The Dragon Lords: False Idols

by Jon Hollins

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered as the crowd descended and committed their last atrocity.

  43

  How to Make Friends and Influence Kobolds

  This, Balur thought, was more like it. Alone in the labyrinth of stairs. Alone with his blade and his enemy. A test of will and cunning. A test of strength and spirit. None of this bullshit about “unwinnable fights,” and “obvious suicide.”

  He truly didn’t understand the arguments Lette had tried to mount against his plan. First, she hadn’t wanted him to charge in directly and attack the champion because it would lead to Will’s death. And Balur was a reasonable Analesian. And so, while he considered this objection revealed a flaw in Will rather than in his planning, he had acquiesced. And he had come up with a new plan that allowed him to attack the champion in a way that would not spell instant death for Will. A plan that provided a distraction so he could clear the path to a serious arse-kicking.

  Because what would provide a perfect distraction? Stirring a bunch of kobolds up into a stampede would.

  It was infallible.

  And Lette’s response? To claim that trying to steal a goblet in the middle of a giant stampede was the stupidest thing she’d ever heard.

  So then he had said that she needed to unwad her panties and let him go stab things.

  So now here he was, belly pressed against the rock, clinging to the wall of the cavern, with the hole marking the entrance to the kobolds’ nest only five yards above his head.

  His tongue snaked past the blade he held gripped in his teeth. The scent of kobolds was heavy on the air.

  He crawled higher up the rugged face of the wall. He could hear small growling sounds, and the click of teeth and tongues. Kobolds talking to each other in their own impenetrable language.

  Balur smiled around the blade in his teeth.

  And then, without warning, a small red face poked over the edge of the cave entrance and stared down at Balur. For a moment there was taut silence. Then the kobold screamed. Then the kobold died.

  Sword dripping blood, kobold body spraying fluids over him, and dangling from the cave entrance with just one hand, Balur scrambled for a firmer handhold. Then he lost it, flailed, caught it again. He grunted a string of curses and heaved himself up into the kobolds’ nest.

  The wall of panicking kobolds smashed into him like Lawl’s fist itself. He was swinging his sword in a flat, two-handed arc, felt the blade punch through fur and muscle, decimating bodies, crushing bones. Then he was swept off his feet, and sent flailing out into space.

  He crashed twenty yards down onto the path below. Even through his scales and muscles, his spine screamed. Stars exploded above his head as darkness closed in.

  He fought through it, fought through the bodies falling down onto him, biting, and scratching, and ripping. He seized a kobold in each hand, used them like a furry pair of pugilist’s gloves. He could feel their organs rupturing as he pummeled them into others of their kind. And it was glorious.

  But even as he fought and killed, more and more kobolds swarmed around him. They nipped at his ankles, slashed at his scales, drew blood in long, thin strands.

  He kicked, bit, clawed. He snatched up a kobold, and tore the useless fucking thing in two with a roar.

  “Be coming on!” he bellowed. And it would be good to stand here against this tide. This was worthy of his strength. To prove that he could outlast them, all of them. That when the last of this pack was on the floor and gasping its last breath, he would still be standing. Clutching his guts, perhaps, dying even. But still standing. That would be a good way to go.

  He glanced up at the nest entrance. Kobolds were still trickling out of it. The pathway hacked into the wall’s rocky edge was packed with them. He roared. More. He needed more.

  And then as if in answer … it was as if the rock pulsed, a huge, orgasmic spray of kobolds launching out of the nest entrance. Out of more and more entrances. Tunnels he hadn’t seen. Hundreds of kobolds. Hundreds of hundreds of them.

  The crowd of kobolds became a tidal wave, barreling along the path toward him.

  Okay, Balur revised in his head, maybe I shall be going with the original plan of leading them to Will and Lette after all.

  He turned, kicked away a swath of rabid kobolds, and started running as fast as he could.

  44

  Run, Kobolds, Run!

