by Galen Wolf
This is the time. Either she’ll betray us or not. If she did betray us, she’d probably get some kudos for turning us in. That is if she wants to curry favour with her previous friends. If she wants to curry favour with us, then she just needs to do as we told her.
I’m staring at her as she gets up to the guards. I make sure I’m close enough to hear what she says.
‘Hello,’ she says to the guards. ‘I’m Elizabeth Bathory, a Level Fifteen Heretic of the Fangs of Koth Guild.’
The hobgoblin glances at her, making sure she is who she says she is, then he salutes respectfully.
‘Now get out of my way and let me take my prisoners through.’ This is the way they talk to each other. The guy with the hound on a leash, yanks the dog back.
The hobgoblin gulps and looks nervously at us on our horses and mules. We sit, heads down.
‘Are they unarmed?’ The guard asks.
‘Of course, you dolt. Why would I let prisoners carry weapons?’
‘Just asking, ma’am. Sorry, ma’am.’
She shakes her head in derision. ‘Now let us through.’
‘Of course. Sorry.’ He bows away and indicates for the spear armed guards to allow us past.
And then we’re in New World Order. It’s a grim place, but bustling. There’s obviously industry here and some trade. It looks like there are factories with smoking chimneys and smoke streaked buildings that look like warehouses.
Fitheach suddenly spurs his mule until he’s past me and level with Elizabeth Bathory. He asks her, ‘The Smoky Crystals from Carrionburg. Where do they keep them?’
Elizabeth Bathory glances nervously at him, but says nothing.
Fitheach is more insistent. ‘Where is the warehouse they keep them in?’
‘I’m sorry…’
I move forward till I’m on the right of her. I’m interested in her reaction. Getting us through the gate was one test, this is another. My only hesitation is what Fitheach will do once he finds out where the warehouse is, but I let him speak.
The saint is staring at her. ‘You must have been on guard duty with the convoys. That’s the whole point of Carrionburg, to dig out the crystals and ferry them to New World Order.’
‘Yes…’ She’s still hesitant and her hesitation makes me suspicious. It’s possible she went along with us getting through New World Order because she’s been tasked with finding out where we’re ultimately going.
The saint raises his voice. ‘So where is the warehouse?’
‘Well, it’s in New World Order…’
‘Yes, we knew that. But where is it from here?’ Fitheach’s frowning at her now, his beak-like nose accentuated by the concentration on his face. ‘West or east? Up here or down there?’ He’s pointing as he talks, and his raised voice and gesticulation is drawing attention to us.
Two hobgoblin guards step up from where they were lounging with their spears against the wall. ‘All right, miss? Need a hand with these prisoners?’
Elizabeth Bathory shakes her head. She turns to Fitheach. ‘Well it’s up there.’ She gestures vaguely.
Tye throws back his hood. He looks riled and he’s flexing his fingers. I know he does this before he casts a spell. If he casts a spell now, all stealth is gone.
I throw him a warning glance, but he’s not looking at me; he’s staring at the back of Elizabeth Bathory’s head, muttering something like, ‘I knew it. We can’t trust her…’ The hobgoblins notice. ‘Hey, ginger, what you doing?’
Tye turns to them. ‘Did you just call me ginger?’
The hobgoblin sniggers and looks at his mate. ‘See that, Grubzug? It talks back? We don’t like them when they talk back.’
The two hobgoblins shift their spears and approach Tye. The red-haired wizard grunts, pivots in his saddle, and lets a fireball explode from his hands. ‘Eat fire, turd heads!’
The two hobgoblins are incinerated by a blast that scorches even me and the stink of roasted meat fills the air as the sound of the fireball echoes off the nearby buildings.
‘Good job, Tye.’ I say.
‘Thanks, boss.’ The kid just doesn’t understand sarcasm.
I turn and I see a patrol of hobgoblins running at us down the Main Street. The evil NPCs scatter out of our way. One kicks over a box of chickens and they fly and cluck, drawing more attention. Behind the hobgoblins are three Hill Giants.
