by Nick Harrow
Delsinia blew me a kiss over her shoulder.
“I will be back for the rest later.” Her smile was strange and distant, like she already knew her fate.
There was no fanfare as Delsinia entered the Solamantic Web. No crash of cymbals when Nephket followed her. Certainly no dramatic overture as the rest of the raiders filed through the web and vanished from my dungeon.
“Big Gnome!” I shouted. I needed to distract myself and dealing with the gnomes was the easiest way to do it. “Come with me.”
I led them back into what had once been Delsinia’s dungeon to the side passage I’d opened there.
“This tunnel will lead you to meat.” I enunciated every word carefully and kept my eyes glued to Big Gnome’s eye pits to make sure she—or it—understood the plan. “But you have to wait to eat. When you hear three horns, that’s when I want you to sneak out there and start cutting up your food. Anyone who wasn’t in this room is yours to eat. Clear?”
“We hunt. We eat.” Big Gnome looked like she hadn’t hunted in a long time because those stunted legs and enormous gut wouldn’t have carried her very far or fast. “Kill many enemies of the great Rathokhetra.”
“Cool.” I hated to turn these little freaks loose, but I couldn’t afford to send any of my guardians with them. Zillah was out on a special mission and Kez was preparing her spells. Big Gnome would just have to handle this on her own. “Remember, wait for the signal.”
“Horns, yeah?” Big Gnome tapped her ear. “Hear real good. Gotcha right.”
And with that, twenty-three blood gnomes armed with flint knives and hatchets took off down the passageway toward their next meal. I really hoped they were patient enough to do what I’d asked.
I willed myself back to the Solamantic Web, where Pinchy and all her friends were still waiting. The big scorpions lowered their heads when I arrived and didn’t jump even a little. I’d always known the giant scorpions were braver than anyone I’d ever met.
“Keep an eye on this for me,” I said. “You see anyone, you holler. I’ll come running.”
Pinchy raised her mandibles to my hand and stroked my cheek with the back of her tail. She clicked her claws together to let me know she understood.
My next stop was City Hall. I didn’t check in on Kez because spooking a sorceress while she was getting ready to do some serious magic seemed like a suicidal idea. Instead, I parked myself on the throne and waited to hear from my familiar.
I also waited to see if Tyrsilene would actually show up like she’d promised. I’d gambled a big chunk of change on her, and if I was wrong, this battle would be a whole lot harder. Not for the first time I wished I’d demanded she leave the arrowhead with me. It seemed able to track her, and it would’ve been nice to know if she was anywhere nearby. For all I knew, she’d taken the money and split town.
If that was the case, she’d better hope I died today.
“We made it.” Nephket’s triumphant voice echoed through my head. “It’s creepy here, but there’s no one else around. Ready for the next hop?”
“Here I come.” Nephket’s body was almost as comfortable as my own. I slipped through her thoughts and into her flesh with instinctive ease, and she embraced me with a shiver of pleasure.
“Welcome home.”
The priestess had been right about how creepy this place was. We stood on a wide, circular platform surrounded by empty space and deep chasms. Other platforms rose out of the darkness, their surfaces festooned with thick cobwebs and empty carapaces. Shadowed figures moved through the gloom above us, and the only light came from the gleaming surface of the Solamantic Web and a distant sliver of an opening in the cavern’s ceiling.
Fortunately, we weren’t going to be here long. The Solamantic Web stood at the edge of the platform, its surface strewn with half-familiar lights and strands of silver. I examined it closely, then double-checked my position against the notes that Kezakazek had made for us. I used Neph’s body to find the sheet of paper marked as “army, rear” and focused intently on the pattern Kez had drawn until it was locked firmly in my mind.
Then I reached out to the Solamantic Web and searched for a match. The dark surface shivered and shuddered, rotated left, then right, zoomed in, then back out. Neph’s mind ached from trying to focus on it, but I held my concentration until, finally, the right pattern snapped into place. The center of the web pulsed, and a ripple of light emanated from its surface.
