Dan the Barbarian

by Hondo Jinx

  Through some black sorcery, the tower door opened onto a nightmare landscape that stretched away for miles and miles in a flat and gloomy plain. Beneath a leaden, otherworldly sky, zombies covered every inch of this sprawling doomscape, packed shoulder to shoulder, chest to back, in a writhing, rotting mass of wagging arms, dead eyes, and gaping mouths filled with rotten teeth.

  Dan’s teammates stared at him for several silent seconds.

  Then Nadia clapped her hands sharply together and said, “Well, looks like I'd better climb this wall, then.”

  Nadia walked the wall, inspecting its surface. Then she clamped a dagger between her teeth like a pirate and started climbing.

  Dan could only stand there and watch, wishing that he could be more than a spectator, though he did have a great view of Nadia's A+ ass.

  Nadia ascended the wall with remarkable speed, scaling ten feet, twenty, higher…

  Then a leering blue-gray face with insane, bulging eyes leaned out of a window above her.

  A ghoul, Dan thought, and saw the monster wrestle something onto the window ledge.

  “Look out!” Dan shouted.

  The ghoul cackled madly and dropped a large chunk of stone.

  “Oh shit!” Nadia shouted.

  The stone smashed into her head.

  An icy spike of terror skewered Dan’s heart as Nadia’s head jerked to one side.

  Nadia’s limp body sloughed away from the wall and plummeted without so much as a whimper.

  37

  Desperate Measures

  Dan moved quickly, shuffling his feet back and forth, and caught Nadia before she could hit the ground.

  Nadia’s limp body slammed into him. Dan stayed under her, but the impact smashed him to the ground. It hurt like hell and knocked the wind out of him, but at least he had broken her fall.

  Nadia was unconscious and badly hurt, bleeding from a deep gash in her head. Panicking, Dan tried to rouse her, touching her face and calling her name, but it was no good.

  Inches away, another stone slammed into the ground with a startling whump.

  Then whump… whump… whump…

  Ghouls leaned from windows up and down the tower, defenestrating stones.

  Dan scooped Nadia into his arms, retreated to safety, and laid her gently on the ground. Holly crouched beside her, inspecting her injuries.

  Boiling with rage, Dan glared at the tower. Ghouls leaned from all of the windows, jabbering and cackling and sticking out their inhumanly long tongues.

  Whump.

  Another stone hit the ground.

  That’s when Dan recognized the stones then for what they were. The ghouls weren’t just dropping stones. They were dropping tombstones.

  Of course they were.

  This place was just some sick theme park.

  Suddenly, he wanted to kill not only the ghouls but also whoever had designed this twisted place.

  Dan turned back to his fallen friend. “Nadia,” he pleaded, “can you hear me?”

  But then Holly took him by the face, her purple eyes boring into him.

  “Leave us be,” Holly said, and her voice was steel. “I have this. Go get that key.”

  She pulled mistletoe from her cloak and started to cast what Dan now recognized as a healing spell.

  “Right,” he said, and pushed Nadia’s injuries out of his mind. He had to trust Holly to handle that, while he focused on the key.

  He sprinted back to the tower, where Zeke stood studying one of the tombstones that had punched into the ground.

  The wizard turned to Dan with an incredulous smile and pointed at the tombstone. “I think I knew that guy.”

  “Can't you do something?” Dan shouted.

  Zeke scratched his beard, seeming to think it over. “I guess I could cast a levitation spell.”

  Dan couldn't believe it. “Levitation? Why didn't you–” but he cut himself off.

  This wasn’t the time to berate the crazy old wizard. Minutes were bleeding away, Nadia was seriously hurt, and this was their only chance at making the finals of Campus Quest. They had to get up there and get that key.

  “All right,” Dan said, changing the tone of his voice. “That’s great. Float on up there and get the key.”

  Zeke pointed at himself, looking badly startled. “Me? I can’t go up there.”

  “Why not?”

  Zeke nodded toward Zuggy. “This monkey is terrified of heights.”

