Labyrinth of Fright (Underdog Book #5): LitRPG Series

by Alexey Osadchuk

  “From what I’ve gathered, these hunters and their families serve House Redtail,” Pinebogey nodded toward the procession of travoises. “It is a familial obligation to help them. So have they really been abandoned? Did they need any more help?”

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  “Then what’s the point of calling yourself a clan? In my mind, the members of a clan should all work together. Regardless of their house or status.”

  “Perhaps when the clan was first founded, they were just how you’re describing… But now, based on the way they treated one another in the hunter village, every house is trying to pull the comforter of power to their side of the bed. And that’s why I said their rivalry is right in a way. It maintains balance.”

  “But they were practically at each other’s throats,” I snorted. “I’d bet my right hand that fat guy would have ordered them all killed if not for us. And that mousy little runt…”

  “A-hemmm,” Pinebogey shook his head. “He stinks of darkness from a mile off. He’s probably hauling a dark artifact around with him.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure,” I objected. “I’ve met a blackblood before who had no problem keeping up human guise at all times.”

  Remembering Shen, Master Chi’s bodyguard and servant, made me shiver unwittingly. I wonder if I could sense him now.

  “Maybe we should warn Sly anyhow?” I asked.

  “You were the one that didn’t want to intervene in their internal affairs,” objected Pinebogey.

  “You’re right,” I agreed with a sigh. “The last thing we need is to get embroiled in their vulpine quarrels…”

  “After all, Sly himself designated us guests of the clan, not his house in particular,” Pinebogey reminded. “Those are different things. And Sage Whitebelly agreed to it. That means we’re outside of their sectarian squabbles. We helped the clan. We are friends of all the houses. I’d like to keep it that way.”

  I nodded in agreement. I’m all in for that.

  “So get ready,” Pinebogey warned. “We’re going to be getting a lot of offers in the settlement.” And with a wink, he added: “And we can keep an eye on that weirdo fox. We should let him think we didn’t notice anything. That way, he won’t be able to get away.”

  During our travel, I became convinced that the nearby woods weren’t quite as savage as they seemed at first glance. We were travelling on a quite a wide path, and it was clearly being maintained. Young trees and bushes that tried to capture pieces of the road for themselves were torn up by the root. Potholes were filled in with earth and stones. The closer we got to Foreston, the wider and more well-traveled the path became.

  On our fourth day underway, we reached the first regular village. Beyond earthen mounds with burrows, we saw a few abnormal huts constructed around the broad trunks of titan trees. When Pinebogey saw them, he went into a daze.

  “Yellow sequoias!” he said, dumbfounded. “Treehouses! This village was built… ghm… or rather grown by a primordial!”

  After that, with pain in his voice he pointed at a few hills in a clearing covered in a carpet of dark green vegetation and said:

  “There used to be more of them.”

  To me they were gigantic stumps covered with earth and overgrown with moss. Pinebogey though perceived them as graves…

  Paying no mind to the people living in the village, Pinebogey looked spellbound as he walked up to one of the giants. His eyes closed, he pressed his whole body up against it.

  The quickly growing flame of dismay in the locals brought on by the outsider’s behavior was nipped in the bud by Sly.

  Standing next to me, he said both affirmatively and inquisitively:

  “Master Pinebogey is a Primordial…”

  “Yes,” I answered shortly. There was no point in hiding it.

  A few minutes later, Pinebogey came unstuck from the sequoia despite himself and walked our way. His face was gloomier than a storm cloud.

  “This forest is deeply ill,” he told us. “Darkness has been seeping its poison into it for many years. It is squeezing out all the sap.”

  Sly kept silent, but I could read a lot in his stubborn gaze. My heart can sense that we have a serious conversation ahead of us in Foreston.

  “Something is going on,” Pinebogey said in a sunken voice, fatedly watching the foxman mage walk away from us. He had gone off to announce that our break was over, and it was time to get moving again.

  “What makes you say that?” I asked.

  “Little sister said so,” he answered, nodding at the giant sequoia.

  I chuckled quietly at that.

  Pinebogey raised his head sharply and looked me in the eyes searchingly. He seemingly wanted to make sure I wasn’t trying to play a joke on him. I calmly withstood his gaze, indicating a respectful attitude to his words.

  “Does this mean you can talk to trees?” I asked.

  “I only realized it when we left the portal.”

  “Not before?”

  “Well, who was I before?” he chuckled, answering his own question: “Nobody. I used to think I could sense forests. Heh… The Heart of the Forest has shown me just how wrong I was. I was blind, but now I see!”

  “And what did your… ghm… sister tell you?”

  “She was complaining. There used to be thousands of other trees like her. Now there are a few dozen at most. The oldest ones are all in Foreston.”

  I scratched the back of my head in perplexity. Whoever would have thought one little seed would be capable of something like that?

