The Doomed Bastards: Reckoning (story complete)
- Thread starter Lazybones
- Start date
Lazybones
Adventurer
It's Friday, you know what that means! 
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Chapter 29
BEWARE OF PURPLE WORMS!
The glowing green warning was still there, unchanged since their last visit.
“Damn it, I don’t like this,” Dar said.
“In general, I would agree that descending further is not the ideal course,” Varo said. “But for the moment, the unproven option is also the least deadly.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t purple worms huge and incredibly deadly?”
“If we remain quiet and don’t draw a lot of attention to ourselves, maybe we won’t encounter any,” Tiros said.
The three men moved warily forward under the stone archway with its glimmering warning, into the vast cavern beyond.
“If I never see another mushroom, it’ll be too soon,” Dar said, giving the densest cluster of fungi a wide berth. Growths were visible everywhere, but were a lot smaller and more sparse than in the cavern they’d entered above. Still, they kept a very close eye out for anything that moved of its own accord, or for any patches that looked as though they could be yellow mold.
All three men looked tired, with ragged beards and eyes sunken in their skulls. Their supplies were running low, although Varo had told them that he could invoke the power of Dagos to create artificial foodstuffs. As that would cut into the cleric’s healing power, which was now all they had to rely upon for dealing with injuries, they continued eating the stale trail rations they’d been given, for now.
After another night’s rest, Varo had once again treated their wounds, purging Tiros and Dar of the lingering effects of their encounters with the monstrosities of Rappan Athuk. Healing Tiros, in particular, drained a great deal of the cleric’s available power, and the old marshal was still a bit unsteady when they broke camp to continue their explorations of the dungeon.
“There’s one thing to be said for this constant struggle for our lives,” Dar said. For the moment, he’d given up on his old and battered sword, and had slung his shield across his back in favor of the huge club he’d already used to great effect against the black skeletons.
“Yeah, what’s that?” Tiros asked.
“Damned if it doesn’t make you sharp. After a few days in here, I feel as though I’ve gotten better in melee than in two years of mercenary service. Knowing that even touching something casually can kill you keeps you on a razor’s edge.”
“Rappan Athuk is a proving ground,” Varo said from a short distance away. “It is a crucible within which the raw ore is seared, and any impurities are burned away. What you have left is steel, ready to be fashioned into a weapon.”
“But steel can break just like anything else,” Dar said, at the same time that Tiros replied, “Steel is inflexible... it either withstands, or shatters.” The two men looked at each other, and after a moment Dar chuckled softly to himself.
“Damn, if I’m starting to sound like you, marshal, then we really got problems,” the fighter said.
The cavern expanded ahead, opening onto an even larger space that extended far beyond the dim glow of their torches. The sound of running water was louder, now, and came from somewhere directly ahead of them. As the moved forward, they could see another stream, this one almost ten feet across, and flowing with a swift current to their left.
“Let’s fill up our water bottles, while we’re here,” Tiros suggested. The marshal, still keeping an eye out for any hints of danger, knelt beside the stream. The water was bracingly cold, but it felt refreshing as he cupped his hands and filled them, splashing the water across his face, washing away some of the dirt and blood crusted on his features.
“Careful, the river’s probably full of demon-spawned death-killer evil bastard devil fish,” Dar said.
“I had forgotten what it was to be clean,” Tiros said, sitting back on his haunches.
“We should get the water and get clear,” Varo suggested. “Denizens of the caverns likely come here frequently to drink.”
Tiros sighed, but nodded. Taking up his nearly empty goatskin flask, he dipped it into the water, letting the current fill it. The water moved swiftly, swirling white as it rushed around a series of boulders lying in the middle of the stream.
Boulders. At regular intervals. Shining faintly purple, in the torchlight.
The marshal jerked back to his feet, the waterskin dropped and forgotten. It floated away on the current as the other two men turned to Tiros in alarm.
“What’s the matter?” Dar asked, lifting his club to a ready position.
“RUN!” the marshal yelled, in the same instant that the purple worm reared up out of the streambed in a spray of water, its head, complete with a huge, gaping maw, turning toward them.
* * * * *
Chapter 29
BEWARE OF PURPLE WORMS!
The glowing green warning was still there, unchanged since their last visit.
“Damn it, I don’t like this,” Dar said.
