The Great Hearts II: A Game of Gods

by David Oliver

  We continued on in silence, each concentrating for any possible threat; whether spider or otherwise.

  A trail of spider body parts led the way to the next cavern, their bodies ripped asunder. None of us had a clue as to the cause. Whatever had done it was obviously powerful and utilised brute strength over blades...spiders were bad enough and so I whole-heartedly prayed we didn’t meet something new. But as usual, the gods either paid no attention or, much more likely in my view, thoroughly enjoyed my pain.

  Inside the cavern was the remains of a giant spider. Its colossal limbs ripped free from its body, its abdomen ruptured and eyes removed as if plucked from the head and casually tossed over a shoulder. Whatever had done this had gloried in the violence.

  “What on earth?” Sophia whispered the question on everyone's lips.

  “Do you think that was the same spider that took Rikol?” asked Ella.

  I scanned its scattered legs. “Can’t see a sword, but it could have easily come loose. Too many claw marks to make out if any of the damage was done by us.”

  “Calidan, that giant spider shrugged off one of your attacks pretty easily,” Cassius said, his expression grim. “Whatever did this was immensely powerful.”

  “A troll perhaps?” suggested Sophia.

  “It would be the likeliest culprit,” I agreed, “but trolls tend to keep to themselves. Why would one suddenly come into the spider caverns? Plus that spider was as quick as it was strong. Trolls are generally pretty lumbering creatures. If I had to guess I would say the spider would have the advantage in a fight…”

  Silence fell as the others pondered my words. Finally Cassius spoke up, “Does it matter?”

  We looked at him, shocked.

  “So what if there is something ahead of us that we don’t understand? We are knowingly going into spider infested caverns to rescue Rikol. It doesn’t matter what gets in our way, we will cut it down and see it crawl before us. Understood?”

  The dorm looked at each other, strength and solidarity reaffirmed thanks to Cassius’s speech. With a grim-faced look at everyone he set off, blade held over one shoulder. One by one we followed him into the next cavern, following the trail of broken limbs.

  More mummified prey and more dead spiders. It was becoming a regular disturbing sight. Thankfully the trail ensured that we didn’t get lost. More and more side tunnels were appearing, turning the spider caves into an interconnected warren. By unspoken agreement we continued following the broken spiders, perhaps presuming that whatever was causing the destruction would head for the next set of spiders, and hopefully Rikol.

  A reverberation caught my attention. Holding up a hand I stopped the others and another reverberation filled my senses. Something down the tunnel was making tremendous impacts.

  “I think we’re close to whatever did this,” I said to the group, indicating the ichor covered floor. “Be ready.”

  Nodding, they continued forward, following my lead. Angry and emboldened we pushed ahead, ready to clash with whatever monstrosity lay before us for the sake of our friend, but we could never have guessed what we found.

  It was a troll. Or something akin to a troll. Humanoid with bulging, misshapen muscles. Around ten feet tall it had a mouth filled with curved teeth, dexterous hands and a pale blue skin. A light patterning of white fur spread across the beast’s back and chest, but not the thick, heavy mantle of fur that trolls possessed. Nor did it seem to have the lumbering movement of a troll, it danced lightly on its feet, smashing through the legs of the gigantic spider that it battled. Whatever else it was, it was obviously a brutally efficient killer. Dodging the spider’s massive leg blows, it spun past the stinging abdomen and tore off the appendage. The spider’s hiss was one of extreme pain, which only grew louder when the beast jumped onto its back and rammed the stinger home into the top of its skull. Limbs trembling in a frenzy the spider collapsed in its death throes. But that wasn't enough for the misshapen creature. It stabbed again and again, driving the stinger deep into the spider’s brain and making a hole into the spider’s head big enough for its hands to get into. Then it released the stinger and, putting its hands inside the spider’s head, it pulled. Piece by piece it broke the spider apart until it was standing in a heap of broken parts, its blue skin covered in green ichor. Standing on top of the pile it roared, a strange sound that I recognised instantly; the uncanny roar I had heard in the forest. That was disconcerting. Was it following us?

