Knives in the Night

by Nathan A. Thompson

  I turned to find Eadric watching me studiously, and considered my request carefully.

  So, that thing you were telling me about? Where you reshape an opening to get inside someplace impenetrable?

  He nodded his acknowledgement, eyes scanning the heavy metal barriers in our way.

  Won’t be as easy for me to do here, since I’m not as familiar with the spells and stonework, but I can still pull it off. Especially if you want me to do something smart like just focus on the door’s hinges.

  That’s a great idea, I responded. We can probably just knock the doors over that way. In fact…

  I began to hatch a plan.

  CHAPTER 12: COUNTERSTRIKE

  Everyone groaned when they heard the plan—except for Val, who just grinned and said, “coooool.”

  That earned her some dirty looks, but when no one could think of a better one, they stopped groaning and went to work like the professionals they were.

  The Horde, to their credit, had done the smart, sensible thing and erected a massive barrier in front of the most important room inside their headquarters. They had also reinforced that barrier to make it difficult for anyone who hadn’t brought a battering ram with them down into the tunnels.

  That last one was on me completely. I hadn’t even thought about bringing a battering ram along for any of my recent dungeon dives. I would have to raise the subject in my next brainstorming session with the team.

  We still had my bow and all our explosive magics, but the door was warded against those, and it was dangerous to fire things like that against a door only a few feet away—and standing farther back to increase the range only gave our enemies more time to react.

  So, instead of roasting ourselves, and due to the fact that we currently lacked a battering ram, we took the only sensible option remaining.

  We turned the door itself into a battering ram.

  Everyone insisted that the idea wasn’t supposed to work.

  Even after Eadric was able to temporarily weaken the door’s hinges and bar lock through a combination of Earth and Shaping magic.

  Even after Karim, Gabin, and I had set up an impressive array of augmentation Scripts that would float just in front of the door.

  Even after Salima, Weylin, and I began intoning a Song chant that would further augment any Ideal spell that passed through our voices.

  Even at the last step, when Breena, Petalbell, and I combined our Air magics to fire a powerful blast of Air magic into the now-hingeless double doors, the rest of the team made the same really familiar-sounding grumbles and got into position.

  I actually dropped a half-step behind everyone else as we poured effects into the doors. Taking part in every stage of the process had cost me most of my mana. I’d recover it quickly after a short rest, but it still took me a moment to catch my breath.

  That was fine, though. Karim, Gabin, and Breena had all told me that would happen.

  In fact, they had never stopped telling me that would happen.

  I told you so! Breena sent through the mindlink as she rushed up to the doorway and prepared to pick new targets for her Lightning magic. At least, I’m pretty sure I told you that would happen!

  Yes, Breena, I sent as I shook off the last of my newest migraine and braced to charge into the room with the rest of the team. I remember you warning me about spending so much mana at once, three times in a row, without rest.

  Well, good! The fairy harrumphed as she fired off a blast of lightning through her wand, searing the face of a Spawn still recovering from the shock of our forceful entry. Because I’ve totally been working hard at warning you ahead of time on everything! Ever since that little incident with the gibber-kin and their castration habits. And that was just one time! she exclaimed, firing off a quick cluster of flaming fairy darts out of her Boom Stick. Just one time! I don’t know why Stell keeps bringing it up!

  I listened wordlessly to my familiar as she worked out her repressed anger and simultaneously took stock of the damage our entry had caused.

  We had put a lot of effort and mana into turning the Horde’s protective barrier into a horrible tool of agony, mutilation, and doom.

  I was not disappointed with the results.

  Saga magic, despite being separate from Ideal magic, could sometimes duplicate the effects of one of the Ideals. That was how Scripters made magical blue fire appear out of thin air, how Songmages manipulated the air with their voice, and how Shapers moved stone or metal around. It wasn’t nearly as potent as the Ideal magics, but it was far more flexible—a Song mage could put in a fraction of any desired element, while an Ideal mage was restricted to whatever he could comprehend through his Ideal.

  Due to these fundamental aspects, our Saga magics hadn’t simply intensified the already-powerful blast of Air magic that had struck the unbalanced metal doors, but it had enabled the air to transfer every bit of elemental energy we could stuff into our Scripts and Songs straight into the doors themselves.

  The result was that the nearly three thousand pound-plus barriers of metal and their locking bar all became simultaneously super-heated, super-cooled missiles with magically increased density and velocity.

  That last combination had been the hardest to pull off and was the reason my head hurt so much.

  But the grisly outcome was totally worth it. The giant slabs of metal and their pole blasted into the Pit chamber like a gunshot, crushing the two Spawn planning to blast us with fireballs into immediate paste, as well as a trail of other Hordebeasts I didn’t have time to identify before they were splattered apart. After bouncing off a cluster of horse-faced Horde, the items shattered, turning into a spray of super-heated, super-frozen metal that pelted throughout the room.