“In general, I would agree that descending further is not the ideal course,” Varo said. “But for the moment, the unproven option is also the least deadly.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t purple worms huge and incredibly deadly?”
“If we remain quiet and don’t draw a lot of attention to ourselves, maybe we won’t encounter any,” Tiros said.
The three men moved warily forward under the stone archway with its glimmering warning, into the vast cavern beyond.
“If I never see another mushroom, it’ll be too soon,” Dar said, giving the densest cluster of fungi a wide berth. Growths were visible everywhere, but were a lot smaller and more sparse than in the cavern they’d entered above. Still, they kept a very close eye out for anything that moved of its own accord, or for any patches that looked as though they could be yellow mold.
All three men looked tired, with ragged beards and eyes sunken in their skulls. Their supplies were running low, although Varo had told them that he could invoke the power of Dagos to create artificial foodstuffs. As that would cut into the cleric’s healing power, which was now all they had to rely upon for dealing with injuries, they continued eating the stale trail rations they’d been given, for now.
After another night’s rest, Varo had once again treated their wounds, purging Tiros and Dar of the lingering effects of their encounters with the monstrosities of Rappan Athuk. Healing Tiros, in particular, drained a great deal of the cleric’s available power, and the old marshal was still a bit unsteady when they broke camp to continue their explorations of the dungeon.
“There’s one thing to be said for this constant struggle for our lives,” Dar said. For the moment, he’d given up on his old and battered sword, and had slung his shield across his back in favor of the huge club he’d already used to great effect against the black skeletons.
“Yeah, what’s that?” Tiros asked.
“Damned if it doesn’t make you sharp. After a few days in here, I feel as though I’ve gotten better in melee than in two years of mercenary service. Knowing that even touching something casually can kill you keeps you on a razor’s edge.”
“Rappan Athuk is a proving ground,” Varo said from a short distance away. “It is a crucible within which the raw ore is seared, and any impurities are burned away. What you have left is steel, ready to be fashioned into a weapon.”
“But steel can break just like anything else,” Dar said, at the same time that Tiros replied, “Steel is inflexible... it either withstands, or shatters.” The two men looked at each other, and after a moment Dar chuckled softly to himself.
“Damn, if I’m starting to sound like you, marshal, then we really got problems,” the fighter said.
The cavern expanded ahead, opening onto an even larger space that extended far beyond the dim glow of their torches. The sound of running water was louder, now, and came from somewhere directly ahead of them. As the moved forward, they could see another stream, this one almost ten feet across, and flowing with a swift current to their left.
“Let’s fill up our water bottles, while we’re here,” Tiros suggested. The marshal, still keeping an eye out for any hints of danger, knelt beside the stream. The water was bracingly cold, but it felt refreshing as he cupped his hands and filled them, splashing the water across his face, washing away some of the dirt and blood crusted on his features.
“Careful, the river’s probably full of demon-spawned death-killer evil bastard devil fish,” Dar said.
“I had forgotten what it was to be clean,” Tiros said, sitting back on his haunches.
“We should get the water and get clear,” Varo suggested. “Denizens of the caverns likely come here frequently to drink.”
Tiros sighed, but nodded. Taking up his nearly empty goatskin flask, he dipped it into the water, letting the current fill it. The water moved swiftly, swirling white as it rushed around a series of boulders lying in the middle of the stream.
Boulders. At regular intervals. Shining faintly purple, in the torchlight.
The marshal jerked back to his feet, the waterskin dropped and forgotten. It floated away on the current as the other two men turned to Tiros in alarm.
“What’s the matter?” Dar asked, lifting his club to a ready position.
“RUN!” the marshal yelled, in the same instant that the purple worm reared up out of the streambed in a spray of water, its head, complete with a huge, gaping maw, turning toward them.
Lazybones said:
*spits coffee*
I hate to make this about me, but if I were playing Dar, that's exactly the kind of thing I would of said. Holy crap, I laughed hard at that one. Definitely my favorite character out of your story hours. Such a cynical, smart ass, pragmatic bastard. I identify with him on so many levels.
Anyways... good stuff!
And HO, my computer isn't set up at home, so I'm forced to be patient. >.<
Lazybones
Adventurer
Rhun said:
Escape?
