Ancients

by Riley Keene

  Elise smashed her mace across her closest opponent’s chest, the weapon shattering the haft of his polearm. She left a crease in the metal strips across the front of his splint mail armor. The guard fell back, trying to take cover behind the line of his allies, but a bolt of flames crashed into his arm. The metal grew red-hot and he threw himself to the ground with a yelp as he tried to tear away his armor.

  Elise’s shield came up, letting the attacks of her three remaining opponents rain against it. One of the three tried to circle around to send a second thrust in around the side of the shield.

  But he was watching Elise’s mace instead of where he was going. Athala was quick to punish by slamming her quarterstaff into his helmet, even as she shouted with a sharp shriek. The man stumbled away, as much from surprise as the sharp blow.

  Elise swept forward, using the opening to slam her mace into another of the attackers’ heads. Where Athala’s blow had momentarily stunned her target, Elise’s attack sent the soldier to the ground in a boneless heap with a dented helmet.

  Athala’s shriek caught the attention of a couple of Ermolt’s attackers, who turned to abandon their fruitless assault on the heavily-armored barbarian. They focused their polearms toward the wizard.

  Ermolt abandoned his defenses with a bellow of challenge, letting the polearms of the others crash against his armor as his club came around hard at the two who had turned away.

  The blow smashed into the side of one, sending him sliding into the other. The one who caught the swing of the club on his ribs went down hard, dropping his polearm to clutch his chest. The other soldier managed to keep her feet despite the impact of the man against her, but in his fall he tangled in her legs and she yelped as she fell to the floor. Her own weapon bounced out of her hands and skittered away.

  Ermolt paid for his aggression, but not dearly. While most of the polearms that lanced forward to take advantage of the opening failed to land in any of the narrow gaps and instead glanced off his armor, one of them caught in a gap between the plates in his upper thigh. The chainmail stopped the blow from piercing into him, but the strike unbalanced him, and the force of it would likely leave a sizable bruise and a nasty scrape.

  Ermolt swiped his club around, roaring like an enraged animal. The swing smashed the offending polearm to splinters. He caught the soldier who had struck him on the backswing, breaking bones in the man’s forearm and sending him staggering away with a scream of pain.

  The line closed to fill the gap and Ermolt landed a kick to the chest of one of the moving combatants. His heavy metal boot launched that one back into the wounded man, knocking him to the floor with another scream as the kicked man scrambled between the urge to help his comrade and return to the line of combat.

  Ingmar hurled another magic-born dagger down into the melee, snarling orders that went unheard over the din of weapons and armor. It was like he was more grumbling to himself about the incompetence of his forces rather than actually trying to take command of the battle.

  Elise ducked behind her shield and the hurled dagger flew over her head. Elise wondered distantly if he was even trying to aim, or just trying to cause chaos. She lunged forward, slamming her shield into her opponent. The force sent them reeling back to trip over one of the other soldiers already unconscious on the ground. A feint warded the other combatant away as she stepped up into a spinning movement that ended with one foot in the face of the toppled soldier, knocking them out cold.

  Athala began to direct another bolt of flame up at Ingmar, but with barely any hesitation she changed target when a guard charged past her friends, attempting to skewer her on his polearm. The line of flames caught him full in the chest. Most of the flames expended themselves on heating up the thickest part of his armor, but sparks and embers flicked up into his face, causing him to abandon his attack when his hair caught fire. He fell to his knees and began clawing at his helmet. The guard tore the heated metal off and started to beat at his flaming hair.

  Athala took her staff in both hands and brought it down on the back of the kneeling man’s head. The impact of the wooden weapon on his skull sent him to the ground, still conscious, but clutching his smoldering head and gasping in pain.

  Ingmar took advantage of the wizard’s distraction, and his next dagger caught Athala in the chest. The magical dagger didn’t penetrate the chainmail Ermolt had given her, but it still forced her back.

