace snapped her fingers, checking up ahead for any signs of beasts, but oddly enough, she found them all clustered near the center of the palace. She was most afraid that their fight would attract other beasts to their location, but she figured that Nathan must already have accounted for the noise and come up with a plan.
They jogged swiftly through the destroyed corridors, Grace seeing signs of death everywhere. Old, slightly faded smears of brown ran across the walls. Torn tapestries and wrecked suits of armor were strewn about, and large marble slabs were cracked, with the remains of expensive-looking vases lying scattered about beneath.
Even in its state of destruction and decay, Grace could see how o
pulent and rich this palace had once been. If the sheer size hadn’t already given that away, the destroyed decorations most definitely did.
Thanks to her ability to navigate, they didn’t take any wrong turns, and within ten minutes of entering the palace, Grace found herself staring at a massive stone door. Behind the door, she could sense a single terrifying presence, as well as the presence of at least a dozen other beasts. Nathan seemed to recognize where they were and pointed up to the door, then to her, and made an opening and closing motion.
She understood what she would have to do for them to succeed, and as she grasped the iron rings and felt the weight she would have to pull, she knew that this would be the greatest test of her strength to date, which was quite strange when she thought about it.
She’d thought that the hardest part of this mission would come at the end when she’d have to pitch in and try to fight alongside Lumia and Nathan. It seemed slightly anticlimactic that her big part in this fight would be to make sure that the doors were closed, but she knew that this would not be an insignificant job.
If the doors were to remain open, other beasts would be able to hear the sounds of battle and come to investigate. In fact, she was sure they’d be coming either way. But, with the heavy doors shut, it might hold the beasts long enough to give them a chance to collect the scrolls and escape.
Lumia slid from Grace’s shoulder as she reached out and grasped the massive ring, her body expanding to her hybrid form. Nathan likewise prepared, his body now surrounded by a shimmering field that seemed to warp what little light there was around him. Seeing inside the room wouldn’t be a problem, as a line of light was visible in the crack at the bottom of the door.
