by Jon Hollins
“Of course.” Balur’s narrow tongue whisked out of his mouth. “I have been tasting it on the air for the past two hundred yards.”
“Dried blood?” asked Will, sounding alarmed.
“And you didn’t think to mention it?” asked Lette, who was generally of the impression that regardless of whether you liked someone or not, if they were on your side in a fight, nine times out of ten you tried to keep them alive.
“I knew you would be noticing eventually,” said Balur with a shrug.
“So,” said Lette, “I’m assuming that at this point you’re actually actively encouraging me to remove your balls?”
“Could you perhaps be waiting,” asked Balur, “until after we get to the kobolds.”
“Kobolds?” asked Will in the same alarmed tone.
Balur nodded. “Having a very distinctive flavor, kobolds are. Once you are tasting it you are not easily forgetting it.”
Kobolds. Lette tried to think about them academically. They were barely sentient pack rodents. Big teeth and big claws. They tended to like dark, quiet places with plentiful food sources. Like nearby villages. Clearing ruins of kobolds had been the backbone of her income back in the days when she and Balur were just starting out as mercenaries.
“So where’s the nest?” asked Lette.
“Nest?” said Will. He seemed to have become stuck in panicked mode.
Balur shrugged. “Must be close. Give me a minute and I’ll find it.”
“Or,” said Will, finally finding his normal register, “we turn around and go back to one of the other staircases?”
“This is being a catacomb!” Balur sounded offended. “You are going into catacombs to be murdering monsters, not to pussy out of the fight when you finally come across it after two whole gods-hexed days of waiting.”
“I just don’t see why we would purposely wander into a fight we could actually avoid,” said Will as if purposely taunting the lizard man with arguments he was incapable of understanding.
“It is being times like these,” said Balur, “that I am wondering why we keep you around.”
“You’re sure they’re close?” Lette wanted to be sure a fight was actually going to happen, before they got into the specifics of whether it was a good idea or not.
“They are being close,” Balur said, turning around. “I can veritably be tasting their shit upon the air.”
He walked away from them, tapping the rock wall. Glancing up and down. Lette didn’t wait to see if Will wanted her to respond to some sort of bewildered look. She just followed her longtime partner and drew her sword.
“I am not understanding,” Balur said after a minute’s slow progress. “Where is this gods-hexed nest being?” He swept his sword at the air, which, as usual, failed to bleed. “We should be seeing signs of their devoured prey.”
“What are kobolds even eating down here?” asked Will.
“Do I look like a biologist?” Lette was pretty sure she knew the answer to that one.
“We’re more than a day below the surface of Avarra,” Will pointed out. “I can’t imagine that there are many fields of livestock around here to keep them satisfied.”
“Why are we making this complicated?” asked Balur. “All we are needing to do is to be finding an opening, to be finding a nest, and to be hitting things in the face until they are stopping breathing.”
“Well, to find the nest,” said Lette, “it would be helpful to see some evidence.”
“Which is why,” Will put in, “it would be good to know what they were eating so we would know what to look for.”
“Okay,” said Balur, “if I am not getting to kill kobolds in a minute, I am going to be killing Will.”
“That,” Will informed Balur, “is uncalled-for hostility.”
Balur was on the verge of responding, quite possibly using the universal language of pummeling sense into someone with one’s fists, when the first of the kobolds fell onto the ledge around them.
At first, Lette didn’t know where they had come from. One moment there were no kobolds, the next three stood among them, snarling and spitting. Then there were five, then eight, then ten. One leapt at Balur and he swept his sword in a short, savage arc, splitting the thing almost in two, sending the bisected corpse flying out into space. Then there were briefly nine kobolds. Then thirteen. Fourteen.