  It was a heck of an opener to our fight, but my team had capitalized on it immediately by rushing into the room and unloading more explosions and death. I didn’t even bother to keep track of who was throwing what kind of magic, because it would have just made my head hurt even more.

  So I focused on everything in the room that I hated that also wasn’t dead.

  Maybe a handful of undamaged Mongrels and Miscreants remained, but their morale had finally broken. They were all screaming, cowering, or rolling around on the floor, whether they were on fire or not. My team was concentrating on the Howlers and surviving three Spawn instead.

  The seven-feet-tall, wolf-headed beastmen had lost over half their numbers to my team’s forced entry, but they were at least trying to either take cover or charge through the fire. The monstrosities were armored in some kind of bronze-colored mail, complete with cuirasses, shin guards and bracers. They still relied on their claws and fangs as weapons, but they also wore strange metal contraptions that covered their hands with barbs and filled their mouths with countless additional trap-like teeth.

  The strange items really helped them achieve that nightmare fashion look, but my team had seen enough unspeakable monstrosities by now to take them in stride. I watched one monster charge through all the arrows, fire, and lightning energy to attempt a swipe at Petalbell, who had floated downward to get a better firing angle on one of the surviving Spawns.

  Breyn stepped in front of the monster and slammed his round shield into the taller creature’s belly. As the Howler doubled over in surprise, the young Gaelguard heaved his shield upward to lift the monster clean off its feet and over his head.

  His chainmail leaked green fire as his normally invisible tattoos flared. That same fire traveled up his arm all the way to his blue, coral-decorated hand axe, which he swung into the monster still braced on his shield. The weapon tore a giant chunk out of the entire front part of the wolf monster’s neck, and the creature choked and smoked as the Gaelguard tossed its body to the floor and finished it off by smashing the Howler’s skull with the rim of his shield.

  Thoroughly satisfied with what I saw, I turned to find a group of Howlers that had somehow managed to weather all the shrapnel and eldritch energy. Their heads turned as they sniffed the
air and searched their surroundings, and then the leader’s eyes locked onto my own.

  “We have found the traitor-prince!” it screamed, and they fell into a v-shaped pack formation and charged directly for me, nostrils flaring and eyes bloodshot.

  I was going to congratulate them on managing to find an individual who had literally battered his way through their front door and into what passed as their living room, but in the next moment, the ground beneath them suddenly turned into mud, and concussive-enchanted arrows began tearing into their bodies.

  I wanted to smack myself in the head.

  Right. I have a mini-siege engine in my bag, and I’m finally in a room big enough to use it.

  Skybreaker appeared in my hands with a thought, along with its supply of arrows. I quickly nocked one arrow, pulled the metal bowstring back as far as I felt was practical, and let loose into the pack of obsessive murder werewolves.

  Apparently, I had pulled it too far back.

  The arrow seemed to lose most of its force as it penetrated the lead Howler’s breastplate and blasted out of its armored back, but the bolt was still powerful enough to tear through another Howler’s armored, Descent-enhanced arm, shred the left thigh of yet another monster as it grazed by the Hordebeast’s leg, and then blast a good chunk off of a final monster’s head, who had slipped further into Eadric’s enchanted mud. The missile then continued its flight, shredding the neck of an unfortunate Miscreant and ultimately smashing into the ground several feet from the Horde Pit itself.

  Interestingly, the most terrifying facts about my shot were that one: the arrow had enough impact to damage and shred nearby Howlers who hadn’t even touched it and two: except for the Howler who had lost his skull, the vital guard of every other monster was strong enough to keep them from immediately dying.

  Also, Weylin and Salima admonished me immediately to pick much more distant targets as they finished off the survivors with their own arrows, and to start treating my arrows with the same care that I treated all of my other explosive magic.

  Then they cut off the mindlink before they could become further distracted by demanding that I start being more careful about my fireballs and lightning bolts as well.

  Don’t listen to them, dude, Teeth said as I fired my next arrow into one of the other remaining packs of Howlers that had begun to get their act together. We’re plenty careful. They should give us medals instead, for not using a weapon this awesome all the time.

  Your logic is terrifyingly irrefutable, I admitted guiltily to my inner dragon as I scanned the room for remaining enemies. There were still several dozen, despite how much damage we had already wrought in the minute or so since we had come crashing in. There had been a lot of them to begin with, and these Howlers were probably the strongest, most well-equipped batch we had encountered yet.

  But we weren’t pushovers either, and so far we had done a good job with the element of surprise.

  Just when the survivors had begun to rally, clouds of kaleidoscopic glitter exploded over their faces. Breena and Petal had chained together a super-improved version of the Air spell my familiar had taught me ages ago, during my first Challenge. The magic didn’t do any damage, but it distracted our enemies enough to allow us to bring down half of the surviving Howlers with concentrated fire.

  I heard Val shout in triumph as she managed to peg a blinded Howler in the face with one of her arrows, but then the three surviving Spawn abruptly changed whatever incantation they were casting.

