by Robert Bevan
“Get down!” said the dwarf. Tim was already on the floor with his arms wrapped over the top of his head. Sparks flashed as steel clanged against stone, but thankfully without the preceding sound of cutting through dwarf.
“Hnnng!” said the nearby grimlock. Tim could only assume that was Grimlockian for I just got uppercutted in the nuts by a pissed off dwarf. It’s similar in any language.
The grimlock’s axe fell to the floor. The next sound Tim heard was a dwarven grunt, followed by a grimlock scream, which fell away and abruptly stopped about ten feet below them.
“Come, halfling!” said the dwarf. “I have his axe, but dozens more approach.” Tim felt the dwarf grab his arm and jerk him forward again. “We can’t outrun them. Our only hope is to retreat to the stairwell and take them two at a time. We’ll take as many of the eyeless bastards to the Abyss with us as we can!”
Tim felt the velvet brush over him as they passed through the curtain. The dwarf dragged him up a few stairs, then stopped.
“Have you considered not dying as an option?”
“Alas, my boy. I fear it be too late for that. They run far swifter than the likes of us.”
The angry howling and barking was growing closer. A mob of angry grimlocks was nearly upon them. Tim crouched on the stairs and felt around in his bag.
“Stand up, lad! Die bravely!”
“I’d rather live cravenly,” said Tim. He pulled his caltrop sack out of his bag. “Let’s go!” He grabbed the surprised dwarf by the arm and gave him a shove up the stairs.
“Huh?”
“Just move your ass, man!” Tim tossed a single caltrop over his shoulder as he scrambled up the stairs behind the dwarf. A few steps later, he tossed a second.
“Just dump the bag already, and let’s be on our way!”
“No,” said Tim, continuing his routine of climbing and tossing. “If I shoot my load right now, they’ll have it cleared away and be up on our asses long before we reach the –”
A grimlock howled out in pain about twenty feet below them.
“They’re right behind us!” said the dwarf, continuing up the stairs.
Tim tossed another caltrop and kept climbing. “But that one fucker with the punctured foot will slow down the whole mob.”
Climb. Toss. Climb. Toss.
“They have two choices,” Tim continued. “They can proceed very slowly and carefully, not being able to see, hear, or smell these. Or they can risk a hole in the foot. Either way, they’re –”
“Hwaaaahhh!” screamed another grimlock, this one maybe thirty feet below them.
It’s working!
Tim felt the second curtain brush by him.
“Ho there!” shouted the dwarf. “State your business!”
A long, wet fart squirted out from above.
“They’re with me!” said Tim.
“Tim?” said Cooper. “Is that you?”
“Yeah, I’m behind the dwarf. Turn around and start running!”
The five of them hurried up the gradually curving staircase. Dave, being unable to run in his armor, soon fell behind until even Tim had to slow down to avoid hobbling him with caltrops.
Another grimlock screamed in pain. They were somewhere between twenty and thirty feet behind Tim. The lead they had been gaining was now limited by Dave’s sluggish Movement Speed.
Ahead, Tim was relieved to see the first faint flashes of light as the rest of his friends passed through the final set of curtains. Cooper was even thoughtful – or clumsy – enough to tear them down on his way through. Finally, Tim could actually see where he was going.
Climb. Toss. Climb. Toss. The bag was getting lighter. He’d be out of caltrops soon.
They were still maintaining their short lead, and Tim guessed they’d probably reach the surface unscathed, but what then? There were still a couple of hundred grimlocks after them. Should they stand and fight at the entrance of the temple? Between the five of them, they’d be able to take down quite a few of these assholes if they kept coming out only two at a time, but they’d only be prolonging the inevitable. They couldn’t outrun them either. Making a break for open ground was only asking to be surrounded and more quickly slaughtered. Their only hope was that someone else was working on a third option.
The light of day, grim and grey as it was, widened as Tim approached the top of the staircase.
“We’re almost there, Dave,” said Tim, trying to be encouraging. “Move your ass!”
