Crown of Steel (Chaos Awakens)

by Heath Pfaff

  "No, but I've got a pretty good head for layouts. If we just keep climbing we'll be fine." He infused his voice with a confidence that Haley was fairly certain was almost entirely bluster. Still, something about having Xan making sweeping declarations of obvious mistruth again was comforting. He might not have been the most honest of men, but his cocky attitude was infectious. Kassa seemed to be just as susceptible.

  "Well, with that glowing level of assurance I sure am glad that you're leading the way." Kassa’s dripping sarcasm probably wasn't lost on the assassin, but he ignored it with an expertise likely born of practice.

  "I know, I know." He replied, waving one of his three fingered hands dismissively. He turned down a seemingly random hall and strode confidently forward as though fully aware of his position within the cavernous fortress. It was good to see that not all his mannerisms had been born of his now relinquished abilities.

  "How big do you think this place is?" Haley asked, suddenly concerned that their bull-headed leader might be walking them deeper and deeper into a veritable labyrinth

  "It's smaller than a proper mage tower, but large enough to house close to three thousand mages." Xan answered promptly.

  Haley was a little taken aback. "Three thousand?! How many are actually here?"

  "According to Shit-Stain, about 2200, but it's difficult to be certain whether or not he was just lying to intimidate me. Also, I'm sure by now that the trolls have trimmed that number significantly. They're good at killing things." Xan replied.

  "I hope we don't have to fight the trolls." Haley voiced her fear without really meaning to. She didn't want to appear weak, but fighting the nearly indestructible trolls was a terrifying thought. Killing one had been hard enough, but these ones seemed even more intimidating. They were larger and even more fearsome than the one in the cabin.

  "Have you learned much magic?" Xandrith asked, looking back over his shoulder as he rounded a corner and found a flight of stairs that he immediately began to ascend.

  Haley shook her head and looked a little embarrassed. "I'm having a hard time with the seals. I can see them, but I can't seem to use them very well." She went on quickly, trying to keep Xan from being disappointed. "I have learned how to tamper with other people's spells though. I learned that on my own."

  Xan stopped suddenly and Kassa walked into him almost knocking them both over. Haley managed to pull up short and not get caught in the mess.

  "What do you mean by 'tamper with'?" Xan asked as he resumed their trek, but more slowly. He was looking back at Haley now, obviously quite interested in what she had to say.

  "You know," Haley began, perplexed that Xandrith seemed confused by what she'd done. "You trace the magic back to its source, and then you can flood power along one of the seals and it all blows up in the face of whoever cast the spell. Or you can twist up the magic and make it fall apart. It causes a back surge of magic that you have to dissipate though. I learned that the hard way." She looked down at her feet in embarrassment.

  Xan nodded slightly to himself. "That's very interesting."

  Haley looked back up to her mentor. "You don't know how to do that?" She asked, feeling a little bit of pride in herself.

  "No, I don't." Xan said. "I'm not sure anyone other than you knows how to do that, Not-Daisy. I've never heard of one mage being able to directly alter the magic of another. Sure you can apply your own power to counter a spell with one of your own, but simply tipping another mage’s spells out of balance? You'd have to break the caster's seals, interact with the work he'd done himself. I didn't think that was possible. When we get out of here, we'll need to investigate this a little more."

  Haley couldn't help but blush as her earlier surge of pride expanded. She'd possibly done something no one else could do, and she'd learned to do it on her own. Maybe she wasn't as horrible with magic as she thought she was.

  "If we get out of here." Kassa chimed in blackly.

  "No need to worry about that. I found these stairs, didn't I?" Xan added confidently. "We'll just keep following them up as far as they go and we'll be out of here in no time. If we do encounter trolls we'll just pop their heads off, or restrain them until I can get a fire burning. Those are the only two ways to kill a troll. Their outer layer of skin is difficult to set ablaze, but Troll blood actually burns quite well. Get fire into them and they die quickly enough."

