by Dante King
“Of course,” the Chaos Mage said. “Especially one as slender and fat-free as our lovely Mallory here.”
“Okay, that’s decided then. We go to the Garden of Ward and Curse first, then to the Hall of Monsters and Demons,” I said.
Leah slurped up the last of her tea. “Oh goody. Doesn’t that sound like just the outing to relax and unwind?”
Mallory got to her feet and reached out a hand to cup Gertrude’s wrinkled cheek. “Thank you, as always, for your help, Inscriber Gertrude.”
“A pleasure, my dear,” the old lady said, sitting back comfortably in her chair. “Try not to barge back in too loudly when you return.”
“We’ll do our best,” I said. “Fingers crossed we won’t be on the run from anything or anyone.”
* * *
It took us the best part of an hour to fetch up outside the door that Mallory told us opened onto the staircase of eleven-hundred steps. We’d had to combine all our guile and stealth with Mallory’s knowledge of the Castle of Ascendance to make it to the staircase. The Castle of Ascendance was surprisingly lightly guarded, but from what Mallory told us, that was out of the Queen’s aesthetic tastes rather than due to a lack of men.
“Queen Hagatha views the Castle of Ascendance as her ancestral home,” Mallory said in hushed tones as we waited for a troop of four armored guards to pass our shadowy hiding place by, “and not a military barracks. She is correct, of course. It is her ancient family seat, but it is an ancient family seat with its own private army.”
“What you’re saying is that, while we might not be able to see many soldiers right now, they’re waiting to come swarming out of the woodwork should the alarm be raised?” I asked.
“Yes, that’s right,” Mallory said. “Our footfalls must be feather-light, our eyes keen, and our ears sharp if we wish to get in and out without causing a stir.”
We slipped inside the doorway that led to the stairs. There was no one around, no guards posted at the bottom. No one.
“Is anyone getting that uneasy feeling that, I think, the poets would describe as boding ill?” Leah asked casually.
“A little,” Mallory admitted.
Privately, my sense of foreboding was coming more from the copious amount of stairs that we were going to have to climb. Eleven-hundred steps was no small feat, especially when I considered that, most likely, we were going to have to fight something fairly dangerous at the end of them. I doubted the second relic would be attained by simply completing a trial of intense cardiovascular exercise.
Eleven-hundred and eleven steps… The Empire State building had roughly fifteen hundred if my memory served.
“There’s nothing to be gained by waiting around, I guess,” I said. “Let’s get on.”
All three of us were puffed and aching when we reached the top of the stairs. We stood, breathing heavily for a moment, hands on knees. Even Mallory, who was usually composure personified, dabbed the back of her hand to her forehead to wick away a bit of perspiration.
“Jeez, you’d have calves of steel if you worked that into your daily workout routine,” I said.
“Ew,” Leah said, “don’t mention the r-word around me, if you’d be so kind, honey-nuts. It’s the antithesis of my being.”
Mallory gave a little breathless laugh. “That should be the Chaosbane aphorism,” she said. “‘Clan Chaosbane: The Antithesis of Routine.’”
“I’ll talk to Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock about it,” Leah said. “It would look good on a seal, wouldn’t it?”
“Speaking of aphorisms,” I said, pointing behind the two women, “how does that one strike you?”
Mallory and Leah swiveled their heads.
Behind them, set into the wall where a door should have been, was a thin crack. Above this crack, which passed as the entrance to a passage that I presumed must lead to this Garden of Ward and Curse, was a short, cheerful message cut into the stone:
LONELINESS IS LIFE’S GREATEST CURSE.
LONELINESS MAKES EVEN GIANTS SMALL.
“That sounds hopeful,” Leah said acidly.
I reread the inscription above the looming crack. It did not, as the poets might have said, bode well.
I started to wonder what it might mean. It was not as if these sorts of legends were carved into stonework on a whim. There had to be a reason for it.
