by Rachel Aaron
****
The Red Canyon was a narrow rent in the savanna. No more than a hundred feet across at its widest point, it formed a chasm that was at least a thousand feet deep, cutting into the ground like a stab wound. A comparison that was only made more grisly by the deep-red stone that formed its walls.
According to the game’s lore, the canyon’s unique color was the result of a primordial Bird that had died here at the beginning of the world. Its anger was supposed to still linger in the shadows, which was why the undead had chosen this place to set up shop. Peering over the edge into the heavy dark his torch could barely penetrate, James believed it. The deep cleft in the ground definitely looked like a place where dreadful things had happened.
Though built right beside it, the gnoll village stopped a dozen feet from the canyon’s edge. Beyond that point, there was nothing—no fences, no railings, nothing to protect someone from toppling right over the sheer drop. Assuming the lich would be forted up in his laboratory, James marched everyone right to the canyon’s lip where the switchback trail started. But the moment the first gnoll stuck his snout over the edge, a volley of white fire arrows screamed up from the darkness below.
The attack came like lightning. Gnolls fell screaming as the stench of burned flesh and blood filled the air. One unlucky warrior was shot in the leg and pitched right over the edge. James tried to grab him, but all he caught was a wisp of fur as the gnoll plunged into the dark, landing far below with a distant echoing crunch.
The gnoll army bayed their war cry in answer. They were about to surge forward when James realized he was going to have to give orders fast before this “army” dissolved back into a mob.
“Stay in your groups!” he bellowed, pointing with his staff. “Archers to the rim! Return fire! Arbati’s group, you push down the path. Those with shields go first and give them cover, and don’t run! Everyone needs to stay together! Thunder Paw, you and your group get wherever you need to be on the edge of the canyon to protect and heal the warriors below. Everyone go, go, go!”
At his command, James’s archers ran back to the edge of the canyon. The shield group placed their benches and doors along the lip while the archers lined up behind the makeshift cover. Ghostfire arrows were still streaking up at them from below, striking the heavy wood. One punched straight through a thatch door to hit a gnoll hunter in the shoulder. The ghostfire on the arrow caught the moment it touched flesh, engulfing the hunter’s entire arm. Then blue light blossomed as two of Thunder Paw’s Naturalists jumped into action, dousing the hunter in magical water to put out the ghostfire before it could spread to the rest of the hunter’s body. When it was over, the gnoll collapsed in a whimpering heap, burned but alive and untainted by ghostfire.
James grinned. “That’s it!” he yelled excitedly. “Return fire!”
The gnolls howled and started pouring their own arrows down into the canyon. Just looking at how many bolts were going down compared to those coming up, James could see that it was obvious they greatly outnumbered the undead positioned below. He just hoped that quantity would be enough to make up for the power difference. It was impossible to say for sure now that the interface was gone, but he was reasonably certain his gnoll military was level twenty-five to thirty on average, all one-skulls. The Red Canyon dungeon monsters were level thirty to thirty-five, and all two-skulls, which meant that each one was worth about ten gnolls in combat. If his earlier math was right, they should still have enough to win, but James couldn’t help taking a peek, just to see.
Careful to not get shot himself, James leaned out over one of the upturned benches that served as a shield to watch a volley go down. Far below, deep in the shadows of the canyon, the nests of skeleton archers were visible only by their white ghostfire eyes. There were little sparks as the gnolls’ arrows bounced off their bones, scraping off pieces and sending poofs of white dust into the air. It didn’t look effective to him, but then a lucky arrow struck an archer’s collarbone just right, and the whole thing shattered, taking the enemy’s entire top half off. Its legs kept kicking, but the skeletal archer was out of commission, and James jumped back with a whoop.
“It’s working!” he cried, running over to check on Arbati’s group. “Keep firing!”
