by Cebelius
A moment later, there was a splash of flame, and he chuckled darkly as he watched the puddle of oil spread and extinguish under the force of the falls.
I still have the luck, he thought with grim amusement, showing his tusks as he turned, snapping his fingers.
His bergsrå bowed her head as he passed, then slowly turned to follow meekly behind.
Halfrekkr's mind was already on his next moves. With armies already potentially en route, he would need to redistribute his current forces. He would need to contact the necromancer. He would need to begin the process of moving to a new base of operations should a retreat be necessary.
The Halfrekkr was a warlord, and supremely good at most of the elements that went into controlling his army, both on and off the battlefield. He was also blessed with an uncanny luck that most often came into play in combat. Opponents stumbled when they shouldn't, bowstrings snapped, swords glanced when they should bite. That said, he did have flaws. He did not trust subordinates to do anything beyond the simplest of tasks. He did not often consider the impact of magic beyond its utility in trapwork and offense.
He was also not particularly observant.
With so much on his mind, he did not realize his bergsrå was glancing back. He did not notice her momentary hesitation. He did not catch her smile before she lowered her head, letting her limp white hair cover her dark satisfaction as she followed silently along behind him.
After all, the bergsrå had served his Mor since before the Halfrekkr was born. She had always served, just as her family had always been held hostage against that service. If there were something he needed to know, she would tell him.
20
And Hell Followed with Him
An hour passed.
Yuri sat patiently, listening to the thunder of the falls.
As he rubbed his right hand with his left, he couldn't help but remember the feel of the metal ring that had brushed his fingers. Just a touch, before being torn away. He'd never even heard the heavy thump of the ballista. The falls had been too loud.
"How much longer are we waiting?" Twisted asked. He could feel her warmth, but she wasn't touching him. She just sat very close by.
"Not long," Yuri murmured, without looking up. There was nothing to see. He didn't have any more lanterns. Even if he had, lighting it would have defeated the purpose of waiting. "It is probably as safe now as it is going to be."
He rubbed his right hand with his left one last time. Pure dumb luck had saved his life. Not his reflexes. Not his skill. Not his dedication or his cunning or his will to succeed.
Just luck.
It was enough to make him think about his life, about his choices. He'd spent the last hour doing just that.
"If it's safe, why wait any longer then?" Euryale asked. "Let's get this over with."
Yuri lifted his hand and swiped back from his eyes, feeling the water crest against the edge of his palm as he flicked it off his head.
"How do you plan to do this, Asturial?" he asked.
"I will create a platform for us to ride. Euryale will face forward and guide me. None of us can see in the dark, so she will have her mask off. Any guards that linger, she will petrify," the dragon proxy replied, speaking quietly despite the fact that the thunder of the falls would hide their voices. After destroying the bridge, she had cast an illusion of them leaving, but until they actually crossed the depthless pit ahead of them, they would not know if it succeeded.
All of them were soaked to the skin after sitting in the wet spray, but no one complained. At least, not about the cold and wet.
It will be good to have this as a shower when we depart this place with our prize, he thought, trying to keep up a sense of optimism.
"Laina will stand behind Euryale. I will need to concentrate on my spell, so she will hold the shield, which will protect us as well if there is unexpected light," Asturial added.
Laina sounded uncertain as she asked, "What if that ... thing, fires again? I can't block that."
"You won't have to," Euryale said with quiet confidence. "Leave it to me."
"Once we reach the other side, we will inevitably have to fight, and once the fight begins it will not stop until we are dead, or have what we came for," Yuri said, speaking quietly as he stood, stretched, and rolled his shoulders.
"Do we have another lantern?" Laina asked.
"No. We will have to rely on torches, or Asturial's magic. She does not have a staff, and I suspect she will be quite busy, so I will carry the torch. Stay behind the shield as much as you can. The range on our light will not be good, and the hobgoblins will fire from the dark beyond. I will not lie, this is going to be a nightmare for us. We will cross in the dark, in silence, and light the first torch when we reach the other side. Is everyone ready?"
There was a general murmur of assent and Euryale — who could see perfectly well in the dark — positioned them all at the edge of the vast pit they were to cross. Twisted wrapped her hands around Yuri's arm, and he let her. The two of them would be essentially useless, their only job to hide behind Laina's shield and hope for the best until the crossing was accomplished.
Asturial spoke, her voice low but precise in its inflection. She paused, then said, "Everyone step forward when I say step. Step."
Everyone took a single step. She said it again, then again. The feeling under Yuri's feet shifted from wet, slightly uneven stone to wet, completely flat hardness.
Asturial said, "Good. Now, stand completely still. Euryale?"
"Mask is off," the gorgon said, her tone subdued. Yuri knew that she worried as much about the ballista as the rest of them. It would simply kill them. It would do much worse to her.
"We are moving," Asturial said calmly. "Be still and silent. It will not take long."
The only evidence that Yuri had of movement was the slow recession of the thundering waterfall behind them. There was a breeze blowing up from below, but that remained constant.
He waited a small eternity there in the dark, and tried not to think about the fact that all of them were hovering on a slab of air over a giant hole that would swallow them up without a trace if they fell.
