“By the Creator’s Beard!” Erik exclaimed. “If I cut your head off, will you grow two more?”
Erik ducked and rolled underneath the monstrous jailor. An errant back hand caught Erik on the shoulder, throwing him into the iron bars of another cell. He jerked away quickly as a gigantic cat, its fur as white as snow, leaped at the bars and growled angrily. The hair on the beast’s back stood on end, and it swiped at Erik through the bars, its claws huge and sharp. He saw the jailor remove a large key from a pocket in his tattered pants. The monster said something to the key, and as Erik had done with his dagger, a door with a lock appeared in the bars of the cell of the large cat. Erik heard the latch of the lock turn and saw the door begin to open. He pushed the door closed as the cat leaped again, but there was no use trying to keep it closed. The animal was so powerful, Erik found himself flying backwards.
The snow cat crouched and growled at Erik, ready to pounce. It was a magnificent animal, far too lean for its size. It was hungry. Its claws scratched against the stone floor, and its canines were like daggers. It leaped at Erik and he rolled under the great cat, coming up in front of the jailor. As the grotesque creature swung down at Erik, he slashed a hand away, producing two more hands. He cut away a foot, and two more feet grew. Erik raised an eyebrow as the magical abomination stumbled, two feet emerging from the same ankle was awkward and difficult to manage.
Your magic is flawed.
Erik swung Bryon’s elvish blade at the monster’s knee, removing the leg from the knee down. It fell with a thundering crash, two lower limbs growing just below its knee. The jailor struggled to get up as it tried to balance on two feet coming from the same ankle and then on its other leg—one part of it sticking out to the side while the other twisted inward.
Erik heard a growl, turned, and dove away just as the cat leaped at him again. It skidded across the floor, crashing into the jailor just as it regained its footing, taking him to the ground again. The monster yelled and cursed and swatted the cat away in anger, sending the beast into the wall with a hiss and a pitiful growl.
As the cat shook itself, clearly stunned by the attack, and as the jailor tried pushing himself back up to his feet, Erik prepared for another assault, but the cat looked to him and then the monster. It growled low and deep and, instead of attacking Erik, who had done nothing to it, lunged at the jailor, who had swatted it into the wall. The cat’s powerful jaws latched onto the throat of the grotesque mutant and, even though the jailor squeezed the cat with all its might, black, sticky blood began to spill to the ground.
Erik rushed next to the cat. He could see blood coming from the animal’s nose as the jailor squeezed it with all its might, so he dropped the elvish blade, gripped Ilken’s Blade with both hands, spied a spot on the side of the mutant’s head, and stabbed. The magical abomination’s eyes went wide, and then it stilled, black blood gurgling from its mouth. When Erik retrieved his sword, the thing went still, and the cat limped away, purring and licking at its feet.
Erik stabbed again, Ilken’s Blade going cross guard deep just to make sure. When he removed the sword, the jailor fell forward. Erik heard a low growl and looked to the cat. It had crouched again, ready to strike.
“No,” Erik said. He dropped his sword and kneeled, lowering his head into a subservient position. He slowly extended a hand. “I won’t hurt you.”
The cat crouched lower, shifting back and forth on its haunches, its tail up and flicking to the left and right. Erik suddenly regretted dropping his sword, and eyed Ilken’s Blade and the elvish blade and wondered if he had enough time to get to either one. However, the cat stopped growling and slowly limped towards Erik, sniffed at his extended hand, and licked it, its tongue rough. Erik dared himself to be courageous, and, as the animal licked his hand, he cupped its chin with his other hand, scratching the cat. It purred, and Erik transitioned to its ear. It rubbed up against Erik and, even in its weakened state, almost knocked him over.
“It seems I’ve made a new friend,” Erik said. “Now, what do you say we release all these poor prisoners?”
The cat purred and moved out of the way as Erik stood. He was about to retrieve his dagger, and then remembered the key in the monster’s pocket. He retrieved it and held it up in the dim, greenish torchlight of the dungeon.
“You don’t know the words?” someone said in Westernese.
