by Jamie Hawke
“Hey, motherfucker,” I shouted, “I’m right here!” As he turned to me, swiping with his sword, I leaped into the air and hoped my shield would work—moving to block, I caught the sword with the edge of my shield as it returned, slamming it to the floor. Before he could block, I’d pushed him back with my shoulder and then, landing on top of him, drove my blade up into his neck.
Boom! Dead motherfucker.
“Not bad,” Red said, helping me up. “Though, if they haven’t already notified the others down here, your shouting probably did.”
“Ah, damn,” I said, but already the green prana was flowing into me and I felt ready for whatever they could throw my way.
“Color me impressed either way,” Pucky said, charging past and slapping my ass on the way. “But come on. Elisa’s in here somewhere, and maybe others.”
“And your sister?” I asked, surprised she wasn’t focused more on that aspect of our journey.
“Long gone,” Red cut in, then lowering her voice added, “And best not to talk about it.”
Indeed, when Pucky glanced over, there was a shadow across her face—darkness in her eyes that didn’t fit even down here. At least I wasn’t alone in battling my inner demons.
We kept moving, descending the rest of the way. At the bottom we emerged into a series of turns. As Red described it, it was a sort of maze that kept intruders from the inner sanctum of these enemy hideouts. It was also a sign that we were close.
She kept commenting on how strange it was that there weren’t more enemies here, at least if it was where they were keeping prisoners and expecting us to come for them.
Pucky was looking at the walls, horns glowing as she traced a pattern with her finger so we’d know if we passed that section of the maze again. A faint gold remained wherever her finger touched.
At a wall like all the rest, she paused, turned with a smile and said, “Maybe they weren’t expecting us.” She pushed on the wall. It vanished, revealing a large, octagonal room behind it. The other walls had more doors, interspersed with racks of swords, even a few rifles. In the middle of the room was what looked like a treasure chest with glowing red lines along the edges.
“The armory…” Red said, following Pucky in.
“Fucking loot!” Pucky said, going straight for the chest.
I was behind Red so couldn’t see the full picture of what happened next, except for hearing Red shout, “No, it’s enchanted for a—” and then get cut off as the chest opened in a flash of red light and purple fog. Pucky’s sister—the purple woman with the curved horns I’d encountered earlier—stood in front of us, on the other side of the chest.
“Ah, damn,” Pucky said, taking a step back.
“Their kind,” Red said with a sideways glance to me. “Can’t help themselves.”
“Our kind?” Pucky growled, glaring. “What? Sprites? Children of the Fae?”
Red pursed her lips, glaring, and nodded at the evil sister.
“It’s been too long, sis,” Riak said waving a hand so that black smoke circled the room, closing in on us and taking on the form of warriors as it did so.
“Not long enough,” Pucky countered. She pulled out her pistol and opened fire, but Riak was swept up in the darkness, circling us, vanishing, laughing.
“Have they told you yet, boy,” her voice echoed from all around, “that you’re fighting on the wrong side?”
She appeared again, thrusting her hands out so that they took the darkness with them and grew into large, black claws that would’ve destroyed Pucky if she hadn’t been able to dodge the attack with her disappearing trick.
“I’m on the side I’m on,” I replied, knowing that didn’t say much. It hadn’t come out as I’d expected, but whatever.
“You’ve betrayed humanity,” Riak continued swirling as new Shade warriors emerged from the dark, stormy clouds. “They’ve taken their dagger to you, labeled you a traitor to your kind… turned you into a monster.”
“He knows that’s not true,” Pucky snapped, charging one of the Shades and quickly dispatching it.
“Maybe you’ve brainwashed him, or maybe your magic has eaten through to his soul, I don’t know. But think about it, Jack. They’ve taken you away from everything and everyone you know, put those markings on you… and made you go up against your government. Me and mine? We fight alongside these human agents, because we believe in a higher purpose, an alliance that will lead to the greater good.”
