The Doomed Bastards: Reckoning (story complete)

[Lazybones]

Don't worry, we'll get back to the Doomed Bastards eventually.

Also, in my writing this month I reached a point in the story where things were set at a pretty dramatic fork, and I kept going back and forth on which way I wanted it to go. So I've decided to pose the question to you, the readers of this story. When we get there, I'll post a poll thread to gauge your thoughts. I'll go ahead and write a few chapters down each path so that I don't lose too much time in resuming the story.

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Chapter 37

A BETTER UNDERSTANDING


At the Seer’s comment, Jasek glanced back, but instead of the wizard’s smirk, his eyes were drawn to the expression on Ghazaran’s face. The cleric’s features remained utterly cool, but there was something in his eyes, an intensity, that sent a cold chill down the thief’s spine. For a moment, he thought that the cleric would go in after the Duke himself, but other than a slight clenching of his fists, he made no move.

He turned back, unable to resist watching the warrior’s end. But to his surprise, Aerim was still fighting, still alive. Bloody wounds covered his upper torso, and as he watched, a blade took his left leg out from under him. That should have ended it right there, but as Jasek watched in amazement Aerim lurched forward, ducking under a sweeping blade that would have taken him in the neck, leaping off his good leg, twisting in mid-air out of the path of a second blade. Another hit him in the torso as he reached the apogee of his leap, but he was already through, and it knocked him forward rather than back into the trap. He spun around and fell, but rolled forward, and came up into a crouch, breathing heavily.

“Take us across,” Ghazaran commanded. The five of them pressed close around the Seer, who invoked his magic, opening a dimension door that took them far down the passage, ahead of Aerim and well past the area of risk. Navev followed a few moments later.

Gesturing for Falah and Parzad to watch the corridor ahead—it bent around another corner to the left after a short distance further—Ghazaran turned to Aerim. He offered no aid as the Duke pulled himself to his feet. He had suffered grievous wounds, but they had already witnessed how quickly he healed.

“That was a foolish and unnecessary risk,” the cleric said. “With the resources at our disposal, we would have found a way to get across.”

Aerim fixed the cleric with his usual hard stare. “Perhaps now we each understand the other,” he said. Grimacing slightly as he put weight on his injured leg, he walked past the priest without another word, heading down the corridor toward the bend. When he walked past the Seer, his hand suddenly shot out. His palm smacked hard into the wizard’s cheek, hard enough to knock him off his feet. The Seer fell to the ground, stunned; his stoneskin had protected him from serious injury, but the suddenness of the attack had caught him off guard.

After a second, fury replaced surprise, and he lifted his hands, beginning the somatic gestures needed for a spell.

Aerim merely looked down at him, with less emotion than if the Seer had been a stone he’d inadvertently dislodged. The wizard hesitated, looking at the others. No one made any move to interfere. The Seer snarled and pushed himself back to his feet, but by the time he’d turned back to the Duke, Aerim had already turned away and was walking toward the bend in the passage.

The others followed. Parzad and Falah lingered behind, waiting for their master, but they went on around the corner after a nod from Ghazaran, leaving him and the wizard alone for a moment. The Seer looked back at the cleric, and his eyes narrowed dangerously. Then he turned and followed after the rest of the group.

The cleric looked back once more at the deadly storm of spinning blades, and then turned and followed them.

The bend in the passage was followed by only a few dozen strides before it culminated in another of the mithral vault doors. Like the others they had encountered thus far, this one had a wheel-lock to operate it on this side; like the others it had been designed to prevent egress, not entry. Jasek was already scanning the door for hidden traps or other threats; as the Seer and Ghazaran rejoined the group he nodded to Falah that he could begin to open it.

The door, like the others, took considerable effort to open, but the Razhuri fighter kept at it, twisting the wheel in a ponderous but consistent motion. When the locking mechanism finally released, the door began to swing outward, revealing a vast, dimly lit space beyond.

“By the gods,” Jasek said, the words drawn from him without conscious thought.

The chamber was larger by an order of magnitude than anything they had encountered thus far. The place was irregularly shaped, a huge cavern that stretched onward for almost two hundred feet, its far end a vague vista in the distance. The light came from everywhere and nowhere at once, a dim shimmering that suffused the very air itself. It was not enough to clearly distinguish many details, but there was one feature that caught their attention right away, and which had provoked Jasek’s curse.

