by Defendi, Bob
In that pause, Gorthander shouldered past them, hugging the wall. One of the guards followed him, and Jurkand slammed his right-hand blade into the guard’s back. The mail parted and bone splintered. The guard gurgled and fell.
Gorthander and Arithian were past, and Jurkand stood alone in a hall, fighting two men who were big enough to have shit him in a privy. He was doomed—he’d die in seconds—but he wanted to make them long seconds. Get Gorthander a head start. Call the one kill good and end it there. If he could hold out long enough, Hraldolf might die before anyone could react. The boy could kill with a glance. If Gorthander didn’t beat him fast, he couldn’t beat him at all.
Jurkand fell back under the sudden onslaught of the two guards, whipping his swords around, parrying like there was no tomorrow. Parrying like the Devil himself attacked. Parrying like any other clichés you care to think of.
The guard on the left knocked Jurkand’s sword away and slashed at his neck. Jurkand leaped back away from the attack, hot pain following the tip of the sword as it cut across his throat. A hot trickle of blood squirted down his front. Not a gush, just a squirt. He smiled.
A clatter rang from the ground. His one-shot resurrection hit the stones, a small glass trinket. Jurkand’s eyes widened as the guard stepped on the charm, shattering it.
His last one-shot resurrection.
“Ah hell.”
Chapter Fifty-Three
“You might want to close your eyes while you’re reading the next part.”
—Bob Defendi
otianna came around slowly, her head aching as if a thousand drunken elves were inside making a thousand chocolate shoes.
She reached up and grabbed her forehead, poking herself in the nose as she did so. Her hands didn’t work properly. She pulled them back and tried to work each of the fingers in turn. It was like trying to operate an elephant from the inside, using only pulleys and levers.
“Wad da helth,” she said. Then frowned.
She looked around, and the movement caused her vision to split, then come together again. She lay in a bed piled in furs. Around her a lavish bedchamber blurred out of focus. Some sort of gold-trimmed armoire stood in one corner, a large silver mirror in another. Fancy carved chairs and padded benches decorated the rest of the room. Over one of them hung her dress.
She tried to peek under the covers, but it took three tries to make her hands grasp them. She wore nothing more than a light shift. She dropped the covers.
What was going on here?
Besides the obvious. It didn’t take a mage’s intelligence to know why an evil overlord would stick a half-naked woman in his bed. The dress was reassuring, though. Maybe she was supposed to put it on.
No, the thing that puzzled her was what was wrong with her hands. And her mouth. She didn’t feel drunk, she felt like she was hung over, but her body responded like she was drunk.
Or drugged.
She had to get out of here. If she couldn’t move her hands, if she couldn’t speak, she couldn’t cast spells. She needed to move before someone came.
Lotianna fumbled the furs aside and swung up to the sitting position. It took three tries.
She needed to take this slowly. She couldn’t move too quickly when the slightest miscalculation could send her skull-first into the flagstones.
Lotianna placed both her feet firmly on the floor. Using her hand to form a tripod she carefully heaved herself off the bed. Teetering there, she assessed her balance, then stood.
She took a step. Another. Her dress firmly in view she stepped forward. And again. And again. It wobbled and waved in her vision, but she made it there after a few eternal minutes. She lifted it into the air.
Her shift barely reached to mid-thigh, and it was all but transparent. She had to get this dress on before walking out into hallways filled with guards and servants and who knew who else.
She examined the dress, and the laces in the back seemed undone. That was good news. Now she just had to get the thing over her head before—
“Going somewhere?”
She spun and started to fall, barely catching her balance on the chair. She squinted across the room, but all she could see was a blurry form with a bald head and a round, shaggy body.
“Whooo er yu?” she asked.
She’d been hoping for a maid and an invitation to dinner. That’s what happened next when one woke up with a dress neatly laid out for them, wasn’t it? The dress should be fancier, though.
“The Overlord calls me ‘Not Beaver,’ but you can call me by my real name: Henchman.”
She tried to make out Henchman’s details, and as he approached she managed to focus. He was short and fat and covered in furs. His expression was one of… interest.
She pulled up the dress in front of her.
“Go a’ay,” she said.
“I’m afraid, My Lady, the Evil Overlord sent me to prepare you for tonight.”
“Sen’ a maid.”
Henchman chuckled and stretched out in a nearby chair. He examined her curiously, but the interest seemed more academic than threatening. “I always prepare the ladies for an evening with the Overlord. It’s… tradition.”
She squinted at him and swayed.
He said, “Sit down.”
It was better than falling down. She collapsed into her chair. She spread the dress over the front of her as demurely as her club hands could manage.
“I’ve been in his service a long time, did you know that?”
“Yu muss be vary prude.”
“You probably meant proud,” he said and smiled. “I am, I suppose. Do you know what I’ve learned?”
She shook her head, but he continued without looking at her.
“It’s all ashes. I was once content to do everything he asked. He was my only concern in the world. Now… something’s changed. I don’t know if I love him or I hate him. I feel… so strongly. It’s hard to tell.”
She squinted at him. Where was this going?