Euryale's voice was hushed as she spoke. "A little higher, slightly left, now straight. Just like this, slow, slow ... stop. Okay ... my mask is on. Go ahead and light the torch."
"I need my arm," Yuri said gently to Twisted, who released it only to crouch in place and wrap his leg instead. He chuckled as he reached back over his shoulder and into the pack. Asturial summoned fire to her palm, and passed it to the head of his torch when he presented it to her.
Once she had light, Asturial guided her floating platform of nothing to a position flush with the jagged edge of the bridge, and they stepped off. Two hobgoblin statues were there to greet them, both looking faintly surprised. One held a crossbow across his body, the other was leaning over the arm of the ballista, one hand perhaps an inch away from the trigger.
"Well, I do not think that could have gone any better," Asturial said with quiet satisfaction.
"Intruders!" screeched a high-pitched voice from beyond the light of the torch. "Alarm! Al-ulk!"
"You had to say it, didn't you," Laina said as she muscled one of the statues off the bridge and passed the shield back to Asturial momentarily, who took it as the minotress pulled her ax around and said, "Come on, outta my way. This thing isn't going to be a problem for anyone ever again."
"No help for it," Yuri said, though he quietly agreed with Laina about the jinx. They entered the corridor, Euryale still forward of the shield as she held her bow ready with an arrow nocked.
With a single mighty swing, Laina destroyed both the ballista and the statue of the unfortunate hobgoblin that manned it.
Once done, she snorted in satisfaction, retrieved the shield from Asturial, and together the group turned and advanced into Svartheim.
The resistance they met was sporadic at first, but a klaxon had begun to ring and as they advanced further into the dungeon they encountered wav
es of hobgoblins and their goblin allies.
Whenever the hobs tried to set up a strong defense, Asturial simply lobbed a fireball into their midst. Euryale soon retreated behind the shield, but as they moved deeper into Svartheim they began to run into a problem.
No one knew where they would have to go to find what they were looking for, which meant they couldn't really leave any side corridors unexplored behind them.
Euryale was inevitably the one chosen to explore these branches. Her ability to see in the dark and the fact that she could remove her mask once beyond the firelight in order to neutralize threats meant she was the only one who could safely, — relatively safely — go alone.
With no way to know just where the sword they wanted was hidden, Yuri chose the path of most resistance.
They ascended higher into the mountain as they moved, and at one point they ran into a corridor that was quite literally wall-to-wall hobgoblins and their goblin kin.
The fight that ensued was savage, and Yuri found himself embroiled in furious combat alongside Laina. As he parried and slid his sword over the guard of the hob in front of him — piercing his neck and sending him stumbling back with hands over his throat in a vain attempt to stem the arterial spray — he had the bizarre thought that he had taken Terry's place on the right side of the shield.
Asturial was on Laina's left, and his old sword proved its worth time and again as she demonstrated a level of skill Yuri would never have credited without seeing it for himself. The idea that a dragon would take the time to master swordplay boggled his imagination, but he was thankful for it now.
Twisted darted around them every so often, though her principle targets were the goblins, who were small enough to get underfoot and tended to aim for ankles and knees. She also paused long enough to tear the throats out of the bodies they passed, ensuring there was no one left alive behind them.
Euryale stood in the rear, and her arrows flashed past with disturbing regularity as she aimed for those in the back of the hobgoblin ranks wielding crossbows.
Their advance was hard won and measured in feet per minute. Any normal group of adventurers would have been mown down almost immediately by the tide of steel they faced, but Asturial's indefatigable strength and skill along with Laina's sheer grit kept pushing them forward relatively unscathed.
Yuri glanced at Laina, whose eyes flickered down to him just long enough to nod. The fear seemed to have left her, and she took step after determined step, leaning into the tower shield as she smashed her way forward against the tide of hobgoblins like a true juggernaut.
Her legendary ax rode her back, its power quiescent in favor of the ordinary shield with which she defended the lives of her companions. Yuri knew that unlike the others with him, Laina did not live for the hue and cry of combat. The rush of power that came from fighting for one's life did not enchant her. She was here for one reason: to preserve the lives around her, and she did that with a single-minded determination that could only be admired.
For a time their advance stalled as they approached a branching corridor. The hobgoblins fought with frenzied resolve, and the goblins came at them from both above and below, hurled into the fray by those further back. Asturial sent one of her increasingly rare gouts of flame over the heads of their assailants and their screams redoubled, but instead of retreating they fought on, hurtling their burning bodies against Laina's shield, or into the sharp-edged death presented by Yuri and Asturial.
They stepped into the intersection, and Yuri waved the torch down the branching corridor as he shouted, "Search down that way, we cannot afford to miss the stairs!"
Euryale strode off into the darkness, her bow slung across her back as she handled several goblins with claws and the lethal bite of her snakes, leaving a pair of them convulsing in their death throes on the floor.
As soon as Euryale vanished down that corridor, the lull in the fighting caused by Asturial's fire vanished as with renewed howls of determination the hobgoblins threw themselves into the fray, clearly desperate to push them back.
