Shadowbound

by Gage Lee

  The scrats unleashed an endless barrage of battle cries from within the tower. They howled their rage so long and loud it momentarily drowned out the moans of the wounded building that surrounded them. If I’d planned properly, and the monsters had trapped the lower floors of their reclaimed headquarters, we’d have a few minutes before they could leave their base. There was no guarantee that was true, or that they’d all wait for the traps to be removed before they came looking for me. I couldn’t see the front of Hokendai Tower from where I was, but there was a door immediately to my right. I kept my hammer ready just in case one of the scrats poked its nose outside the building.

  The surprisingly loud twang of a drem shardthrower being fired echoed through the courtyard. A split second later, a scrat screamed in pain.

  The rear door of the tower exploded outward, and a hooded figure leapt past me. The back of his cloak was peppered with crudely fletched darts, their impact sites surrounded by growing circles of blood. The monstrous fighter took one more step and collapsed to the ground. His head fell back, revealing a face twisted in agony and covered in black threads that wormed beneath its surface. Blood and froth splashed from the creature’s nose and mouth, its whole body tensed, back arched, jaws flung wide, and then went still. In its haste to get out of the building, the creature had tripped who knew how many traps and been poisoned by the defenses his own people had erected.

  >>>A new secondary task, “Antivenin,” is now available.

  Rewards for this task include the scrat venom antidote, three reference points, and two Akashik network interface credits.

  Targets: A scrat shaman

  The penalty for failure in this task is death.

  Do you wish to accept this secondary task?<<<

  My heart skipped a beat and my breath caught in my lungs like a handful of fishing hooks. The cure for the poison that threatened to kill my sister was here, somewhere.

  And all I had to do to get it was abandon my carefully laid plan.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  RUSHING INTO THE BUILDING in search of a shaman to complete this task would be suicide. Fortunately, if I hung around the tower long enough, plenty of scrats would come to me. I wanted to circulate my breathing to refill my core, but there was no time. I only had two minutes of enhanced strength and agility left after waiting for my discipline to recharge.

  I marked my spot with the Material Gaze of Discernment and hammered a second weak point. The blow landed with a satisfying explosion of stony shrapnel, and yet more fissures opened in the tower’s structure. Heavy slabs crashed down to block the back exit, preventing any scrats from escaping that way. Now their only way out was the front door, and the drem had that covered.

  I didn’t know how many of the three hundred scrats inside would make it out the front door, but I was sure it would be a lot more than I’d faced so far. Despite the overwhelming odds against me, I felt no fear as I charged around the tower, just the cold, quiet hope that at least one of them would be a shaman. It was worth this crazy risk to save my sister.

  Chunks of stone the size of bowling balls fell from the top of the tower and shattered on the cobblestones like deadly hailstones. I shielded my eyes with an upraised hand and kept running, heedless of the danger that surrounded me. There was no time to worry about my safety. All that mattered was finding a shaman and killing it very, very dead.

  It was the raw sewage stink of their bodies that warned me the scrats were close seconds before I saw them. I hoisted my hammer and charged. The screaming of scrats caught in their own traps as they stumbled out of the building overwhelmed the thunder of my heart. It seemed like my enemies were already surrounding me. I was about to dive into a swarming mass of bad guys, and I wasn’t sure I’d make it out the other side.

  The first scrat I saw had its back to me, one hand raised to point at something in the distance. It never saw me coming, and my ghostlight-enhanced kick shattered its spine and sent it stumbling into its companions. The monsters shrieked in outrage and shoved their dead friend to the ground. Too late, they realized he wasn’t being rude. I swept my hammer across the clot of verminous humanoids, and its iron head shattered bones and pulped flesh before crashing into the tower’s wall. My backswing destroyed the rib cage of another scrat and sent four more sprawling onto the surrounding stones.

  >>>You have gained four reference points.<<<

  I’d arrived just in time. Other than the scrats I’d just finished, only a handful had left the tower, and they’d all fallen prey to either their own traps or the heavy, pulverizing bolts flung by the drem shardthrowers. The bodies sprawled around me all looked the same, with nothing to identify a shaman amongst them. I took a quick peek inside the doorway and immediately realized what a bad idea that was.