It stood facing away from them, looking out into the room. The statue was massive, fifty or sixty feet tall from the bottom of its feet to the top of the sword it held outstretched above it. The depiction was of a winged man, carved with armor in an archaic style, a breastplate and greaves to cover the arms and legs, like one of the gladiators of the ancient days. Even facing away from them, they could all feel the presence of it, something in the stone that stood watching, waiting.

“A guardian,” the Seer said.

“It is not watching for us,” Ghazaran replied. As they moved forward, cautiously, their lights revealed more than the chamber’s dim glow had hidden. The walls to either side of them were carved with intricate detail, dominated with deep reliefs of armored men, warriors in stone that marched around the perimeter of the room. Those carvings seemed to extend across the length of the cavern. Most of the cavern was slightly lower than the area around the entry; the floor rose as it approached them, forming a platform of sorts upon which the huge stone angel stood sentry.

Their eyes were continuously drawn to that sentinel, dominating the room. They could all feel something from it, a sense of power in waiting, anticipating something that might happen in the next minute, or not for a thousand years. They moved forward slowly, giving its huge feet a wide berth.

It was Ozmad who finally awakened them to the danger. “The watchers stir,” the elf said. At first they all stared back up at the angel, but the huge statue had not moved. But the noise of stone grinding alerted them to what the elf had sensed, and they looked back down to see the stone warriors stepping out of the reliefs in the walls. Each stood over nine feet tall, and they shook the ground with their movements. There was a full score of them, each stepping into formation as they pulled away from the wall.

And they were fast, faster than men, the sound of their footfalls melding into a cacophony of noise that filled the chamber, building and echoing until it pounded at their senses like a hammer.

Aerim’s shout sounded over that din. “FALL BACK!” he yelled, but even as they started to retreat, the charging horde swept over them.

 

[Faren]

That was awesome. After that scene,
Duke Aerim> Vin Diesel.

 

[Lazybones]

Chapter 38

THE STONE LEGION


They came on so quickly, that the defenders barely had time to ready their weapons before the leading edge of the golem charge hit them.

Aerim was in the forefront, and he took a blow across his chest that would have toppled a normal man, even in heavy armor. But the Duke merely grunted, staggering backwards but recovering quickly. A second golem came around the first and lunged at him, but he met it with a powerful swing of his blade. The enchanted steel sang off the golem’s body, and shards of stone went flying from the impact. The golem swept a fist at him, but he was already falling back, and the monster’s attack hit only empty air.

More golems came up the opposite site of the platform, around the far side of the huge stone angel. Falah stepped forward to block the path of the leading foe toward Ghazaran and the other casters, but he paid for it as the creature smashed into him. The Razhuri was a tough fighter, but the golem outweighed him by a factor of ten, and he was flung roughly back, bouncing hard on the floor and rolling to a stop a good fifteen feet away. Dazed by the force of the collision, he nevertheless had kept his grip on his sword, and he immediately started to come to his feet.

The golem that had hit him kept on coming, flanked by another to each side. But before they could reach the rest of the group black tendrils erupted from the floor, twining around the legs of the stone warriors. At once the temperature plummeted. Navev’s chilling tentacles only partially hindered the golems, their mass and strength allowing them to tear free of their clinging grasp. But even a few seconds’ delay gave the companions time to fall back to the vault door.

“Duke Aerim!” Ghazaran yelled. The Duke was continuing to give ground, but now three golems were pressing him, crowding in on each other as they delivered strike after strike. Somehow, Aerim had kept both his footing and his position, subtly adjusting his path of retreat so that the golems could not surround and overwhelm him. He had delivered a second hit on the one he’d first engaged, and deep cracks covered its body, but the golem paid no heed to the damage.

The lead golem on the other side of the platform pushed through the last of the chilling tentacles on the edge of Navev’s invocation, and moved forward to intercept the Duke. Another had made its way around Aerim, moving along the wall, and it lunged forward at the closest target, which happened to be Navev. Jasek, a few steps closer to the door, saw it coming and shouted a warning, but the undead warlock merely turned and impassively watched the two thousand pounds of stone death rushing toward it. The thief hesitated only an instant, then turned and darted toward the mouth of the passage, the round opening gleaming with the ring of bright mithral set into the surrounding stone. The Seer was already trying to pull the heavy door shut, but he was either waiting for the rest of them, or having difficulty swinging it on its massive recessed hinges.

