Escape from Celestial

by Tony Johnson

  “Careful, Kari,” the Elf joked. “You’re starting to sound like an actual woman.”

  Kari would have laughed, but her attention had already moved to a more pressing issue. “We’ve got to put out that torch,” she called to Steve in front of her. “The monsters behind us will be able to follow us by our torchlight even if we are far ahead.”

  “If we get rid of it we won’t be able to see where we’re going!”

  “We’ll have to keep turning down different pipes and hope we turn enough corners so they can’t see the light,” Ty compromised.

  Taking the next right he came upon, Steve led them down the pipe’s walkway. A third of the way down, he saw another ladder with a torch next to it. Mid-run, he tossed the torch he was carrying into the river of waste and grabbed the new one. Still running, he dragged it alongside the wall and felt its warm flames as it burst to life. Unless the monsters behind us have control over the elements of fire or lightning, they won’t have access to light if we switch out every torch we come across.

  “Good thinking!” Kari encouraged him, seeing the warrior’s strategy.

  As soon as the three heroes passed under a manhole, a group of monsters funneled through the opening, down the ladder, and gave chase. Knowing that the enemy coming down the ladder had seen them, Steve took a quick left-hand turn and came to a three-forked path in the sewer pipes. Quickly choosing the tunnel on his right, the heroes were halfway down it when they saw a large group of monsters coming straight towards them.

  “Go Back! Go Back!” Steve yelled, seeing their way was blocked. He quickly stopped and turned around, almost causing Kari and Ty to collide into him. The three ran back up the pipe they had come down, knowing they were heading towards the group that had been chasing them earlier.

  Steve was limping from injuries sustained in his fight against Silas, but luckily, he and the others made it back to the fork before their pursuers did. The approaching monsters were close enough the heroes knew they had no time to waste. The faint glow of torchlight on the nearby sewer wall was growing steadily brighter.

  “If we can see their light, they can see ours. Let’s go!” Kari yelled in panic.

  “Which way?” Ty asked, looking from the pipe on the left to the one in the center. To him, it sounded like he heard footsteps coming from one of the pipes, but he could not tell which one.

  “It doesn’t matter!” Steve yelled as he readied his sword and ran past the indecisive Elf, entering the fork’s left pipe. Ty and the Halfling cautiously followed behind.

  There were no monsters on the walkway and Steve didn’t feel like sticking around for that fact to change. Every time he came across a new sewer tunnel he took it. He never stayed on the straight path, keeping in mind they wanted to turn as often as possible so they could limit being tracked by their light. He also extinguished his torch every time he came to a ladder and grabbed a new one from the wall. It wasn’t long before they couldn’t hear the growls and snarls behind them at all.

  “I think we’ve lost them,” Ty began to say after half an hour of running, finally believing they had created enough distance between themselves and their pursuers. Feeling safe enough to momentarily stop, the heroes bent over, put their hands on their knees, and tried to catch their breaths. Each one of them had cramps in their sides.

  Since he was standing next to a torch, Steve swapped out the one in his hand and then lit the new one. When he turned to check on Ty and Kari, both the Elf and the Halfling gasped in horror.

  Steve’s injuries from the fight with Silas had swelled up. In addition to all the wounds he had sustained during the siege, he looked like he was on the brink of death. The shifting torchlight made his injuries look especially gruesome.

  His nose was broken and jagged, and he had two huge black shadows under his bloodshot eyes. His eyes weren’t even fully open. One was swollen completely shut. The other was halfway open but also very swollen. Under his entire chin and jawline was a dark-blue bruise where the prince had kneed him before being hanged on the gallows. The flesh around where the rope had bit into his neck was a deep purple and badly chaffed. There were various cuts, bruises, and bumps of various severities all over his forehead, temples, and cheeks.

  “You don’t even look like you,” Ty’s jaw dropped at his brother’s grotesque complexion. Then, noticing the fresh wound on his shoulder, Ty pointed and asked, “How’s that feeling? I saw Silas sliced you pretty good with his sword.”