  The flickering shields of green fire that had been protecting them from our earlier magics disappeared, along with the glittery dust that had been blinding the surviving Hordebeasts.

  “It is time,” the tallest of the horse-faced monsters croaked from the very back of the massive Pit. This one was armored head to toe in black and green plate armor, with only the front of his skull peeking out. “Your days of savaging our hearts and souls are coming to an end, traitor-prince!”

  He reached behind his back and pulled out a large, curved sword. Green fire blazed around the blade as he pointed at me.

  “Buy our new lord a few more moments of time!” he shouted as the other two armored Spawn drew their own weapons and rushed forward. “Then we will finally kill the traitor-prince!”

  The phrase ‘new lord’ evoked all kinds of uncomfortable connotations, but I didn’t have time to consider it as green fire sheathed the claws and teeth of the surviving Howlers, and they rushed toward us with renewed strength.

  “Yeah, well, fuck you, too!” I shouted with testosterone-fueled defiance, tossing my bow into the air just long enough to throw a lightning bolt into the empowered wolf-men before they could reach my people. Then I caught the bow, nocked another arrow, pulled the bowstring back as far as I could, aimed for the asshole Spawn still trying to lead from the rear, and let loose.

  Skybreaker’s quarrel tore through the air with a powerful crack of concussive force. I tracked the missile’s spiraling trajectory across the Pit—the most massive and disgusting specimen I had seen yet—to the other side, where the armored Spawn waited.

  The creature roared in angry contempt and intercepted my arrow with his massive, flaming blade.

  There was a loud thunk, and the monster swayed from the impact, but he stood unharmed. The deflected arrow instead blasted a skull-sized crater into the stone wall three feet away from him.

  He pointed his sword back at me, this time in a clear challenge.

  “Try again,” he dared as the Pit bubbled and belched between us, “traitor-prince.”

  I was more than willing to see just how many arrows it took to get to the center of a Horde-pop, but the other two Spawn and the surviving empowered Howlers were about to engage in combat with my team, so I had more urgent targets to kill.

  I dismissed Skybreaker and summoned a weapon better suited for dealing with giant, charging monsters. Shard appeared in my hands the next moment, giving me just enough time to brace the icy poleaxe against a frothing, wounded, flaming wolf monster loping toward me on all fours.

  He tried to leap over my weapon, but I shifted the haft in time for the spear-point to catch the monster in the throat.

  I tensed as the four hundred-pound monster slammed windpipe-first into the business end of my icy weapon, but I found myself able to hold the weight without losing my balance. Satisfied, I shoved the already-wounded monster off my weapon and left him to claw feebly at the ice sealing his throat shut and overwhelming his vital guard.

  I took a half-moment to take stock of the melee raging among our group.

  Unlike the fight in the tunnels, the room was too wide to form a proper shield wall, and the Howlers would have been able to jump over it anyway. We had tried to form a triple-rowed semi-circle instead, with Eadric, Breyn, and I in the front, Karim and Val in the middle, and Salima and Weylin in the very back. The two fairies fluttered overhead and kept raining Ideal magic and fiery fairy darts.

  I heard Eadric grunt as an armored Spawn hacked its flaming blade against the dwarf’s shield. The nine-foot-tall monster pushed its entire weight against the five-foot dwarf, moving the Testifier back a single inch. Both combatants seemed surprised by that.

  Since Eadric was holding his own for the moment, I whirled to slice into the front shoulder of another Howler charging toward the archers on all fours. The monster skidded to the ground, vital guard struggling to overcome the damage caused by my icy poleaxe and its previous wounds, but Gabin didn’t give it the chance. The Atlantean Scholar-Marine stabbed hard into the Hordebeast’s eye socket with his metal spear, then twisted.

  I didn’t have time to watch, however. The number of still-living Howlers was still too damned high, in spite of all the damage we had wreaked on the survivors upon entry. Three more thundered toward me, with two quickly dropping under concentrated fire from our elven archers and Karim’s Script missiles. Somehow, the last and largest one just barreled through the arrows and launched toward me with outstretched, flaming claws.


  Shard’s icy spear point caught it in the shoulder, but the frothing creature gave no sign of pain. Instead, it reared back up on its hind legs and gripped the haft of my weapon with both hands. The hulking creature stepped backwards, struggling to pull it out of my grip, and steam rose up between its talons as Shard’s icy power battled the green fire of its claws.

  I growled in frustration as I advanced, slid my grip further down the poleaxe’s haft, and shoved the weapon deeper into my enemy. My aggressive actions turned the tables on its attempt to disarm me and knock me off balance. The snarling beast went to the floor instead, just in time for my Lightning magic to activate and course into its body.

  The combination of Ice and Lightning magic was enough to send my enemy into paralyzing spasms. I tore Shard free of the Howler’s shoulder, raised it over my head, and brought the axe blade of the weapon down into its defenseless face. The resulting crunch told me that I had probably overwhelmed his vital guard and killed him.