by Billy Wong
Rose! Finn fell back onto the bed, crying and tearing at his hair before remembering he had none. No... he'd failed her too many times now—the one time she hadn't been able to save herself, he let her down. She'd gotten hurt far too badly in spite of his vain efforts many times before, but now she had been dragged to hell and was gone forever, no amount of resilience enough to save her. Longing momentarily to join his dead love, Finn threw his head back and howled with grief; then, unable to endure the strain of his sorrow, his weak body passed again into unconsciousness.
An unknown amount of time later, he awakened and heard familiar voices speaking to him. Opening weary eyes, he saw the two people in the whole world he still cared about in his crippling despair. "Amber! Jacob! Y-you're here! But you're not supposed be... What happened? Are you okay?"
"We're fine," his daughter told him. Then she asked the inevitable, dreaded question. "Where's Mom?"
Finn closed his eyes and turned away on his side. How could he tell them their mother was dead, that he'd done nothing to save her in her hour of greatest need? They let him have his silence for a minute, then Amber tapped him on the shoulder and whispered in a breaking voice, "I understand, Dad. Mom is... is... gone. Please, tell me what happened. I have to know—how could Mom die?!"
There. She'd said it. Rose had died; she was dead. Arggh! At least she had seen her children grow into strong young adults, but she'd never watch them marry and have her grandchildren, never grow old with Finn. She'd been thirty-eight, still stronger and fitter than anyone Finn ever met and far, far too young to die. And yet she was gone... Amber did deserve to know what had happened, and he told her.
"Your brave mother was already horribly wounded, but taking it to the demon lord when she got shot by a goblin's crossbow in the chest. Yet it barely slowed her down, so when that damned Justin jumped on her trying to take advantage of her injury, she spitted him on her sword. But then he bit her hand and the same goblin shot her in the face, and Justin dug his huge claws into both her sides, deep into her body.
"That still didn't stop her and she fought back, throwing fire right down his throat. But he tried to kill me in revenge, and wounded as I was she had to save me. She did it by shoving the demon into the portal from which he summoned his kindred, but he took her with him. Gods, she was hurt so bad when they went in—crazy to think she was still moving. She died as she lived, an unconquerable hero, a goddess of war—and love, love for me and you that kept her going no matter what."
Hearing his father's account of events, Jacob fell faint. Amber caught him while she cried herself, setting him down on the next bed only to lay her own head on his stomach as she sobbed uncontrollably. Though he shared his children's grief, Finn shed not a tear; having failed his wife, he resolved to be even stronger for his children, to never let them down like he had her. When Jacob awakened and Amber's sobs had diminished into soft hiccups, he said, "Let's go home, kids. There's nothing left for us to do here."
Though her eyes were puffy and swollen and continued to leak tears, Amber replied, "No, Dad. The monster army is still together, with Winston—a vicious goblin we've grown familiar with—in charge. He won't stop just because Justin is gone. He loves to kill, and we have to stop him if we don't want people to suffer in spite of all the work we—and Mom—did. Like she would."
Finn swallowed as he took in the determination in his daughter's eyes and her strength in the face of despair, her valiant spirit unbroken by tragedy. Just like her mother, his wife. To his shame, he found himself fearing the qualities he'd once admired so in her. He couldn't watch Amber die the same kind of premature death Rose had, after her mother sacrificed herself to save her from such a fate at Justin's hands. "No, Amber, we're not staying to fight this Winston. We're going home. I've had enough of death."
To his surprise, Jacob sided with his sister. "Dad, what's wrong with you? You never run away from a fight. What about the people here? If Mom was... was..."
His voice broke off, and Finn knew what he had wanted to say. Alive. Well, Rose wasn't, and as much as he missed her, he had no intention of letting their children join her. "The people can take care of themselves. It's just a stupid goblin, how long can he hold onto his power? He'll get killed soon, one way or another." He vaguely recalled Justin saying Winston had actually raised the army before he arrived, but because it didn't fit with what he needed to believe, brushed the thought aside.
