Hunting The Three (The Barrier War)

by Moses, Brian J.

  At the end of the hallway was another set of large double doors, this time tall enough for even Garet to pass through without leaning down. Birch and James waited at the doors for the others to catch up, then at Garet’s signal they pulled the doors open and the others rushed past them into what would be the grand hall.

  Birch had no sooner stepped from behind the door when the overpowering stench akin to that from a slaughterhouse overwhelmed him. Perklet was busy emptying his stomach to one side, and both Vander and Nuse looked queasy. For all that, Birch looked on impassively, his jaw clenched stone-like as he gazed on the carnage before him.

  Pale moonlight passed through large windows and illuminated hundreds of dwarves who lay stretched about the grand hall in varying states of butchery. Most were armored, but their defenses had obviously proven inadequate against whoever, or whatever, had come against them. Many were missing limbs, or pieces of them, and blood lay thick on the floor in a sea of sticky redness. The air reeked of blood and excrement, the odors heir to any battle where men were slaughtered in such numbers. Occasional flashes of lightning brought the room into sickening detail.

  “Light torches,” Garet ordered. “We need to check for survivors.”

  “Survivors? In that?” Wein asked, his eyes wide and filled with a strange fierceness.

  “Just do it!” Garet barked harshly. So saying, he put words to action and soon had a circle of light radiating from a burning brand in his hand. Birch had enough light to see by from the moons, and his red-tinged night-vision provided him any visibility he really needed. He inspected two dozen dwarves and found no survivors.

  As he was turning away from a dwarf whose head and left arm were missing, he heard Vander cry out from across the room. The Orange paladin was by the throne, but was hurriedly backing away, horror evident on his face.

  The others converged on the throne, but Birch was the first one there. He saw a dwarf wearing a blue cloak over heavy chainmail armor and the royal crest hanging from a chain around his neck, but where a crown might have rested, instead a dark shape crouched atop his head. Birch made out bat-like wings extending down from small, clawed hands, and two red eyes burned fiercely from a cat’s face, but with leathery skin instead of fur. The creature’s lips were stained with blood and gore, and Birch saw it had opened a hole in the dead dwarf’s head and was feeding from the stuff within.

  The creature, which Birch recognized a lesser demon of some sort, snarled at them and hissed words in an alien tongue. The words tugged vaguely at Birch’s memory, and he felt like he was on the verge of understanding them when James swept his sword down and split the creature in half. His blade bit into the chair behind the dead dwarf’s head, barely avoiding further desecration of the royal corpse, then he pulled the sword free.

  The demon dissolved into a cloud of vile, black smoke, which dissipated and was gone.

  Chapter 30

  There is no strength in righteousness, only folly. Satan seeks to topple those who have the farthest to fall.

  - “Teachings of the Violet Facet” (454 AM)

  - 1 -

  “What in San’s name was that thing?” Nuse asked, his breath exploding from him as the last of the black vapor disappeared. The seven paladins were still clustered around the corpse of the enthroned dwarf, staring in mild horror at the remains of his skull.

  “A lesser demon,” Birch replied. “I don’t know if I recall it’s species…” he paused, and somewhere inside him, something whispered the answer. “It’s an imp, they’re minor demons and often act as scavengers in Hell,” Birch said, listening to some inner voice of knowledge. “They’re relatively mindless and feed off the bodies of demons and souls cast aside by more powerful creatures.”

  Birch stopped. Imps hadn’t been seen on this side of the Merging for centuries. He remembered having seen the small demons before, on his trip down into Hell, but at the time he hadn’t known what they were called. How then did he now know? The name was recorded in histories dating back to the Merging War, but there were no illustrations.

  “So if they’re just scavengers, and if they’re so small, they probably aren’t responsible for what’s happened here?” James suggested grimly, surveying the carnage below them. Birch shook his head.