There was a massive noise as the golem charging Navev reached his target, and brought its massive fists down. The mummy had made no move to evade, but in the last instant there had been a black flash of energy, and the golem’s strike passed harmlessly through the warlock, striking the floor with enough force to open a long crack in the ancient stone. The floor was of the same odd stone as the rest of the complex, and almost at once the damage began to repair itself, the jagged opening slowly knitting back together. The golem leaned precipitously forward, passing through the image left behind by the warlock’s dimensional shift, but it quickly recovered, resuming its charge forward.

They had almost all won back to the doorway, all save Aerim, who now found his route to the escape blocked by the golem that had escaped the chilling tentacles. He did not have time for hesitation; several golems were on his heels, and it was not clear how even he could withstand their combined assault.

Ghazaran looked at Ozmad, who had watched the entire battle with dispassionate observation, falling back to the doorway as though he were on a feastday stroll. “We need him,” the cleric said.

The elf waved a hand, and a black slick formed upon the ground directly in front of the golem advancing to block Aerim. The stone warrior’s foot slid out from under it, and it plummeted forward, directly toward Aerim. The Duke, seeing two thousand pounds of stone come crushing down toward him, leapt forward, diving under the falling golem. He landed on the edge of Ozmad’s grease effect and slid forward, his heavy armor scraping on the smooth floor. He was up even before his momentum had fully eased. The golems pursuing were only a step behind him, barely delayed by having to hurdle or bypass their fallen companion. But the door, persuaded by the combined efforts of the Seer, Jasek, and Parzad, was swinging shut, and as Aerim surged forward, turning his body to slide through the narrowing gap, it slid back into its threshold like a cork being thrust into a bottle. Falah reached for the heavy wheel that would reseal it.

But before he could work the mechanism, the door shuddered, and creaked back open a few inches. Falah pulled at the wheel, but he may as well have been trying to stop an avalanche.

The door groaned alarmingly on its hinges as it swung open another half-foot. Several sets of stone fingers were visible around the edges.

“Oh, we’re screwed,” Jasek said, to nobody in particular.

 

[Richard Rawen]

WUNDERBAR!
Really enjoying the characters! Love the bad-guy party conflicts, and I'm hoping the 'fallen' knight will redeem himself? I can hope.

 

[Lazybones]

Chapter 39

THE STAND


The door creaked open wider, slowly, with a noise like the scream of a thousand dying animals. The golems must have bent the door on its hinges in their initial forcing of it, but even solid mithral could not withstand their combined strength. A dozen stone hands were now visible around the periphery of the door, forcing it wider.

The companions drew back. “Now where do we go, O fearless leader?” the Seer said to Ghazaran. “Or have you forgotten the hall of spinning blades?”

Ghazaran’s expression cracked, just slightly, betraying a hint of uncharacteristic anger. As if to echo that unexpected burst of emotion, Parzad shifted into position behind the wizard. But before the cleric could respond, Aerim, still somewhat battered from the punishment he’d absorbed from the golems, stepped forward to face the door. The Duke scanned the corridor peering up at the vaulted ceiling, making a full circuit with his eyes down the walls, finally stopping at his feet. He nodded to himself. Taking up his great blade, he drew it hard across the floor in front of him. Sparks rose up as the metal deeply etched the stone. The magical rock quickly healed the damage done to it, but Aerim was no longer looking, his attention was focused upon the door.

“Here we stand,” he said, simply.

The opening in the doorway was now a good five feet across; as they watched, a golem thrust itself into the gap, using its body as a wedge to force the opening wider. The hinges protested alarmingly, and then there was a series of loud pops, like a hammer striking an anvil. The door fell open, slamming to the ground with an echoing crash.

Behind it was an awful lot of stone warriors.

“My magic will be of no use against these,” the Seer warned, from the rear of the group. Ghazaran had come forward, and he touched Aerim, healing his wounds. Falah had taken up a position at the Duke’s side, slightly behind him. He’d put away his khopesh, instead arming himself with the scimitar they’d found guarded by the prismatic spheres in the gallery above. He had not yet used the weapon, but the Seer had pronounced it possessed of a potent magic, and in these close quarters it was less likely to interfere with the Duke’s greatsword.

Ozmad added his own support, infusing the Duke with a bear’s endurance spell. The elf withdrew calmly as the first of the golems surged forward into the passage. The things were so big that only one of them could fit easily into the corridor at a time, although the others pressed in behind, waiting for an opportunity to join in the fray.