Something important down that way. Maybe the way up? Maybe the treasure room? Yuri thought as he desperately thrust and parried, finally forced to bring the torch into play as a bludgeon and makeshift shield, its flames dancing wildly as he thrust it into the face of a hob who screamed and dropped his weapons in a desperate bid to ward away the flame.
Yuri neatly eviscerated him as he yelled, "Anything down there?!"
Euryale's reply came a moment later, easily audible even over the clash of combat. "Nothing we need, and no way up!"
"Get back here then, we need you!"
All the while, the hobgoblins pressed in a frenzy, but Laina never wavered. Asturial stood strong. Yuri's arms were leaden, but he gamely switched the sword and torch and fought left-handed, letting his right recover.
It seemed like a long time before Euryale came back, and when she did she started firing into the hobgoblins with terrifying rapidity, killing them so quickly that the party began to move forward again at a slow walk until finally they reached a set of crude stone steps leading up to a heavy stone slab that had obviously only recently been dropped into place.
Yuri made the decision, and Asturial carved her way up the steps while the rest of them continued to fight in the hallway alongside.
Her might was such that when she pressed her palms to the stone, it rose with a slight grinding sound, and she grunted with effort and thrust it suddenly forward. Screams rang out in the corridor above as the heavy rock slab crushed feet and legs, and the group slowly ascended, following billowing waves of dragon's fire.
Twisted followed Euryale up, taking the rear position and willfully absorbing grievous wounds to kill each hobgoblin that tried to come up after them while Yuri slashed down at the press with a renewed, desperate energy.
Then Euryale stopped, crying out for Twisted to get up the steps and out of sight. Laina was already up there, and Yuri glanced back at her, getting her nod before he too leapt up into the upper corridor.
"Do not look!" he yelled, turning to face a few hobgoblin warriors on his side of the new hallway. They were bracketed, and he and Twisted fought side by side while Laina and Asturial handled whatever came from the other direction. Below, the battle cries of the hobgoblins cut off with startling abruptness.
The hobs that faced them now were obviously older, stronger, and better trained than those below, and Yuri found himself embroiled in a furious exchange with two heavily armored opponents as Twisted howled and leapt upon a third, bearing him to the ground under her snarling, manic weight even as the hob's sword burst from her back as it impaled her.
He parried a slash from the left only to suffer a tremendous shield bash from the right that caught his arm cross body and slammed him off his feet.
Even as he landed he shifted his sword, pressed his hand to the flat, and thrust it up to catch the ax coming in for his face. He twisted the blade, slid it up, and crushed the hobgoblin's unarmored thumb with the pommel, forcing him to drop the weapon with a howl even as the other stepped forward and kicked Yuri squarely between the legs.
The mind-bending pain paralyzed his lower body and the only reason he didn't scream was because his lungs were empty and he couldn't manage to draw breath.
He lost control of his sword, flailing wildly with it rather than directing the stroke, but he knew he was seconds away from death as the mace the hobgoblin was holding rose, then fell.
It slammed against a massive wooden shield.
Marcus?
In the delirium of his pain, he saw his lifelong friend and mentor for a moment before the illusion dissolved into Laina. She stepped over him and for a moment he found himself staring straight up between her legs.
If he hadn't been in so much pain, he might have been embarrassed to note that she didn't wear a wrap under her loincloth.
Definitely not Marcus.
Then she was past him, and Asturial was crouching by his side as she asked, "Where?
"
"Stones," he gasped.
Her eyebrows rose, then she winced in some sympathy.
"There are only two left," she said. "Euryale is with us."
He didn't bother to speak, just nodded and let his head loll, trying to weather the storm of gut-churning agony flooding through his body without puking his guts out.
Even after the sounds of fighting subsided, Yuri couldn't do much of anything but listen as Euryale said, "Asturial, push that stone back into place."
"I thought you handled everyone else down there," the dragon said. "That may be our way out. If I go down, who else can move it?"
"We'll find a way, just do it."
"We should wait for Yu-"
"NOW!" the gorgon screeched.
He listened as the stone was slid back into place, and was thankful Asturial just chose to do the thing rather than suffer Euryale's ear-piercing shriek again.
The backpack was slid out from under him, and his head wound up in Twisted's lap. She was looking down at him curiously, and when his gaze met hers she asked, "What does it feel like?"
"It feels like a hobgoblin drove his sabaton into my testicles," he said with a wince.
"I suppose there's no way I could know how that feels," she said, seeming a bit frustrated.
He laughed weakly as Laina handed a bottle to Twisted. "Try giving birth," he said as she pulled the cork. "I hear that is as painful as it gets for women."
"I look forward to it," she said without the faintest trace of sarcasm, and proffered the lip of the bottle to him.
He watched her watching him drink, and thought about what possible answer he could give to that. He wanted her, but she was a loup garou, and he was a tiger-kin. There could be no progeny from their union.
Warmth spread through his core and down, and his body fell limp with relief. Twisted ruffled the fur atop his head, and scratched between his ears, looking down intently at him, as though waiting for an answer.
What can I possibly say?
"If children are what you want ... then I am not the one for you," he said at last. "I would give you much, but I cannot give you that."
