Forgotten Ruin: An Epic Military Fantasy Thriller

by Jason Anspach

  “Not a full-on nape-strike like you did the giant with,” warned Sergeant Kurtz, studying the ceiling above and testing that breath of air once more. “Just burn ’em out of there, or drive ’em off so we can get by.”

  PFC Kennedy nodded.

  “Roger that, Sar’nt.”

  We pulled back toward a place where there was more space and air in the passage, and Kennedy went forward with Kurtz on his six. A few minutes later we smelled roasting spider.

  It did not smell good.

  Kennedy’s torch-staff flogged the giant gross spiders with a whip of streaming flame. Webs caught and were consumed instantly. Later Kennedy told me that, once the spiders began to shriek, which was really disturbing, and backed off, he shot them with what he called magic missiles. Tiny comets of fire that erupted from his hands and fingertips—not the staff—and then side-windered into the hulking fear-struck arachnids he was roasting alive.

  The old wizard had taught him that trick. Kennedy cackled when he told me that part. Snorting as he pushed his BCGs up onto his nose. Like some kid burning ants with a magnifying glass and reliving the lurid horror for his amusement.

  But I try not to judge.

  The spiders exploded in noxious gassy farts when the missiles hit. The smell was horrifying, and their poison, as it vaporized, made Kurtz’s and Kennedy’s eyes and throats burn because they were so close. They pulled back, and while we all waited for the nest to finish burning, the sergeant insisted they both get hit with atropine injections to counteract any side effects.

  Eyes red and watering, Kurtz then led us into the blackened remains of the old throne room. The burnt husks of spiders, hairy legs upturned, charred and blackened, lay dead in a corner of the room where they had huddled to get away from the flames and nurse their injuries. The bodies of humanoid creatures also lay blackened everywhere. Perhaps these had been stored within the webs? Victims the spiders had dragged into their lair for later meals in times past.

  “This tells us,” said Sergeant Thor, down on one knee and studying the desiccated and burnt corpse of what was most likely an orc with a fanged overbite, “that we’re headed in the right direction.”

  “How’s that?” hissed Kurtz in the silence as we all stood there studying the damage and horror. His voice ragged from the burning poison he and Kennedy had gotten unhealthy doses of.

  Not like mere poison would ever stop Kurtz.

  “These orcs probably came down from the fortress above looking for treasure,” said Sergeant Thor. He pulled a leg off of one of the larger still-smoking spider carcasses. It reminded me of a time when I’d eaten one of those Alaskan King Crabs. Far less appetizing, being what it was, though. “Adventuring. Ain’t that what you do in your games, Kennedy? Go looking for treasure down in dungeons. That’s the dungeon part of the game, right? You call it an adventure, don’tcha?”

  “Right, Sar’nt,” said Kennedy reluctantly. “You go on an adventure. That’s what we call it.”

  “So yeah,” continued Thor. “Why couldn’t monsters do the same thing? Go on adventures. They want stuff. These guys just did a little off-duty trophy hunting when not watching the fortress walls. Or they got sent down here, maybe. Either way, this tells us we’re on the right track. If they got here and got caught by these things, then we’re heading in the right direction. That’s what we’re on, Rangers… an adventure.”

  Silence as we all just listened to Thor. He was right. It was a horrible place. But we were on an adventure.

  Wheeee, I thought to myself. What an adventure. Not what I signed up for. And… I bet coffee isn’t a treasure we’ll find down here.

  So there’s me being selfish and all.

  “Time to move,” said Kurtz, and then we were on our way out of the room and through a maze of underground halls stretching off in every direction and into… a vast area devoid of anything. A cavern, like a giant bare and empty cistern filled with a strange green mist that was always distant. Buttresses reached up to support the ceiling high above. We’d entered through a hatch that had been torn off and cast aside long ago.

  “This place is probably like a reservoir,” said one of the snipers as we wandered and investigated it. “They could fill it up with water in times of siege if they had to. Or just to protect the tombs below.”

  No one dissented from the hypothesis.