  The beast stopped its roar and shuddered, breathing heavily. Its head flicked from side to side, its arms twitching erratically, as though wanting to go in two directions at once. After a minute the twitching slowed and it turned, scanning the room and spotting us at the tunnel mouth. Expecting an attack we tensed, blades out, but the creature just looked at us with one vividly blue, intelligent eye. An eye that I couldn’t help thinking held a vast amount of rage, yet...recognition?

  What’s worse is that as it turned away I could have sworn that it winked. A feeling confirmed when Sophia murmured, “Did that thing just wink?”

  Good, so it wasn’t just me losing my mind.

  Stiffening as though it sensed something nearby, the troll-beast unleashed another roar and raced down another tunnel.

  “Did that just happen?” Ella asked to a chorus of dumbfounded nods.

  “Some kind of intelligent troll I guess…but it doesn’t act like any troll I’ve heard of,” Cassius said. “But we should leave the guesswork until we’ve found Rikol and got out of here.”

  Once more we set off into the tunnels. The beast seemed to know where it was going which I hoped was a good thing as I couldn’t smell or sense Rikol nearby so following it seemed to be a better option than not. Perhaps it would give us time to figure out if the strange creature was a friend or an enemy. Considering its extremely violent dismemberment of the spiders I would settle for the enemy of my enemy, but I couldn’t shake the sense that it somehow knew us.

  Another mystery to solve.

  The labyrinth of ice continued. Mazes of tunnels criss-crossed around us. Without the troll leading the way we would have been hopelessly lost. As it was I wasn’t sure I would be able to lead us back to the entrance. The entire area smelled of strange troll and large spider, making it hard to distinguish our route through the stinking mire. This should have been a worry, but every single one of us would have gladly lost ourselves in the labyrinth for a chance to save our friend. And so forward we plunged, casting aside doubt and fears, following only the echoing roars of the troll and keeping eyes open for Rikol.

  It wasn’t long until the grunts and roars of the troll changed, the echoes that reverberated along the tunnel sounding angrier, and soon my senses picked up the chittering that I had come to associate with the eight-legged locals. The sounds ramped and crescendoed until I was positive my senses had failed me. Surely there couldn’t be that many spiders.

  Stalking into a vast cavern, flanked by my friends, my jaw dropped open. The troll was an island in a sea of brown, green and grey. Spiders of different sizes were assaulting it from all sides, their glistening mandibles grasping for its flesh. Behind the waves of legs were several giant spiders, threading their way towards the harried troll. Behind those spiders was a creature of nightmare.

  And that was saying something considering the predicament we were in.

  This spider dwarfed even the already gigantic ones that we had fought before. Thick black hairs thrust out from its articulated legs; each bristling appendage as wide as my arms outstretched. The torso was vast, an undulating, disgusting mass of flesh and horror that rippled each time the behemoth took a step.

  “Fuck. Me.” Sophia breathed seeing the monstrosity. “That thing is huge!”

  The others simply nodded, wide eyed in amazement and horror. “How about we go round instead of through?” Ella suggested carefully, not taking her eyes off of the spider queen.

  “I wish we could,” I replied, expression grim. I pointed at the ceiling behind the spider
. Following my finger the others squinted, gasping as they saw several rows of hanging people, wrapped in web.

  “Is Rikol in there?” asked Cassius.

  “I can’t see for certain, but it seems as likely a place as anywhere else,” I answered.

  “Fan-fucking-tastic,” whispered Sophia, loudly enough for everyone to hear. Wry smirks appeared on our faces and for a moment the terror of the situation lessened. She continued, “So what’s the plan Cal?”

  “Well firstly, not getting eaten,” I began, the other nodding sagely as though I was imparting great wisdom. “Secondly, I think that as the troll thing didn’t immediately try to eat us, we might want to try and support it in this fight. But I still don’t recommend getting close...whilst it didn’t instantly try and kill us it might just be saving us for later.” Again more nods. “Sophia, if we find which one Rikol is, you reckon you can hit the web holding him up?”

