by Ari Marmell
Now that gaze swung side to side, as though Katim was determined to memorize every detail of the building. “This is the only place where…the worms have reemerged,” she pointed out, speaking up over the roasting doppelganger. “Or at least the only…place we've seen them.”
“True,” Cræosh agreed. “All right, then. Shorty, which wall did you say they came from?”
Gork pointed.
“Okay. Belrotha?”
“What?”
“The worms on the other side of that wall insulted your momma. Let's get them!”
The ogre looked askance at the orc. “Us talk about this before, Cræosh. Worms not insult mother. Worms never meet mother! And you not supposed to talk about her, either.”
Cræosh sighed. “Just get rid of the wall.”
Belrotha sighed at Gimmol. “All him had to do was ask,” she complained. “Him a very slow learner.” Then, one hand firmly on the ceiling, she twisted so no shrapnel would strike the gremlin on her shoulder and slapped her other palm against the stone. The wall didn't so much crumble as simply cease to exist in any meaningful capacity.
“I thought this building looked official,” Gork muttered as the dust settled and the last echoes faded away into the chasm's eternal night.
“What are you talking about?” Cræosh asked. “It's a fucking stairway. How can you tell what kind of building this was by looking at the fucking stairway?”
“This was the headquarters of the watch, Cræosh, or something similar.”
“How do you know that?” the orc demanded.
Gork waved negligently at the steps. “Because those steps lead to a dungeon, you festering sore! No one builds stairs that steep or that narrow unless they lead to a dungeon. Trust me, I've seen enough of them.”
“I’m not convinced. But let's find out.”
“Um, Cræosh?” This from behind, as he set a foot upon the topmost step.
“It'll be tight, Belrotha, but I’m sure you can fit.”
“Me not asking about stairs. Me asking about roof.”
“Oh. Hmm.”
Still, after some nerve-racking experimentation, they determined that the ceiling would remain standing without its load-bearing ogre. At least, it would for a time; the ugly creaking promised them they'd have to hurry, or be prepared to find another way out.
So they hurried. Cræosh remained unconvinced by Gork's logic until they reached the bottom of the stairs and found a solid wooden door, lying half off its hinges. It wore rusted brackets that would have held a dauntingly weighty bar.
“Okay,” the orc finally agreed. “It's a dungeon.”
“Told you,” Gork said smugly.
Cræosh growled something unintelligible.
“Well I did tell you. You all heard me tell him, didn't you?”
“Why don't you scout ahead, Gork?” Cræosh asked, his fist closing tightly on the kobold's collar.
“What? I’m not going in theaaaaagggghhhhh!”
The kobold quickly sailed beyond the range of their torchlight. A resounding thump echoed back to them a moment later, followed by a brief whimper.
“I see why you enjoy doing that so much,” Cræosh said to Katim.
“It's cathartic,” she acknowledged.
“Anything to report so far?” the orc called cheerfully.
A low mutter came drifting through the darkness.
“What'd he say?”
The troll chuckled. “I believe he said…‘Just a very hard wall.’”
Cræosh laughed. “All right. Let's go scrape him up and keep moving.”
As the squad ducked through the doorway, Gimmol leaned across his perch so he could whisper into the ogre's ear. “They're acting like nothing happened! Doesn't anyone care that Fezeill's dead?”
The ogre shrugged, once more coming near to dislodging the precariously balanced gremlin. “No one like Fezeill, so no one care that him dead.” She smiled. “You not worry, though. Me like you. If you die, me care.”
“Swell.”
It was less than cheery, even as dungeons go. The entryway was dominated by all sorts of encouraging images carved in the stone: here, a masked headsman, axe raised high; there, a woman, also hooded, standing atop a gallows, noose dangling from her clenched fist. The cell doors were black, fastened by both a small bar and a sizable iron padlock half eaten by rust. They lacked even the tiny barred window common to so many prisons, denying the prisoners the least exposure to a world beyond their four tiny walls.
“What a nasty place,” Gork observed to no one in particular. Appropriately enough, then, no one replied.
