The Failed Fellowship

by Michael R. Underwood

  Qargon led on even as their choice of paths multiplied exponentially.

  "This is the main tunnel—you can tell from the finished ceiling." The dwarf lifted the torch to illustrate his point. The main tunnel was not only larger than the side pathways, but the roof and side walls were mostly jagged edges rounded off, leaving an uneven-but-cultivated look.

  Lights emerged from the tunnels, drowning out Qargon's torchlight.

  "Get ready," Qargon said, pulling a hand axe from its loop at his belt. "Stick together; don't let them isolate you. And avoid their bites."

  "They what?"

  "The ants," Qargon said. "They're controlled by the hive blooms. Made to be slaves to the fungus and ensure its spread. They were one of the simpler but more dangerous creations of the Fungal Lords. Hit them wrong and they'll explode; spores will get into your lungs. Then you become one of them."

  "That's not the least bit terrifying." Leah drew her sword. "I'll keep them busy and you smite them?"

  Mallery brandished her mace. "A fine plan."

  The ants’ rustling grew louder.

  "Here they come," Roman said, his voice brightening with the coming battle.

  ———

  Roman drew his shorter sword and a hammer. The narrow tunnels made his larger weapons impractical. He could use the greatsword as a spear, but that'd only keep them at bay for so long. "No chance we can outrun them?"

  Qargon laughed. "As much chance as a cask of mead staying sealed after a battle."

  “Understood." Roman pulled the kerchief around his neck up, refolding it as a crude mouth guard. He took a wide stance, lowering his center of gravity to receive a charge and to free up some overhead space.

  Staccato sounds of legs on stone echoed through the tunnels, growing louder by the moment.

  Mallery said, "I'm going to try to shut some of them off." Chanting rose from behind Roman as he watched glowing figures approach.

  Each of the ants was three meters long, standing a meter and a half at the shoulder. Fungal blooms dotted the grey-furred ants' bodies in an irregular pattern, but most had blooms emerging from their heads.

  Leah had burst into song, a tune of strength and valor. Roman felt his already-powerful moves enhanced by the bardic magic. It felt not unlike being back in his home world, where the very nature of reality in the story region helped guide his aim and bolster his stamina. But it was not the same, didn't come with the same sense of obligation and being boxed in.

  It was just power, and he'd use every bit of it to protect people and do his job.

  Roman chucked a hand axe at an oncoming ant. The blade cleaved into the mushroom-dominated head, and the creature slowed but then kept coming, its movements more jerky.

  "Do we need to watch out for spores?" Leah asked.

  "Worry about tha..." The sounds of steel on chitin rose from Qargon's direction, swallowing the dwarf's words.

  Roman focused on the battle before him. The ants were more than big enough to bowl him over if given the chance. So, he'd have to make sure they didn't get the chance.

  He swung the hammer at the ant's probing leg, batting it aside. He grabbed the axe out of its head when the thing turned its maw. He kicked and swung and pushed the thing back, standing his ground, then dove to the side when another fungus-taken ant barreled out of a tunnel, leaping at him.

  Roman pushed off the side of the tunnel, turning to face the new attacker. The ant lashed out with its front legs, catching Roman across the back and forcing him to the side. The fungus-ridden ant opened its maw, and Roman led with his blade, head down as the sword pierced the creature's maw and then cracked through its head, scattering spores.

  He slid out from under the beast as it collapsed, but the sword didn't come with him. He drew a knife and continued, slicing the air to hold off another.

  "Two down, two coming," Roman said, passing the information back.

  "Three back here," Qargon answered.

  Light blazed from Mallery's shield. "Keep them back just a minute longer and I will have a solution for a half-dozen."

  A minute was a long time in a fight. Roman filled the tunnel as best he could while still being able to move. The ants were big enough that they could only come two at a time, barring new attackers from overwhelming the heroes all at once.

  But they just. Kept. Coming.

