by G. D. Penman
He burst out through that circle and the world was ninety degrees off. Whatever cave he was being flung from was level with the ground, and he was flying sideways out of it, skidding to a halt by colliding with a heap of bones.
His brain baulked at the sudden re-alignment, but self-preservation kicked in and he flung himself aside before the rest of the guild came flying out to land in a heap. Lindsay had managed to land on the bottom of the pile, yet, despite being muffled by Jericho’s fur, Martin could clearly hear her yelling, “Can we go again? I want to go again!”
They disentangled themselves and took in the sights. The stone down here was porcelain pale. The cave of the Skip Gate was a perfect circle, just like the silver ring of the apparatus itself, but around it were sculpted lips. A human face carved smooth and perfect into the stone. Like a cherub. All around it there were other bulbous outcroppings, all smoothed out into more faces.
Julia said it for all of them. “What the hell?”
Everywhere they looked were faces. Even the cobblestones beneath their feet bore the same pristine faces. All white and wan and open eyed. Staring out blindly.
Lindsay kept trying not to step on them before eventually realizing they were everywhere and giving up. “Oh, this is not cool. At all.”
The shape of the cave they’d emerged into was as irregular as the one they had departed, yet every surface of it had been transformed into the same staring faces. The only thing breaking up the ceaseless masks were the bleached bones scattered amongst them. The bones were not yet as pale as the stone and still had a yellow cast to them, for there was no sunlight here to strip them of it. Martin’s analytical brain started out trying to calculate just how many corpses would be required to produce this quantity of remains, but he found that he couldn’t even count the ones closest to him against the backdrop of white and soft shadows. His eye just couldn’t track all of the information.
Lindsay nudged him. “Any possibility that all these little faces don’t shoot lasers out their eyes later?”
He sighed. “It does look like a pretty lasery situation.”
“Alright. Scooby, Velma,” Lindsay turned back to the other two. “Keep an eye out for lasers!”
Martin pinched the bridge of his snout. “I don’t like where this metaphor is going.”
“Shut up, Shaggy.”
“That’s why.”
Jericho was laughing until Julia pulled him down to whisper in his ear. Then he stood bolt upright. “The dog?”
Speckles came flying out the portal, plowing directly into Jericho’s midsection, folding him over.
“And right on cue! Here comes–”
Martin turned on Lindsay with an accusatory finger. “Hey! Speckles is a valuable member of this team. Don’t go dragging his name through the dirt.”
Lindsay let out a giggle. “You’re right, you’re right. He’s no Scrappy.”
“You’re right, you’re right, you’re right, you’re right, you’re right…”
Her voice echoed back at them from all around. Bouncing back and forth around the cave, making it hard for Martin to identify its source.
Lindsay’s eyes widened. “Oh, that is ominous.”
“Right on cue! Right on cue! Right on cue! Right on cue! Right on cue!…”
Martin drew his sword and pressed a finger to his lips before anyone could say anything else. Slowly, the echoes of Lindsay’s voice faded away.
The rest of the guild had clustered together while Martin wasn’t looking. Every one of them staring at him wide-eyed as he waved to follow him. The stones seemed to emanate some dim light. Enough to navigate by for Martin, but not enough to keep the rest of them from stumbling and tripping over every long rib that they came across. The crunching of bones beneath their feet did nothing to ease Martin’s nerves, but neither did it seem to echo.
The cave tightened up toward one end where another of the great chubby-cheeked cherub faces waited for them with its mouth wide open. The door to the next chamber.
When Martin glanced back Lindsay was pointing at it and dramatically shaking her head, but he could already see that through the mouth it opened out into another cave, not a digestive tract. He flashed the group a thumbs up then headed on through before the frantic hand waving and headshaking could drain his confidence any more.
The cavern stretched out to the edges of his perception. Every surface was coated in more of the same porcelain faces. At the center of it all, Phalanx, Maw of Darkness, stood waiting.