![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
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Chapter 30
SERIOUSLY SCREWED
For once, Tiros didn’t feel his old body protesting as he and Varo ran full-out across the cavern, retracing their steps back toward the narrow staircase to the second level of the dungeon. Brown toadstools went flying as they trod through patches of fungal growths, and the flames from their torches flickered wildly with the speed of their movement.
The ground rumbled all around them. It sounded like the end of the world.
Tiros saw the stairs ahead of them. He glanced over his shoulder, and saw Dar, lagging behind. The fighter was fresher than he, but Dar was burdened by his arsenal, and by the pounds of gold and silver he had poured into his backpack from the ghoul horde.
There was no sign of the worm, but by the shaking of the ground, it was still coming, somewhere beyond the light of the torches.
“Run, damn it!” he shouted. Just ahead, Varo hesitated, halfway between Tiros and the stairs. “Run, you bastard!”
The fighter lowered his head and put on a burst of speed. Driven by the marshal’s urging, or perhaps a more primal need to live, Dar rushed over the ground, his boots crunching heavily on the uneven surface.
There was still no sign of the worm.
Where in the hells it is... Tiros thought, just as the worm exploded out of the ground a scant fifteen paces behind the fighter.
Dar heard it, but he didn’t look back, only continued running toward the shelter offered by the stairs. Varo had made it to the foot of the staircase, and Tiros knew that if he charged, he could join the cleric before the worm could get to them.
But as for Dar...
“Look out!” Tiros yelled, turning and running back, toward the fighter and the charging worm. The thing was... huge just didn’t seem to fit. The creature was gigantic, its segmented body fifty, sixty, seventy feet long? More of it was still coming out of the ground as its head, along with the gaping maw, dove at Dar.
Tiros hit the fighter and knocked him aside just as the worm shot forward. Something hard clipped him on the shoulder, spinning him around, flinging him roughly to the ground. A noise like an earthquake filled the cavern. It took him at least a full second to recover enough to see what had happened.
The worm had overshot, its head driving into the archway that overhung the entrance to the staircase. With forty thousand pounds of mass driving behind it, the creature had pierced through that barrier, its head and about fifteen feet of body jammed deep into the narrow staircase. Its lower body flailed out behind it violently, and Tiros could see that its tail had finally emerged from its tunnel, the end tipped with a gleaming black stinger larger than a spearhead.
Dar was already attacking. The fighter slammed his club heavily into the creature’s body, which reverberated from the force of the impact. The sheer... gall of the mercenary’s action stirred something deep within the marshal, but before he could do anything else, he saw the worm’s tail swing around, its deadly head clearly fixing upon its target.
“Look out!” he shouted again.
Dar turned around, but he could not avoid the stabbing head that drove into the center of his breastplate like a ballista bolt. The fighter bounced off the worm’s body and fell. Tiros could not tell if the stinger had penetrated, but at least the mercenary hadn’t been impaled, as he’d feared.
Stone exploded outward as the worm’s head tore free from the staircase entrance. Tiros’s spirits fell as he saw a shower of collapsing rubble descend in the worm’s wake, closing off the hope of escape with it.
Huge, long, twisting, shadowy forms appeared around the edges of the battlefield. Tiros’s brain struggled to take it all in... More of them? But as the creatures entered the radius of the feeble light of his torch, he saw that the things were not more worms, but giant centipedes, three of them, each dozens of feet long, looming over the humans, but small in contrast to the gigantic worm. The centipedes had red and black shells, hundreds of stubby yellow legs, and mandibles like daggers that snapped at the air as they surged forward. All three converged on the worm, attacking its body with those piercing jaws.
The worm counterattacked at once. Its head snapped down and seized a centipede, tearing its prying mandibles free and lifting it high into the air. Its sting impaled a second, but this one kept holding on, its body twisting as the worm’s stinger continued to penetrate deeper into the wound.
Still overwhelmed by the sheer insanity of it, Tiros knew that the distraction offered by the appearance of the other vermin would not help them for long. He pulled himself up, and turned to flee. But then he saw something that changed his mind.
Dar was up again, and somehow, incredulously, he was attacking. The fighter had lost his club when he’d been knocked down by the worm’s initial rush, but now he was hewing at it with the two-handed sword they’d found in the ogre lair. As the marshal watched, amazed, the fighter tore a gash three feet long in the worm’s body. Dar lifted the sword to strike again, but the worm’s shifting body caused his strike to go awry. He staggered and fell to the ground, the sword flying from his grasp to fall clattering to the ground a good five paces away.
