“Aye,” Elec nodded. “If there is anything I can do to help you, please tell me. For now, share some of my bounty.” Elec slapped Shardrin on the back.
The two of them sat and ate, Shardrin recounting tales of his adventures and indicating that he was nowhere near finished with his career.
“I am only just beginning to build the tales for the bards to sing in taverns,” Shardrin laughed. He removed his belt that held two scabbards of the most intricate and boiled leathers, much like the armor that he wore. “There is always room for one as skilled as I that can scout and disarm the deadliest of traps. Have you been practicing?”
“Aye,” Elec nodded, producing the gears which he had been taking apart and putting back together with the greatest of ease.
“It seems it might be time to show you something a bit harder,” Shardrin observed, clearly impressed with Elec’s attention to detail and expert placement.
“What are those?” Elec asked, not really listening to the last comment but instead focusing on the twin scabbards.
“These,” Shardrin explained, picking them up and setting them on his lap, “are my prized swords.”
“May I look at them?” Elec enquired, throwing more wood onto the fire. It was getting dark and there was a distinct nip in the air.
Shardrin nodded, handing Elec the first of the two. The short sword that he removed from the scabbard was even more intricately constructed than the casing. Elec did not know who had made them, but recognized expert craftsmanship when he saw it. He also noted a faint blue glimmer along the edge of the blade and felt a chill there that was more than the cold of the steel. The glow indicated that some kind of magic had been mixed with the blade when it was crafted.
“So. Do you want to attempt to work on a more difficult mechanism?” Shardrin asked him, holding up a new device of some kind. It was truly more intricate, with more gears, pins, springs and moving parts than Elec had ever seen before.
Elec took it, once he had replaced the short sword back into its housing, and stared at the object in fascination. As he fiddled with something, Shardrin took the sword and refitted the belt around his waist.
“Ah!” Elec yelled out in sudden pain, shaking his hand to stem the ache. Shardrin returned his gaze to him.
“Quiet,” he advised Elec. “We do not know what is out here in the wilderness. Now, as I was trying to tell you, this particular device has an electrical discharge upon it. It is not fatal, but will certainly hurt you if you are not careful,” he added, standing up suddenly. “It makes you focus, does it not?”
He unsheathed his swords. The second blade appeared to have a dim red glow… or was it just the reflection of the fire? Elec could not tell.
“What are you doing?” Elec asked in confusion, looking around for some hint of danger. He could see nothing in the gloom of twilight, except the glowing sword. Adok was nowhere to be seen since he had taken flight some hours ago.
Shardrin moved away from the fire and toward a path that led up the hill above them. Then Elec saw them. A half dozen or more smallish shapes were bounding down the hill, the size of dogs, and with pointy snouts and long, slender tails that made them seem like… dire rats?!
Elec kicked a few of the fresh logs back out of the fire, thinking that they would not want to leave it unattended. The flames immediately dimmed.
Shardrin was moving up the hill toward the attackers. As the creatures approached him, Elec stood and removed Daegnar Giruth. From then on, things seemed to move in slow motion around him as he followed the trail of the rogue elf. As he ascended the path, he watched as Shardrin engaged them.
His first pass of the blade, a south to north upward chop, seemed to freeze the center section of the first rat as it was cloven in two, the lower portion falling straight down to the soil and the top portion flying off. It hit the ground some fifty feet away and shattered into a hundred shards upon the rocky ground below them, the parts scattering and vanishing in the weeds and foliage.
Shardrin’s second swing caught another of the creatures with an outward hack that carved through the flesh and bone of the beast like a warm dagger through fresh butter. Elec looked at the remains of that one as he neared the combat, its insides completely and utterly liquefied and held together by its own melted vestiges.
“By the gods,” Elec murmured.
“Mind helping me? You can swear later,” Shardrin remarked nonchalantly, ducking as a dire rat launched itself over him, heading toward Elec now. His hearing was better than even Elec’s it would seem. That was an impressive thing, Elec thought as he strode forward, his enchanted blade held out before him, gripped tightly in both hands.
