by S. R. Witt
Bastion snorted. “Not a great one.”
I glared at him. “Keep laughing, asshole. It’s not like you’re coming up with any alternatives. I guess your great idea is to stand here and fight to the death?”
Havelock rolled his shoulders as he hefted his shortsword. “There’s better ways to die, but worse, too. Plus, Indira thinks it’s sexy when I get beat up.”
He stood next to Bastion, and the pair of them looked like ancient berserkers ready to face their fate on the field of battle. I pursed my lips, before pointing out the obvious. “If we die, that’s it. We’ll all respawn in different places and never see each other again.”
Havelock shot me a grin and stuck his tongue out at Indira. “Sweet cheeks and I can always find each other, seeing as how I have her phone number. Things might be a little tougher for the rest of you.”
Bastion shrugged. “We’ll kill the dogs here, then go deal with Corvus and the cultists.”
Indira crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head. “There isn’t time. The binding ritual will be complete before we finish the fight, and that’s if we don’t get killed.”
Mercy pulled her hood up over her head and leaned against the wall. “The rest of you go ahead. With any luck, I can kill enough of them with arrows to buy you the time you need.”
My gratitude that Mercy had figured out what needed to be done was dampened by her suggestion that she be the one to stay behind. At fourth level, if she died, that was it for this character. I wouldn’t see her again unless we were very, very lucky. And, so far, luck hadn’t exactly been my strong suit. Then again, what kind of leader would I be if I stifled someone else’s glorious self-sacrifice?
“Thank you—” I started, but Havelock cut me off.
“You’ve already got one monster of a warrior, and you’re going to need the archer. Cringer’s just going to have to get used to the idea of taking care of himself for the moment.”
The dwarf immediately voiced his protest. “No. I won’t go anywhere without Havelock watching my back.”
The gnome patted his charge on the arm. “They need you, pal. Someone has to keep that pointy-eared bitch alive, especially if I won’t be around to do it.”
Indira got all huffy and jabbed a finger at Havelock. “I don’t need you or anyone else to keep an eye out on me. That’s why we divorced in the first place.”
Havelock smiled a sad, sweet expression that momentarily transformed him from a lecherous creep to a doting husband. “That’s why you wanted a divorce. Because I tried to protect you?”
An awkward silence filled the hall. When it became apparent no one else was going to say anything, I cleared my throat and put a hand on Havelock’s shoulder. “Thank you. But we have to go.”
Havelock grinned. “Get her out of here. I got this.”
He patted the pouch that held his pipe-smoking supplies. “And I’ve got a little surprise for those dogs if they think this is going to be an easy fight.”
We exchanged glances, and I knew what he meant. “Hold the line as long as you can. Then do what you gotta do.”
Havelock smiled and raised his blade to salute the rest of us. “That’s me. Always doing what I gotta do.”
Indira cleared her throat, and for a moment I could’ve sworn I saw the glint of tears in her eyes. Then it was gone, replaced by a steely certainty and the frosty demeanor we’d all come to know, if not necessarily love. “Good luck. I’ll see you on the other side.”
Havelock squared his shoulders. I gave him a nod and a thumbs up.
And then we left him, alone, facing death with a smile on his face and a broken heart in his chest.
CHAPTER SIXTY
No one looked back. Havelock’s sacrifice was tough to swallow, and we couldn’t bear to see him standing all alone as almost-certain doom came for him.
Plus, it took all of our concentration to make any progress toward our goal. Whether from our tripping the trap or the stress of the ritual taking place in its rotting heart, the Crumbling Temple was coming apart all around us.
Within minutes of our leaving Havelock, a series of alarming cracks opened new fissures in the walls. They shot past us like bolts of black lightning, carving through the soft shale, and spewing grit and dust into the air. The floor and ceiling popped and buckled, raining chunks of stone on our heads and threatening to knock our feet out from under us with every step.