  The room past the tower’s entrance was packed with scrats. Most of them were engaged in the dangerous business of disarming the traps they’d deployed to keep intruders out. There were several others, though, who held hexcasters trained on the open door, and they all opened fire the instant they saw me.

  I ducked back around the corner just ahead of the blistering storm of gold-and-white bolts. Any slower, and I’d have been sprawled out on the ground alongside the scrats I’d killed. That had been far, far too close a call.

  From their hiding places across the courtyard, the drem responded to the firestorm. A pair of heavy bolts sailed past me and blasted through the tower’s open door. The scrats inside howled in pain, and traps unleashed their deadly payloads as tripwires were snapped.

  The wounded tower shuddered again, and the pungent stench of scrat fear gusted through the open doorway in a gag-inducing wave. My eyes watered at the stink, and I offered up a silent prayer to whatever might be listening that I hadn’t just sucked down a lungful of some vile beast-borne disease. Before I could think too long about how horrible that would be, a whole new set of problems appeared above me.

  Hexcasters opened fire from the windows that dotted the tower’s walls. The scrats didn’t have a great angle to draw a bead on me, but there were so many of them they didn’t need to worry about accuracy. The shots knocked chunks of stone from the wall and kicked up cobbles from the courtyard. Clouds of pulverized mortar filled the air and blinded me for one critical moment.

  The scrats were smarter than they looked. A group charged out of the building under the cover of the hexcaster fire. Fortunately, they were just as blinded by the dust as I was. The scrats slashed wildy at the air, hitting each other rather than me, and I backed out of the dust cloud and raised my weapon defensively.

  The drem didn’t wait to see what would come out of the smoke. Their shardthrower fire punched through the white cloud in a steady stream. Even without a clear line of sight, every one of their shots either knocked a scrat off its feet or hummed through the doorway to shatter against the stone floor. The drem might be flighty and hard to understand, but they were deadly accurate.

  With a surprising show of restraint, the hexcasters stopped firing down into the cloud to let their own troops regain their sight. As the dust died down, I saw shadowy shapes moving toward me, curved ghostblades in their hands ready to carve me into ribbons. They fanned out around me, trapping me between the tower and their weapons.

  I cursed and held the hammer out in front of me, hoping I could use it to defend myself as well as crush scrat skulls. I hadn’t had any training with the weapon, though, and wasn’t sure if brute strength would be enough to get me through this fight. Five scrats faced me. Four of them wore the tattered hooded cloaks I’d seen on every other scrat. The fifth one, though, was something else altogether.

  The obvious leader was easily half again as tall as his comrades, with dangling bone earrings and a thick spike punched through the bridge of his nose. He wielded an eight-foot-long spear tipped with an ugly flint blade that dripped a gruesome red slime. Power radiated from the oily black marbles of his eyes, and an ugly sneer split his face.

  >>>Scrat Shaman, Fallen humanoid be
astkin

  Third-level core

  Enhanced Strength, Neutral Dexterity, Flawed Constitution, Neutral Intelligence, Enhanced Wisdom, Neutral Charisma

  Pack Fighting, Crack Shot, and Blood Sorcery disciplines

  Threat level: Red<<<

  “I just want the big one,” I called out to the scrats, pointing the demonic head of my hammer at their leader to emphasize the point. “The rest of you can go.”

  They didn’t go.

  The shaman roared an order, and his followers instantly burst into action.

  >>>Warning! The technique “Pack Fighting” has been activated. Your opponents have increased damage potential for the next attack.<<<

  The two scrats on the outside edges charged in a flanking maneuver. Their knives flashed toward me, golden ghostlight roiling across their cutting edges. Their attack made it impossible to defend against both of them at once, and if I turned my attention to block one knife, the other would definitely cut me open. Already wounded from my infusions, I couldn’t risk any other injuries.

