by Eric Ugland
Onto the keep. I hoped we’d find nothing but an empty structure. Sure, there’d be a bit of mystery as to why the place was empty, but we could certainly get over the mystery in favor moving along to Osterstadt and not missing our deadline for arrival.
The boys were not eager to go further into the castle. They both lingered close to the portcullis.
“Who wants to come with,” I began, “and who wants to stay here?”
They turned to each other and did a thing with their fists. One of them stuck a thumb out. Ragnar punched Skeld lightly in the chest, and then ran after me.
“What was that?” I asked, stepping through the busted door to the keep.
“Thumbs.”
“How’s it work?”
“Person closest to north is thumb, person closest to south is fist. You put out either a thumb or a fist. If they match, that’s a fist. If they don’t match, that’s a thumb.”
“Sounds like rock paper scissors.”
“I prefer thumbs.”
Had we been somewhere safer, I might have taken a moment to educate my hirðman on the finer points of the great game of Roshambo. But the interior of the keep gave me chills. Swaths of the wall were coated in black, and given how it was flaking, I could tell it was very old blood. Bones and organic rubble were everywhere. This castle had seen wholesale slaughter.
“Eona, keep us safe,” Ragnar whispered as we walked though the remains.
There was a large doorway and two stairwells. Through the doorway, I could see a big room, like either a banquet hall or a throne room. I poked my head in there, and it was the same story: massacre. More dead there than anywhere else so far. But now I saw the remains of things that weren’t human. Or at least weren’t of the various humanoid races. There were bones that belonged to things I couldn’t name or even begin to guess at. While I’d been content to leave all the other bones alone, these ones intrigued and confused me, so I popped them in the ol’ bag.
A large throne had been knocked over and shoved into a corner. The rest of the space was dominated by long tables and benches. There were remains of a meal — nothing food-wise, but all the serving plates, tableware, and silver candlesticks still lay there. That also went into the bag, since sooner or later there’d come a time when I’d need more money, and silver was, for better or worse, money. I couldn’t, in good conscience, leave it behind.
A single door led out of the banquet room. It led us to a kitchen, and then a storage cellar. The cellar’s contents had rotted at some point. An impressive array of mushrooms and other dark-loving plants had filled the space, and there were definitely a few small creatures who scurried away into the dark corners when approached. A single small chest sat on a shelf, basically unmolested. I couldn’t help myself — I scooped it up and dropped it in the bag.
Back from the cellar, we went through the throne room, then up the stairs and into the residential areas. The second floor housed barracks. Twin rooms ran the length of the keep, with just a single hallway between them leading to a privy — basically just a seat with a hole in it. The hole led to a shaft that headed outside somewhere. There was a glint of sunlight down below, so I figured it could work as an emergency exit should things get truly bad.
Up to the third floor. This seemed to be the place where whomever was in charge lived. Large rooms, well appointed. There was a small bookshelf with a number of tomes on it (into the bag), and a massive four-poster bed with the remains of a feather mattress on top. A large copper bathtub was in a room by itself, along with a few copper pitchers, likely used to fill said tub. With a little help from Ragnar, and after I explained the magic bag, we managed to get both the tub and the pitchers into storage.
The magic elicited a slight eyebrow-raise in the Lutra, but no comment otherwise. A bit of jewelry was out on a dresser, and we found more inside. All of it went into the bag. We saw a chest I couldn’t open at the end of the bed. Inside. At that point Ragnar got a little overexcited, and basically anything that wasn’t nailed down in the master bedroom went into the bag. I had to draw the line at the chamber pots.
The fourth floor had small rooms, each with a rough-hewn bed, a small dresser, and a chamber pot. Nothing particularly interesting. There were some coins (which we took) and some personal effects (which we took), but there was nothing of real note or value.
The last staircase led to a door that was blocked. Nothing a little banging and shoving couldn’t solve. I broke the door and we got out onto the roof. Some bits of furniture had been made into a barricade, but it hadn’t seemed to have done much good. We found more skeletons up top, ones that’d been torn apart.
This must have been the last stand of the posh owners. There was a ton of jewelry, including something that was definitely a crown, as well as a big fat signet ring. Weapons, however, seemed to be in short supply. I guess the soldierly types had had their own stand somewhere else.
As soon as I grabbed the crown, a ghostly apparition swirled up. A slightly green and lightly translucent woman stood in front of me. She had a very noble bearing. She bowed her head to me, and spread her hands.
You have been offered a quest:
Justice for a Duchess
The Duchess MacDermott and her kin were killed by [unknown] and she seeks vengeance on that which slaughtered her family.
Reward for success: XP and access to the royal treasury
Penalty for failure (or refusal): None
Yes/No
It didn’t seem right to refuse, and if the unknown thing that’d done the slaughtering was still around the castle, completing one quest would mean completing the other. BOGO was always my favorite.
“Yes,” I said to the ghost. “I will bring you justice.”
The woman smiled, nodded, and disappeared.
I don’t think I need to say it, but I will: all the goods on the roof went into the bag. As did the few weapons that were there, most of which were more ornamental than useful, a fortune in jewels tacked on to already gaudy sheathes. Ridiculous.