  Roman wove a defensive pattern, but since he was forced to use his shorter weapons, the ants could counterattack more easily. He left the knife in a spore-free shoulder and stepped back to slide the longsword off his back. He'd be restricted to short cuts and thrusts, but it was three times the reach. And now that he knew how they moved...

  Longsword in hand, he cut into the ants' movements and jabbed the tip at them to punish any advances.

  He speared one through the head, shearing the fungal bloom with it. The creature dropped to the floor beside its companion, filling the tunnel. Roman lunged forward, blade first.

  And missed.

  The ant dipped under his blow and bowled him over.

  And then kept going. Roman took a hand off the sword and grabbed a leg.

  The creature dragged him along the ground, twitching its leg as it went. The result was total disorientation. He lost all sense of up and down.

  But he did know one direction: where the ant's leg was. He dropped the longsword and drew another dagger, then brought his dagger-holding wrist to the one holding on for dear life and, using one hand as a brace, started cutting the ant's leg off.

  Leah shouted the chorus of her song, sword whipping through the air as she held the creature at bay.

  Roman sheared through the leg, and the creature bellowed, spores spreading from its blooms.

  "Watch the spores!" He rolled back and got to his feet. He plucked the longsword off the ground and spun it in a short half-cut that took off another leg. That was enough to get the ant's attention. He scuttled crab-wise, putting his back to the pile of dead insects.

  The ant followed the threat that had just harmed it, putting its back to Leah. She slashed straight through the thing's abdomen, a perfect cut that caused the thing to shriek, a cloud of spores shaking free from each of the creature's blooms.

  Roman stabbed the ant's maw, then a short slice to chop off the main plume.

  Another one down.

  Within a heartbeat, another creature crawled past the pile of ants and pounced for Leah.

  Chapter Ten

  Heroic Travel Montage, Part Two

  Nolan the swordsman was easy to find. To start, the town of Hammett was barely worth the name—literally one crossroads with a building at each corner: one tavern, one church, one general store, and one smith to support the dozens of farms in the area.

  They stabled the horses at the tavern and walked inside. The tavern was tiny room for maybe thirty, but most of the tables were empty. They'd dodged three more patrols between Ag'ra and there, each between ten and twenty strong.

  The tavern being empty made it all that much easier to find their missing swordsman bent over the bar, drunk as a kid on their twenty-first birthday.

  Nolan wore an unassuming longsword in a worn scabbard leaning against the bar beside him. From the nicks and dings on the hilt, King guessed that sword had seen regular use for most of a decade, if not more.

  King stood back and let Xan'De approach his companion.

  The big foreigner filled the room with his booming voice. "How many drinks is that? I will gladly catch up, but I need to know where to start."

  Nolan turned, eyes red, unfocused.

  "What?"

  King and Shirin settled up with the tavern owner, a man named Rangel, room and board for all four of them.

  He left Xan'De to speak with his friend. No need to complicate the situation. With the party reassembling, he and Shirin could step back, let the story take its course, nudging it here and there. Stories wanted to resolve, wanted to fix themselves. He just hoped that the rest of the team was having as easy a time of it wit
h the Hammer.

  ———

  When the St. Bernard–sized ant jumped for Leah's face, she didn't have the time to panic, or think, or do anything other than what her training told her to do. So, without thinking, in between verses of her song of battle, Leah took a step the side and cut into the creature's mandibles and shoulder, cleaving into a leg at the end of her cut.

  The fungal ant dropped to the ground, blackened half-congealed blood dripping to the tunnel floor.

  Her fencing background made her a very combat-ready bard, and thanks to weeks of practice, now she could sing and fight with nearly no problems.

  Leah spun the blade over her head and cut again. Her instinctive move had left Mallery without further cover. The cleric was deep in battle-prayer, invoking lances of faith and divine shields and all that good stuff that was helping them stay ahead of the as-of-yet unending stream of ants.

  And they just kept coming. A small armory lay scattered on the tunnel floor around Roman, all of the blades he'd thrown, dropped, or lost in the thick chitin of the fungal insects. Brain-jacked ants probably would not respond to her biting wit, even with the bardic magic behind it.

