by Simon Archer
The only upside I could see from this distance was that, with how some of the glowing crystals were arranged, there had to be more clefts and trails in the steep mountainsides than the pure white color revealed. We could hopefully find a way to navigate them without the modern climbing equipment that was gone in the void between worlds.
“I didn’t think they would be so… large,” Petra gasped. “From my woods, they look so tiny.”
“They are pretty huge,” I admitted before flashing her a grin, “but don’t worry. Reggie and I have climbed taller. You’re in good hands here.”
Her beaming smile made my morning. “I know I am, William. I trust you will keep me safe, no matter where we go, just as I will do the same for you.” As if to emphasize her point, her karush let out a loud bark and snort as it shook its head. She patted its long neck and giggled. “I suppose I did say that well, didn’t I?”
“You sure did.” I gathered my karush’s reins and guided the riding beast towards what I gathered from Wodag’s description was the main canyon the Wyrmtooth tribe dwelt in. Between the two largest peaks, he had told me, and if there were any larger mountains in this range, I was a Russian nursemaid.
We made good time that day, aided by my good head for navigation, Wodag’s detailed information, Petra’s skillful use of dryad magic to smooth out the few natural obstacles we hit, and the unending endurance of the karushes. To maximize our time, we ate, drank, and napped on their backs, and by late afternoon, we were deep into the gradually growing hills, the mountains now looming over us like blades about to fall upon our heads.
“In the times before I was bound, this was called the Whitesword Range,” Libritas hummed in my ear. “I know that isn’t very imaginative, but the ancients were, well, rather straight-forward in their thinking.”
And that was the moment we saw it. Well, to be fair, we heard it first: a thunderous roar that rebounded off the mountains, rolled across the foothills, and washed over us. It was half Godzilla and half pissed-off lion with a liberal dose of Mach-1 jet engine mixed in for good measure, and it was followed mere moments later by the source of the sound.
Now, I couldn’t be sure how big the great draconic thing was that clawed up out of a valley to the west of our destination. We were simply too far away to be sure I was judging it right… but it was big. Like, rampage through Tokyo big. I was strangely happy that Wodag’s idea of a wingless dragon was quite close to my own, another cause for me to think that much of Earth’s folklore came from Etria. The thing that struck me the most about the terrible lizard was its dull white scales that matched the stone of the mountain and its saber-like talons. As near as I could tell from here, they looked like they were literally made from steel, and by the way they cleaved into the stone to support the beast’s climb towards the summit of the peak, they were probably hard and sharper than any metal blade.
“And that,” Libritas sent in my mind, the ancient artifact’s voice tinged with no small awe herself, “is a rock wyrm… albeit one many centuries old. They never stop growing as long as they can feast on enough flesh and Solas to sustain themselves, and this one… well, it has certainly managed that for a long time.”
Petra turned to me, her eyes wide with justifiable fear, and I simply reached out to her. As she leaned towards me to wind her vines around my outstretched hand, I took a centering breath and found my courage.
“Right, ladies,” I said aloud as I laid my free hand on Lib’s hilt, “this isn’t the end of the world.” As I spoke, the giant wyrm chomped up a bite of stone and crystal as easily as you’d spoon up a bit of ice cream. “It’s not like we need to kill a wyrm or even tame one. We just need wyrm-fire.” I grinned despite my own healthy amount of worry about the kaiju snacking down on a mountaintop. “And as that’s wyrm poop, all we have to do is find the aftermath of their meals. Most animals don’t shit where they eat or sleep, so all we have to do is to be smart and observant, right?”
“Yes!” Petra latched onto that idea for dear life, and her vines started to relax as she did. “And if we do manage to make peace with the orc tribes, they already have harnessed the secrets of wyrm-fire. They could help us accomplish our mission easily.”
“Indeed,” Libritas chimed in. “I only wish I had my full strength. If I did, even that wyrm would be nothing for us to fear.”
“Don’t worry,” I said aloud so that both of them would hear me. “We’ve got this.”