Erik turned to see a man—at least the remnants of a man, emaciated with black eyes like the possessed—staring at him from a barred unit at the end of one of the many rows of cells. He didn’t have the green, pallid skin like the possessed soldiers, and he pressed his face hard against the bars. He looked sick, his ribs poking through stretched skin, his hip bones clear and pointed, barely holding up his tattered pants. His cheeks were sunken, jawbones and cheekbones visible, and his hair was thin and hung from his scalp in splotches.
“Clearly,” Erik said, and he heard a low, almost inaudible growl, rumble from the snow cat’s throat.
“I’ve listened to that thing say the incantation every day for the last … well … I’m not sure how many years,” the man said. “I can help.”
“Your eyes,” Erik said.
“Yeah,” the man said. “I was once one of those green freaks, but my will was too strong.”
The man smiled, revealing a mouth with half its teeth missing and the other half rotting.
“You are so special you get your own cell?” Erik asked.
The man kept smiling.
“I wasn’t always alone,” the man said, “but all my cellmates left me.”
“Left you?”
“Food, torture,” the man said with a quick shrug.
“Will the incantation let everyone out?” Erik asked as screams and yells for help echoed through the dungeon.
“I only know mine,” the man replied, “and the one for the cell next to me and across from me. But I know of a way you can release everyone.”
“Tell me,” Erik said.
“Let me out first.”
“No,” Erik replied.
The prisoner laughed. It was the laughter of a madman, a wheezing, sporadic laugh.
“I have seen death,” the man said. “What can you do to me? I have seen the void of magical enslavement, years of nothing but nightmares. Leave me here. Fine. Then you will die down here too. You will know what death looks like.”
“I know what death looks like,” Erik said.
The prisoner stepped back, away from the bars, and just stared at Erik with his black, blank eyes.
“Release the prisoners next to you and across from you,” Erik said, looking at the adjacent cell, filled with a dozen men, all similar looking to this fellow, and the one across from him, filled with a mixture of men and women. “Then, I will let you free yourself.”
The man seemed to think for a moment and then nodded. Erik lifted the key in front of the men’s cell. The prisoner leaned forward, the stink coming from him almost unbearable—a mixture of dirt and body odor and fecal matter. When he spoke, his breath was equally as horrid, the smell of rot. As the imprisoned man spoke, the bars in the cell next to him shimmered, a door appearing with its lock.
“Use the key,” the man said, and Erik obeyed.
The lock clicked, and the door opened. The men just stood there for a moment.
“Go,” Erik said. “You are free.”
No one moved.
“They don’t know what to do,” the once possessed soldier said, laughing. “They are broken, little more than animals.”
Erik remembered the cannibals that had attacked them in the Gray Mountains. He remembered the destitute that called the streets of Finlo their home and the homeless prostitutes that hung around The Lady’s Inn. He remembered the slavers that had attacked Marcus’ gypsy caravan. Were they little more than animals?
“They’re scared,” Erik said. “That is all. Open the other one.”
The same thing happened. The man spoke an incantation. A door and lock appeared
. Erik opened the door. And the cell’s inhabitants just stood there.
“Now me. Now me. Now me,” the man said, jumping up and down as much as he could and pestering Erik like a petulant child.
“First,” Erik said, “how do I release everyone else?”
The prisoner looked at him, furrowed eyebrows and face growing red.
“That wasn’t the deal.”
“I’m changing the deal,” Erik replied.
“I don’t know,” the man replied.
“You lie,” Erik said.
The prisoner screamed, clutching his hands into fists, holding them to his face, and falling to his knees. He began to weep and pull out clumps of his remaining hair.
“Please!” he shouted. “I don’t know!”
“Hush,” Erik hissed.
“I don’t know,” he said through tearless sobs. “I only know mine.”
Erik looked at the man warily. Emaciated, broken, insane. He was wasting time. He thought to try his dagger in the cells here, but maybe the door it opened before did not have the incantation spell. He tried it, and it didn’t work.
“You can open the cells all at once,” said a gruff voice, coming from behind Erik.