  Sophia grimaced, “I can’t see it from here, but if it’s relatively static then I would imagine so. But we don’t know the properties of the web, something coming out of a spider that big might not get easily cut.”

  A valid point.

  “We haven’t got much in the way of other options,” voiced Ella, always the voice of reason. “We won’t know until we try, if it fails then we‘ll come up with something.”

  “Agreed,” I replied. “I think we should skirt around as much as possible and when we see an opening - and Rikol - Sophia can take a shot and one of us can try catching him. Then we get out of here as fast as possible. If any of that fails then watch each other’s backs and try not to die. Good?”

  Nods all round.

  “Well then,” I twirled my blades. “Let’s get to it.”

  We struck out from the cavern entrance, keeping close to the edge in an attempt to avoid the notice of the swarm. We didn’t need to have worried quite so much - the spiders only had their many horrible eyes focused on the strange troll that was wreaking havoc on their population. It stood surrounded by a mountain of broken and twitching limbs, gleaming claws eviscerating every spider that came close, green ichor spraying like an intermittent geyser. But for every one it killed another took its place, and its claws could only be in so many places at once. As we watched several spiders jumped onto its back, stingers stabbing and mandibles flexing. The troll roared in pain and swung, its claws catching one of the spiders but leaving two still attached and just out of reach of its flailing arms. Proving that it was no normal troll, the beast picked up a nearby corpse that wasn’t completely crushed and swung it like a club behind its back, using the extra reach to knock the spiders loose in a splatter of squelching limbs. Spinning, it scythed through the nearest ranks, a whirlwind of angry death. And for a time it looked like an effective strategy...until they started dropping from the ceiling.

  In an instant the troll was covered. The momentary distraction allowed a fresh flood of the surrounding arachnids to surge forward, enveloping the creature in a wave of stabbing limbs and bristly legs. Blood of a different colour began to spurt in greater and greater amounts and the troll began to visibly slow; tiring from blood loss. Sophia paused and a second later an almost continuous flight of arrows sped into the mass, the power of Sophia’s bow allowing each one to cut through multiple bodies before stopping. Her shooting never ceased to amaze the rest of the team and myself - whilst we were all passing fair with the bow, Sophia’s archery was masterful. Her first few arrows cleared the spiders off the troll’s face, allowing it to once again see the most immediate threats, and the next few tore off those attached to its back, providing it a brief respite. Even from a distance we could see the gaping wounds on the beast’s frame immediately begin to knit together and it once more entered into its windmill spin, this time keeping an eye on the ceiling, an ichor coated paw reaching up to bat a descending spider out of the air every now and then. As its wounds healed its speed began to pick up until it was once again back in fine form.

  Sophia nodded to herself and trotted along after us. “I can’t do that again,” she said as she caught up. “My quiver only holds so many and I doubt rescuing Rikol is going to be as simple as we’re all hoping.”

  She was right, it wasn’t.

  Whether the gigantic spider queen could see us - something that from the rheumy look of its oozing eyes I very much doubted - or it had a connection to its spiders or some other sense of which I wasn’t aware, after Sophia’s intervention a large percentage of the surrounding wave of spiders peeled away from the troll and began heading in our direction.

  “Heads up!” Cassius yelled pointing at the ceiling.

  “Circle up!” I barked. “Sophia in the middle - keep those things off our heads. Keep moving towards the rear of the cavern as we go, we don’t want to get bogged down.”

  The whistle of arrows punctuated my order and the closest spider fell from the ceiling, legs writhing around the shaft of wood in its chest.

  I had time to once again admire the shot and then they were upon us.

  Not for the first time I regretted leaving the battle-axe that I had utilised when clearing the fort. Its massive double-edged blade would have been extremely useful to cut swathes through the surrounding enemies. Shit, my sword that that bastard giant spider had hopped away with in its leg would have been good too. Pretty much anything other than daggers, I thought grimly as I hacked, sliced and spun amongst furred limbs. I usually quite enjoyed dagger work, as when against human enemies it required a speed and accuracy above most other weapons. Against an endless horde of spiders however? Not the best.