Then Lette looked up. Then she understood. Kobolds were scrambling down the wall above them. Sharp yellow claws dug into crevices in the rock. Black eyes glittered like spurs of polished jet. She could just make out the darker shadows of cave entrances above. A score more kobolds emerged, flung themselves down, claws spread. Then she didn’t have much more time for assessing the immediate situation, only to cut, and slice, and stab, and parry, and curse, and spit, and stab, and slash, and sidestep, and whirl, and curse, and stab, and twist, and stab, and stab, and stab.
Balur was whirling his swords around in great scything arcs, knocking bodies left and right, up and down, hurling them off the edge of the pathway in pieces. Kobolds fell screaming, claws slashing at the air. Balur was yelling, almost singing, emitting a sound of near-perfect joy even as kobolds clambered onto his back. He was bleeding liberally from gashes to his arms and forehead.
Will was stabbing and thrusting desperately, letting out short, barking yelps as he did so. He too bore wounds on his arms and legs, and he was already panting heavily.
Lette whirled, thrust her sword into the face of an oncoming monstrosity, yanked the blade back, and jammed it into the neck of another creature closing on her right. But even as she did so, she felt two heavy impacts against her left side and was sent staggering.
More kobolds were falling, their numbers pressing in tighter and tighter. Bodies were packed in a heaving mass along the path carved into the wall of the labyrinth. As the crowd shifted, so did she, and it was only a matter of time before she was pushed to the blind precipice, sent chasing down after so many of Balur’s victims.
“There’s too many!” she shouted. “We have to get out of here!”
“Pussy!” yelled Balur, using another sweep of a sword to open up a momentary space in front of him, which was almost immediately refilled by thrashing red bodies, gnawing and clawing at him.
Lette was long past having her bravery challenged by a homicidal lizard man, though. She pushed toward Balur, hacking and slashing a path, picking up several more gashes as she went. They could not sustain this.
“To Balur!” she yelled at Will, but Will was as incapable of getting out of his current situation as Balur was of getting out of a whorehouse offering free beds for the night.
“Balur! To Will!” she shouted instead, changing the angle of the bloody path she was cutting through the kobolds.
Balur looked at her. “But this is being—”
Then a kobold jumped on his face. Balur ripped it away—taking off chunks of his cheeks as he did—and flung it out into space. It screamed as it plunged down and away. “Fine then,” Balur grumbled, and began smashing a path through the kobolds toward Will.
Lette stood with her back to Balur, sandwiching Will between her body and the Analesians.
“Okay,” said Lette after a few panting moments of respite. “Now we move.”
Slowly they inched down the pathway, beating back the kobolds as they went. Lette felt dirt and dust and gravel grind beneath her feet. The musky, wet smell of sweating kobolds pressed in on all sides. Their heaving breath, Will panting, Balur shouting, “Come on, you fuckers! Test me! Test me!”
The kobolds shifted with them, keeping a safe distance but only just. Occasionally an adventurous creature would dart in, snapping at Balur, and he would whip his blade around to smash into the creature’s neck. Then as he wrenched the weapon free, two or three would dart in on the opposite side, trying to take his legs. Each time, Balur got the blade back in time, but the window was closing. Lette herself nicked the gut of one the struggling kobolds. It screamed, an almost human sound emerging from
around its massive protruding teeth, and then its intestines were tangling her feet. She almost tripped and it was a few harrowing seconds of smashing skulls and stabbing eyes before she established the safe zone again.
Her arms throbbed. Her breathing grew ragged. She could not keep this up indefinitely.
“We’ve got to get free of these things,” she snapped over her shoulder to Balur.
“They are being kobolds.” Balur sounded disgusted.
“They are being, Balur,” Lette said acidly, “an absolute crap ton of kobolds. It would be embarrassing to tactically withdraw from one kobold. A crap ton is an acceptable number to tactically withdraw from and reassess one’s life choices.”
“Is there a nunnery around here I haven’t seen?” asked Balur, kicking an adventurous kobold out into the void. There was an ugly snapping sound as its spine hit something on the way down.