“In the past, I just did what he said. I never thought about it. I did the bare minimum for myself. The rest was all for him. It’s funny, he’s given me so many leeways, especially of late. It’s never occurred to me to indulge in them before. What’s happened to me?” The last came out very small and childlike.
She tried to smile at this poor man. She knew exactly how he felt. She felt the same way since the… change… She couldn’t convey what it was like to be so empty inside then to inexplicably have that emptiness fill. The poor fellow didn’t even have a real name. She reached out to pat his hand, and only when hers flopped uselessly did she remember the drugs.
“For instance,” Henchman said, considering her. “He’s given me very specific instructions on what I can do while preparing his women. Before tonight, I’ve never done them.” He leered at her, and she went cold. “While there are certain things I can’t do to you and keep you fresh, there are many, many choices left open to me.”
Henchman smiled and stood, smelling of wood chips and fur preservatives. He reached up and jerked her dress out of the way with a single pull, leaving her shivering and exposed in her shift.
“Very nice.”
She screamed.
Chapter Fifty-Four
“And that isn’t funny at all.”
—Bob Defendi
raldolf had made it maybe fifteen feet when he heard the fighting in the hall. He retreated to his throne room and glanced at his guards on either side—there were twelve total. The girl would have to wait for later. The guards moved to block the way behind him, and Hraldolf waited.
A single dwarf came around the corner, his ax drawn and glowing with fell power. His chest heaved, but if Hraldolf knew dwarves, that had nothing to do with exhaustion and everything to do with excitement. The dwarf ached for this battle.
“Little One,” Hraldolf said, beyond his wall of meat.
“Who you calling little, Nancy Boy?” the dwarf gr
owled.
But his expression was one of surprise. Their eyes were locked and the dwarf must be shocked to have survived the process. Just like that, it would have been over yesterday. Yesterday.
“Your name is Gorthander, correct?”
“Oh, aye,” the dwarf said.
“Are you ready to die, Gorthander?”
“Do you think you can kill me?”
Hraldolf stroked his clean face and shrugged. “Perhaps not anymore. But my guards can.”
“How about you and I?” Gorthander asked. “Single combat.”
“Why do I have the urge to say yes to that?” Hraldolf asked. “Good gods. That’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard.”
“Stupider than letting us escape?” Gorthander asked.
“I had to know.”
“Know what?”
“If I was the hero or the villain,” Hraldolf whispered.
“And what do you think the answer is?”
Hraldolf didn’t need to think anymore. He closed his eyes and felt the tears welling up inside. Dear gods, he knew. Maybe that was actually why he’d let them out in the first place. He knew.
“I’m the villain.”
“Then it’s time to die.”
The dwarf charged into the guards, and Hraldolf turned away. He was the villain. He was actually the villain. Dear gods, what did that mean?
The grunts and the howls of combat echoed behind him. He didn’t watch.
Gorthander hacked and growled, ax and sword and armor ringing on one another.
The villain. He couldn’t be the villain. He’d done all of this for his people. He’d done all of this for Humanity. Even destroying the world had been for the good of his people.
But why?
“Die!” Gorthander screamed.
The grunts and the hollering intensified. Blood splattered loudly on the plastic mat, like paint on a tarp.
The villain. The villain. Dear gods, the villain. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He had to decide what to do. He had to plan his next move.
With a grunt, his final guard fell.
He turned and Gorthander stood there, doused in blood, a great statue in tribute to slaughter. A mighty visage of death and strength and terror. The Dwarven warrior, so iconic he was a cliché in and of himself.
The guards sprawled around him, hacked and carved into torn chunks of red meat, pieces of twisted armor peeking through the mess. This was only slightly more coherent looking than one of his guards after he’d displeased Hraldolf. The Overlord had to admit it: the dwarf got the job done.
“You killed my guards. Twelve of the best guards in the world.”
“I’m a Player Character,” the dwarf said.
“Gorthander,” Hraldolf said, falling into talking mode, villain mode he now realized. “Gorthander, what do you expect to accomplish?”
“I can see your face, and I ain’t blown up,” Gorthander said. “What do you expect to accomplish?”
“I don’t need to blow you up, Gorthander,” Hraldolf said. He scanned the dozens of dents and tears in the dwarf’s armor. “You sure you don’t want to heal up before this fight?”
Gorthander watched him suspiciously. “What’s the trick?”
“No trick. Stand as far away as you like.”
Gorthander backed up until he could watch both the door and Hraldolf and cast a healing spell on himself. The dwarf shimmered, then drew to full height. Perfect. New.
And he could defeat twelve of Hraldolf’s guards in melee combat.
“I still don’t get it,” Gorthander said.
“You’re no good to me wounded.” Hraldolf smiled.
His gaze hadn’t worked passively on the dwarf—they probably didn’t find Humans all that pretty to begin with, but now the dwarf’s eyes lit up in delight and he fell to the stone floor, his chest heaving in rapture. He gazed on Hraldolf, and he was the Overlord’s slave.
“Master!” Gorthander said.
“Yes.”
Chapter Fifty-Five
“No joke now. Writing.”