  Now unoccupied, with her previous enemies scattered across the floor, Elise charged the knot of soldiers engaged with Ermolt. He had been forced to fight more defensively again when a lucky strike clipped the side of his face. The line of red was barely a finger-width from the bottom of his eye.

  Elise charged the backs of Ermolt’s attackers, landing two lightning-fast strikes to the backs of the helmets of two of his opponents before they realized she was among them. One of them dropped to the floor face first, but the other only fell to one knee. Ermolt finished the job with a booted foot to the soldier’s face, and they landed on their back, staring blankly at the vaulted ceiling of the large chamber.

  Ingmar’s forces had different ideas of how to deal with the twin threats of Ermolt and Elise. Three of them tried to come together, tightening their formation, while the three on the other side tried to spread out to pen them in and force them together. Ermolt met Elise’s eyes, flicking his gaze towards the clumped group. Elise nodded.

  Ermolt bellowed, turning on the tighter defensive formation, his back to the other three. They lunged forward, but Elise interposed her shield, deflecting their attacks from Ermolt and drawing their attention. Meanwhile, Ermolt’s weapon swept the polearms of the other three aside as they focused in on him. He stepped inside the range of the long weapons, and brought his club straight down, landing the heavy weapon on the shoulder the man standing in the middle. The impact sent him to the floor with a crash and a scream.

  The other two dropped their polearms at last, finally drawing their short swords, using Ermolt’s own tactic against him by pushing forward, placing themselves too close for him to effectively swing his club. But these weapons served only slightly better than their polearms as the blades only left scratches in the fine suit of armor.

  Ermolt dropped his own weapon and grabbed one of the two guards by the shoulders, slamming his forehead down into the smaller man’s nose, shattering it. The man fell to the floor clutching at the fountain of blood in the middle of his face.

  The last soldier grasped her blade with both hands, trying to drive the tip into a seam of Ermolt’s armor. The barbarian twisted at the last moment, letting the weapon drive a deep scratch across his chest plate instead of punching into his armpit. He carried the momentum of the dodge forward, driving his gauntleted fist into the soldier’s face.

  She took one stumbling step back but kept her feet. Ermolt struck again, bringing his other fist around into an upwards blow to her jaw. The impact snapped her head back and sent her to the ground. She pushed herself up onto her elbows for a moment, struggling to regain her senses, and then collapsed.

  Elise held off the other three by focusing on keeping her shield well-positioned, and covering any gaps with a swipe of her mace. When Ermolt picked his club back up and came up behind her, the three she was holding off blinked up at him, looking around at the unconscious, wounded, and otherwise disabled soldiers littering the floor around them.

  With a grin, Elise took advantage of the distraction. She lunged forward, driving her mace into the stomach of one of her opponents. The man doubled over, and she whirled the weapon around to strike him on the top of his head before he could recover. There was a hollow noise and the man slumped to the floor.

  Ermolt bellowed in challenge and raised his weapon, but the other two were already scrambling back when Elise lunged. With Ermolt’s battle shout, they broke into an open run, hurling their weapons aside and running around the dais for the door at the rear of the giant room.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Ingmar turned to sho
ut at the fleeing guards, but his anger was interrupted by a bolt of flame. Athala’s well-placed fire crashed against the altar next to him, sending a wave of heat and embers across his chest. He snarled and ducked beneath the altar, patting at the sparks to keep himself from catching alight.

  Athala found herself trying to catch her breath in the moment of quiet. She wasn’t exhausted yet, but she was still weighted down by this chain shirt. She had no idea how Elise and Ermolt fought in this or more.

  “Surrender!” Elise yelled as she approached the dais. Athala watched her friend warily but rested her arms over her head to help catch her breath. “You’re finished, Ingmar!” He didn’t reply and so the Conscript climbed up the steps to him. Ermolt stayed at the bottom step, keeping a wary eye on the fleeing combatants.

