Absently, he rested the head of the battle-axe on the chest of the corpse he was using as a platform to improve his vantage point, and shook the blood from his hands. Some of it was his—he was bleeding slowly from numerous small wounds he’d taken to his arms and shoulders in the short but furious battle he’d had with cavern’s defenders. His dwarven chainmail was rent in spots, as even the kythrandir links could not withstand the primordial fury and iron jaws of creatures Time should have erased long since. He’d also acquired a small slash to the left side of his jaw, and it stung abominably–likely a bit of venom in the wound, he realized. Most of the blood was that of his foes, he noted with savage satisfaction.
The body on which he stood was that of one of the Fenriksyr dogs he’d decapitated in the defenders’ initial onslaught. Like most of his kind, he was actually shorter than the measure of Krella’s haft. The dead (and nicely foreshortened) Fenriksyr was, in fact, merely the topmost of an impressive pile of corpses and body parts, subhuman and canine, but the dwarf did not hesitate to use the remains to improve his perspective and plan the next phase of his search. The dog’s body was huge, even with the fearsome head removed: the creature was a sort of Hel-hound, taller at the shoulder than Gorrim himself when standing on all fours, and nearly as broad across the chest as the dwarf, whose musculature and strength were legendary already among his own kind.
Not that he cared for such things particularly, but the name Gorrim Guar-Mortik was already known, was whispered in places where one did not speak the names of others aloud.
Though there had been no other living soul to witness what had taken place in the cavern, it was grim and bloody testimony to Gorrim’s great strength and martial skills, as augmented by the ancient fey magic imbuing the blades of Krella, the Headsplitter, that fully twenty of Fenriksyr lay dead in their own blood, with twice that number of their powerful but stunted subhuman masters, their curving hook-tipped blades beside them.
He considered his options. The small bit of canine venom in the wound on his jaw was irksome, but not enough to slow his reactions or cause permanent damage, and his dwarven mail, which hung nearly to his knees and covered him from throat to wrist, nullified the effects of any venom that might have otherwise accompanied his other wounds. Kithrandyr chain was highly prized for ample reason. He felt fatigue only slightly, and it was leaving him quickly. The cavern was far beneath the surface of the world in which he normally moved, and he was a dwarf. His people were of the earth’s depths, and the mystical millennia-long ties of dwarven-kind to the mineral-rich depths, passive though they were said to be, were reasserting themselves in him.
Despite the dangers of the task he’d accepted and the arcane forces aligned against him, he felt strangely at home in the depths. He could sense the cavern’s roof far above him, and knew just how far the walls extended around him. He could even sense the location of the final doorway, far across the cavern, the portal through which he would gain access to the Chamber of Juleptsu… if he survived whatever additional surprises the accursed priests had built into the cavern in which he presently stood.
He became aware of the earth as a Presence, a source of power on which he might be able to draw, though he would have to rely on instinct alone. He felt as though the Presence might be female in nature, motherly, and just for a moment, it was as if a soft hand had touched his brow. It must, he was sure, have been his imagination. The wound on his jaw did seem less painful…
By the gods, he thought, time to get moving. He’d been attacked by the dogs and their masters almost immediately on entry to the cavern. He was still close to the entrance, their bodies piled under and around him. The flickering torchlight revealed that the entire scope of the fight had fallen within a semi-circle of lighter stone around the entry, a clear line of demarcation from the dark, shadowed floor beyond it. The cavern’s defenders had been stupid, clustering near his entry point and giving him plenty of victims within Krella’s lethal arc, instead of using the shadows and the cavern’s size to their advantage.
Clambering down from the pile of corpses, he picked his way to the inner edge of the semi-circular boundary. The light of the torches was poorer here, but it appeared that neither body parts nor even a single drop of blood had touched the floor of the cavern outside the lighter stones.
Perhaps, he mused, the defenders had not been quite as stupid as he thought. Showing his teeth, he lifted Krella high and began to chant softly in the dwarven Old Tongue. After a few moments, the axe-head began to glow with a soft blue-white radiance. As Gorrim continued to chant, the sweat beginning to stand on his brow, Krella’s light–for in truth, Gorrim had summoned the Light of the Fey–intensified, illuminating a much larger area before him.