  As Ty moved to examine his brother, Steve turned away, hiding the injury. “It’s not that bad,” he lied.

  Ty changed the subject, knowing Steve was the type of person to downplay his injuries. “Kari, I was going to formally introduce you to my brother, seeing as you two haven’t officially met yet, but since the face in front of us looks nothing like him, you’ll just have to imagine what he looks like without all the swelling, cuts, and bruises.”

  Reaching to his side, Steve pulled out the meat cleaver from the cape tied around his waist and handed it to Kari. “Thanks for letting me borrow it,” he said, smiling through fat and split lips.

  “Glad you found a good use for it,” Kari smiled back.

  Steve agreed, “There’s no better use than cutting open the prince’s mouth.”

  Just when the pace of all the action seemed to slow and the heroes thought they had a moment to breathe, two shadowed figures came down through a manhole in front of them. I thought we’d escaped them, Kari’s shoulders slumped at the never-ending chase.

  A skeleton and an orc, Steve could tell by the shape their shadows cast once the skeleton grabbed the torch from the wall under their manhole and ignited it. The torch was the only weapon the skeleton held, but the orc wielded a vicious morning star, a club-like weapon with sharp spikes coming out of its metal head.

  Steve didn’t know what to do. They had just come down a long pipe with no tributaries branching off it. “We can’t go back,” he whispered, turning to the two behind him. “We don’t know for sure if the monsters behind us gave up.”

  “Let’s take our chances with them,” Kari determined.

  “I agree. We should fight. They haven’t seen us yet. Let’s take them by surprise.”

  Before he ran forward, Ty grabbed Steve’s uninjured shoulder and held him back. “Not you. Kari and I will take care of this.”

  Steve thought Ty was joking, but the Elf wasn’t smiling. He doesn’t want me to fight for the same reason he stuck me in the front of the group with the torch. He thinks I’m too injured. He’s trying to keep me away from the monsters.

  “You can’t be serious,” Steve pulled away, breaking out of his brother’s grasp. “I’m fighting.” With that declaration, he ran to engage the enemy. Ty groaned in frustration and followed him into the fray.

  Chapter 30

  Steve charged the skeleton first, which was by far the easier of his two opponents. Skeletons were usually the simplest of monsters to defeat, but at the same time among the most dangerous. Any person or monster killed by a weapon held by a skeleton would become accursed. Their corpse would have no control over its actions except for doing what it was commanded to do by the Skeleton King, the leader of the Living Dead.

  The skeleton before Steve was an elderly Human woman who’d been killed during the siege. He felt sick looking at her. There were loose strips of charred flesh hanging from her bones. Her right leg and arm looked completely undamaged and were still partially covered by shredded clothing.

  Steve found it hard, knowing he was going to have to kill the woman, but when the skeleton viciously arced its flaming torch at him, he remembered, This is not a Human anymore. This is a monster. And a quick death for me if I don’t fight back.

  Barely ducking the skeleton’s second swinging arc, he was forced to take a step back to avoid it. He felt the heat emitting from the torch when it passed in front of his face. Getting hit by the fiery top will severely burn my skin.

  When the s
keleton swung its fiery weapon for the third time, Steve swung his weapon at the exact same moment. Brightflame hit the long handle of the torch, severing four of the skeletal fingers holding onto it. The torch flew out of the skeleton’s hand and extinguished itself in the sewer river with a sizzle.

  Seizing the opportunity with a battle cry, Steve grabbed the bone, flesh, and gray hair of the skeleton’s skull and slammed its cranium against the sewer wall with a wince-inducing crack. He then kicked it into the sewer river, where the monster crumpled into a pile of disconnected bones, never to live again.

  Before he had a chance to defend himself, the orc slammed its morning star into Steve’s already-damaged shoulder. The weapon’s spikes punctured through Steve’s spaulder and sunk deep into his skin.

