by Ben Wolf
“We’ve been consumed,” Coburn said. “Irwin is in here, too, beneath me.”
“Hello?” came Irwin’s muffled voice.
“The… air is toxic,” Coburn said. “I’m… dizzy. Losing vision.”
Garrick realized he could still see the water around him. He knew it was what he was seeing because he could make out the dark, mottled shapes of the room’s stone pillars.
And if he could still see the pillars, maybe they could get out.
A wave of dizziness hit him as well, and spots filled his vision. Whatever gases were in the creature’s belly, they weren’t breathable for long.
“Coburn, knives,” Garrick uttered.
“Can’t reach. No strength. You?”
Garrick’s hands were being sucked in totally opposite directions from Coburn, and it was a strong pull. Maybe too strong. “I’ll try.”
Strength was the one thing Garrick could always count on. He’d always had it, and he always would. He could lift heavier things and inflict more damage with his body than any human or human-hybrid he’d ever met. So now he would call upon his strength once more, hoping it could save him.
Garrick marshaled all of his waning energy and pulled his arms toward him. The creature’s stomach resisted, pulling back, but Garrick strained harder, and his hands slipped back to him with a dull thump.
The stomach immediately closed in on the space where Garrick’s arms had been, but Garrick kept moving. He dug his fingers into the stomach lining, inching down toward Coburn. They fished for Coburn’s body and found his clothes. They crawled through folds of wet fabric until they found the solid hilt of his knife.
All the while, the stomach constricted further, as if aware of Garrick’s plans. But he resisted and tried not to breathe the toxic air.
He grasped the knife and pulled his hand away from Coburn, and he turned the knife toward the creature’s stomach lining. Its sharp point dug in easily, and Garrick drew it in a straight line toward his own face.
The tension in the stomach tightened, quivered, and then released. Garrick kept cutting. Teal water splashed Garrick’s face and chest, and he realized he’d cut straight through to the pool itself. Still dazed from the gases in the creature’s gut, Garrick scrambled for the surface, still holding Coburn’s knife in a death-grip.
His head broke through the water, and he gasped, never more grateful for the musty dungeon air. The dizziness started to fade immediately, and he felt strength returning to his body.
Coburn surfaced next, and Irwin’s head popped above the surface last. They made their way back to the pillars and held on.
“What in the third hell was that?” Garrick asked.
Irwin shook his head. “Nothing I’ve ever seen before. It appeared to be some sort of membranous creature—carnivorous and quite hungry. When it swallowed you, suddenly I could see through its skin very clearly.”
“I think the only reason we survived was because it ate all three of us,” Coburn said. “When it devoured you, you added too much strain to its form, and thus we could then see a way out and cut through it.”
“I just want to know if it’s dead or not,” Garrick said.
“Hard to say for sure,” Coburn said.
“Light in the pool has started to fade. Maybe the creature was the source of the light?” Irwin suggested.
“I doubt it will continue to pursue us, though,” Coburn continued. “Not with a wound the likes of what you just inflicted upon it.”
Coburn’s words reminded Garrick that he was still holding the knife. He extended it. “Here. You may not have done much in the last room, but this little knife just saved all of us.”
“Thank you.” Coburn accepted it. “Where’s your axe?”
Garrick shook his head, infuriated. He’d loved that battle-axe. “At the bottom. I dropped it when it grabbed me.”
“Hold firm,” Coburn said. “The light is unquestionably fading, but there should still be enough…”
He inhaled a deep breath and dove under the water, knife in hand.
“Is he crazy?” Garrick asked. “That thing is still down there!”
“I think you killed it,” Irwin said. “The light is almost out.”
“How could that thing give off enough light to illuminate the whole pool?” Garrick blinked at Irwin.
“I don’t know. And right now I don’t care. I just want to get out of this room.”
A moment later, Coburn emerged from the water and extended a familiar handle toward Garrick. “Allow me to return the favor.”