  Then the woodsman added quietly:

  “They’re expecting me…”

  * * *

  For the next two days Pinebogey was a changed man. Most of the way, he was missing somewhere in the forest. At first, that made the foxfolk quite nervous. Especially when the woodsman serenely appeared out of nowhere when we were marching or taking a break. Once he was even waiting for us in a meadow, having gotten ahead of us by a few hours. The forest seemed to be revealing secret paths he could walk freely. I had to tell him to stop using them. The last thing we needed was a conflict with local rulers.

  While Pinebogey’s outings clearly put the foxfolk on guard, Gorgie’s regular returns from the forest with fresh meat meant he was practically treated like one of the foxfolk before too long. No matter where he showed up, he was quickly surrounded by a little gang of fox cubs he graciously allowed to climb up onto his back.

  When the little ones mounted the harn for the first time, I was reminded out the children of the slaves we’d freed and led through the Stone Forest, who the royal scouts later failed to protect. Last I saw him, Mee was still distressed that he didn’t get them to their parents. Yes, they were orphaned, but they survived.

  On the morning of the fourth day, Sly’s artifact gave out. A few times when we stopped and the mage activated it, I was next to him as if by accident. And finally I was able to get a look at it through my magic vision. It was an amulet with a simple healing spell inside. The size of the supply was impressive. Twenty thousand mana points. To tell the truth, one glance was enough to tell that the artifact was defective and not working at full capacity. Its energy structure had been severed at a few points.

  When I realized that the wounded were left without magical healing, I immediately tried to offer my services. But to my surprise, Sly refused to accept the help outright. Pinebogey explained after that they were scared of my unfamiliar sorcery. I had already freaked them out with my aura. In the heat of battle it was forgivable, but now, without a clear threat to their lives, no one would allow this outsider’s magic to be used on them.

  To tell the truth though, by lunchtime the situation had changed drastically. A few of the wounded had gotten worse all at once. Sly’s artifact had been keeping their wounds stable, staving off death, but without the amulet these two foxmen would certainly not make it to evening.

  As a result, paying no mind to Sly, a whole delegation of the wives, children and friends of dying fo
xmen approached me. Not letting it wait another second, I activated forest’s blessing and the men who were at death’s door recuperated before our very eyes. They were still far from fully healed, but they would live. And that was what mattered.

  When I activated the spell, I caught a fleeting glimpse of Sly’s face. He thought I wouldn’t see his smile of satisfaction. I was getting the impression I was taking part in some kind of play and lack of a script was forcing us to improvise.

  After the first healing, the mage and I had a little talk about the place we were going and what exactly was going on in these lands.

  I wasn’t able to get much out of him, but it was enough to get an overall picture. I didn’t ask about the monster hunters just yet, but I did inquire about a couple quirks nevertheless.

  “Listen, Sly,” a few hours ago we had started addressing one another by first name. “We have already been to four villages, and no one in any of them was surprised to see a human.”

  “Your kind sometimes visit these places,” he responded, stirring the embers in the firepit with a long stick.

  “Is that so?” To say that I was surprised would be an understatement.

  “Explorers,” the foxman explained curtly.

  A-hem… Who else?

  “Their village is downriver on the Morta, not far from the saltwater,” Sly continued. “But this year for some reason they’ve been taking their sweet time to get here.”

  Hm… It seems I know what explorers and village he’s talking about. The mage did not fail to notice my reaction, either. I saw a question on the tip of his tongue, but for some reason he was in no hurry to ask.

  So then, the explorers… That explains a lot. Their tolerance for humans, and knowledge of our language for instance. I also now understood that the explorers and foxfolk got along just fine. I wonder why my countrymen are coming here specifically. What are they looking for? My gut is telling me Takeda had been leading us to that explorer village for a reason.

  A strange situation was coming together. I could see that Sly had a lot of questions. Much like myself. But neither he nor I could work up the nerve to ask. For example, I’d like to know why the blackbloods attacked that specific hunting village and not some other one. And why that fat Whitebelly was so surprised to see Sly alive and well. And what the Bug was going on with that Dark foxman?

  But still I asked a different question.

  “Listen, Sly,” I started. “We’ll reach your city soon. What should I know about your clan, so I don’t get myself into trouble?”

  Sly considered it briefly, then nodded at his thoughts and began to speak:

  “Clan Sharpear is one of the most ancient clans on the continent. At one time, it was made up of nine houses, same as the number of Founders. But over the centuries, the number of houses has been reduced to five.”

  My brows shot up into my forehead in surprise.

  “Yes, yes, you heard right,” Sly said, cringing. “Four houses have vanished. Absorbed into the others. The stronger ones. Sectarian wars, feuds with other clans.”

  “In that way, our kinds are very alike,” I snorted.

