The Good Guys Chronicles Box Set

by Eric Ugland

Ragnar opened his mouth, held up a finger, then shook his head.

  “All right then. Let’s go,” I said.

  “Already said that,” Nikolai called out from inside the tower.

  I rolled my eyes, but got moving.

  The door at the bottom of the tower was closed.

  I narrowed my eyes. “That’s weird,” I said, pointing to the door.

  Nikolai pulled it open, just ever so slightly, then peered in. A heartbeat later, he opened the door up the whole way.

  The room sat empty. Of anything moving or alive at least. It looked like it might have been a torture chamber in its previous life, before it became the sex dungeon for the Forsaken. There were still chains stuck in the walls, and racks of nasty-looking implements. Cells with iron bars lined one wall. But mostly, there was shit. Like literal shit, and tons of it. Piles of the nasty stuff, smears on the walls, everywhere.

  One of the Forsaken had been in the middle of a meal of another forsaken when I’d interrupted them, and that creature was still alive. Barely. He made noises at us, seemingly unable to decide if he was going to growl at us or mewl for mercy.

  I walked over and slid Hellreaver through its forehead. The creature stilled.

  Then it voided its bowels. It was a hard moment, but I held my vomit in. The Lutra did not.

  Nikolai, with some sort of power eluding me, just moved through the space without concern.

  “Come,” he called out, standing at the far end of the room.

  I had to navigate the mess on the floor, but I got over to Nikolai. There were three doors ahead of us.

  Two were broken, hanging open. Nikolai pointed one way and then to himself, then the other way, and to me.

  One was just a row of empty jail cells, which Nikolai took.

  The other was a small office and living quarters. There were no remains inside, and very little intact furniture. I ran my hands across the walls and found a loose brick above the straw remains of something that had likely been a bed at one point.

  A little shimmy using my blade as a lever, and the stone popped right out. I snatched it out of the air as it fell, and set it gently on the ground. In the little open space that remained, I found three small sacks, one jewelry box, and a funky-looking key nearly as big as my hand. The sacks and box went straight into my bag. The key, though, I kept out, sliding it into a small pouch on my belt. If any of the games I’d ever played were true, finding a key meant I’d need it soon.

  Nikolai was waiting in the hall with the two Lutra, both of whom looked a little green around the collar. At least, as far as I could tell given all the fur covering them.

  We approached the next closed door. I took a deep breath, trying to calm my nerves.

  Nikolai peered around the door as he opened it, doing his beast to get a view of anything that might come at him.

  It was a fucking hallway. Not a long one or a special one. Just a hallway with another fucking door at the end. Which was also closed.

  As we headed down, I made sure I gave Nikolai enough room to swing his sword around should it be necessary.

  For real this time, I braced myself for whatever we were about to encounter.

  Chapter 67

  We made our way into an octagonal room that seemed half lab, one quarter library, and one quarter living space. But none of that was really important. The most terrifying element of the room was on the far wall. It’s hard to describe because it broke my sense of reality. Pieces of, well, reality seemed to be in tatters and hung around a, um, another? It was like something had torn the wall, and pieces of the wall hung down as if they were fabric. Looking through said hole, I saw another world: bits of sand and a reddish sky. It was difficult to keep my eyes on it. The hole flickered along the edges, kind of like static. My only guess was that it was a wormhole of sorts, though having never seen one before, I had little confidence.

  “Fuck,” Nikolai breathed quietly.

  “What the fuck is that?” I yelled.

  “A portal to another plane of existence.”

  “You’ve seen them before?”

  “Once.”

  “Any idea where it leads? Like, Hell?”

  “Given that we faced the Forsaken, Hell would be my guess.”

  “Wait — are you about to tell me there’s more than one Hell?”

  “There is only one Hell.”

  “But?”

  “There are other, well, negative planes. Hell, The Abyss, The Darkness, The Wastes, and my personal belief as the worst, The Outside.”

  Ragnar and Skeld muttered.