I sighed. It didn’t take too much imagination to guess what the words might allude to. I looked at the crack in the wall. I was fairly broad and tall, and it would probably give me just enough room to maneuver my way through. The ladies would fit easily enough, but there was no chance that any of us would be able to walk abreast down there.
“Loneliness is life’s greatest curse,” I muttered,
Not much could be seen down the passageway from the entrance of the crack. It was too meandering, and the view was quickly obscured.
Still, if I had learned one thing from my time in the magical world of Avalonia, it was that shit rarely got less hectic just because you waited around to think about it a little more. Better to rip off the bandaid, even if it might turn out to be attached to your nutsack with superglue.
“Allow me to go first, ladies,” I said.
I stepped sideways into the crack in the wall and wormed my way into the space beyond.
Immediately, a horizontal portcullis of slithering metal vines, which looked more like razor wire than anything organic, snaked out from one side of the crack’s opening. The vines squirmed across the aperture and anchored themselves in the rock of the other side, cutting me off from my two companions.
Leah looked up at the inscription above the crack and snapped her fingers. “Loneliness,” she said. “Loneliness is a bitch.”
I turned to face the unknown of the rough-hewn corridor. I conjured my black crystal staff into my hand with a thought.
“I’m going on,” I said to the two women over my shoulder. “See you when I see you. Any last words of wisdom for me?”
“Yes,” Mallory said solemnly. “Know that caution isn’t just for the timid. It can be a useful tool. But like any tool, you have to know when to use it and when to drop it.”
“Yeah,” Leah said. “I always find it helpful to remember that there’s just no fun in tiptoeing through life just so that you reach death nice and safely at the end of it, is there? Was that helpful?”
“As a trapdoor on a canoe,” I said. “Be right back.”
I squeezed myself through the narrow passageway, the ends of my staff scraping and tapping along the stone. It was a very narrow ravine alright, tight and winding.
“Designed so that cocky idiots like you can get in,” I said to myself, “but whatever the hell’s lurking down here can’t get out, I bet.”
I could feel the tension starting to rise in my guts. I wasn’t afraid, mind you. I hadn’t been properly scared for a long time. Ever since I landed in this insane world, really. However, there was definitely a familiar blend of excitement and curiosity beginning to spread out from my stomach.
My imagination, regardless of all I could do, began ruminating and hypothesizing on what exactly might be lurking in wait for me at the end of this damned skinny passageway. It was one of the crosses that anyone living in Avalonia had to bear, I supposed, knowing and being able to picture a whole smorgasbord of giant, hairy, slimy, toothy, multi-legged pains in the asses that would like nothing better than to gobble you down.
Being scared of monsters, though, in this fantastically dangerous environment, would be like a gynecologist having an aversion to bearded clams.
A glimmer of light up ahead hinted at the narrow fissure coming to an end. Sure enough, when I reached it, the passageway suddenly opened out into a fairly big open space. I stopped at the very end of the passage, making sure I was still enfolded in the shadows. The last thing I wanted to do was set off any other wards that might be a landslide of fecal matter raining down on my head before I was ready.
In front of me was the Garden of Ward and Curse
.
In truth, I thought that it could have used a bit of a wash and brush up. A little TLC from a landscaper that knew his business.
It was a circular area, surrounded by waist-high stone walls. At first glance, it reminded me of that scene in The Fellowship of the Ring, when Frodo and the rest of the hobbits are accosted by the Ringwraiths on the top of Weathertop. There was a dilapidated feeling to the place; tumbled stone and tussocky weeds growing up through cracked stone.
There was a pool in the middle of the garden. It was so still that it might have been painted on the ground, like one of those cool illusions that people draw with chalk or paint on sidewalks. Even the slight breeze blowing over the parapets of the tower did not stir it. The water was flat and dull, and only the reflection of a smattering of stars gave it any semblance of reality.
Stars?
I looked up and caught my breath. I hadn’t really noticed it at first, as you so often don’t take note of the most obvious things, but the night sky was spread across me like a veil. I knew I was standing on top of the tower that we had just climbed, but there was no way that it could be nighttime. Leah and I had arrived almost first thing in the morning. It could only just be lunchtime now, if that.