  The only answer was to abandon defense and go with an overwhelming offense. I swung my hammer in a looping arc. It was a clumsy strike, but it was fast and scary, and it drove all of the scrats, even the big guy, back out of the hammer’s deadly reach. None of them wanted to see if they could survive a strike from that weapon. In the brief moment of freedom my wild attack had earned me, I activated my discipline and glanced over my shoulder. There were far more weak points in the building as it neared collapse, and it only took a split second to identify the best target.

  The shaman raised his spear to the sky and called out an incantation that raised the hairs on my arms. A reeking red mist oozed from his pores and collected in seething auras around his minions. The smaller scrats shuddered and roared, their bodies shifting and growing into twisted, hideous monstrosities.

  >>>Blood sorcery detected.

  Scrats will receive increased Strength, Endurance, and improved natural armor in five seconds.

  Their revised threat level will become red.<<<

  The hulking shaman grinned at me as his magic transformed his scrawny allies into eight-foot-tall monstrosities. He knew there was no way for me to defeat those beasts. It would only take a few more seconds for the spell to complete, and then they’d rip me to shreds.

  There was only one way out of this. I unleashed a battle cry, raised my weapon, and struck with every fiber of my being.

  The shaman’s eyes went wide as he watched the demonic head of my hammer whirl through the air and slam into its target. His gleeful expression became a howl of horror.

  And my blow landed squarely in the center of the mark my discipline had made. The stone shattered into a thousand pieces. Shrapnel shot past me and pelted the scrats as they transformed.

  The building had sustained a mortal blow. Its walls crumbled, too weakened to hold the weight above them. A wave of dust and debris shot out as the base shattered and the top swung down like a felled tree.

  Right toward me.

  I spun away from the tower, raised my hammer over my head, and flung it at the shaman. Surprised by what I’d done to his precious tower, the shaman had no chance to defend himself, and my impromptu projectile’s heavy head crushed his skull. Blood erupted from the creature’s ears and mouth, and he staggered back, eyes rolling up into his sockets. With no hesitation, I charged forward, grabbed the fallen creature by the coarse fabric of his cloak, snatched my hammer from where it had fallen, and ran as fast as I could out of the falling tower’s path. The weight of the creature dragging behind me slowed me down, but I didn’t dare let go of him. If he was buried beneath the falling rubble, I’d never dig him out in time to get the antivenin and save Biz.

  Like my run to the tower, my flight away from it seemed endless. No matter how fast or how far I ran, it didn’t seem as if I could get out of the tower’s growing shadow. Stones pummeled the ground all around me, shattering on impact to spray grit and splinters in my face. I was half blind, more than half deaf, driven by panic and a relentless will to survive.

  “Kai!” Darok bellowed. The sound of my name tore through the cataclysmic roar of the collapsing tower. I couldn’t see my friend, but I veered toward his voice. I ran and ran, not daring to look behind me, my numb hand curled in a death grip inside the scrat’s cloak.

  The tower’s final death roar unleashed a shockwave that lifted me off the ground and hurled me across the courtyard.

  I landed hard, bounced off the cobblestones on my shoulder, twisted through the air, came down hard on my back, and rolled painfully to a stop. My whole body ached, and my head rang like a gong. I tried to sit up, but my vision blurred, and a wave of nausea crashed over me. I sank back onto the stones and focused on circulating my breath to restore my depleted ghostlight reserves.

  >>>Secondary task “Antivenin” complete.

  The scrat shaman satchel contains one dose of antivenin.

  You have received three reference points.

  You have received two Akashik network interface upgrade credits.<<<

  I let out a sigh of relief and winced at the pain in my ribs. I didn’t think I’d broken any of them, but they definitely weren’t shy about letting me know how they felt about the abuse I’d heaped on them these past couple of minutes.

  >>>Infusions expired. You have sustained moderate fatigue damage. You have sustained critical physical damage.

  Refilling your core will reduce physical damage to serious and eliminate fatigue damage.<<<

  So that’s what I did. It only took a few minutes of circulating my breath to eliminate the dizziness and nausea, and the worst of my physical aches and pains. I managed to sit up just in time to get an earful from Xin.