Garrick pulled his battle-axe out of the water and held it up. It felt good to have it in his hands again. It felt right. Even though he’d only been apart from it for a few minutes, the thought of permanent separation had devastated him.
But no more. He had it back now.
“I’m done soaking. Let’s go.” Garrick affixed the battle-axe to his back again and started to swim.
They managed to get out of the pool within ten more minutes, thanks to Garrick implementing Coburn’s strategy of swimming from pillar to pillar and resting as needed. By the time they were out, the pool’s light had faded to nothing, and the room had gone dark.
Irwin pulled one of his glowing yellow vials from his pack and used it to light the space. They wrung out their wet clothes and checked their inventories to make sure nothing had gotten lost or damaged thus far. Satisfied, they re-dressed and headed into the next room.
As before, a slab rose from the floor behind them, sealing off the darkened pool and whatever remained of the creature they’d slain. But that’s where the similarities to the previous two rooms ended.
Where the previous two rooms were rectangular in shape and featured pillars, hanging lamps, and mounted torches, this room was a circle with no pillars and no light besides Irwin’s yellow vial. The ceiling was considerably lower, and the floor was smooth, black obsidian instead of tile.
Black-and-white marbled stone made up the interior walls. Halfway up each wall, a section of the stone was cut out all the way around, replaced by a ring of black metal. There was no other door that Garrick could see aside from the one they’d entered through, but a dark, circular opening in the center of the ceiling might’ve been another way out.
A huge block of stone lay directly under the opening in the ceiling. As they advanced, the block sharpened into a sarcophagus of some sort. Huge etchings of the ancient Aletians’ symbol adorned its sides and its top.
“No light in here,” Irwin said. “What are we supposed to do?”
“Perhaps there’s a switch somewhere, like in the first room,” Garrick suggested. “Start looking. Do you have more of those yellow vials?”
Irwin passed one to each of them, and they split up to comb the room for answers.
After several minutes of fruitless searching, Garrick brought them back together.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” he said. “The only thing in here is this sarcophagus.”
“Perhaps we should attempt to unearth its inhabitant in search of answers?” Coburn suggested. “If indeed an ancient Aletian resides within, perhaps it holds the key to our escape, whether literal or figurative.”
“I’m not a fan of disturbing the dead, but if we don’t do something, we’ll just end up joining their ranks,” Irwin added.
“Hold this, and step back.” Garrick handed his vial back to Irwin. He stood at the end of the sarcophagus and curled his fingers under the lip of the lid. He straightened his back, crouched down, and lifted.
The stone scraped, and Garrick’s muscles strained. The lid was heavy—it probably weighed a little more than the granite altar they’d moved in the temple—but he was making progress.
As he lifted, Garrick walked the lid to the side, twisting it along the edges of the sarcophagus to create enough of an opening to look inside. If he tried to take the lid all the way off, it weighed enough that he’d never manage to get it back in place again.
With some more pu
shing and positioning, he managed to get the lid turned perpendicular to the sarcophagus at one end. He motioned for light, and Irwin scampered over with a vial in-hand. Together, they leaned over the sarcophagus on one side, and Coburn leaned over the other.
The yellow light shined on a hulking corpse not swaddled with burial dressings, but decay had certainly taken its toll on its body. When it had been alive, it had probably rivaled Garrick for size—or perhaps it was even larger. Based on how Garrick had positioned the lid, they couldn’t see the corpse’s head, but they could see from the middle of its chest down to its feet.
Black skin and flesh covered portions of the body, but plenty of bone showed through the remains of its tattered clothes. A large, long-handled hammer lay next to the body with its head near the feet which were clad in leather boots, still surprisingly intact, given the state of the rest of the corpse.
But by far, the corpse’s most striking feature was the golden key embedded in its chest.
The skin and flesh had worn away around its ribcage, and gold glinted up at them in the yellow light from the vial. The key was easily as long as Irwin’s head and neck combined, and it hung down just below the sternum.
