by Cebelius
The orange light of evening was still enough to reveal, once he turned to look, several statues standing atop the towers behind, and many more on the much more formidable defenses in front.
He counted twenty by the time he reached the gates to this second wall, which Euryale had already opened wide to receive them.
Another dozen statues stood in the inner courtyard in various attitudes of alarm, and a few had been caught off-balance and were now broken and scattered by the impact.
Yuri could hear the sound of rushing water once he passed the inner wall, and there was a cool, steady breeze blowing out of the cave mouth before them.
Euryale was leaning against a crenelated stone wall designed to provide cover for archers defending the yawning cavern entrance beyond. Her wings were folded over her shoulders and her brazen claws were tapping idly at her elbows as she watched them approach. Then she leaned away from the wall and gave them all a mocking bow, one hand spread toward the entrance as she said, "Welcome to Svartheim."
15
Light Bearer
Yuri had no map of Svartheim. He'd been able to talk to not a single person regarding what might be in store for him inside the dungeon.
Had this been an ordinary run, he would never have attempted it. There were simply too many ways for things to go badly wrong. Mila and Marcus were excellent monster hunters, but the mark of one such was that they did not take foolish risks.
Yet this was no ordinary run, and neither Mila nor Marcus were with him. Instead, he had an immortal, the wielder of a legendary weapon, a dragon, and a werewolf. They were not simply delving for components or whatever loose change they might find either. They knew there was a legendary sword in Svartheim, and Yuri suspected they would have only one shot at retrieving it.
The stakes were high, but there was a more immediate question: Who would carry the light?
Asturial held the shield. Laina needed both hands free to wield her ax effectively. Euryale was an archer, so she needed both her hands as well. It was down to either Twisted, or himself, and he was already schlepping the gear. Worse, Twisted needed to be free to shift between forms, which meant ...
Pack-mule AND lantern bearer.
He grinned at the thought as he blew out the taper he'd used to light the lantern, shutting its casing and holding it aloft as he said, "Asturial will lead with Twisted behind. I will stay in the middle. Laina will be behind me and Euryale will bring up the rear."
"Why do you want me behind you?" Laina asked as she hefted the ax. "Not gonna be much use back that far."
"If circumstances require it you will have time to move up. Right now though, you are our only source of healing. You are more important in that capacity than as a fighter and should be protected as such."
He glanced over the group and then blinked as he saw Asturial's massive sword slung over her back. He pulled the pack from his shoulders, reached in, and retrieved his old shortsword. Unlike the one he'd been given by Boss, this one was an ordinary sword, but it was sharp and well-cared for. He offered it to Asturial, who blinked at it, then at him.
"What am I to do with that?" she asked.
"The caves are likely to be too tight for you to make best use of your usual blade," Yuri explained. "Use this instead."
Asturial's expression turned thoughtful, then she reached out and drew the shortsword from its scabbard and brandished it easily, obviously familiar with similar weapons.
"This has good balance ... it is yours?"
"Yes. I used it for years before Boss gave me the sword he found in the Labyrinth. It will serve you well."
"This will make me more effective seeing as how I'm expected to carry this door around. Thank you."
"Twisted, do you use weapons?"
"Not really. I'm good with javelins?"
He grinned and shook his head. "Even if I had any, this would not be the place for such. I am not going to worry much about you, but you need to tell me if you notice your regeneration reaching its limits."
She grimaced, glancing down at her naked left arm, which was still covered in little more than peach fuzz. "I will. You think we'll see that much fighting?"
"If we don't, it will mean we are too late and the hobgoblins have fled with the prize."
"Does anyone know what Tyrfing actually even looks like?" Euryale asked. "I mean, none of us has ever seen it. How will we know we've got the right one? Swords aren't exactly rare."
"Baba Yaga told me it is a shortsword: straight, double-bladed, with a hilt made of gold. It will be hard to miss."
The cave they stepped into quickly dead-ended at a cascade that fell straight down a shaft in the rock. The goblins, or someone, had chipped out a path about ten feet wide on average that corkscrewed around the deluge. Yuri shook his head and was glad that his lantern was proof against rain, as they were soaked before they even reached the top of the ramp down.
Heavy traffic kept the moss and other scum that usually accumulated under similar conditions from making what was already a treacherous path outright deadly, but they were forced into single file and had to move at a slow walk, unable to hear anything past the roaring of the falls.
Yuri considered dousing the light, knowing that if there were anyone at the bottom watching, they would have warning, but ruled it out. Both he and Laina needed to be able to see.
"Twisted!"
He had to shout to be heard over the roaring water, but her ear twisted back toward him and she glanced back at him. He asked, "Can you see in the dark?!"
She shook her head and he nodded and waved to indicate she put her attention back on the path. He'd thought to send her ahead to scout, but that wouldn't work if she couldn't see. Her sense of smell would be no match for darksight, and the waterfall probably disguised any scents here in any case.
There was a sharp crack ahead of them, and then another so close by that Yuri jumped for the wall. The rumble of the falls disguised it for another critical moment, then before he could say a word Asturial had angled her shield up and was chanting as she held up a hand, palm toward her face as she cupped it.