The worm’s head came around, still carrying the struggling centipede in its jaws. That ring of jagged teeth snapped heavily shut, and the centipede was cut cleanly in two, the fifteen-foot segments flying out into the darkness to either side. The head shifted, focusing on the diminutive human even as its sting continued to worry deeper into the body of the second centipede. But instead of seeking to fly or hide from the inevitability of destruction, Dar merely reached around and drew out another weapon, the heavy warhammer they’d uncovered in the ghoul lair.
Without realizing consciously what he was doing, Tiros was running forward, Valor leaping into his hand at his call. As the worm’s upper body came around to face Dar, the creature came within his reach, and he leapt forward and swung with all his might.
Valor flared with blue light within his hand, and the marshal felt something surge within him, or within the sword; in the fury and chaos of battle, he could not be sure.
The tip of the sword cut through the worm’s rubbery hide. The attack did not do as much damage as Dar had inflicted upon it earlier, but it must have hit something vital inside, for the worm immediately shifted its attack upon the marshal. The dark opening, almost a full five feet across, filled Tiros’s view, accompanied by a terrible stench that rose from deep within the creature.
He tried to get away, to do anything to avoid that fate, but the worm was faster. Pain exploded within his torso as the worm seized him. He struggled, tried to bring his sword down to hack himself free, but he was pinned, and could not move. The worm’s grip was like being held in a steel vise, and he could hear as well as feel the bones popping in his body.
“Tiros!” he heard Dar yell. He was vaguely aware of being lifted into the air. He glanced down, and saw a point of light on the far side of the creature. Varo. The cleric had not fled, after all. For an instant the cleric’s eyes met his, and the dark follower of Dagos nodded.
The worm’s jaws opened. Tiros took a final breath. He knew that this was the end.
And he fell, vanishing into the darkness as the worm swallowed him.
So that's the way of this story, then, eh? Watch a TPK in slow motion? That's just mean, LB! MEAN! >.<
BTW, I finally decided on alignments for the remaining three... now two... (/mourn Tiros)
Tiros: LG
Dar: N
Varo: LE
EDIT: BTW, I think Tiros' actions and words would have influenced Dar in a positive way, maybe even making him N with G tendencies. Possibly even emulating some Law. But with Varo as his guide, it's like having a Sith Lord taking over the reins from a Jedi Master. Dar's doomed to evil, me thinks.
BTW, I finally decided on alignments for the remaining three... now two... (/mourn Tiros)
Tiros: LG
Dar: N
Varo: LE
EDIT: BTW, I think Tiros' actions and words would have influenced Dar in a positive way, maybe even making him N with G tendencies. Possibly even emulating some Law. But with Varo as his guide, it's like having a Sith Lord taking over the reins from a Jedi Master. Dar's doomed to evil, me thinks.
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Even in the belly of the beast, I am not ready to count the good Marshall out just yet and I expect to see a joint effort to rip the beast asunder from the inside.
Although it is very possible I am quite wrong...
Great story LB and I am anxiously awaiting the next installment...
Although it is very possible I am quite wrong...
Great story LB and I am anxiously awaiting the next installment...
Lazybones
Adventurer
Chapter 31
BLOOD OF THE FALLEN
Dar could do nothing to intervene as the worm seized the marshal—taking the fate that it had intended for him, he knew—and lifted him into the air. The fighter did the only thing he could do, slamming the magical hammer hard into the worm’s body at the joint between two of its body segments. The dense hide cracked under the force of the impact, but that didn’t stop the worm from swallowing its captive a few seconds later.
Dar knew that he would be next. He could run, but he already knew that the worm could catch him. The thing was a demon from the darkest pit, and it seemed invulnerable, too huge to seriously hurt. But to Dar’s mind, the worm represented all of what Rappan Athuk had done to him, all of the vileness and horror and sheer evil of this place.
So he kept smashing at it. His wild blows glanced off its body as often as they connected, but its body was already deeply indented at two places where the fighter had focused his attacks. The worm was also showing other signs of heavy wear. The centipedes had done considerable damage, and the last one was still worrying its flank on the far side. And while Dar could not see it from his current vantage, Varo had done his share as well, pouring negative energy into its body from a pair of potent inflict wounds spells.
