LEGENDS: Fifteen Tales of Sword and Sorcery

by Colt, K. J.

  The purple glow became a bright light, and I brought my hand up to shield my eyes. It faded quickly, and when the spots cleared, the wall had dropped away. A tunnel climbed the length of my sight.

  No-Kill stood on the other side of the passage, a purple glowing orb in her hand, the light fading as the last of the wall evaporated. She beckoned us forward, then turned up the incline, moving out of sight.

  “Ren?” said Khavi.

  I turned to him, eyeridge raised. “Yes?”

  “I’ve always obeyed your orders, haven’t I?”

  “Yes, you have.” I hesitated. “Are you all right?”

  He looked directly at me, and there was something in his eyes—something dark and sinister, something fierce and determined, something I had never really seen in him before.

  “Ren, we need word to reach Ssarsdale, to warn our cousins and prepare the army for war, and you have seen the gnome defences. You’re a sorcerer, you’ve got the dragon’s art; you’re a leader. You’re young, yes, but you’ve got potential. If this hadn’t happened, you would probably be running Atikala in a few generations.”

  “Khavi, what are you—”

  “I want you to use the scroll to seal up the arrow slits,” he said, his hand hovering over the hilt of his sword. “You should be able to do it before they fire. Then, turn around and run away from here, and make for Ssarsdale. Tell them what happened today, and do what your duty compels you to do. I know what mine tells me—that this gnome has lived too long, that I can’t go on living knowing that Atikala is in ruins.”

  “Khavi—”

  But he was already gone, his eyes solid red, his weapon flying into his hands. A shiver danced down my spine as Khavi’s voice boomed all around, echoing off the stone walls, a primal vocalisation that shook the very foundations of the city.

  The scroll was on my hip. I could use it to seal up the arrow slits as he’d suggested, but if they were going to fire, or pull some trick, or stop Khavi in any way, it wouldn’t come from there.

  Khavi charged up the incline towards his doom, bellowing his warcry. He reached the top of the lip, disappearing from sight, and his ferocious, fate-defying shout was abruptly silenced.

  I turned to the passage behind me. There were other passages, other routes I could take, ones that would bring me to the surface and then to Ssarsdale. I could run or I could stay. There were worse fates than dying here.

  My hands trembled right above the scroll. Khavi’s words rang true; my duty called, inexorably pulling me towards my cousins so they could rally an army, assault this city, and make each and every gnome within pay for the kobolds they had crushed underneath the stones. Khavi was the better fighter, his blade strong and sure, but his voice had been silenced instantly. To follow him up that ramp, that incline leading to the city proper, was to embrace certain death. Duty, logic, reason—every part of me that was kobold implored me to use the scroll and retreat, to let Khavi’s death serve a community that no longer existed. The souls of all those kobolds cried out for revenge, pleading with me to return to this very spot with an army at my heels, ready to repay blood with blood.

  But try as I might, my feet would not allow me to turn away from Khavi, to take even a single step away from the spot where I stood. Instead I found them moving in front of each other, one by one, moving up the incline and bringing the scene beyond into view.

  No-Kill knelt on the crest of the lip, her hands by her sides, staring out at the cavern beyond. Khavi stood beside her, his arms limp and his weapon lying on the ground. For a brief moment I wondered if he was paralysed again.

  Then I saw. A vast emptiness, a hole in the underworld disappearing straight down. The entire city had been scooped out by the spoon of a giant, the creature digging down further and further, creating a city-sized well in the earth that stretched out further than I could see. A red glow burned at the bottom of the pit, bright and angry. I could see no smoke. Above was a circle of the brightest light, a yellow disk in the blackness.

  The gnomish city had fallen, dropped so far into the underworld that it was beyond sight, plummeting to its destruction below us, falling far enough that there was no rope long enough to reach it.

  It was with a terrible realisation that I once again turned back to the entrance to the city and saw the empty ballistas, the unmanned arrow slits with bows left where their wielders had dropped them.