At first the water simply cascaded around the edges, then a plummeting rock bounced off of it and sent blue arcs of power across its surface.
He slid in behind her and the others did likewise. No one needed to be told that getting hit with one of these would be bad.
Unfortunately, the rocks weren't just falling down the shaft, and he could feel the additional rumble through the pads of his feet.
"Laina! Take the wooden shield and angle it against the wall here! Hurry!"
Laina asked no questions. She took the tower shield from Asturial and set it longways on the ground, angled to send rocks from above down into the chasm. Yuri got down on his back, bracing his shoulders against the shield, and after a moment Laina did likewise.
Seconds later, rocks began crashing against the wood and sailing out into the endless cascade of water thundering by. The force of it sent them both sliding until Laina's legs split around one of Asturial's feet. The dragon didn't move, and their slide stopped. She never looked down, nor did she cease concentration on her own shield, which was a near constant spiderweb of blue energy as rocks continued thundering down around them.
Eventually, the rockfall began to die away, and once he was relatively certain they weren't going to be crushed, Yuri got back to his feet. His shoulders ached, but if that was the worst of it, then fortune had favored them.
Laina had taken the brunt of the force against the shield, and she seemed unsteady as she hauled herself upright using the shield for balance.
Once she was steady on her feet, Yuri signaled her to return the shield to Asturial and they continued down. While there was no doubt in his mind that the rockfall had been deliberate, nothing could be done about it. They simply had to keep going, and face whatever waited for them at the bottom.
As it turned out, the force they encountered didn't wait.
They had little warning due aga
in to the falls. Its roar drowned out virtually every sound, and its shimmer hid the glint of Yuri's light on metal until the advancing party rounded the final curve and charged toward them.
A bright ball of flame appeared over Asturial's shoulder, but it was immediately snuffed out by the torrent. Before the dragon could do anything else, Twisted howled and flung herself down at the hobgoblins.
"Are you kidding me?!" Euryale screamed. "What the hell are you doing!?"
Beat me to it, Yuri thought wryly as he watched the werewolf tear at the hobgoblins. She killed two in the surprise of her initial charge, slashing the throat of one and kicking the second off the edge.
Then the discipline of their opponents began to tell. Yuri's only light was a single lantern but it was enough to get most of the important details. The hobs facing them ranged from five and a half to six and a half feet tall with muscular bodies and ochre skin. Their goblin ancestry was plain in their floppy ears, but the potbellies and long noses were gone. Their limbs were straight and strong. If anything, their physiques reminded him somewhat of Terry Mack's. Orcs were strong, but also wildly undisciplined. Hobgoblins were not.
And that is NOT a good thing for us.
They wore armor that looked new, and wielded weapons ranging from maces to longspears. Those carrying weapons in one hand had shields in the other, and they quickly closed ranks against the intruder, shield bashing and stabbing her repeatedly. Any normal mortal would have died.
The damage barely slowed Twisted down.
An arrow took one of the hobs in the throat, and another jerked as a second clipped his heavy iron skullcap.
"The waterfall is ruining my aim!" Euryale shouted.
"I can't charge them," Asturial shouted as she drew Yuri's old sword and advanced at a measured pace. "If I do I'll swipe Twisted off with the rest!"
Crossbow bolts sailed through the dim light and Euryale jerked backward as one tore through her stomach, punching completely through. Another struck sparks off the stone just above Yuri's head as Euryale, ignoring a wound that had already closed, fired again and again. Not every arrow found a home in hobgoblin flesh, but many did, and her withering assault began to chip away at the ranks facing them.
With Asturial and Twisted taking up the width of the path, there was little Yuri could do. Laina started edging back up the trail and Yuri shouted, "No! Get closer! Closer! They will shoot at you if you get too far from us! Get behind Asturial!"
He suited actions to words as he got down close to the fight.
Asturial was killing hobs with fearsome rapidity, able to wield the shield like a battering ram to force open gaps in the shield wall facing her.
Twisted, her fur now blood-spattered and much whiter, was still pressing her own attack. She absorbed grievous damage as she pulled down one hob after another, usually by tearing their throats out. As heavily armored as they were, very few other vital areas were accessible to her claws.
What Yuri estimated to have been a force of about twenty hobs was now half that, and rapidly shrinking. Two fled from the back, but Euryale managed to kill them both before they got out of sight around the deluge.
After that, Euryale reserved her fire for picking off any who retreated, and though the hobs fought with admirable resolve, there was simply no one in reach they had the strength to kill.
They began backing up in an attempt to fight a rear-guard action, but none of them could hold back either Asturial or Twisted even when fully focused on defense.
The last of them died with a howl that was almost immediately drowned out by the thunder of the falls as Asturial shoved her sword through his guts and pitched him over the edge.
Yuri did a quick check, but the only two who had been hit were Euryale, who showed no evidence of it save for the fact that she was holding the sodden white silk of her dress out and looking with distaste at the ragged hole, and Twisted, whose blood had already begun to wash out of her now otherwise mostly white fur.
"Are you okay?" Yuri asked, cupping his mouth and talking almost directly into her ear to be heard.