Sixteen
The Janus Ordeal
It towered over Martin, as all the other Archdukes had, but while they had bulk to spare, this creature was almost spindly. There were a pair of lithe human-looking legs beneath the shredded oily leather-rag skirts that hung around the creature’s lower half, but they ended in hands. Long elegant fingers spreadeagled out over the stone to bear its weight. Each one ending in a perfectly manicured fingernail, painted a glossy black.
From the waist up, any hint of humanity was lost. It rose up in a great cone of the same sickly, pallid flesh as the legs, but formless by comparison. A termite mound of flesh.
Scraps of the same ruined leather were strung around it like a charnel Christmas tree festooned with drab tinsel, and at the top four blank white masks looked out over its domain. Expressionless, eyeless and glowing with the same dim light as the ones that covered the chamber. Yet unmistakably the faces of the Archduke.
“What the hell? What the hell? What the hell? What the hell? What the hell? What the hell?”
Martin was half turned to tell Julia off for crying out when he realized that the reverberating call in her voice was coming from Phalanx.
As Julia’s voice echoed away to silence, Lindsay’s giggle began to build, climbing louder and louder. The hands on the ground flexed with a crackle of cartilage.
With no other options, Martin barked, “Spread out.”
His own voice roared back over him as the Archduke lurched toward them. “Out! Out! Out! Out! Out! Out! Out! Out! Out! Out! Out! Out! Out! Out! Out!”
Martin clapped one hand over an ear and drew his Creedblade with the other. If this thing thought that getting yelled at could stop him from doing what he wanted, then it really should have checked his school report cards.
Nobody else could serve as tank, so Martin cast his buffs, lit his sword with Celestial Strike, and charged. The room fell away behind him. The noise, the faces, all of it narrowed down to just him and the creature ahead.
Almost casually, the archduke’s fingers tented up and it lifted from the ground in a graceful leap. It had so much strength in those fingers that they could launch its entire mass twelve feet up in the air.
Martin watched it rise, still bolt upright as it soared through the air, and his charge lost momentum. He started scurrying to the side as fast as his little legs could carry him. As it turned out, it wasn’t fast enough.
The hand came down flat on his tail, pinning him in place and crushing it to a pulp. The blissful numbness that Strata gave instead of pain flooded halfway up his back.
[Skaife has suffered 12 bludgeoning damage]
Only a single hand had come down to pin Martin in place. The other was still held out to one side by a bended knee, the grasping fingers at its end lunging out towards Lindsay where she had been trying to sneak around its back. She was a lot more nimble than Martin had been. When the huge hand kicked out toward her she leapt aside, twin blades swinging to score bloody lines across the fingertips.
The hand jerked back like it had been stung. So human that, for a moment, Martin forgot what was above until Lindsay’s voice bellowed out. “Laser eyes! Laser eyes! Laser eyes! Laser eyes! Laser eyes! Laser eyes!”
Jericho and Julia gave each other one look and then took off running in opposite directions. The predicted beams of blinding light blasted out from the masks above, blackening the floor in a broad swathe where they struck. They left afterimages in Martin’s vision — dark lines across his per
ception.
The archduke did a graceful pirouette, leaving a smooth curve of scorch marks in all four directions that it faced. The pivot point was the hand on top of Martin’s tail. It ground the flesh away, vibrations rattling up his spine.
[Skaife has suffered 16 bludgeoning damage]
He was dragged around with it. Clawed feet skittering over the smooth curves of the graven faces and failing to find purchase. He had to get free.
Phalanx’s other hand was swooping back toward him now and he was pinned in place. It would come down and crush the life out of him at its leisure.
He swung his sword.
[Skaife has suffered 7 light damage]
His tail came off in one clean cut. The numbness there was sharp and bright. So close to real pain that, for an instant, it took Martin’s breath away. He flung himself like a ragdoll, tumbling across the faces below, bounced and bruised.