  The gnomes had deserted. Weeks ago after their city had fallen out from underneath them. The weight crushed Atikala’s ceiling and, like a collapsing stack of scrolls, buried it beneath the ruins of what had once been an impregnable gnomish fortress.

  No-Kill wailed, the first sound any of us had made. She clutched her head, babbling in her fey tongue. She grasped hold of the edge of the abyss, staring at the vast nothingness.

  I reached out, touching No-Kill’s uninjured shoulder, drawing her back from the edge. The gnome shuddered and shook, her eyes wetting as her eye-tears came, crying in the right place at last.

  The sheer scale of devastation we were facing dissolved my hate. I pulled the gnome I called No-Kill towards me, wrapping my claws around her shoulders and hugged tightly, keeping her eyes away from the endless abyss. The gnome cried into my shoulder, her sobs echoing in the vast chasm.

  The reality of what had happened to my own city, as surely destroyed as this one, really, truly hit home for the first time. Atikala was as gone as this nameless place, no less cast into the endless abyss, and there would be just as few survivors. No-Kill and I shared the same pain.

  Everything we had known about, cared about, and loved was gone.

  So I cried too, and Khavi as well, mourning for the destruction of civilisations, for the massacre of two races, and the hopeless inevitability that presented so many more questions than answers.

  No-Kill was first to regain some sense of wit. She let go of me, stepped back, and pointed to the Feyeater.

  “Kill,” she implored as she pointed at her heart, her face streaked with tears. “Kill.”

  I didn’t say anything, but I felt the dagger slide from its sheath. Khavi was at my side, his claw clasped around the hilt, holding the Feyeater in both hands.

  “Khavi,” I said, my voice shaking, “it should be me.”

  “No,” he said. “I know you don’t want to. I’ll do it.”

  A week ago I would have given everything I had to say that a whole city of gnomes were dead, that it was worth any price to bring our enemies to utter ruination. I’d trained my whole life to kill, to use weapons and magic to protect my people, and this was to be my duty. My purpose in life.

  Now, though, there was another gnome here, begging for death, one more body I could add to the slaughter. But I didn’t want that. I didn’t want Khavi to kill her, either.

  I wanted No-Kill to live. I wanted to find out what her name was, and maybe even be her friend. I wanted her to come with us to Ssarsdale, and explain that this gnome wasn’t evil, and then she could spend her days with us, in our new community.

  But I couldn’t. No matter how much I wanted to, I couldn’t deny that No-Kill was a gnome, and I was a kobold.

  I couldn’t say or do anything.

  No-Kill slid down onto her knees, her eyes closed, and her head hung. Khavi gently nudged the dagger against her shoulder, letting the impossibly fine tip find a vein. The weapon seemed to hunger for it, sensing the presence of the creature it was enchanted to kill, and I swore the blade stretched, begging to be plunged into gnome flesh.

  His strike planned, Khavi raised the blade up above his head, staring down at the gnome whose real name neither of us knew. He hesitated. The dark blade waited patiently as Khavi stared at the gnome that shared our anger and our pain.

  Then he plunged the Feyeater into her neck. Blood gushed from the wound, bubbling over and splattering onto Khavi’s claws. No-Kill slumped over in a crumpled heap, her face laying in the rapidly expanding pool of scarlet.

  He wiped his claws off on the back of No-Kill�
��s cloak, then handed the bloodsoaked dagger back to me.

  No-Kill’s heart wasn’t black. It was red, healthy and living. Not evil at all.

  “Thank you,” I murmured. I went to the body of No-Kill and crouched beside her, reaching out and touching her lifeless body. I was empty. Hollowed as if a piece of myself died.

  “I didn’t ask her name,” I said, “or the name of this place…whatever it was.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Khavi. “She’s just a gnome. This hive of them is gone, but there are many more out there, below the earth and even on the surface. Their species is numerous.” His tone became acidic. “You’ll find no end of feylings to dote over if you go looking for them.”