The fighter glanced over his shoulder, and saw the worm lift the limp form of the second centipede, shaking the destroyed vermin from its stinger. Dar already knew how much that deadly spear hurt; his breastplate was caved in from the first hit he’d taken, and his chest burned. It was likely that its poison was tearing through his bloodstream this very minute, slowly killing him.
“So be it,” he snarled, the words slurred. He’d cracked his jaw when the worm’s initial charge had knocked him roughly down. He could barely see the stinger, a black shaft in the surrounding darkness, but he tensed, knowing it was coming.
The stinger appeared out of nowhere, darting so fast that there was no chance for him to focus on it and respond. Instinct replaced thought, instinct and training that together brought the hammer around, backed by the fighter’s considerable, if depleted, strength.
The head of the hammer struck the sting, and shot the entire hard shaft with the force of a catapult into the worm’s body. The rigid tip became a projectile that tore through thirty feet of worm, shredding tissue, before it lodged deep inside its body. The force of its momentum was enough to knock Dar sprawling yet again. This turned out to be fortuitous for the fighter, for the worm started gyrating madly, its body slamming onto the ground hard where he’d been standing a moment before. The last centipede went flying, only to dissolve into wisps of nothing before it hit the ground. Dar staggered to his feet and somehow managed to get free of it before it crushed him with its violent movements. Retreating to the far side of the cavern, he saw Varo already there.
“The marshal?” Dar asked, knowing that the question was idiotic as soon as he asked it. He’d seen the creature swallow Tiros, and for all the marshal’s determination, no mortal man could have survived that.
“Dead,” Varo said, confirming what he already knew.
They watched the worm as its death throes began to weaken. It took the better part of two minutes for it to finally stop moving, and even then, its body continued to twitch as they approached it.
“The sounds of this confrontation will draw every creature within a league,” Varo said, as Dar recovered his greatsword, and walked over to the body of the monster.
“This needs doing,” Dar said, hacking a long opening in the creature’s body. It took another minute; although it was easier to hit when it wasn’t moving, the worm’s hide was still incredibly thick. But the fighter kept at it until he’d severed the worm nearly in two.
It took longer for him to find what he was looking for. As Varo watched, he dragged a heavy, limp form from the worm’s innards.
The cleric came over to take a look, even though it was obvious that there was nothing that he could do. Velan Tiros was barely even recognizable as human. Acid from the worm’s stomach had eaten away much of the flesh covering his face, leaving a bloody mess.
“May your gods take you home, marshal,” the cleric said softly, as he laid his blanket over the dead man’s ruined face.
Dar hadn’t lingered. Another minute passed, until finally he emerged, himself looking rather the worse for wear, his clothes slick with the worm’s blood, and seared from the acids of its insides.
And holding Valor in his hand.
“What about his magic glove?” Dar asked.
Varo checked Tiros’s right hand. “Destroyed. And I don’t imagine we’ll get much from his pack, either.” The cleric did find that the marshal’s magical throwing axe had survived his ordeal, so he handed that to the fighter. Dar took the weapon, wiped some of the gunk from the blade, and calmly tucked it into his belt.
Varo looked intently at the fighter. “Are you all right?”
Dar didn’t respond for a long moment. “Let’s get out of here. As you said, something else will probably come by and try to kill us any time now.”
As if on cue, they heard noises coming from the direction of the main cavern. Looking in that direction, they saw what looked like a light source approaching from around the leading edge of the cavern wall to the left.
“Someone’s coming,” Varo said quietly.
“Well, let’s go see what it is then,” Dar said. Still holding Tiros’s magical sword, he and the cleric walked to the end of the worm, and waited.
They didn’t have to wait long. The light source resolved into a burning flame that came from the end of a quarterstaff. The staff was held by a man who was in the later years of middle age, by the look of him. He was accompanied by a party of travelers, six in all. Nearly all of them were clad in armor of black chain links, which tended to blend into the surrounding shadows, making it slightly uncomfortable to look at them directly. Four were men, including the staff-bearer. Two of the men were humans, heavily armed and carrying themselves with the air of trained warriors. The last was a dwarf, a squat but muscled figure wrapped in a dark cloak, and carrying an odd black metal weapon that had an axe blade on one end, and a spear-head on the other.