“Well, I’d say we’ve discovered our way out, one way or another,” Coburn said. “I don’t surmise he has any further use for it. Shall I…?”
Garrick nodded. “By all means.”
“Hold the light closer, if you would, please.”
Irwin complied, and Coburn reached into the sarcophagus.
As Coburn’s fingers touched the golden key, the corpse’s dead hand latched onto his wrist.
“What the—” Coburn started. He managed to jerk his hand free, but the corpse kept moving.
They all backed away from the sarcophagus, and Garrick raised his battle-axe.
“What did you do?” he snapped at Coburn.
“You were watching the whole time,” Coburn fired back. “The key is bewitched. Accursed…”
“Booby-trapped,” Irwin finished for him.
The bones in the sarcophagus rattled against the inside of the stone, louder and louder, more and more violently. Then a pair of decayed hands reached up and pushed on the edge of the lid. Then another pair joined them.
Garrick couldn’t believe his eyes. Whatever the thing in there was, it had four arms instead of two. It must’ve been lying atop its other arms; otherwise Garrick would’ve seen them when they found the key.
The arms hefted the lid off the sarcophagus with ease, and the lid skidded off the top and smashed to pieces on the stone floor. Instead of sitting upright and climbing out, the thing demolished one of the sarcophagus’s stone walls with its legs and arms, and then it rose to its full height with its hammer in two of its four hands.
Garrick studied every inch of it, trying to identify potential weaknesses. Aside from possibly the key in its chest, he couldn’t readily identify a single one.
But what he could identify was what the thing was—sort of. Aside from being a decayed, undead corpse with four arms, it also had two heads. And both of them were bulls’ heads, each with two long horns jutting out from their sides.
“What in the name of the gods is that?” Coburn asked.
“A minotaur?” Irwin offered. “A bull’s head on a man’s body, but with two heads?”
“So… a duotaur?” Garrick suggested.
Coburn and Irwin both nodded.
All around them, the black metal ring set into the walls ignited with brilliant yellow-orange flames, providing ample light for the room. The duotaur’s heads barked a dissonant moo-grunt, and its boots burst apart, revealing cloven hoofs for feet and the reverse-jointed legs typical of livestock.
The golden key gleamed in its chest.
“How do we kill it?” Coburn asked.
“Only one way to find out,” Garrick said.
“I really hope this is the last room,” Irwin muttered. “Do we use the black vial?”
Against a foe like this, the black vial might’ve made sense, but Garrick shook his head. “It might damage the key. We can’t risk it. We need it to access the treasure.”
The duotaur twirled its hammer between its four arms in a brilliant display of proficiency, transferring it from hand to hand as if it weighed nothing. But it had to weigh more than Garrick’s battle-axe—mostly because the duotaur stood a solid three inches taller than him, not including its horns.
Wielding that kind of weapon and moving the sarcophagus slab as easily as the duotaur had meant it was stronger than Garrick. And the way it moved the hammer suggested it could be a better fighter, too.
If Garrick couldn’t rely on his strength and his berserker rage, he might have to find a way to be quicker than the duotaur—as odd as that sounded to him. Coburn and Irwin would move faster than the duotaur for sure, but Garrick doubted he’d be fast enough to make a difference.
Worse still, that hammer could deal significant damage to Garrick in ways that conventional weapons couldn’t. His skin could deflect cuts and resist stabs from sharp objects, but the crushing force of a hammer could reduce his bones to powder. His enhanced healing abilities could only repair so much.
Garrick had to err on the side of caution; he had to fight smart, especially since he had to do the majority of the fighting himself.
“I’ll take the brunt of his fury.” Garrick removed his pack from his back and tossed it aside. “Don’t let him get close to you. Just support me from the sides as you can.”
Coburn and Irwin nodded, and Garrick motioned the duotaur forward.
But the duotaur charged toward Coburn and Irwin first, and they dove out of its path. It slowed to a halt, then it pivoted on its hooves and charged again, this time toward Garrick.