  Khavi’s anger was not my own, and his words couldn’t reach me. I felt nothing. I gently rolled No-Kill onto her back and closed her eyes. “I’m sorry,” I said to No-Kill’s body, although the words seemed entirely empty. I looked at Khavi. “We should bury her. She wanted that for her kin, she’d want it for herself.”

  “I say we just toss the body into the abyss, so she can lay with the others. That’s as good a grave as the rest of the city got, and better than they deserved.”

  “I’m still the patrol leader,” I said, “and I say we’re going to bury her.”

  “You’ll do that on your own,” spat Khavi, folding his claws and turning to stare at the bottomless abyss.

  Such insolence would be normally be punishable by field execution, and as patrol leader I had the authority to do it. If I did, I knew, deep in my heart, that Khavi would accept this ruling. That’s what he was. Strong, loyal, and obedient. I could make him. I could punish him if he didn’t.

  But I knew that I had to do this.

  “Fine.”

  So I did. I wanted to dig a grave for her, much as we had done for her kin, but then I had a better idea. I carried No-Kill’s corpse to a spot near the wall and cleared the dirt and dust away from a section, deep and long, scraping away the soil. I prepared a suitable resting flat stone shelf, then I withdrew the scroll. I unfurled it and began to read.

  The scroll’s light was almost painful. The earth itself bent to heed my words. The ground rose up into steps, five in total, then a raised platform with a rectangular box. I had no idea what I was making; I simply imagined the burial mound we had placed No-Kill’s kin into, then tried to make something better and more elaborate, something more deserving of her.

  The writing on the scroll faded away to nothing. I stupidly had forgotten a lid for the tomb, so I fetched rocks from the gateway and piled them near the box until I was certain I had enough to cover it.

  I gently placed No-Kill’s body within, then one by one, I placed the heavy stones into the tomb, sealing her body within. To be certain, I piled on lumps of glittering crystal from the tunnel further back. I found a large flat stone near the entrance, formerly a trapdoor to defensive tunnels, and used the magical dagger’s tip to inscribe upon it in the language of dragons.

  Here lies the gnome with no name, last of her kin.

  She faced life with courage and death with the same.

  We never knew what her name truly was,

  but in another life I would have called her friend.

  I placed the plaque at the head of the mound of crystal, taking care that Khavi would not see what I had done. I knew he would hate it. I had taken the only real weapon we had, the only thing stronger than my spells and our steel, and used it to give a proper grave to his enemy. In my mind, though, we had intended to use the scroll to bury gnomes.

  In the end it had been used for that purpose.

  I joined Khavi staring out at the emptiness that was the abyss, the place where a city of gnomes had once lived and breathed.

  Kobolds did not bury their dead. They were incinerated in the city’s furnaces, burned to ashes, used as fuel to heat the nurseries, and sustain the growth of new life. But I knew that gnomes and other species treated the dead with veneration, and for the first time, I began to understand why.

  “Where do we go from here?” asked Khavi, his quiet voice echoing faintly from the other side of the cavern walls.

  For a moment I didn’t answer, then I shouldered my backpack and breathed deeply of air too sweet and fresh to be from a place that had seen so much death.

  “The only way is up,” I said.

  We left the dead city, continuing our long climb to the surface.

  ACT TWO

  Passage to Salvation

  THE END OF ATIKALA KILLED our hope, but the destruction of our enemies at Stonehaven took with it something else.

  Our hate.

  There is a saying amongst my people that reflects this. Within every heart lives two dragons, a dragon of Hope and a dragon of Hate, both mighty and powerful in equal measure. They war constantly, always struggling for dominance to be the rightful ruler of your heart.

  You feed them with your actions.

  All that drives us in life is fuelled by either hope or hate. Hate is the dark mirror of hope, empowering our hearts with the same fire and energy but striving for different ends. Hate drives us to bring those above us to ruin, while hope exalts us to raise ourselves up beyond where we are. We want to better ourselves, or drag down someone else so we are on top.

  The destruction of the gnomes had taken with it the dragon of our hate, but hope could not flare up to take its place; hope was already dead within us. We were soulless, cast adrift and ready to settle down to wait for death. I remember these times as being some of the hardest of them all, not because of pain, or suffering, or loss…but because I no longer felt anything at all.