I leaned over the edge and looked down. Skeld was standing at the edge of the bailey, glancing about.
“Everything okay?” I yelled.
It took him a moment to locate us, and then he proffered a thumbs up. Which was a little hard to see because otters have tiny thumbs.
The walls of the castle were built right up to the cliff edges. The keep was situated on the southern edge, and the entrance to the bailey was on the west. A tall tower rose on the east, right above where Cleeve and company were resting. Ragnar scratched his nose.
“You want to look through the tower?” he asked.
“I do. I think it’s pretty damn necessary.”
I eyed the storm for a moment, trying to gauge how far it had come in the time we’d taken to clear the keep. My best bet, we had somewhere in the neighborhood of an hour before the storm hit. I couldn’t see even the slightest bit of sunshine coming through. It was another monster storm.
“Do you have some way to communicate with Skeld?” I asked.
“Sure,” Ragnar replied, with a nod.
“Can you tell him to bring the group around, at least to the boathouse. There might be some—”
Ragnar leaned over the roof and shouted, “BRING THEM TO THE BOATHOUSE!”
Skeld gave another thumbs up, and darted off.
“I could have yelled at him, man,” I said.
Ragnar shrugged. “The tower?”
“The tower.”
Chapter 65
You could only get to the tower from the battlements — it didn’t have a courtyard entrance. Weapon stands filled the entryway, still stacked full of spears. Looking up, the tower was pretty open, just a spiraling staircase up to the roof, which led to a broken door. I wasn’t super into the idea of climbing all those stairs. Not so much because of the exertion — I had that pretty well under control. I just wasn’t particularly keen on finding a monster up on the roof with our one exit a tight staircase down. Opposite the e
ntryway we’d come through, there was another door. One that was open just a hint. Getting closer, I heard noise. Scratching. Moaning. Low growls. A peek inside, and I saw stairs going down.
Down or up. Time to choose.
Really, the best possible option was closing the door to the tower and forgetting about it. So I stalled the decision by loading all the weaponry into the bag. Then the weapons stands. And the side table. And everything else not nailed down in the room. That done, I had to man up.
I held a finger to my lips and indicated to Ragnar that we should be quiet.
He nodded.
I pointed up.
He shrugged, which was enough of a commitment for me.
We began climbing up the stairs. At the top, a door hung off a single hinge, and moved ever so slightly in the breeze. Outside, there was a pointy bit of roof, as well as a small walkway all the way around the tower. There were high crenellations along the walkway as well as murder holes in the floor. We stepped over some bones, ruined armor, and a few busted crossbows. Nothing worth putting in the ol’ loot bag, even by our admittedly low standards.
I looked over the edge, and saw our group had already moved from the initial beachhead. Over to the west, a curtain of rain came down, streaming from completely black clouds. It was one of the most ominous things I’d seen.
“What do you think of that storm?” Ragnar asked.
“It’s going to be a motherfucker.”
“Are we going through the door and down the stairs? Where the noise is?”
“Yes.”
He nodded once. It was clear the Lutra didn’t want to do it, and I understood his hesitation, but we had a quest. Technically, two quests.
Back down the stairs and to the door. I had my sword out and ready, and Ragnar had his spear.
“Quiet and slow,” I said edging the door open. The sounds were still going, unchanged.
Walking downstairs, the walls felt tight, like they were closing in. One flight, two flight, three flights, four.
Finally we hit another door, also shut.
I edged it open.
A strange pulsating light streamed out of the room, almost ethereal.
I peeked around the door, and sighed. Things were never easy in this world. A bunch of creepy-looking monster things were inside, gallivanting about, almost equally split between fucking and feasting on each other.
They looked like they’d crawled out of a pit of hell and spent a few generations inbreeding. Doing my best to keep it quiet, I managed to release my little identification spell on the nearest one.
Forsaken Hybrid
Lvl 8 Brawler
They were all variations on that, and roughly levels 6-10. They had sickly yellow skin, with thick wrinkles folding over every joint and limb. Their big mouths were overstuffed with jagged, twisty teeth. Wide orbs with giant pupils bulged from their eye sockets, telling me they rarely left the dark. Massive muscles rippled all over their backs and upper bodies, but it looked like they’d all skipped leg day. Lots of upper body strength, not a whole lot to work with on the lower end.
I tried a quick count, but one of them ripped the head off another who was actively engaged in coitus, causing a spray of green-black ichor and other bodily fluids. I gagged — I couldn’t help. And that was enough noise for the Forsaken Hybrids to realize they had company. A horde of vile eyes were suddenly upon me.
I shut the door.
“Up,” I snapped at Ragnar. “Keep going until you get Nikolai. I’ll hold them off at the door to the tower.”
Ragnar was running before I even finished talking.
The Forsaken didn’t even pause at the door. They slammed through it with abandon. Clearly they were enthusiastic about having new creatures to torment and eat. They crashed up the stairs, right behind us, making an enormous racket.