By the time they'd reached the end of the long hall, Cræosh had rather irritably made two observations. One was that the doors on about half the cells—perhaps five on each side of the corridor—were open, revealing the skeletons of long-dead inhabitants who had not survived Krohketh's fall. Two, and it was this that inspired the sudden darkening of his mood, was that there appeared to be no exit from this dingy hallway other than the way they'd come. Not even so much as a fist-sized hole in the wall.
So where had the bloody worms come from?
As if she'd read his mind, the troll appeared at his side. “We seem to be missing…something rather important.”
“Gee, you think so? Whatever might make you think that?”
“If we had an hour or…two to spare, I'd explain it to…you.”
“Obviously,” Gimmol said from atop Belrotha's shoulder, “what we're looking for isn't in the hallway. So we're going to have to check the cells.”
“Makes sense,” Cræosh agreed, just as happy to avoid the upcoming argument. “We'll check the open ones first. I doubt the worms have been closing the doors behind them.”
“Cræosh?” the crouching ogre asked, staring back over her shoulder. “Am dead humans the same as dead ogres?”
“Belrotha, what the holy bubbling fuck are you talking about?”
“Dead ogres stay dead.”
“That ain't exactly unusual, Belrotha. Most dead things stay…” It finally dawned on Cræosh exactly what the ogre was implying. For just an instant, he squeezed his eyes shut and allowed himself a brief whimper.
Sure enough, several of the skeletons had risen to their feet and dragged themselves out into the hallway. They shambled, their movements slow and abrupt, tendons flexing as they…
Tendons?
Cræosh looked closer. Those weren't tendons!
“Ancestors…”
Some of the longest worms he'd ever seen had wrapped themselves about the bones, intertwining themselves through the various joints. They flexed, they stretched, and the long-dead bodies walked once more.
“Now that,” Gork commented, kah-rahahk held out before him, “is truly disturbing.”
“Innovative, though,” Katim added.
The skeletons drew closer, bony feet scratching the stone floor with each step. They wavered like drunken sailors, threatening to topple to one side or the other, but they never did. Fleshless hands reached out, fingers prepared to rend whatever stood in their path.
Disturbing and innovative they may have been; they were not, however, particularly effective. Cræosh allowed the first of the shambling skeletons to draw near, and then he attacked. Bone and, more importantly, worms split beneath his heavy blade. Both arms fell limp, and indeed the left forearm fell with a clatter to bounce its way across the floor.
Katim and Gork returned the orc's evil grin, Jhurpess pounded his massive club against the floor, and Belrotha just grabbed the crippled skeleton and pulverized it against the ceiling. She held onto a single femur, wielding it as a club.
In a matter of instants, the skeletons were nothing but a carpeting of powder and the occasional chunks of bone, glued together by a thin paste that had once been several dozen long worms.
“That was fun,” Cræosh said, kicking at the refuse.
“Easy,” Belrotha grunted in agreement.
“Well, that was mostly because I disar
med him for you,” the orc told her—and then began hopping and cursing as Katim stamped on his foot.
“Why?” Gimmol asked, frowning down at the bones.
When it became clear that Cræosh was too busy to answer, Katim shrugged. “Experimentation? To see what…techniques other than swarms might…function? Perhaps, after the bombardment…there weren't enough for more than…this? Or perhaps, this is…all they needed.”
“Worm-bones not do good job at stopping us,” Belrotha protested.
“No,” Cræosh said, finally ceasing his frantic hop. “But I bet they know we're coming now. Get the hell back to searching.”
In the second-to-last cell on the left—which contained one of the dungeon's skeletons that had not been puppeteered by Sabryen's worms—Gork discovered a segment of wall distinct from the rest. The mortar around those bricks had been chiseled out and several pitons driven into one side as crude hinges, transforming the entire affair into a heavy, primitive door.
“Who builds a back door in a prison cell?” Gimmol asked from out in the hall.
Gork shook his head. “Nobody. This is new. Well, newer than the rest of this place, anyway. This place wasn't a dungeon anymore, just part of the ruins.”