“That is not okay to joke about!” Lette almost turned around to slash him across the back. A scar might get him to remember her point.
The kobolds surged then, some mass frenzy grasping them, and for a moment Lette had to forgo the pleasures of conversation. Hack, and thrust, and parry, and thrust, and hack, hack, hack away.
When they were done, the precipice was dangerously close.
“Fuck,” she said, as her heel swiveled out over empty space. She pressed away from it, cutting for every shuffled inch. “They’re trying to push us over.”
“Maybe,” said Will, “we’re not that far from the bottom. Maybe that’s where their food source is. If they push us down, then we’re easy pickings.”
“Wow,” said Lette, only wowed by the vast inappropriateness of his timing. “That seems like a really relevant insight to discuss at this juncture.”
“Well.” Will shoved past her, and for a moment she teetered dangerously. “Maybe we don’t have far to go before we can safely jump down.”
“Jump?” Lette grabbed on to the back of Will’s shirt for support. He tottered backward with a short yell, and she had to hack the claws off some grabbing kobold before it could reach him.
“You want to get away from these fucking monsters, don’t you?” said Will, ducking lunges from one of the larger kobolds.
“This is definitely being a tactical withdrawal we are talking about is it not?” asked Balur.
Lette ignored the lizard man. “Jump?” she said again.
“There.” Will pointed while she fought desperately to save his oblivious life. “Twenty yards downhill, look. There’s another staircase passing directly below us, maybe only ten feet down. Then there’s another bisecting it. And … maybe … maybe that’s a third, there.” He pointed into blurry shadows. “That’s three jumps and we put significant distance between us and these things. Enough distance to find some shadowed corner where we can hid—” He looked up from the ledge, and at Balur’s back. “Where we can tactically withdraw until we’re better positioned for our counterstrike,” he said instead.
“Jump,” Lette said, “ten feet down onto a staircase that is probably almost a millennia old, pray we don’t fall off its unprotected edge or shatter its shoddy workmanship, and then repeat the experience one or two more times?”
“Or,” said Will, “you know, eventually get overwhelmed.”
“Be speaking for yourself,” said Balur, trying to shake a hissing, snarling kobold off his free arm.
“Fine then.” Gods, she had wanted Will to grow a pair, but now? Here? Will had always been a master of shitty timing.
“On the count of three,” she told Balur. “Charge?”
“Charge?” asked Balur, finally flinging the kobold free from his arm. “Wheee!” And with that questionable battle cry, he lowered his shoulder and plunged into the ranks of kobolds.
Lette—just for a fraction of second—closed her eyes. If he just waited for the count just one single gods-hexed time.
Then she was off, running in the bastard’s wake, dragging Will by the sleeve, waving her sword with the other arm in a desperate attempt to discourage any other kobolds from jumping.
They were just about to launch themselves when one kobold charged in below her guard, grabbed her by the ankles, and brought her crashing to the ground. She felt her jaw slam closed, the skin on her chin open in a hot gush, her teeth smash together, her brain rattle. She fought on instinct, trying to turn, but the thing was on her back. She could feel its sharp claws scrabbling at her, tearing her clothes, scoring her back. Its hot breath was on her neck. Drool trickled down onto her ear. Her swords were trapped awkwardly beneath her. She heaved, couldn’t shove it. She felt its whole body tense.
Then it fell away. The weight gone. She scrambled to her feet. Will was standing there, holding his sword in both hands. Its blade was drenched in blood and gore.
He also seemed oblivious to the three kobolds about to gut him.
There would be time, Lette decided, to thank him later. For now she just pushed him out into space and followed him down.
He screamed. She jumped into the sound. Hard stone slapped the breath out of her. She felt herself roll, somersaulting backward, her head clattering against steps, dirt grinding beneath him.
“Fwah!” She tried to curse but couldn’t quite get the word out.
A massive hand seized her arm, hoisted her aloft. Balur held her clear off the ground. The lizard man was grinning.