Dave huffed as he marched up the stairs. “You know I’m going as fast as I can!”
Tim dumped the few remaining caltrops from his sack and bolted past Dave to the surface, where Julian was standing impatiently with an open scroll.
“Get out of the way!” said Julian. “Dave, move to the right!” He looked at the scroll, the parchment trembling in his hands. “Horse!”
Tim dove out of the way as a hefty black steed materialized next to Julian.
“Yah!” said Julian, slapping the beast on the rump. It obediently charged blindly into the temple entrance.
“Fuck!” Dave shouted from within. The clash of metal, stone, and probably hoof, echoed out from the darkness of the staircase.
“Shit,” said Julian. He called down to Dave, “I meant my right. I should have specified. My bad.”
Dave finally emerged, among the screams of angry grimlocks and the whinny of a surprised horse, trudging up the last few stairs. He had a black left eye, his face was all scraped up, and his nose was bleeding into his beard. He didn’t say a word as he limp-waddled past Tim, toward the log bridge, revealing a fresh hoof print on the backplate of his armor.
“I’m really angry!” said Cooper when Dave, Julian, Tim, and the other dwarf had crossed to the outer edge of the invisible trench. His body grew thick with four Strength Points’ worth of muscle, and he picked the log up off the ground with ease.
“Good idea, Coop,” said Tim. “Cut off their means of follow—What the fuck are you doing?”
Cooper turned around to face the temple entrance.
“Bwaaahhh!” said the first grimlock to reach the surface. He brandished his battleaxe as he sniffed the air for someone to hit with it. His nose wrinkled as he faced Cooper, but his disgust didn’t last long. Cooper sent him back downstairs with a log to the chest. Several grimlocks just behind him screamed as they were forced back.
Cooper ran and jumped a good five feet before reaching the edge of the trench, but still landed about five feet beyond the other side.
“Julian, Dave, new guy!” said Tim. “Start running. We’ll catch up with you at the skull tree.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Julian.
“We have to stay back and fix Cooper’s latest blunder.”
Julian needed no further explanation. He, Ravenus, and the two dwarves bolted toward the jungle.
“You said it was a good idea,” said Cooper, who had recovered from his Barbarian Rage.
“That’s because I thought you were going to throw the log into the trench,” said Tim. “I didn’t think you were going to hand them their bridge.”
“But did you see the look on that dude’s face when I hit him with the log?”
Tim grinned as he loaded a bolt into his crossbow. “Yeah, that was pretty epic.”
“So,” said Cooper. “What are we doing?”
Tim trained his crossbow on the temple entrance as angry grimlock voices once again approached the surface. “As soon as they lay down that log, you’re going to shove it into the trench.”
The first two grimlocks emerged unburdened by their log. Tim chose a target, but held his fire, waiting to see what they would do. Both of them sniffed the air, homed in on Tim and Cooper, and started running for the trench.
Tim waited for his chosen target to get within about ten feet of where he’d have to jump from before firing his crossbow. As he’d hoped, the bolt interrupted his jump, but not his inertia. The injured grimlock stumbled, fell, and disappeared beneath the i
llusory ground.
The other grimlock cleared the trench, swinging his axe down at Cooper as he landed on the other side. Cooper ducked the blow and punched the grimlock in its eyeless face. It fell backwards into the trench. Invisible though they were, both grimlocks could be heard screaming as they tried to fend off what sounded like an army of hungry dire rats.
The next four grimlocks emerged with the log. The two at the front stood at the edge of the trench. With rehearsed timing, the four of them swung the log twice before releasing it, forming a perfect bridge, which they quickly used.
They were so efficient, in fact, that the first two were already on top of Cooper by the time he got a hold on the log. They tried to wrestle him away from it, but Cooper held on.
Tim drew his dagger, ran up, and stabbed one of the grimlocks in the small of the back. It let out a single, sharp cry, but Tim knew it was dead before it fell over and disappeared into the trench.