This, he well knew, should have been impossible, just as it should have been impossible for any dwarf to wield Elven weapons forged aeons before, and by the highest of Elven magics at that. Nor should Krella have responded to language other than High Elven. Dwarfs and elves, though they’d occasionally been forced to cooperate over the millennia, still regarded each other with deep suspicion and intense dislike, if not outright hatred.
But Krella had fallen to his hand with the death of an enemy, an Elven assassin. The weapon had spoken to his spirit; his spirit had answered, and there was a strange bond between the dwarf and the near-sentient axe. He had long since ceased to question it. Rather, he had accepted it and was grateful for it.
The idea that the link between dwarf and mystical weapon might bespeak a strange and arcane destiny awaiting him in a shadowed future did not even occur to him. Gorrim was, after all, a dwarf.
His destination, the portal to the Chamber of Juleptsu, was before him, diagonally to his right at a distance of perhaps two hundred paces. Krella surrounded him in a luminescent blue-white sphere of perhaps thirty paces in diameter.
So, he thought. Minimal time to apprehend and repel attacks from the darkness around him. No way, save by his other senses, to detect a possible attack from above or below, or to forestall magical attacks.
He had known it would not be easy.
He would not have had it otherwise.
It was time. He leaned Krella blades-up against the corpse of another fallen dog, and began by gathering seemingly random items from the cavern’s floor, within the half-circle of lighter stones: loose pebbles, bits of metal, primitive charms from the necks and bodies of the subhumans–all small, hard items that he deposited in a small pouch. He also selected four of his enemies’ vicious, hooked knives, thrusting them into the wide, studded belt about his waist.
One of the dead subhumans had carried a small oaken shield, round, and bound in iron. That, too, he took for himself, loosening the crude binding straps and thrusting through his left arm, chain and all. Then, by Krella’s light, he began casting items from his collection of pebbles, bits and pieces, one by one, in the direction of the portal he sought, cautiously stepping forward as the pebbles and bits he cast before him provoked no response.
One never knew when a misstep might trigger a trap for the unwary.
His tension grew with every step, but there were no hidden traps, no sudden attacks or waves of hostile magic. By the time he’d crossed the cavern, anticipating attack with every step, his muscles were tight with tension and he could feel the sweat trickling down his back beneath his mail and protective leather under-jerkin. The air had grown thick, and his surroundings had grown all too quiet, the sound of the cast pebbles seeming ridiculously loud as they bounced on the cavern’s floor.
Krella’s light revealed he had reached the far wall, and he could sense the Chamber of Juleptsu before him, though his eyes told him he was facing a blank wall. He hesitated, and then cast a pebble at the wall itself. When nothing happened, he snorted and threw a second, larger rock with more force. To his astonishment, his second throw actually appeared to leave a small crack in the wall, a crack that began to grow and spread of its own accord, crumbling the surrounding stone. Fragments of the wall hit th
e floor of the chamber. In Krella’s otherworldly glow, the fallen shards of stone began to move slowly in his direction.
“Gurni’s beard!” he cursed aloud. No sooner had the oath left Gorrim’s blood-stained lips, than the fallen stone fragments had become spiders, hungering for his blood—and they no longer moved slowly, scuttling at him with terrifying speed, poison visibly dripping from their mandibles.
He was not afraid of spiders, and the sole of his boot made quick and messy work of the eight-legged crawlers. There were those, he knew, even among warriors, who might have been paralyzed with fear. He was not one of them. The ugly arachnid was no real threat to him, though they did serve as a warning for what might await in Juleptsu’s hidden nest.
He considered his situation before risking entry into the dark portal revealed by the shattered wall. The Fenriksyr venom was causing his jaw to pulsate with pain yet again. Pulling off the steel gauntlet on his right hand, he dug a thick forefinger into the wound and scooped out something wet. Flicking it onto the ground, he saw it was a combination of coagulated blood and green ichor. Ignoring the pain, he dug at the wound again, causing it to bleed more heavily, and he persisted until he saw only fresh blood on his fingers. Satisfied that he’d rid himself of as much venom as possible, he pressed on the wound firmly for a few moments to slow the bleeding. Better, he thought. Much better.