  Both dragons lay dead, and my heart was a barren wasteland cloaked in winter. While this wounded me greatly, it was better than the alternative. I said many things, did many things, that I regret in this time of my life, but I always feel the slightest bit of pride that at that moment, right when I had nothing, I didn’t feed Hate and nurse it back to health.

  Most manage to find an equilibrium in their hearts between Hate and Hope, controlling the former while encouraging the latter, and for most, this is a happy and content existence. Some find that Hope’s strength overpowers Hate easily, and that they are able to do noble things effortlessly and naturally simply by following their intrinsic sense of righteousness.

  However, some embrace that hateful dragon within them, that boiling black pit of rage that simmers and bubbles out of sight, ushering them into darkness and wickedness too numerous to count. They embrace this powerful ally and use it to great effect.

  Sometimes my surface friends wonder why anyone would do this, would willingly plunge themselves into shadow and wrath. Even humans, that most flexible and different of species, almost universally espouse the idea that good is preferable to evil, and that it is better to be noble than to be malicious, even when they do not believe it. Why would anyone listen to that whisper from Hate, the dark voice urging them to abandon Hope and to take the selfish path, the destructive path, the path of darkness?

  Kobolds know. Kobolds know because the voice of Hate, the black dragon within, is seductive. It promises that all things are relative, and that by listening, one can reach the summit of their dreams easier and faster. Hate promises much—power, wealth, revenge for slights real and imagined. When the choice is made between humble Hope and eager Hate, it is Hate’s words that have the most strength, and its promises are greater.

  But greater too, is Hate’s hunger, and you can only feed a dragon for so long before it grows too large for the meals you bring. Where Hope would grow fat and content, sleeping most of its days and dreaming of pleasant things, Hate grows ever more ravenous.

  When the food grows too meagre for its bulk, Hate turns its greedy eyes upon you.

  — Ren of Atikala

  CHAPTER NINE

  Two weeks later

  WE WANDERED THE DIMLY LIT tunnels of the underworld without a goal, walking for the sake of walking, the plan to make for Ssarsdale long gone from our minds. We moved
from tunnel to tunnel, from cavern to cavern, the regiment of our disciplined upbringing gone. We set no watches, made no schedules, and didn’t determine a pace or direction. We rarely spoke, exchanging less than a dozen words a day, mindlessly walking in the endless dim light of the underground.

  We slept, ate rations we salvaged from the gnome battlements, sipped water, and walked. We did not recall our daily lesson; we did not practice or clean our equipment or make a proper camp. We did nothing but simply exist in the timeless, seasonless underworld, letting time slip away from us.

  Finally, one day, Khavi simply would not wake up.

  He was not asleep. His eyes were open, but he remained curled in a ball, unmoving and silent, his breathing slow and even. His gear lay strewn around in a disorganised pile, his sword half out of its scabbard, thin scabs of rust forming over the blade. It hadn’t been cleaned or oiled in some time, an almost unthinkable lack of diligence for a routine loving kobold.

  Almost as unthinkable as my complete lack of caring about it.

  “It’s time to get up,” I said, unable to keep the weariness from my voice. “We need to get going.”

  Khavi didn’t stir. I reached out and poked him in the side. He still didn’t move.

  “Khavi, come. We’ve slept long enough.”

  “Have we.”

  “Yes.” I couldn’t force energy and life into my flat and lackluster tone.“It’s been a full sleep cycle. It’s time we moved on.”

  “To where?”

  To where indeed? I searched my mind for the answer. “Ssarsdale of course.” The words seemed foreign to my tongue. “Are you all right?”

  “How do you know Ssarsdale still exists, and if it does, how can they help us? Why would they bother?”

  I was weary. I had slept more than adequately; too much, in fact, letting the hours pass without care. I was tired of Khavi and his attitude. I was tired of the endless tunnels throughout the underworld. I was tired of wandering without a point, tired of everything, tired of living.