by Steve McHugh
“You shouldn’t mock him,” Morgan chastised. “You don’t know what he’s gone through.”
“He’s murdered thousands, probably tens of thousands of people over his lifetime,” I said. “I couldn’t give two shits what he’s gone through. He kills and tortures innocent people, sometimes because they’re in his way, sometimes because he needs to, sometimes just because it’s a Wednesday and he’s got fuck all else to do. You allied yourself with a monster. I don’t know which one of you is worse.”
Morgan blinked once, and I wasn’t sure if she was going to throw a punch my way. “You’re nothing but an arrogant little man who has no idea what he’s talking about.”
I watched her walk off after Mordred, and waited until enough distance was between us before I set off again.
“You okay?” Diane asked as she placed a hand on my shoulder.
“Been a long few days.”
“Going to be a long few more,” Remy said. “I really hope we don’t run into any of these elves. Whatever they are.”
“A figment of his imagination?” Kasey asked. “Do you think he’s responsible for what happened to the dwarves?”
I shook my head. “Mordred is a lot of things, but there’s no way he’s a match for even half a dozen dwarves in open combat, let alone a million. And you can only kill so many people from the shadows before they actively start to hunt you. No, whatever they are, they’re real.”
“And they scare a man who once struck down Arthur,” Diane said. “That does not bode well.”
Unfortunately, I had to agree with her. Whatever had Mordred so spooked that he’d essentially left all of us alone for the entirety of our time here wasn’t something to take lightly. I’d seen him fight. I’d fought against him, and he was no slouch in that department. On top of that, he was never shy about getting involved when violence was required.
“Let’s just find a way out of here.” I set off after Mordred, but didn’t catch up with him until we’d reached the city limits, where I found him and Morgan crouched behind a white stone wall.
“This city once held five thousand people,” he said softly. “Be on the lookout; there’s no telling if anything settled in their place.”
I knelt beside him, with the rest of the group doing the same. I risked a peek over the wall and saw a street that cut straight through the center of the city, bisecting it. I pointed at Mordred and Morgan. “If there is anything in there, smaller teams will be able to evade easier than all seven of us walking through the middle of town. You two take the right; Kasey, Diane and Chloe the left. Remy and I will go up the center. If you come across anything, come get the rest of us. Do not engage; we have no idea exactly what might be in this town.”
“Where should we meet up?” Kasey asked.
Mordred kept his voice low as he spoke. “While it’s been a thousand years since I was last here, it doesn’t look like much has changed. No electricity, or running water. The town doesn’t look much different in way of size, either. Same types of houses, same streets. If I remember correctly, there was a well in the center of the city. They placed a huge statue of one of the dwarven kings on it; I can’t remember which one. It’s made of solid gold. If it’s still there, you’ll see it, and if not, you’ll easily find the well.”
“A thousand years and we’re going on maybe?” Remy asked.
“It’s better than anyone else’s plan,” Morgan pointed out.
“No arguments,” I interjected. “We meet in the center of town. If the well is still functional and the area clear, we’ll find somewhere to rest up for the night. I reiterate, though: fast but steady. Let’s not wake anything up that is best left asleep.”
“Yes, sir,” Mordred said as he snapped off a salute.
“Shove it firmly up your ass,” I said with a smile. “You want to go steaming in there and piss off these blood elves, you be my guest.”
The rebellious humor in his eyes vanished in an instant. “We’ll do it your way. Quick and quiet.”
Mordred and Morgan slunk off into the city as the sun’s final rays vanished over the horizon. Kasey, Diane, and Chloe were about to leave when I stopped them.
“Chloe, you know what I said earlier about using your magic less? I really don’t want you to use your own life force to do anything, but if you need to use it, don’t hesitate. You can worry later on about dying a day or two earlier. Right now, we need to get out of here and do it all in one piece. I’m not losing anyone here. Okay?”
Chloe nodded and the three of them moved into the city.
“I have a bad feeling about this,” Remy said. “I can smell things in there, Nate. They smell of death and decay. Neither of those are good things to smell.”
We were about to climb over the wall into the city when Mordred and Morgan returned. Mordred crouched beside me. “There’s no way along there. Lots of cobwebs, lots of collapsed buildings. It would take days to climb over it all.”
“You’re with us then,” I said, not exactly thrilled about the prospect.
We climbed over the wall and began walking along the stone-cobbled street, my gaze kept straight ahead, while Remy, Morgan, and Mordred took turns looking to the left and right. We made it roughly halfway along the street when a large shadow passed over the moonlit path about a hundred feet ahead of us.
“What did you see?” Morgan whispered.
“Something big. Moving fast.”
“You think those panthers came back?” Mordred asked, a slightly nervous edge to his words.
“I sure as hell hope not.” I certainly agreed with the unspoken sentiment. Panthers in the daytime were bad enough, but trying to fight them during nightfall would give us a serious disadvantage.
Remy sniffed the air. “I don’t like that. It isn’t panther, and I still smell death.”
“Let’s just get to the center of the city and find somewhere safe,” Morgan said. “I don’t think this city has been inhabited for centuries.”