  Before any of them could react, Ingmar shouted out a spell, calling another dagger to his hand. He lunged out from around the altar, his soft soled shoes slipping on the translucent stone only once. Elise was seemingly caught off-guard by the charge, but she was still able to raise her shield in defense. But Ingmar’s aim was not to stab her. Instead, he hit her full on across the chest in a tackle, unbalancing her.

  Elise toppled backwards, failing to catch herself on the steps of the dais, and slid down on her back, Ingmar brought with her. He struggled to keep on top of her as they fell down the stairs and the wriggling caused her to knock her head against one of the steps. She laid at the bottom of the stairs, stunned.

  With Elise and Ingmar so close together, Athala wavered, unable to cast a spell without risking hitting her friend. Athala noticed the magical dagger that Ingmar had dropped and tried to dive for it, but the wizard kicked it away from her grasping hands. He instead formed another spell but this time he slammed his hand to Elise’s breastplate, and Athala could see flecks of frost skitter across the surface. Elise gasped in pain and made the instinctive mistake of grabbing a hold of the metal to try and pull it away from her chest.

  The palms of her hands instantly froze to the icy surface.

  Ermolt was suddenly there, peeling Ingmar off the Conscript and tossing him against the dais. The barbarian then turned to help Elise with her armor. Ingmar impacted with a dull thump as his back hit the stone, but he didn’t hesitate before getting back to his feet.

  “You ruined everything,” he snarled as he leaned forward to pick up the dagger he’d kicked aside. “Why? What has she offered you?”

  Athala hesitated. Who did he mean?

  Ingmar grinned at her confusion and dove forward onto his knees, sliding across the floor. He slammed the dagger into the back of Ermolt’s knee, drawing a roar of pain from him. With a delighted cackle, Ingmar repeated the spell he had used on Elise, immediately turning the metal of Ermolt’s gauntleted hand red-hot.

  The combination of attacks caused Ermolt to drop his weapon and try to leap away from the source of pain. Instead, his leg buckled under him. He fell to the floor, clawing at the heated gauntlet and throwing it off before it could cook his hand. Ermolt snarled in pain, clutching his burnt hand to his chest, the comparatively cooler metal of his armor likely offering some comfort.

  Ingmar called out another spell, but Athala saw the sweat running down his face from the effort of so much magic so quickly. The hollowed ruts under his eyes stood out, and his pallid skin was marked with high bits of color in his cheeks. Athala was surprised at his fortitude—he wasn’t a strong wizard, or even a smart one, but he had her beat when it came to pure depth of magic. He crawled forward towards the still-downed Conscript and raised the newly-conjured dagger as Elise struggled to tear her hands free to defend herself.

  Athala shrieked in combined anger and terror as she charged. Without any martial training, she took to the only route that made sense to her and tackled him. The impact threw him away from Elise, and Athala wrestled with him to try and tear the dagger out of his hands. While he had likely pushed himself to his mental limit with the flurry of back-to-back spells, he was still physically stronger than her. After a brief struggle, Ingmar was on top of her, slowly forcing the dagger down towards her throat while she held it back with both hands.

  “This is all because of you!” Ingmar snarled. Flecks of spittle sprayed across her face. “I’ll kill you!”

  Athala couldn’t respond as she was focused solely on trying to hold the weapon back. The shimmering blade drove ever closer as Ingmar put more of his weight behind it. Ingmar’s expression of rage twisted into a vicious grin as Athala tipped her head back to avoid the point of the weapon cutting open her chin, the blade just about to penetrate into—

  There was a great swooping sound and the pressure slacked on the dagger. The weapon fizzled into guttering sparks of magic as Ingmar’s hands went limp and Athala shoved them away.

  Half a breath later what felt like an ocean of blood splattered directly into her face.

  Athala screamed on instinct. The weight of Ingmar was gone almost instantly and strong hands lifted her up to a seated position. She coughed and spat, rubbing her hands at her face to clear the blood from her mouth and eyes.

  “Are you alright?” Ermolt asked.

  “What—” Athala paused and spat out a mouthful of blood. “What happened?”