Mercy and I took the lead, our lighter footfalls both stealthier and, we thought, less likely to cause a catastrophic cave-in. But it soon became apparent nothing we did was going to make things any better or worse.
“You think it’s time to run yet?” I asked.
Mercy looked back as a fist-sized chunk of ceiling bounced off Bastion’s armored pauldron with a metallic clang. “We should at least start walking real fast.”
We picked up the pace, dodging around falling rocks and jumping over tilting chunks of the floor. I gave up trying to find traps; there was too much falling apart around us to worry about clipping a trip wire or stepping onto a trigger.
The chanting was louder now, a throbbing echo emanating from the very stones of the temple’s foundation. Threads of nauseating green light wove through the cracks in the tunnel’s walls, pulsing to an ancient, erratic rhythm.
Cringer bellowed in pain and Indira screamed. They fell to their knees and clutched their heads in their hands. Indira’s eyes rolled in their sockets, and Cringer started chanting in a language I was afraid I recognized.
“Grab him,” I barked at Bastion as I hooked my hands under Indira’s arms. She was light, much lighter even than her slender frame suggested as if her bones were hollow. The feathers on her cloak tickled my nose as I lifted her off the ground despite her feeble, moaning protest. “Let’s just keep—”
My throat locked up as a palpable wave of emotion slammed into me.
We weren’t wanted here. Something dark and impossibly old stirred around us, awakened by the ritual and hungry for release. It had waited so long, so very long, for this moment. It would not be denied its freedom.
It saw us, felt us, and it wanted us gone.
Tough shit, I thought. I don’t want to be here, either, but there’s work to be done.
Pushing back against the urge to turn tail and run was hard work. Sweat oozed from my pores, and my headache throbbed like an old wound. But I pressed on.
“Fight it,” I snapped at Bastion. “Pick Havelock up, and fight it.”
For a moment, I thought my brother would tell me to fuck off and die. He glared at me, his eyes narrowed with pain and confusion. But he didn’t want to fight me, he wanted answers. “What is it?”
If we started down that rabbit hole, we’d never get anywhere. It could have been some dark god, banished by the dragons in the time before men. Maybe it was a demon, summoned by the Sisters to wreak vengeance on the world they felt had abandoned them. Or maybe it was just a bad-ass monster working for Corvus. The truth was, it didn’t matter what the thing was. “Who cares? Pick up the dwarf and keep walking. Let’s finish this.”
Something changed in Bastion’s face. The belligerent glare died and determined acceptance took its place. Bastion scooped the dwarf up into his arms, and said, “Lead on.”
Mercy took up the rear, keeping an eye on the passage behind us as Bastion and I struggled to haul our companions forward, against the titanic resistance grinding down on our souls.
The tunnel abruptly sloped up, and the going became much more treacherous. The floor’s marble tiles shifted underfoot with every step, and their chipped and broken surfaces were too slick to offer study footholds.
But the hideous pressure the ritual had thrown up in our path relented. It was as if the very act of resistance had taken it by surprise, and it had no fallback position. The ancient evil had given us its best shot, but once we’d shown we weren’t going to back down, it gave up.
Remember that kids. Sometimes, evil is a wimp.
Cringer gulped
in a lungful of air and smacked a hand against Bastion’s chest. “Put me down.”
Indira came around, too. A single tear leaked from her left eye and soaked into the leather armor covering my arm. “I’m all right, I think.”
Bastion and I lowered our companions to the steeply inclined stone floor and braced them until they could recover their balance. “We’re almost there,” I said. “But we need to push on through before something else happens.”
Cringer grunted in agreement and leaned into the wall for support. He managed to take a whole step before the shit hit the fan, again.
His left arm pushed through the crumbling stone and disappeared up to his elbow. He shouted in surprise and Bastion grabbed him by the shoulders to yank him back before the collapsing wall could bury him in a rockslide.
A chunk of rock fell from the ceiling and caught Indira in the shoulder. She yelped in pain and lost her balance, falling flat on her ass. She didn’t stay there long, though, as gravity and the uncertain footing turned her stumble into a roll.