“For being a tactical withdrawal,” he said, “this is not being so bad.” And then, using her arm like a pendulum, Balur flung her off the edge of the stairs.
She landed better this time, kept her feet and her breath. Balur landed next to her. “Try that shit again,” she said, “and you’ll lose the hand.”
Balur fluttered nictitating membranes at her. “You are always being such a romantic.”
Will was scrabbling to his feet beside them. He glanced back. “One more jump,” he said.
Lette looked back. The kobolds were flooding over the first lip, scrambling down the rock wall. As she watched, some leapt for the stairs they had made. A few fell short, falling screaming; others made it.
She jumped, landed, turned. Balur was crashing through the air. And Will, sprawling, arms spread. And gods, he was not going to make it. His desperate fingers clawed at stone just one unforgiving inch below the lip of the step. But almost instantly it was three inches, six …
And then she had him.
She was lying flat on her stomach, feeling the shouting strain in her shoulder. Will screamed. Then he realized he wasn’t falling to his death. He looked up at her.
And gods … such good fucking eyes, gods hex him.
But she was smiling despite herself. “No you don’t,” she told him. “If anyone gets to kill you, it’s me.”
Then she heaved him up onto the stairs, and they were running again.
An hour later, they reached the bottom.
Lette looked around. It was, she supposed, pretty much what she would have expected. The world’s largest stairwell. The ground was sandy in places, rocks studding it here and there, but mostly occupied by pillars of stone supporting the stairs above, and other staircases making landfall.
Will stared around, his brow creased. “Is this place really a labyrinth, or just really overdesigned?”
“Yes,” sighed Balur, “that is totally being the relevant question.”
Lette was a little more focused. “There has to be a champion around here somewhere.” She peered down corridors of stone. “Avatars of the gods are hardly known for their subtlety.”
“Wait,” said Will, “have you fought a champion of the gods before? Because that sounds as impressive as … well, as a divine labyrinth of stairs, and, well …” He hesitated. “Well, I’m sort of shocked neither of you have bragged about it before.”
Lette licked her lips. And she would like to have been offended, but actually that was a fair comment.
“So, no then,” Will surmised from their collective hesitation.
“We were killing a demigod
before,” said Balur. “That is being very similar, and potentially more impressive.”
“You told me about that,” said Will. “And do we even know what a champion of the gods is?”
Lette again came up short on words. Champion of the gods had seemed such a definitive term when Firkin had originally said it. Still, how different from a demigod could it be?
“Well,” said Balur, “it is obviously being some mortal warrior who did so well in combat he was being gifted with longevity and strength by Lawl himself. He will be a significant notch in my blade.”
He sounded ridiculously sure of himself. And considering the mess with the kobolds, Lette wasn’t sure it was a tone he should be striking right now. “Two things,” she said. “One, you didn’t kill the demigod, I did. And two, a champion of the gods is clearly of divine origin sent down here to earth. It’s going to be some inhuman beast. You know they have a thing for animals.”
Which wasn’t necessarily clear, but she wasn’t going to take that attitude from him.
“Five gold bulls says it is being a transformed mortal.”
“Transformed into what?”
“Into anything. I am saying it was starting here on earth and was being divinely transformed.”
“I’ll take your money.”
Will had wandered away from them. Probably he was looking for another situation for her to save his life in.
“Erm, guys!” he called back over his shoulder. “Guys, I think—”
“It is being a closed bet,” Balur called to him. “I am not cutting you in now. Unless you are having a different wager you want to offer.”
“You are such an ass,” Lette told him. She was feeling unexpectedly protective of Will.
“That is being uncalled for,” said Balur.
“I think I found—” Will said.
“Not you cutting him out of the bet,” Lette covered. Being protective of Will in front of Balur was likely to lead to awkward questions. “Your whole smug, superior attitude. As if you know what a champion of Lawl is.”
“You are being the one who is obstinately insisting it is being a divine creature!”