  But if she lost her handy-dandy side sword, all she had was her lute and a knife in her boot. Sword it was.

  Mallery finished a spell, and before Leah's eyes, four of the ants up the tunnel sank into the rock, vanishing as if beneath choppy waves.

  At that, the other fungi seemed to decide to cut their losses. The brain-jacked ants broke and ran, disappearing into the tunnels, leaving behind the corpses of the fallen and sprinkles of spores spotting the floor.

  "That was a right cracking fight, wasn't it?" Qargon wiped his axe off on a spore-less portion of an ant's abdomen. "Good to know you lot are worth your salt in a battle. Good moves, there. Don't take much to magic myself, even gods' magic, but right handy to have around in a pinch."

  "Everyone okay?" Roman asked, pulling down the do-rag he'd used as a filtering mask.

  "All limbs present and accounted for,” Leah said. "Well done, Sister Mallery."

  "Felur’s earth blessings are versatile. But I won't be able to use that one again today."

  Qargon lit his torch once more and pointed down-tunnel. "Well, for now we're safe. Best get moving, case anything else rattling around the tunnels thinks this is a good time to pile on. Scavengers and the like. Follow me."

  ———

  Nolan and Xan'De agreed that the best place to look for Alaria was in the darkest, nastiest back alleys of Yordin, the port city to the southwest of the capital. Which meant a swift ride across the bulk of Fallran.

  They dodged patrols, getting very handy at predicting their schedules. And when the skeletons were off book, Shirin's incantations and the blessings of Felur protected them.

  Which meant that a week into their ride across the peninsula, they were getting pretty bored. Xan'De and Nolan rode together. The two men, though from vastly different backgrounds, got on in the way that King associated with old compatriots. Shorthand, abundant in-jokes, and a great deal of nonverbal communication. He gave them their space, let them take the lead.

  The latest report from Leah, Mallery, and Roman indicated that they'd gone underground, guide in place, bound for the Hammer of K'gon.

  No further word from Ioseph about the state of the army.

  Now more properly seen as the resistance. The skies of Fallran still ran purple, nights longer each day even as they headed into summer. Each day, the Night-Lord's hold on the land grew stronger. But that was the way the story went. It was always darkest before the dawn; the cycle had to run its course before the heroes could rise up and cast down the evil overlord. All running textbook so far.

  Which was why he worried. Since the spring and just before Mallery's mishap on Western World, none of their cases had run this smooth. If the forecasters were to be believed, the weight of popularity helped the story here progress as it should. The beats of a heroic quest were as popular and widely known as ever. Fantasy had become so popular, it now had its own reality TV shows, on top of the millions watching the latest fantasy epic on premium cable.

  There'd be a reckoning when they touched back down in HQ, but that was a problem for later. The team didn't need to know that he'd fabricated the flight plan and deployment order. The mission came first, and King would handle the repercussions.

  Chapter Eleven

  The Buried Kingdom

  After another long day of walking, some walking, and more walking, Qargon led the team into a vast cavern.

  The view took Mallery's breath away, and it made no signs of coming back.

  The claustrophobic tunnels opened up to a massive cavern, carved with precision and beauty into the living stone.

  And before them, though marred by many hundred tons of rock-fall, was the Fortress of K'gon.

  Mallery tried to imagine the subterranean city as it had been, lit by bioluminescent stone fixed in the firmament of rock above the city, glittering lights in an infinite rainbow approximating white light filling the cavern like daylight. The expert craftsmanship of the city, every stone a masterwork, made with care and precision and love, a calling card and story to be recounted for generations to come.

  Even a half-mile away from the main building, she could discern the detail, gargoyles and embellishments and entrancing fractal designs, older versions of what she'd seen on the surface, like the difference between early and late Byzantine imperial architecture. Her mind chewed on the differences between the styles, then she put it aside and focused again. This wasn't the time to stop and gawk. Especially because Leah was.