The warriors were already a third of the way down the switchback. Arbati led the charge in a lopsided formation, keeping the shield gnolls on the outside to protect the rest from shots from below. Just watching them run gave James vertigo. The canyon’s tiny switchback would have been terrifying under normal conditions. On the warriors’ left was a sheer rock wall. On their right, a thirty-foot drop down to the next part of the switch. To make things even worse, the steep path was already slick in places with blood where a few arrows had gotten through, but Arbati didn’t let his group slow down. He kept them running as fast as they could without breaking formation, clearing the top of the switchback faster than James had thought possible to charge the archer nests at the canyon’s halfway point.
Now that the enemy was right in front of them, the undead archers turned to start shooting at the advancing warriors. Several gnolls were immediately struck and sent flying off into the edge, but stone hands from the Naturalists above caught them before they could plummet the rest of the way to their deaths. They had cover fire as well. With no need to duck and cover anymore, the gnoll archers became much more effective. As they leaned over their makeshift barricades to rain arrows down on the undead, the skeletal archers began to falter. The undead didn’t feel pain or fear, so it took far longer than it would have with mortal enemies, but eventually the onslaught of arrows and warriors hacked them to splinters, leaving their bones twitching on the ground.
At the very bottom of the canyon, the remaining skeletons emitted ghastly screeches and redoubled their attack, pelting the warriors—who were on the move again down the switchback to the canyon’s base—with wave after wave of arrows. Fortunately, James and the Naturalists were up on the rim, watching them. More stone hands burst forth to provide safety and cover, while healing spells fell like rain on injured gnolls until they popped back up again. When a shield bearer stumbled, dropping his arrow-riddled door, James threw out a stone hand to fill the gap, leaving the undead’s ghostfire arrows to crack and splinter on the elemental fist.
Soon, though, the warriors began to move out of range of the Naturalists’ support.
As the healing spells and stone hands stopped, James yelled to Thunder Paw, “Move onto the switchback! We’re right behind you!”
Thunder Paw’s unit picked up their makeshift shields and started making their way down the narrow, blood-slicked cliff path. When they’d cleared the first switch, James led his unit onto the trail was well. Even with the unorthodox formation, everyone held together, and James smiled. He hated that it had happened, but the undead had drilled the gnolls into a truly fearsome, if irregular, military. They took orders well, stayed together, and fought without hesitation. The lich had made a terrifying weapon here in Red Canyon, and James was all too pleased to see it turned against him.
James had to prowl on all fours to keep his body below the gnoll-sized cover. He and his archer group were almost to the canyon’s halfway point when he heard Arbati roar. Risking a peek over the edge, he saw that the warriors had reached the bottom and were now storming up the narrow trail to take on the last of the defenders’ cliffside positions. Arbati himself was scaling his way to the higher ones using his claws, grabbing his enemies by their exposed ribs and hurling them down to the gnoll warriors below for dismemberment.
By the time Thunder Paw and James made it to the bottom, all the undead archers in the canyon had been reduced to twitching piles of bones. James was pleased with how well everything had gone until he noticed how many wounded and dead gnolls there were.
The bottom of the canyon was littered with small, furry, arrow-riddled bodies. Each of the skeleton archers had more dead gnolls scattered around their feet as well, some with fur still burning from the ghostfire.
As he looked at the dead, the regret James had felt fighting the patrol on the road came back with a vengeance. He tried to remind himself that this was different, that these gnolls were volunteers fighting for their freedom, not indentured servants of the undead, but they weren’t even inside the dungeon yet, and he’d already gotten so many killed. He was horribly aware that he didn’t know what he was doing. Playing war games was good for tactics, but it was very different from actual war. Games had never made him think about how many orphans and widows he was creating, and he didn’t even want to contemplate what would happen if they lost.
James shook his head to clear the doubt, then marched past the dead to join Thunder Paw at the dungeon’s entrance, a horrifying hole in the canyon’s red wall ringed with necromantic symbols and gnoll skulls. The old gnoll looked as tired and horrified as James felt, but the Naturalist’s one good eye burned with determination, reminding James how much the old gnoll was fighting for. His grandson’s life depended on their victory. So did Lilac’s and through her, all of Windy Lake. The whole savanna needed them to win tonight. He’d just have to find a way to make it work.