  Dan glanced at the scoreboard and ground his teeth with frustration. Time was slipping away. If they didn’t beat the third-place team, they would lose.

  In that moment, old-world Dan spoke up.

  Maybe losing would be okay. If the semifinals are this dangerous, the finals will be much harder, teams will be able to attack other teams, too. Really, old-world Dan reasoned, it would probably be better to just bow out now.

  Fuck you, Dan told his former self.

  No more half-stepping. No more fretting. No more settling for mediocrity. This was his chance at gold, girls, and glory!

  “Levitate me, then,” he told Zeke. “Lift me up to that skull.”

  The wizard got busy. A pinch of this, a dash of that, a twiddle of the fingers, and a stream of mumbled gibberish. Then, explaining that vertical levitation was much simpler than horizontal, he had Dan stand twenty feet out from the wall, beyond the range of the ghouls’ projectiles but still in line with the skull’s face.

  Seconds later, Dan lifted off the ground.

  An inch, a foot, a yard, up and up he rose, higher and higher. It wasn't like flying. He just lifted weightlessly up and up toward the great, grinning skull high above.

  A spasm of primal fear shuddered through him. Not at the skull or the ghouls or even the thought of falling. What chilled his marrow was the realization that magic had him in its grasp.

  A twisted cackle sounded overhead. High above him, a ghoul leaned into view, hauling a tombstone onto the window’s ledge. With a squeal of delight, the ghoul launched the stone into the air.

  Dan was twenty feet out from the tower. He had thought that he would be safe. But the ghoul was leaning out of one of the highest windows and had thrown the stone hard. Now the gray slab was tumbling straight toward Dan.

  He couldn't change directions or jump to one side. As the stone hurtled toward him, Dan braced himself and swung his cursing two-handed sword as hard as he could.

  Clang!

  Steel met stone. The force of impact jolted out of the sword, through Dan's hands, and up his arms. But he had swung accurately and hit the stone hard enough to send it spinning away.

  “Is that the best you’ve got, you rotten assholes?” Wulfgar shouted.

  Ghouls filled the windows, sneering and jabbering and making obscene gestures toward Dan, who rose past them, up and up and out of their range.

  Wulfgar ranted, saying terrible things about their mothers.

  Dan glanced over his shoulder at the scoreboard.

  He had a little over eight minutes left.

  He had no idea what he would face inside, but the Noobs still had a shot.

  A dark cloud burst from an upper window and raced toward him in a rush of eager flapping and high-pitched squeaking.

  Bats!

  The gruesome flock attacked him like a swarm of giant mosquitoes.

  Dan screamed and swung his arms as the bats crashed into him, clinging to his clothes, scratching his flesh, and chomping down wherever they could sink their teeth.

  A plump bat thudded into his forearm, grabbed hold with sharp claws, and sunk its teeth into the meat of Dan’s arm just below the elbow.

  That's when Dan, roaring with pain and revulsion, realized that these were not bats.

  No, not bats.

  Rats.

  Winged rats.

  Huge, New-York-City-subway-sized rats with leathery bat wings, glowing red eyes, and curved incisors that flashed like miniature scimitars.

  Rats covered him, squeaking and biting and scratching, tearin
g his clothes and flesh. They were tangled in his hair and crawling inside his shirt. So many clung to his cloak that their weight pulled the cloak against his throat, choking him.

  Dan squeezed his eyes shut and screamed.

  Leathery wings flapped against his face. Sharp claws ripped at his flesh. Screeching, scrabbling, slashing rats covered every inch of him. Scimitar teeth sunk into his arms, his nose, the back of his neck.

  Holding Wulfgar in one hand, Dan bellowed with rage and plucked rats as quickly as he could. They were huge, as big as rabbits, but he was strong and wild with fear and revulsion and desperation, and he snapped their bones like twigs in his crushing grasp.

  Grab, crush, toss away.

  Grab, crush, toss away.

  Again and again.

  But every time that he peeled away one rat, two more replaced it, scrabbling and screeching and fighting for the space that Dan cleared.