  She stepped back and got Leah's attention, breaking her from her awestruck state.

  "Beautiful, right? But we need to keep going."

  Leah shook it off and looked ahead. "Right. Sure."

  Back on track, Mallery's mind tried to turn back the clock, removing piles of boulders and shattered buildings, and imagining the pristine city it had once been. K'gon's masterpiece would never recover, even if the dwarves did manage to reclaim the city.

  "How did this city fall?" Mallery asked, neck still craned up to take in the city, ruined though it was.

  "Our folly. Hubris, like most of the ending of dwarven epics. We expanded throughout the foundation of the world, continued to explore and expand, ever-new canvases of stone and steel we could use to reflect our brilliance, refine our craft. But we weren't the only beings to make our homes here below. The kings of dwarven lands came to be rivals, turning their backs on one another in pursuit of glory and immortality through craft and deeds. So, when one kingdom came under attack and called for help, the besieged king's cousins did not answer. And one by one, the under-kingdoms fell, until it was too late. The descendants of K'gon and Varek fled to the surface, abandoning the great subterranean cities."

  "And how long ago was that? Didn't the dwarves figure it out after the first kindgoms fell?" Leah asked.

  "Dwarves aren't known for our quick changes in judgement. We bear grudges like another art form, and our royalty live a long, long time. Some tales say the early kingdoms to fall succumbed nearly as much due to betrayal and long knives as they did to the creatures of the deep darkness."

  "Shit," Leah said. "I'm sorry. To lose places like this, to lose your home..."

  Mallery thought of her relatives that had fled the USSR, others that had barely escaped the Holocaust. It seemed like her people were always being chased out of home after home. It wasn't a fate she wished on anyone, even in her darkest hours, fleeing from the anti-Semitism that flared up on the Internet and daily life. She'd tried bitterness on from time to time, but it always left her hollowed out.

  Unfortunately, Fantasy World was no stranger to bitterness and vengeance. It followed the same zero-sum approach so many people on Earth had: grudges between peoples, back and forth, until everyone goes down at once.

  Qargon led the party down the pathway to a long bridge over a chasm, one of three such bridges, each leadi
ng to a fortified corner of the fortress. One bridge had crumbled under the weight of the cave-in, and another had a thirty-foot gap in the middle.

  The bridge before them was intact but covered in rubble, dozens of pieces that earned the label of “boulder”.

  "This is my cue," Mallery said. "Everybody get close. And hold hands. Thinking positive thoughts would not hurt, either. The spell will let us pass through rock, but since we're standing on rock, it requires concentration, and active attention to which rock you want the spell to let you pass. Hold my hand, and even if you falter, I'll catch you." She added in a wink for Leah. Even in a crowd, she tried to make Leah feel special, to not forget their nascent relationship even as they focused on work. They couldn't just switch it on and off. If this was going to work, they'd have to find a way to be partners in both ways at the same time without compromising the mission.

  Qargon offered Roman a meaty hand. "It's a damn sight better than trying to bring an excavating team. Bring a group of fifty, we'd have lost ten to the ants, another ten to their spores, and the size of the party would have attracted a deep burrower. This is better, as long as your magic holds up."

  Leah grabbed Mallery's hand on one side and Roman's on the other.

  Mallery chanted in Fantasy World's version of Not-Latin, her hands twisting and dancing in ritual motion.

  "Mighty Felur, hear your humble agent in this world as she requests your blessing and grant of passage through these trials."

  Pure white light beamed from her holy symbol. Her tabard stirred like she was standing in a wind tunnel. Mallery's body filled with the certainty and power of Felur, as great a high as a standing ovation from a sold-out house.

  She focused that power into the blessing they would need to make their way through the stone.

  "Focus on standing still."

  Mallery's ears popped, and she felt her footing begin to slip into the rock. It felt less like quicksand and more like sticking her feet in hot water after a long day of dancing. She focused, and her feet stopped and stabilized. She lifted her feet and visualized herself stepping on the stone, and so she did.