  “Well then, let’s keep looking, shall we?” Garet asked. “Ditch the torches. Let’s not announce our position to anything hiding in the shadows five hallways away.” He pointed across the room. “Dennet said that door should take us to the stairs that lead up to the rest of the fortress. We’ll proceed as before, with Birch and James on point. Keep an eye out for more of these little bastards.”

  Birch and James nodded, then headed to the door across the hall. Birch turned the handle and cracked the door open, then sent Selti ahead into the hall. The dakkan was less noticeable, his vision would be just as clear as Birch’s in the dim-to-nonexistent lighting, and Selti could certainly take care of himself against all but the most serious of opponents.

  Birch followed the gray-scaled dakkan down the hallway to a staircase that spiraled up into the mountain fortress. The hallway was revealed in stark orange relief – Birch’s night vision granted by the curse of his fiery eyes. The others were forced to make do with the feeble white light that glowed from bowls filled with moss. The bowls were spaced every dozen feet or so and were intended only for dwarves, who spent most of their time underground and had learned to live comfortably with such limited illumination.

  Selti chirped from somewhere ahead, signaling that all was clear. With James close on his heels, Birch mounted the staircase and began to climb, hugging the outer wall to see as far ahead as possible. James stayed far enough back to give Birch a clear path with his sword, should he need to bring the weapon to bear in a hurry.

  Birch’s calves were beginning to tire by the time they reached the level Dennet had indicated. Birch waited until he saw Garet’s head on the stairs behind him, then he pushed the door open a crack.

  Selti slipped into the room without waiting for Birch’s directions, and there was an immediate screech of surprise and pain from within. Birch flung the door open and saw Selti locked in combat with an imp, while another of the diminutive demons crouched nearby, waiting to attack. The second demon spied Birch and hissed, its leathery, cat-like face bared in a snarl. The scavenger demon leapt at him, wings and claws outstretched.

  With a flash of his sword, Birch cut the creature in two and watched as the resulting black mist parted in the air before him. Selti, meanwhile, had gotten the better of his attacker and was slowly grinding the creature’s neck between his needle-like teeth and twisting its neck at a near-right angle to prevent it from yelling out. The imp choked silently in pain until Birch finished it off with a swift stab from his sword and watched it dissolve. Selti sneezed violently and stared suspiciously at the black mist until it disappeared.

  Behind Birch, James signaled to Garet that they’d destroyed two more of the small demons. Garet nodded and indicated they should proceed. Birch gave Selti a quick looking over to see if he was all right. Seeing only a few minor scratches, he murmured a quick healing prayer, then sent the dakkan ahead again, this time with a word of warning not to proceed without directions.

  James sidled closer to Birch and whispered in his ear, “Are you feeling anything strange? Like what you described from your encounter on the road?”

  Birch shook his head.

  “Nothing like that,” he whispered. “I can feel there’s something here, somewhere, and whatever it is, it’s powerful. It has the same sort of feel of The Three I experienced before, but wherever it is, it’s nowhere nearby. What I’m feeling has more the sense of being an echo, as if the demon had come and gone already. At least in this area.”

  James nodded.

  Birch started off again, heading toward the room where Dennet had said they would find the source of the light that had signaled them from the fortress. After only a few steps, he heard Selti hiss in warning and hurried to where the
dakkan stood crouched outside a door. The door was too close to be the one they were searching for, so Birch placed his ear to the wooden surface and heard rustling inside. He signaled James, then slowly turned the handle. Then, with a quick thrust of his hand, Birch threw the door open and James leapt past him into a dimly lit room.

  “Don’t kill me!” a small voice squeaked.

  Birch glanced around, at first not seeing the source of the voice. The room was piled high with assorted clutter, much of which looked like children’s toys and games. Finally, amidst a pile of ragged dolls and broken toys, Birch spotted the pudgy face of a young female dwarf.

  A small bowl of glowing moss provided enough light that they could just make out her grimy features. Her face was caked in dirt, and her eyes were wide with fear.