“She means wiping us all out,” Red cut in, vanishing in a flutter of red only to appear between two warriors, dispatching them quickly before returning to my side, at the ready in a defensive stance. “Once all Myths are dead, then what… you turn on your human friends there?”
Riak appeared, floating at the edge of the darkness. “When that day comes, it’ll be too late for you to care.”
The two flew at each other as if they had no choice, red robes and dark clouds shooting out as if propelling them forward. When they met, the two were slashing with blades, dark hands thrusting out to try and attack Red while she spun and countered. Green prana floated to her and me, some to Pucky as she threw herself into the fight. She wasn’t tiring in spite of what I’d heard about her kind and shades, but figured it had to do with being the daughter of a Shade Master. I did my best, too, but was mostly lunging and stabbing and getting pushed back, only to spin and lunge again.
In all the chaos, I was able to make out Red slamming Riak into the back wall and nearly stabbing her with that blade, but then the latter’s horns glowed and she was staring at me, the knife hitting stone and Red falling past her, smacking her head against the wall and landing in a heap. Riak’s eyes went purple as the darkness around us faded too. Pucky was shouting my name, hands reaching at me from all directions, but I fought it, resisting.
And then it was gone and Riak was pushed away, thrust out and through one of the arched entrances.
I ran to Red’s side, knelt, and cradled her head. “Red, are you okay? Red!” Her eyes opened partially and she looked at me, groaning, as Pucky ran past, only to hit some sort of barrier that Riak had put up!
“They’re here with me,” Riak said, talking to some unseen person. A voice came through the other side, and then she replied, “No, they’re not going anywhere.”
She was at the entrance, less than a foot away from her sister, leering at us. With a dead stare, she slammed her hands together and the walls around us started to close. We sprinted toward the closest opening, but black smoke covered it and then it was moving faster. There was no way we’d make it.
“Go!” Pucky shouted, and an instant later Red’s cloak was flapping about, darting toward an entrance to our right, and she was gone.
Pucky reached out for me and time slowed, the two of us starting to fade out and we were even thrust across the room—but it was too slow. The exits were sealed.
“Dammit,” Red’s voice came from the other side. “Hang tight, I’ll find a way to get you out of there.”
“Do try and hurry,” Pucky said, clinging to me and glancing about as if there might be a door we simply hadn’t considered.
I leaned up against the wall, relieved to finally have a moment to catch my breath, even if it was in a trap where the agents would find us. I quickly applied my newest prana to speed and agility, having felt a lack in those areas against the knights. Plus, agility could always help in other ways, I noted privately as I saw the way Pucky was looking at me—apparently her comfort in this prison.
“You were something,” she said.
“Yeah?”
She leaned up against the wall next to me, but turned sideways and wrapped her arms around my waist. “For your level, and past experience? I mean, I’ve seen Protectors who’ve been at this for years who weren’t as brave as you.”
“What you call bravery, others would probably call stupidity.”
She chuckled. “If stupidity kills our enemies and saves the world? We need more stupid people.”
&nb
sp; “Too easy, that one.”
She stared up at me with her green eyes, and I reached over, noticing an eyelash on her cheek. Taking it, I told her to make a wish and blow it, and when she had I leaned in and kissed her—a gentle, momentary kiss.
She closed her eyes for it and when I pulled back said, “Mmm, but that wasn’t my wish.”
“Damn,” I said with a laugh, “I was hoping it would’ve been. That would have been romantic as hell.”
“Nothing says romance like a pleasant kiss in an enemy dungeon.”
“Shut up,” I said, playfully. “What was the wish, then?”
“When we have some alone time, you’ll see.”
That got my attention. She leaned her head into me, resting it on my chest and running a hand along my abs. “Are you, I don’t know, enjoying this? Happy here?”
“Here as in this dungeon?”
“As in with me.”
“Yes to both,” I admitted. “I lived my whole life pretending to do all this stuff, thinking it was all make-believe, and now I’m here with the real, live characters from my fantasies and—”
“Fantasies?” She looked up at me.
