Brace For the Wolves

by Nathan Thompson

  "The what?" I asked.

  The what? Pain hissed in my mind.

  "The Pendragon," my little ghost replied. "The chief dragon. It's written on your soul. It sings to us." The spirit paused for a moment. "It's why I can talk to you."

  Impossible! Pain roared in my skull. You are no Pendragon! You could never be the Pendragon! You will never—

  "Hey, Wes," Weylin called out. "I think we're done with the door!"

  I suppressed the murderous monster lurking within my genetic code and walked over to where my four companions were.

  "So how is it? Did you find any kind of trap on the secret passage?"

  "Many," Karim nodded, looking at the thin line carved in the stone. "Different glyphs meant to explode. Different Ideal spells meant to trigger, such as fire or ice."

  "The blade traps were the real head-scratcher, though," Eadric grunted as he pointed to a massive, but thin, blade dripping some kind of liquid on one edge. The thing was almost five feet long. "Not even sure how they managed to fit that into the stone-work. Also makes you wonder about the kind of person who would put this many traps on what's already supposed to be a secret passage."

  "It's not that secret," I pointed out. "We all noticed it very quickly."

  "You and I did," Eadric nodded, moving a finger along the outer edge of the indent. "Because whatever covering used to exist here has been eroded somehow. Less than a few hundred years ago this spot would still look seamless."

  "Okay then," I said. "Guess it's going to be one of those dungeons. We'll check for any kind of booby trap every five feet—make that three feet. Just assume whoever built this place was crazy enough to put a trap every three feet."

  My sister had gone through days where she'd design dungeons like that for her games. Dad said it was a phase she'd grow out of. Maybe.

  "Also," I added, pointing at the poison-covered giant razor. "We're keeping that."

  "Why?" the dwarf asked, wincing in confusion. "Why would you even..."

  "Well," I said with a smile. "You're going to need to shave eventually, aren't you?"

  There was a pause for several seconds, and then people began laughing. Eadric was actually first, then Weylin began to snicker, and Karim began to chuckle. Even Breena let out a titter, though I don't think she really understood the concept of shaving that well as a fairy (no facial or leg hair. And yes I know that's not fair).

  "He's alright," Eadric finally said. Then he stuck his hand out. "Welcome to the team, newbie."

  "Thanks," I smirked, humoring his desire for a handshake. Ironically though, I got it. My table-top games with Rachel, Himari and Andre were the same. You could slay all kinds of dragons, cast all kinds of spells, but you were only a true member when you proved you could roll with the team's humor. "But if I understand correctly, this isn't going to cut down on the number of jokes I'm going to put up with, correct?"

  "Hell no," Eadric replied. "It just means we'll all feel better about it."

  "I figured," I said, still smiling.

  "But to celebrate, we were gonna let you do the honors." he pointed to the unopened passageway.

  "The honors," I clarified. "You're going to let me have the honor of being the one opening the possibly safe doorway."

  "That's correct," Karim nodded.

  "We were going to do it before because you had the best combination of reflexes, magic, and natural toughness," Weylin added. "But now we're letting you do it because we like you."

  “Gee guys, I’m touched,” I said with a smile. "Really. So how do I open this?"

  Eadric pointed to a five-fingered indent, that I hadn't noticed before because each indent had been full of camouflaged sediment that blended in with the rest of the rock. Eadric had looked both impressed and disturbed while he explained that process to me.

  "You guys checked the indent for traps too, right?"

  "We swept it clear," Weylin said confidently. "Some needles coated with contact poison and a spell that accelerates a person's blood flow."

  My hand began carefully moving away from the indents.

  "Alrighty then," I said firmly. "Gonna need another glove. Two gloves actually. For the same hand. Because there's no way I'm wearing a glove I want to keep while opening this thing."

  "We swept it clean," Karim protested. "There's no poison or needles left."

  "Don't care," I replied quickly. "Two gloves, or we stay out here all day playing elven chess."

  "Damnit," Eadric grunted. "Could've had him if we'd brought a chess board."

