by J. R. Ford
Flame engulfed the room before us. The heat was nigh unbearable.
Heather gulped, steeling herself. Her hand trembled as it made the symbols.
There was little I could do for her. This was a sacrifice to be borne by her alone. It grated at my soul. I turned away.
The fermids were coming up the stairs and over the side as well. The heat on my back told me that Heather hadn’t yet succeeded.
Wait. “You make symbols for what you’ll transform and what you’ll transform it to, right?”
“Yeah?” Her voice shook.
So if she symbolled fire, then touching water wouldn’t inadvertently deflect the casting. I snatched the canteen from her belt and poured water over her hand. “Might help.”
Heather took a deep breath and extended her arm. With hissing and sloshing, the fire shifted to water, the heat disappearing. I was left night-blind in the dimness of the lantern and what little flame had been beyond Heather’s transmutation capabilities. The water sank into a grate below and spread over the remaining fire. Hot steam rushed through vents in the wall and singed us as we crossed the room. The grate rattled under our footsteps, and the water beneath bubbled.
The far door opened into quiet darkness. I’d hoped the thin grate in the previously fiery room would deter the fermids, but they carefully pressed on. Within moments of us shutting the door, they were knocking. Then a leg pierced straight through, nearly stabbing me.
“That door won’t last long,” Heather said.
Time for a gamble. “I’m going to open it. When I do, you throw some fire in there, then get behind the door. Ready?” Something had to have fed that fire, and I had an idea what.
She looked confused but gripped another stone shard. The leg retracted, and I swung the door open. Heather flicked the stone and jabbed it with her left index finger, then sidestepped behind the door with me.
A boom and crackling told me that I’d been right: the bubbling had been a flammable gas. I slammed the door as fermids burned to a crisp with a disgusting stench. I suspected it would’ve been worse had most of the air not been venting out the side of the tower.
“Plus 60,” Heather said.
I raised the lantern high, though the motion tugged at the thousand tiny cuts and bruises on my left side that I’d received tumbling on broken rocks back in the cavern. Another room extended before us, but nothing moved in the blackness.
“There’s a button here, like in Riyaasat,” Heather said. “But I’m low on mana.”
“That mana is more valuable than light,” I said, thinking of the fermid chomping into her bear leg.
To our left, islands were cluttered with beakers, vials, and other potion-making equipment. Some liquids, stoppered in vials or jugs, glowed brightly in the darkness. The air stank of ammonia and formaldehyde.
The right half of the room boasted an array of racks, beds, and several strangely shaped contraptions looped in leather belts and iron wire. Dark splotches stained the equipment. My stomach churned.
The warlock’s operating room. Was this where he’d built the slugs that had poisoned Ana?
We took our time, letting Heather regenerate mana, keeping eyes out for anything that might leap out at us from some unnoticed shadow. But nothing stirred. For all the horrible implications of the room, we’d found a moment of peace there.
We would survive. We had to. But some questions can’t be delayed. Perhaps it was only that the fermids had rekindled my fear.
“After you left, Ana told me something.” I fought to keep my tone neutral, casual.
Complete failure. Heather looked at me with such sincerity in her yellow eyes that I was convinced she could read my mind.
“Do you know what I’m going to ask?”
She nodded shakily.
But it still had to be said. “Do you…” I felt sweat trickle down my back. It’s not real, I reminded myself. What a weak lie. “Do you like me?”
I hated the words as soon as I’d said them. I looked down at the floor ahead of us, white tiles gleaming in warm tones. Perhaps the lighting would conceal my blush, a tree in a forest.
My words hung thick in the air. Give me the ants, anything over this purgatory.
“We can talk about it later.” Her voice wavered, and empathy surged. An hour ago, she’d been convinced she would die, and odds were we still would. She didn’t want to put anything in the open, only for it to be crushed upon our deaths and irreparable separation. She would return to the West Country, and I to Atlanta, and we’d never see each other again. What would be the point, then, of speaking of something which could never be? Of opening a weakness for it to be immediately preyed upon? Better to wait until we were safe, if that time came.