Aerim merely waited behind his now-invisible line. As the golem came within reach, he fell into a defensive stance, his sword held straight up like a lance. The long blade did not so much as quiver.

The golem had reach, but even as it struck Aerim pivoted and smashed his sword across its body, striking a stylized stone greave with enough force to drive a crack through its entire arm. In turn he took a glancing blow that nearly knocked him off balance, but Falah was there to steady him. Aerim sprang forward off the fighter, driving his sword in a violent series of attacks that left massive cracks crossing the golem’s frame. The construct countered with another blow that rang hard off Aerim’s left shoulder, but the Duke did not yield before its assault. As it swung its other arm around to follow up he hit it again, striking its arm near the first crack, and finishing the work of destroying the limb. The golem’s entire arm flew forward, bouncing off the wall and skittering to a halt at Jasek’s feet. The golem did not long survive the loss; Aerim’s next hit was a powerful thrust that drove into the meeting point of two of the long cracks covering its torso, and as the sword penetrated the thing it began to collapse in a rain of debris.

Even as the golem disintegrated, two more of the guardians pressed forward, crushed together in the narrow confines of the passage, seeking to overwhelm the Duke through sheer mass and inertia. Aerim just had enough time to resume his stance, and as the pair met him he drove forward, smashing his sword down into the leg of the one on his left. The other lowered both fists and thrust forward, but Falah had his flank, and while the blow from his scimitar did little in the way of damage, it diverted the golem enough to spoil its attack.

The fighters’ rough breaths had started to form white plumes in front of their mouths. Behind the attacking pair, more chilling tentacles had emerged from the walls and floor, wrapping around the arms and legs of the golems lined up around the ruined door. The golems made no move to evade, intent upon their goal.

Aerim and Falah were forced back slowly, each step hard won by powerful blows given and absorbed. Falah’s jaw was a broken mess where a glancing hit had crushed the side of his helmet against his face; blood poured down his chest, and sprayed out as he fought for breath. Aerim was absorbing even more punishment, but Gharazan and Ozmad had both come up behind him, and as he fell back, they were there to infuse him with healing power and magical defenses. Ozmad protected him with another ward, a displacement spell that caused his outline to shift and distort. Thus bolstered, Aerim surged back forward into the fray, ducking under a sweeping arm and laying into the more damaged golem with a series of violent blows. Even in the confined space, confronted by two foes that greatly overpowered him in size and strength, Aerim fought like a banshee, wielding his huge sword as through it was a wooden switch. A second golem crumbled, forming a low mound of debris that spread across the width of the passage.

But the golems kept coming. They were fast, too fast, and as the companions gave ground, they tore free of Navev’s chilling tentacles and came on. Each of the golems was covered now with a rime of frost, and bits of ice cracked off their bodies as they moved.

The rest of the companions were able to offer little aid to the fighters holding back the stone tide. Parzad had taken a glowing crystal out of his pouch, and there was a look of solid concentration on his flat features, but there was no obvious result to his efforts. The Seer remained at the rear of the group, tentative, as though debating whether to hazard the corridor of spinning blades once more. Jasek had his sword out, but he obviously knew that his skills would be of limited use should Aerim or Falah fall.

Falah was moving lethargically, his reflexes slowing in a way that went beyond mere fatigue. The golems were doing something to the defenders; Jasek began to show it as well, the thief sagging as he leaned against the tunnel wall. Of those in the front, only Aerim seemed unaffected, as he met the next golem in a violent exchange of sword and stone. He won that exchange, and the golem fell back into the one behind it, coming apart as cracks crawled and expanded across its body.

The Duke started to lift his sword back into his defensive stance, but the next golem in line came on too quickly, thrusting through the crumbling remains of its fellow. The litter of stone debris covering the floor did not hinder it, and clouds of dust rose up under its tread as it stepped forward and delivered a truly massive blow upon Aerim. The Duke was knocked back, and his sword clattered loudly upon the floor as it fell from his suddenly limp hands. He landed in a crouch, his left arm dangling uselessly from his side, broken, his lips twisted into a rictus.

The golem surged forward to exploit its advantage. Falah stepped into its path to stop it, but the construct caught him with a solid backhand across the front of his face. His helmet saved his brains from being splashed across the wall, but the blow launched him flying off his feet. Spinning backward, he flipped heels over head and caromed off the wall before landing face-down in a heap upon the floor.

