Warrior_Monster Slayer

by Sam Ryder

  Lace, unlike Millania, did not turn away. She stalked right up to me.

  “Uh oh,” Beat said, which wasn’t particularly helpful.

  I said nothing, allowing Lace the opportunity to get whatever she needed to off her chest. She stopped a few feet away, her eyes roaming from my feet to my head and back down again, as if sizing me up. As usual, she wore her small bikini-like coverings that had been the only clothes afforded to her when she was brought here. We’d had a fling once, which had been way better than her eating me, so I knew her skin was covered in a thin layer of fur you couldn’t see with the naked eye. Her hourglass curves weren’t quite to the perfection of the Three, but not far off either. Had we been back on Earth, she would’ve been the most beautiful woman I’d ever laid eyes on. Her tail switched from side to side, reminding me this was no human, even if she had many of the same parts.

  “You?” she said, her lips curling in disgust.

  “Lace, I’m sorry.” It was all I could think of to say. I knew she’d wanted—expected—to be named the next Protector.

  “Sorry? You and…” She redirected her dagger-filled glare at Beat. “…her, take off in the middle of the Black, leaving the rest of us to face the monsters on our own, and they make you Protector?”

  I didn’t think correcting her would help, but technically we hadn’t left during the Black, though two Blacks had passed while we faced the horrors of the demon stronghold known as Annakor, which translated loosely to: the death of sky, earth and sea. In other words, the end of the Three goddesses’ reign.

  “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” Beat said, but I raised a hand to stop her. Though I appreciated the way she always tried to defend me—a true friend—nothing she said would help calm Lace right now. She was pissed off and needed an outlet. As the new leader of the Warriors, I was willing to take everything she had to give and more. Eventually, I would need her to fight.

  “No?” Lace said. “Explain it to me. Explain what could possibly be more important than defending the ward shields? In case you didn’t notice, they were breached while you were gone. The first time in over a century. Millania and I…” She shook her head, and I could see the pain of the memory reflected in her eyes. “We should be dead.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  Her lips pursed together. Because leveling up hadn’t removed my man-brain and replaced it with something more useful, I couldn’t help but remember how good she’d tasted. I felt movement beneath my loincloth. Though I’d been with the Three only a few hours before, it seemed leveling up had also increased my libido. A lot.

  Any thoughts of sex, however, were banished when she said, “There were six types of monsters.”

  Oh man. I immediately understood the ramifications. This monster-filled planet was a dangerous place, but what had always given it balance were the rules, which had been stable for many long years before I arrived. For example, the monsters generally attacked in packs formed by type. The demon horde, the Maluk’ori, always fought together, while hellhounds, winged gargats and the other types of monsters stayed together and out of each other’s ways. Trolls were loners, partly because there were fewer of them, and partly because they didn’t play well with the other monsters—like babies that grabbed a toy and said, “Mine! Mine! Mine!” unwilling to share with the other babies.

  However, since my arrival the rules had started changing, and not for the better. Once I’d been involved in a skirmish just outside the ward wall where demons fought alongside hellhounds. There’d even been a troll. None of them attacked each other. Battling three different types of monsters at once had been scary enough—six would’ve been hell.

  “We were nearly overrun,” Lace continued when I didn’t respond. “Eve showed up with Souza just before Millania and I would’ve been killed. The panther’s presence changed everything and the monsters started fighting each other again. Too bad the damage was already done.”

  I understood how Eve’s massive panther could’ve freaked out the monsters and made them revert to their old ways. She was a formidable steed.

  Still, we’d been lucky. If Eve hadn’t arrived when she did, Beat and I might’ve returned to camp to find everyone dead and the goddesses held hostage or worse.

  “And yet they made you Protector,” Lace pointed out again. “Why might that be, considering I’ve been here ten times as many Blacks as you? Might it have something to do with the giant penis you’re hiding under that cloth?”