Almost as if the wyrm heard us and had its own opinion on the subject, it let out another tremendous roar, acidic spittle splattering over the rocks as it began to climb its way down.
“Well, fuck you too,” I called back whether the big bastard could hear me or not. “I don’t care how big you are or how loud you roar, we’ll get the job done!”
It was honestly a tiny bit childish… but it not only felt good to do it, but it also brought a smile and a laugh to Petra, and that was worth it.
15
We didn’t get another glimpse of the big daddy… or mommy, who was I to judge?... rock wyrm as we weaved through the hills into the Whitesword Range proper. However, as our karushes steadily plodded their way into the first deeply cut valley, the wyrms’ presence both big and small was plain everywhere in the steeply sloped valley. Be it the scars of acid burns in the stone and the scrubby brush that dared grow here, shattered stubs of bitten-off Sola scattered among the intact crystals or cut gouges of all sizes of talon from kitten to kaiju.
The wyrms weren’t the only things we saw evidence of. As Petra and I moved deeper into the canyon, I caught glimpses of where our orc tribes might have been. A discarded shard of broken pottery here, a well-covered but still faintly visible old campfire there, the signs of the Wyrmtooth tribe was plain if you knew what to look for. None of the covered fires were warm in the least, but it still left a sort of trail to follow as the main valley began to split off into clefts cut into the white mountains and trails that led up the peaks.
Honestly, though all we had was a trail of sorts to follow and nothing else, I always felt like something or someone was watching us every step of the way. Still, we pushed on, but by the time afternoon rolled around, another, more immediate, problem was becoming rapidly clear as I reined my karush in before a split in the valley.
“I hate to say it, but our friends here,” I patted my karush on its long neck, “are just too big to take us much further.” Petra frowned thoughtfully as I pointed to the three clear paths ahead: two rapidly narrowing branches of the main canyon and a rough trail just wide enough to allow a person to walk up it. “While we might be able to go back and try a wider section of the canyon, I’ve got a feeling we won’t find the orcs along any major pass.”
“You are most likely right, William,” the dryad said as she scanned the cliffs rising around us. “These are well-trained riding beasts, so we could direct them back to Kaulda. They would most likely arrive safely… but then our return trip will take twice as long at least.”
I nodded in agreement as I tried to suss out a solution. It only took a few moments before I had the beginnings of an idea.
“Petra,” I began as I turned to face her, “do you think you could grow a protective little grove of sorts for these guys?” I thumbed back behind us. “There was a secluded little gap in the canyon just a few minutes back that might work for the space we need.”
The dryad’s eyes lit up at the idea. “I am certain I could, at least something that would keep these poor dears secure for a day or two.” She leaned forward, vines reaching up the beast’s swooping neck to scratch behind its ears, much to the karush’s delight. “As they are grazing beasts, I could flood the clearing with grasses, then block it off with bronzewood trees. It wouldn’t stop, say, a rock wyrm, but from anything less, they would be fed and protected.”
“Sounds good,” I agreed, “and with a little help, I can shape a water trough for them. We’ll just have to cross our fingers that we can catch up to the orcs or some rock wyrm spoor quic
kly.”
There wasn’t much else to say on it. I had to trust in a bit of luck now, but when didn’t you have to pray for a little luck in dangerous situations? Every adventure is a gamble of sorts, after all.
With our plan set, it only took us an hour or so to get the karushes to the little gap canyon I had noticed before, one of the previous orc campsites, as a matter of fact. That simply made me even more certain of the relative safety of our mounts as Petra made the scrubby grass flourish and shaped a tangled gate of bronzewood trees and thorny vines to keep the karush safe. We even had a bit of that faith in luck validated when I discovered a small spring trickling up along the far wall of the valley. With a little work, we dug it out to form a natural place for the karush to water.
After sorting out the bare minimum supplies we’d need, we took a good, long drink of the clean spring water ourselves. A quick goodbye to our faithful mounts later, we got back on our way. To be honest, it felt good to be hiking under my own power again. By the time my legs were fully stretched out, and we had hit a good rhythm to the hike, not long at all, really, the same three pathways came into view.