Fitheach turns and a white fire erupts from his eyes, shoots out a hundred yards, wraps round the oncoming hobgoblins and squeezes them until they fall to the ground, twitching.
I shake my head. ‘Great guys. How are we going to get out of here now?’
‘Fight our way through,’ Fitheach says. He’s clearly pumped by the action.
‘This is walled city you know.’
‘Come on, boss. It’ll be fun,’ Tye says, then shoots a fireball at the oncoming Hill Giants. It explodes knocking them down and killing one.
‘Go left,’ Elizabeth says. ‘The warehouse is up there.’
Maybe she can be trusted.
We hurry up a dirt track between buildings. At one point Tye turns and fires another fireball killing another giant. Bernard hurls a smoke grenade which gives us some cover until the giants burst through, roaring. Tye fries one with a Flaming Ray. I get another 300xp and then Fitheach says, ‘Want me to stop them?’
‘Erm, yes. If you can’t do that.’
Fitheach turns and frowns and lifts his hands and a blue kind of fog flies out and lands on the floor, rising like a miasma between us and our pursuers. As they come into it, their movements slow down like they’re forcing their way through jelly.
‘Let me drop a firewall on them?’ Tye pants.
I stare at Tye. ‘Why are you asking? You don’t normally ask.’
He looks embarrassed then grins and drops a firewall right on top of Fitheach’s blue fog. The giants can’t get out, and they can’t go back or forward and so they stay and cook in Tye’s inferno. I get another 400 xp.
‘Gratz, boss,’ Tye says as the blue levelling glow envelops me then fades. Another hundred skill points. Only one more level until I have to choose my prestige class and become a Paladin, becoming a god of the battlefield, but at the cost of losing my settlement. Anyway, I don’t have to think of that now.
Elizabeth is pointing at a nondescript building of ruddy stone. ‘That’s where they keep the Smoky Crystals.’
I look to Fitheach who’s got a grin from ear to wrinkled ear. He winks. ‘Time to burn.’
I shrug. We might as well. It’s not like we have any further chance of being low-key.
‘Be careful,’ Elizabeth says, ‘It’s heavily guarded.’
I see Tye’s fingers flexing again. ’We can deal with that,’ he says
Blowing the Gaff
We’re outside the warehouse that has the Smoky Crystals inside it. Several of my group are very keen to blow it to hell but as for the others, namely Elizabeth Bathory, I’m not so sure. I pivot round on my saddle and see the blue fog and firewall cast by Fitheach and Tye are still consuming any of our enemies stupid enough to try to get through them. I don’t know how long the barrier will last.
The warehouse has a big door. An ogre steps out, club weighed in his hand.
‘What do you want?’ He grunts, then sees Elizabeth B, still wearing her Fangs of Koth insignia and gets a whole lot more respectful. ‘Sorry, ma’am. Didn’t see you there.’
She hesitates. I’m watching her like an eagle. So are Bernard, Tye and Fitheach. I see the glint in my fiery haired wizard’s eyes. He’ll fry her if she even breathes wrong.
She clears her throat. ‘I need to come into the warehouse.’
The ogre frowns. His inborn respect for a member of the Fangs of Koth is having a fight against his suspicion and duty that no one should come in.
Elizabeth goes on. ‘You remember me? I was
on an escort trip with crystals up from Carrionburg.’
The ogre nods slowly. ‘I remember you, ma’am.’
I glance around. The spells are fading. Pretty soon our enemy will burst through. They can’t even see where we are outside the warehouse through the fog but once that fades they’ll have a direct view. We need to get in fast. The warehouse butts up against the obsidian town wall. This is the end of the line. There are no more streets to run down. We need to get into the warehouse or fight the whole town.
I cough. The ogre looks suspiciously at me. We’re all wearing long black robes. I know ogres aren’t very smart, but we don’t look like regular evil guys.
Elizabeth says, ‘We’re coming in. I need to inspect something.’
‘This is most irregular, ma’am. We don’t have any orders to let anyone in today.’
She comes up with her master stroke. ‘Are you prepared to tell Maligon you refused one of his guild entry?’