  “And this leads to Hell?”

  “Likely. I believe the Forsaken hail from Hell, but I am not completely positive.”

  The other side of the portal was unpleasant to say the least. I mean, where we were was full of demon shit, carcasses, blood, guts, and a whole host of other fluids I didn’t even want to think about, but the other plane was just horrific. We looked into a valley that was completely devoid of vegetation. Clouds moved by in the sky, but far too quickly. Bold flashes of lightning were a relative constant, and thunder boomed through the air.

  “Okay,” I said, “so I’m guessing we need to shut that thing down.”

  “We do,” Nikolai replied. “Which means we must go through the portal and find the portal stone.”

  “Cool. What’s that?”

  “The thing that keeps the portal open. It will be a thing from this land, taken over there and kept. Should we manage to bring it back, the portal will close.”

  I smiled. “Sounds simple enough.”

  “Nothing involving portals or the lowers planes is ever simple, and to think it might be is to be a fool. So why am I surprised you think it is simple?”

  I rolled my eyes. Nikolai being such a drama queen was starting to wear on me.

  “I got this,” I said. I took off the knapsack and handed it over to Ragnar. “Keep this safe.”

  He nodded.

  “You and I will go through,” Nikolai said, his eyes still not off the portal. “Your hirð will remain behind to guard our exit. Should we perish,” he said turning to Skeld, “you shall take Cleeve on to Osterstadt.”

  “Apologies,” Skeld said, then pointed at me, “but we can only take orders from him.”

  “Just do what he says,” I said. “I die, get Cleeve to Osterstadt. Or if I don’t die and the portal closes, get Cleeve to Osterstadt. Okay?”

  “Understood,” Skeld replied.

  “Do I get to keep the bag if you die?” Ragnar asked.

  “Skeld gets half,” I said.

  Then, Nikolai and I stepped through.

  Chapter 68

  The other side was, in fact, hellish.

  Ah, an Explorer. You have discovered another plane of existence. Welcome to Hell.

  You gain 1000 XP.

  Points for discovering places! Seemed like maybe it’d be useful to bounce around. But just 1000 points, though. Unless the points increased, it seemed pointless to do in later game.

  The air was hot yet fetid. Dry but stinky. Dread washed over me in waves, and I wanted to retch and run. I’d do anything to get the fuck out of dodge.

  “This place sucks,” I said.

  “It is literally Hell,” Nikolai said, his eyes scanning the place. “What were you expecting?”

  The man had a point.

  “What exactly are we looking for?”

  “I have no way of knowing,” he replied. “It will be something from our world. It will retain the feeling of our world, so it will not feel as hellish as anything else you touch here.”

  Nikolai started searching in front of the portal, kneeling on the ground and looking in the various cracks.

  I walked around to the edge of the portal, trying to get a look at what was on the other side. It was confusing, because on one side, I saw the room in the castle and Ragnar and Skeld standing there looking worried. On the other side, there was no sign whatsoever that the portal existed. So I just saw Nikolai fumbli
ng around the cracks for a stone. Given other circumstances, it might have been hilarious, but at the moment, it was rather terrifying. The Forsaken had been pretty easy to dispatch, but I had no desire to go up against anything bigger or badder.

  Then I noticed a man. Or something that used to be a man. The figure knelt on the ground. His arms were outstretched, tied at each wrist to poles on either side of him. His head hung down. On his back, his skin had been removed and stretched out to form wings. Walking around, I saw that his ribs had been broken and folded out, and were resting on his ‘wings.’ Finally, his lungs had been pulled through his ribcage, and were exposed to the air.

  On the far side of the man was a small hut, built out of a darker mud than any of the soil around the area.

  A rattling noise came from behind me, and I turned to look at the man.

  His lungs inflated, and I screamed, then backpedaled, hitting the ground with my back.

  Immediately, it was clear I’d made a rather large mistake. There was a very loud gonging sound, like, I realize now, the ringing of Hell’s bells. At the same time, Hellreaver started heating up to the point that I could feel it through my armor.

