by R J Murray
“Power is not a concern,” the constable said with a wide grin.
Before Amina’s astonished gaze, four bumps appeared at the corners of the constable’s mouth. They grew, elongating into thick, sharp, mandibles like those of an insect.
“I carry the souls of many of this cities people within me. You will use their power and create the bridge between here and that place.”
A bridge. Something only the chosen of the pantheon could do. A gift given to them by their deity and one that required the sharing of the strength of many of the faithful. With the rite, Amina could create a path between one place and another, bridging the distance between them with her faith.
With a single step, she could be a thousand miles away or deep into the wilds, in a cave where an evil waited in restless slumber. She swallowed hard and shook her head, body tense as she waited for the violent response from the constable.
“No.”
She was proud of how steady her voice was, and she held her chin up as she stared the constable in the eye.
But no blow from clenched fist or kick from booted foot came, the smile on the constables face just widened and she nodded happily.
“This pleases me.”
“I-I don’t understand.”
“My master instructed me in the manner of which I can compel you. I cannot kill you, for that would doom him, but I can persuade you.”
“How?”
Amina’s mouth was dry, and she didn’t like the way the constable was smiling. A shiver ran down her spine as she considered all of the many ways that she could be tormented. Her faith was strong though and she would stand firm, holding to her goddess no matter what happened.
The constable spun on her heel and stalked back across the stone floor to the grate she had dropped through. Small puffs of dust rose with each step and Amina watched, uncertainty in her gaze.
Constable Asa leapt up through the grate without so much as pausing and there were some muffled sounds from above before she dropped back down. The smile on her lips was positively evil as she held the small child, a girl of perhaps four years old.
“N-no!”
The killer’s mandibles stretched wide as she lifted the squirming child easily towards them. They closed around the girl’s head, pressing not ungently and she began to scream as her dress darkened, fear loosening her bladder.
“I’ll do it!” Amina screamed. “For the love of Ysnir do not harm that child and I shall do as you ask.”
“See now,” Asa said, lowering the crying child. “That was easy.”
Chapter 28
An awestruck Mia re-joined the rest of her companions when dawn broke over the horizon. It had been a night of little sleep and much talking and while she had a greater knowledge of the wilds and her friends, it had left her more than a little shaken.
Her life before, in the village, had been one of almost blissful ignorance. None there had known that the wilds were spreading, slowly, bit by bit but definitely growing. Those who adventured in its depths had seen the signs.
Syn had spoken of their earlier adventures, of the creatures they had faced, and battles fought. He had introduced her to a war unending and, with a surreal realisation, Mia had become aware that she too was part of that war.
When she reached the house her friends had spent the night in, they were already on their way out. Elva crossed to her and pulled her into a quick embrace.
“You worried me! Don’t just wander off anywhere in the wilds!”
“Syn was with me.”
“Yes, well.” Elva shot a scowl at the grinning thief. “Syn doesn’t always show the best judgment.”
The minotaur left the house last, his wounds already healed enough for him to be able to walk on his own. Mia wondered just what was in those potions for them to work so well. She shook her head, dismissing the thought as his sorrowful gaze met hers for just a moment. Her heart ached at the pain she saw in those sad eyes.
“Our thanks,” Jochum said, clasping the powerful minotaur on the shoulder. “For sharing your story and your home.”
“Be wary. The wilds are… restless, after a storm.”
“We have not far to go before our journeys end,” Jochum said grimly. “Another warrior would be welcome should you wish to join us.”
“Bah, we have no need for the cow. Let us leave this place. The day is wasting.”
Wynn pulled his cloak around himself and turned away from the others, uncaring of a response to his foul-tempered words. Mia shook her head gently. Anyone with eyes could see that the minotaur was a noble creature and the mage's words were crude at best.
“My fight is not over, tis true,” Braphus said, ignoring the mage. “But my time of mourning is not yet done.”
“Should you change your mind, we are off to the caves to the north, up by the hill shaped like a great beast.”
“I know them. It is a dark place and one you should beware of. Danger lurks.”
“We know what we face, my friend. But your warning is welcome anyway.”
Jochum gathered the rest of them up with a glance and they moved as one back towards the road. Mia looked back once, to see the lonely minotaur standing still before the house, watching them.
“He’s so sad,” she whispered to Elva. “Should I feel like that for a monster?”
“The wilds are a hard place and not all within it are corrupted it would seem.” She looked thoughtful for a moment before glancing at the younger woman. “The minotaur’s are not monsters. Just warriors with an oath holding them to this place.”
“Like the oath you all swore?”
That she would soon be swearing, she realised with a shiver of fear.
“Aye, child. Like our oath. Such things are not to be broken. An oathbreaker is a low creature indeed, shunned by those that know of their sin. For those who bind their oath with magic, the punishment is far greater.”
“What do you mean?”
Elva shook her head, pressing her lips tight together and glanced up at the back of the warrior far ahead of them.
“One who breaks such an oath will find their soul denied a place in any afterlife but the nine hells.”
