It was impossible to tell from whom the scream originated. It may have been both of them. It may have been only one. In either case, as Gavriel and Vi rocketed down the stone chute, there was screaming.
The chute showed little sign of ending. Ditto the screaming. It was, however, turned to some purpose, at least.
“Do something!” Vi shrieked in Gavriel’s face.
“I’m trying,” he shouted back, “but your brass bra is in the way!”
“I don’t care. We’re falling. Cast a flight spell already.”
“Look, you copper-and-tin-plated-bytche, I’m trying. If you think it’s so easy—”
Gavriel’s sentence was cut short by the stone wall that slammed into his back. He bounced off the wall and into Vi, knocking her into the opposite wall and sending them spinning apart. The chute was narrowing.
Vi struggled to reach her swordbelt. Free of Gavriel’s limbs, she managed it. She loosed the belt, freeing the sword, scabbard and all. Her dagger slipped off and was swallowed by the shadows. Spitting out a curse, Vi braced herself and levered her sword sideways. The tip of blade and hilt tore into the narrow walls of the stone chute, spitting out a streak of sparks from either end. Vi’s descent slowed.
It ended with a sharp jerk. Vi clung to her sword for dear life. Son of a bytche. Gavriel was still above her. Vi braced herself for the impact. Nothing happened. Vi looked up. All she saw was darkness.
“Gav?”
“You rang?”
His voice came out of the darkness less than six inches above her face. Vi snarled at the shadows.
“I see you managed to get your flight spell working.”
“Was there ever any doubt?” Gavriel sounded smug.
“Yes. As a matter of fact, there was. If I recall correctly, there was a lot of doubt. Especially as to your manhood. You scream like a girl.”
“As opposed to your manly bellowing?”
“I don’t have to bellow manfully. I’m a woman.”
“I had no idea.”
“Whatever. Just shut up and help me.”
“As you wish, prin—”
Gavriel squawked and slammed into Vi. The sword beneath her snapped. With a chorus of screams, a tangle of limbs and bodies plunged once more down the pitch-black stone chute.
Fortunately, their fall was arrested a few feet later. Unfortunately, it was arrested by a cold, hard marble floor. A small shifting of gravel trailed down the chute to rattle across the floor.
***
Elsewhere, three ches-pieces appeared on an ancient and strangely warped ches-board. Something old stirred in the shadows. Eyes gleamed in the darkness and a voice, dusty with disuse, rasped.
“Ah, excellent. A new game.”
***
It was pitch black in the cavern. Someone groaned. Moments passed. Leather creaked and brass scraped against stone. A voiced whispered in the dark and suddenly the penumbral gloom parted.
Gavriel flicked the last of the enchantment from his fingers. The cavern they were in was fairly large. The floor was comprised of vast marble squares, fitted expertly to one another. Throughout the room were scattered a number of crumbling statues. Many stood watch over long rectangular slabs of stone. Several were hung with the attributes of fallen warriors. Swords, shields, spears, helms…all rotting away and providing way, way too much potential cover. Something had knocked him out of the air. Scuff. Scuff. Something that was probably still here. Gavriel turned slowly.
“You have got to be kidding me.”
Vi came to, staring at the floor. She blinked. It was a very nice floor. Marble. Black and white. Precision set, no mortar. Sharp clean lines, under the patina of dust. Great.
The swordswoman pushed herself up. Her left arm spasmed and she hissed. The hilt of her sword fell from the dent in her brass bra with a clatter. It had wedged itself there upon impact. In retrospect, using her sword as an emergency brake had not been the greatest of ideas.
“Vi, darling,” Gavriel’s voice murmured in her ear, “we have company.”
Vi tucked and rolled, coming up into a defensive crouch. What was left of her sword was grasped firmly in her left hand, daggerlike. She felt the familiar inky feeling of Gavriel’s enchantment upon her eyes, allowing her to see in the dark.
She stared. She swore. Then she stood and strode over to the teenager who was standing in a defensive posture not ten feet away. He couldn’t see her in the darkness, but he heard her approach and turned to defend himself.
Vi’s arm snaked through his guard and slapped him upside the head. The teenager yelped. Vi caught him by the hair and hauled him close.
“Valeral! What in the hells are you doing here? We told you to stay with the mounts while we scouted the first level.”
“Ow! Aunt Violet—”
Her grip tightened. Valeral stifled a yelp.
“I’m sorry, Aunt Vi! I’m sorry! Just let me go. I’m sorry.”