Elec swung the weapon—over swung it, in fact—and threw himself off-balance. The blade was much lighter than he expected. Or was it the adrenaline rushing through his veins that made him do it. The clumsy swing nearly took him off the side of the hill and down onto the rocky surface below.
The rat did not miss its target, however. Its beady eyes flashed in the dim light of the campfire below and its teeth locked onto Elec’s forearm, biting right through his flimsy armor. He yelped in pain and threw the thing off of him, losing a small portion of flesh as he did. He looked down to see blood seeping out from under his leather clothing. He reached for his bandolier, seizing and uncorking a potion which he quickly consumed. Then he drank another, tossing the vial aside as the rat launched itself at him again.
In that split second, the elixirs took effect. The pain of his wound, which had already begun to burn from within from an obvious contagion, receded and the gash was slowly closed. Elec’s speed and reactionary time increased too, so the rat seemed to slow down comparably to his own actions. He smacked the thing with the flat of his blade, accidentally missing with the edge, and knocked it to the ground. He brought a clumsy overhead swipe down onto the creature, removing only its tail in the process.
Elec heard the laughter of Shardrin in the background and swung round to face him. He saw the Scoundrel cross his two blades in front of him, essentially blocking a diving rat and catching it in mid-air. His next action was to uncross those blades, taking the head of the huge rat off, and sending it soaring away while the body dropped to the ground with a sickening thud.
Elec whirled back in time to see his own enemy fly through the air toward him. He instinctively held out his blade firmly with two hands, and the rat impaled itself upon his sword edge. Elec glimpsed a low flying shadow and reflexively ducked, thinking it to be another enemy, but it was the form of a giant eagle. Adok, Elec realized, as the bird descended and grabbed two more of the dire rats that raced toward the high elves and flew off with them.
“Where are they coming from?” Elec managed to call out to Shardrin, who drove a short sword through the belly of the last one and then stood on its carcass with his right foot, removing his blood soaked weapon and wiping it clean with a rag of dirty leather.
“There.” Shardrin pointed to a spot several hundred feet above them. It was hard to see, especially in the darkness, but Elec’s darkvision allowed him to make out a depression in the side of the hill—a cave entrance of some kind.
“Shall we?” asked Shardrin, not waiting for a response but heading in that direction. “They were certainly aggressive creatures,” he called back to Elec, smiling that same sly smile that he had before.
This elf has certainly been around, Elec thought, pursuing him as best he could.
Several minutes passed before Elec finally reached the path into the cave and saw Shardrin holding up a hand, forefinger extended indicating for him to remain silent and to stop moving. He did so and crouched, waiting for Shardrin to advise him further. A moment more passed, then Shardrin padded softly back to Elec and squatted to face him.
“The rats are all but gone, but I have to say that there is something deeper within this cave,” Shardrin explained, sheathing his second sword. Elec simply nodded and followed after him quietly. He paused at the cave entrance and looked skyward
, searching for Adok, but did not see him.
“There are tracks here, and large ones at that,” Shardrin added, looking around. “Do you see the size of these tunnels, elf?”
Elec noticed that the passage was huge, seemingly able to hold a full grown dragon. He stopped breathing involuntarily at that thought, and then sucked in a breath slowly to stop the panic from ensuing. Shardrin appeared to be enjoying himself, Elec noted, and he shook his head slightly in disbelief.
“I am picking up the scent and sound of running water nearby, rich with minerals” Elec said softly.
“Good,” Shardrin nodded. “There may be hope for you yet, Elec.” He removed the reddish hued sword halfway from its sheath to shed a minor glow upon the rocky walls. It bathed the surrounding few feet in a dim radiance. He then stooped low to the ground and ran his hand along the surface of something that Elec could not quite see.
“Something larger than we has traversed these tunnels and perhaps calls this place its home,” Shardrin stated, smiling sarcastically once more at that bit of news. “See the prints here, hardened and softened by dampness over time?”
“Aye,” Elec whispered back, considering some kind of faded impression of a footprint on the now-toughened ground.
