An Epic Hero Story: Book 2 Chapter 40 (Patreon)

The dark wasn’t a problem in this dungeon as it had been in the last. Morlo didn’t even need to banish the shadows himself, just giving Vara and myself the order to do so and watching with no great approval as we each conjured flames behind and ahead of us. 

“Lanks,” Gruin muttered, “why do you even have eyes? They’re useless.” I normally wouldn’t have been taken back by such a barb from him, but this one seemed to have far more venom in it than I was used to. I found myself staring at him, which Gruin apparently noticed. “What the fuck do you want?” he growled.

Before I could do anything stupid, like reply, Morlo cut in with a sharp hiss and gestured our eyes up ahead. There was another wall waiting for us, though this one looked…odd. 

“The floor,” Vara indicated the section she was referring to by shaping her flames in a way I’d not yet learned and revealing a set of deep scrapes on the stonework, “do you see that?”

“It’s…been damaged?” I guessed. Vara gave me one of those incredulous looks, and it only deepened when Morlo seemed just as lost as me.

“It looks like something’s scraping along the stone in a consistent way, right?” she asked. “I’ve worked in carpeted houses, you get marks like that from a door opening. There’s a hidden passage there, there should be a way to open it.”

Vara seemed surprised by how impressed we all were, and Morlo mumbled something about young eyes before probing the air with his hands. I felt what he was doing a moment later, waves of force rolling off him to press blindly at the wall until something gave. A switch.

Just as Vara had guessed, a whole section of stone parted and swung out to reveal a passage.

++”I have my moments.”++

The flames illuminated our way deeper and further into the dungeon. I was certain by then that either the layout was different from the one I’d explored, or it was a vast labyrinth indeed and we’d now come across an entire network we hadn’t encountered in the other. 

“There’s four turns coming up,” Gruin told us all confidently.

“Are you sure?” I asked. He thumped a wall with one closed fist, listened for a moment, then nodded. 

“The Grynkori knows his business,” Morlo assured me, though he didn’t have to. I still remembered our hunt through those damned mines. Even if I hadn’t, he’d have been proven right just minutes later when we found the precise turns Gruin had somehow known would be there. We received further evidence of his sensory prowess when the Grynkori started scowling and shuffling away again. 

This time, I was wise to what was happening.

“If you’ve heard more undead, let us know before running off to pick a fight!” I snapped, genuinely surprised and, more than that, infuriated by his new behaviour. “I don’t care how desperate you are to die, you’re not taking the rest of us with you.”

It was a nasty and mean thing to say, but of all the times I’d indulged in such cruelty I don’t feel bad at all about this one. By my reckoning almost getting me killed in some demented death wish is far nastier and meaner than any retort Gruin got in turn. 

The Grynkori glared back at me, but didn’t cut and run this time. He reluctantly stayed with the group as more shamblers shambled for us. 

Good thing, too, because this time the group had no less than three of those giant undead among them. I suppressed a groan and got down to business.

Morlo helped of course, though the cramped conditions were more limiting for him than I’d feared. He could have chosen to bathe the monsters with enough heat and force to rend them into so much charcoal, except doing that might well have cooked us all alive too as the energy was forced back down the corridor.

Instead he tempered his power and concentrated it tightly on a single one of the giants, loosing a blue-hot jet of fire that struck it square in the chest and burned down, I think, to expose ribs and spinal bone beneath it. The damned undead kept lumbering forwards even with that injury, but was slowed.

Given that its spinal column was currently peeking out at me, I decided that it was just about the perfect opponent for Kyvaine the Fearless, and charged in to heroically put it down like a wounded dog while everyone else focused on the less mangled ones. 

That doesn’t mean I had an easy time of it, mind. It was still about eight feet tall, and its sword alone probably weighed as much as my leg. If I’d been thinking that I’d enjoy parity of strength in this contest, it would’ve been a horribly nasty surprise for me. 

But of course, I hadn’t been. Having fought these creatures before I employed the same darting disengagement I used then, turning blade swings away with skill rather than force and always keeping the feet moving beneath me. That the undead was both slower and weaker than its kin had been a year ago, at least from my perspective, was of no small help, but really I think the main difference was just that I’d gotten a lot more technically sound. 