An enchantment then. A way to disorientate the lonely adventurer. To compile the exhaustion that they were expected to feel after ascending that fucking staircase.
The stars, in contrast to the gloomy pool and gardens, shimmered in a way that made me feel as if I was at the business end of an acid trip.
I puffed out my cheeks, shrugged my shoulders, and mentally touched the mana reserve that all mages carried deep within themselves. My father’s crystal staff felt good in my hands; familiar.
I had one last scan of the area.
Everything looked quite serene and boring. No sign of any prowling nasty. No bones or arbitrarily discarded lumps of meat. As secret relic gardens went, this was most definitely one of the less diabolical and sinister looking ones that I might have imagined.
Nevertheless, in my admittedly brief but varied experience, it was precisely at moments like this that I could almost guarantee I was about to be shit-fanned.
I cracked my neck and rolled my shoulders, loosening the muscles. Magic tingled in my palms and itched at the back of my throat. I could feel the pulse thudding, strong and heavy, in my chest.
Still alive, baby.
Not being one to play things by convention, I cleared my throat and bellowed, in a throaty roar, “Honey, I’m home!”
Even though the garden was at the top of a tower and open to the air, the acoustics were phenomenal. My voice bounced and rang around the cracked stone pillars for what felt like a full twenty seconds. It was extremely satisfying. Iron Maiden could’ve put the show of the century on in that little al fresco amphitheater.
A deep growl resonated from out of the murk.
“Here we go,” I said to myself.
A dog emerged from behind a large clump of ratty weeds.
Now, to make a clean breast of things, it was a big dog. A very large dog indeed. Like Rottweiler sized. It was the kind of dog that looked like it was powered mostly by the need to shred the flesh off anything or anyone it encountered. The kind of dog that junkyard dogs aspired to be when they grew up. It was an animal made to kill; yellow teeth, psychotic red eyes, and fur that looked more like the bristles you might find on the Calydonian boar.
A hellhound, though of a variety I had not encountered before.
Still, though, after all the shit that had tried to have me for lunch, it was just a dog.
I took a couple of steps into the cavern. Behind me, another horizontal portcullis snapped across the passage entrance, barring my exit. I took a deep breath and prepared to let loose my best battle cry, before I used a Blazing Bolt to send this hellhound to whatever afterlife awaited it.
There was a swishing sound, and a ripple spread from the very center of the pond in the middle of the Garden of Ward and Curse. The ripple reached the edge of the pond and continued, taking to the air. It spread until it lapped up against the edge of the circular space and engulfed me.
Nausea assailed me. I bent over involuntarily, clutching at my cramping stomach.
And as I bent forward, the ground seemed to come up to meet me.
“What the fuuuu—” I moaned as the world contorted, stretched, and grew suddenly large.
In the space of five heartbeats, the desolate garden seemed to have grown around me. I felt about as large as the average garden gnome.
Comprehension dawned.
The garden had not warped and grown—I had shrunk.
A deep, volcanic rumbling filled my tiny ears.
“Ah,” I said.
The murderous dog did not look so little anymore. On the contrary, it now looked like it was the size of an elephant.
I nodded and bared my teeth in a smiling snarl.
“Should’ve known it was looking too easy,” I said to the enchanted night.
Chapter 15
The hellhound roared its challenge and charged toward me, its claws kicking up sparks on the stone.
“Sit!” I yelled.
No luck. I hadn’t thought it would work, but it had been worth a shot. The hellhound pelted onward. It crashed through the pond, not bothering to go around it, and a spray of water saturated me.
“If that starts to chafe, you’re really going to get it,” I growled, thinking of the stairs that I still, hopefully, had to descend.
A high, snarling scream of rage came out of the mists of water that the monstrous dog had plowed up. Briefly, through the curtain of silver rain, I caught a glimpse of flashing yellow fangs and mad, rolling red eyes.