I was about to turn to Petra to get her thoughts on which trail to investigate first when an echoing bellow, the screeching roar of a rock wyrm, vibrated down the narrow split to our right. The dryad tensed as my right hand dropped to Libritas’s hilt, but before we could even take a step, the wyrm’s roar was followed by a weaker, far more fear-filled cry.
It wasn’t another wyrm. It was a man or, more specifically because of the nasal snort that came along with it, an orc. Whoever it was, they were in mortal terror.
The smart thing would have been to take the other split or start heading up the trail, away from where some poor bastard was distracting the most lethal creature I had ever seen. But doing the smart thing would have been turning away from someone in danger, and you know what? That sort of thing just didn’t sit well with me, so instead of rushing to safety, I broke into a sprint down the narrow canyon that was the source of the roars and cries.
I wasn’t surprised in the least that Petra was right on my heels as a carpet of green plants sprouted ahead of us, pushing through the rough terrain ahead of us. Instead of the loose rock and broken surface slowing us down, I found that each step landed on even, almost spongy grass that sped us on our way.
That was good too because the orc’s cries of terror and struggle continued to sound off in a terrible chorus to the occasional piercing roars of a big rock wyrm. How big, I didn’t know, but I could only hope it wasn’t the Big One. The chasm we raced down narrowed gradually until it was just wide enough to let me keep running, and as we cut around a sharp cut in the valley, I caught sight of a tremendous flash of light and fire ahead, followed by the wyrm’s painful shriek.
I didn’t assume that was the end to whatever was going on, so I kept sprinting, and as the narrow chasm opened back up again, I got confirmation that the danger was far from over yet.
The big clue was the huge, clearly pissed-off wyrm rearing up in the center of the large box canyon that lay before us. While it wasn’t quite as big as the first one we had seen, this thing was no baby, measuring probably twenty feet long if not longer. To make matters just a little more concerning, half of its head was on fire, something that seemed to piss it off even as it charred the chalk-white scales into a gnarly black. One eye was burned shut, but that was still one golden reptilian eye focused entirely on the pig-man that was on one knee in the drake’s shadow.
As for the potential victim, it was plain to me that he was one of the local tribesmen. Unlike either Uruk’s thugs or the people of Kaulda, the orc was dressed in tanned leathers dyed white and red, though I wasn’t sure how much of that red was his own blood, as he was clearly a deep tear in his dragging left leg. Half of a tattered cloak, covered in scrub brush and dirt to serve as a primitive ghillie suit, hung off his shoulder as he desperately dug for something.
Past the battle in mid-moment in front of us, the battlefield itself was desolate, scoured clear no doubt by the drake itself. The only thing of note at all was a wide cave mouth that disappeared into the mountain beyond, but to get to that would require getting past one extremely angry wingless dragon.
“Petra, protect him,” I called out as I ran forward. “I’ll get its attention so we can get him out of here!”
My reasoning was sound as I drew Libritas from her sheath: I had two good legs and the element of surprise, and that meant I had a million times better of a chance of surviving the wyrm’s fury than a limping orc. As the Brand of Freedom’s runic tip blazed to life, its pure light seemed to catch the rock wyrm’s eye, and it turned its fanged maw away from the orc.
The tribesman blinked in awe at that, and then again as a small copse of trees burst up around him. Instead of bronzewood, Petra conjured up something I hadn’t seen before, each tree seemingly sticky with some kind of greenish sap, from trunk to leaves, but I completely trusted her choice.
Not that I had time to question it if I wanted to. I managed to get within a dozen paces of the wyrm before its momentary fascination with Libritas’s light turned to renewed fury. It let out a roar, bits of acidic spittle hissing and sizzling as it splattered against my clothes, hair, and the surrounding ground, before lunging at the thing it found offensive. The acid stung like a bitch, and I certainly knew I didn’t want to get hit with a purposeful spit of that stuff… just like I didn’t want to be bitten in half by those rows of gleaming metal fangs.