  That was mainly because there was no ability to move easily, no dancing out of the way of scrabbling limbs to strike from behind. Instead it was just a plethora of stabbing, over and over, cutting and thrusting into anything that came my way. The axe at least would have knocked corpses away, the sword providing that extra bit of reach to stay away from the vile creatures, knives just meant that very quickly my vision turned green as I became an advertisement for spider ichor. Ella was faring similarly; Cassius having moved closer to her to provide support - a wise move. I was finding it difficult and I could hit hard enough to split each spider in two without much effort. Their bodies didn’t seem to have the hard carapace of the giant spiders, for which I was immensely grateful - I had no desire to have a repeat of my earlier misfortune and be reduced to using my hands to punch spiders to death...though armed only with daggers, it more often than not felt like I was anyway.

  Out of the corner of my eye I could see Cassius slashing with his sword, each swing of the blade hitting multiple opponents and slicing off limbs with wild abandon. Ella was next to him, laying into the spiders that Cassius missed and finishing off those he had crippled. Each of us was covered in thick, green ichor from the close encounters, all except Sophia who was still raining death at those on the roof, causing a hail of broken arachnids to fall, their corpses crushing their brethren beneath. I could barely see the troll anymore, the immediate volume of spiders that needed stabbing blocking my vision, but I could hear its continued and full-throated roars.

  Despite our best efforts, we were slowly grinding to a halt, the incessant multitudes giving us no room to breathe, let alone walk. We had our backs to the cavern wall which provided a little protection, but Sophia was low on arrows and there appeared to be no end to the horde.

  “This isn’t looking good!” bellowed Cassius as he cut a leaping spider in two. “What now?”

  I looked around frantically, trying to think of something, anything that would help - but nothing came to mind. Thankfully Sophia kept her head as a sudden bloom of flame behind me caught my attention. Sophia had stopped shooting and instead lit a torch, thrusting it at the nearest spider. It hissed and frantically attempted to back away. Instantly a gap appeared around the torch where the spiders no longer approached, afraid of the fire but not of the steel we had been embedding into their chests.

  Ella touched Cassius on the shoulder and disengaged from the fight, pu
lling close to Sophia and grabbing another torch. Quickly a second flame appeared and together they did more for us in the next few seconds than the past few minutes of blood, sweat and tears had; they succeeded in driving back the horde.

  “Thank fuck for that,” Cassius said, breathing heavily and wiping sweat away from his brow. “That was getting pretty dicey back there.”

  Ella smirked and pulled away a strand of spider fur away from his face. “I guess you could say that it got a little...hairy.”

  The groans that elicited soon gave way to some much-needed laughter. Incongruent, perhaps, with our predicament but sometimes laughter is the best medicine. The troll continued roaring and slaughtering its way through the spider swarm as we chuckled and I fervently hoped that we didn’t have to fight it. The mountains of dead spiders behind and around it made our own trail of dead look paltry in comparison. For the moment though, we had breathing space. Breathing space that was ringed with bulbous eyes that glistened in the firelight.

  “Everyone okay?” Cassius asked once we had stopped laughing.

  A chorus of nods and affirmatives.

  “I have two arrows left,” confirmed Sophia, checking her quiver. “So keep your heads up for spiders dropping from above, I can’t afford to waste a shot that we might need to save Rikol.”

  That wasn’t good. So far we had only been surviving because of Sophia’s ability with the bow preventing angry spiders from landing with their stingers on our heads.

  “How many torches do we have?” I asked, keeping my eyes on several giant spiders that had turned away from the troll and were slowly advancing our way.

  Sophia quickly patted down our bags whilst keeping the flame held high. “Seven, including the two lit,” she answered.

  Seven torches. Seven torches to get us further into an ice bound cavern, rescue Rikol and escape - all without getting eaten by small spiders, giant spiders, a monstrously oversized eight-legged queen freak of a spider or ravaged by a raging troll...thing. No matter which way I looked at it, it wasn’t great odds.