  Kari viciously threw her meat cleaver at the orc, splitting open its head before it could deliver the killing blow. She and Ty ran to the warrior’s side whose energy was depleted from the short battle. Steve exhaustedly rested his elbow on Brightflame’s ruby pommel as he checked the severity of his injury.

  “I told you we would handle it. You should’ve let me take them,” Ty scolded.

  Steve didn’t like the tone in Ty’s voice. He has a distinct ‘I was right and you were wrong’ vibe. His realization was confirmed when he caught a quick glimpse of Ty glancing at his injury.

  I knew it! Steve thought, repeating Ty’s words in his head, ‘You should’ve let me take them.’ What he really means is, ‘Look what happened to your shoulder. If you would’ve listened to me, this wouldn’t have happened to you.’

  Unable to drop the subject, he angrily confronted his brother as he ripped off a piece of his tunic and tied it around his wound as tightly as possible. “Why don’t you come out and say it? You don’t want me fighting down here!”

  Ty answered back just as angrily. “I don’t want you fighting at all, not just down here. Look at yourself! You look like you’re going to keel over any minute!”

  “You don’t need to worry about me. I know what I can handle.”

  “I don’t think you do”, Ty said, escalating the argument further. “Taking on the Shadow Prince one-on-one like that? That was a pretty stupid thing to do!”

  “You didn’t seem to have a problem with it at the time!” Steve argued.

  Ty pulled at his hair in frustration. “I didn’t know you were so injured from the siege that you’d be unable to defend yourself after two minutes of fighting! What were you thinking? He almost killed you!”

  “That’s a risk I was willing to take!” Steve shouted. As he spoke, his voice grew louder and louder. “Someone’s got to stop him! The destruction isn’t going to end just because he got the crown. I heard him talking to the Hooded Phantom in the King’s Tower. They plan to march to Misengard. They want to rule the entire kingdom. The Hooded Phantom, Silas, Nightstrike, they have to be stopped no matter what the cost!”

  Hearing his angry voice echoing down the sewer pipe, Steve took a moment to take a deep breath and collect himself. When he spoke again, his voice was calm, but it cracked as he spoke and revealed another source of his frustration and anger.

  “He’d still be alive if it wasn’t for them.”

  Immediately, Ty knew who Steve was referring to, but his brother’s next words still shattered his heart.

  “Thatcher’s dead, Ty,” Steve’s voice cracked.

  The Elven warrior took a step back, stunned at the news of the death of the man who took in and raised him and his brother, Darren, after their parents were murdered.

  Deep down, Ty had feared their father was dead. Titus was one of the Guardian Knights, sworn to give his life to protect the king. When he saw Silas launch the head of King Zoran into the crowd in the courtyard, he had felt a pit in his stomach. How can Thatcher be alive if the king is dead? Now, his father’s death had been confirmed, but he still didn’t want to believe it.

  “What?” he softly asked, hoping he had misheard.

  “He’s gone. Just like King Zoran, Sir Lambert, and the rest of the Guardian Knights.” Steve was on the verge of crying, but Ty could tell his brother was holding in his tears, unwilling to show emotion. “The Hooded Phantom and Nightstrike attacked them in the King’s Tower. Silas joined them at the end.” Ty watched as Steve’s knuckles turned white as he gripped Brightflame even harder. “They have to pay. All of them!”

  Now I know why he fought the Shadow Prince even though it might’ve meant his death. Steve wants to kill everyone that helped bring down Celestial. He wants to stop the army from going to more cities so more sons won’t have to watch their fathers die. He doesn’t want anyone else to experience what he feels right now.

  “I wish I could’ve stopped the Phantom from killing him. I wish I could’ve saved Thatcher, but I couldn’t.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Ty stated earnestly, putting his hand on Steve’s undamaged shoulder, trying to make him change his line of thinking. “Don’t blame yourself for what happened.”

  Steve nodded in agreement. He knew Ty wasn’t wrong, but deep down he couldn’t stop replaying all the deaths he had seen in the King’s Tower over and over again in his head. He kept trying to think of anything he could have done differently that would’ve changed how the events in the observation tower unfolded.