  Sly gave an understanding smirk.

  “Now the clan is ruled by a council of five elders. One from each of the five houses. My father is among them. As is Sage Whitebelly’s. And as you’ve seen, there is no lost love between us.”

  To say that Sly was putting it briefly would be an understatement. He’d be surprised to learn how much he had in common with his forebearer.

  * * *

  “A-hemmm,” I drawled out, puzzled at the scene unfolding before me. “Not what I expected.”

  “Welcome to Foreston!” Sly proclaimed triumphantly, clearly relishing our gaping looks.

  And there was plenty to be surprised at. From what Sly told us about this place, I was imagining a big village with lots of earthen mounds. Or at the very most a couple giant sequoias with a few little houses hanging off them. And all that surrounded by a low stockade wall. But what I was now seeing surpassed all my expectations.

  It was a true city. Small, strange and with an uncanny beauty. Something of a kingdom of titan sequoias.

  “This city was cultivated,” Pinebogey told me quietly when Sly was just out of earshot. “Everything you see is a single living organism. The fortress walls, corkscrew towers, the gates. Even the roads are a complex root system.”

  “Are you serious?” I asked with admiration.

  “Absolutely,” Pinebogey nodded, now pale with emotional charge. “The thing is this organism is currently dormant. And based on the old bark and dry roots, it has been this way for a very long time.”

  “But then who created all this beauty?”

  “The supreme Primordials using the magic of the Heart of the Forest. When the city is awake, it is always warm inside, always summer. Look up at the giant crowns of the sequoias. They once protected the whole city from heavy rain, snow and hail. The walls of this city cannot be burned or destroyed. Inside there is always food and water for the besieged.”

  Pinebogey waved a hand at the fortress wall.

  “You see those dry shoots over there? Those are killer vines. Look how many there are. Dozens. Hundreds. Anyone foolish enough to climb over the walls was in for a nasty surprise.”

  “Are they also dormant?”

  “Some of them,” answered Pinebogey. “The rest… Alas, most of them are dead.”

  I was finally able to exhale. Seeing all that majesty took my breath away.

  “It’s only a small fraction of what’s inside,” Pinebogey said with pride in his voice. “Let’s go, we must see it all up close.”

  While we stared at the marvelous city with gaping mouths, the foxfolk hadn’t slowed down one bit. Many were already next to the gates. Just Sly, waiting patiently, had given us time to take in all the astonishing sights.

  Over the last two days, much to everyone’s surprise, I got all the wounded on their feet and now they could even walk unaided on their own two.

  I had recalled Gorgie on Sly’s request. To tell the truth though, we told the others the harn had just gone into the nearby forest to await my return. I decided not to tell them about my summoning amulet. Let them think my beast is far away.

  As we walked down the road, a commotion took hold up by the gates. Based on Sly’s concerned face, this was coming as a surprise to him as well. We were not exactly thrilled to see the forty excellently equipped soldiers coming our way with levels thirty and up.

  “Don’t worry,” Redtail hurried to reassure us, although his voice was slightly quavering. “This is an honor guard, which will lead us to the middle of the city where we’ll be expected.”

  I wondered how they knew of our arrival. Had the fat fox really gotten here before us? Or had Sly somehow sent word to his daddy? At any rate, the fact that he was somewhat spooked was normal. Just look at these sentries’ ugly mugs. He wasn’t expecting his daddy and cursed buddies to react this way.

  When the “honor guard” had us surrounded, pointing their several dozen spears at us in no uncertain terms, the fur on Sly’s back stood on end.

  “Headman!” he barked. “Just what do you think you’re doing?! These masters are guests of honor here! It is thanks to them that my warriors and I are still alive!”

  “Master Sly!” a broad-shouldered foxman stepped forward. Without a single emotion on his face. Now that’s restraint. “The clan council of elders has ruled that the outsiders are to be taken to the Yellow Tree.”

  “But headman!” notes of panic slipped through in Sly’s voice.

  He wanted to say more, but I stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

  “Sly, don’t you worry about us,” I said with a smile. “We’ll be just fine. I’m sure this is a misunderstanding.”

  The mage nodded curtly and turned coldly to the commander:

  “Headman, I gave my word to these masters. You do after all understand that if something happens to them and it’s your fault… I d
on’t think I have to explain what would happen next.”

  The headman calmly shrugged his shoulders and responded:

  “I am just following orders, Master Sly.”

  I chuckled to myself. A tough cookie. It’s always thugs like him that get appointed to positions like his. Honestly, guys like him also usually die on the front lines though.

  When we moved on, Pinebogey asked quietly:

  “What was that back there? We could have just left you know.”

  “No my friend,” I responded, showing off my whole mouth of pearly whites. “Now I definitely need to get into this city. Much like you, I’ve also noticed something. Take a look over there…”