I threw myself in a dive, angling myself towards the side of the wyrm’s head that was still on fire as the jaws snapped shut mere inches above my back. As I hit the ground, I turned the dive into a roll which took me past the wyrm’s slavering jaws, into its blind side and back up to a crouch.
“The orc is clear!” Petra shouted, but I didn’t risk looking to see her exact situation or even to breathe a sigh of relief. My momentary advantage was already slipping away as the rock wyrm’s sinuous neck twisted around to seek me out, its body moving with leonine grace as it did so.
“Any idea where a rock wyrm’s weak spots are, Lib?” I sent as I broke into another run, a curving movement to try to keep me within its blind spot. While this was a big canyon, it was still small in terms of giant wyrms, so the best it could to track me was to spin like a dog chasing its tail. Of course, I was the tail, and if it caught me…
“Ideally, the eyes,” Lib sent back, her entire forming pulsing with each syllable, “but it will guard its last uninjured eye. The mouth and throat are a no-go, both reinforced and toughened by the acid it sprays.”
Speaking of that acid, the wyrm did just that, simply letting out the biggest, wettest, longest loogie in all of creation as it craned its head around to track me. The long stream of the gooey, viscous acid splattered all over the damn place, filling the air with steam and gas as it ate away stone, dirt, and scrub. The wyrm was spinning so fast now that the acid was hot on my heels, and that’s when I saw that I had come around nearly a full rotation and the protective little grove that Petra made for the orc came into view.
I went for it. Petra raised that shield for a reason, after all. I flung myself forward into a baseball slide, digging up a furrow as I slid behind the sap-covered trees. The corrosive spittle splattered all over the trees, and somehow, none of it penetrated through the woven, sticky branches. Furthermore, as I suspected, the trees didn’t get dissolved into so much goop. They held strong, but there was a rather nauseating smell, sulfur maybe, rising off them.
“More options, Lib, and fast,” I sent back as I caught my breath. The ground to all sides was still a bit too acid-covered for me to want to risk another run, and judging by the pained, frustrating roar that I heard through the trees, the wyrm was about ready to barrel through the trees to get at little old me.
As I expected, Libritas pulled through for me. “The lower quarter, William! Even the belly of the wyrm is thickly scaled, but the underside junction between the hind legs. The scales a
re soft, and there is, well, a natural, soft access point there…”
“You’re suggesting I essentially kick this thing in the dick?”
“Well, yes.” Libritas coughed. “That is one very specific way to put it.”
“That works for me,” I sent back before raising my voice. “Petra! I need a distraction!” With Lib clutched tightly and my free hand reaching into my pack for a coil of rope, I broke up out of my crouch and rushed for the far canyon wall, the only clear, non-acidy path I had.
Stupid to leave my back open? Only if you don’t have a kick-ass dryad on your side. As I broke cover, I caught a glance at the entrance of the canyon where Petra had raised another small barrier of the sappy trees, and Petra surged through that, the wood and sap wrapping around her brown skin to form anti-corrosive armor.
“You will not harm a hair on his head, wyrm!” she roared, her voice echoing with the fury of Mother Nature as she thrust her hands forward. Her vines exploded in size as they spiraled out from her, palm-sized thorns sprouting from them in the blink of an eye. Like colossal fanged whips, the vines lashed out at the wyrm, more than catching its attention as the thorns scoured deep enough into the beast’s scales to draw blood in a few places.
The rock wyrm, half-blinded and now scourged in the flank, spun once more, letting out a blast of acid that washed off Petra’s sap-covered armor. That still had to hurt, but she held strong, giving me just enough time to do what I needed to… which was tie an end of my rope around Lib’s handle. And the moment the wyrm spun on my dryad, I turned on a dime and raced back for the beast, now with its other flank to me as it advanced on Petra.
It roared, and she was roared right back, still flailing at the beast as I made it the last few yards to cross under the wyrm’s belly.
“Okay, Lib, light it up!” I growled as I slid my grip down a foot or so of the rope. “Go as hot as you can, everything but the handle!”