“Archers, gather arrows,” James ordered. “Arbati, Thunder Paw, let’s talk about what’s next.”
The gnolls around him immediately scattered and started picking up any unbroken arrows they could find from the rocky canyon floor to fill their empty quivers. Arbati watched them irritably, brushing at the new burn patches on his fur as he turned to James.
“We don’t have time for this,” he growled. “The enemy is moving, and arrows are not useful in caves.”
“Arrows are always useful,” James replied quietly. “Right now, they’re especially useful for keeping our troops occupied while we talk about how we’re going to deal with the dungeon’s five bosses.”
“Who cares about them?” Arbati said. “We’re just here for the lich.”
“Who’s at the very back,” James reminded him. “This is—was—a dungeon. Before we can fight the main boss, we have to go through his underlings. There’s one boss for each of the death-mixed elemental experiments the undead are running down here: fire, water, wind, and air. Each one has a strong AOE—”
“A-O-E?” Thunder Paw repeated, his auto-tuned collar mangling the strange English letters.
“Area of effect. Sorry,” James said. “Massive damage over a large space that can inflict major casualties on troops. Arbati, that means you and I will probably have to do most of the fighting against them. I also doubt the bosses will be polite enough to wait patiently in their rooms anymore. Our best chance is to catch them by surprise. The moment we spot one, you and I will draw it off alone and kill it as fast as we can, okay?”
“We will make short work of these abominations,” Arbati said with a fanged grin.
“Good,” James said. “Then let’s go.”
“Warriors, on me!” Arbati shouted, lifting his sword high. “Shields up!”
“Archers!” James called. “Finish collecting arrows, then meet me in the cave. You have five minutes! Thunder Paw, your group follows the warriors! Keep up the heals on them!”
Arbati led his gnolls in first. They marched through the wide dungeon entrance in formation, forming a shield wall with their doors, pot lids, benches, and planks. Leaving his archers to pillage the battlefield for ammo, James picked up a bench of his own so he wouldn’t have to crouch and ran after them, hopping over the empty space where the dungeon’s swirling portal used to be. He didn’t want to leave the archers leaderless, but he needed to be near the front when they ran into one—or more—of the dungeon’s bosses.
Unlike the rest of FFO, the Red Canyon dungeon was exactly as he remembered. Just like in the game, the entry cave quickly widened into a stone bridge over a forest of needle-sharp stalagmites. But while the wide approach had been mostly for show back in the game, there was now a line of skeleton archers formed up behind a short wall at the other end of the bridge, blocking the double iron doors that were the only way in.
Ghostfire arrows started flying the moment they got in range, lighting up the cave with their haunting white light. The wide bridge offered no cover, and the air was filled with pained yelps and the stink of burning gnoll fur once again as the warriors charged the firing line. Baying in defiance, they hunkered down behind their makeshift shields and ran full tilt at the enemy. For a soaring second, James thought they were going to trample the skeletons under their feet, then he noticed that the front row of undead wasn’t firing. He squinted at them as a flaming arrow screamed past his head, then he cursed.
The skeletons in the front weren’t like the others they’d fought. Those had been nothing but bones with bows. These were covered in plate armor and shields they’d locked in front of them to form the wall the archers were firing over.
The gnolls’ charge was quickly losing steam. The haphazard shields that had served them so well going down the canyon were nearly useless now that the much taller archers could just fire down at them, and with so much damage flying around, the healers simply couldn’t keep up. One by one, the Naturalists stopped casting as they ran low on mana, and the hyena-like warriors in Arbati’s pack started to fall, staggering under the arrow rain and not getting back up. If James didn’t do something fast, they’d have nothing left by the time they got to the end of the bridge, but he didn’t know what. He was starting to panic when he heard barking at the cave entrance, and he looked back to see his archers marching in.