  Beat snorted. “I don’t know about giant…it’s all relative…”

  “Lace, I know you’re angry,” I said. “I get it. I don’t know exactly why they made me Protector either. Even Eve admitted you’re the best Warrior we’ve got. But it’s what the Three decided and we all have to live with it. All I can say is that I’ll do my best.”

  Her eyes narrowed, her body tensing even more. For a second I thought she might attack me. But then the fight left her. She spun on her heel and walked away, her tail snapping once across my face, stinging my nose.

  “Nice talk!” Beat called after her.

  I watched her go, hoping I hadn’t just ruined things with someone I very much needed on my side. When a general only had three soldiers, losing one would be disastrous, especially one as capable as Lace. Then again, I was hoping to get more soldiers as soon as possible. Eve was out on a Finding mission, but probably wouldn’t return with a new lot of Level 1 Outcasts for at least a Black or two. Which meant I needed to rally the troops, so to speak. We needed to survive until reinforcements arrived, and we needed to do so with a badly damaged ward shield that now had a big-ass hole in it, as if we were inviting every monster on Tor to come on in. I was tempted to place a Welcome Monsters doormat just outside the breach.

  “Want me to go talk to her?” Beat asked.

  “No,” I said, much too quickly. The thought of Beat trying to talk Lace off a cliff made me want to skin myself alive. I could see it ending in the brawl to end all brawls. Both women would need to soak in an ooze bath for a week afterward to heal their injuries. Assuming either of them were still alive.

  “Joking,” Beat said, smirking. “Give her space. She’ll come around.”

  I hoped she was right. “What now?”

  The question was meant more for myself but Beat answered anyway. “You tell me, fearless leader.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “What do we do about Vrill? Should we go after her?”

  I cringed. The stark reminder that we’d abandoned the first friend I’d made on this world, the very woman who’d saved me that first day in the Circle, sent a pang through my chest. I remembered the lost look on her face when her evil doppelgänger had dragged her through the magical mirror and locked her inside.

  Vrill, are you still alive? I wondered. More than anything, I wanted to run all the way back to the shadowy mountains and search for her. If Lace had been named Protector, I might’ve done just that. But the Three had not chosen Lace—they’d chosen me, Sam Ryder. They’d put their faith in me, and now I had responsibilities for the three surviving Warriors, as well as protecting the damaged ward shields.

  “No,” I said, the single word seeming to tear pieces of me off as it emerged from my throat. “We can’t go.”

  “Then what’s the plan? We can’t just leave her there.”

  “I…” I honestly didn’t have a clue. I should’ve been tired, but I wasn’t. Possibly another effect of the cocoon ooze bath that lifted me from Level 2 to 3. Before Protector Kloop died, my only responsibility was to fight, eat and sleep. Rinse and repeat, Black after Black. When he died, everything happened so fast. I wasn’t trying to be a leader—it just sort of happened. I did what I thought I had to do to help the Three and protect the other Warriors.

  Which led me to what I knew I had to do now.

  Which made me groan.

  “What?” Beat said.

  “First, I’ve got to talk to Lace.”

  Beat’s eyebrows rose to her scalp.
She was still mostly bald—the result of the ooze bath that initially leveled her up to Warrior—but a thin cap of hair had begun to sprout. It was odd how the ooze bath affected different people differently. That fact was on a long list of Shit I Wanted to Understand. “You’re a glutton for punishment, you know that?”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  “Wait,” Beat said, stopping me with a hand on my shoulder when I started to walk toward the hut Lace had disappeared into. I turned toward her, frowning, waiting for her to impart some wisdom or advice. Instead, she grinned and said, “Want me to smother you in teriyaki sauce before Lace eats you?”