I see the ogre sigh. He looks her up and down, but tentatively. Then he steps aside.
We dismount. I don’t want to leave the horses and mules out here so we lead them through the door.
‘You can’t bring beasts in here, ma’am. It’s not allowed.’
She skewers him with her steely glare. ‘Don’t tell me what I can or can’t do, NPC.’
That’s exactly right. Thank the Lord she didn’t say please. Ogres don’t respect good manners.
He bows his head and says no more. We go in, me leading Spirit by his bridle.
The warehouse is huge and smells of gunpowder. Racks and racks of Smoky Crystals of all different sizes, arranged by size on wooden shelves in metal frames go right up to the ceiling. There must be a hundred thousand crystals here or more.
Bernard’s tilting his head to take in the enormity of their collection. He says, ‘They don’t have a clue what to do with these, or there wouldn’t be so many here.’
I ask Elizabeth. ‘Is there a back door?’
‘To the warehouse?’
I think: duh. Where else? But I don’t say it; instead, I smile. ‘Yeah. It won’t take long for them to consider searching the warehouse. I’d rather be out the other side and then we can get out the far gate and we’ll be through the wall.’
‘You think so?’ Bernard says. ‘You really think we are going to get out the other city gate now?’
I sigh. He has a point. But what else can we do?
Fitheach is looking around. Finally he says, ’Let’s blow this place sky high.’
Tye nods in agreement. ‘Yes. Blow it. Let’s do it.’
I raise my hand. The ogre guards are getting even more suspicious now as we stand round muttering, and when I glance over to Elizabeth Bathory, I see she’s sweating. I say, ‘Guys. We can’t fight a town. That’s that. We have to sneak out of here, not announce our presence to every single enemy regiment within a hundred miles.’
‘Sneak out how?’ Bernard says.
‘Through the back door.’
‘If there is a back door.’
I turn to Elizabeth. ‘Can you confirm there is a back door?’
She doesn’t answer.
‘If there’s a back door, we’re going out that way, silent and stealthy,’ I say.
They grumble but they’re about to go along with me and calm their aggressive tendencies when there’s a commotion at the door. A hill giant is talking to the ogre guard. Then he points at us. The game’s up. I see a whole lot of bad guys stacked up behind the hill giant. The decision is made for us. I turn to Tye. ‘Blow it.’ Then to Fitheach. Can you paralyze them or fog them or something?’
’Sure, boss,’ the saint says. Everyone is calling me boss now. Then he glares at the enemies by the door and that weird white fire shoots out of his eyes and wraps around them. They fall twitching to the ground, but there are plenty more behind them.
Not to be outdone, Tye casts a firewall by the door and giantish screams and shrieks reverberate around the warehouse.
‘Now would be a good time to tell us where the back door is.’ I’m looking at Elizabeth.
She shrugs. ‘I’ve never seen a back door. I only came with the cargo trains that dropped the crystals off. We arrived at the front door, they came to get the crystals and that was that, I went back to Carrionburg without really entering the warehouse.’
I study her expression and decide I believe her, but it doesn’t help.
Another fireball from Tye and a grunt from Fitheach and a blinding white and blue light pulses out from the door. Our enemies are being annihilated; the only trouble is they are endless. Spirit is getting nervous of the explosions. Henry’s looking skittish too, rolling his eyes but trying to be brave to impress Bessie.
‘Let’s go,’ I say. ‘That way.’ I point down the central alley between the rows and rows of Smoky Crystals. If there’s a way out, it’ll be up there.
Tye and Fitheach stand as our rear guard while Bernard and Elizabeth and I go forward with the horses and mules. The racks of Smoky Crystals tower over us on either side. The animals are nervous, snickering and stamping their feet. I stroke Spirit to reassure him. We go fast down the aisle. Tye and Fitheach falling back behind us. ‘I’m out of mana,’ Tye says.
Bernard turns, and extracts a mana potion from inside his robe and chucks it at Tye. ‘Here.’