When the other hand came down it delicately lifted the scrap of his tail and tossed it away with disdain. The pirouette came to an end. The beams of impossibly bright light strobed out. The masks up there were black now, but as Martin watched with horror they began to fade back to white. A visible timer on the beam attack. Handy.
He stumbled to his feet. “Burn it down while the masks are black, stay between them when they’re white. Piece of cake.”
“Cake. Cake. Cake. Cake. Cake. Cake. Cake. Cake.” For a moment it seemed like the whole thing was toppling over, but that pillar of boneless flesh above the skirts was the only part to move, dipping down as it rambled on and on.
Soon, it was so close that Martin had to drop to his knees once more or risk touching the mask. It plinked and clicked as it cooled above him. Ceramic or bone. “Cake. Cake. Cake. Cake. Cake. Cake. Cake. Cake. Cake. Cake. Cake. Cake. Cake. Cake. Cake. Cake. Cake. Cake. Cake.”
It lurched back the other way so dramatically that Martin’s held breath escaped him in a gasp. Phalanx swung its upper body in a great arc, whipping it around to come back at him again. Martin found his wits and his feet, sprinting out from where the cudgel of its face would surely fall. Instead it stopped dead a few feet from the ground and the rambling distorted back into Lindsay’s giggles.
Oh, it was insane. The movements he’d taken for attacks – for the rational actions of a thinking, calculating enemy – he couldn’t rely on them at all.
With its head still dangling down toward him, the Archduke charged, giggling all the way. The raw-looking top of the termite mound had no point, but with the mass of Phalanx it was liable to crush him with the advantage of size alone.
Arrows soared past Martin, useless wide shots from Speckles’ bow. The little Anurvan was hiding back toward the entrance, ready to bolt if things went wrong. Martin wished that was him.
He ran in the opposite direction. If he broke to either side he might put the others in danger as the top swiveled to follow him. If he wanted to be a tank, this was how.
It was a shame that Lindsay didn’t see it that way. All she saw was her friend being chased down by the kind of thing that the monsters of Strata had nightmares about. She leapt onto the trailing hand of the rear leg with a squawk of impotent rage. She landed right in the palm of its hand, readied her blades, and was promptly smothered as the trap of fingers snapped shut around her.
Martin skidded to a halt. “Lindsay!”
“Lindsay! Lindsay! Lindsay! Lindsay! Lindsay!” Phalanx lurched back to its full height, lifting its closed but shaking fist until it was level with the array of masks. “Lindsay! Lindsay! Lindsay! Lindsay! Lindsay!”
The masks were white. It was going to blast her at point blank range.
Throwing caution to the wind, Martin charged back in, launching a Javelin of Faith at the hand holding her as he went.
[Phalanx has suffered 24 light damage]
The skin blackened at the light’s touch, but the crushing grasp never loosened. Not for an instant.
“Jericho, hit the hand!”
“The hand! The hand!” Jericho had been closing on the beast the whole time it chased Martin, punctuating every loping step with another snap of the cat o’ nine tails against his broad shoulders. The fur was matted thick with blood. The shimmering aura of Vengeance around him was so thick that it obscured Martin’s view of him. Like he came with his own smog. “The hand! The hand! The hand! The hand! The hand! The hand! The hand!”
Jericho flung his arms out wide. The dark version of the new ability he’d unleashed on the last Archduke came again. Huge missiles burst forth from the center of his body, arching out to strike at Phalanx.
Some struck the central pillar and others grazed the legs, but the lion’s share went exactly where Jericho wanted them to go. They pummeled the hand that held Lindsay until it could no longer choose to hold on. The fingers were too bruised, burned and battered to do anything else.
“The dog? The dog? The dog? The dog?” Jericho’s own voice roared back at him.
Lindsay leapt from the broken grasp of the Archduke’s hand to slice her way down its body in a long spiral. Both her blades cut in, unleashing great streams of blood that made her next loop all the easier and more lubricated.
Putting on the voice she used for her impressions of Martin, she yelled, “Work the meaty shaft, team!”