  Hah-larious. “Yes, please,” I said. And then I headed for a dinner where I would be the main course. Just another day in the office on Tor, I thought.

  ~~~

  “Get. Out,” Lace said when I entered the hut. Her cat-like ears were tilted in my direction, though her eyes remained closed. She was sprawled out on one of the thin pads we slept on, her tail curled around her lithe form.

  I was off to a good start.

  “Hate me if you want,” I said, “but I didn’t abandon you and Millania.”

  Her yellow eyes flashed open and I barely managed not to flinch. The size of her pupils fluctuated from wide to narrow and back again. Like a scope trying to lock in on a target. They stopped. Target acquired. “Explain,” she said, her voice a low growl. I had a feeling the quality of my answer would determine my fate.

  All I had was honesty. “I trusted you. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t—couldn’t—have left. I trusted you, Beat and Millania to handle whatever was coming. I didn’t expect Beat to come with me, but I couldn’t deny her. Plus, I needed her help. I wouldn’t have been successful without her. And we were successful. We destroyed the pit of dark magic. The Blacks won’t get any longer.” I swallowed as I remembered how we’d lost one of our own—Vrill—when she’d been dragged into that magical mirror by a darker, evil version of herself. I locked away the thought for now. “But I knew you would survive. I knew you would protect the Three, on your own if you needed to. You think Eve and Souza saved you?” I shook my head. “I reject that. Even if they hadn’t shown up, even if Millania hadn’t been around, you would’ve survived. You would’ve won.”

  When my speech was finished, Lace’s eyes narrowed. “I didn’t realize leveling up would give you a silver tongue, Protector. But I’m not some naïve fool. Without Millania, Eve and Souza, I’d be dead. Now leave, I need to rest. The Black will be here before we know it.”

  “So you’ll fight?”

  “Of course I’ll fight, dumbass. Just because I’m pissed off at you and the Three doesn’t mean I’ll abandon my post.”

  That was good enough for me. I glanced at her one final time as she rolled over and went back to sleep.

  TWO

  MONSTER PARTY

  The worst thing about the Black was that you couldn’t postpone or cancel it. It was like the job that you hated but could never call in sick to, or take a vacation from, or even get a weekend off.

  Oh yeah, and let’s not forget about all the things that go bump in the night trying to eat you. That sucked too.

  As usual, the last rays of the dying Bronze fell swiftly, shadows descending like sword strokes. We lit our demontorches, which were basically metal clubs painted with highly flammable and ever-burning demon’s blood. Handy in a pinch when you needed light.

  If not for the torches, we literally wouldn’t be able to see our hands in front of our faces. Even with the torchlight, the darkness seemed to press against us, the unnatural flames providing only a small halo of visibility.

  Lace hadn’t said a word to me after she woke up, grabbing her bow and quiver of arrows as she’d shouldered past me. She walked silently ahead of us now, her movements as smooth as melted butter with all the grace of a cat on the prowl.

  Millania, as usual, walked slightly apart from the rest of us, her three-pronged trident cupped in one hand and resting on her shoulder like a Civil War soldier’s rifle and bayonet. Next to Beat’s ripped frame, the ocean dweller was reed-thin. I wondered what she’d looked like before she’d been leveled up.

  Beat walked beside me, her shield and spear clanking slightly as they brushed against each other every few steps or so. We’d marched into the Black together more than a dozen times now, but her presence was always a comfort. Especially after what we’d survived in Annakor.

  As we approached the edge of the ward shield, I felt my mouth go dry. Not from fear, but because of what I saw. Cracks in the air, a visual representation of the damage sustained to the wards that had helped protect this place for many decades. Worse than any of that, however, was the gaping hole, a ragged entrance cut through the shield. When I’d first arrived on this planet, I couldn’t even see the wards. They were completely invisible. Now, in the daylight, they were visible all the way around, full of cracks that seemed more numerous by the day, like a damaged windshield slowly shattering.

  None of us said anything as we passed through the wards, the familiar suck-pop! pulling at our bodies as we emerged on the other side. We didn’t need to say anything. As we’d been trained by Protector Kloop before he’d died, we lit more torches, setting them on the rough ground in a wide circle to give us as much lead time as possible if attacked. Then we positioned ourselves in the center of the lit space, like an island in the midst of a tempestuous ocean infested with sharks.