The air around them was silent. They continued down and then the passage leveled off for another fifty feet or so. Then their keen elven ears picked up the unmistakable sound of snoring. They looked at one another and then back toward the source area of the sound, withdrawing their weapons quietly, and advancing softly once more. The snoring grew louder until they saw ahead of them a spacious cavern with an opening above through which the air poured in freely and the smoke from a recently ignited fire billowed upward and out. Through the crackling of the fire and the smell of the burning wood, there was a purely putrid smell within the chamber. Shardrin clearly noticed it too as he winced, reflecting what Elec’s expression probably looked like.
As they crept forward again, they finally caught a glimpse the source of the snoring—a giant.
Elec gasped involuntarily and his eyes widened in shock and awe. He had heard of these supernatural creatures, but had never seen one, especially up close.
The thing was massive, easily reaching more than twenty feet in height, and surely weighing in excess of one thousand pounds. There were animal furs covering most of its lower half, while its chest and upper torso were bare skin, bristling with coarse hair and corded muscles.
As they neared the sleeping giant, Elec noticed that it had the widest jaw he’d ever witnessed on a living creature. He had seen ogres before, raiding his village once after they had somehow crossed the waters of Sunrise Bay to attack them, but they were reminiscent of children when compared to this giant. It was balding with only a tuft of auburn hair upon the top of its head and a scruffy clump on either side of its jaw, framing its face. It was somewhat bloated, as the ogres had been, but had muscles everywhere along its arms and chest. Scraps of animal parts, bones and uneaten flesh lay all around the sleeping behemoth, and also piles of animal hides piled so high that Elec was uncertain as to whether the skins were mere pelts or whole creatures.
Shardrin circled the giant, short swords in his hands, as it lay sleeping, its back up against a crop of rock that projected up from the floor and was covered in skins. Elec approached also, sipping an elixir, then removing his sword from its scabbard. As he neared, he heard a crunch underfoot that echoed throughout the chamber.
The creature first opened one black eye—the shade of the darkest of nights—and then the other, affixing its gaze upon the approaching elf, curiously at first. Then its brow furrowed and it snarled at Elec. Its mouth opened and it displayed a misshapen row of yellowed teeth, with some missing, but those that remained were sharpened at the tips. As it stood, reaching its full height of twenty-five feet, it remained hunched-forward, its substantial arms stretching almost all the way to the ground, reminding Elec of a carriage resembling that of a gorilla. The giant barely fit within the vast expanse of the spacious cavern now that it was upright.
Elec froze, paralyzed by fear at the sheer enormity of the giant. It was truly massive and reached for a club, which was in reality the trunk of a tree, the base of which was worn smooth, no doubt from incalculable usage.
It swung the tree across its body, meaning to turn Elec’s bones to powder, but the elf regained his sensibility. He rolled nimbly backward and under the swing as the club slammed into the wall of the cavern, creating a thundering cacophony that echoed throughout the chamber, seeming to shake the very walls themselves.
Elec looked up from the ground and glimpsed flashing blades as Shardrin leaped from a ledge above the giant, landing squarely on its back. He disappeared behind the girth of the mighty behemoth but must have landed a solid strike as the giant howled in pain and dropped its weapon. The giant turned slightly in a vain attempt at wresting the elf from its back, allowing Elec to see that Shardrin was out of the reach of its grasping hands.
“Strike!” Shardrin called out to Elec, who held his enchanted blade firmly in both hands. He downed another potion quickly before running straight at the giant, slashing wildly many times and scoring several hits. He remembered that his uncle had told him of the magic within the blade and trusted that this was exactly the time and place to make use of it.
The giant’s back was stained with bright red blood dripping from underneath the hides over it. Suddenly, it stumbled backward toward the wall of the cavern. Steam punctuated the air now too, as the frost and fire from Shardrin’s enchanted blades fought for supremacy.
Elec followed the creature’s movements. He realized that although the giant was not intelligent, it certainly was cunning. It intended to slam its own back against the wall in an attempt to crush the rogue elf.