“Although it’s strange that part of it has collapsed and this is still well maintained,” Remy said. “Almost as if they purposely want people to come this way.”
“Keeps everything tidy. The city isn’t overrun with vines and trees. There’s nothing but a few months of growth here. So who’s keeping it neat?” Morgan asked.
“You think blood elves like gardening?” I suggested.
“Blood elves might like crochet for all I know,” Remy said. “Let’s not find out.”
The journey continued in silence until we reached the area where I’d spotted the moving shadow. Strands of web had been stretched out across the ground, with the doors to the houses on either side of the road completely removed, replaced with strands of web that moved into the house. The moonlight lit them up, and it would have been quite beautiful, if it hadn’t been so mind-numbingly terrifying.
“Well, I think I know what I saw,” I said, trying not to turn around and look about for anything crawling up to me.
“Giant spider?” Morgan asked. “That’s just perfect.”
“They might not be,” Remy said hopefully. “Might be giant silkworms.”
I didn’t even bother to give a response to the idea that massive silkworms were crawling over the city. “Magic-resistant giant spider,” I whispered after a few seconds. I sighed. When it rains, it pours. “We’re going to need to take a detour.”
I took a step back as a piece of rock dropped from the top of the nearest building across the cobbles about two feet from where I stood, rolling over several strands of web, pulling them as it went.
“Run!” I shouted as the first giant brown spider burst from its lair, running toward the stone.
All three of us turned and sprinted away, but after a few yards it had become obvious that Morgan hadn’t been as fast as we were. I stopped and turned back to her as she threw a huge block of magically created ice at the spider, which was easily the size of a large car. It was thrown back into the web of another spider, which had no qualms a
bout attacking its neighbor, sinking forearm-long fangs into the tangled beast.
Morgan scrambled to her feet as I used fire to cut through the webs that had snared her. “That wasn’t what I expected. Got a plan?”
“Can you freeze up the entrances to those houses?” I asked.
“And then what?” Remy asked. “Just run past those monsters?”
“I was going to go with sprint, but essentially, yeah.”
“That spider could change its mind and come after us.”
He had a point.
“Morgan—” I began.
“On it,” she stated and began using her magic to cover the half a dozen doorways close by in thick sheets of ice, while the now-dead spider in the center of the street was slowly wrapped in silk by its murderer.
When the doorways were clear, Morgan blasted a jet of freezing air on the ground, turning it into an ice rink, making the victorious spider slip off to the side of the road with a large thud.
“Run!” Mordred shouted, scooping Morgan up in his arms and running with her.
I didn’t need telling twice, and used my air magic to make me faster as I ran toward the ice rink. Remy hit it before me, dropping onto his back and allowing the momentum he’d built up to carry him past the spider carcass and to the other side of the ice. I landed a few seconds later, just as the spider that had been knocked off the road climbed unsteadily back to it and saw me. I slammed my hands onto the ice, cracking it as every ounce of air magic I had poured into the ground, using it to propel me into the air at high speed. I avoided the spider, which lost its footing once again and landed face first in its doorway.
I landed just beyond Remy, Morgan, and Mordred, scuffing my knees, elbows, and palms, but alive. And soon after the four of us were sprinting off toward the center of the city, hoping the spiders were done for the night.
We continued on in silence, until we reached the center of the city, a ring of buildings all looking in on a large, ornate fountain in the shape of an anvil. Water glistened in the fountain. Like Mordred had said, at some point there had been a golden statue atop it, although it now lay on the ground as if cast aside; time or vandalism hadn’t been kind to it. A large part of the statue’s limbs had been destroyed, and the king’s head was missing entirely.
“Someone didn’t like their monarch,” Morgan said.
“His son was king when I was here,” Mordred said.
“Do you think those blood elves destroyed it?” I asked.
“I have no idea. A lot has changed since my last visit.”
“So, where to now?” Remy asked.
“We need to get into the mountain, into the dwarven city. It’s the only way we’ll be able to figure out how to get home. There should be a realm gate, and if there isn’t, the library will hopefully give us clues. So long as it wasn’t destroyed.”
“The blood elves?” Morgan asked.
Mordred nodded. “They hated the dwarves and anything associated with them, but I can’t imagine the dwarves would have let the library fall into elven hands without a considerable fight. Hopefully some of it will remain.”
“Heard some commotion,” Diane said as she, along with Kasey and Chloe, joined us. She turned to me. “I assume that was your doing?”
“Big spiders,” I said as nonchalantly as possible.
“This place is beginning to turn into the worst tourist destination ever,” Chloe said.
“How do we get into the mountain?” I asked, wanting to get the conversation back on track.
“Two ways,” Mordred said, picking up a stick from the ground and using it to draw a circle in the layer of dirt beneath our feet. “The first is we leave the city, which is this circle, and walk around to the right. There’s a bridge there; we cross it to the entrance to the city of Thorem. The big problem there is how exposed we will be. The bridge is over a gorge that is probably a few hundred feet in height, and the bridge itself stretches for the better part of a quarter of a mile. If there’re any problems once we’re there, we’re stuck. There’s nowhere to go.”