The moment of his confrontation with Juleptsu was almost upon him. First, he checked his weapons, seeing to Krella’s edge and the security of his borrowed shield, and then he shrugged once or twice to settling his chainmail about his massive shoulders and chest. He slipped the gauntlet back onto his hand, and flexed his fingers into a mighty, steel fist.
He was ready. He spat, seized Krella firmly, and deliberately stepped forward to the portal, the axe lighting his way as he passed through it. He was prepared, Gorrim told himself, to challenge the old god in his very lair. Truly, he knew not the meaning of fear, though he did not move without caution. The world held much more fell things than Fenriksyr and spiders in the deep places of the Black Earth, as he well knew. Juleptsu, black ancient of the depths, was among the darkest of beings.
The portal led him down a long, narrow corridor that opened into another torchlit chamber, vast and circular. The torches’ wan purple flames cast a sick and unearthly light–clearly, the work of conjuration with dark magics that inspired dizziness and nausea. Not surprising, Gorrim considered, given what little was known of Juleptsu’s true nature. Even the air seemed tainted. The room was silent, save for the faint dripping of water. Thick, scabrous webbing depended crazily from the ceiling, casting malevolent shadows.
This is too easy, he thought, knowing the chamber to be a trap. He began moving toward the chamber’s center, Krella at the ready. The sound of sliding stone turned his attention to the portal through which he had entered. It was now closed, as if it had never been open at all. Trapped inside the chamber of Juleptsu, he became very aware of three things: the echoed dripping of water, the sound of his own breathing, and the gentle metallic hum of Krella, his truest companion, ever-willing to tear his foes asunder. The axe knew what was transpiring, he was certain; the hum indicated that it was responding to hostile magic, countering what it could.
As Gorrim approached the centre of the room, Krella’s glow revealed a circular obsidian pillar he’d never have seen in the torchlight–it seemed to absorb the dull, flickering glow, remaining virtually undetectable in the dim chamber unless one bumped into it. He held Krella closer, and saw that the pillar was deeply carved with prophetic tellings in what he knew to be a runic language, and an ancient one. Gorrim spoke several tongues and could make out some of the symbols, but he could not cipher the meaning of the carved scripts themselves.
Whatever this dark speech is, he thought, time must’ve forgotten long ago.
As he studied the carvings upon the pillar, the skin on the back of his neck began to prickle, and Krella’s glow intensified. From far above, there came a sudden, eerie chittering, and it was clear that he was not alone. He held Krella high, using the Light of the Fey to see what new horror stalked him from above.
Something struck his arm with great force, knocking Krella from Gorrim’s grasp and sending it flying across the chamber with such force that the axe embedded itself into the wall. There was a rush of air as a heavy body dropped near him, landing lightly on eight spined and curved legs, each longer than Gorrim was tall. He had to tilt his head back to get a glimpse of the terrible face of his foe in the dim light. With Krella’s light extinguished, it took a moment for his eyes to adjust.
Gorrim found himself face-to-face with a great and terrible spider, ready to devour its prey, its eyes bulging and mandibles dripping foul-smelling, poisonous ichor. Gorrim grunted angrily, and leaping forward, drove his gauntleted fist directly into the spider’s maw, sending a large fang flying free. The empty cavity spurted black blood and ichor, and the colossal spider hissed in rage, and leaped back out of range, gathering itself. Krella was far from Gorrim’s hand, and his newfound oaken shield became the only defence against its certain retaliation.
To his shock, the spider spoke.
“I have not tasted dwarf for a millennium. Take solace in the knowledge that you will be enjoyed!”
So—here was his foe, in the flesh. “Juleptsu,” said Gorrim, almost smiling. “You’ve been an infection in the body of the earth for far too long. I will end your immortal life, or die in the attempt—and in that case, you’re likely to choke to death on me, you disgusting insect.”
He pulled a hooked knife from his belt and threw it at Juleptsu, who merely suffered a scratch on his blackened face from the shoddy weapon. The spider laughed.
“Shall I begin?” he hissed.
Gorrim cursed the crude blades of his would-be dispatchers under his breath.
Perfect, he thought. Poorly weighted curved blades are useless for throwing, lunkhead. He needed Krella, and between him and the axe was Juleptsu, the Spider God, the Dark Ancient himself.