  "You hate elven chess," the elf said to his friend.

  "Guys," I said one more time. "Focus. Gloves."

  Eventually, two gloves that could fit over each other on my left hand were supplied, and, after making sure all five of us had cast every single protective spell I could think of on me, I cautiously placed my hand next to the five holes that were supposedly going to let us inside. Nothing happened to my hand when it hovered over them, so I gave a sigh of relief and slowly pressed all of my fingers into the proper indents.

  That was another thing that went wrong on that day.

  Every type of feeling inside my fingers, with the notable exceptions of pain and why-god-why-did-I-do-this, fled from my arm faster than a vegan that encountered a barbecue festival. I started to spasm even worse than I had back during my disability days, briefly noting that my arm was wiggling like an al dente spaghetti noodle. At some point, though, I must have been blasted off of my feet, because I was suddenly making direct eye contact with the tree-obstructed sky.

  Oaths tore out of the throats of everyone around me. I heard Breena shriek and fly next to me. And I got an update from my mind-screen that I had lost over four hundred vitality points from that single attack.

  "Sorry-sorry-sorry!" my fairy companion said over and over. "We promise we didn't do that on purpose, Wes!"

  She began to heal me, and I loved her for it.

  "No gabrarblem," I slurred, still struggling to move my teeth and tongue in the proper direction. "Ashidence happin."

  "Damn it!" Eadric swore. "We checked it! What the hell went wrong?"

  A half-second later, while Breena was sending wonderfully cool, gentle healing energy into me, I heard Karim answer.

  "It looks like the first trap was just a distraction. There's an illusion script underneath, and a fairly elaborate lightning inscription underneath the illusion."

  "Oh wow!" Breena said. "That's super-persistent! And it would have been a LOT worse if Wes wasn't so cautious, and hadn’t had lightning magic of his own! You were the perfect choice for opening the door, Wes! I'm glad we picked you!"

  "Thank... you," I said slowly to Breena, all while clamping down on the sudden urge to get her a sugar-coated Venus flytrap as a present one day. I looked down at my hand, noticed the demise of both gloves, and decided to give my paranoia credit.

  Lesson learned, I replaced my glove and arm bracer, and got back to my feet. A dark, narrow opening had formed out of the wall leading downward. I could dimly make out the white stairs, but I couldn’t see where they ended.

  “Alright,” Eadric grunted as he peered down. “I’ll take the lead. Weylin can watch our backs. Karim and Lord Challenger in the middle, while the Holy Fairy hangs back until we need her light.”

  “It’s Breena, by the way,” the tiny pink woman offered. “Just Breena. You don’t have to call me that other name. In fact, it makes me feel super-old.”

  "That sounds like a good formation, though," I commented. "Assuming you're taking the lead because you still have good vision in the dark." The dwarf nodded, confirming the authenticity of yet another fantasy trope that existed on Earth. "But before we get going, I want to try something."

  I pulled Virtus' skull out and examined him. He seemed much the same, and I figured he had recovered at least enough to handle a few questions. I would have pulled him out sooner if I had dared. In fact, when I looked back at my left arm, I wondered if maybe I should have dared after all. But
my little adventure with the door from hell was already over.

  "Avalon, confirm the status of Virtus. Have you been able to supply him any power?"

  "Affirmative," the planetary supercomputer replied. "The entity's mana shortage has been partially corrected. Caution is still advised."

  "Noted. And thank you," I added, realizing that it wouldn't hurt to be grateful to the talking planet in charge of watching my back. I got no response, so I turned my attention to my friendly skeleton. "Virtus, I know you're recovering, but I have a couple of questions I need to ask you. Can you handle that?"

  "Barely," the tired voice replied from inside the skull. That would have to do.

  "Okay, first question: should we expect further traps and enemies down these stairs?"

  "Traps... yes... enemies... no... because of traps."

  Right, I thought. It would make sense that those two would cancel each other out.