I could sense those thoughts wrestle in her head with her desire to speak her feelings. But perhaps I was only projecting.
Or maybe it was because I’d completely forgotten our audience. You idiot! Who would reveal their feelings before 3,000,000 viewers?
Being useless with women wasn’t the worst truth for the world to know about me, but it burned nonetheless.
“I’m going to check out the potions,” she said. “Might find something useful.”
I watched her walk over to a lab table upon which rested some glowing liquids. Her dress, previously pale blue, had been streaked with dirt and soaked through so that it seemed nearly black. It clung to her. She picked up a couple of vials and shrugged. I pretended to not notice her shaking.
Feeling intrusive, I looked down. The base of the island was cabinets, and one wooden door hung open. Something squirmed in that darkness.
“Heather, get back!” Startled, she stumbled away, dropping a vial of yellow potion, which shattered. A gray shape as thick as my thigh slithered out from the cabinet. Stubs scraped against tile as it unwound. A forked tongue lapped at the spilled potion. Then, it began to grow until it was as thick around as my waist. Its jaws yawned, displaying gleaming fangs in a familiar gesture.
“Dragon!” I shouted. Heather ducked away from a gout of flame. It slithered after her, six nubs protruding from its body like legs that never grew.
Heather incanted, then lunged at the dragon and poked it just below its head. In an instant it had shrunk back to its smaller, though still formidable, form. It bit her leg, and she toppled with a scream.
I dropped the Lightning Blade — electrocution might just make it bite harder. My dagger pierced scales and drew its ire. As soon as it let go of Heather, she glowed and was a black panther. She chomped into the side of its head and shook. Then she transformed back and fell to the tiles, clasping her ankle where it had bitten her.
I drove my dagger through the skull of the stunned snake. “Kill a failure: +5.” Then I bolted over to the surgery and rummaged through cabinets. Fresh gauze was forthcoming.
“I hope it’s not venomous,” she said, wincing as I wrapped her wound. The fangs had punctured deep into flesh, and blood streamed out in alarming quantities. I tightened it as much as I could and tied it off. “Render aid: +1.”
“Keep pressure on it. I’ll look around for anything labeled antidote.”
I searched a few islands. Nothing had labels. Don’t know why I’d expected the mad scientist to be a bit more organized.
She shrugged. “I’ll have to hope. I’m out of mana, though. Reverse transformation only cost 5, but after that, I only had enough for a second of shapeshifting.”
“Good thing you moved quickly then.”
Her voice trembled. “It seems to refill about 1 point every ten seconds. Means I should have full mana back in…fifteen minutes? Not bad, but I’ll have to stay human for now. And I’m not sure I can walk.”
“I’ll help you.” I handed her the lantern and took her under the armpit. Together we hobbled toward the opposite side of the room. A staircase rose into the gloom. “How much does transmute cost?” If we were to encounter more trials, I needed to know what she was capable of.
“Depends on the size. Back on
the bridge, and in the fire room, I think I transmuted as much as I could in a single go. Each took 20 mana. But transmuting those little stones only took a couple each.”
“Okay.” So nothing big on the agenda.
The air grew cold and damp-smelling as we ascended. The door opened into another room of cages, but these were piled haphazardly. Nets, ropes, metal traps, and wooden bird feeders were scattered across the room.
“I guess he needed to catch his subjects somehow,” Heather muttered. Navigating the mess proved tricky. Some of the bear traps were primed — one wrong step and we’d lose a leg. Heather leaned heavily against me, and I used the Lightning Blade to brush aside clutter the best I could.
On the other side of the room, vibrant mushrooms sprouted. Violet, crimson, and verdant green, all with huge caps and stalks. The same as we had encountered briefly in the caves beneath the mountains. Had this man populated the entire realm?
They clustered around the top half of the staircase and spilled over the side, a veritable forest. I set Heather to lean against a wall and ascended alone. When I got to about arm’s length, the closest one sprung. I stumbled away, and it bounced back and forth, vibrating like a doorstop until returning to rest.
“I don’t think we want to touch those,” Heather said.
“Nah, don’t want to transform into a mushroom. So what do we do?”