  We searched the whole space until we found rungs in the wall leading up to a trap door in the ceiling far above.

  “Looks dangerous,” said Tanner as we all sat there staring upward. “Glad I didn’t go to the assault climber course.”

  The Rangers still had their heads on a swivel. We all did. The entire place so far was incredibly creepy. But as far as we could tell there was no other way out of this reservoir. If that was what it was. And straight up… well, that was the way we wanted to go.

  “I’ll go up top,” said Private Soprano. The assistant gunner. He had been to the course and was an assault climber. “Sergente?”

  Kurtz studied him. Soprano was the smallest and probably the most agile. Other than Jabba.

  Kurtz okayed the plan, and Soprano shucked his extra ammo for the two-forty and gave it to me. He made ready to try the rungs, checking his gear and making sure his pistol was secured in the holster and his carbine was well placed and slung across his back. Barrel up. The rest of the Rangers formed a perimeter to make sure we didn’t get suddenly ambushed at any moment.

  By ghosts.

  The air felt tense down here. It was that kind of graveyard place where you know you shouldn’t be. Anything bad could happen at any moment. But hey, that’s the optimist in me talking. There was a breeze coming from somewhere, and despite spending over two hours searching the reservoir for a way out, we never did find the source of that dusty and foul air. Rotten, like it was coming from someplace down below instead of from above where we needed to go.

  “You sure we’re on the right path?” Tanner asked Sergeant Thor. But the big sniper didn’t reply and only continued to watch the misty green darkness all around us. Waiting for those unquiet ghosts. Sure that by rifle or tomahawk, he’d get it done.

  “Clock’s burnin’,” said Kurtz again as Private Soprano got ready to climb. Re-lacing his boots once again. “Now get up to that door, Ranger. When you’re at the top drop a green ChemLight if it’s all clear and we’ll start our ascent. Drop a red one if for some reason the way is blocked or we can’t assault up through there. Got it?”

  Soprano nodded and turned to checking his gear one last time, whispering loudly to me as he finished.

  “Hey. Know why I joined the Rangers, mi amico?” The son of Italian-immigrants-turned-Ranger’s voice was rusty and he was breathing fast. I think he was nervous. And he should be. It was a pretty far climb up to the ceiling to reach the trap door, and if he fell from up there, it would be either death, worst case, or best case, pretty serious injury. And our situation, down here in the dark and crawling around a dusty old tomb full of otherworldly dead, wasn’t the best for someone who was going to need a trauma team and an osteopath.

  “I joined because mia famiglia… see, Talker, we are in… ah… how to put it… we’re in the family business. Back in Sicilia.”

  Ah. I suddenly realized we were doing an info dump. The last will and testament the Rangers had been all about lately. I put on my listening face. But I prefaced that by saying, “You ain’t gonna fall, Soprano. Don’t think about it.”

  Because I sure wouldn’t, I didn’t add. When my turn came, if it did. Falling sucks. Physics don’t care how bad you might get hurt. It’s just math.

  But I said it like I knew for sure he wouldn’t. I didn’t know that, of course. Still, it pays to think positively in dire circumstances down in deep tombs you never thought you’d find yourself in.

  Now he started looping around his body all the climbing gear he could carry up. Rope. D-c
lips. 550 cord. All of it. The Rangers were always ready to climb. That was just second nature.

  “I joined,” he said breathily. His voice rasping in the hushed darkness. “Because my family is part of La Cosa Nostra. Not a big part. Kinda small, in fact. But, you know… back in Sicily we have some very nice action. But… ah… you see, mi amico, we need to expand. My uncles, who are the real bosses, well, it’s like dis… they thought it would be nice if our family hadda some more skills. Violence. Combat. Ambush. That could go a real long way back home. We ain’t so good at that right now. So… Uncle Andrea, he sees Black Hawk Down. The movie, y’know?”

  Yeah. I’d seen that one.

  “And he says to my old man one day, ‘Let’s-a send Giacomo to America and he learna ta be da Army Ranger. Then he come-a back and teacha us how to do the killing. Those guys are real tough.’”