The men surrounded a pair of women, both human, but otherwise of little similarity. One was clad in black armor like the others, with short-cropped raven hair, and bearing a longspear among other weapons. The other was fair, with shoulder-length hair so pale as to be almost white. She too held a spear, a much shorter one, but unlike the other she did not carry a martial air about her. If anything, she seemed to bear a deep abiding sense of peace about her, tinged with a hint of melancholy.
The party of newcomers caught sight of the worm and halted. Varo remained silent, but Dar came forward, crossing his arms across his chest. He still held Valor at the ready.
The members of the other party saw him. The staff-bearer leaned over and whispered something to one of the men, a tall warrior with a longsword at his hip. The six came forward, the expressions on their faces anything but friendly.
“That’s far enough,” Dar said. “What do you want?”
The man that the staff-bearer had spoken to came forward. “We have come for Marshal Velan Tiros,” he said.
For a few seconds a silence stretched out between the two groups. Then, finally, Dar laughed, but it was a grim sound, thick with irony.
“Did I say something funny?” the warrior asked. He seemed as tense as a coiled spring, and the others behind him were equally prepared for what looked like a looming confrontation.
“The gods hate us!” the fighter exclaimed, turning and throwing up his hands. The newcomers shared a wary look, but Varo quickly came forward, and raised his hands in propitiation.
“We are not your enemies,” he said to them.
“Where is Tiros?” the warrior responded, his voice as sharp as a razor’s edge. “Your friend holds his sword, and I warn you...”
“He’s right over here,” Dar said. He walked over to Tiros’s body, and pointed down to the corpse. “Here you go. Just in the nick of time, he’s still warm, even. A little the worse for wear.”
The six newcomers stared down at the body in silence.
BLOOD OF THE FALLEN
Dar could do nothing to intervene as the worm seized the marshal—taking the fate that it had intended for him, he knew—and lifted him into the air. The fighter did the only thing he could do, slamming the magical hammer hard into the worm’s body at the joint between two of its body segments. The dense hide cracked under the force of the impact, but that didn’t stop the worm from swallowing its captive a few seconds later.
Dar knew that he would be next. He could run, but he already knew that the worm could catch him. The thing was a demon from the darkest pit, and it seemed invulnerable, too huge to seriously hurt. But to Dar’s mind, the worm represented all of what Rappan Athuk had done to him, all of the vileness and horror and sheer evil of this place.
So he kept smashing at it. His wild blows glanced off its body as often as they connected, but its body was already deeply indented at two places where the fighter had focused his attacks. The worm was also showing other signs of heavy wear. The centipedes had done considerable damage, and the last one was still worrying its flank on the far side. And while Dar could not see it from his current vantage, Varo had done his share as well, pouring negative energy into its body from a pair of potent inflict wounds spells.
The fighter glanced over his shoulder, and saw the worm lift the limp form of the second centipede, shaking the destroyed vermin from its stinger. Dar already knew how much that deadly spear hurt; his breastplate was caved in from the first hit he’d taken, and his chest burned. It was likely that its poison was tearing through his bloodstream this very minute, slowly killing him.
“So be it,” he snarled, the words slurred. He’d cracked his jaw when the worm’s initial charge had knocked him roughly down. He could barely see the stinger, a black shaft in the surrounding darkness, but he tensed, knowing it was coming.
The stinger appeared out of nowhere, darting so fast that there was no chance for him to focus on it and respond. Instinct replaced thought, instinct and training that together brought the hammer around, backed by the fighter’s considerable, if depleted, strength.
The head of the hammer struck the sting, and shot the entire hard shaft with the force of a catapult into the worm’s body. The rigid tip became a projectile that tore through thirty feet of worm, shredding tissue, before it lodged deep inside its body. The force of its momentum was enough to knock Dar sprawling yet again. This turned out to be fortuitous for the fighter, for the worm started gyrating madly, its body slamming onto the ground hard where he’d been standing a moment before. The last centipede went flying, only to dissolve into wisps of nothing before it hit the ground. Dar staggered to his feet and somehow managed to get free of it before it crushed him with its violent movements. Retreating to the far side of the cavern, he saw Varo already there.
“The marshal?” Dar asked, knowing that the question was idiotic as soon as he asked it. He’d seen the creature swallow Tiros, and for all the marshal’s determination, no mortal man could have survived that.
“Dead,” Varo said, confirming what he already knew.