The ranger fell silent and increased her pace, leaving Mia to walk alone and ponder her words. Why would a priestess, someone devoted to a god or goddess, break an oath and stop themselves from spending eternity with their deity?
It beggared belief and more than that, she had supposedly loved the warrior, enough so that she included in the oath a clause to stop him sacrificing himself to save the rest of them. To know such love and then still break the oath, was beyond anything Mia could imagine.
She walked along in silence, gaze watchful for danger but thoughts tumbling over one another as she tried to reason it out.
Jochum, at the head of the group, pushed aside a thick branch that was covered in quills like a porcupine. If not careful, it could fling those quills for some distance and they were sharp enough to pierce flesh easily.
He used his sword and held the branch aside as he ushered the others ahead. Once they were passed, he followed, gently letting the branch move back into place. He breathed a sigh of relief when it released no quills, but that relief was short lived.
The rest of the company of the raven were standing stock still, a short distance away. He hurried to catch up with them and cursed as he saw the reason why.
“What is it?” Mia asked, looking around in confusion.
“Mushrooms,” Elva answered. She dropped to a crouch, bow across her knee as she peered ahead.
Poking up through the grass were purple mushrooms with yellow spots. They looked odd but no different than any other mushroom. A rounded crown that flared out over a thick stalk.
“They’re just mushrooms?”
“Any one of which can release a spore that will paralyze you in an instant, girl,” Wynn snapped. “Just nudging one with your foot as you pass will release a cloud of the thrice-damned things into the air for you to br
eathe in.”
“Then they eat you,” Syn added with a nod to the underbrush to their right.
Mia glanced across and recoiled. A quivering jelly-like substance formed a mound beneath the overhanging branches of the crimson bush. It had a faint leaf green colouring and she could see through it.
She could certainly see the remnants of the small furry creature that was slowly dissolving inside of it. There were more of the mounds, some large, others small, but all seeming to be lying in wait.
“The mushrooms release a spore, the gelatinous ooze slimes over to you and starts to dissolve your body with their acid,” Syn said, disgust evident in his voice. “As the ooze… devours you... it leaks some of the dissolved juices which nourish the fungus.”
“Rare to see them above ground but judging by the number of mushrooms, they have found a nice feeding ground to keep them well fed.”
“A-are they intelligent?” Mia asked, moving a little closer to the others.
“Nay, child. Just creatures of instinct. The larger ones I have seen could devour a woman whole.”
“These would take time and devour you bit by bit,” Wynn cackled. “Would take you some time to die, unable to move and feeling every bit of it.”
Mia shuddered at the thought and looked at the others. “What do we do then?”
“Mage?” Jochum said. “Without burning down the forest around us.”
“Bah, it’s too wet to burn.”
“This is what Braphus meant,” Syn whispered. “After a storm, the animals come out to feed and that is a fine time to catch an unwary creature.”
Wynn moved his hands, fingers twitching like he was playing an invisible stringed instrument and he muttered an incantation. As he spoke the last word, power surged outwards and Mia gasped at the sudden tightness around her waist.
“W-what?”
No one responded to her panicked words and she looked around, wild-eyed. She spied Syn who was speaking but she could hear no words. She reached out to him and her hand stopped short, pressing up against something she couldn’t see but could feel.
The panic began to rise in her and she moved her hands, feeling their way around the bubble that seemed to enclose her from the waist up. Syn, waved to catch her attention and when she looked his way, he mimed lifting a chain and clasping something on the end of it.
My source stone! She realised with a start and her fingers closed around it. Immediately, the magic encasing her came into focusing and her breathing began to slow. She could see the weaving of air, thickening it around her, making it so tight a shield that not even sound could get through, let alone spores.
Seeing that she understood, Syn gestured for her to follow and she turned to see the others walking through the mushroom field. Clouds of dust spurted up from those mushrooms but rebounded from the shields woven around each of them.
With a deep breath, Mia followed. It was a strange feeling, to be enclosed in a globe of almost absolute silence. She could hear her own breath and the beating of her heart, but nothing else. She walked along enclosed in her own little bubble and began to calm down.
Until she began to wonder what would happen if she tripped and fell while in it.
Heat filled her cheeks as she quickened her steps, panic rising once more. She was stopped by the hands of the large warrior as he caught her, the woven shield dissolving at a word from Wynn as she made it past the danger.
He held her close for several long minutes as she sucked in gasps of air, body shaking. Jochum gently patted her back and let her cling to him for as long as she needed. Finally, she pushed away, blushing.
“Sorry.”
“Nay, lass. You should have been given warning.”
“Bah!” Wynn ignored the glares of the others and wrapped his cloak tightly around himself once more. “Let us be gone. The cave’s just ahead.”
Mia stepped back, away from the warrior, the blush heating her cheeks and made a show of adjusting her cloak and checking her dagger. For the moment, with the passing of the storm, the rain had ceased to fall. Something for which she was grateful as she badly felt the need to bathe.