  Haley wasn't as certain about the situation as Xan was, but his stairway was taking them a long distance up. They passed multiple different landings for floors, but as long as the stairway continued to spiral upwards, Xan kept leading them in that direction. They walked for so long that Haley felt certain they must be at the very top of the cliff already. How high up did this structure go? She was just picturing them opening a door at the end of the stairway that opened up into the clouds when Xan drew to a stop once more. A foul smell wafted down the stairway towards them. Haley knew that scent well enough. It was the odor of death, and the air was ripe with it. Haley didn't need anyone to tell her that they'd found the trolls again.

  They moved upwards quietly, taking the steps one at a time and keeping a watch both up and down the stairs as they proceeded. They passed their first corpse a single flight later. He was dressed in blue robes, though that was difficult to tell since he'd been eviscerated and the cloth had soaked up his blood to make them look black. His body was ravaged, barely held together by some sinew and bone. The sight of it turned Haley's stomach, but she bit back the urge to vomit. She'd already lived through horrors in her life, and at least this mutilated corpse was no one she knew. Perhaps it was sad that she could distance herself from the death so easily, but after all she'd seen in her relatively short life this was one horror that wouldn't keep her up at night. She already had enough of those in the dark corners of her mind.

  Over the course of the next two floors the number of corpses began to increase and sounds of activity from above sifted down the stairwell. It soon became only too apparent that they were climbing the stairs directly into the middle of trouble. Haley could tell that Kassa was also quietly distressed by this knowledge, but Xan had an almost manic grin plastered across his face as he ascended. The chaos above seemed to beckon him as though the screams and clash of metal were calling his name, urging him closer and closer. The assassin would occasionally stop their ascent to pick over a dead body and remove items of clothing that weren't too badly stained or tattered. He'd managed to find himself a decent set of boots and a shirt mostly free of blood. He chatted quietly in whispered tones to the corpses as he removed their equipment.

  Haley was clutching her dagger tightly in one hand. She would have drawn her axe, but she was wary of drawing the cursed weapon and maybe attracting the Trolls crawling through the mage's fortress. Haley wasn't even certain that was possible, or that the weapon worked that way, but it seemed like a stupid risk to take. Besides, she wasn't properly trained to fight with the axe. At least she knew how to use her dagger, even if it wasn't the first weapon she reached for on instinct.

  The seemingly eternal upward spiral of steps stopped abruptly at the very next landing. The three companions slowed as they reached a small room. The door leading out into the fortress was closed and barred from their side, though there was no sign of whoever had dropped the bar into place. Beyond the door the sounds of battle were louder than ever. The roar of the Troll hoard was occasionally punctuated by the explosion of a mage spell going off, but the loudest sound was the screaming of men as they were torn apart. The mages were losing quickly. Some small part of Haley told her she should try and help them, that this time they were on the same side, but another part of her thought they deserved whatever they got. The mages had done her and her friends no favors. If anything, the trolls had been more helpful.

  The strong, the ambitious, the powerful; they deserve to live. Haley, you should sympathize with your troll kin. We were cast out by the humans because we were different, because they didn't understand the quest for strength. You
understand though. You've fought, and trained yourself to be strong so that you will never be hurt again. Power is the only thing the world really understands. You don't need to fear the trolls, Haley. You're one of them. You and Xandrith could both be with them. You needn't fear the future they're creating. You both could be a part of it. Think about ...

  "Haley," Xan's voice cut over Haley's thoughts, blocking out the axe's voice. "I know that look, even through the mask. How long has it been openly talking to you?"

  Haley shrugged. "A few weeks now, I think. I wasn't sure what it was when it first started. I thought it was my thoughts, but it felt too invasive, separate. I've tried to get it to be quiet, but it keeps pressing. It wants me to create some kind of pact with it."

  Xan nodded. "If you give in and finalize the pact, it will start to gain more and more control over you. I know it's hard to resist but you don't need what it's offering. The power it offers is already a part of you. The bonesteel weapons can connect with certain magic seals, and they provide quick access to those seals by tapping their own pool of power, but they can't use that magic without you, the red mage. The troll weapons have no real power, just the ability to help you use your own talents."

