by Steve McHugh
“Smells like mildew,” Mordred said, igniting a ball of light between his hands and tossing it into the darkness.
The sound of something fluttering around in the darkness beyond troubled Mordred, and he stood to the side of the grate motioning for the others to do the same. Dralas sighed and didn’t move until Tarron motioned for him to do so, just before hundreds of large flying creatures escaped the confines of the tunnel.
“Bats?” Remy asked.
“I don’t know their exact name, but I do know they’re big bats,” Mordred said. “They’re not shy about attacking anyone who enters their territory. They really don’t like light, and we really don’t want to go in there without light.”
“Why?” Kase asked. “What aren’t you telling us?”
“The tunnels beyond link to the fortress,” Mordred said as the last of the bats flew toward the entrance, the sounds of their wings echoing after them. “But they go quite far down, and there might be a few . . . inhabitants there.”
“Define inhabitants,” Tarron said.
“Drakes,” Mordred said. “Smaller dragons, about the size of Komodo dragons. They look more like snakes though. They hunt rats and the like, and from what Hel tells me, they’ll leave you alone if you leave them alone. But they hunt in the dark. So I’d rather not take the chance.”
“Are they Nordic?” Remy asked. “Because I’ve never heard of them.”
“Mesopotamian,” Irkalla said, her tone suggesting that she wasn’t happy. “Although I thought they were all dead.”
Mordred opened his arms wide and, palm out, jiggled his hands. “Surprise. Hel said they breed too quickly. Apparently one of the Mesopotamians brought them here as a gift to someone or other. She forgot that bit.”
“You gave dangerous snake-dragons as gifts?” Remy asked Irkalla.
“Sure, why not?” Irkalla said. “Perfectly normal gift between friends.”
“I don’t want to be your friend,” Dralas said with a smile. “Friends don’t usually bring gifts that can eat the other person.”
“The giant speaks true,” Remy said.
“They don’t hunt people,” Irkalla said. “Usually. Also, they’re not able to breathe fire much, and they don’t like light, so we’ll be fine.” She disappeared into the tunnel.
“Much?” Remy shouted after her, as Mordred motioned for him to follow after everyone else had already gone. “Define much.”
“Well, you’re about the right size for a good meal,” Irkalla told Remy, failing to hold back a smile.
Remy’s eyes narrowed. “I’m beginning to regret coming on this mission.”
“Why?” Mordred said. “Is it the threat of being eaten? Because if it helps, the dragon is a lot more likely to eat you.”
“How does that help?” Remy asked.
“I said, if,” Mordred told him, tossing another ball of light into the distance.
Things in the darkness slithered and scurried down paths, and more than once Mordred had to ignite a second ball of light, just to ensure that nothing attacked them from behind.
“That is a massive rat,” Kase said as a black rodent ran down a dark offshoot of the main path. “It’s the size of a pig.”
The scream of an animal being attacked made everyone stop.
“Drakes?” Tarron asked.
“I really hope so,” Mordred said. “I don’t really want to get into a fight with a bunch of animals in an enclosed space like this. I don’t think it would work out well for us.”
“But mostly me,” Remy said. “Seeing how I’m snack-sized, apparently.”
“Would you like to get on my shoulders?” Dralas asked Remy.
Remy looked between everyone. “Yes, that’s very kind of you, Dralas. I would feel safer up there.”
“You have a sword,” Kase said. “Probably more than one, knowing you.”
“Doesn’t hurt to be prudent,” Remy told her.
“Or lazy,” Irkalla said as Dralas picked up Remy and placed him on his shoulder.
“I wish I had a camera,” Kase said. “And an internet connection.”
“You’re all jealous because Dralas cares about my well-being,” Remy called back.
“I just wanted you to shut up for five minutes,” Dralas said, making everyone laugh. Even Remy grinned, playfully swiping the back of the giant’s head.
“You all suck,” Remy declared, which did little to stop anyone laughing.
The laughter ended the second there was another scream from the darkness.
“Not to agree with Remy or anything,” Kase said. “But this place sucks.”
A large snake-like creature slithered out of a nearby hole in the wall only ten feet from where the group stood. It had a long red-and-green body with the head of a dragon. A black forked tongue shot out of its mouth, the large teeth glistening with red from a recent kill.
“No one move,” Irkalla said.
The drake turned its head, seemingly looking from one member of the group to the other. It hissed slightly, before a low growl escaped its maw.
“That is not snake-like,” Remy whispered. “That is definitely not snake-like.”
The drake struck quickly, darting toward Tarron, who was closest to it. The shadow elf slid to the side, drew his sword, and decapitated it in one smooth movement. The headless corpse dropped to the floor with an unpleasant noise, which was quickly replaced by growls filling the tunnel.
“Run,” Mordred said, throwing massive amounts of light in front and behind the group as they all sprinted off.
Mordred risked a look behind and saw over a dozen drakes coming toward them, one of them much larger than the rest. He formed a shield of ice that covered the entire tunnel and then rejoined the group. “It won’t keep them long,” he said over the sounds of sizzling.
“Why did they have to have fire breath?” Remy asked.