Jochum led the way once more, the large warrior a comforting bulwark against anything that may attack them. Wynn followed behind, eagerness lightening his steps. Syn and Mia were next, daggers held at the ready and Elva brought up the rear. Her favoured weapon was the bow and she could better use that from a distance.
The open maw of the cave was filled with darkness, as impenetrable as any Mia had ever seen. The moss-covered rock surrounding it was cracked and broken, giving her the impression that some great hand had reached down from the sky and lifted a section of the rockface to create the opening.
Weeds grew before the entrance, the dense undergrowth to either side leaving little room for movement. The mud before the opening showed deep imprints of feet, filled with the sludge-like water that seemed to be all that fell in the wilds.
There was an odour of mould and rot about the entrance and behind it, something else, something like rotting meat. Unpleasant to the senses.
“Light,” Jochum ordered.
Wynn gave him a sour look but spoke a word and light flared in his hand. A few more words and it rose up to hover above his right shoulder, a glowing ball of white light that bobbed in the still morning air.
“Prepare yourselves,” Elva muttered. “Those tracks are fresh.”
“If you get separated,” Syn whispered to Mia. “Just head downwards. All passages lead to the same place. You will find us again.”
She nodded and licked dry lips, unable to answer because she couldn’t be sure she could speak past the lump of fear in her throat. She gripped the hilt of the dagger tight and waited as each of her companions readied themselves.
Jochum crouched low, ducking beneath the overhang of rock and stepping into the cool darkness of the cave. Wynn followed close behind, his magic lighting the way. Syn placed his hand gently against Mia’s back and propelled her forward with him. She was grateful for the push as she was unsure her feet would have moved of their own volition. Elva came after.
Inside, the cave was cold, far colder than it should be, with water running down the walls and the cave floor covered in muck and filth. Mia pressed the back of her free hand to her mouth as the odour caught her off guard.
“Yeah, you get used to that,” Syn whispered. “Whatever’s living here is using this part for a latrine.”
“Great!”
She tried to avoid looking at the piles of slime-covered waste or think about the squelching sound that came with each step she took. The others didn’t seem to notice or perhaps to care. They just moved ever forwards into the darkness. Mia hurried to keep up.
As they moved deeper into the caves, strange markings were etched on the walls. Crude drawings and symbols that had no meaning to any of the party. Bones rattled underfoot as their boots kicked them and insects crawled and scurried everywhere.
The stench of mould grew stronger and the rotting meat, different from that putrid odour of the air beyond the cave. Mia clutched her dagger in one hand and her source stone in the other.
Wynn’s source stone too, glowed a deep, dark green and around him, swirled a series of patterns, all waiting for the final word to bind them together into a spell. She shivered at the complexity of them, a part of her yearning to be able to weave such beauty as another part shied away from it. The old superstitions of home not yet died away.
The attack came without warning, a small body launching itself at Jochum. He spun, swinging his blade and blood sprayed as the creature was cut almost entirely in half. Wynn spoke a word of power and lightning flashed from his hands, arcing from one small, furred body to another.
Burning fur and flesh filled the tunnel they were in. An arrow flew past Mia’s ear to strike another of the rat-like creatures and Syn was gone from her side, knives flashing as he performed a dance of death amongst them.
One leapt at her and she raised her hand, dagg
er forgotten as she wound her arm around in a circle before her. The creature rebounded from the shield of air she had formed and hit the ground with a thud.
Less than three feet tall and vaguely man-shaped, it wore a woven harness of crude rope and carried a stone bladed knife that it tried to slash at her with. She kicked it, hard. The furry monster, all fangs and claws, vanished into the darkness.
Then silence fell, and they were alone once more. The bodies of a dozen or more dead creatures lay around them and Mia, mouth open in astonishment at how fast it had been, looked around to make sure all her friends were safe.
“What were they?”
“They are called, Rottaka. Rats, transformed by the corruption into those parodies of man,” Wynn said. “Foul creatures. They must have nested in these caves.”
Mia shuddered as she peered down at one of the small, limp bodies. It did very much resemble a rat, but the weapons and harness were clearly signs of intelligence that rats didn’t possess.
“I hate this place,” she muttered and Syn clapped her on the back.
“Few like it.”
His laughter echoed from the walls as they continued their journey down into the darkness, heading ever deeper towards an unfathomable evil and an oath to be given.
Chapter 29
Kristdor slammed his truncheon against the side of the big man’s leg and he squealed as he went down to the cobbles. The watch captain forgot him immediately as he turned to the next man who seemed determined to gut him with the fish hook he was swinging wildly.
He deflected one swing with the truncheon and stepped forward, throwing his other fist forward to strike the man full in the face. A loud crack filled the air and the man went down, hard.
“More coming, Cap’n!” Snorri called out.
The constable was doing his best to avoid the swinging club of a man twice his size. He finally seized his chance and swung his own truncheon upwards, between the bigger man’s legs. Snorri grinned as his assailant dropped his club and clutched his hands between his legs.