She picked up a long metal rod with two blue-circuited prongs. “‘Acquired Shock Prongs: +100’!” When she pushed a button, lightning flared to life between the prong tips.
She used it as a crutch to hobble up the stairs and poked the foremost shroom, to no avail. Then, taking a deep breath, she incanted transmute and stuck her finger into the sizzling lightning. The stream erupted into sputtering flame, which she immediately jabbed toward the foremost mushroom.
It shuddered and flailed as the fire took root, spreading across the cap then enveloping it entirely. Its frantic vibrations brought it into contact with another mushroom, which also caught fire. Soon the entire forest was alight and dancing.
“I’m going to take a look around,” I muttered. The scratching sound was back. I picked my way around the clutter, well-illuminated by the mushroom bonfires.
Sure enough, I found multiple fermid tunnels. But the tendrils of panic constricting around my neck withered under the heat of the fire and Heather’s gaze on my back. I forced my breath to come steady and turned to face her. “We’ve got incoming.”
“The traps,” Heather said, pointing at a closed bear trap.
“Good idea.” I knelt and tried to force it open. Its hinges were rusty and didn’t budge until I leaned my entire body weight onto it. I should really work out. Heather limped over and lifted the pedal until it locked with a click.
The mushrooms were burning too slowly. The fermids sounded like a thousand fingernails grating asphalt. We got three more traps primed before the first one emerged.
We retreated up the stairs, myself readying the Lightning Blade, Heather her Shock Prongs. The blaze roared hot against the back of my neck.
The first fermid stepped right into a trap with a satisfying crunch. But three more had already arrived.
“Stay calm,” Heather said. “We’re not the newbies we once were. We can take them.”
I realized I was hyperventilating and refocused on my breath. Heather’s presence beside me helped. I wasn’t alone. About time these fermids learned to fear us.
One reached the stairs and started climbing. My hands were shaking, but I cleaved the Lightning Blade down hard at its head. I shut my eyes, and as soon as I felt the impact, I whipped the sword back. The fermid fell, shuddering. Importantly, I hadn’t disarmed myself. I’d have to share my technique with Ana, once she was whole again.
Heather lashed out with the Shock Prongs. Another trap snapped shut.
They kept coming. Too many to count, or even to try. I focused on dispatching each one that dared a head-on assault. Those that tried to claw up the side met Heather’s Shock Prongs. The smoke from the bonfires seemed to be affecting them, making them sluggish, but it also burned in my throat.
They kept coming. Ochre carapace soon smothered the room. I struck with mechanical efficiency and surgical dispassion. Occasionally, when opening my eyes after a strike, reality would envelop me. It’s not real, it’s not real, only of course it was real and one slip here would mean getting devoured by these nightmarish beasts. Morbid images flashed on my television screen: my arm ripped off and gobbled up by clacking mandibles, acid ooze dribbling into my eyes and mouth like brimstone, Heather being dragged over the railing into the churning ocean…
Each time, I shot her a glance. Her face was determined. The fermids were real, but so was she, and so was I.
They kept coming. Ten million milling legs. The room reeked of smoke, fried ant, and sweat. The miasma flooded my throat, and my arms were getting heavier. Newcomers scrabbled over their dead brethren, corpses rising like the tide until our height advantage was neutralized. Some scratched at the wall, and their claws molded stone as if it were mud — some kind of Alchemy? They carved deep gouges and started climbing.
They kept coming. I couldn’t breathe, drowning in the smoke. My vision began to fade. A hundred black maws closed in from every side, even above, the climbing ants poised to leap.
“Let’s go!” Heather said.
In my fatigue, I hadn’t noticed that the mushrooms were burnt husks. We retreated backward up the stairs, our weapons still working. Heather dammed the horde while I opened the trapdoor at the top. We slipped up, shut it, and turned the handle. I heaved cold storm air.
Heather laughed between gasps. “I finally completed that quest! We must’ve killed fifty of them!”
I coughed. “We did, didn’t we? Let’s keep going. That trapdoor won’t hold them for long.” It was crossed with iron reinforcements, but after fermids had pierced a similar door despite them, I wondered at their efficacy.