“Because they’re dragons,” Irkalla said as a drake twice the size of the one they’d seen earlier burst out of a pathway, narrowly missing Kase, who punched it in the head hard enough to send it flying back down the tunnel.
The group continued running until they reached a thick, metal door. Irkalla tried to blast it apart with her necromancy, but it didn’t have any effect.
“Rune-scribed,” Remy said, dropping down from Dralas’s shoulder and drawing his sword. “And it’s made of silver. Hel really didn’t want this opened. I hope you have a key.”
Mordred removed the key from his pocket as Remy frantically pointed toward the mass of slithering drakes that was approaching.
“I think we pissed them off,” Kase said.
“You punched it, not me,” Remy said.
“Now is not the time for arguing,” Kase said sternly.
The door swung open and they ran inside. The noises from the other side of the door as it locked shut made Mordred exceptionally glad he wasn’t out there.
“I doubt they would have killed us,” Dralas said.
“Yeah, but I don’t fancy fighting dozens of the things,” Mordred replied.
“Valid point,” Dralas told him, looking around the large room the group found themselves in. “Where are we?”
“Under the fortress,” Mordred said, removing a piece of paper from one of the pockets on his leather armor. “Hel drew me a map of how to get upstairs and release the prisoners.”
“Wait,” Irkalla said. “I thought releasing the prisoners was bad. That they’ll try to attack us.”
“They’ll attack anyone, and I plan on making sure that the closest thing they see to attack is a very large army that could use thinning.”
“Why would they do that?” Kase asked. “Just who are these prisoners?”
“You know about Abaddon, Mammon, Lucifer, and the other four?” Mordred asked. “About them being created through incredibly powerful blood magic. Conceived with the darkest of powers you can imagine, which imbued them with dangerous abilities?”
Kase nodded.
“Well, you kn
ow that it was tried again? Me, Nate, a few others?”
Kase nodded again.
“The prisoners in here are what happens when those children born to blood magic are not capable of rational thought. They are animals. Exceptionally powerful animals. They can’t use magic or anything like that, but they’re really strong, fast, and are hard to kill. They were created in a large experiment that I’m pretty sure Ares had a hand in, about a thousand years ago. Hel and her people discovered it, put a stop to it and brought those they could find here, but a lot of the messed-up stuff put in their heads stayed. Some got out, went on a murder spree, but eventually all one hundred and nineteen were brought here. Which is where they’ve stayed for a thousand years. They age slowly—though not like sorcerers, much faster than that—and most have died off over the centuries.”
“How many are left?”
“Last count, forty-three. The dragon ate the corpses of the others.”
“And we have to let those forty-three out?” Remy asked. “Because that sounds . . . what’s the word? Stupid.”
“Idiotic?” Kase suggested.
“It’s not like we’re inundated with good plans,” Irkalla pointed out. “Let’s go unleash the horde of evil.”
“Horde of Evil would make an awesome band name,” Remy said.
Everyone glared at him.
“Just saying, is all,” he almost muttered.
The group moved through the maze of stone corridors, ignoring the opened doors that revealed empty rooms that had long since fallen into disuse. Most seemed to have structural floor problems, and Mordred didn’t even want to consider where he might fall if he stepped inside, so they continued on instead.
A set of stone stairs led up to the main part of the fort where all of the prisoners were kept. Each door was silver in color and marked with several runes, and Mordred found it eerie that there were no sounds from any of the prisoners inside the cells. Several skeletons lay on the ground around the fort, many of them wearing parts of the armor they’d died in.
“What happened here?”
“The prisoners last got out a few hundred years ago, but Hel managed to get them all back inside,” Mordred said. “These prisoners are almost pure blood magic—their touch causes pain in others. Since Hel couldn’t take the chance the injured would spread the contamination, they left them to die where they lay.”
“They turn into zombies?” Kase asked.
“What? No,” Mordred said. “Not zombies. Just zombie-like symptoms. These people can think and act, it’s just that they only want to think about hurting people.”
Mordred pointed down toward the thirty-foot-high barred wooden doors. “We need to open them: they lead to the courtyard at the front of the fortress, and therefore toward the army we’d like to make smaller.”
“I’ll do it,” Dralas said.
“Where is the dragon?” Irkalla asked.
Mordred pointed off toward the rear of the fortress, a place that partially sat inside the mountain. “Over there.”
“How did the dragon get the dead over there?” Tarron asked.
“Drakes drag the dead to it,” Mordred said.
“Oh, not more of them,” Irkalla said with a sigh.
“They’re too small to be a problem,” Mordred said. “When they get bigger they go below, but they hatch up here, where it’s warmer. They drag the dead to the dragon, and presumably feed on scraps. One of these people, with all the power they have inside them, probably sustains the dragon for a long time.”
“That’s really disgusting,” Kase said.
“How do we open the cells?” Tarron asked.
“There’s a control release rune on each door that reads life signs. Someone dies, the rune activates and opens the door. The main release is upstairs from here.”
Mordred pointed over to one of two sets of stone stairs that led up to the floors above. The stairs sat opposite one another further down the main corridor, slightly back from the silver cell doors.