The things in the shadows overhead rustled, and one of them screamed.
“It’s open,” I said. “Everyone through.”
The raiders wasted no time plunging through the opening. They’d been adventurers long enough to know that if you heard a sound like that it was time to get the hell away before you met whatever created it. Weapons drawn and shields raised, the treasure hunters launched themselves into the space between worlds.
“Go!” Delsinia shouted. “I’m right behind you.”
It was obvious she didn’t mean that. Her chained daggers were in her hands, and her eyes scanned the shadows above us for threats. Something was coming; we could feel it in the air.
Before the soultaker could react, I threw Nephket’s arm around her neck and dragged her into the web. Delsinia struggled for a moment, then went limp as we tumbled through what felt like infinite darkness. There was no up, no down, and Nephket’s body felt unmoored from reality. None of her senses worked right, and it was difficult for me to interpret their input from my seat behind the wahket’s eyes. She smelled a bouquet of random colors and heard the scent of burning metal and raw honey. The second jump seemed like it took much longer than the first had, and by the time Neph emerged from the darkness, her head rang and her stomach wanted to turn itself inside out.
“Down,” Charlie hissed in Nephket’s ear. The half-orc’s hands closed around my familiar’s wrist and dragged her to the ground behind a scrubby stand of long grass. Delsinia landed next to Neph a moment later and hugged the ground like she was afraid she’d fly off into space if she so much as lifted her head off the dirt.
“They haven’t seen us yet,” Charlie whispered. “But they know something is up. They’ve got two guard patrols on the far side of the camp, moving in opposite directions. They’ll get around the whole camp in the next fifteen minutes.”
“Then let’s not be here in fifteen minutes,” I said through Nephket’s mouth. “Is your team ready?”
We were still a good way from sundown, but the golden light of afternoon had already given way to the deep red of the impending twilight. There was still light, but it wasn’t much, and the shifting shadows of this time of day would make it difficult for the enemy’s scouts to spot our people as they moved into position.
“We’re good.” Charlie held up a small clay flask wrapped in oil-soaked cord. “Are we doing this?”
“Go,” Delsinia said. “We will have the web ready for you in ten minutes.”
“Don’t let me down.” The half-orc returned to the raiders, and a moment later I saw them fan out across the rough terrain as they raced toward their targets.
The Solamantic Web was still open, a narrow black rectangle that was all but invisible under the red rays of the setting sun. Fortunately, none of the weird bug people that had spooked Del in the previous world had followed us home.
Yet.
I dug through the sheaf of papers Nephket kept in a satchel slung across her body.
“North side, hills.”
This pattern was more challenging than the first one. There were three circles connected by curves of silver ink that formed a complex pattern equidistant from each of the rings. Five minutes after I’d started looking, I still hadn’t found anything.
“I see flames.” Delsinia said the words as if informing me that the weather had turned a bit chilly.
A moment after she warned me, shouts and angry cries burst from the enemy army’s camp. The smell of burning wood filled the air, and my search for the pattern coordinates became more fren
zied. The web shifted and shuddered at my command, zipping and swirling in and out of focus as my mind tried to find something I could latch on to.
One minute passed.
Two minutes.
At three minutes, Charlie’s panicked voice cut through the din.
“Get it open!”
An arrow hissed through the air over Nephket’s head. If I couldn’t get the web open soon, we were fucked.
The patterns inside the web became a blur. The thousands of combinations were impossible for me to follow with my naked eye. The harder I concentrated on what I saw, the more elusive the coordinates became. With less than thirty seconds to go, I finally spied the right set of symbols.
I focused my thoughts on it, and the web snapped into place. The mystic portal’s outline shuddered, the complex network of stars and lights and arcs vanished. A new world appeared through the web.
I took one moment to look back at Charlie’s handiwork, and Nephket’s heart leapt into her throat.
The raiders had lobbed dozens of firebombs at their targets. Most of the improvised explosives, little more than flammable oil inside a clay vessel, had found marks on tents or wagons. Fires burned all along the camp’s southeast side, and soldiers and horses screamed as the inferno engulfed them.