The wizard catches it and swigs it back. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he says, ‘Thanks, Uncle Bernard.’
Bernard grunts. ‘I’m not your uncle.’
Tye cackles and turns and shoots another fireball into our oncoming enemies. I risk a look back. There are rows and rows of enemies, trolls, hobgoblins, and giants, now able to stand up straight because they’re through the low door. There are even werewolves. We need to find that exit.
Then there’s the first explosion. A Flaming Ray cast by Tye caught a glancing blow against one of the stacks of Smoky Crystals, igniting them. They explode, shards of crystal ricocheting through the far end of the warehouse, striking our enemies with glasslike shrapnel. ‘I guess the crystals are flammable,’ Tye says.
‘Be careful, Tye,’ I say. ‘If they blow up, they’ll kill us too.’
He nods. The minions of evil come through the front door in waves, ignoring their comrades who are burning like Roman candles. They scream and run, brandishing their weapons only to be met with a deadly rain of fire and blinding white light.
Tye and Fitheach are running back to us. We’ve gotten nearly four fifths of the way down the main avenue in the crystal warehouse. More crystals blow up behind us. There’s a real danger of a chain reaction.
‘Careful of the crystals, Tye!,’ I yell again.
‘Sure, sure. I’m trying to miss them.’
‘Try harder. We don’t want the whole place to go up or we’ll be back at Silver Drift. We’ll lose the element of surprise.’
‘I don’t really call this an element of surprise,’ Bernard grunts as he runs. I’m running too, pulling Spirit along with me. But there’s no back door. I only see a blank stone wall ahead. The rows end and there’s a cross cutting passage like a T at the end of the main alley. We get there and I look rapidly left and right. ‘The back door?’ I’m looking at Elizabeth but she shrugs and shakes her head. ‘I don’t know. I honestly don’t know.’
It would be helpful if she did know. Really helpful.
‘There is no back door,’ Bernard sounds exasperated. ‘And if there’s no back door, that means we have to go back out by the front door.’
I look where he’s looking. Our enemies fill the place. We’re past the last row of crystals standing by the high stone wall. Fitheach and Tye are in the middle of the alley between crystal racks, firing their spells at the oncoming throng. Soon they’ll be out of mana, and Bernard’s only got so many mana potions he can dole out.
’So we go back the way we came?’ Bernard’s standing with his hands tightly gripping Henry’s reins. The big mouthed mule says nothing but his eyes are showing their whites an
d his shaking. He doesn’t like the explosions.
‘Okay,’ I yell back to my team. ‘We’ve got to fight our way out.’
‘Fine,’ Tye says, ‘But I’m going to need another mana potion, Uncle Bernard.’
Bernard nods and pulls out a flask with a sparkling liquid inside. ‘Fitheach, you need one?’ He calls to the saint.
’Yes, please, if you can spare one.’
Bernard takes two sparkling potions and hurls one to the wizard and one to the saint. They sip the potions and keep on firing.
Then there’s an almighty explosion. The first report rips into the enemy with a deafening din. I feel the heat as the crystals go up and I hear the sound of smashing glass as the splinters of crystals fly across the room causing dreadful damage, slaughtering the hobgoblins and dwemmers that are pursuing us.
There’s a dazed silence. The smoke rises, there are screams from the wounded.
‘Advance!’ I call, drawing my sword. The enhancements on it flutter like fire and I see the bleed rune placed on it by Bernard. The smoke is choking and acrid from the burning crystals.
We go forward. Tye and Fitheach are in the lead. I turn my head. ‘Can you do anything to help?’ I ask Elizabeth.
She nods and concentrates before firing a bolt of necrotic energy that slams into a hill giant who’s getting slowly to his feet. It kills him instantly with disease damage.
For some reason the game gives me a report on my XP halfway through the fight.
Okay, Elizabeth’s on board, we just need to fight our way out.
Then there’s another explosion. This time bigger than the others. The shock wave sends me reeling and deafens me. Then I see daylight in the wall. The right wall, a way down has a big hole in it. As I watch rubble falls from the wall killing some dwemmers.