He turned to see a dwarf. His head had been shaved and not kindly. His scalp was scarred and scabbed and patches of reddish-brown hair hung in dirty clumps. Like all the others, he looked like he hadn’t eaten a real meal in some time.
“How?” Erik asked, and the dwarf looked surprised the man could speak Dwarvish. “Do you know the incantation?”
“At the end of this hall, there is a door,” the dwarf said. “It won’t be there now, but after speaking a spell over the key, it will appear. In that room, there is a lever that will release all the prisoners.”
“Do you know the spell?” Erik asked.
“I do,” the dwarf replied.
“By listening to the jailors like this broken fellow?” Erik asked, pointing to the other prisoner, now lying on the floor and crying.
“No,” the dwarf croaked. “I used to be a jailor.”
Erik glared at the dwarf.
“Be disgusted all you want,” the dwarf said, his eyes without emotion. “I am disgusted with myself. But, when presented with the option of becoming bear or cat scat, or working for a madman, I chose the latter. Besides, I rescinded my position, and this is what it got me.”
“Alright then,” Erik said to the prisoner curled up on the cell floor, “speak your incantation.”
The man hurried to his feet and spoke the spell over the key. His door and lock appeared, and Erik freed him. At first, the man didn’t know what to do, then he cheered. He limped to the cell next to him, grabbing one man by the shoulders.
“You are free, you fool!” he shouted, pulling on the man as much as he could in his weakened state.
When the other prisoner stumbled out of the cell, the snow cat growled, and Erik patted the animal on the neck. The freed prisoner looked around as if he couldn’t believe what had happened. Finally, he fell to his knees and cried, lifting his hands up and then covering his face. The others finally spilled out of the cells. The broken man, the one who was once possessed, clasped Erik’s arm, to which the snow cat growled again and he let go, backing away slowly.
“Thank you,” he said, clasping his hands together.
Erik just nodded, and the man limped away.
“It warms my heart to see such kindness,” the dwarf croaked sarcastically.
“Speak your spell, dwarf,” Erik said, lifting the key to the dwarf’s cell.
The dwarf did as he said he would, and, also as he suggested, a door appeared at the end of the hallway.
“The key will open it,” the dwarf said.
“Erik!” Turk’s voice was unmistakable. He called from the next hallway over. “Are you alright?”
“Fine!” Erik called back and then unlocked the door and went inside. He quickly stepped out of the room and slammed the door shut.
“What tricks are you playing, dwarf?” Erik asked. The room was filled with several dozen possessed men and women, all naked and all with green-pallid skin and black, blank eyes.
“They won’t attack,” the dwarf said, pressing his face into the bars of his cell. “They are food for the animals. They have been commanded to just stand there. The lever just inside the room will make all the locks appear.”
“How?” Erik asked.
“By the gods, how should I know?” the dwarf replied, his voice dripping with irritation. “It’s magic. I just know that it works.”
Erik opened the door again. The snow cat growled and hissed as it stared at the pale-green possessed. He looked to his right and saw a lever. He pulled it. A loud click echoed through the dungeon. He turned and saw locks in all of the doors within his vision.
“There should be another lever next to it,” the dwarf said. “That one will open the doors. Hurry. Sustenon will know you are down here if he didn’t already. It is his magic.”
Erik moved to pull the second lever, but then he spotted one cell that held a mountain troll. It was still big, as big as Erik remembered the ones from the Southern Mountains, but it was a shadow of its former self. It looked scared and beaten and broken.
Erik didn’t want to set it free. He remembered what mountain trolls had done to Drake and Samus. He remembered what mountain trolls had done to Aga Kona. Those poor people. He looked down at the snow cat by his side. It looked up at him, and Erik was sure it understood him.
“No one deserves to be imprisoned like this,” Erik said.
He pulled the lever. Another audible click echoed through the dungeon as hundreds of doors opened. The troll slowly left the cell, walking on all fours. It stared at Erik for a moment. Erik gripped Ilken’s Blade, ready. The troll snorted, said something in its archaic language, turned, and ran from the dungeon. So many others did the same, from animals to people, all running, all blundering about, and all—undoubtedly—raising the alarm.