  “You did not follow the plan,” she practically shouted, her finger jabbing into my chest with every word. “Stand up so I can knock you back down.”

  “Before you kill me, can you make sure all the scrats are dead?” I asked.

  One of the drem helped me to my feet, then drew a finger across his throat. He pulled his mask down and showed me an ear-to-ear grin.

  “Gone,” he said in a high-pitched voice I could barely understand. He hooked his thumbs together and flapped his hands like a bird taking flight.

  The building’s mammoth corpse stretched across the courtyard and into the ruins beyond. Dozens of buildings had been wiped out by the falling tower. Scrat bodies, or parts of bodies, were tangled up in the catastrophic damage. The only whole corpse I saw belonged to the shaman I’d brained and dragged out of the danger zone. His satchel had fallen off his shoulder a few feet away, and I hurried over to retrieve it. It smelled almost as bad as he did, a rich, pungent odor of unwashed fur and rotten meat. That last stench came from the shaman’s lunch, and I flung the hard biscuit and moldy meat sandwiches into the wreckage. That left three wax-stoppered vials wrapped in clumps of mossy clay at the bottom of the satchel.

  >>>Antivenin

  This vial contains five doses of scrat venom antidote.

  Value: 50 blades per vial

  Scrat venom (two vials)

  Each vial contains five doses of deadly scrat venom.

  Value: 100 blades per vial<<<

  I let out a sigh of relief and carefully hung the satchel over my shoulder. I wouldn’t be able to rest until those vials were safely back with Biz, but at least I knew she could be cured. There was only one thing left for us to do.

  “None of the scrats escaped the building?” I asked.

  It turned out our enemies not only weren’t smart enough to avoid the traps they’d strung up in their own home, they were also too stupid to run away from a falling tower. The way Xin explained it, most of them had been crushed by the debris. The few who’d avoided that fate were picked off by our drem sharpshooters or killed by the varm axmen. The scrats who’d infested the tower were gone. Fell Lord Inphyr’s advance guard, and whatever they’d come to collect from Hokendai Tower, had been utterly destroyed by a bunch of kids. I
almost wished I could see his face when he realized how we’d outplayed him.

  “Good,” I said, retrieving my hammer from where it had landed when I was thrown clear of the tower’s destruction. “Let’s get to work.”

  With all the scrats in the immediate area now well and truly dead, the only thing standing between us and a rich deposit of ghostlight ore was a few feet of stone. This would be easy as pie.

  I knocked a hole in the ground near the back edge of the tower’s base where there was less rubble. It only took a few swings of the hammer to open up the basement, and all of us except the drem jumped in. The little guys hid themselves in the rubble to stand watch. If any scrats who’d survived the ratpocalypse came poking around, they’d shoot them full of holes with their shardthrowers.

  The ghostlight veins covered most of the basement’s walls in thick ropes of orange-and-black light. There was so much of the stuff it sang even before we plucked it from the walls, and I could almost hear the words of the dead. It was an eerie feeling, and it seemed to bother everyone, except for Xin. I got everyone to work before the heebie-jeebies could take hold. Physical activity was a good way to blunt fear’s edge, and we embraced it wholeheartedly. My team worked for two solid hours, littering the floor with chunks of crystalized ore. As the rest of the team loaded up the sacks we brought, I peered into the cracks and fissures I’d opened in the deposit.

  Pale threads of purple light, the same color as the sky, shone in the darkness. They sang a song that was almost, but not quite, like the ghostlight’s voice. They called to me, urged me to reach in and touch them They had something to show me. Something important.

  “Shadowstream,” Xin said and clapped a hand on my shoulder. She shoved a sack filled to bursting with ghostlight ore at me. “It’s not for the likes of you.”

  Her eyes filled with a wistful, distant gleam when she said that. For the briefest moment, her pupils were the same purple that had spoken to me from the darkness. Then, she blinked, and smiled.