  Ty could tell how tormented Steve was and that his comforting words didn’t have much of an effect. He didn’t know how his brother would respond to his next words, but he knew they were what Steve needed to hear. “Thatcher wouldn’t want you blaming yourself for his death.”

  Kari felt like the rudest person in the world for interrupting Ty as he tried to console Steve, but she needed to get their attention. “I hear monsters,” she said calmly to the two warriors.

  Ty, however, was so focused on Steve that he didn’t even hear Kari.

  “The dragon will pay. So will Silas and the Phantom. Somehow, someway, we’ll get our vengeance. I want it as much as you do, but, for now, we’ve got to keep our heads on straight and find a way to survive all this. Alright?”

  “Okay,” Steve breathed out, putting on a stone face of determination.

  Kari interrupted again, this time with a voice louder and more panicked so she would not go unheard.

  “We need to move! Monsters are coming!”

  Chapter 31

  The next day at the forge, the sound of shouts and galloping horses could loudly be heard from outside Grizz’s shop, prompting Dart to tell his master, “Something’s going on.”

  Grizz set down the tool he was remolding and wiped his greasy hands on a towel. He and his apprentice walked outside where four men on horseback were talking to Serendale’s gate patrol.

  By their light green and dark-green colors, Grizz could tell three of the men were Serendale warriors, but a man with long hair Grizz had never seen before rode the fourth horse.

  His tunic is stained with blood, but he doesn’t look wounded, the Dwarf noted.

  “Close all the gates,” one of the warriors called from atop his horse. “There’ve been more deaths. The monster has killed again.”

  “Where at?” asked one of the guards.

  “Hunters’ Den.”

  The four horses picked up speed and blazed down the main road, heading for the warrior garrison. “Make way! Make way!” the leader of the pack shouted to the people walking in the street.

  “Hunters’ Den?” Dart questioned in shock. “My parents and little brother are there! They were supposed to come back this afternoon after spending the past couple days in Almiria.”

  Grizz could see the concerned look on the boy’s face, worrying for his family.

  “An attack? What if one of them is hurt?” Dart was talking out loud to himself more than to his master, but then, settling himself down, he asked, “A monster? What do you think it could be?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” the blacksmith told his apprentice. It can’t be good at the speed they were travel
ing. I could tell by their grim faces that something is wrong.

  Grizz’s attention turned away from the riders and to the town gate the warriors had entered through. Two warriors were closing Serendale’s main entrance, which was always left open during the day. As soon as the gates were closed, one of them sounded a deep, long, horn, signaling for other gates around the city to also be closed.

  “They must want us all to stay inside,” Dart gathered.

  Grizz thought differently. It’s more like they’re trying to keep something out. “Stay here at the forge. I’ll go find out what’s happening.”

  Taking off his blacksmithing apron, the Halfman gently draped it over a nearby weapon rack. He left his shop and headed towards the center of the city. Warriors of silver, light green, and dark-green armor abandoned their patrols and ran past him or galloped on their horses. The sounding of the horns not only signified for the gates to close, it also meant all veteran warriors had to head to the warriors’ mess hall for an emergency meeting.

  Arriving at the back of the crowd of curious townspeople, wanting to know what was happening, Grizz saw three armed guards blocking the closed gates leading into the garrison.

  “What’s going on?” a woman in the crowd called out.

  “Why are you closing all the entrances to the city?” asked another.

  Why was that man bloody, but not injured? Grizz wondered to himself.

  He began making his way through the hundred or so people who had come seeking answers. In front of him an Elf tried to squeeze past the blockade, but was turned away.

  “I’m sorry, sir. No one is allowed in right now.” The guard then called out to the anxious crowd to keep them patient. “Commander Krause will make an announcement momentarily.”

  Grizz broke through the throng of people and stood in front of the three warriors. None of them have any painted armor, which means they’re newer warriors. He knew if a warrior was wearing light or dark-green armor, they had done something valiant to earn them the honor of painting one of their armor pieces one of the colors of Serendale.