“All units down!” he yelled as loudly as he could, dropping to his belly and throwing his bench-turned-shield over his head. Ahead of him, he saw Arbati and his gnolls doing the same. When they were all down, James lifted his head just enough to see the wall of warrior skeletons.
“Hold fire!” he yelled, balling his hands together around his staff as he started the Chain Lightning spell. He’d been trying to avoid using his own magic. Mana recovery wasn’t going to be an option in this battle, and he needed to get to the lich with as much juice as possible. But there was no way his archers could shoot past that shield line, and the other Naturalists were out. That left him, so James wove the magic as fast as he dared, throwing the lightning low over his warrior’s ducked heads and straight into the shields of the skeleton knights.
The spell went off with a blinding flash and an even louder boom. Even James was surprised by the lightning’s effectiveness. He hadn’t realized how much stronger his magic was until it blew the skeletons’ shields apart. Four warrior skeletons were scorched to ash inside their armor, collapsing into heaps as the flash of light faded. By the time the thunderclap echoed away, the undead shield line was broken, leaving the archers defenseless.
“Now!” James screamed, ducking his head beneath the heavy bench. “Loose arrows!”
The archer group let fly with a volley that shrieked inches over the warriors’ heads. Feathered gnoll arrows peppered the enemy archers, breaking bones and shattering bows, leaving the undead pack at the end of the bridge in a jumbled mess. As they struggled to pull themselves back together, James leaped to his feet.
“Charge!”
Arbati and the gnoll warriors abandoned their shields to race across the last of the bridge and crash into the still-reeling undead. Ax-wielding gnolls swarmed the archers who were still up, severing joints and biting off vertebrae. The skeleton knights James hadn’t fried swung their huge swords in response, but then Arbati charged in with his new sword, cutting through the undead monsters’ armor and bones in a single blow.
After that, the warriors made short work of what was left of the defenders. While they hacked at the remaining animated bones, James turned to Thunder Paw. “Have everyone eat for mana then join us.”
Thunder Paw nodded and started barking orders. The Naturalists sat down in relief, huddling behind their doors and benches as they shoved food into their muzzles. Satisfied, James picked up his own bench and waved for his archers to follow him down the bridge. They’d just about secured the entire thing when James
saw the enormous doors at the end of the bridge creak to life.
“Arbati!” he shouted. “The doors!”
The doors to the main laboratory were each made of two-foot-thick slabs of metal. James had never seen them move, let alone close. He’d never thought of them as anything more than ambiance, art assets to make the dungeon more atmospheric. But apparently they were real enough, because they were closing in front of his eyes, being shoved into place by a squad of six enormous skeletal undead.
James swore. If those doors closed, that was the end. They’d never cut through that much steel between now and sunrise. But while he was still too far away to do anything, Arbati was already at the end of the bridge. The warrior leaped through the closing doors with a roar, landing sword first in the rib cage of the closest undead. He shattered its pelvis with a savage kick, then he leaped on the next one, knocking over the two-skull undead like bowling pins.
The disruption stopped the left-hand door in its tracks, buying James enough time to bolt through. He swung his Eclipsed Steel Staff hard as he went, breaking the femur of the knight on his left. The skeleton turned and swung back with a sword that was as big as James was. He blocked it on his staff just before it took his head off, more grateful than ever he’d decided to wear armor with some Strength and Agility on it.
While they fought fang and claw to keep the doors open, more monsters swarmed up from the caves below. The new undead dog-piled onto James and Arbati, forcing them to go on the defensive. But just as they were starting to be pushed back, the gnolls on the bridge surged inside to help. The wave of bloody, battle-crazed gnolls fell howling on the undead reinforcements, picking them apart bone by bone. Better still, unlike the bridge, the area on the other side of the doors was nice and wide. With nothing to constrain them, the gnolls’ superior numbers quickly filled the room, overwhelming the lich’s forces and pushing them back. As they solidified their position inside of the half-closed doors, the hordes of monsters coming up from the dungeon below suddenly stopped, turned, and began to run away.