“Oh.” A long pause. “Why would worms need doors? They should get by just fine with holes in the walls.”
“Because some of the worms are wearing human skeletons, remember?”
Again, “Oh.” And then finally, “So what's behind it?”
The kobold stepped back. “Any two of those bricks weigh more than I do,” he announced. “Cræosh?”
“Yeah, right. And this has nothing to do with you being worried the entire thing could collapse on your head?”
“I never said that.…”
The orc heaved. Ponderously, groaning like a constipated whale, the portal swung open. Beyond was a wide, shallow staircase leading even farther down. The steps, made of the same dark stone in evidence everywhere else, were completely free of dust.
“Worms,” Gork announced after a quick examination. “If it had been humanoids using the stairs, there would still be some dust where the wall and floor come together. But even that's swept clean.”
Jhurpess spread his arms, measuring the width of the stairs. “Take a lot of worms,” he noted.
“What a coincidence, Nature-boy,” Cræosh snorted. “There are a lot of worms.”
“True,” the bugbear conceded.
And unfortunately, as the squad discovered soon enough, a substantial number of them were lurking up ahead.
The staircase terminated in a long hall: a straight expanse, relatively featureless save for the sconces at regular intervals along the walls. The torches within, for no reason the goblins could fathom, were lit. The gentle glow revealed a thick layer of worms, millipedes, and maggots coating the floor in a restless rug.
A rug that had to be half a foot deep, if not more, since the squirming vermin were about even with the top of the bottommost step.
“Well, fuck me backward,” Cræosh said. Then, turning to the troll, “You're the athletic one. Why don't you jump it?”
Save for the twitch of an ear, Katim didn't bother to acknowledge his existence.
“Gimmol?” he asked more seriously. “Anything you can do? Burn us a path, maybe?”
The gremlin swung down from his perch atop the ogre's shoulder, landing with a faint thump. “Not burn, no,” he said, peering out over the worms. “Not with so many of them; they'd just fill up the spaces. I think I can get us across, but it won't be easy—not for any of us. And I might not be much good to you for a while afterward.”
Cræosh shrugged. “If we can't get through, it doesn't much matter anyway. Whatever you've got to do, do it.”
The gremlin nodded. “Okay. Be ready to move quickly when I say so. The path's not going to last long. And, uh, watch your step.”
For a long moment, Gimmol chanted and muttered, lips rumpling around foreign syllables, fingers dancing like a flight of hungry mosquitoes. Then, wincing only slightly, he stepped off the stairway and into the hall.
Ice crystallized from the air around his feet at every pace, spreading not only out but down. Insects and invertebrates froze, encased in the spreading ice. The bulk of the creatures, fortunate enough to escape being entombed, instead flopped helplessly against the slick and frigid surface, lacking sufficient purchase to climb up and ravage the gremlin's feet.
His brow already damp with sweat, Gimmol moved toward the hall's far end. “The invocation was intended for creating bridges across slow-moving water,” he muttered in response to his companions’ unasked question. “Since there's no water to freeze here, the ice is fragile. Don't start until I say so, and when you do, for the gods’ sakes, be careful.”
“The cold didn't bother the worms when we were in the tundra,” Gork said, a note of complaint actually evident in his voice.
Cræosh shrugged. “They weren't frozen inside it or trying to climb it, were they?”
Gimmol disappeared from sight, moving beyond the envelope of torchlight. He left a path of ice behind him, but even as the others watched, the first few inches were starting to bead with moisture.
“Why didn't we just walk behind him as he went?” Cræosh wondered.
“Why not ask him when you…get there?” Katim said.
“I'll just do that.”
More minutes passed. Tiny rivulets trickled from the flimsy walkway, pooling in the corners of the hall. And finally, just as Cræosh was about to suggest they'd waited long enough, Gimmol's voice floated back from the corridor's far end. “Okay, guys. One—only one—at a time! Go!”