“Second option, please,” Remy said.
“There’s an entrance in the mountains just up ahead.” Mordred drew a second, smaller circle just above the first. “It means descending into the gorge much further along the trail where it’s shallower. It’ll be several miles of trekking through woods with who-knows-what inside, before we reach a part of the gorge that’s only about a dozen feet deep. Unfortunately, it then means a climb up the mountain. There used to be a pathway there, but considering what’s now inhabiting this city, it might not be the empty path it used to be.”
“So both of our options suck,” Kasey summarized. “Excellent.”
“There is a third option,” a voice said from the shadows.
Morgan drew her twin blades, while I noticed Kasey’s fingernails grow longer, the hair on the back of her hands beginning to sprout.
“I’m not a threat,” the voice said. A man stepped out of the shadows of one of the buildings. His skeletal appearance made it difficult to age him, especially with a bald head and leather armor that looked to be slightly too large for his frame. “I can take you into the mountain.”
“Who are you?” Diane asked.
“My name is William,” he told us. “I live under the mountain, close to what remains of the dwarven city.”
“You’re human,” Remy stated. “What happened to the people in this city?”
“Wiped out, or taken as slaves,” William said, taking another step toward us. “Fourteen-hundred years of slavery and death. There’s a small resistance movement, but we’re not powerful enough to overthrow the blood elves.”
Mordred looked like he’d been hit when the word slave was used. I almost asked him if he was okay, but managed to stop myself. I didn’t want to give a crap about what he felt, but it’s hard to maintain hatred when you need one another to survive.
“Is there a realm gate in Thorem?” I asked, no less thrilled to hear that the blood elves had taken slaves. To discover that there were untold numbers of humans in servitude to monsters who terrified even Mordred sent a shiver up my spine.
“At least two that I know of,” William confirmed. “I haven’t been close enough to either to say whether they work or not.”
“Any dwarves still remain the city?” I continued, trying to ascertain whether our newcomer was on our side or whether he had ulterior motives.
“A few hundred last I heard; we have little communication with them. They spend most of their time running and hiding from the elves.”
“How do you get us into Thorem?” Kasey asked.
“There’s a set of passageways under here. It goes into the lowest parts of Thorem, away from the blood elves, who don’t like to go down that far. They tend to occupy the furthest left side of the mountain, where the crystals and richer parts of the city used to be. It’s safe, I promise.”
“We don’t have a lot of choices here,” Diane whispered. “I don’t trust him, though.”
“Me neither,” I agreed.
“Take us into the city,” Mordred said, surprising me with how quickly he’d agreed to go back into a place he’d been professing to hate since we’d arrived in the realm. “The sooner we’re there, the sooner we can figure out a way to leave.”
Well, at least that explained why he was suddenly so keen to get into Thorem.
“We should leave quickly,” William said, and turned to go.
“What do you get out of it?” I asked.
William didn’t turn back to the group. “I’m hoping you’ll help me. The blood elves have my father. I can’t find him alone.”
“We’ll help,” Mordred told William, surprising me even more. “Lead the way.”
William led us all into a large building on the opposite side of the city center, which, from the size and number of benches inside, had probably been some sort of political building or a town hall. He stopped at the rear of the large room and knelt, moving a rug from t
he floor and exposing several dwarven runes.
“What do they say?” I asked.
“Hidden,” he told me, placing his hand on one, which lit up bright blue, the others around it doing the same as a huge groan escaped the wooden floor beneath my feet. I stepped back slightly when the floor began to lift and move, exposing a set of stairs beneath it that led down beneath the city.
“It’s okay; it’s torch-lit,” William promised. “It’s a giant cavern, but it’s safe. I already checked it on the way to meet you. I need to go last to ensure it’s closed. Sometimes the predators in town like to come in here after they smell us.”
I looked down at the flickering light several dozen feet beneath us. “If there’s something I don’t like down here, if this is some elaborate trap, I’m going to kill you, William.”
“I promise it’s safe.”
“We’ll see.” And I descended the stairs into the unknown beneath me.
CHAPTER 13
The cave system under the city was expansive, and more than once there were crossroads and closed doors of silver and gold that could have led to a whole separate system for all I knew.
“How do you know where to go?” Chloe asked after half an hour of walking along an identical path, with barely indistinguishable walls and ceilings. Her voice echoed around the massive area.
“Small marks on the walls,” William told us. He walked over to one and showed a small green rune next to a white crystal that emitted enough light to see all around us. “Each rune goes to a different part of the system. This whole place was designed by the dwarves to get in and out of the city with minimal problems.”
“It’s stood the test of time,” I said, feeling somewhat in awe of the huge amount of work that must have gone into creating something as impressive as this.
“The dwarves knew how to build things,” William said. “But most of this was done after the blood elves came. It was done in haste, so there’s none of the impressive finery that was in other parts of the city.”
“The blood elves were responsible for the dwarves vanishing?” Diane asked.