  He would never crush them all. There were too many of them, and they were too vicious. They would tear him to ribbons before he could kill them all.

  Then, as suddenly as the rats had burst from the window, they were gone. With a collective squeak, they detached as one, darted away like a flock of sparrows, and plunged into a lower window and out of sight.

  Dan roared after them and swung Wulfgar back and forth, half-mad with pain and panic. His clothes were tattered. Every inch of exposed flesh was sliced and torn. His arms and face oozed blood from hundreds of stinging wounds that were likely teeming with infection.

  To Hades with infection!

  He couldn’t float here, fretting like an old woman. He just needed to make it to the end of the event. Campus Quest healers would be waiting, and they could fix pretty much anything this side of death.

  Dead was dead.

  So don’t die, asshole, he told himself, and realized that he was sounding more and more like his ill-tempered two-handed sword.

  Dan wiped blood from his eyes and noticed that his upward movement had stopped. He now hovered fifty feet above the ground, face-to-face with the gigantic skull.

  Perhaps that's why the rats had left. Perhaps, like monsters he had faced in T&T, the rats were magically contained to a specific portion of the challenge.

  The skull's eyes were indeed wide-open windows. No glass, no bars, no ghouls.

  All right, he thought. Here we go.

  He looked down at Zeke and motioned toward the skull.

  Dan started floating slowly forward. He held Wulfgar out before him. The sword raged, thirsty for blood.

  So far, with millions of zombies, ghouls, and flying rats, the Tower of Terror had definitely lived up to its name. What was waiting inside the skull?

  For as certain as he was that the key would be somewhere inside the skull, he was equally certain that its guardian wouldn't be some weak-ass monster like a skeleton. In T&T, Tower Masters didn't design challenges like that.

  On the flipside, however, the final guardian wouldn't be something impossible, like a vampire. After all, most of the Campus Quest competitors were fairly low level.

  As he neared the window, he glanced again at the scoreboard and he saw that he only had six minutes left.

  Time was running out fast.

  Then his boots touched down, and he was standing on the stone window ledge.

  He felt the levitation spell leave him.

  Dan was on his own.

  38

  Into the Giant Skull

  “Crom,” Dan breathed as he stood on the eye-socket window sill and surveyed the interior of the great skull.

  More sorcery.

  He saw no torches or candles or electric lights, and yet the interior of the skull was filled with light—that same eerie green illumination that had surrounded the tombstone of the evil necromancer, Ballok Shazar.

  How he loathed sorcery!

  At the center of the room, the key floated in midair. Seeing it, Dan chuckled grimly. Just as he had expected, the key was made of sparkling red gemstone, as if it had been crafted from an enchanted ruby in the mind of Willis.

  A strange fog covered the floor and ceiling. Otherwise, he saw only the sparkling key floating in the weird green light. Nothing else. No monsters, no resurrected necromancer, not even an obvious hiding place for some creepy final guardian.

  Was it possible that he had already earned the key?

  After all, he had found a way to the top of the tower, avoided an army of zombies, battled psychotic ghouls, and survived an onslaught of flying rats.

  Perhaps that was enough. Perhaps all that he had to do now was grab the key, secure his rope, and slide back down. He certainly hoped so. Because he didn’t have time now to do much more.

  But his barbarian’s sixth sense prickled, telling him that the situation couldn't be that simple.

  He narrowed his eyes at the misty floor and remembered the fog from the second challenge. Were more leprechauns waiting in this fog? In the Tower of Terror, they wouldn’t be normal leprechauns, of course; they would be frigging zombie leprechauns, moaning in brogue, with their flesh rotting green, not gray.

  He banished these thoughts. This mist was too low to conceal leprechauns, zombified or otherwise. It was only inches high, not feet high.

  Besides, he thought, you’re running out of time. Quit thinking and get moving!

  He jumped down, hit the floor running, and stumbled. The fog stuck at his boots then ripped away, slowing him. In three lurching strides, he reached the center of the skull.

  The crystalline key floated in the air, winking red.

  There was no time to worry about tricks or traps. He snatched the key from the air and shoved it into his pocket with a triumphant yawp.