Katim was moving before the echo faded, skating as much as running across the ice, gliding across the churning sea of worms. Cræosh followed with rather less grace; three times he nearly lost his balance, and only frantic pinwheeling of his arms and wrenching strain in his back saved him from toppling over. Gork just put his head down and ran, and Jhurpess…Well, Jhurpess managed. Loudly.
It was, in fact, just as the flailing bugbear skidded to a halt beside the assembled group—who were themselves standing beside yet another dull, unmarked wooden door—that Gimmol's eyes went wide. He actually reached up and grabbed the startled orc by the breastplate.
“What…?”
”Why didn't you let Belrotha go first?!” the gremlin screeched.
“I figured she might shatter the…” And then Cræosh's own jaw dropped, as he realized what must soon be barreling his way. “Gork! Get that fucking door open! Now!”
The distant torchlight darkened, obscured by a fast-moving shadow. Grunts and exclamations erupted from the passageway, and it finally dawned on the rest of the squad that ogre plus ice added up to a whole lot of momentum.
Jhurpess, in the midst of his unintelligible shrieking, decided that waiting for Gork to do something with the lock was clearly going to take too long. His massive club flashed over the kobold's head—close enough to rustle the hair Gork didn't have—and split the wood straight down the middle. There was plenty of room beyond for the entire squad, except that Cræosh, Jhurpess, and Gork had all dived for the opening at once and succeeded in firmly wedging themselves into the doorframe.
Katim leapt, digging her talons painfully into the crevices in the stone, clinging to the ceiling above; a vicious, malformed arachnid. Gimmol just cowered into a little ball as far from the center of the path as he could get without rolling off into the vermin beyond.
By the time Belrotha reached them, she'd ceased running at all, having already built up what even she recognized as an excessive amount of speed. The ogre held herself completely stiff, legs locked in a crouch, arms extended for balance, and still she slid rapidly across the ice, slowly rotating as she came. A look of bemusement plastered across her face, she glided beneath the quivering troll, past the cowering gremlin, and plowed full tilt into the flesh-packed doorway.
The sounds of impact finally faded, the dust and the splinters and th
e frost settled into a thin haze, and Katim allowed herself to drop to her feet, shaking her aching fingers as though to slough off the pain. She felt the ice crack beneath her soles and shivered as a spray of cold water splashed over the tops of her boots. Gimmol's spell was quite clearly giving out. She nonchalantly reached out, lifted the gremlin-ball, stepped through the now-vacant doorway, and promptly dropped him again.
Some yards ahead of her was a haphazard collection of limbs that Katim assumed accounted for the rest of the squad. Even as she watched, Belrotha rose and shook herself, sending more splinters—and also Jhurpess—into the air. Cræosh dragged himself rather more slowly to his feet: staggering, blinking owlishly, and leaning vaguely to his left.
And Gork—Gork lay, facedown and unmoving, on the hard stone floor.
Well, there was no blood, at least. Carefully, Katim knelt beside him. “Gork? Gork, you need to…get moving.”
“Go away,” the kobold muttered, his voice muffled by the rock into which his snout was pressed. “I’m dead.”
“You're not dead. Now…get up.”
“I’m dead,” he insisted firmly. “I got run over by a herd of rabid wildebeests, and now I’m dead.”
“You're not dead,” Katim said again.
“I—”
“But you're about…to be.”
“—suddenly feel a whole lot better,” Gork finished smoothly, rising to his feet. His arms were mottled with fresh bruises, and he favored his right ankle just a bit with his first few steps, but otherwise he appeared remarkably unscathed by his collision with the “wildebeests.”
Satisfied that the squad would be hindered by neither the kobold nor, after a few moments to regain his equilibrium, the orc, Katim examined the room around them.
“Room,” as it turned out, was something of a misnomer. Apparently natural, to judge by the veritable forest of stalactites and stalagmites, the cavern must have been over a hundred feet on a side. Fires—not torches, these, but small bonfires—burned at seemingly random intervals. Large slabs, apparently leftovers from the formation of the Demias Gap, lay scattered throughout those various protrusions, creating a stone hedgework not dissimilar to Queen Anne's maze of plants.