“Not as sorry as you’re going to be,” Vi muttered.
The swordswoman gave her nephew a small shove, sending him stumbling towards Gavriel. The sorcerer raised one elegant eyebrow and stepped aside. Valeral stumbled through the space Gavriel had just vacated and crashed to the ground. Vi snorted.
“Give him a pair of darkeyes, would you, Gav? He’s likely to break something, stumbling around blind like that. My sister’ll kill me if he comes home with any broken bones.”
Gavriel smirked and with a whispered word sent a coil of shadow snaking out towards Valeral’s eyes. The shadows crept in, filling the youth’s eyes with a deep and inky darkness. He blinked.
“Woah. I can see!”
“You’re welcome,” Gavriel said.
“That’s awesome! You have to teach me how to do that, Gav.”
“Gavriel.” He corrected him. The darkness shrouding his eyes hid the smile therein. “And I don’t think your aunt would approve.”
Gavriel turned to Vi. “Now what?”
“We haul his sorry arse back up to camp, that’s what.”
“But, Aunt Vi! You promised Mother you’d—”
“And you promised me you’d stay in the camp until we came back for you. I don’t see that happening either. So I don’t care what I promised your mother, about you or your training. It’s not safe down here—“
“It’s not safe anywhere,” Valeral burst out. “That’s the point.”
“Look, you little snotrag, I—”
Gavriel was laughing. Vi paused in her tirade and turned towards the sorcerer. With a calm and deadly sweetness, she spoke.
“Something funny, Gavriel?”
“Oh come off it, Vi. He’s not a child. He’s seventeen. You did the exact same thing when you were his age. You’re being more than a bit hypocritical.”
“That was different, I-”
“Not that it’s not amusing, mind you. But it’s a moot point. Valeral stays.”
Vi went white. Her voice, if anything, got even sweeter. Valeral’s eyes widened and he took a cautious step back.
“That is not for you to decide.” Vi’s voice could have frozen boiling water in less than six seconds.
“Nor you either, I’m afraid.” Gavriel didn’t flinch.
He pointed up towards the ceiling. Vi stared at him for a long, long moment before her gaze followed his hand. She blinked. Swordlady’s tits, the hole disappeared!
***
All across the board, pieces were stirring. The game was afoot. Long, bony fingers caressed a number of pieces before selecting one and placing it on the board. As soon as ivory touched marble, the piece multiplied, replicating itself across the board in a tattered, irregular spread.
***
The ceiling was smooth. Seamless. There was no sign of the point at which they had entered. Vi let out her breath in a long hiss.
“Illusion?”
“Not that I can sense,” Gavriel said.
“Trap door, then.”
“If it is, it’s so tight that not even a shadow could slip through the cracks.”
“Locus transfer?”
“Possible. We were somewhat distracted at the time, so it’s hard to say for certain.”
Vi’s next question was cut short by the sound of skittering. A vicious little giggle drifted towards them, carried upon the sounds of sharp claws on marble. Gavriel and Vi snapped into defensive position around Valeral. Vi’s hand groped for a sword that was no longer there.
“Valeral, give me your sword.”
“I don’t have it.”
“What? Why not?”
“I lost it in the shaft.”
“You what? Of all the idio—”
“Vi, now is not the time,” Gavriel interjected.
“Damnit, Gav,” she hissed, “I don’t have a weapon.”
“There are plenty of choices, if you can get to one.” Gavriel gestured toward a nearby funerary statue with his nose. “Provided it hasn’t rotted or rusted away to nothing.”
“Thrilling.” Vi growled softly.
“This is awesome.” Valeral practically danced in place.
“Shut up, Val.”
“Fall back to the statue of the one-armed soldier on three,” Gavriel whispered.
“One,” burst in Valeral.
“Two,” snarled Vi.
“Three!”
The trio fell back, tracing a straight line to the one-armed soldier and the crypt he watched over. The snicker-snack of the giggling followed them. The scrabble of claws on marble was closer now, and half-seen figures darted from cover to cover. They were too quick to make out.
“Whatever they are, they’re small and black,” Valeral whispered excitedly.
“Goblins of some sort, most likely,” Gavriel murmured. “This is close enough to their standard habitat, and their motions match the usual goblin tactics. Notice—”
“Leave off the lecture until after the battle.” Vi was fighting with a sword, trying to free it from the statue’s surprisingly strong one-armed grip.