Mercy shouted a warning as another section of wall cracked and shed fist-sized chunks into the passage behind us. Indira slipped past the collapse, her body banging and bouncing off the stone as she rolled faster and faster. If someone didn’t stop her, she’d end up beaten to death against the rocks.
Guess I’m someone, I thought and threw myself after the tumbling magus.
The collapsing wall heaved boulders at my head and dumped a shifting layer of scree onto the sloped floor.
DEADLY OBSTACLE CHALLENGE RESULT
Dexterity (15) + d100 (83) = 98
vs
Challenging Obstacle Difficulty: 100
Skill Check Result = -1
MINOR FAILURE! Your attempts to avoid the falling rocks are partially successful, but you are unable to avoid all of them!
Damage: 10 - Armor (5) = 5 total damage]
Battered, but alive, I dove past the danger, feet sliding on the jagged rocks and dust raining down from the ceiling. The second I passed the falling wall I bounced back up onto my boots and ran down the crumbling tunnel
Indira was in a full-on slide, and her silk robes offered no protection from the stone clawing at her every inch of the way. Spots of blood appeared on her clothes, evidence of the wounds she’d suffered during her tumble.
Then things really went to shit.
The steep tunnel we’d just navigated gave way. Twenty feet ahead of the rolling magus, a section of the floor vanished with a bone-rattling roar and a thick cloud of powdered stone.
For just a moment, Indira’s eyes met mine. She was a bloody mess. Her face was covered with cuts and bruises, and her eyes were filled with animal panic. I was her only hope of survival.
I ran for all I was worth, struggling to close the gap between us. Then, praying I wasn’t too late, I dove after Indira.
The stone floor rushed up to meet me, slamming into my chest and stomach hard enough to drive the air from my lungs. Dust and bouncing stones blinded me, and I shot my arm out in front of me in a desperate grab.
For one, panicked instant, I felt nothing. Then my fingers found feathers, and I grabbed hold of Indira’s cloak.
We kept sliding, our combined mass pushing us faster rather than slower. I clawed at the stone floor for purchase with my free hand, and two of my fingernails peeled away like wet decals. My index finger caught in a narrow fissure and snapped like a dead twig. I needed something else. Something stronger than just meat and bone.
I managed to draw my remaining stiletto in a reverse grip with my injured hand. We were moving too fast to aim for anything if I’d been able to see through the dusty filling the tunnel. It was a long shot, but I didn’t have a choice.
I slammed the tip of the stiletto against the stone floor and prayed it would find something to catch on before Indira and I plunged to our deaths.
Indira ran out of floor. She screamed as her body shot out over the edge of a yawning chasm and the only thing keeping her from a fatal fall was my tenuous grasp on her cloak. If my stiletto didn’t catch on something, we’d both be dead.
And then it did.
The narrow blade found a crack in the floor and wedged in tight. The sudden stop twisted my arm and shot a bolt of crimson pain through my shoulder.
Indira smashed into the wall below me with a muffled thud and went limp in my grasp.
For long seconds, I didn’t move. My busted finger and wrenched shoulder ached with such intensity it took every ounce of willpower I could muster to hang onto the dagger. My left arm felt like it was going to pull free of its socket from Indira’s dead weight. A dark voice whispered for me to let her fall, to save myself. I didn’t know if she was alive or dead, and sacrificing my life to hang onto a potential corpse didn’t seem like a good trade.
I rejected the thought. Until I knew she was dead, Indira was still alive, and I’d hang onto her no matter the cost.
When I didn’t hear an immediate rescue attempt, I raised my voice. “Need some help down here.”
There was no answer, and I thought the whole tunnel must’ve collapsed. Grisly visions of my brother smashed beneath a rock, Mercy and Cringer crushed into viscous red jelly alongside him, filled my head with despair. I needed these people. I couldn’t do this on my own. They had to be alive.