Though doubt still showed in Amber's gaze, she too was reeling from her mother's death and had little heart for an extended argument. Hanging her head, she conceded, "Okay, Dad. It isn't what Mom would do, but if you really want to leave..."
He did. He couldn't take seeing his children get hurt or worse, when his broken heart barely clung to life by a thread. But then, he remembered something. While Justin was gone, the gate to hell he'd been pushed through still stood, and who knew what could find its way through it? Not only would Rose absolutely insist he clean up that last detail if she could talk to him from beyond the grave, but whatever came from the other side could be capable of threatening the entire world, including their children. He had to destroy the portal.
"Winston doesn't matter, but I do have to go back to where we fought Justin to tie up a loose end. Wait for me."
He tried to get up, but upon pushing himself off the bed swooned and plummeted towards the floor, his concerned kids managed with difficulty to catch him. "No, Dad!" Jacob said. "You're too hurt to go anywhere, you're barely alive! We'll do whatever you need done."
Feeling grateful for their support, Finn nonetheless knew this was something he must do himself, that he simply could not subject them to the danger of. But as he pushed them off and stood, his head turned weightless. He fell again, the darkness swallowing him.
#
"Take good care of him, Kild," Jacob told the self-proclaimed immortal as he and Amber departed, leaving the unconscious Finn in his care. They both worried for their father, but had decided to go and take care of his task before he awakened and put himself in danger again by attempting it himself.
They figured he wanted to seal the portal before anything bad found its way through. Though they weren't sure how they could do it with their current level of magical skill, Amber insisted on going, reasoning that Rose had done things with magic beyond what her skill should have made her capable of on sheer willpower. The two of them together, she concluded, should be able to find some way to get rid of the gate; and even if not through raw force, then maybe through smart thinking. Rose had rendered gates useless before by collapsing the caves they were in, and while there might be no cave around this one, burying it might do as well...
Jacob of course had second thoughts, but there was no way he could stop Amber from going, and having just lost his mother would not let the same happen to his sister. So they traveled north, Amber eventually commenting she hoped they would find Winston along the way so she could repay him for his part in Rose's death.
Upon her mentioning it, Jacob asked, "So why didn't you tell Dad Winston was the one who shot Mom? Maybe he would've been less opposed to fighting him then."
Amber shook her head. "Yeah, definitely. But he would've also gotten really mad and vengeance-crazed, and I didn't know if that would be good for his health right now. So I kept my mouth shut."
"He would really want to avenge Mom on that sneaky rat."
A smile spread across Amber's face. "We'll tell him we already did it when we get back. That'll relieve his anguish, and it'll be the truth."
Along the way, they fought several times against goblins, ogres, dire wolves, and even a troll, but Jacob was hardly afraid during any of them; all the melancholy that seemed to pervade his very essence left little room for fear. Without that weakness holding him back, he fought efficiently alongside his sister, making him feel almost like they were younger versions of their mighty parents.
But their skills still did not nearly equal those of Rose and Finn, and by the time they reached the camp Ki
ld had described to them, they were battered and terribly fatigued. And certainly in no condition to raid it. Though Kild told them most of the monsters here had been slain during the last battle, the camp had apparently been refilled with new inhabitants from elsewhere. A gigantic blood-red standard flew proudly over it, indicating the foothold Winston had established.
Perhaps this was even his base of operations, as it'd been Justin's. But though Jacob shared Amber's desire for revenge, he was aware this might not be the time or place to take down the goblin, and reminded her they were here for the portal. Even so, how could they reach it? There were scores of monsters about, far too many for them to defeat or even hold off until they got the job done.
"We need a diversion," Amber said, "to get most of them away from the center."
"Right, but how are we going to attract the attention of all those things?"
"How about fire?" a voice suggested eagerly. "Those tents catch flame real well."
Turning, Jacob was shocked by the appearance of a pig-faced man behind him, and recognized him from Kild's recollection of the battle. "You're Darm, aren't you? The guy who sets people on fire?"