We burst through the door out into the sunshine. I spun around, grabbed the door, and shoved it shut.
Immediately, something slammed into it, the wood splintering. But it still held.
Ragnar didn’t wait, didn’t stop to see anything. He merely leapt from the wall, his tiny arms pinwheeling as he soared down.
The second he hit the ground he was sprinting, heading straight down the miniature mountain.
I did a quick test with my greatsword, seeing how it felt. Hellreaver was light. Easy. I wondered if I should try to go one-handed, and get a shield up in the other.
Slam.
No time to think.
Slam.
I took a step back, and glanced over to the west. The rain would be here in no time.
Fine, I thought. Let the water wash their blood off.
The door split, and a massive Forsaken squeezed through.
It squinted against the sun, and that was all the time I needed.
I roared, swinging for the fences.
Hellreaver seemed hungry, glowing as I swung the massive blade around, until it bit into the side of the creature. There was a sizzle and a pop. I saw the blade sear the flesh of the monstrosity as it tore through. He crumbled immediately, death coming quickly to the infernal beast.
The rest of the monsters clearly hadn’t fought anyone with weapons in quite some time. They just didn’t seem to understand the extra reach I had. Over and over again, the Forsaken charged, full of rage but devoid of brains.
But it wasn’t neat or skilled work; it was brutal and primal. Swing, chop, thrust, pull, cleave. Maim, kill, reset. They scrambled over their brethren, slipping in the ichor. Which covered everything, including me. A good swing, and I lopped a limb off. A great spurt of the monster’s blood came out, coating the battlements. A chop would take a head, the body still moving for a moment before it realized nothing guided it. A powerful thrust and a monster would drop to its knees, making disgusting mewling noises as green-black blood bubbled out of its mouth.
More than once, a great cleave went straight through a torso, and the monster would scrabble at the stone, trying to grab hold as it fell down into the bailey, its guts stringing out behind like Satan’s party streamers. And the motherfuckers bled like it was their passion. Fountains of the vile liquid erupted from necks and arms. Actually from any hole I put in them, to the point where the ichor was running down the wall and dripping off my armor. Heads, limbs, and other unidentifiable extremities dropped to the battlements and from the battlements in a truly macabre version of a ticker tape parade. It was a celebration of the god of Death, whoever that was in this crazy fucked up world I’d stumbled into.
The monsters kept coming, and had it not been for the beautiful bottleneck the door provided, I’d have probably been overwhelmed. But they could only come at me one at a time, and in their eagerness, they’d often start fighting amongst themselves in the stairwell, so it wasn’t unusual for an already wounded Forsaken to come through and meet their death at the end of my sword.
Nikolai, Ragnar, and Skeld came crashing through the barbican, sliding to a stop as they watched me lop the head off the last lingering Forsaken, a rather fat and slow one who’d been breathing heavily after his traipse up the stairs. Whether by luck or happenstance, the head of the fat Forsaken tumbled off the monster’s body, then rolled off the battlement, and landed with a heavy wet thud on the bricks below.
I gave a jaunty little wave to Nikolai, droplets of ichor flying off my fingers.
He frowned at me.
Chapter 66
“Sorry,” I said. “Thought these guys were tougher.”
He frowned, and poked at some of the remains.
“What were they?” he asked.
“Can’t you do that—”
“Only works if they are alive,” Nikolai said. “Dead things are dead.”
“Need necromancy for that,” Ragnar added.
Nikolai nodded. “And I prefer we stay away from that breed of magic.”
“Yeah, okay, noted, necromancy bad,” I said. “My crap identification had them as Forsaken Hybrids. Brawlers mainly.”
He g
runted, which likely meant he was deep in thought. Or that I’d done something stupid. Not mutually exclusive. A quick nod at the Lutra, and the three ascended the stairs.
The rain was just off the island now, maybe two hundred yards away. It made quite a loud thrumming, smashing against the water.
“The whole castle was massacred?” Nikolai asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “Looked like it was a brutal encounter. That boathouse was locked from the inside, with people barricaded in.”
He shook his head, frowning.
“What?“
He kicked at the nasty remains in front of me, causing some to roll off the battlements and send a spray of ichor around the bricks below.
“These aren’t tough,” he said. “Pushovers. You just killed, what, ten, twenty?”
I did a quick perusal of my notifications.
“Forty-three,” I said.
“Worse than I thought,” he said. “Something else had to have been the cause of this.”
“Easy to check,” I replied, “I have a quest to get vengeance on—”
“You dumb sack of shit.”
“Hey—”
“You took a quest? Here?”
“Yeah, what—”
“You do not think that might fuck with our timeline? With needing to get that dying man down there to Osterstadt before you lose everything we have been working towards, you fucking assbutt babyface fuckwit? Invite me to your party and your quest, assface.”
It took me a moment to figure it out, but I sent over an invite.
Nikolai has joined your party.
His eyes unfocused, and I could tell he was reading something.
“Let us go and get your mess cleaned up,” he said, and tromped into the tower.
I looked at my hirðmen. They looked at me.
“Thoughts?” I asked.
“No,” Skeld replied.