“Not like that,” I said, “I meant, like I actually had daydreams about this kind of action stuff when I was younger.”
“You don’t fantasize about me?” She pouted.
“I do now, all the damn time.”
“I fantasize about you too,” she said. “I mean, hell, we barely know each other and in my mind we’ve already fucked at least a dozen times.”
If I’d been drinking something, you can bet it would’ve spewed forth right then. Instead, I gulped, squeezed her tight, and awkwardly said, “Wow.”
She laughed. “Wow? How many for you?”
“Honestly, how much would once for every second since we met be?”
“Mmm,” she pretended to count on her fingers, but then grabbed my ass, pulling me tight against her. Rubbing so that her body was tight against my crotch, she kissed my neck, sending chills through my body. “When we’re back from this,” she whispered in my ear, kissed me again, and then continued as her hand slid around to my front, “I’m going to ride you so hard you’ll be too exhausted to even want to fantasize about me for at least… five seconds or so.”
I giggled—yes, actually giggled—which made her giggle and then snort. Some might find such an effeminate giggle from me and then snort from her would ruin the moment, but not us. We were too wrapped up in each other for little things like that to be anything but endearing. I pulled her in for another passionate kiss.
“God, you two,” Red said, and we turned to see she’d managed to get one of the doors to vanish. “You can’t even last a couple of minutes without… all this, huh?”
“Guilty,” Pucky replied and grinned, slapping my ass. “You find her?”
“Nope, but…” Red motioned us on. “You’re going to want to see this.”
14
We started out of the octagon-shaped armory, but Pucky paused, eyes wide. “The chest wasn’t only enchanted to call her,” she pointed out, kneeling to grab something. When she stood, she was holding a badass rifle with glowing blue energy bars and a fancy scope—the type of weapon I had to guess had some magical element to it, because it certainly didn’t look like anything I’d ever seen before other than in sci-fi games. It looked way too big for her, but she managed it with ease. “You know this is going to come in handy. Dibs.”
“Won’t they know you have it?” I asked. “I mean, wouldn’t they be freaking out more now, attacking?”
“Chests like that often spawn the item,” Red replied, eyeing the gun with some jealousy. “They must’ve thought it high security, or wouldn’t have attached… her,” she said it cautiously with a look toward Pucky. “But yeah, the chest would probably spawn an item at random, but only if we’d earned it. I’ve heard of these chests, but never seen one like it.”
All this talk of chests, yeah, my eyes wandered to her overly exposed chest, and she frowned, then laughed.
“Sorry,” I said.
“Huh?” Pucky asked, still looking at her gun. “What happened?”
“Nothing,” Red replied, shaking her head and leading the way. “Quietly now, in case they’re still there.”
“They?” I hissed, but she just motioned me forward, crouching now. At the end of the hall, she revealed a hidden door to our right that led up some stairs. We paused at the top, and she indicated a crawl space.
“Had to get through here to make it back to you all,” Red explained. “And that’s when I saw them. I don’t think they’ve all been notified.”
We reached the edge of it and she pointed down. Scooting forward, I was able to see what she was referring to. Another room, this one more of a rectangle, with several dwarves, a couple of flying monkeys, and some Legends I didn’t recognize (but could tell were Legends because some of them had green skin, some had horns, and one even had a cat’s tail) in it.
They were gathered around a mummy, who was mumbling something I could barely hear, only catching on that they were discussing some major attack, one that would hurt both Myths and Normies alike.
So this wasn’t just some hideout or place to take prisoners, it was a rally point of sorts. The location to launch an attack from—and I had to assume there were others out there, to cause the sort of havoc they seemed to be discussing.
“They’re getting ready to make a move,” Pucky whispered. “We need to find out where.”
“Might be that Elisa’s heard something,” Red countered.
“A fucking storm is coming, I can tell you that much.”