The deformed pyromaniac nodded proudly. "Not just people. I gave your parents some help too. Set the whole camp ablaze while everyone was too busy fighting to pay attention to me." Had he caused Finn's awful burns? He licked his lips. "I also had fun watching the rapist girl burn. She died good and slow—a fitting repayment for what she did."
Sickened by the loathsome creature, Jacob nonetheless had to ask, "So what do you propose we do?"
"Set one corner of the camp on fire, and they should come running to keep it from spreading. Then you'll get the clear path you need."
It sounded like a decent plan, but Amber demanded suspiciously, "Why are you giving us advice? You don't care about anyone's life."
Darm took on a wicked grin. "No, but I'll get to see more wonderful mayhem if a whole bunch of monsters burn, than if just you two get yourselves killed. And I hate that Winston who leads them." The first part made some twisted sense, but Darm knew Winston? Jacob stared for a moment before he explained, "He shot me in the leg when he spotted me setting tents on fire. Now I can't get close to have fun, because I'd be too slow to run away. And I had to cauterize my wound—hate being burned!"
Of course, he only enjoyed making others miserable... Jacob resolved then to put a stop to Darm's madness regardless of what help he gave, at least if they all survived the day. The three of them showered the sparsely populated southwest corner with arrows and crossbow bolts tipped with burning oil to begin their attack, until it was a roaring inferno which nevertheless did not even come close to drowning out the screams of trapped monsters. Leaving Darm to relish his handiwork and continue fueling his glee, the twins snuck in through the south part of camp, which had emptied the fastest due to wind fanning the flames that way.
"This is really dangerous," Amber said as they entered the smoke-filled area.
Jacob shot dead a stray goblin that attempted to ambush him with a javelin toss. "Better than fighting all those monsters at once." Another little beast ran at him with a shortsword, but seeing its comrade's death hesitated only to be cut down by Amber's heavy blade. They continued into camp, thankful never to encounter more than three monsters at once, and eventually reached the portal. But sitting at its side, apparently left to guard the gate, was a massive troll.
Jacob knew a troll's hide was extremely tough to penetrate, and doubted if either he or his sister could defeat one in direct combat. So, taking cover behind tents, he crept as close as he could before leaping out with a shot at its eye, hoping to kill it in one surprise attack before it could retaliate to potentially devastating effect. But this time his nerves failed him, and a slight twitch of his hand threw his aim off an inch so that the bolt did not bury itself in the orb, but broke against iron skin. Irritated like a beestung man, the pot-bellied gray giant roared and heaved itself to its feet.
Amber charged to meet the creature stomping forward, and surprised Jacob when she slid between its legs to get behind it and stab upward at the weak spot beneath its tail. The move had served their mother well in her defeat of the legendary nation-destroying Spelldrinker, and equally favored her daughter as the troll wailed, flailed its arms, and crumpled with a red puddle forming beneath its lower body.
Jacob looked approvingly at his sister, but they both knew the troll's cries had alerted the other monsters, and hurried to try and seal the portal. Together they chanted the words which would let them manipulate a construct of the air element as gates were. They raised their hands to the shimmering field of light, attempting to dissipate the enchantment. Their power proved no match for its, and the mere resistance of its energy hurled them five feet away from the structure and each other.
"Can we cover it?" Jacob asked pleadingly, knowing it wouldn't work.
Amber shook her head. "We don't have time to bury it, and if we did they'd just dig it back up again!"
"There has to be something we can do. Think, Amber!" Right now, Jacob's mind was racing too fast to actually create any semblance of an idea.
His sister proposed a crazy plan which just might work. "Wait a minute—you might not be able to destroy a gate by destroying the frame, but the metal does keep its size in check, so what if we shrank it down a bit and took it with us?"
"That's insane! But it could work, though we'll be carrying a portal to hell around... fine, we've got rather limited options after all."