They watched the worm as its death throes began to weaken. It took the better part of two minutes for it to finally stop moving, and even then, its body continued to twitch as they approached it.
“The sounds of this confrontation will draw every creature within a league,” Varo said, as Dar recovered his greatsword, and walked over to the body of the monster.
“This needs doing,” Dar said, hacking a long opening in the creature’s body. It took another minute; although it was easier to hit when it wasn’t moving, the worm’s hide was still incredibly thick. But the fighter kept at it until he’d severed the worm nearly in two.
It took longer for him to find what he was looking for. As Varo watched, he dragged a heavy, limp form from the worm’s innards.
The cleric came over to take a look, even though it was obvious that there was nothing that he could do. Velan Tiros was barely even recognizable as human. Acid from the worm’s stomach had eaten away much of the flesh covering his face, leaving a bloody mess.
“May your gods take you home, marshal,” the cleric said softly, as he laid his blanket over the dead man’s ruined face.
Dar hadn’t lingered. Another minute passed, until finally he emerged, himself looking rather the worse for wear, his clothes slick with the worm’s blood, and seared from the acids of its insides.
And holding Valor in his hand.
“What about his magic glove?” Dar asked.
Varo checked Tiros’s right hand. “Destroyed. And I don’t imagine we’ll get much from his pack, either.” The cleric did find that the marshal’s magical throwing axe had survived his ordeal, so he handed that to the fighter. Dar took the weapon, wiped some of the gunk from the blade, and calmly tucked it into his belt.
Varo looked intently at the fighter. “Are you all right?”
Dar didn’t respond for a long moment. “Let’s get out of here. As you said, something else will probably come by and try to kill us any time now.”
As if on cue, they heard noises coming from the direction of the main cavern. Looking in that direction, they saw what looked like a light source approaching from around the leading edge of the cavern wall to the left.
“Someone’s coming,” Varo said quietly.
“Well, let’s go see what it is then,” Dar said. Still holding Tiros’s magical sword, he and the cleric walked to the end of the worm, and waited.
They didn’t have to wait long. The light source resolved into a burning flame that came from the end of a quarterstaff. The staff was held by a man who was in the later years of middle age, by the look of him. He was accompanied by a party of travelers, six in all. Nearly all of them were clad in armor of black chain links, which tended to blend into the surrounding shadows, making it slightly uncomfortable to look at them directly. Four were men, including the staff-bearer. Two of the men were humans, heavily armed and carrying themselves with the air of trained warriors. The last was a dwarf, a squat but muscled figure wrapped in a dark cloak, and carrying an odd black metal weapon that had an axe blade on one end, and a spear-head on the other.
The men surrounded a pair of women, both human, but otherwise of little similarity. One was clad in black armor like the others, with short-cropped raven hair, and bearing a longspear among other weapons. The other was fair, with shoulder-length hair so pale as to be almost white. She too held a spear, a much shorter one, but unlike the other she did not carry a martial air about her. If anything, she seemed to bear a deep abiding sense of peace about her, tinged with a hint of melancholy.
The party of newcomers caught sight of the worm and halted. Varo remained silent, but Dar came forward, crossing his arms across his chest. He still held Valor at the ready.
The members of the other party saw him. The staff-bearer leaned over and whispered something to one of the men, a tall warrior with a longsword at his hip. The six came forward, the expressions on their faces anything but friendly.
“That’s far enough,” Dar said. “What do you want?”
The man that the staff-bearer had spoken to came forward. “We have come for Marshal Velan Tiros,” he said.
For a few seconds a silence stretched out between the two groups. Then, finally, Dar laughed, but it was a grim sound, thick with irony.
“Did I say something funny?” the warrior asked. He seemed as tense as a coiled spring, and the others behind him were equally prepared for what looked like a looming confrontation.
“The gods hate us!” the fighter exclaimed, turning and throwing up his hands. The newcomers shared a wary look, but Varo quickly came forward, and raised his hands in propitiation.
“We are not your enemies,” he said to them.
“Where is Tiros?” the warrior responded, his voice as sharp as a razor’s edge. “Your friend holds his sword, and I warn you...”
“He’s right over here,” Dar said. He walked over to Tiros’s body, and pointed down to the corpse. “Here you go. Just in the nick of time, he’s still warm, even. A little the worse for wear.”
The six newcomers stared down at the body in silence.
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