  “We won’t hurt you, little one,” James said softly, sheathing his sword. Birch stood behind him, his sword still out in case this was a trap or if any demons were attracted by the sound of their voices.

  The dwarven girl flinched back from James’s outstretched hand and held a wooden horse before her like a shield.

  “It’s okay, mieka[44],” James said, trying to sound reassuring. “We’re paladins. Holy warriors. We’ve come to help.”

  “Y…you’re paldins?” she asked, and Birch had to suppress a smile at the innocent tone in her voice as she mispronounced the word.

  “Yes, meika. You know of us?”

  “My da was a paldin, and he was the…” she said, and suddenly more tears welled in her eyes. “He tried to stop the monsters, but he…” she sniffed back tears, “he went to stop them and never came back. I saw the big one get him.”

  Birch perked up at this, and with a glance, he indicated James should probe further, but gently.

  “I’m sorry for him, meika,” James said softly. “When did your da fight the monster?”

  “Two days ago,” she said with a sniffle. The young girl was obviously trying to be very brave about it, and Birch was impressed with her spirit. Her father must have been a fine man. Her command of the human language was impressive for one so small as well, indicating she was probably well-educated.

  “He died in the hall fighting the big one, and the other warriors with him. The big one killed da first, then the rest.”

  Birch nodded to himself, dispassionately calculating that the demon had probably slain her father first to remove the most serious threat. As a paladin, the girl’s father would have had the power to destroy the demon, either by wounding it seriously with a blessed weapon or else by marking the demon with the holy symbol. If the demon was strong enough, only marking it with the Tricrus would be sufficient ─ and if it was one of The Three, it was certainly strong enough.

  “Okay, we’ll talk more about it later. What’s your name, meika?” James asked.

  “Jerissa.”

  “Okay, Jerissa, there are seven of us here to help, and I want you to come with us. We’ll keep you safe,” he promised. “Will you do that for me, meika?”

  Jerissa nodded and crept out from a little hollow she’d made for herself amidst the rubble. Birch leaned down and stuck his head inside and marveled. There was a whole room hiding underneath what looked like nothing but junk. The young dwarf girl had burrowed out the rubble, placed several wide boards to form a roof, and had crafted crude supports to keep the mass from falling in on top of her. Obviously, she was dwarven to the core.

  A sleeping pallet lay in one corner, and she had a small candle with less than an inch of wax as her only source of illumination. With the dim moss basket in the room, Birch hadn’t even noticed the glow radiating from between cracks in her crude shelter. If she’d done that on purpose, Birch was more than slightly amazed at the dwarf’s ingenuity.

  Birch pulled back from the pile and glanced at where James was gathering the young girl in his arms. The young dwarf was the size of a human toddler and no real burden to the Yellow paladin. She settled in and looked at Birch, and immediately screamed at the top of her lungs. Jerissa scrambled to free herself from James’s grasp, but the Yellow paladin held her firmly.

  “Let me go! Let me go!” she screamed. “He’s just like the big one was! We’ve gotta get away!”

  It took several minutes for James to soothe her and reassure her that Birch was also a paladin. No, he wouldn’t hurt her. Yes, he was there to help and was a good guy. When Jerissa was quieted, she looked at Birch with almost as much curiosity as she did suspicion.

  “Why do your eyes burn like that?” she asked, her voice wondering.

  “He’s a very special paladin,” James answered for him. “He’s fought so many monsters that he can see their weaknesses, and he can burn them with his eyes.”

  “Really?” she asked in amazement.

  Birch smiled in answer, unwilling to contradict the Yellow paladin’s harmless lie. If only everyone could be put off with such a simple explanation.

  After another moment, the three of them left the room and rejoined the others in the hall. James moved back to be with Garet and the others, still holding Jerissa, and Vander stepped forward to take his place behind Birch.

  “We’re close enough to the room that we don’t have to split up so much,” Garet said. “Spread out to give yourselves room, but stay close. I only hope the ones who signaled us are still alive.”