Despite being in obvious agony, and ignoring his broken arm, Duke Aerim reached out his good hand for his sword. But before he could reach it, the golem’s huge foot landed on the blade, pinning it against the floor under two thousand pounds of stone. The granite warrior loomed over him, its fists coming up to finish what it had started.

 

[Lazybones]

Chapter 40

THE POUNDING


As the golem slammed its fists down toward Aerim, Ozmad stepped forward to meet it. The elf looked almost pathetic as he lifted his slender hands, but even as he moved he began to... change. His body swelled, his arms growing thicker and longer as they rose up to meet the golem’s attack. His face also transformed, his delicate elven features replaced by an almost bestial, fearsome visage. His skin deepened in shade to a deep blue, and tufts of red hair erupted from his skin in dozens of places. His billowing garments became instantly tight, but the cloth expanded to cover, bulging with the bulk of huge muscles and long limbs. Finally, a pair of horns emerged from his forehead, black shafts that ended in twisting points.

The ogre mage caught the golem’s wrists in his hands, absorbing the force of its attack with a mere grunt. The two stood there for a moment, locked in a battle of strength for which they were apparently closely matched. The golem still had a significant advantage in terms of weight, but Ozmad held his ground, his muscles swollen with magically-enhanced strength.

Behind him, Ghazaran drew Aerim out of the fray, while Parzad used his psionic abilites to slide the unconscious Falah back down the rubble-strewn passage. There wasn’t much more space left to retreat; the bend of the corridor was only a few paces behind them, now, and the deadly stretch of spinning blades lay not far beyond that.

The stalemate between Ozmad and the golem had only lasted for a second or two, but another golem was already starting to push around them, and a third was adding its weight to the first by pushing hard against its back. Suddenly the ogre mage yielded, releasing his foe and stepping quickly back. The golem bent almost double as its fists slammed into the floor, striking just inches from Ozmad’s feet; his boots had resized with him, but clearly weren’t up to providing protection against that kind of blow, had it connected.

The golem, still moving with magically enhanced speed, reacted quickly, but Ozmad was faster. The ogre reached to its belt and drew out its mattock, which looked tiny in his huge fist, but almost instantaneously the weapon began to grow as well, extending until it was almost twice the size of Aerim’s sword, the shaft nearly as long as that of a spear, only several times as thick. Despite the crowded quarters the ogre wielded it as effectively as the Duke had his blade, lifting the huge weapon easily and driving the hooked end down into the golem’s shoulder. The blade caught like a shovel biting into earth, and a huge chunk of the creature, including its right arm, came away as he yanked down on it.

The golem was in poor shape now, but its companion took advantage to push past and attack, driving a solid punch into the ogre’s flank. The blow should have punished even a foe as large and powerful as the ogre, but Ozmad merely grunted and reversed its weapon, taking off half the golem’s face with a two-handed strike. Within the confines of the corridor Ozmad could not manage the wide swings that had been so effective against the stone trees earlier, but the short, curt strikes he was unleashing seemed hardly less deadly. The one-armed golem he’d just crippled lunged forward to attack with its remaining fist, but he slammed the mattock into its side at the hip. The limb gave, and as it fell it crumbled into rubble.

The temperature in the corridor was below freezing, now; Navev’s chilling tentacles filled the corridor from end to end, and the outer shells of the golems were starting to crack as the supernatural chill took deep hold of their bodies.

Aerim and Falah were both on their feet again, if still sorely hurt, but there was nothing for them to do but watch as Ozmad destroyed one golem after another. The ogre mage took hit after hit, but his own wards and magical protections absorbed a good deal of the attacks, and as soon as he’d stabilized Falah, Ghazaran took up position directly behind Ozmad, touching the back of one leg repeatedly with a healing wand. The stone warriors did not relent, and soon the mound of debris was the size of a low wall, clogging the passage and impeding the movement of the next ranks. But still the golems came, their skin cracking as they tore free from the tentacles, leaving flakes of frost and shattered bits of stone in their wake.

It was some time later, no more than minutes, certainly, although it felt like much longer to those standing in the corridor. By the time that the noise of the golems grew still, and the last crumbled into debris, they were all pale and shivering with cold, all save Ozmad, who looked like a demon with his hide covered in stone dust that was caked with blood where he’d absorbed blows hard enough to break his skin. Navev had dismissed the tentacles, but it still felt like the interior of a meat locker within the confines of the passage.

Ghazaran threw down his wand, its power utterly depleted. “My remaining healing resources are... limited,” the cleric said.