  Will was beginning to think that he had drunk slightly too much. He wasn’t entirely sure. He didn’t want to be right. But he did keep on vomiting whenever he tried to put new liquid in his body.

  “No,” the champion was saying. “No. No, you have to choose. That’s how it works.”

  Will made a noise. He wasn’t honestly sure what it was.

  “A pig’s mouth or month-old yogurt,” the champion insisted. “You have to choose one.”

  “I—” Will managed, which he found to be a pretty impressive accomplishment.

  “Silence!” A voice crashed massively through the room, bouncing and echoing about them.

  Both Will and the champion decided to comply. They looked around. No source for the voice was obvious.

  “This is what has become of you? This how you serve my orders?”

  The voice had an odd hollow timbre to it.

  “Oh shit,” the champion whispered next to him. He was on his feet, slowly backing away. “Oh no.”

  “What?” Will said.

  “Stand!” bellowed the voice. “Do not back away from me.”

  The champion clutched his helmeted head.

  “What did I tell you?” boomed the voice. “What was the condition of your service here?”

  There was something familiar about the voice. “I think I know—” Will started.

  “It’s Lawl,” said the champion. He sounded on the verge of crying.

  “Lawl?” Will managed. That didn’t seem particularly likely.

  “I told you to guard it,” boomed the voice.

  “I guarded it,” pleaded the champion. “It’s still here with me. It’s safe. No one has come for it in a hundred years. I’ve scared them all away.”

  “You have done nothing!” roared the voice. “I created you. I created law and order. You have merely sat here. And you have disobeyed.”

  If a voice could have flayed the skin from a man’s back, Will thought, it was that voice.

  It really did sound kind of familiar.

  “Distract him,” hissed the champion, slowly backing away from Will.

  “What?” Will squeaked.

  “Distract him,” the champion hissed again.

  “Lawl?” Will had placed the name now. “The king of the fucking gods?”

  “Show him your tits,” the champion suggested.

  “I’m a bloke!” Will took fairly significant offense to this. They’d been hanging out for the best part of two days at this point.

  “You cannot escape me!” Lawl roared.

  “Oh shit,” the champion moaned.

  “Look,” Will said, trying to console, “I’m sure you’ll be able to explain.” Off the top of his head, he couldn’t think of any particular stories where Lawl demonstrated any sort of capacity for mercy, but on the other hand he couldn’t think of his own middle name right now either.

  “I hereby rescind you of your duties!” bellowed Lawl.

  “No,” moaned the champion.

  “I hereby rescind you of Barph’s Strength!” Lawl went on.

  “No!” The champion’s cry was louder this time, harsher. “You can’t!”

  “You are unworthy!” roared Lawl. And there was thunder with his voice now …

  His …? There was something about the timbre that made Will question that.

  The thunder grew. A pounding that made the earth shake.

  “You can’t take it from me!” shouted the champion, waving the goblet in defiance. “It’s mine. It’s all I’ve got. It keeps me warm on the cold nights. It bathes my loins with its love! We’ve got something special!”<
br />
  “Bathes your …” Despite everything, Will got caught up on that. “What did you and that cup …?”

  The champion shrugged awkwardly at him.

  “Ew!” Will started spitting.

  “The goblet!” Lawl demanded.

  “Never!” shrieked the champion.

  The whole room was shaking now. Dust was pouring down from the columns. Stacked pots and vases were tumbling. Mosaic tiles were shaking loose.

  “Put it down and you may yet know my mercy. Put it down and you shall not be unmade!”

  Will wondered why Lawl bothered with the bargaining. It didn’t seem very divine. Lawl had always seemed more of the smite-first, ask-questions-later sort of god to him.

  “You’re not the boss of me!” yelled the champion.

  “I think he is,” Will noted.

  “You’re not fucking helping,” the champion snapped.

  “You will deliver that goblet to me right now,” Lawl roared, though he was barely audible over the thunder rattling the room, “or … Oh fuck!”