“But Aunt Vi, this is stuff I need to know,” Valeral protested.
Vi pulled the sword free with a rusty hiss and turned to stare malevolently at the teenager. He shrunk back behind Gavriel and swallowed.
“After the battle is fine,” he squeaked.
“Gavriel,” Vi’s voice turned sweet again, “why haven’t you dealt with the goblins already?”
“We don’t know how many of them there are.”
“So?”
“So, be patient.”
“Gavriel.” Vi drew out his name in a long, low threatening tone.
“Violet.” There was the faintest hint of steel beneath Gavriel’s mild reply.
Valeral glanced between the two and, in a rare show of prudence, kept his mouth shut. Further discussion was curtailed by the advent of pitched battle. Small black shapes darted forward, a mass of bodies cresting like a wave of rotting lace.
Vi loosed a bloodcurdling battle cry and lay to with her rusty sword. It was more of a metal bludgeon than anything else, but a sword was a sword. Goblin bodies went flying through the air. Unfortunately, a disproportionate number of them managed to stagger to their feet and rush on again.
Hands blazing with crackling black energy, Gavriel bytche-slapped a large goblin across the face. It staggered back and collided into another. Dark energy crackled and burst forth from the point of contact, sending the two sprawling. They, in turn, hit others and prompted more explosions. A wave of space cleared as the successively dwindling shockwave coursed through the advancing goblin hordelet.
“Awesome, awesome, awesome, oh my goddess, so awesome.” Valeral danced back and forth. When the opportunity presented itself, he whacked a goblin in the face with a nearby funerary urn. It broke on impact. So did the goblin’s nose and the little creature fell back, howling and clutching the bleeding proboscis.
A stream of invective stained the air blue to Valeral’s left. Vi’s borrowed sword had broken. The swordswoman was covered with sweat and smears of rust and surprisingly very little blood. Valeral could have sworn she almost looked unhappy about the lack of blood splatter, but then, he had a very active imagination.
“I need another sword,” Vi bellowed. “This statue’s all out.”
“I’m already on it.”
Words of darkness literally dripped from Gavriel’s lips. They roiled around his feet, writhing like headless serpents.
“That’s…disturbing.” Valeral gulped.
“That? No. Trust me, I’ve seen him do much worse.” Vi smiled inwardly. Thanks, Gav, the kid was getting a little too into the whole adventuring thing. “And if you think that’s bad, you should see some of the weirdoes we’ve gone up against.”
The goblins drew back, already wary from their last engagement with Gavriel’s magics. The darkness around his feet surged, an explosion of shadow that obscured all vision. When it cleared, fully half of the goblins were wrestling with shadow serpents as thick as Valeral’s arm and the trio of adventurers was halfway across the cavern, hunkered down behind another statue.
Vi dropped Valeral. She had slung him over her shoulder to carry him as they ran. He hit the ground rather unceremoniously. Gavriel smirked. His eyes tracked the movements of the confused goblins wrangling with illusory serpents. A few of them had figured out the illusion and did not look happy.
“I love fighting goblins.”
Valeral stared at Gavriel. Gavriel’s tapped his cheek thoughtfully and looked at the goblins. After a moment, he began to whisper and flutter his fingers. Valeral watched as the sorcerer’s hands moved in and out of complex patterns and arcane syllables rolled from his tongue.
Vi wrestled with another sword. The hilt came free in her hand. A small streak of powdered rust streamed out of the scabbard.
“This is bloody useless,” she screamed.
She flung the sword at a nearby goblin’s head. It knocked the little creature for a loop. It also had the unfortunate effect of drawing attention to the group’s position. Those goblins not still engaged with illusory serpents began to draw together for another rush at their position.
“We need to fall back.” Valeral tugged at Gavriel’s sleeve.
The sorcerer ignored him, words pouring faster and faster from his lips. His hands flew through a series of complex motions, faster and faster. Vi took Valeral’s arm and gently pulled him towards her.
“Let him finish. Just be ready to move when he is.”
Valeral glanced from Vi to Gav and back again. He nodded.
“I’ll scout us a defensible position.”
“You do that.” Vi’s attention was on Gavriel and the mustering goblins. “Hurry up, princess. We don’t have all day.”
Gavriel waggled his eyebrows at her. With a flourish, he finished the spell.
“All set.”
“Come on, we need to fall back. You ready, Val?”
“Straight back towards the wall, then hook left.” The teenager grinned. “Right behind that big statue with the blindfold and the scales.”