The dog emerged out of the spray of water and lunged at me. Its face was a mask of disbelieving fury that something had been ballsy and foolish enough to come trotting into its domain.
I threw my miniature ass to the side at the last moment, rolling out of the way as the hellhound went past like the California Zephyr. Snapping and snarling and spraying water droplets every which way.
Bizarrely, despite the fact that the hellhound wanted to turn me into hamburger meat, I found myself hesitant to blast the dog with magic.
“Come on, Justin, it’s not your average Fido, no matter what it might look like!” I said to myself. “Fido doesn’t have teeth that big, or eyes that look like they’re on fire. Fido can’t fucking swallow you whole!”
The hellhound skidded around after it had missed me. Its claws scrabbled once more on the stone, so eager was it to get back to the pressing business of tearing me to pieces. I couldn’t fault its enthusiasm. It was obviously earning its wage as relic guardian. It boomed out a couple of barks that actually made me step back a couple of paces and blurred my vision. It charged once more.
I used my miniature black crystal staff to send a Storm Bolt fizzing toward my enemy, but the magical shot missed, thanks to my unfocused vision, and blew a chunk out of a stone pillar over the dog’s shoulder.
I just had time to blink a few times and thrust my staff out and let loose a Compulsion curse. The ribbon-like spell hit the dog in the mouth just before its jaws were set to snap closed on me and made it veer off to the side. One of its forelegs clipped me and sent me sprawling across the stones. I rolled to my feet, but my foot caught on a crack in the stonework, and I went tumbling again.
The Compulsion spell was a curse that increased the target’s anger and fanned it into a murderous rage. Might not sound ideal, but if the target was as insanely pissed as this hellhound was, then it actually acted as distraction.
I regained my feet and saw that the hellhound was busy ripping apart random lumps of stone with its bare teeth. As I watched, it headbutted a tree stump and exploded it into shards of rotten wood.
I almost felt sorry for the creature, but I reminded myself that a quest was a quest. I was a War Mage at the end of the day. I could puzzle out any moral complexities after I lopped this frenzied fucker’s head off.
I planted my feet, took a long, slow breath through my nose, and exhaled. A plan had popped into my head. All that was required now was to put it into practice.
I charged.
I sprinted toward the hellhound. It was a big and ugly thing, and it loomed ever larger in front of me as I ran toward it. As I hurdled bits of wood and rock, and ran around clumps of weeds that were now like the size of small trees, I summoned a Frostfire Golem.
I couldn’t believe that it had taken me this long to think of whipping up a little bit of thaumaturgical help. The golem would be able to make short work of the dog while I looked for the relic.
The Frostfire Golem appeared just in front of the hellhound, and I was suddenly made very aware that it was not just me that had been shrunk.
It was my magic too.
The golem should have been about nine feet tall. Instead, it was about ten inches high.
It brandished its icy, fire-filled fists at the dog. The hellhound, caught in the throes of the Compulsion curse, paid it no heed. The golem reached out and grabbed clumps of the hound’s hair and yanked them, probably trying to rip the legs from its foe.
Instead, the golem came away with two fistfuls of hair, and the hellhound found itself bald from the shins down.
The hellhound yelped and whirled about in a perfect three-sixty bound. It landed on its feet and stared down at the little Frostfire Golem with popping eyes. Its maw was gaping, showing off its sizable and very lethal teeth, each easily long enough to go right through the golem. Its pupils contracted as it focused on the thing that had just given it an impromptu wax job.
It roared throatily and brought a meaty paw down on the Frostfire Golem.
The Frostfire Golem exploded under the force of the blow. It burst apart in shards of fire and ice, the magic that animated it disappearing like mist under the sun.
I was sad to see it go, but by that time, I was already in position.
A flaming orange axe blossomed in my hand, like an elemental lightsaber being activated. I let loose a cry of determination that the hellhound couldn’t have missed or mistaken for anything other than a challenge.