  Vander and Birch moved swiftly down the hallway with the others in their wake, and finally reached the doorway where Dennet had said they would find their mysterious communicator. The others clustered behind them; James kept a protective arm around Jerissa, and this time Vander threw open the door for Birch.

  Birch leapt into the room and quickly glanced about, then he lowered his sword. The room was a large meeting hall lit by several torches – the sudden increase in light caused most of the paladins to blink as their eyes adjusted – and it was packed with wide-eyed dwarves. At least thirty of the halflings stood in frightened clusters about the room, and with a glance toward the window, Birch saw three dwarves signaling with a large lantern and two mirrors.

  “Thank God you’ve come to save us!” a dwarven woman cried. As if her voice had been a floodgate, the other dwarves in the room set up a clamor of cries of relief, prayers of thanks, and frantic queries.

  “Did you find any other survivors? My husband?”

  “Praise be to all that’s merciful!”

  “Is the king dead?”

  “What about his daughter?”

  Birch held up a restraining hand, and the other paladins filed into the room and spread out amongst the dwarves. As James entered, those nearest him cried out in joy.

  “Princess!”

  An elderly woman stepped forward and reached for Jerissa, who had tears in her eyes as she smiled in joy.

  “Princess?” Birch whispered, leaning toward James. James shrugged.

  “Apparently so. I guess that was her father on the throne. A dwarven paladin, king of the dwarven nation,” James mused. “How did that come to pass?”

  Birch remembered the sight of the dwarf on the throne, and suddenly the fact that the dwarf’s cloak had been blue registered in his mind. So not only had the demon destroyed the only paladin ─ and thereby the only one who could seriously harm him ─ but in the same man, it had also killed the dwarven monarch.

  Jerissa was busy explaining to the dwarves clustered around her how she’d survived. Apparently the young girl had witnessed some or all of the slaughter in the throne room from a secret hiding place behind one of the walls. Then she’d fled and hid in various rooms for the first few hours, alternating between her fear of the demons prowling her home and her sense of duty to find and help her people.

  Eventually, she’d found a room where she’d constructed herself a hiding place of sorts. She was chased about by demons and, after losing them, had closeted herself in the room and not dared to come out until the paladins found her. The assembled dwarves were chagrined to realize their princess had been hiding out only a few dozen yards down the hall,
and not one of them had gone in search of her.

  “Jerissa, you said something before that I wanted to ask you about,” Birch said gently, kneeling to put himself closer to her level. She looked at him expectantly. “When you first saw my eyes and were scared, you said I was just like the big demon. What did you mean by that?”

  “The big one looked like a dwarf at first, but I could see his eyes had a funny light in them, like they were on fire,” Jerissa said. She fought off hands that were trying to wipe the grime from her face. “Let me alone, I’m helping the paldins,” she ordered as seriously as she could.

  “I didn’t hear what he said to my da, but then he got bigger and bigger, until he was bigger than he was,” she said, pointing to Garet. “Then he jumped at da, and grabbed him, and bit him on the hea…” she broke off, trembling at the memory.

  “It’s all right, Jerissa,” Birch said, placing a hand on her shoulder. “I understand now. Thank you. You were very brave, and your father would be proud of you.”

  Jerissa nodded, then allowed herself to be pulled away by the tugging hands of the other dwarves.

  Birch straightened and saw Garet signaling everyone to gather around him.

  “Well, from what I’ve gathered from the dwarves, there was only the one large demon, then a handful of smaller ones, and a couple dozen of these little buggers we’ve seen so far,” Garet said quietly. “None of them have left the room since they gathered here, so they don’t know what’s happened since or where the demons went. It seems strange the demons haven’t hunted them down here, but for now let’s let it pass as a miracle. We’ll rest here, then we need to split up, spread out, and search this place. There may be more survivors, and we have to find the demons and destroy them.

  “Questions, comments, or suggestions?” he asked.