  Makes sense, I thought.

  “Of course my old man was never in the mob. Came to America to escape it. Used to be a carabinieri in town. Ran the desk at the local precinct. He had dreams of me singin’ opera. So he says to me… ‘we come to America, Giacomo, and you learna to sing opera like-a Pavarotti. Okay? Then you never have to join the family business,’ and he means La Cosa Nostra because if I’m a big opera singer and I ever come-a back to Sicily I get a pass. Only real way outta the family is to either be a priest or singa the opera. Sì?”

  He looked up at me and smiled. Satisfied his gear was good to go.

  “You can hear how I sound, Talker. I’m ain’t a good singer, either. But truth is, I kind of wanted to join the family business. My Uncle is watching Blackhawk Down and having dreams, well, I’m watching Goodfellas and doin’ the same thing. Nice suits. Good cars. Lotsa pretty girls. Travel. So I join the Army. Become a Ranger. I learn how to do all the stuff that’s gonna put us on the map back home in Sicily. The family, that is.”

  Soprano pauses to fiddle with his gear. “That’s why I’m doing this, Talker. I wanted go to Ranger School then go back and teach everyone how we can put those Scagliotti in their place. They’re a rival family. Always gave us Sopranos a hard time. So… you know how it is.”

  He spits and then adds, “I can see the look on your face and you think I’m crazy. Put it down in the registrare, anyway, okay?”

  The record.

  I said that I would.

  It didn’t seem to occur to Soprano that the Scagliotti-Camilieri rivalry had probably wrapped up about ten thousand years ago. And for that matter so had the last cycle of Ranger School.

  But why ruin a dream?

  Kurtz was waiting at the bottom of the ancient rungs.

  “This is gonna make-you recommend me for promotion, right, Sergente Kurtz?” asked Soprano as he pulled on the first rung in the wall. Testing it.

  Sergeant Kurtz gave me a rare conspiratorial look and rolled his eyes behind Soprano’s back.

  “Yeah,” he muttered. “Sure thing, Soprano.”

  The little man was about a quarter of the way up the rungs climbing toward the ceiling of the cistern, or whatever this place was, when Tanner whispered to me in the dark. “You know if he was in a regular line unit he’d’a been the guy fillin’ out 4187s for Ranger School in the S-1 every month.”

  The rest of the climb wasn’t hard for PFC Soprano. He moved like a monkey and when there were missing rungs, he had himself up to the next one based on sheer arm strength alone. Pulling himself upward. Impressive considering the amount of gear he was carrying.

  He was way high up now, had to be at least five stories, when he made it underneath the trap door. We watched as he pulled a knife, reversed it, and tapped on the bottom of the lid.

  The soft sound we heard far below had an odd quality to it. Later I’d put two and two together, but at that moment as the little Ranger hung beneath the trap door, balanced on rungs that had been set in the walls who knew how many thousands of years ago, the analysis of the sound wasn’t the first thing on my mind.

  “It’s locked or something,” Tanner suggested. Tanner had great eyes. “Now I think he’s picking the lock.”

  “Where’d he get a lockpicking kit?” asked Kurtz.

  If anyone would’ve asked, I had one. But that was supposed to be a secret. I had a pretty good idea where Soprano had gotten his though. Probably in a care package from back in Sicily. If his career track was leading toward the family business, well, I’d read a few Mediterranean Noir crime novels just to get a feel for French and Italian when I was studying them. Jean Claude Izzo was outstanding. Too bad he only wrote three crime novels before he died. But I was betting the lockpicking kit was courtesy of some Uncle Vito, or something similar.

  You be a good boy and come-a back after you learna everything the Rangers know. Black Hawk Down, mi bambino and all.

  Later I’d learn that most Rangers were skilled in lockpicking and hotwiring vehicles in accordance with the airfield capture missions. Soprano picked the lock in about thirty seconds. Five stories up, loaded with gear, and balanced on a couple of narrow rungs. No mean feat, to say the least.

  “Got it!” he shout-whispered down below to the rest of us.