"Yeah!" she said with a feral grin. "I needed that!"
Yuri ran his claws over the top of his head and nodded bemusedly as he shouted, "All right! Keep moving! We need to get out of here before they drop another ton of rocks on us, or worse!"
They made the bottom of the ramp less than five minutes later, though it wasn't the bottom of the shaft. That continued on farther than anyone could see.
To their left, the ramp broadened into a flat area about twenty feet in diameter. Discarded tarpaulin lay next to racks obviously there to hold weapons and shields, though most of them were empty now. A few damaged shields and an ax-head without a haft were all that remained.
Well, it is good at least that we apparently killed the entire force arrayed for defense of the entrance, he thought. That was the only good news. The bad news was there was virtually no chance the rest of the dungeon hadn't been alerted to their presence. The only other exit was an opening in the wall to their left that led into what looked from Yuri's position to be another vast open space.
Yuri set his lantern down close to the wall to one side of the opening and peeked the corner. What he saw was not encouraging.
A single path of stone about four feet wide arched gently out over a void ... into nowhere. Whatever was on the far side of that stone arch, it was too far for the light to reach.
This just keeps getting better.
"What's out there?" Laina asked.
"Nothing I can see," he said, glancing around as he thought about what to do.
"Euryale?" he said at last.
"Yes?"
"I think ... I need you. Again."
"Want me to fly over there and kill everything?" she asked.
"No. I need you to walk."
Euryale blinked, glanced around the edge of the wall and into the void beyond, then folded her brazen claws as she asked petulantly, "Why?"
"Because if there are any traps on the bridge, we need to know about them."
Euryale's arms uncrossed, and a few of her snakes hid behind the nape of her neck. "Oh. I suppose that makes sense. I didn't think of that."
"Well, at least you can be useful. I feel like I am simply being escorted," Yuri said, ears twisted sideways in frustration. "All I have been good for is keeping the lantern lit."
"Without you the rocks would have probably pushed everyone but me into the void," Asturial said without glancing around. Her attention was focused on the next area. "We need you if we are to get through this. Power without proper direction is worthless."
"Heh. You could probably walk through Svartheim by yourself if you chose, Asturial. You are a dragon."
Yuri didn't know what made him say it. Frustration probably. He knew it wasn't true. Dungeon dwellers dealt with monster hunters in some fiendishly ingenious ways, and dragons were known to plumb the depths of dungeons from time to time using their proxies, always seeking to increase their hoards.
Perhaps it was that he truly did feel useless. He had always led his team, but he had always participated as well. In the last fight, he had stood quietly and held up a damn lantern because that was all he could do.
Regardless of why he said it ... it was the wrong thing to say.
Asturial stared at him a moment, her golden eyes only faintly luminous in the dim light of the lantern. Then she shook her head and set Marcus' shield aside before turning to Euryale.
"Stay here. I will cross the bridge."
"What? Why?" Euryale asked.
Asturial glanced back at Yuri and said, "To prove a point."
"Asturial, I-"
"Sh! You said it. Your mind is clearly not in the right place. You lose nothing in my attempt, so stay silent and watch. Perhaps you are right. If so, this will be much easier for all of us. I am not throwing my proxy away, Yuri Kolenko. I am going to take every precaution I can, and you should know this is not the first time I have gone into a dungeon. I am aware of the
risks. While I do this, you need to get your mind right. These others, and I, need to be able to count on your guidance. This is my choice, not yours ... but let this serve as clarity for you. I do not believe my proxy will survive this attempt."
Asturial took a deep breath, then cast a spell Yuri had seen her use before. A swirl of water droplets rose around her as the winds obeyed her power. Then she stripped off her clothing, set her massive sword aside along with Yuri's blade, before summoning her shield with one hand. It was instantly revealed by the droplets that landed and slid down its surface.
"This will not take long, either way," she said with a last glance around. "Wait here."
In her free hand she summoned fire, then stepped out of the waterfall room and onto the long stone arch that passed over the darkness below.
Yuri couldn't help himself. He watched, keeping most of his body hidden behind the wall, and the others did likewise.
He didn't know what to expect.
Asturial was no fool. She did not simply walk, she charged. She moved with frightening speed, and made it perhaps fifty feet before there was a sharp, heavy sound Yuri didn't immediately recognize. Before his brain caught up to the fact that he'd just heard a siege engine, Asturial's energy shield — one that had easily withstood the rockfall — shattered. Her body was lifted off its feet and hurled backward. She was tumbling head over heels and the iron tip of the massive bolt impaling her sparked as it carved a gouge in the wet stone not five feet from Yuri before it pole-vaulted Asturial's wildly twisting corpse off the far edge.
The waterfall shoved her body down into the darkness. Her fatal charge, all told, lasted less than ten seconds.
Laina gasped, covering her mouth with her hands as she looked wide-eyed at the gouge left behind by the bolt, murmuring, "Oh ... no. No no no!"
"Asturial is fine," Yuri said quietly, though his chest felt tight, and his hands trembled. He kept his reaction out of his voice, forcing calm. "She will send us another proxy."
"Why did she do that?" Twisted asked, still staring wide-eyed at the falls.