  These last two words were delivered at a significantly different pitch to the other two, and seemed to Will to be a bit of a non sequitur. Or oh fuck. What did that mean? Was that some sort of divine punishment?

  The champion didn’t seem like he wanted to find out. He let out a final defiant, if inarticulate, yell, turned tail, and started to run toward the shadowed corridor down which he had disappeared to urinate earlier.

  At that same moment, running at a speed that seemed to suggest her life was in significant danger, Lette entered the chamber from the golden archway that led out to the labyrinth of stairs.

  “Lette!” Will shouted, trying to get her attention. “You’ll never guess what happened! Lawl actually—”

  “Start fucking running, you moron!” Lette screamed and threw what appeared to be a cow’s horn at him. Will stared at her.

  Then Balur came into the room, also running hard. He appeared to be bleeding from … well, everywhere. His whole being was crisscrossed with cuts and slashes.

  “Balur?” Will asked.

  “Run!” Lette screamed. She was level with him now, streaking after the champion.

  Oh right, Will thought. The goblet. We should get that before Lawl does.

  And then the kobolds came into the room.

  They burst in like water, like a stinking, furry tidal wave of red and teeth. They burst through the golden arch in spray, crashed against the far wall, and then began to flood after Balur.

  Will stared. There was a majesty to the sight after all. Something actually divine about it. He was awestruck just by the scale of the madness pouring down upon him.

  “Run!” bellowed Balur, and finally, finally the words sank in.

  Not for the goblet, he thought. For my life. I get it.

  And then he turned, and he ran.

  Unfortunately, though, Will had just spent two days drinking himself almost comatose, and neither coordination nor speed was within his grasp.

  He managed three stumbling steps, and then the kobolds were upon him. Something small, hard, and furry barreled into his legs, flipping him up off the ground. He sprawled backward, landed on a seething carpet of bodies. For a moment he was borne aloft, the world crashing and bouncing around him. He could see Balur, desperately running, arms flailing, the red tide slowly creeping up on him. The pillars and shadows at the far end of the room rose up like a cliff face. Then they were crashing into them, spurring down a narrow channel.

  Everything was crushing darkness. Claws ripped at Will’s clothes and skin. He smashed into one rocky wall. The kobolds were forcing more and more of their bodies into the narrow channel. They were climbing over each other, over him. He scrabbled to not be buried in the dark, kicking out, stepping on a seething mat of living fur. He heard a yell from Balur suddenly grow muffled.

  Then they were out through the passage and into sudden light. Instead of the unnatural twilight glow of the labyrinth of caves, this seemed like genuine daylight, even if its source was distant.

  The space beyond was a natural fissure in the bedrock of the world. Will glimpsed its walls stretching almost infinitely up, the tiny slice of white light far above. The passage at the back of the champion’s chamber gave out onto an uneven ledge that formed a step on one side of the fissure. A rocky wall rose ever upward to their right. A dark, clawing void descended ever downward to their left. Hot winds rushed up from the abyss, to gust over them.

  The towering, surging mass of kobolds teetered on the brink of disaster. Will was balanced near the crest of the wave. He could see the endless black below him. He could see Balur, nearer the base of the stampede, thrashing and tearing to be free. He could see Lette ten yards ahead, still sprinting. And then perhaps a hundred yards away he could see the champion, feet pounding, weaving dangerously, his massive bulk taking up almost the full width of the path.

  Kobolds spilled out into nothingness, their swollen numbers too great for the path. Will was crashing down the cresting slope of the kobold wave. Bodies were spilling out into space, plunging down to be swallowed by shadows. Will couldn’t even hear their screams over the chattering roar of the kobolds all around him. For a moment he went under the surface, lost track of where he was. He could feel the abyss calling for him. Then he was back on top, somehow astride the back of one of the kobolds, holding on to its sharp, tufted ears, bouncing up and down as it leapt along the backs of its compatriots. They passed Balur, still thrashing, like a drowning swimmer searching for air. Then they were out ahead of the rest of the kobolds, pounding after Lette.