We’d emerged onto a roofed patio. Storm winds howled, and the waterfall roared over the spatter of rain. To our right, a bridge led to the third, glowing tower: a short, stocky building, built over one of the waterfall’s many mouths, directly above the bridge we’d crossed three floors below. A hollow roof rose above us, a conical latticework of wooden beams, tiled over with dark-blue shale. The shadows beneath the roof were deep, deep enough to draw me in. Lantern light shone on two pairs of eyes.
I had time to curse before one trollbat swooped down, wheeling as it neared the floor and gliding around us. We hobbled as fast as we could toward the bridge, undeterred by the shriek of a second.
The first made its play. Heather and I dropped flat, cringing as jaws snapped above us. We scrambled up as the second trollbat landed on a low beam and beat its wings, buffeting us with wind. We leaned into the gale, but the roof was slick. We tumbled back and crashed into the railing. My back screamed, as did Heather, before she fell.
“No!” I shouted, looking over the edge. Heather the mountain goat let out a scared bleat, having somehow found purchase on the vertical fortress wall. The Shock Prongs tumbled down behind her. She bounded back up just in time to collapse as a human around the railing. Out of mana.
The trollbat’s wind blasted us from one side and the howling storm from another. Rain slapped our faces.
The trollbat, growing impatient, swooped down and crawled toward us. The other screeched from out in the storm. I clambered to my feet, using the railing for support. Heather clutched it for dear life, her eyes glowing bright yellow.
I didn’t know when the second bat would strike, but the first was gaining momentum. It leapt, leathery wings extending to catch the wind, and I jumped to meet it. It shrieked as the Lightning Blade pierced its breast. Its claws tore at my shoulders, shredding cloak and flesh, but I drove forward and pushed it onto its back.
The shuddering, combined with the tugging of its flesh healing around the blade, nearly made me lose my grip. Then it got its crimson-shining claws bet
ween us, poised to gut me. I wrenched the Lightning Blade free, and its flesh sealed almost immediately, the color draining from its claws.
But I was on it again before it could get up, slashing wildly. It reeled from a cut across the face, then went limp as I gashed its throat open. That one didn’t mend. Blood ran in rivulets on the wet roof.
I turned. Heather was a black bear but still pressed to the railing, one swipe from a long fall. The trollbat loomed before her.
I charged over, slipped, and slammed into the railing. “Oof,” I said. The bat glanced at me and got a paw to the face for its inattention. It recoiled, gnashing bloody teeth, and launched back into the storm.
“Come on,” I said, and together we bounded toward the bridge. The wind chafed at my clothes, which the rain had again soaked.
The final tower loomed, its circuitry bright against the dark sky. The door was another imposing oaken portal. Gray iron bands crossed the planks, these ones inlaid with luminous blue. Hopefully the circuitry would deter fermids, because they’d broken through the trapdoor and were swarming over the roof. They hadn’t spotted us yet, instead picking at the dead trollbat.
Heather returned to human form and panted for a moment, then began downing the Health Potion Farrukh had given her earlier.
“I thought you were out of mana,” I said.
She gagged on potion, coughing. “The goat did it,” she gasped, her eyes still aflame. “Like Pradeep said, elemental balance, mana refund. I’m back to full.”
Awe and pride welled within me. We could do this.
She nodded as if reading my mind. We entered before the fermids could notice us.
We stepped into a high-ceilinged room, and I shut the door behind us. Desks and tables were strewn haphazardly, notebooks stacked unceremoniously or else left open. Vials and chemical equipment cluttered a table near the back wall, flanked by well-stocked bookcases. Stairs ascended on the left side of the room. Opposite them, a wide-open window gazed over the valley. Water rumbled beneath us. No one home, it seemed.
“Hello?” Heather called.
“You’re not Vedanth,” a voice said. A man stepped from an alcove in the same wall as the door. He was the spitting image of his brother, save that he had a shaved face, red-painted knuckles, and a line of bright blue down his throat. He wore a gleaming helmet, breastplate, and mail skirt, all riddled with dark-purple circuitry, leaving his arms and midriff exposed.