  “What was that?” Nikolai asked, looking around, trying to see through the portal.

  “My sword,” I replied, pulling the blade from its scabbard and holding it out at arm’s length. It glowed white, heat radiating off.

  Nikolai raced around the portal and glared at me.

  “Any chance ’tis a holy relic of some variety?”

  “I mean, it’s called Hellreaver — your guess is as good as mine.”

  Nikolai stared at the weapon a moment, and I felt a tingle as he cast a spell.

  “Fool,” Nikolai snapped. “It is a blessed weapon, and you touched it to the ground here?”

  “By accident.”

  “Accident or on purpose. Same result.”

  “I take it this is bad.”

  “Every devil, from the lowliest imp to the King of Hell himself, just got notice of some element of Heaven in their realm. They are all racing this way right now, slavering at the chance to kill an angel or agent of good. When they get there, they will find an open portal to our world, and they will kill themselves to get through and wreak havoc upon it.”

  “Yeah, that’s bad.”

  “Find the portal stone. Fast. Even I am no match for most of Hell. Find the portal stone, or we will die.”

  “You think it might be this dude?” I asked.

  Nikolai looked over the man.

  “He’s still alive,” I said.

  “It is not him.”

  Curiosity swelled. How did Nikolai know? But this wasn’t the time to talk about it. There were already screams and shouts coming over the hills.

  A nasty creature came around the hut. He was vaguely humanoid and had overly-tight black skin, horns sprouting from a horse-like head, weird boney protrusions all over the body, tattered wings hanging off its back, and cracked and cloven hooves at the end of his spindly legs.

  I fired off a quick bit of magic to identify my opponent.

  Voloth Tongue Eater

  Lvl 9 Tormenter

  The Voloth Tongue Eater babbled something at me I couldn’t identify or understand. Then, my boon fired off, and I got a notification:

  Smashing! You’ve learned a new language, Infernal.

  Nice.

  I didn’t really feel like talking to him, though. Instead, I swung Hellreaver around at the creature, putting some serious strength behind it.

  I hit, but it just sort of bounced off.

  “Your weapon has no power here,” the Voloth rasped at me. He let his head snap back, his mouth opening wider than it should have been able, and started laughing. It was a horrid sound that really shook me, like the longest, nastiest nails scratching across a gross plate.

  Nikolai said something behind me, but I wasn’t interested in what Nikolai had to say.

  Instead, I dropped the sword (which sent another loud gong noise out into the world as it hit the ground), reached out, grabbed the asshole’s two horns, and started pulling.

  The Voloth screamed and reached for me, but my arms were longer than his.

  Something started to give in the monster’s skull, and the Voloth found a new octave for screeching, even as he got his claws into my arms. I didn’t have much in the way of protection around my arms beyond the pauldrons on my shoulders, and the devil started shredding with wild abandon.

  But I wasn’t about to stop. I could feel the horns getting just a little farther apart. I closed my eyes, roared my anger at this stupid situation, and finally heard a tearing sound.

  The devil’s skull came apart, revealing a mess of internals and a rush of black viscous fluid. The screaming suddenly stopped. The creature went limp, and I held it aloft by the horns. I tossed the body to the side, shook some of the devil blood from my hands, and grabbed my sword.

  GG! You’ve killed a Voloth Tongue Eater (lvl 9 Tormenter).

  You’ve earned 1250 XP! What a mighty hero you are.

  “Help me with him,” Nikolai yelled.

  I looked over my shoulder to see him kneeling in front of the bleeding figure, working to untie him. I raced over, sliding the last few feet on my knees.

  The man, or what was left of him, wheezed, bloody bubbles coming from his mouth.

  “Heal him,” Nikolai ordered.