“Dralas, take those up two floors to a wooden door. Inside are the releases to the main doors here, and the doors of the courtyard beyond. Once you’ve released them both, you’re going to have to get your arse back down here and up those stairs there. Don’t dally,” Mordred said.
Dralas nodded and jogged off toward the door, while everyone else ascended the second set of stone stairs that spiraled up to a large room.
There was nothing in the room, just dust, the occasional cobweb that was large enough to make Mordred reconsider his role in this mission, and four doors. Three doors were open, their runes long since faded, or damaged, but the one in the center of the room had a bright-blue rune that blazed.
Mordred drew a sign over the rune, disabling it. “Hel had me show her I remembered that fifty times,” Mordred said.
“I’d have made you do it more,” Remy said as they all entered the room.
At one point it had been the epicenter of the fort, but it had fallen into disrepair. A large hole in the roof dripped water, and the wooden tables and chairs, having at least partially rotted, gave the place an unpleasant smell.
Dozens of runes, all the same blue as the one on the door, shone brightly on the far wall next to a large window. Mordred looked out at the battle in the distance. “Trebuchets,” he said. “The sounds we heard earlier were trebuchets.”
“What are they using as ammo?” Kase asked.
“Giant balls of flaming metal,” Irkalla said.
“I kind of wish Layla was here,” Remy said.
“I hope she’s okay,” Irkalla said.
“She’s fine,” Mordred and Kase said in unison.
Mordred looked down below as the double doors slowly opened. Dralas could be heard running up the spiral stairs that the rest of the team had just taken. Once he was inside the room and had closed the door, Mordred deactivated the runes to open all of the cell doors.
Nothing happened for several seconds. The runes blinked a few times, and then a wail cut through Mordred like fingernails on a blackboard. The remaining prisoners ran into the courtyard, and Mordred motioned for everyone to step back from the window. He walked over to the side of the wall, and from the cover it afforded continued to watch as the prisoners searched the courtyard, before one of them punched the fortress’s metal-and-wood doors, disintegrating them.
“Holy shit,” Remy said from beside Mordred.
The prisoners fled out into the battlefield, and Mordred made sure to count every one before he nodded that it was clear.
“You sure there’s no one else down there?” Tarron asked.
Mordred nodded again, although a glimmer of discomfort stayed with him.
The group returned to the floor below and found no one waiting for them, evil or otherwise. They made their way to the rear of the fortress, moving out of the main building and into a large open area that was big enough to fit a second fortress. They passed beneath a massive black-brick archway, then stopped at the entrance to the cavern.
The inside of the cavern was in darkness, and while Mordred considered illuminating it, he didn’t want to piss off the dragon inside.
He took one step into the darkness and waited.
Something inside took a long sniff of the air. “Sorcerer,” it said.
“I have second thoughts about talking to Smaug,” Kase said.
“You brought friends,” the darkness said.
“We need your help,” Mordred told him.
“You released my food,” the darkness replied.
Mordred took another step forward and really hoped he didn’t have to fight a dragon on top of fighting everyone else today. “Mammon is here.”
The darkness laughed and two bright-red eyes, each one the size of a man, glowed from the inside. There was a low, threatening growl that made Mordred want to take a step back, but he stood firm.
“Now,” the darkness said, its voice harder than before, “you have my interest.”
22
LAYL
A CASSIDY
The dwarves were the first to enter the large wooden-and-stone temple that housed the realm gate to the Yggdrasil tree. The temple itself looked like the roots of the tree had merged with the stone around the mountain, although there was no tree in sight. It was strange to look up and see nothing but sky. The rest of the team entered the temple, one large room with a realm gate at one end. There were no guardians to operate the gate.
“This is weird,” Harry said.
“You know, you can always stay with the boat,” Zamek said.
“I need to do something to help,” Harry said.
“Getting killed won’t help,” Diana told him.
Layla looked down at the smooth red-and-gold floor. Two grooves cut on both sides of the temple ran the full length of the hundred-foot-long building. Fire burned in the grooves, low flames lacking ferociousness. “The grooves have some kind of oil in them that’s burning.”
A scent of flowers filled the air, although Layla couldn’t name the flowers.
“Tulips,” Chloe said.
Layla raised an eyebrow in her direction. “I like tulips,” she said.
“Blood,” one of the dwarves called out from closer to the realm gate.
Everyone ran over, and Layla noticed that the blood appeared to vanish behind part of the wall. She ran her hand along the wall until her power picked up a hidden mechanism, a switch that was made to look like one of the many carvings around the temple. Layla pushed the carving, and the wall slid open, revealing a room full of incense jars and several chests of gems and coins.
“Offerings,” Zamek said. “When the temple is further north, it’s close to several villages, and the inhabitants used to bring items here to offer to the tree.”
Layla looked over at the realm gate at the end of the temple. It was four or five times larger than the ones she’d seen before, and almost covered the entire rear of the temple. The gate wasn’t activated and, as she got closer, Layla could see that, unlike most gates, this one was made entirely from wood. The wood changed color several times around the realm gate, moving from different shades of brown, to yellows, reds, and black.