“We need... to rest,” the Seer said. His breath came out in white plumes in front of him, and he trembled as though it had been he who had held the line against the golems.

“We cannot stop,” Ozmad said. The ogre mage lifted his mattock, which began at once to shrink back to its usual diminutive size. Tucked back into his belt, it looked almost like a child’s toy rather than a weapon.

Jasek stepped forward and looked up at the ogre mage. He said quietly, “Not that I want to agree with... him,” he said, indicating the Seer with a jut of his elbow, “but we’ve all taken a beating, especially you and the Duke there. I can’t feel my arms and legs, and that’s not going to help when it comes time when you need my skills. We need to take a breather, find someplace to hole up for a while, catch our breath.”

The ogre shook his head. “The Duke and myself will recover quickly from our wounds. As for the rest of you, Ghazaran will do what he can once we are free of this corridor, but we cannot linger long. Look for yourself.”

He gestured toward the mounds of rubble, and as they collectively turned to look they could all see what he meant. The heaps of shattered stone, its odd multicolor shadings matching those in the walls and floor, were beginning to diminish. On closer examination it could be seen that the rubble from the golems was slowly seeping into the floor, absorbed back into the substance of this place.

“What’s happening?” Jasek asked.

“I imagine if we continue forward, we will see the stone guardians slowly reforming,” Ghazaran said.

Ozmad nodded. “Indeed. We must be past their cavern by the time that they are reborn.”

“And when we return?” the Seer asked.

“The Ravager will open a path that anyone will be able to follow,” Ghazaran said. Ozmad had already started forward, his huge boots crunching on the rubble as he trod forward toward the gaping opening where the mithral door had stood at the end of the corridor. The others, after a moment’s hesitation, followed after him.

 

[Nightbreeze]

By the way, I am pretty sure that the anti-heroes, did a pretty nice favor to Dar&company. Lazybones, correct me if I am wrong,, but the good party seems pretty ill-suited to fight against a horde of golems.

 

[Richard Rawen]

By the way, I am pretty sure that the anti-heroes, did a pretty nice favor to Dar&company. Lazybones, correct me if I am wrong,, but the good party seems pretty ill-suited to fight against a horde of golems.

Except... the DB's have to negotiate the sunken elevator yet, let alone any other hazards in the way. Even if the spirits clear a path, from what the Anti-heroes saw, the golems may very likely be reformed by the time the DB's reach them... I wonder if the Treant-golems have the same properties... even if not there are several of them unharmed in the way yet.
I'm thinking that the spirits will have to intervene or the DB's will not catch up =o(

 

[Lazybones]

Both of you are right in that the DBs are going to have a tough time of it, catching up. We'll get back to their side of the story tomorrow.

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Chapter 41

MEETING AMURRU


The chamber with the giant statue was as it had been before—or at least, nearly so, for their eyes were drawn to the niches in the walls where the stone guards had once stood in relief. More than one of them glanced up to the massive angel, with its spread wings and huge sword lifted higher above them than the spire of a castle tower. But the stone guardian, if in fact that was what it was, did not stir for them. Perhaps Ghazaran had been right, and it had been set here not to watch for them, but for the thing that lay deeper within this complex, the thing they had come here to free.

They made their way across the huge cavern in silence, even their footfalls muted on the odd stone of the floor. There was only one break in the quiet, as Jasek drew their attention to one of the alcoves, where they could all see a pair of stone feet. Once again, Ghazaran had been right; the warders were reforming.

They pressed on, and while the decorative carvings continued around the entire expanse of the chamber, they encountered no more empty—or mostly empty—alcoves. What they did find, in a deeply recessed nook on the far wall of the cavern, was another of the mithral vault doors. By now their procedure was familiar, and after both Jasek and the Seer had scanned the portal for mundane and magical hazards, Falah applied himself to the heavy wheel. The faint grinding noise that penetrated through the mithral put them all on edge, and each of them stood ready for anything with spell or weapon.

But this door opened without incident, revealing another corridor beyond. There was a dim but flickering glow of natural light that reached them from down its length, where it appeared that the corridor opened onto another chamber a good fifty feet or so ahead.

With a brief look back, Jasek started ahead. He saw little in the way of reassurance in the faces of his companions; more and more, it was as if Ghazaran and Ozmad were seeing beyond what was here, their attention focused on something beyond his perception. Compared to them, the face of the Seer, his eyes betraying a mix of avarice, hatred, and mistrust, was almost reassuring. Those feelings, at least, he could understand. Falah and Parzad were not worth mentioning, as they were mere appendages of the cleric; and as for Navev...