—Bob Defendi
amico and Omar sprinted through the halls of the Heart of Light, tearing around corners, racing up stairs. Damico’s lungs rasped. He wasn’t pacing for distance. He burned calories like a ton of bacon fat in a coke furnace.
They burst out onto the top floor of the palace, staring down the hall into the necks of ten soldiers, in front of a door. Those necks were each the size of a torpedo. Their arms could tear the roots out of mountains, and their swords would have made Damocles’s entire family cower in fear.
Damico didn’t have time to worry or think. He charged.
Omar surged ahead, his sword out, screaming a bloody battle cry, but Damico’s feet hit the floor and twisted out from underneath him. He barreled into a tumble, barking both his knees and knocking the wind from him.
Omar filled the hallway, hacking and cutting and generally being Omar. Damico stared down at his foot. It felt funny.
It looked funny too. Or rather it looked exactly like it was supposed to if it were transparent. He could see the floor through it, the wall, the stairway at the end of the hall. Everything. Then it solidified.
“Dammit.” He rolled back on to his knees and rose. He felt like Marty frickin’ McFly. What was going on here? Had he finally brought too many people to life?
Or was he dying?
“Dear God, no.”
That was it. He was dying. He had slipped away in the real world, and now his soul was without an anchor. He had what, five minutes? Ten? Thirty on the outside? This was it. The big question mark. Death. The Reaper. His mortal coil had taken up square dancing.
No.
He stepped forward, carefully placing his feet which seemed happy to comply for the moment. He stumbled more quickly toward Omar who had already dropped the first bad guy. Damico held up his sword, and it flickered with power. Carl had seen this coming, all that time ago. He’d given them these weapons, just for this palace. This was it. He was at the end of the adventure.
But the end how?
Omar bellowed and hacked down a second foe, then one of them thrust a lucky blade through his defenses and into his belly. Crying out, he fell back.
“Tag!” Damico screamed, leaping into his place.
He parried and hacked as Omar pulled out a potion bottle and uncorked it. Damico could hold them now. First one attacked then the other, then Damico found his opening. It happened like that over and again, and he didn’t have trouble with the multiple foes. They took turns.
Carl must have been rolling separate initiatives for the bad guys. Damico had to hand it to him. The boy had heart. That was a lot of damn bookkeeping.
Damico hacked and hacked, cutting through their hit points, whittling away until the first one dropped, gasping. Then he started on the second, his initial stance defensive until he figured out the new pattern of initiative rolls.
And then he hacked again, the niggling pains of his own whittled hit points aching. He wished Gorthander was with them. Omar loomed behind him, and he cut and dropped a second one.
“Tag!” he shouted, stepping back.
Omar leaped up into position, and Damico could barely stand still from the anticipation. He wanted to be first. He needed to be first, but the numbers clicked through Damico’s head, and he knew that under these conditions, Omar had a higher damage per second. He was best at being a Viking.
But still the images of Lotianna ate away inside his head. He could see her there in his mind’s eyes lying under a grunting Hraldolf, raped by his own brother. The gorge rose in Damico’s throat, and he had to fight.
But he couldn’t. He had to sit here helplessly for her sake. Omar could cut through this brute squad faster than Damico in his wildest dreams.
Another wave of shakiness passed over Damico, and he fell to one knee. He held up his hand and could see through it now. At least he was taking
a breather, not playing Johnny B. Goode. He shook and stared at the hand and willed it to become solid again. Somewhere, his body lay dying on a bed because his soul wasn’t in it. He knew if he could just be there, he could give his body the will to fight. He had the strength. He could do it.
But he couldn’t get there. He was trapped here, and that was the end. Dead in a hallway. Faded away to be replaced moments later with an NPC simulacrum. Carl wouldn’t miss a beat, he knew. Somehow, he knew Carl knew that he knew. They were connected, the two of them. He could sense the reality of this place with a certainty he found inexplicable. But it was here. He knew how it worked. He knew why it worked.
He struggled to his feet again, and Omar had only two guards left. Then he hacked, and there was only one.
Omar fought not like a banshee, not like a berserker. In truth, he didn’t even fight like a Viking anymore. He would call out battle cries now and then, but he no longer held the excitement he carried at the beginning of the battle. Now he cut with a perfect economy of movement. Twist just so to parry. Feint ever so slightly thus—attack, parry, riposte, and his blade bit the bad guy. Now that the battle had gone on this long, Omar wasn’t a barbarian or a madman, he was a professional. This was what he did. And nobody did it better. Cue Carly Simon.
The last guard dropped, and Damico shot past Omar. He slipped in the blood and pressed on. He scrambled to the door, and his hand passed straight through the ring. He collapsed, his breathing ragged, the insubstantiality bordering on pain.
And he had control again. He straightened and reached for the ring. The woman he loved was on the other side. He heaved and threw open the door. He raised his sword in triumph and shouted, “Hey, you! Get your damned hands off her!”
But there was no one there.
Not only was there no one there, but the room was disused, the bed cleaned even of the mattress. No one had used this place in years.
The guards hadn’t been guarding. They’d probably been on break.