Juleptsu pounced at the dwarf, cracking the shield and knocking Gorrim over. His leap took him over the dwarf’s head, and one of his black legs bypassed the shield and struck Gorrim a glancing blow to the jaw, dislocating it, and worsening his wound. But instead of taking advantage, Juleptsu backed off as Gorrim roared in pain, clearly taking sadistic pleasure from the damage he’d inflicted. He even raised one foreleg and beckoned to the fallen dwarf, inviting him to try again.
The dwarf got to his feet, grabbed his jaw, and shoved it back into place. The crunch of bone was audible throughout the chamber. Gorrim grimaced, spitting a blood-stained molar upon the floor. He spat blood and shook his head, and then focused on the Spider God. He’d been lucky, he knew: if the foul poison oozing from Juleptsu’s mandibles had touched his bare flesh, he’d already be writhing in death agony, and he couldn’t be certain that even the magical protection against poison that was fused into each link of the kithrandyr mail would be enough to withstand the Dark Ancient’s taint. His piercing green eyes grew cold and flat, and he stretched his great muscles, his joints cracking as he did so. He bared his teeth at Juleptsu in a humourless smile. “Thanks,” he grated, his voice like gravel. “I needed that.”
He suddenly charged forward, running at the great and repellent arachnid with shocking speed. The Spider God crouched low, its two forelegs raised in anticipation, as if to embrace the charging dwarf. Then, at the last possible instant, Gorrim crouched low as he ran, gathered himself and leapt, his short legs straightening with a snap and propelling him up and over the hissing monster.
Instead of leaping to meet him, Juleptsu reacted in shock as the dwarf used his own tactic against him. The arachnid reached up with a single foreleg in an attempt to knock the airborne dwarf to the chamber’s floor. As he sailed over Juleptsu’s head, Gorrim reached with his mailed right hand, seizing the tip of Juleptsu’s upraised foreleg in his iron grip and twisting with all his strength and the weight of his own mailed
body as he flew past the startled god. Whatever Juleptsu had believed about dwarfs, he clearly had not understood Gorrim’s capabilities.
Like all the males of his kind, Gorrim was short but massively muscled and boned. His weight was considerable, and he was fully mailed. He had propelled himself into the air with great force, like a dwarven missile, a living weapon. His hand had wielded Krella’s weight for years; it had swung a dwarven hammer effortlessly and endlessly. He had never been defeated in the annual dwarven wrestling competitions, and the force of his grasp had caused more than one opponent to break down in agony or sprawl senseless before him.
Nothing in Juleptsu’s experience could have prepared him for what occurred next: with a rending snap, the Spider God’s foreleg shattered at multiple points, its tip completely crushed in Gorrim’s steel fist. Juleptsu screamed in agony, skittering sideways, his foreleg flopping before him with ichor spurting through broken chitin. That natural armor might have turned aside an ordinary sword-blade, but even the Spider God’s supernatural form could not withstand the torqueing power of the mighty dwarf’s grasp.
Gorrim flew well past his foe, righting himself in mid-air and landing with a roll and the harsh clanging of kithrandyr mail. He skidded to a halt at the far wall, exactly at the spot where Krella’s massive haft stood out from the stone. Casually, he turned and regarded Juleptsu, who was crouched low some distance from him, nursing his shattered foreleg and trembling in pain and rage as he returned the dwarf’s gaze.
Without taking his eyes from the loathsome creature, he reached up and put a hand on the axe haft. The weapon did not come free. Turning, he raised his other hand to the haft and appeared to struggle, still not looking away from Juleptsu. Then, when he detected a change in the tone of the creature’s hissing—perhaps a note of relief—he dropped both hands and spoke.
“You think still to kill me, Old One? Or perhaps you think to escape me because I cannot make use of my weapon? That is it, isn’t it? I’ve done what no mortal creature has ever done to you. You think perhaps you may still destroy me, but you would rather retreat and heal yourself while I seek to free myself from this cavern.” He paused, then hawked and spat, his spittle blood-tinged. “You said it had been a thousand years since you tasted dwarf. You’ve forgotten quite a lot about my kind. We are famed for many things—our strength, our tolerance for pain, our ferocity, perhaps even our own tastiness,” he continued in an amused tone. “But we’re best known for the dwarven sense of humour. I myself, for example, am an extremely funny fellow. Let me demonstrate.” He bared his teeth in a humourless snarl.
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