  I channeled some magic and laid my hands on the man. Purple tendrils seemed to leech out of me, surrounding the man for a heartbeat. They caressed his skin, then dissipating as if blown by a gentle breeze. He didn’t look a whole hell of a lot better once the spell was done, but he opened his eyes, and the bloody froth stopped coming out of his mouth.

  “The portal stone,” Nikolai hissed, “where is it?”

  “Hut…” the man whispered, barely audible.

  “Go!” Nikolai yelled.

  I ran. On the horizon, I saw dark shapes both in the sky and on the skyline. Knowing a distraction would be super useful right about now, I grabbed the sword, said thank you to Hellreaver, then hauled off and threw it as far as I possibly could.

  The sword glowed white, searing the sky like a tracer bullet. It went quite the distance, and as soon as it hit, a long bong sounded out once more. The shapes on the horizon changed directions ever so slightly.

  I lost traction and slid to the ground. I had to scrabble back to my feet, coming to the back side of the hut on all fours. There was small arch leading into the hut, and I ran through without a second thought.

  The inside of the place stank, so bad it felt like the inside of my nose was burning out. My eyes watered. My gorge rose. It took serious effort to not vomit.

  A small bunk sat to one side, with a shelf opposite and a desk in between. In the middle of the desk, there was an open book.

  Screeches sounded off outside.

  “Montana!” I heard Nikolai yell.

  I threw everything from the hut onto the blanket on the bunk, then wrapped it in a bundle. I grabbed the bundle, and took one last look around the place. It was devoid of everything but the shitty furniture, so I booked it.

  The devils were definitely coming quickly. The whole throwing-the-sword trick hadn’t fooled them for long. A quick glance in any direction revealed nightmares converging on me. The ground was straight up rumbling under a million infernal feet, or hooves, or claws, or any of the other horrific things the hellish creatures used for charging at us.

  I sprinted across the shitty yellow dirt. Thank god Nikolai stood at the edge of the portal, because otherwise, I’d have no fucking clue which direction to go. He waved for me to run faster.

  Behind him was a maelstrom of teeth and claws, the gap closing between him and a cavalcade of terrors and horrors screaming and roaring. I wanted to lay down and give up. I promised myself I’d put more points in Agility if I could just escape these devils.

  Nikolai reached out and grabbed me, pulling me through the portal. I fell to the ground, and wat
ched as the portal shimmered, then closed. Suddenly, everything horrific stopped.

  Chapter 69

  It was reasonably quiet in the castle. Also it definitely felt better just being out of Hell. Who would have thought?

  Ragnar and Skeld stood at the back of the room, giving us space. Nikolai picked himself off the ground, then helped me to my feet. He brushed some of the dirt off himself, and I did the same, doing my best to get the yellow dust off me. It smelled terrible.

  The man we’d rescued groaned. He was mostly in the same position we’d found him, still having trouble moving his arms.

  I sighed, and sent another healing spell his way. His body pulled itself back together a bit.

  “I must thank you,” he said, very softly. “Might I give you a reward?”

  “Sure,” I said. “But a quick question or two first, okay?”

  He reached out for me, but I stepped back.

  “You opened the portal to Hell, huh?” I asked.

  “I did,” the man replied. “I simply miscalculated the portal runes.”

  “So you lost control of a portal to Hell and everyone in this castle paid the price?”

  “An honest mistake.”

  “Dude, why were you making a portal to Hell in the first place--”

  “Power,” Nikolai said. “These fools always attempt to find more power, and rarely pay the price.”

  “The price?” the wizard asked, rage taking over his face. “I have been tortured beyond the limits of human endurance for what seemed like ten lifetimes. How have I not paid the price?”

  I pulled my dagger from my boot and shoved it up through the man’s neck.

  “Enough bullshit,” I said.

  GG! You’ve killed a Human (lvl 22 Arcane Archivist).

  You’ve earned 2000XP! What a mighty hero you are.

  Someone who’d been willing to do what he’d done wasn’t going to be giving me an actual reward. He was definitely planning on something insidious. So I figured I’d be insidious first.