  “Shall I ring the dinner bell or do you want to?” Beat asked.

  “Be my guest,” I said. Under Kloop’s leadership, we would generally wait in unnerving silence until the monsters inevitably came. But I wasn’t Kloop, and why delay the inevitable?

  Beat lifted her spear high in the air, letting it hover for a moment, the tip catching the red-orange light from the demontorches, reflecting tongues of flame. And then she brought it down with a clang! She repeated the motion several times: Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!

  “Idiots,” Lace hissed.

  I couldn’t argue with that. But then again, sometimes being idiotic when faced with monsters was the only thing that prevented my nerves from uncoiling like a dropped spool of yarn. Still, I gripped my hammer’s shaft harder, feeling adrenaline begin to course through my veins.

  A sound arose from somewhere in the distance. Like a gruff cough. It was answered from the other direction. Then from another direction still.

  “Fucking bludgeons,” Beat said. “I hate bludgeons.”

  It was Beat’s standard comment when facing any monsters. She hated them all. Then again, so did I.

  “Better than the six types of monsters Mill and I faced last night,” Lace growled, a not-so-subtle reminder that Beat and I hadn’t been around to help during a crucial moment.

  “There were at least that many at the black-magic pit,” Beat fired back. “And one of the Morgoss. So maybe you should shut the fu—”

  “Not the time,” I said, cutting my friend off. “We’ve all faced dangers. Our only hope is to stand together now. Hold your positions. Survive two Blacks and then we’ll have reinforcements.”

  “I’ve heard that before,” Lace muttered, but the four of us reasserted our positions, back to back to back to back, a tight knot in the center of the lighted space.

  Heavy footfalls approached, the stomp stomp stomp of creatures who didn’t know the meaning of the words sneak or tiptoe.

  That was the good and the bad thing about bludgeons: they came at you fast, with no surprises. It was scary as hell, but at least they were predictable.

  The first one burst from the darkness at a gallop, hunched over with its flat, hard head trained forward like a battering ram. It was heading right for Millania, the one least equipped to take on this particular monster in a one-on-one showdown.

  For a split-second, I almost expected to hear Protector Kloop’s familiar musical voice call out a command. My hesitation almost cost at least one life.

  But this was my show now, and I needed to prove to Lace—o
r maybe to myself—that I was the right choice for Protector. Or at least a good choice. “Gap the circle!” I shouted, taking one large step forward.

  The others acted just as quickly, separating from each other. The out of control bludgeon plowed forward with reckless abandon, passing through our midst without stopping. Millania, who was the closest to the monster, was not idle. After obeying my command, she stepped into a lunge, planting her feet and jabbing her trident between the bludgeon’s feet as it passed.

  Like a stick shoved into the spokes of a bike tire, the weapon caught, almost getting yanked from her hands as the stone beast fell. Beat stabbed at its hard flesh as it tumbled to the ground, but penetrating a bludgeon’s hide was almost impossible.

  There were two ways to kill it: through the eyes or through the mouth.

  Lace, who had stepped out of the path of the falling bludgeon, calmly fitted an arrow to her bowstring, took aim, and fired. Her magical arrow split into three, although she didn’t need the assistance this time. One arrow flew into the monster’s gaping mouth, while the other two each penetrated one of its eyes.

  Overkill.

  “Get clear!” she shouted, though it was an unnecessary warning. We’d all seen what happened next when Lace shot her arrows.

  Millania was forced to drop her weapon, which was still tangled in the bludgeon’s legs, as she scrambled away. Beat barged into me as we both dove for the ground, covering us with her massive shield. I didn’t see what happened to Lace, but she was the most agile of all of us, and was likely well out of range of the—

  BOOM!

  All three arrows exploded while still embedded in the stone monster’s head. For a few seconds after the blast there was an eerie silence, but then the rock shrapnel began to rain down on us. Tink tink tink! Beat’s shield deflected most of the projectiles, but wasn’t large enough to prevent several heavy, rough-edged stones from slamming against my legs.