  “It’s alright,” Ermolt said, leaning on the club to catch his breath. “He’s gone.”

  “Gone?” Athala finally wiped enough blood from her eyes to blink them open. “Where did he—oh.”

  Athala focused in on Ingmar’s corpse. It lay still on the floor nearby with a ragged stump where his head used to be attached. She followed the trail of blood to see a scattered mess of bone fragments and brain matter, a few fist-sized chunks being the largest parts still intact. She turned back slowly to inspect Ermolt’s club. Bits of flesh and shorn hair stuck to the bloodied head of the weapon.

  “Oh Ermolt,” Athala sighed, immediately forgetting she was covered in blood to instead comfort her friend. “I’m sorry you had to do that.”

  “It’s—I mean,” he took a slow breath. “It’s fine. I’ll be alright. He was a monster. He deserved it.” Ermolt set his jaw, nodding slowly. “This was the only way it could have ended.”

  While Athala couldn’t find fault in that argument, it still didn’t feel right. Something caught her eye and she picked a bit of bone out of her hair and retched.

  “Ugh,” Elise groaned. “That feels so weird.”

  “What happened?” Ermolt asked hurriedly, as if grateful for the distraction.

  “My breastplate is back to normal,” Elise explained, sitting up and touching the metal surface tentatively. “But everything feels all cold and numb still.”

  “Well,” Athala said, using the conversation as a distraction as well, “when a wizard dies, any magic they powered with their own hands is undone. The magic draining the heat from your breastplate vanished, and the natural temperature was restored. But nothing else that was touching it was affected by the magic, so it is still the temperature it was after being in contact with the—”

  “We get it,” Elise said, rubbing her hands together to try and restore feeling. She winced at the tenderness of the nearly frostbitten flesh. “It was magic.”

  “Are you sure you’re alright, Ermolt?” Athala pressed, struggling to get back to her feet. She refused to look at Ingmar’s cooling head or body. He might have tortured her, twice, and tried to kill her, but he was still a person. Still a father.

  Or well, may have been.

  How could she believe the stories he told her? And now that he was dead, how could she confirm them?

  Athala pursed her lips and instead focused on trying to wipe away the blood.

  “I’ll be fine,” Ermolt said. “I’ve done it before, and I will likely do it again. But this wasn’t like the guard. He wasn’t just doing his job. He was trying to murder you.” Ermolt shook himself. “This isn’t like the ones before either. He hadn’t killed anyone. Not anyone I knew about or cared about. But he was going to.” He shrugged. “I guess that makes
it better.”

  “Well, you saved my life.” Athala touched her throat, finding no wound, though she was still spattered with blood. “If you had to kill him to do it, then—” She trailed off and looked over at the headless body, then quickly looked away again. “Then so be it,” she added, her voice small and uneasy.

  “Right then.” Ermolt got to his feet, wincing slightly as he put weight on his injured knee. “Let’s get this spell and get out of here. I could use a real meal and a healing potion or two.” He limped over to his discarded gauntlet, the metal no longer glowing with heat. He tested it with a tentative touch, and then picked it up to put it back on.

  Athala walked up to the altar. She looked over Ingmar’s notes and writing tools that were still spread out, only slightly singed. She was glad she had worked to memorize as much as she could of the spell’s runes. She rummaged through the notes, snatching up a writing implement to make a few notes alongside Ingmar’s for reference.

  “Alright.” Athala nodded, her face still spattered with blood. “Let’s begin.”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  It took about a quarter of a bell more before she actually started the ritual.

  Elise insisted on cleaning Athala up before the blood dried to her face and she was having difficulty administering first aid to Ermolt’s knee while her hands were still tingly and numb, so Athala helped with that.

  The three of them then realized that many of Ingmar’s soldiers were either semi-conscious, or would become so soon, likely before the ritual was completed. Elise set about ripping strips of cloth from the hem of Ingmar’s robe—a final indignity for a monster of a man—so that Ermolt could go around and bind the hands and feet of the fallen fighters to prevent interruption.