  Kurtz shushed him.

  Soprano slapped his forehead. Comically of course. Then a thick finger to his lips. But when he spoke again, it was in that same loud comic-whisper.

  “Sergente!” he gestured for us to back away from below. “Sumting’s not right about-a this door. Make-a space, si prega?”

  Please.

  We backed away and then he undid the bottom of the trap door.

  Anyone else up there, and they would have died in what happened next. I was completely convinced of that as a sudden rockslide came pouring out of the trap door. And anyone up there except Soprano… and a bunch of us down below would be dead now too. Crushed by the falling rock that gushed out and onto the floor below where we’d been standing.

  When the dust cleared, I fully expected to see Soprano’s broken body lying among the rockfall. I didn’t. Instead he was hanging by one hand from the ceiling above. He’d found, or made, some place to hang on in order to avoid falling to his sure death below.

  We’d been warned. This place was filled with traps.

  He swung into the trap door and climbed up, disappearing into the dark rectangle above. Two minutes later, a rope came down, dropping onto the floor. Then a green ChemLight tumbled down to us and Kurtz caught it with one gloved hand.

  It was time for us to go up.

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Once the entire team was up and through the trap door in the ceiling of the cistern, which took a while, it was heading on toward 0300 in the morning. All of us were starting to feel the time crunch. If we didn’t make our overwatch position to support the assault on the main gate, that attack was “going pear-shaped,” in Tanner’s words. The Rangers under Captain Knife Hand didn’t have the ammo or manpower to push through. But that wouldn’t stop them from trying.

  The question was… how many more traps and enemies did we have to face down here?

  The answer on the other side of the trap door in the ceiling was almost immediate. One by one, we came up the rope and hauled our gear up. I was one of the last because I’m not that important right now. Let’s face it, no one is interested in starting up a dialogue on relations with anything creepy or crawly we’re going to find down here. At least I was ahead of the Lost Boys in the pecking order.

  As soon as I was through, I saw why the Rangers who’d gone before me were urging quiet and stealth as much as possible on the other side of the high trap door.

  We had found the central well. The one spoken of by the Old Mother. The express elevator to the penthouse suite.

  Or at least, we stood to one side of it. We were in a long hall that ran along one edge of the well, continuing as far as we could see with our enhanced vision. Less a hall and more a gallery. Like some sacred spa
ce of prayer one might find in an old monastery. Or some once-princely castle that had fallen into despair and ruin. Now bare and spartan, cloaked in shadow and gloom. Haunted and forgotten.

  The inner side of the hall opened directly onto the well. The vast and massive well. A virtual canyon of underground dead space. But not round. More like an inverted pyramid of emptiness sunk underground. And across that canyon we could see more halls or galleries over there, layered one on the next like some enormous belowground cityscape. Some sections had caved in and crashed down onto others within the crawling necropolis, revealing the insides of tombs over there. Far away and forever out of reach. And far above, maybe six or seven stories up, loomed the dome described by the Old Mother. It was covered in paintings, like the Sistine Chapel or the Hagia Sophia. But the darkness was such that I, at least, couldn’t make out any details up there, even with the Hunters’ Fellowship.

  It was all utterly fantastic, and bizarrely mesmerizing.

  But none of this was the reason for our quiet and stealth. What had us cautious were the torches in the upper levels moving around the visible sides of the well. Many of them. Moving in masses. And it was here that the Moon Vision of the Hunters’ Fellowship came in handy. It focused on the light sources bobbing up and down among the upper levels, focused and zoomed in, using those torches as anchor points.

  Orcs. And lots of them.

  Far too many of them for us to fight.

  Kurtz was on that immediately.

  He swore first. Then, “We cannot get into a fight down here. Clock’s burnin’ and we gotta make our time hack.” He looked around at everyone, making sure we were reading him clearly. “We’re gonna creep our way through as far as we can. We engage as a last resort. Repeat… only on a hard compromise situation.”

  He looked at me.

  “You. You got that… ring thing. Turns you invisible and all. Right?”