But many more armed men were unscathed by the blaze, and they were scant yards behind the slowest of Charlie’s men. It would be a very close race to see who made it through the Solamantic Web before I had time to slam it closed.
Nephket took a deep breath and leapt into the web.
Chapter 22 – Feathers and Scales
THE RAIDERS WHOOPED ecstatically and roared Charlie’s name like she’d been the one who came up with this plan.
I swear, I never get credit for anything.
“Did you see them burn?” The half-orc reeked of smoke, and her breath held more whiskey fumes than air. “We certainly kicked the hornets’ nest with that little stunt. If that doesn’t get Lexios marching on the oasis in the next ten seconds, I’ll eat a dwarf’s shorts.”
“Shut up,” I shouted through Nephket’s mouth. I had to concentrate to close the gate.
“My men are still coming.” Charlie grabbed Nephket’s arm and tried to pull her away from the web when she realized what I was up to.
Delsinia stepped between the women with the grace of a striking scorpion, and her weapon was across Charlie’s throat in the blink of an eye.
“We don’t have time to wait for them,” I barked at Charlie and turned my attention back to the web. “If I don’t close this right now, the Kyth army will be so far up our asses we’ll never shit straight again.”
“Two seconds.” Charlie’s eyes were wide, and she pleaded with me not to leave her boys behind.
“One.” I ignored the half-orcs frustrated shout and counted away the seconds of the raiders’ lives. “Two”
I slammed the gate without a second thought. A scream tore through the air, and a severed arm tumbled past me and rolled across the spongy ground beneath our feet. For a moment, no one moved or spoke.
Charlie’s voice trembled as she counted her troops, and Nephket’s eyes watered with the horror of what we’d just done.
“Look at it,” I commanded my familiar. “Look at the arm.”
She didn’t want to, but Nephket obeyed my command. She stared at the carnage until the truth sank in. The limb was encased in golden armor. It belonged to a Kyth soldier, not a raider.
“We lost two.” Charlie’s voice was flat and dead. “I saw Gariss fall to an arrow. Who saw Vira?”
A halfling with more teeth than hair nodded to Charlie.
“Burned.”
There was a moment of silence, and then everyone breathed easier. We hadn’t left anyone behind. The casualties had been honest deaths, if not glorious ones.
“Thank you,” Nephket whispered into our shared mind. “I couldn’t have lived with myself if—”
The last part of Neph’s sentence was lost in a jumble of panicked thoughts from Zillah. The scorpion queen’s words poured into my mind in a frantic flood that made it impossible to understand what had happened.
“Slow down.” I struggled to keep the tone of my thoughts smooth and even. “What’s going on?”
Zillah shouldn’t have even been engaged in combat yet. I’d sent her to lead two units of our military around the west side of the oasis. They were supposed to hide in the woods along the ridgeline. If everything had gone according to plan, Zillah wouldn’t have even seen Lexios’s troops.
“We were attacked,” she said, her thoughts pitched low in a hoarse whisper. “You’re not going to believe this, boss.”
“Don’t leave me hanging,” I said. I felt Nephket’s urgency to move on to the next stage of our plan, but I couldn’t spare the mental bandwidth to communicate with her until I knew Zillah’s situation.
“Motherfucking dragons.” Her thoughts were filled with awe, and I caught a glimpse of blue scales and flashing lightning in her memories. “Three of them. They claim they answered your call and demand you answer their challenge.”
Shit. The call from the Exemplar of War couldn’t have brought me one fucking monster that didn’t want me to kick its ass?
“How bad is it?” I dreaded the answer, but I had to know.
“Ten confirmed kills. Twice that many wounded.” Zillah sounded exasperated and confused. “I can’t tell how many, exactly. They hit us from above, and most of the men scattered. Nobody’s trained to stand up to that kind of shit, boss. They did their best, but now we’re pinned down.”