Again they hastily chanted arcane words, this time to manipulate metal. They placed hands on opposite sides of the gate's frame, magically pushing them closer together. Slowly, the wide hoop turned into an extremely thin oval, and they panted in exhaustion as they savored their triumph. Targeting the frame, they'd bypassed having to overcome the actual portal's powerful magic and effectively closed it. Of course, if the monsters got their hands on the piece of bent metal, they would more than likely be able to bend it back into working shape. So they picked up between them the crushed ring still heavier than a man, and began to return the way they'd came.
A crossbow bolt sprouted in Amber's knee. With a cry she fell, dropping the end of the hoop she held, the sudden shift in weight making Jacob lose his balance and fall pinned beneath it. Flanked by two of the largest trolls Jacob had ever seen holding great axes of stone, Winston laughed as he aimed a second shot at the wounded girl.
Then a flaming arrow flew from outside the camp, impacting on a troll's side. The point did not penetrate, but the flaming oil clung to the dull-witted giant, and panicking it tried to run in an apparently random direction. Failing to even notice Winston in its path, it bowled the goblin over effortlessly and trampled the would-be king into the dirt, leaving him twisted and still on the ground.
The other troll seemed rather more devoted to the service of its little master as it attacked the burning one with righteous fury, hitting it on the arm with an axe blow that, backed by vast strength, easily broke its skin and the bone underneath. But howling madly the burn victim struck back, caving in the other troll's skull with its own axe. It attempted again to flee, this time into the crowd of baffled monsters watching. Some of the goblins fired bows uselessly at the troll, only to send its friends into a rampage of their own as they turned on their tiny allies. Not knowing what to do, many ogres tried to retreat from the chaos only to be attacked themselves, and the army disintegrated into a churning mass of newfound enemies.
Somehow standing despite the incredible pain her destroyed knee must have caused, Amber limped over to Jacob and pushed the metal hunk off his body. "So there goes the enemy horde, huh?"
"They never had much of an alliance anyway. Can you still carry the hoop?" Even if Winston was dead—Jacob wasn't quite sure of that—who could say there weren't other goblins or ogres, or even a freak troll, smart enough to make use of the portal? They needed to have it truly sealed by their father, or at least put where no one would find it and literally reopen
the doors of hell.
Amber answered as he suspected she would. "I can roll it. I still have one knee." Though he grew afraid she'd fall as she hobbled alongside him, she held herself up with an agonized grimace. Eventually the two left the monster camp behind as Winston's flag burned behind them—Darm's work, of course. Hopefully the goblin was as dead as he'd looked after being stepped on by his panicked bodyguard. Even if he survived a cripple, his time of glory would most likely be over, and Jacob felt a sense of accomplishment at having helped bring about his downfall. The war was finished.
But not the siblings' battle, for they found Darm aiming his bow at them when they passed the outermost tent of the camp. "What are you doing?" Amber snarled while he set his sights on her heart.
The pyromaniac laughed arrogantly and sneered. "You think I'm that much of a fool? I knew you planned to betray me from the start. Sure you hid it well, but your weak brother's eyes gave it away. So it's only right I stop your treachery, huh?"
True, Jacob had thought to put an end to Darm's evil ways. But Amber had known nothing about it, she was innocent! He didn't even have time to give any sort of protest before the flaming arrow streaked from Darm's bow at point-blank range to bury itself in her chest. "Amber!" Jacob cried as she fell, her shirt already catching fire. He shot back at Darm, hitting him in the neck. The man collapsed to his knees, pulled uselessly at the bolt lodged in his throat before tipping over dead.
Jacob turned back to Amber, tears of fear in his eyes. "Are you okay?"
She actually managed to giggle while she patted out the fire beginning to spread across her shirt. "I ducked, Corn Cob. It only hit me in the upper chest; it's really nothing. Didn't even pierce any vital organs." Looking thankfully at him, she added, "You didn't run away this time."
He shrugged. "I guess I'm tired of being useless. Come on, if you're fine, let's get going. Before anything else happens."