The thief suppressed a shudder, and led them forward.

The chamber at the end of the corridor was lit by flames that burned in stone pots carved into the walls around the perimeter. They had to be magical, as Jasek smelled no smoke in the air, and the place was filled with an almost preternatural chill that pressed through his clothes and skin and made itself felt in his bones. Opposite them several curving steps led onto a dais, where another dark passage was visible, flanked by a pair of rune-carved stone pillars.

They were not the only inhabitants of the chamber.

The guardians made no motion as they entered, but almost by reflex Jasek stepped aside, into the shadows under one of the stone fire-bowls. Ozmad did not hesitate, stepping boldly forward, Ghazaran and his followers almost at his heels. They examined the figures standing in niches along the walls to either side as intently as the thief had.

There were ten, five to either side, forming an honor guard of two rows that faced out into the chamber, at them. One glance was enough to show that they were dead, desiccated figures wrapped in strips of ancient linen, bulging here or there where a bone protruded from ancient flesh. Jasek did not need to look back to know that they were echoes of the shambling figure that was just now appearing at the mouth of the passage behind them. The mummies wore breastplates of hammered bronze in a style that the thief suspected had not been seen in a thousand years, and each carried a huge sword, held in both fists before them, the blades forming long curves that almost touched the walls behind them at their ends.

Ghazaran muttered something that Jasek couldn’t quite hear. Ozmad looked down at the cleric, and there seemed to be something communicated between them, a signal that Jasek couldn’t quite read. The thief saw that the cleric had taken out the bundle of leather scrollcases that he’d stolen from the sun priests in Camar; according to what Ghazaran had said, there was powerful magic inscribed upon those old parchments. Falah and Parzad both tensed, expecting trouble.

The ogre stepped forward, and spread his arms wide. “Show yourself, caretaker!” the ogre shouted, his deep voice echoing through the chamber.

It happened so quickly that Jasek blinked and he—it—was just there, standing atop the dais between the pillars. If the mummies radiated a sense of great age, this thing was seeped in it. It bore no wrappings, so they could see how its dried flesh clung to its bones like an almost sheer cloth. It looked so frail that they could not see how it could stand, let alone move about under its own power, but it was clad in heavy armor, a suit of archaic half-plate fashioned from scaled dragonhide rather than metal, the whole covered in a robe that was little more than strips of cloth. It bore a shaft of flanged bronze as a weapon, a light mace that it carried like a scepter. When it spoke, Jasek started in surprise; the thing’s jaw barely moved, but he could hear its voice as though it was standing right in front of him.

“You seek to unleash destruction upon the world,” it said. “That cannot be permitted.”

Ozmad opened his mouth to speak, but before the ogre could respond to the creature’s challenge, a wracking pain erupted through Jasek’s body. He fell back against the support of the wall as invisible daggers stabbed deep into him, with no way to evade or dodge the attack. He saw that he was not the only one; the others were clearly suffering the same assault. All save one; Navev just stood there, half-obscured in the darkness of the corridor.

Trying to fight through the pain, Jasek looked up in time to see the mummy guardians flourish their great blades and rush forward to attack.

 

[Lazybones]

Chapter 42

ANOTHER STROLL THROUGH THE FOREST


“Well, this doesn’t look good,” Dar said.

The spacious chamber before them had been decorated to resemble a forest, down to the incredibly faithful depictions of leaves set into the stonework that ran around the perimeter of the place. Almost a dozen huge stone trees had been painstakingly crafted out of the surrounding stone, their highest branches reaching almost to the top of the vaulted ceiling thirty feet above.

The floor was covered with debris, bits and pieces of stone littered about carelessly. They were quick to notice the connection with the gap along the wall where another of the stone trees might have fit in.

“What do you think?” the fighter asked Allera. “Golems?”

“I don’t know,” the healer replied. “There is a strong... presence... here. And blood. There was a battle here, not long past.”

Letellia hovered behind them, her eyes open to things that none of the others could see. “Elementals.”

“Why aren’t they attacking?” Kiron asked.

“Maybe that... Amurru... has commanded them to let us pass,” Maricela suggested.

“Don’t count on it,” Dar said. Zethas had taken a step forward, his head craning nervously at the stone giants all around them, but Dar forestalled him. “Stay here,” he said to all of them. Drawing Justice from its sheath, he started forward across the room.