  Haley shrugged. "I know it's not safe to trust it. Sometimes it's just difficult to ignore."

  Xan considered Haley for a moment. "I could break the connection between you and the axe."

  Haley stepped back as though Xan had struck at her. "No, I don't want … I mean, I might still need it." Haley's free hand was now clutching the hilt of her cursed weapon protectively. The thought of losing the axe sent a terrified chill down her back and left her feeling vulnerable. "It makes me stronger, and we still have to escape from here so I might need it. We don't know what's going to happen on our way out, and ..." Haley was only too well aware that she was acting irrationally protective of her cursed weapon.

  Xan raised his three fingered hands. "I would never part you from it against your will, but remember, the longer you keep the axe the stronger its hold on to you. There may come a time when you can't get rid of it anymore."

  Haley found herself nodding numbly. "I know, but it won't come to that. I'm in control." She said the words, but she wasn't certain how true they were. She needed them to be true. She needed Xan to believe that she believed they were true because she needed him to see her as more than a child. When would that happen?

  Xan considered her for a moment, his single gray eye piercing her and laying her open as though the mask wasn't providing a barrier between them at all. "Alright, I'll take your word for it." He said, and then his all too knowing gaze was gone and back on the door to the landing.

  "We'll move quickly. If we have to fight trolls remember to strike for their eyes and then their neck. If you can decapitate them they'll die. If you see one bleeding and you can find a torch, throw it at their wounds. Their blood burns even if their skin doesn't. Once it gets inside them, they'll burn out from within and die. If you don't have to fight, don't do it." With that, Xan dropped the bar securing the door and stepped into the next room. Kassa was directly behind him with her sword drawn and at the ready. Haley came up behind them feeling strangely out of place. Suddenly she didn't feel like a regular part of the group anymore. She'd led the way into the fortress to find Xan, and yet now that she'd found him she was certain the other two were treating her like a child again. Xandrith was in no fighting condition at all, but he was moving her to the back too.

  You need to prove yourself. You can't do that as you are now. Even with the little bit of help I can provide you now you're still too weak. We can be better though.

  Haley closed her mouth tightly and thought inwardly at the presence of the axe. I won't make that bond. I'm not going to lose myself.

  If you don't bond with me, you're going to be the little burnt girl forever, and Xan will never see you as an equal. Listen to me, Haley. You know it's true. Look at them together.

  Haley couldn't help but look at Kassa and Xan as they passed through the opening, shoulder to shoulder, not even glancing back to see if Haley was still behind them. She remembered the whispered words that had passed between the two earlier, and even more keenly she remembered all the time they'd spent together even before Haley had entered the picture. There was a strangely crushing pressure in Haley’s chest as though someone was stepping on her lungs. She found it difficult to draw breath for a second.

  You're losing him.

  Haley shook her head. No, he was never mine. It wasn't meant to be.

  Of course it was meant to be! The axe version of her voice shouted so loudly that Haley felt as though the words were bouncing around in her head. You are both sanguine mages, and you're both killers at heart. Xandrith and Kassa are the ones not meant to be together. Kassa doesn't understand what it means to be hurt. She doesn't understand the darkness that exists inside the two of you. She can't. She's never felt the pull of the noble troll blood. She can't know that power.

  The words were so welcome, and so easy to believe. Haley and Xandrith were meant to be together. I am meant to be with him because I can understand what he is. Even as those words played back in her head in her own voice, she could tell they were just a wish she was trying desperately to believe.

  Dreams are worth fighting for. Remember, and don't give in yet. The voice spoke those last two statements and then disappeared back into the depths of Haley's mind, or back into the metal of the axe from which it had come. Haley wasn't entirely certain where it went, but she was happy to have it gone. Her mind was already a confusing place and she didn't need the words of the damned axe pushing on her emotions. She felt frayed. She strode through the door after the other two with her knife hanging limply at her side, all but forgotten in the palm of her hand.