“Alright then,” Vi nodded. “Let’s go.”
The trio withdrew once again. The goblins, seeing them retreat, managed to scrape together their courage and let loose with a strange whooping giggle of a warcry. They rushed forward en masse.
“How terribly predictable,” Gavriel said.
The sorcerer snapped his fingers. A webwork of shadow tendrils lashed out from the darkness, ensnaring the goblins. The little creatures yowled and struggled. The more they struggled, the tighter they were bound. In moments, the entire hordelet was enwebbed, snarling and biting.
The trio relaxed imperceptibly. Valeral looked up at Gavriel with awe.
“That was awesome! Can you teach me how to do that?”
Vi snorted and turned her attention to prying the dusty sword free from the statue’s hand. At least this one wasn’t rusted. She sniped at Gavriel over her shoulder to pass the time while she did so.
“He was just showing off. Showing off and being lazy. There was no real reason to set a spell that complex.”
“Au contraire,” Gavriel sniffed, “there was an excellent reason.”
“Aside from what? Your desire to not muster the energy to blast the little buggers? It would have been easier.”
“It’s also less elegant, could have destabilized the cavern ceiling, and—”
“Uh, guys, I think we have a problem…” Valeral broke in hesitantly.
“What?”
Gavriel and Vi spoke in unison, turning to follow Valeral’s pointing finger. There was movement in the shadows. The heavy stone slabs that had sealed in the dead had vanished. Dozens of corpses, armed and armored, were moving towards them.
“They’re not shambling. Shouldn’t they be shambling? I thought zombies always shambled.” Valeral’s voice went a bit squeaky towards the end.
“Gav?” Vi’s voice was terse.
“Those aren’t zombies,” Gavriel said grimly. “I’m guessing they’re some sort of corrupted sacred guardians. This place may have been a temple of some sort, a long time ago. And I’m guessing we’re currently cast in the role of desecrators and tomb raiders.”
“Which means what, exactly?” Valeral swallowed.
“We’re screwed.” Vi finally yanked the sword free from the statue’s iron grip. It settled into her hand as if made for her. She swung it once, noting the perfect balance.
“At least I found a good sword. Gav, can you blast these things?”
“I can, if you’d like me to bring the whole mountain down on top of us in the process.”
“Uh, I vote no to that option,” Valeral interjected.
“I’m going to have to agree with my nephew on that one. Other options?”
“How many can you take out with your new sword?”
“I have no idea. Seven, eight maybe? Shall we give it a go?”
“I’d really rather not have to. This Ahr’manhi robe is brand new.”
“I told you not to wear that! What sort of idiot wears brand new Ahr’manhi on an expedition like this?”
“You told me we’d just be sparring with your nephew! I had no idea—“
“Guys? Big undead warrior man at twelve o’clock!” Valeral ducked.
A massive greatsword slashed down, shattering the statue in front of them and reducing their cover to rubble. Gavriel made a flicking gesture with his hand and a whip of pure darkness lashed out. The thing just grabbed and pulled. The whip dissolved into smoky strands. Gavriel blanched.
“They’ve got some sort of minor immunity to magic. Vi, a little help here please?”
The sorcerer tumbled out of the way as that massive greatsword sliced through the space he had occupied just a moment ago.
“My pleasure,” the swordswoman snarled.
She brought her sword around in a lighting overhead slash. The blade drove down and ricocheted off the guardian’s skin as if it were rubber. Or stone. Or some sort of magic stone-rubber hybrid that perfectly repelled sword blows.
“Oh, hells no.”
“Quick, this way!” A feminine voice called.
The crypt beneath the statue had shifted, revealing a darker oblong in the floor. Gavriel and Vi exchanged a glance. Valeral looked from one to the other.
“Should we?” Gavriel asked.
“Can’t be worse.” Vi shrugged.
“Well, technically, it might be.”
“Only one way to find out.”
“I suppose so.”
“Would you two hurry up!” Valeral yelled at them from the darkness.
More guardians were appearing. Gavriel and Vi exchanged one last glance, then leapt into the darkness. Above them, a slab of marble slammed into place with all the finality of a tombstone.
***
Eyes watched from the darkness as three pieces vanished from one board and reappeared on another. Ripples of movement were spreading across several boards now, an ever-widening chain of events. A dry chuckle crept out of the shadows.
“What an interesting move.”
To Be Continued…
{ 1 trackback }
Comments on this entry are closed.