  No electric shock fried his hand. No trap door opened beneath his feet. No poisoned arrow plunged into his chest. At last, he'd gotten a lucky break!

  Now he had around five minutes to tie off the rope, slide down with the key, and unlock the tombstone.

  Piece of cake!

  But as he turned to leave, he almost toppled to the floor. The fog had enveloped his boots, rooting him in place. Looking down, he was instantly covered in goosebumps.

  That wasn't fog locking him in place.

  It was spiderwebs.

  Which meant that the smoky substance overhead was actually spiderwebs, too.

  Giant spiderwebs.

  And giant spiderwebs meant…

  The webs overhead vibrated. And with a soft rustling, a giant spider crept into view.

  The monster waddled with unnerving silence, the size of an unshorn sheep, its furry body borne upon eight chitinous legs, the needle tips of which tiptoed along the smoky strands with an uncanny delicacy.

  It moved closer in short bursts. Move, stop. Move, stop.

  A profusion of small, black eyes gleamed like so many blood blisters upon the spider’s blunt head, staring hungrily at Dan from above a set of impossibly huge fangs dripping a fluorescent yellow ooze.

  Poison!

  Straining frantically, Dan yanked a foot free–thank you, 18/92 strength!–but then Wulfgar was yelling, “Come and get it, you eight-legged son-of-a-whore!” and Dan saw that the spider was trundling straight at him.

  No more herky-jerky stop-and-go creeping. The giant spider was coming for him now!

  “I really don't have time for you now!” Dan yelled. As the spider pounced, he swung Wulfgar in a short and calculated chop. The massive arachnid retreated. A few of its bony legs dropped to the carpet of spiderwebs.

  Dan grunted, pulled his foot free again, and stepped closer to the window.

  The spider rushed forward, snapping at him with its oozing fangs.

  Dan leaned away from the attack and drove Wulfgar forward. Bellowing curses, the sword plunged into the monstrous spider, skewering the fuzzy carapace and punching out the other side with a crunch.

  The spider screeched horrifically as its exoskeleton split wide and burst like a piñata, raining down not candy but a dark and stinking jelly of gelatinous
spider guts.

  The spider uttered a dying squeal, waggled its remaining legs, and went still.

  Dan swung his sword, dislodging the corpse and tossing it aside.

  All right, he thought. Now pull free of these webs, rappel to the ground, and unlock that tombstone.

  He yanked his leg as hard as he could, ripping free of the clutching webs. Then he swung his hips, turned toward the window, and roared with surprise.

  He hadn’t heard the second spider, which now dangled inches away from him. Before Dan could even react, the spider’s head whipped forward and chomped down on his arm.

  Dan screamed as gigantic fangs plunged into the meat of his forearm. Instantly, he could feel poison burning inside his flesh, spreading away from the pain of the wound as the spider shook its blunt head back and forth like a pit bull.

  Wulfgar slipped from his grasp and fell, cursing, to the floor.

  Dan grabbed the spider with his free hand and wrenched it from his arm, screaming again as the fangs tore free.

  The huge spider went wild, chittering and snapping its fangs, which now dripped with both venom and blood. Its rash of blood-blister eyes glared at Dan with savage malice.

  Dan tightened his grip, bellowed wordless rage, and thrust his arm forward as hard as he could, smashing the spider into the wall beside the window.

  The spider shrieked and hissed, digging its pointed legs into Dan’s arms like so many needles.

  Dan ignored the pain and piston-punched the spider into the wall again and again, bam, bam, bam!

  Then something cracked, and the spider shifted across its middle, losing shape as it came apart in Dan’s hand, breaking into a furry mess of cracked exoskeleton and stinking jelly. Its legs pulled free of Dan’s flesh and retracted into its ruined and lifeless body.

  Cursing like Wulfgar, Dan tossed the dead monster aside and ripped his sword from the cobwebs.

  Poison burned like fire in his veins.

  His muscles twitched and jerked. His heart pounded alarmingly in his chest. War drums of pain drummed in his skull.