“Stand ready,” Qatarn ordered his men, unnecessarily, for everyone in the group stood on a razor’s edge, their weapons and magic held prepared on the edge of use. Zethas fingered his bow, an arrow held against the string, half drawn. Only Selaht seemed unaffected by the tense mood, but his penetrating dark eyes missed nothing.

Thus none of them were surprised when one of the trees along the wall suddenly swung its branches down and took a step forward, its lower body splitting apart to form legs, its massive roots acting almost like great splayed feet. Dar, only barely halfway across the room, spun to meet it, but almost immediately the one behind him also started moving, and then others, including a pair flanking the mithral door in the far wall.

“We have to help him!” Kiron shouted. He lifted his sword, but even as the knights and soldiers started forward, Dar turned and yelled at them, “Hold the line!” Recognizing the poor odds, Dar continued his turn and started running back toward the others. But the nearest of the trees was already too close.

“Look out!” Allera yelled, but even if she’d shouted earlier, there was little that Dar could have done to avoid the branch that snapped down like a whip, cracking hard across his back. The blow knocked him forward and down, and he was fortunate to only fall to one knee.

Letellia, her brow furrowed in concentration, cast a spell, conjuring a wall of force that slanted across the room, forming a barrier from floor to ceiling. Three of the stone treants were caught behind the obstacle; they flailed at it with their branches, and for a moment they looked almost frustrated.

But while she’d placed the wall with expert precision, she’d been unable to block off one other besides the one that had hit Dar. That treant surged forward with a sudden burst of speed. Allera, acting quickly, hurled up a repulsion field to stop it, but the invisible barrier did not even faze the creature, and if anything it picked up more speed as it lumbered forward. Likewise Maricela’s beam of searing light dissolved as it struck it, indicating that the stone treants were possessed of considerable resistance of magic.

Dar felt rather than saw the monster coming up fast behind him, and he hurled himself out of its path. The fighter had been only an ancillary target of its rush, but even so one of the heavy roots clipped him across the left thigh, and this time he did go down fully, spinning as his legs were knocked out from under him.

There was nothing that the others could do to help him, for the huge creature kept on going, smashing into the front of their defensive line. Kiron with his knights, and Qatarn with his soldiers, each formed one side of the wedge. The fighters were ready with their weapons, but the treant hit them with the force of a charge of heavy cavalry. Tertius screamed and was launched flying, his sword flipping end over end before it hit the wall near the entrance and clattered loudly to the floor. The fighter did not travel quite so far, but he landed just as hard, and while he was still conscious, he did not get up. The other two watchmen were not struck quite so violently, but both were knocked back, Primus jostled to the side, falling to one knee, while Secundus was spun about so fast that he bounced off of the nearby wall. Only Qatarn held his ground, the huge centurion grunting as a root smacked hard into his gut.

The knights fared little better. Aldos had set his glaive against its charge, but while its momentum drove the curving blade deep into its stone trunk, the force of it knocked him aside as well, and he barely kept his grip on his weapon as he fell to his knees. Yellow fluid spurted from the gash, and where it landed on the knight’s cloak and arm it raised wisps of noxious smoke. Kiron, his big sword flashing, was only barely able to keep from being pinned under the thing, and he yelled a battle cry as he slashed at the roots all around him. Only Petronia avoided being trampled, and that was by falling back as quickly as she could, shielding her face as jagged branches scratched at her armor.

Dar struggled to get up, but before he could do anything, one of the long branches from the first treant wrapped around his body, lifting him into the air. He lashed out with Justice, and a segment of branch, covered in jutting spines like stone fingers, went flying. But more branches were tangled around his legs and torso, and he could not get free.

Trying to keep his orientation as the thing whipped him around, he brandished his sword again, but before he could strike the treant hurled him straight upward, into the ceiling. Air was blasted from his lungs from the force of the impact. He hung there for the barest instant, and then he was falling, the floor rushing up to greet him.

He grimaced at the expected impact, but he did not land as expected. Instead, as he plummeted downward, the treant whipped around another branch. The fighter barely had the time to register what was happening before it struck, batting him out of the air like a man swatting a bug. His sword was knocked out of his grasp, and clattered against the ground. A moment later, he hit high against the wall of force. His journey only then came to an end, as he fell a final eight feet to splat hard upon the floor, his body a maze of hurts from the battering he’d suffered.

He managed to lift his head to see that it was not yet over; the treant was coming his way.