He moved aside as well, and the duotaur barreled past him, but it lashed its hammer at him in a wicked backhanded swing as it passed him by. He barely managed to get his battle-axe up in time to deflect the blow. It sent painful quivers ratcheting up into Garrick’s arms and sent him staggering back a step.
Imagine if he’d hit you instead, Garrick told himself. Can’t let that happen.
When the duotaur turned back, Garrick got his first clear look at its heads in the light from the fires encircling them.
Like the rest of the duotaur’s body, decay marred its faces. One of the heads had only one eye and was missing half of the facial tissue by its mouth, revealing twin rows of plaque-rimmed teeth. Strips of blackened flesh dangled from its chin and jawline along with its hair.
The other head was missing a chunk of skin just to the left of the center of its forehead, and its absence spread over the base of its horn. In lieu of a cow’s meaty nose, pointed nasal cavity bones jutted out from a tear in the center of its face.
Its appearance didn’t bother Garrick for what it was. What bothered him was that some practitioner of dark magic had seen fit to steal the essence of two healthy minotaurs only to then merge them into an even more freakish monstrosity—all for the sake of guarding whatever treasure lay within this dungeon.
It twisted Garrick’s stomach that people in Aletia had not only the will to perform such heinous acts but also the capability to carry them out. Even so, he chided himself for his thoughts. Lord Valdis was a practitioner of dark magic as well. Perhaps he was being overly judgmental.
His thoughts on the ethics of duotaurs and dark magic dissipated as the beast charged again. This time, Garrick seized the opportunity to deal a blow of his own. As the duotaur blasted toward him, Garrick ducked low and swung his battle-axe hard at the duotaur’s stampeding hooves and ankles. If he could disable it, then—
CLANG.
The hammer’s head met his battle-axe mid-swing, then a heavy pain lit up the side of Garrick’s face.
Garrick fell to his side, stunned, as the duotaur’s charge slowed to a halt. Then it began to turn around.
What had happened? The hammer head had blocked Garrick’s battle-axe—had the duotaur hit him with the hammer’s pommel?
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His tongue felt something hard inside his mouth, followed by the tangy, metallic taste of copper. Garrick spat a globule of red blood into his hand along with a tooth. His tooth. His tongue searched his top row of teeth and found an open space where his first molar had been not five seconds earlier.
Garrick tossed the tooth aside. He’d regrow another one in a few weeks, but the duotaur would pay for it.
The familiar rush of fury heated Garrick’s chest, and he shifted his grip on his battle-axe. Maybe a rage-fueled attack was in order after all.
Once the duotaur had reset and prepared to charge, a red vial smacked into the side of his leftmost head and shattered. It kindled into fire and ignited the duotaur’s left head, left shoulders, left arms, chest, and back with blazing fire.
The duotaur groaned and writhed, but it didn’t lose its balance or stumble. The fire spread to its right head, but by then, three of its four arms had started patting the flames out with quick smacks, leaving singed hair and charred flesh behind.
With its heads smoking and more of its skin gone thanks to Irwin’s vial, the duotaur looked even worse than when it had first set upon them. Interestingly enough, though, Garrick caught a whiff of what smelled like steak searing over open flames, and his stomach responded with a low growl.
Later. When this was all over, he’d treat himself to a fine meal of steak, potatoes, and ale. But for now, he had an undead duotaur to take down.
Before the duotaur could charge again, Garrick rushed toward it with his battle-axe raised high. He swung it hard at the duotaur’s midsection, a blow that would’ve cleaved any human in half.
But the duotaur effortlessly blocked the attack with the shaft of his hammer and lashed two of his fists at Garrick’s head. Garrick ducked under the punches and backed up, ready to swing his battle-axe again, but he had no time.
Instead, Garrick sidestepped a devastating overhead blow that fractured the obsidian floor, and he swung his battle-axe again. Unable to block Garrick’s attack, the duotaur stepped back, and Garrick’s swing missed it entirely.