  "Alright, next question: I'm assuming the other side of the entrance was just as trapped as this side was. How did you ever make it out? And do you know if the traps reset?"

  "Traps... reset... in days... Got out... using fodder... Tovius... same way...probably."

  "What were you using as fodder?" I asked. "The Detrite?"

  "Wouldn't... let me... had to use... own troops."

  Wow. That was a dick move. Even after witnessing his dialogue with Tovius, it was hard to imagine just how much his fellow mercenaries must have hated this guy.

  Then again, remembering my own experiences, people didn't always need a reason to hate someone else.

  They just needed the right amount of fear, disgust, or both.

  "I'm sorry that they forced you to use your own men," I replied.

  "Don't be...unwilling... conscripts... raised against...will."

  Bitterness and remorse leaked out of the skull.

  "They can do that?" I asked. "Does that mean most of the soldiers we fought earlier weren't like you and Tovius?"

  "No..." the skull groaned sadly. "Minds...but not...will... slaves," Virtus finished in a hiss.

  His news just made my resolve to not let anyone in my group die down there that much stronger.

  I could tell he was losing the energy he needed to speak, so I had to move this along.

  "Okay, Virtus. Tell me what you can about enemy numbers and captive placement."

  "Both... deep inside... can't... say more... contract."

  "Right," I replied. "Had forgotten about that. I'll let you rest."

  "Thank... you."

  Since he didn't need to breathe, I wrapped him up carefully and placed him back in my magical storage, while commanding Avalon to direct a tiny trickle of mana into my handle. Since it could store items, I assumed it could also store a bit of the planet's energy, and I was right. That was probably something I would have to look into later.

  But for now, we had a dungeon to explore.

  Everyone got in Eadric's recommended formation, and we all began to walk as quietly as we could down the stairs.

  Not three steps down, I heard the dwarf grunt in irritation.

  "Problem?" I whispered.

  "Not anymore," he said quietly back. "Look down four more steps."

  I saw what he was talking about.

  Bones. Lots and lots of bones. Skulls, femurs and ribcages picked clean of gear littered the floor. They turned out to be harmless, but the fact that we had to check still slowed us down a lot more than I wanted.

  The existence of traps was another problem, and one I probably should have tried to get Virtus to give us more info on. The fourth trap, discovered less than halfway down, revealed that idea to be impractical though. There were simply too many traps for the undead hoplite-legionaire to have kept track of, even if he had been able to string more than three words together at a time.

  Finally, though, after using Breena to spot three arrow traps in the walls, two small spike switches in the floor, and one trap that almost released a pile of rubble onto Karim's head, we were clear of the stairwell. I got the feeling that even more traps might have been there if not for Tovius' recent excursion to the surface.

  The fact that most of Virtus' former coworkers found this underground cavern worth holing up inside also concerned me. But again, I knew he couldn't reveal much without breaking his magically bound contract, so I sucked up my irritation and just counted myself lucky that I had so many advantages as it was: an entire group of magic users, a friendly ghost, an enemy that was willing to flip to my side at any capacity, and the entire planet to help me run surveillance. My home planet's country didn't even have most of those advantages.

  Just as Virtus said, nothing else bothered us. We entered a long, wide hallway devoid of light. I felt stone beneath my feet but it was so dark that I honestly couldn't even tell if the walls were made of earth or worked stone. Probably the latter, given the time and energy put in to make this place a death trap right where the welcome mat should have been left.

  Beyond that, though, was a feeling of ancientness that I hadn't felt anywhere else on the planet. I felt guilty for some reason, like I was a grave-robber desecrating a thousand-year-old tomb back on Earth, except that I knew this place was even older. According to Virtus, this place was probably older than the earliest of human civilizations back home.

  So how was it that he had been so familiar with fighting people from Earth?

  I didn't have an answer to the question, and we passed through the hallway without any real incident other than Eadric catching a bunch of arrows on his shield when we triggered another unseen trap.

  I was getting real tired of those.