“Holy shit.” Bastion peered down at me, and I realized the section of the tunnel had tipped precariously upward during the collapse. What had been a very steep 30-degree angle was now an impossible 60-degree angle. There is no way for me to climb up, and no way for anyone else to climb down without putting themselves in grave danger.
I was fucked.
“If you’re going to do something, might want to be quick about it,” I suggested. “I don’t know how long I can hang on.”
“Just a second,” Bastion called down. His head disappeared from view, and I heard him and the rest of the group mumbling above me.
Thirty seconds passed. A minute. My shoulders were on fire, and my fingers were little sticks of pain dynamite waiting to explode. “Seriously, I can’t hold on much longer.”
“Hold your horses,” Mercy called. She appeared at the edge of the drop, a rope tied around her waist. A wave of relief shuddered through me. Maybe today wasn’t my day to die.
Of course, looking at my in-Game clock, it wasn’t quite noon yet. There was still plenty of time for something to try and kill me.
Mercy lowered herself over the edge, walking backward toward me. I’d known Bastion was strong, but if he was anchoring her on that steep slope, he was a hell of a lot stronger than I’d thought.
It took Mercy a few minutes to cross half the distance to me, and every second felt like an eternity. My arms trembled uncontrollably from the strain of supporting Indira and hanging on to the stiletto. “No rush,” I gasped.
By the time Mercy reached me, I couldn’t feel my arms or my hands. My fingers were frozen claws, clinging to Indira and the handle of my stiletto out of sheer survival instinct.
“Thanks for hurrying it up,” I grumbled as Mercy eased down next to me.
She pushed a coil of rope under my chest, then looped it up and over my back. “God, you’re such a drama queen,” she snickered. “Hold still while I tie you up.”
“Under any other circumstances…”
She tightened the knot with unnecessary force, cutting off my weak suggestion. “Dream on, lover boy.”
Then she yelled, “Haul them up. I’ll take Indira once she’s over the edge.”
The rope scraped over the stone, inch by agonizing inch, and I slid away from the deadly drop. Once my weight was off the stiletto, I pulled it free and tucked it back into its sheath. I didn’t have the strength for anything else, so I just held on to Indira and let Bastion pull me to safety.
Mercy helped support Indira, giving my strained muscles a welcome break. Bastion hauled us up onto the relatively stable ground at the top of the incline. “Way to be a hero, bro.”
If this
was what being a hero felt like, I wanted to be a villain. I flopped onto my back and writhed as tracers of pins and needles fire shot up and down my arms. “Somebody had to do it.”
Indira gasped and shuddered next to me. I turned my head to the side just as she opened her eyes. “I better not be dead,” she whispered.
It wasn’t a very good time for smartass remarks, but I didn’t care. I winked at the elf and asked, “You don’t think this is heaven? Me and you together, forever.”
For someone who’d been more dead than not just a moment ago, she packed a surprisingly powerful punch. “Not even in my worst nightmares.”
“You’re welcome.”
The magical pressure on my chest returned. A heavy hand clutched my heart and squeezed.
Bastion helped me to my feet. “Even I felt that one.”
Indira brushed herself off as Cringer bathed both of us in a golden, healing light. “That was another thread. They’ve woven almost the entire pattern.”
“I’m going to pretend I know what you’re talking about,” Mercy said. “Magical mumbo-jumbo aside, I’m guessing that’s a terrible thing.”
“Let’s get this over with,” I grumbled. We brushed ourselves off and climbed the rest of the way up the sloped passage. We emerged from the narrow tunnel into a wide, level hallway. To our left, it ascended an enormous set of stairs.
The pair of massive iron doors at the top of the staircase, their surfaces wrapped in knots of writhing serpents, told us we’d arrived at the site of our final battle with Corvus and her buddies.
The mother of all magical tremors shot through me as I stared at the door. The green light spilling from the cracks around us flared so brightly spots swam before my eyes.
Indira and Cringer both groaned and clutched their heads.
Shit.
That was it. The last thread was woven, and the pattern was complete.