As the second pair of grimlocks stepped onto the bridge, Cooper gave up his struggle and concentrated fully on the log. While he succeeded in neutralizing the bridge, he did so at the cost of falling into the trench with it. Dire rats shrieked under the sudden weight of a log, a half-orc, and three more grimlocks.
“Cooper!” cried Tim, loading his crossbow again.
“I’m okay,” Cooper called up. “Give me a minute!”
“We don’t have a minute!” said Tim as two more grimlocks came limping out of the temple entrance. These two had obviously fallen victim to his caltrops. As pissed off as they appeared, Tim reasoned that they were no immediate threat. They didn’t look to be in any state for trench-jumping.
The next two, however, looked perfectly nimble, as did the two that followed them.
There was a hell of a fight going on just below Tim’s feet. Axes clanged against rocks. Rats squealed and hissed. Grimlocks grunted, growled, and barked. Cooper swore a lot. Tim wanted to help out, shoot something that wasn’t Cooper, but he couldn’t see anything beneath the façade of still, featureless earth.
Firing his crossbow might also give his position away. Tim couldn’t be sure, but he didn’t think the gathering crowd of grimlocks was paying any attention to him. His scent must still be masked. They looked to be far more interested in the fight below.
More than a dozen grimlocks crowded at the edge of their side of the trench, eagerly cheering whenever they heard a dire rat squeal. Tim got the feeling that they did this sort of thing for recreation. It reminded him of listening to a boxing match on the radio. Still more grimlocks filed out of the stairwell, some limping, some not, all eager to listen to the battle raging on below.
“Fuck! No! Get that one!” Cooper sounded as though he’d formed a temporary alliance with the surviving grimlocks. Getting trapped in a shit pit full of dire rats makes unlikely bedfellows.
Tim wanted to call out for his friends to come back, or call for Cooper to hurry up and do whatever he had planned. Keeping silent was driving him nuts.
“Ha ha!” said Cooper as one of the grimlocks below grunted. “Stupid fucker.” One of the dire rats gave a particularly agitated squeal before flying out of the ground like it had been launched with a catapult.
The dire rat landed in the middle of the crowd of about fifty grimlocks, who then proceeded to freak the fuck out. The chaos that erupted was beautiful. Grimlocks screamed, shoved, and started swinging their axes with wild abandon. At least eight of them, who had been too close to the edge, fell into the trench, where they were met with more bloodthirsty rats and Cooper.
“Fuck! You!”
Two seconds later, a grimlock head flew into the crowd. This neither stemmed nor bolstered the panic-driven madness, as none of them could see it. Nice try, Cooper.
A second dire rat thrown into the fray, however, bolstered the madness quite nicely. Then Cooper’s hands popped out of the ground, followed by the rest of him. He was scraped up, bloodied, and covered in shit, but he’d looked worse.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” said Cooper, climbing the rest of the way out of the trench. He picked up Tim and started running.
Tim fired his crossbow into the crowd of rat-crazed grimlocks because why the fuck not? He didn’t know if he hit any of them or not. They were all screaming.
“How did you get out of the pit?” Tim asked, bouncing under Cooper’s arm as they crashed through jungle foliage.
“I piled up a few grimlock bodies, climbed on those, and used my Jump skill.”
“It’s more useful than I’d given it credit for.”
Before long, Cooper and Tim caught up to the others at the skull tree. Cooper set Tim on the ground.
The dwarf sat against the black trunk of the skull tree, cradling the head of his dead brother. “O Baelrick, sweet brother. What beautiful eyes you once had. How I hoped to gaze upon them one last time as I say goodbye. But alas, those savage devils deny me even that!” He turned the head outward to show how his brother’s eyes had been removed.
“Pfft,” said Cooper. “That was no savage devil. That –”
Julian clonked him on the head with his quarterstaff. “Shut up, Cooper!”
“What the fuck!”
Tim watched curiously as Julian attempted to cover what Cooper had already blabbed while simultaneously justifying his own outburst.
“The man is grieving,” Julian explained slowly and deliberately. “The grimlocks ripped out this man’s eyes. If that isn’t savagery, then I don’t know what is. This isn’t the time for one of your lectures on racial harmony.”