Erik ran back to the hallway in which his friends were imprisoned. The lever had unlocked all the doors … all the doors. The snow bear opened its cell door with its head, its three cubs following it. It looked at Erik. The snow cat grumbled, and the snow bear grunted. It looked from the cat to the man, back to the cat, and then over to its cubs. It plodded by Erik, its massive paws smacking hard on the floor. She watched Erik, over her shoulder, as her cubs passed him, making sure he, nor the cat, did nothing untoward. Another door slammed open and the unmistakable hiss and chitter of an ártocothe came from the darkness of the cell.
The ártocothe walked from its cell, looking every which way it could. Then, it locked its eight eyes on Erik. It hissed again, venom dripping from its feelers and fangs under its body. Erik sheathed Bryon’s sword and retrieved his shield, crouching in his fighting stance. The spider took a few steps backward, ready to strike, and then it turned and ran, as fast as it could and paid no heed to other creatures, man or beast. It wanted to escape this place as badly as anyone else.
As Turk and Bryon and the other dwarves emerged from their cells, Erik ran to his cousin, wrapping his arms around the man and squeezing as hard as he could.
“By the Creator’s Beard!” Bryon exclaimed. “What is that?”
Erik turned and saw what Bryon was referring to.
“A friend,” Erik said, looking down at the snow cat.
“You are alright?” Turk asked.
“I am now,” Erik replied.
“What a lovely reunion,” someone said, and Erik turned to see the man who called himself the son of Patûk Al’Banan.
“You’re welcome,” Erik said.
“For what?” Bu asked.
“For rescuing you,” Erik replied.
“Do you want your man?” Turk asked, pointing to one of Bu’s soldiers lying on the floor of the cell. He didn’t look well.
Bu shook his head.
“He is as good as dead and will only slow me down if I expect to escape this place,” Bu
replied.
“Well,” Erik said.
“Well what?” Bu asked, his old, grizzled soldier stepping up next to him, the arm of one of the Hámonian knights draped over his shoulder.
“Are we done?” Erik asked.
Bu seemed to think for a while.
“For now,” Bu replied. “I had every intention of killing you and taking the Dragon Sword, but the Lord of the East could send his whole army up here and still wouldn’t succeed. I am going to go home to my kingdom and my wife.”
Bu looked to his old soldier and then back to Erik.
“You saved my life,” Bu said. “I think, for now, that deserves a truce.”
“Perhaps. I could kill you instead, but maybe another time. Your weapons are in a room just around the corner,” Erik said.
Bu gave him a curt bow, and the old soldier just grumbled. He turned and walked away, slowly, looking over his shoulder every once in a while.
“How do we get out of here?” Bryon asked.
“We don’t,” Erik replied. “At least, not yet.”
“I don’t understand,” Bryon said.
“The Dragon Sword,” Erik replied.
“To the Shadow with the Dragon Sword,” Bryon said. “Haven’t you had enough of this place?”
“More than you could imagine,” Erik replied, “but we have to retrieve it. And we have to defeat Sustenon.”
“Why?” Turk asked.
“All these people,” Erik said, “all these creatures. They’ve been possessed, experimented on, terrorized, and tortured by this wizard. We owe it to them.”
“Very well then,” Turk said.
Bryon grumbled.
“Where do we find the wizard and the Dragon Sword?” Nafer asked.
“Up,” Erik replied, pointing to the ceiling. “I was in the room where it was kept.”
“You saw it?” Beldar asked.
“No,” Erik said, “but there was an altar, and something tells me that’s where we could find the sword.”
“What do we do with him?” Bryon asked, pointing to the who once served Bu, lying on the floor of the cell.
“We can’t leave him here,” Erik said.
“I will carry him,” Turk offered. “His master has cast him aside, and he will only end up as food for one of the many creatures in here if we leave him.”
Dragon Sword: Demon's Fire Book 1 Page 35