  But eventually they gave way to an opening that led to a massive round chamber. Here, there were even more bones, and this time some of them looked different from the sharp-toothed, misshapen skeletons we had fought outside. These were heavily corroded, as if they had been only preserved at all by the lingering magic in this place, and they were still wearing the remains of their metal gear. I saw corpses arrayed in crumbling mail, scale armor, and even plate, though it all looked like it was going to fall apart at any moment. I drew closer to one, after receiving a nod from the others that they hadn't found any traps. The skeleton was covered in cobwebs, but he looked to be wearing the half-crumbled remains of a metal breastplate and a mail skirt. As I looked closer, I could barely make out the etched design of a snarling bear on the metal.

  Suddenly, I heard a voice behind me, in a language I didn't recognize, and whirled around, pulling out my bronze short sword.

  "Did you hear that?" I asked my now-startled companions.

  Everyone shook their heads. But a second later, I heard that voice speak again, in English.

  "Hold, damn it! Hold until the last of them make it through!"

  The accent sounded Eastern European, maybe even Russian. A moment later, I thought I heard the clanging of metal weapons.

  Mesmerized, I walked over to another warrior, clad head to toe in crumbling mail, with the image of an Eastern-style dragon etched onto it.

  Again, I heard a voice speak, this time in what I thought was Chinese. A moment later, it translated into English, again followed by the clashing of metal upon metal.

  "Are you dogs or men? Hold your ground, and do not dishonor the heroes of Earth!"

  "Wes?" Breena asked, floating a little closer to me. "What's going on?"

  "I'm not sure," I replied, walking past another body, this one with a rusted shield that had the picture of a lion on it. Again, a foreign language was translated, this time from what might have been Swahili.

  “Run along behind me, little ones. Everything will be alright.”

  Finally, I walked up to the last skeleton, one with a winged helm that reminded me of an eagle. I heard a triumphant cry, shouting in a language that reminded me of a documentary I had seen on the Sioux Native American tribe.

  "They have all gone on! That was the last group still alive! We are victorious! Invictus! Hail!"

  "Invictus
!" voices from the bodies behind me all spoke, both in English and their own tongues. "Hail!"

  "Charge!" the voices all shouted as one. There was a final cacophony of violent clashes and screaming, as if a last stand had been abandoned in favor of a last, and more defiant, charge. The maelstrom of violent noise persisted for a long minute, accompanied by what I felt to be the death cries of large, hideous things, and then all was silent.

  "Victorious," the voices all sighed quietly, as if giving up their last breath. Then all was silent.

  I waited for a minute, but no other voices spoke.

  Save one.

  Grief, the quiet voice said to me. Grief...and pride...

  And rage. They should not have needed to die.

  "Wes?" I heard Breena repeat next to me. "Wes, what's wrong? Is everything okay?"

  I shook my head.

  "They knew," I said quietly. "They knew they were all going to die."

  "What?" my little fairy asked. "Who knew? And how do you know they knew?"

  I pointed at the bodies in rusted armor.

  "They all knew. They were fighting to save someone else. I don't know who. But they won. And then they died."

  I looked at my companions. "You're all sure you didn't hear anything?"

  Everyone shook their heads.

  Eadric bent down and examined one of the corpses.

  "Doesn't look to be like the ones we fought outside," he carefully poked at the body's remaining pauldron. "And this is wrong."

  "What do you mean?" I asked as I turned to him.

  "I mean this pauldron shouldn't have worked. Even though it did, judging by the scratches and claw-marks along the armor here." He traced his finger downward. "And here. I don't know what kind of metal this is. And it shouldn't be in this good of a condition. Not after all this time."

  "Are you sure?" Karim asked, moving over to take a look of his own. "If this place was sealed, then many things could be preserved..."

  He trailed off as Eadric shook his head.

  "The air isn't that bad in here. I don't know how they did it, but this place wasn't closed off in an airtight fashion. All of the gear in here should have rusted away a long time ago." The dwarf stood back up, looking concerned. "We've found something undiscovered, once again."