She was trying to make a mockery of the mimicry. Trying to trick it into copying her nonsense. If it worked, Martin was fairly confident the whole guild would have wiped, dying of laughter.
Lindsay was flung free of the flesh before she hit Phalanx’s waistline, leaping out to kick off the leg as it lowered back to the ground before she landed. A bruise blossomed out where she’d kicked.
Every part of the Archduke seemed almost too easy to injure, like it was built for a softer life than Strata could provide. Martin certainly wasn’t going to complain that every enemy they faced wasn’t plated in armor, but he did wonder why this one should be so susceptible. It wasn’t like its damage dealing was high enough to balance it out.
Lindsay threw back her head and roared with laughter. Cupping her hands on either side of her beak she bellowed, “I’m a big wobbly dong!”
For a long moment there was absolute silence, then a dry whisper.
“Light your tail. Martin candle.” It came out so softly they all strained to hear it. Then, in an instant, Lindsay’s voice was almost deafeningly loud when the masks strobed back to life, the beams of light blasting out across the room, spinning in angled arcs as the beast twisted and contorted as it capered around. “Light your tail. Martin candle. Light your tail. Martin candle.”
Every one of Iron Riot was taken by surprise. The beam clipped Martin in the side of the head before he could leap aside. Julia, at the far side of Phalanx, took the blast square in the chest. Speckles was slapped out of the room by the impact of the light on his slight frame. It even caught Jericho on the heel as he took his own dive to safety.
[Skaife has suffered 16 light damage]
The only one to avoid the beams entirely was Lindsay. She had reflexes like a cat, and had been looking right at the Archduke when it powered on. The rest of them looked worse for wear. Martin’s ear was missing a chunk he was pretty sure he was never getting back. He was trying not to think about the loss of his tail. Just the thought of it was making him queasy. The only consolation was that the masks were back to black, and that meant they were liable to get a moment to think before it happened again.
“Why won’t you say you love me?”
They all froze in place, every one of them turning, as if drawn by magnetism to stare at Jericho as the fragment echoed again and again. “Why won’t you say you love me? Say you love me? Say you love me? Say you love me?”
The hand reached out to Jericho now, bruised and battered and bleeding. Black clawed fingers stretching out to him like a hand being offered to a friend that had fallen. “Say you love me?”
Jericho roared back. “Shut up.”
“Say you love me? Say you love me?”
; He lashed out at the hands with his whip. “I said, shut up!”
“Jericho.” Martin could smell the set up. “Stop.”
“Say you love me?”
Jericho lashed out again and again and again.
“Say you love me?”
Froth formed on his muzzle. The whip lashed back, splashing trails of blood all over the Heretic.
“Say you love me?”
Martin caught Lindsay by the sleeve. “It’s a trap. I don’t know how, but it’s a trap.”
“I know that! Anyone with a brain can see that! What do I do?”
Martin dragged her forward. The other hand. It was the only thing keeping the Archduke upright. She saw her target as soon as she got her feet under her, running alongside Martin, beak chattering with every step.
The other leg and hand were vibrating with the effort of holding the rest of the beast’s weight in place to take its spanking.
“Say you love me?”
Jericho’s roar was loud enough to drown out the Archduke echoing above them. “Stop saying that!”
Lindsay and Martin split at the last moment. Her going right, him going left, both of them leaping over splayed fingers to go for the ankle itself. He almost laughed when he heard Lindsay bellow, “Shadeblade Slice!” But the thought of Phalanx echoing it back to him was enough to sober him. His own sword lit up with Celestial Strike and he swung.
[Phalanx has suffered 9 slashing damage]
[Phalanx has suffered 11 light damage]
Just like all the blows they’d struck before, this one parted the flesh of Phalanx with ease. Sinews snapped. Blood drenched Martin, but it wasn’t enough.. He cast Rebuke on the ankle too.
That was enough. Between the cuts on either side of the leg and that one last final push, the Archduke was knocked off balance.