  Will’s stomach was a churning portal into the Hallows themselves. Something apocalyptic was brewing there. And yet all he could think was, A racing kobold. I found myself a genuine racing kobold. With this steed, I could be rich.

  They sailed past Lette. She screamed something at him, but he had no idea what. He was laughing, and trying not to vomit, and screaming in terror, sometimes all at the same time.

  He was probably not going to drink for a while after this.

  The path beneath them was far from even. It spread out, almost as wide as a city street, then narrowed to a country lane. The abyss yawned at them. Air like a god’s breath blew over Will, tousled his hair. He screamed again. Beneath him the kobold was letting out a constant, high-pitched, chittering yell. Will wondered if it had been punctured somehow.

  The champion was still ahead of them, staggering now, gripping the side of the wall. Will could just make out occasional shouts of “Noooo!” and “Mine!” over the roar of the kobolds behind them. He risked a glance back, almost lost his seat astride the kobold’s shoulders. He had perhaps ten paces on Lette, thirty on the kobolds.

  Ahead of them, the champion stumbled to a halt, took his turn to look back. His eyes went wide. What he thought he saw, Will was utterly incapable of telling. A crimson tide. Lawl’s punishment. Maybe the champion just really didn’t like kobolds. But he let out a shrill scream, took a stumbling step backward, and then, with a yell, tumbled over the lip of the path, and with the goblet still clutched in his hand, fell away into the abyss.

  45

  Balls

  “Balls!”

  Lette stared in utter horror as, like a felled tree, Lawl’s champion toppled over the edge of the ledge and went pinwheeling into space.

  Why? Why was her life always at the mercy of complete and utter fucking idiocy?

  It tripped? A divine champion of Lawl? It fucking tripped over its own feet? And it took the divine goblet holding their one hope for defeating the dragons with it?

  For a moment she almost stopped. Just in sheer awe at how much of an asshole the universe was willing to be. Just so she could stop, throw in the towel, and tell the gods to save their own fucking selves.

  Then she remembered the stampede of kobolds that was inches away from her.

  She accelerated. Will was just ahead of her, somehow clinging to the back of a kobold that he’d driven into a state of
absolute frenzy. Somehow he had stayed on the path and the champion hadn’t …

  The champion. There was something about his trajectory as he fell …

  She was running as fast as she could, breath coming in short staccato bursts. She didn’t have time to assess …

  His ankle! It was the champion’s ankle. There were vines on the edge of the path and his foot had caught in them.

  The champion crashed down, his body describing a short, sharp arc. He crashed into the abyss’s cliff wall upside down, dangling by his ankle.

  She had to think. She had to run. She had to get down to that gods-hexed champion before he dropped that goblet, unless he had dropped that goblet already, and then … Then just piss on everything. Drown the whole world in divine urine.

  Ahead of her, Will lurched on his kobold. The teetering pair finally giving way to … honestly just common sense. And then, suddenly Will launched himself into space, hurled himself out at the fallen champion.

  Lette’s heart stopped. Because this was, surely, a suicide attempt. She could think of no other explanation. Fuck. Life without …

  Gods, she did not have time for this. And then, whether by intent, or sheer dumb luck, Will collided with the champion’s dangling foot and folded in half around it. He clung there desperately as the kobold raced on into darkness.

  She would be parallel with Will in a moment. Did she fling herself after him? Rescue him? Was she really that suicidal?

  He had said he loved her.

  And why? Why did he have to finally say it down here? In the middle of this?

  Of course she knew he still loved her. His puppy-dog eyes practically screamed it at her every time he thought she wasn’t looking at him. But that was hardly the fucking point. She’d never thought that he’d stopped. She may have hoped it for a while, but she’d never really expected it. Will was the sort who, once he was committed to an idea, had trouble letting go. It was not an unattractive trait. But this had never been about him loving her. If it had been then she would have ruined a lot more shirts with pig shit. And quite frankly, it was a touch insulting for him to assume that she was obligated to him in any way just because of his feelings.