“Keep your head down. I’ll be there in a moment.” I shifted my focus back to Nephket. “Zillah ran into a problem. I have to help her deal with it. I’ll open the web, then I need to leave. I want you and Del to stay here while Charlie does her thing on the other side. When the raiders return, reach out to me. I’ll come back and seal the portal.”
It was a terrible idea, but it was the best I could do on the spur of the moment. I shuffled through Kez’s notes, found what I needed, and focused on the gate. I don’t know if I was better at this or if the new pattern was simpler, but I found the coordinates almost as soon as I started to look for them. A new gateway opened next to me. Perfect.
Before Nephket could protest, I leapt out of her mind and into Zillah’s body.
Zillah was crouched down behind a tree near the top of the ridgeline, where she remained absolutely motionless and watched the horror below her.
“Holy fuck.” There were no other words to describe the chaos that unfolded in front of my eyes.
Three blue dragons swooped like deadly shadows over the abandoned farmland. Their wings billowed as they caught the wind and carried them over blackened bodies and blasted earth toward their prey.
The slowest of my soldiers struggled to reach the cover of the forested ridgeline. Their faces were stained with streaks of sweat and dirt, their eyes were wild and wide, and their mouths hung open as they gulped for air. There were twenty of them still down there, terrified young men who hadn’t signed up to fight dragons in the name of Lord Rathokhetra.
The largest of the dragons, its body twice the size of a full-grown steer with a tail three times that length, streaked over the heads of the fleeing soldiers. It spun with uncanny agility and hovered in midair between the troops and the trees. Its massive wings pumped, slow and steady, and spun up gritty dust devils that stung the faces of the cornered troops. The creature’s mouth hung open, its lower jaw seemed to unhinge as it opened wide, and then it unleashed hell.
A column of roiling electricity burst from the dragon’s mouth. The lightning twisted and writhed as the flying reptile raked it across my men in a brutal sweep.
Three soldiers died instantly, their eye sockets burned to black holes filled with blue sparks. Five more screamed and fell to the ground, and arcs of electric power surged away from their bodies to jolt other soldiers nearby. Those unfortunate bastards had their muscles seize up as the electricity sho
rt-circuited the signals from their brains, and they collapsed with smoke leaking from their nostrils and mouths.
The big dragon screamed in victory and rose back into the air to make space for the smaller ones. They were half the size of their larger brother but twice as vicious. They swooped and darted amongst the fallen, ripped open torsos with their claws, slashed the legs from under the fleeing troops with their tails, and battered those who were still upright with their outstretched wings.
“That’s about enough of this shit,” I growled. If these assholes thought my men were prey to stuff their bellies, they were about to get a hard lesson to the contrary.
“You can’t go down there, boss,” Zillah said. “They’re fucking dragons.”
“And I am a goddamned dungeon lord.”
I had no time to think about what came next. My people were dying down there, and those fucking dragons were the cause of their suffering.
Even worse, those dragons were there because I’d called them. They’d answered the Exemplar of War call, which made them my responsibility.
With a roar, I leapt out of Zillah’s body and incarnated. The wind from the dragon’s wings buffeted my hair and tugged at my headdress. The khopesh was heavy in my grasp, and my heart pounded in my chest like a war drum.
“Hey, assholes!” I shouted. “You looking for me?”
Before the dragons could wheel around to face me, I raised my hand and unleashed the Light of Condemnation. The spell blasted away from my hand like a comet and slammed into the largest dragon’s back, right between its enormous shoulders.
The beast convulsed with pain and plummeted from the sky. The brilliant silver light from my spell trailed behind the creature as it crashed to the ground, where it glowed like a fallen moon.
“Dungeon lord.” One of the smaller dragons landed a few yards away from me. Its powerful wings kicked up a cloud of dust and debris. “You have called, and we have answered. Are you strong enough to dominate us?”
“You better fucking believe it.” Eldritch Bolts jumped away from my upraised hand and smashed into the creature’s snout. Blue sparks crawled along the wyrm’s curled lips, and a cloud of steam spurted from its nostrils.