Well played, Julian. Would Cooper pick up the innuendo?
“Did you get hit in the fucking head? What the fuck are you talking about?”
Apparently not.
“We can talk about this later,” said Julian, holding his staff like he was ready to hit Cooper with it again. “Let the man grieve.”
“I’m a dwarf,” said the dwarf. “In case you haven’t noticed.” He stood up. “My name is Dodwynn. I thank you, halfling, for rescuing me.”
Tim lowered his head. “I’m sorry we didn’t arrive in time to save your brother as well.”
“Don’t be,” said Dodwynn. “The grimlocks did him a kindness, believe it or not. I feared he was destined for a worse fate, which would have claimed both our lives.”
“What’s that?” asked Julian.
“Lycanthropy.”
“You don’t say.”
“It was torture,” said Dodwynn. “Every day we were locked in that cage, not knowing when he would turn. We nearly went mad trying to keep track of how much time had passed, trying to remember when we last saw the moon, and what phase it was in.”
“How long were you down there?”
“It’s impossible to say for sure. Based on my beard growth, close to a month. Baelrick must have been bitten just after a full moon.”
“So if he was still alive,” said Julian. “And he hadn’t turned by now…”
“Then tonight would almost certainly be the night.”
“We have to go back for that statue,” said Cooper.
“Statue?” said Dodwynn. “You sought the holy figure? That was our quest as well. Were one of you bitten?”
“There’s no time for that,” said Julian. “If it’s his blood I need, I’ll just go and get it. Werewolf or not, how strong could he be? Surely the five of us can hold the bastard down while I bite him back, right?” He turned to Dodwynn. “That is, if you’ll join us.”
“I believe we seek the same creature,” said Dodwynn. “For my brother’s honor, I shall join you.”
“Any objections?”
Tim shook his head. “I like our odds against one werewolf better than two hundred angry grimlocks.”
Evening brought more rain, which fell on them even harder once they emerged from the jungle. Once night fell, everyone kept a sharp eye on Julian, looking for signs of his turning. The rain felt great to Tim. It washed away the crust of grimlock shit from his skin and clothes. He’d never
felt so alive, and so ready to kill someone. Tim’s desire to hunt down Colin was neither altruistic nor borne of his friendship for Julian. It was straight up vengeance.
It was still raining when they reached the main road leading back to Cardinia. Julian had made it through the night thus far with no hint of change, as evidenced by his answers to Dodwynn’s continuous questions.
“Do you feel anything?”
“No.”
“Not even a little tingle?”
“No.”
“Do you feel maybe you’ve grown a bit more hair in your genital area?”
“NO!”
“It just don’t make no sense.” Dodwynn looked up, letting the rain splash on his face. “If only we could see through those clouds.”
Julian stopped walking. “Of course! Why didn’t I think of that before?” He looked at Ravenus, tucked under his serape. “Why didn’t you think of that before?”
“Think of what, sir?” said Ravenus. “I’ve only been privy to the part of this conversation where you keep saying ‘No.’ It’s a tad hard to follow.”
“Ravenus, I need you to go up and look at the moon for me. Can you do that?”
“If you like, sir. But I’d much rather this be a moment we could share.”
“Stay focused, Ravenus! This is important. I need you to go look at the moon, and then come back here and report. Got it?”
Ravenus nodded resolutely. “Right away, sir!” He launched himself from Julian’s bosom and climbed into the night.
“I don’t know what you expect to gain by this,” said Dave.
“What are you talking about?” said Julian. “I’d like to have at least some idea of when I’m going to turn into a goddamn dog!”
“Does it change what we’ve got to do tonight?”
“It might.”
“Suppose Ravenus comes back and tells us we’ve got two weeks left.”
“Impossible,” said Dodwynn.
“But what if?” Dave continued. “Are any of us really going to rest while there’s the potential for you wolfing out on us? Whatever we’re going to do, we’ve got to –”
Ravenus returned, spraying the group as he shook the water out of his feathers.