“Shardrin!” Elec called in warning, slicing another superficial blow at the giant’s moving legs.
“I know!” Shardrin called back, trying to remove one of his short swords from the giants back that seemed to be stuck. That blade was aglow with a dull red light too, Elec noted.
Elec pressed the attack, hacking and slashing at the giant’s legs until they stopped moving altogether. Elec heard a mighty thud as the behemoth crashed its own body into the wall with thundering force, just to the right of the campfire. Shardrin fell from the creature harrowingly upon the hard ground, knocking the wind from him. Elec could tell he was in pain from his facial contortions which he could see in the flickering light of the fire. The giant, still standing under the elves’ assault, turned his attention toward Elec, who held up yet another elixir.
“Never a better time to give this one a try,” he muttered to himself and downed the contents as the giant advanced a step. His vision blurred for a moment and then suddenly, he was moving and at great speed. Everything else appeared to slow down and he was moving faster… much faster. It was working.
He slashed and cut at the giant’s legs again as they presented themselves. He ran between them, dashing back and forth around the creature. It could not catch him. The combination of his elixir and the magic of Daegnar Giruth in slowing his opponent’s blows was devastating. Elec realized that he did not need to be a master-at-arms to deal with this enemy. Again and again, his sword found giant flesh. The beast staggered, bleeding from dozens of wounds now, and crying out in some kind of guttural language that must have been the native giant tongue. His tone, however, was unmistakably angry.
Shardrin managed to rise to his feet unsteadily and surveyed the scene before him in wonder. He saw that one of his blades was still deep within the giant’s back and he shook his head, moving to aid Elec. But the elf needed no help, for the giant stopped and leaned forward, its black eyes rolled into the back of its head and it fell to the hard ground. The sound of that impact echoed throughout the cavern.
A moment later, Shardrin was back atop the creature, attempting to unearth his blade from what could only be the giant’s ribcage. It became apparent that the bone and skin around t
he blade had melted and was bunched up around the sword in a heap. Eventually, after a few forceful tugs, the blade was coaxed free. Shardrin cleaned it off and replaced it in his scabbard.
“Now, let’s have a look see at what our giant had in the way of treasures!” Shardrin declared with a grin from ear to ear. Elec’s vision was beginning to return to normal and he nodded, though he was suddenly very thirsty.
Shardrin spent a few moments looking through the piles of discarded belongings and under the animal skins that the giant was obviously using as a bed. Elec removed a water skin and downed the contents. Shardrin came over to him.
“Your eyes,” Shardrin remarked, noticing that they appeared odd. “They are almost all white. There is no sign of the black.” He thought this quite strange indeed. “You may want this, though,” Shardrin added, holding up a dagger—a magical dagger with runes and a pommel made of expert craftsmanship, the likes of which Elec had never seen before. “I can teach you to fight with both weapons held if you’d like.”
Elec reached out and took the offered dagger, turning it over in his hand and feeling the master-crafted balance. He perceived that the blade was perfect in all ways… and sharp too, from the looks of it.
“Aye,” Elec said in response to the offer. “I’d like that.” The two elves rummaged through the debris and ruins there and found gems, some copper, silver and gold coins scattered about, and also a small statue of a wolf. It seemed to be carved from ivory, Shardrin reckoned. “This might fetch a coin or two,” he smiled, cleaning the statue thoroughly with a sash of leather and then placing it neatly in his belt pouch.
“I’d better check on Adok,” Elec mentioned, looking round one last time. His eyes appraised the hard stone walls and floor, the all-but extinguished fire that had been blazing for hours, and the carcass of the giant that would no doubt attract denizens from deep below in the tunnels of the subterrane. Stray animals from above would also wander into the cavern, such as the dire rats they’d seen earlier, to feast on what was left after that. He sighed and wondered what it all meant.
The Beginnings Omnibus: Beginnings 1, 2, 3 & Legend of Ashenclaw novella (Realm of Ashenclaw Beginnings Saga) Page 14