“Oh, shit,” I said, nudging Red and indicating the far side of the wall. I hadn’t noticed a second before, but it seemed to be partially translucent black stone. It wasn’t the cool stone that caught my attention, but the very three-dimensional, very real but frozen forms of a woman and a man—neither were recognizable, but I could tell from looking at them that they were Myths. Even more so, I realized as I focused, that they had that glowing aura I’d first seen on Red and Pucky soon after my tests related to becoming the Protector.
“That’s two of them,” Red said, voice growling as she glanced around at the other walls, waiting… “Ironic that it would be those two, frozen.”
“Kai and Gerda,” Pucky explained upon seeing my confused expression. “Come on, you have to know the Snow Queen story, the Troll Mirror and all that?”
I frowned, confused. The only snow queen I knew about was from the movie Frozen, and this didn’t sound anything like what I remembered that being about.
“How about we rescue them, see if they know anything about Elisa, and then you read him bedtime stories over a nice, warm cup of shut the hell up?” Red said, winked at me, and then turned back to Pucky. “Ready to try out that rifle?”
“You bet your ass I am,” Pucky replied, pulling it up to aim.
“Do I need to cover my ears or something?” I asked.
“Just hope it’s not cursed and blows up in our faces. Otherwise, you’re good.”
I gulped, lying there watching and hoping I wasn’t about to die.
Pucky had the tip of her tongue out, pressed to her upper lip as she grinned like a child about to steal a slice of birthday cake. She pressed her hand to the glowing side, causing the rifle to charge up with a strange hissing sound, the back lighting up even more. Then, with a release like air out of a tire but faster and stronger, a blast of energy shot out and turned two of the dwarves into frogs.
“It’s an amplifier gun,” Red explained. “Shoots based on powers of Myths and Legends who’ve held it before.”
“And I can choose and select, once merging with it,” Pucky said, again placing her hand against its side. “Just have to get a feel for the damn thing.”
This time, as the enemy below was scurrying about to see where the shot came from, Pucky released a blast that froze three more into ice.
“At least we know one of it
s former owners,” Pucky said, preparing to fire again. “The Snow Queen herself—the chest must’ve been connected due to the presence of Gerda and Kai.” Another moment, and her eyes went wide, “Ooh, and I’ve got one more, it looks like…” she was about to fire to show us, when a winged monkey arrived right in front of us, screeching so that the others came flying up, our hiding spot exposed.
“Good,” Red said, knife at the ready and pulling herself toward the closest monkey. “I was getting sick of being cramped in here.”
She grabbed it by the wing as it tried to flee for help, but then the others below turned to fire on us as she rode it down, knife at its throat. The mummy growled up at us, reaching, but I held onto my amulet, prepared. Then it wasn’t the amulet, but me—I was thinking about Red and Pucky at my side, thinking about what a lucky guy I was, how insane all of this was but that I was loving it. And then the shadow was gone as if I’d shone a light in the room, though there was no light.
I crawled out of the lookout spot and dropped in to join the fight. One of the flying monkeys broke my fall, and I grabbed hold as its wings flapped, lowering us.
My first instinct was to push the little bastard away and charge the mummy, but two more of the winged monkeys came at me. There were still the frozen dwarves and the ones turned to frogs, and a glance around showed the mummy was making an escape. When one of the remaining dwarfs turned a gun on me, I wasn’t about to get shot so I pulled one of the monkeys into the line of fire. It went down, and then I was charging the dwarf, but too late.
These dwarves apparently had some sort of magic, because once he charged through the exit the mummy took, it was like an invisible wall went up.
That left his friends for the slaughter, but he’d gambled that we weren’t the type. He was right. Or so I thought. As I turned to see what our next move would be, the blast from Pucky’s rifle hit the monkey nearby, turning it, too, into a frog.
Another had a shotgun aimed at Red, so when the last blast from the rifle hit, it was with more malice—but it only sent a brilliant burst of light that caused him to stumble and look around in confusion.