  The scattered bodies they'd seen up to that point were nothing compared to complete chaos littering the hallways beyond the stairwell. A gruesome battle had been fought. Twisted bodies, mostly human ones, lay in piles all along the corridors. They were crumpled and thrown away like litter in the streets, and the Trolls had spared no one in their progression. There were no wounded or injured to tend to. Every body that lay along the corridor or in one of the piles of corpses was mutilated and obviously well beyond life. Haley couldn't draw her eyes away from the disaster. It was so brutal and disgusting that it all felt unreal. She felt like she was living some awful story in which the monsters had already defeated the heroes, though Haley was hard-pressed to think of the mages as heroes. She could only make out the bodies of two trolls lying amidst the humans. Both were still vaguely troll shaped, but burned out from beneath their skin so that they smoldered and produced an awful stench from their amazingly complete husks of skin.

  Kassa and Xan were moving forward steadfastly and Haley had to speed up to keep pace with her older companions. They hadn't stopped to gawk like she had, another sure sign of her inexperience in these tense situations. Though as far as Haley could tell, this was the kind of experience that would shock just about anyone. Perhaps her companions were the ones that were strange and not her. The sound of combat was getting louder. When they breeched the passageway between their current room and the next, they discovered why.

  Combat may have been the wrong word. Haley, Xan, and Kassa stepped out into a large meeting hall packed full of trolls. The beasts were finishing off the last of the mages, ripping them apart, eating them alive, tormenting and torturing those still unlucky enough to be conscious. There was no battle left. If anyone was still casting spells, it was to no avail. The trolls were just toying with them now. As Haley and her companions entered the room the trolls closest to the door stopped in their brutality and took note. A whispering, hissing language seemed to flow through the room, starting from the nearest beasts and moving like a wave through the creatures.

  "This doesn't look good." Kassa whispered between barely moving lips.

  "It could be worse." Xan said quickly, as though it were an ingrained reply. "There could be even more
trolls, or maybe some of those nasty metal beasties from the Reach."

  Haley frowned and lightly poked Xan in the ass with the tip of her knife. "You're an idiot!" She snapped a bit more loudly than she’d meant to. The assassin jumped, grabbed where he'd been poked, and looked indignant. He looked like he was about to retort, but a human voice rose up over the Troll speech.

  "Friends, I see you've made it out of the dungeons. Very commendable. It must have been difficult." All three pairs of their eyes snapped to the man speaking. It was an elderly man maybe in his seventies, and he was dressed in a fancy black robe with fine embroidery in deep shades of red lining the sleeves and neck. He had a grandfatherly face with wrinkles in all the right places to indicate that he smiled a lot, but his eyes told a different story. They were just brown eyes, but never had Haley seen a human with such a cold and detached stare. Even as he smiled out at them, his white beard and smile-wrinkled face looking as though he was welcoming his grandchildren to come sit on his lap, his eyes made him look like a sciarwolf about to sink its teeth into their throats. The fact that he was standing amidst the trolls, apparently unharmed and unrestrained, was even more ominous.

  "Shidsane, you can't know how happy I am to see you here!" Xan's tone of voice indicated that he was telling the truth, though only darkly so. He'd been hoping to get a chance to rip this very man apart. The tension in the air was intense, like a gray sky hanging over a silent wood just before a thunderstorm breaks out. It was an apt comparison. The assassin was ripping life force from the trolls unfortunate enough to be too close to him, which was a lot. Taking from so many sources was easier than draining one troll entirely. "I am going to tear you from existence." Xandrith growled.

  "Stop it now!" Shidsane yelled, holding up a finger before him. "If you dare attack me I will unleash this horde on you and yours, and no amount of power will stop them all from tearing you and your friends apart, Xandrith! Drop your magic. If you hurt me, it's over for them." He pointed at Haley and Kassa. "You can kill me, certainly, but is taking my life worth your friends? Is it?"