Somewhere along the way, I’d become an actually good fighter. I put this merit to full advantage, and promptly created the opening to stab the undead right under its chin.

That didn’t kill it, though the burst of Thaumaturgical flames I sent spitting out of my sword tip went a long way. It wasn’t as cold in the dungeon as I might have feared, and shearing a tenth of a degree from my own body’s heat gave my power the kick it needed to send fire hissing out from the monster’s open mouth and nostrils. It shuddered for a moment, then fell heavily at my feet as a steaming mess.

Another victory for Kyvaine. 

But I had two more victories still to seize if I wanted to walk out of this fight. The towering undead lumbered closer for us, Morlo taking one, as easily as his situational constraints would allow, and of course leaving the last to me.

And this one wasn’t already injured.

It seemed eager to show me how much trouble I was in, hurrying forwards and opening things up with a heavy overhand swing that split open the stone floor where I darted back from it. My own retaliatory stab did little but scrape a few metal flakes off its breastplate. Ill-aimed.

Ill-aimed and, it seemed, only serving to encourage the giant undead more. It continued chasing after me with one swing following another, barely a quarter-second between any two and no sign of fatigue. I was used to human, orcish and wretchling opponents tiring when they fought with such vigour. Adjusting to the endless stamina of an undead was painful work.

Not as painful as it would’ve been without my armour though. One especially lucky blow connected almost perfectly with my pauldron, proving the limits of Thaumaturgically worked steel where it pried through the metal plate and nicked my flesh below. Fortunately most of its momentum was exhausted on the steel, and I didn’t feel any heavy bleeding. 

The undead wasn’t quite so lucky when I managed a better-targeted hit after that, opening up its wrist. Had it been a living thing I imagine the blood loss and shock would’ve pried those fingers apart and left its sword to fall free, as things were I had a lot more killing to do before victory would be mine. Confined as I was by the walls, I wasn’t able to use the footwork I normally enjoyed flaunting in such fights. Even so, speed and precision kept me ahead of the undead’s weapon, and my own was chipping away at it one swing after another. 

It helped to have Thaumaturgy of my own. Where I wasn’t able to mortally wound the thing with steel, I quickened the process of mangling its body beyond use with swift bursts of Thaumaturgical flame, or created openings for myself by blasting out waves of force that threw it off-balance and scored opportunities to attack. 

I really wasn’t struggling as much as I might have feared, and actually felt almost robbed. Somehow I’d been fearing these creatures, in the back of my mind, for the better part of a year, feeling them loom over my memories like a Demon made manifest. Here I was fighting one in worse condition than it was, and I was winning easily.

By the time I landed my killing blow, most of the other undead had been dispatched too. Vara and Gruin had combined their abilities to slay the third giant, while Morlo had swept away the smaller ones as Devyne worked to defend him. 

“Bah,” Gruin spat with disgust, “barely a fight at all. And you two ran screaming from the first of these you entered?” He addressed the question to Vara and myself, not bothering to hide his contempt any more than he usually did. 

“We didn’t have Thaumaturgy, or armour, or trained warriors with us,” Vara snapped back. She and Gruin had taken a particular dislike to each other that I’d long since promised myself I wouldn’t get in the way of. Either of them was too wilful for me, both at once would crush me like wheat in a millstone. 

Fortunately, Morlo interrupted that particular clash of wills.

“There’ll be more down here, Grynkori, temper yourself and you can enjoy all the killing you want.”

Gruin didn’t look mollified, and I suspect it was more just a desire to argue with Morlo that had his tongue held fast. I didn’t actually care though because the end result was all the same for me, and we were able to continue deeper into the dungeon without further delays.

Or rather, without further delays caused by our own people. There were plenty more undead to try and slow us, throwing themselves at our weapons as fearlessly as ever. We seemed to have been past the worst of them though. 

But not the worst of the dungeon. The deeper in we went, the more my skin crawled as I remembered just how our last dive had ended. My eyes flickered to Vara’s, and hers to me. Both of us were thinking the same thing, minds turning back to the thing that had chased us out. Would we actually see it this time?

Would we survive it?

The questions were at the front of my mind and burning where they sat, like hot coals held in a tight grip that refused to open up. If nothing else it was a distraction from the purely physical danger. 

But that distraction was doomed to end as soon as we came to the chamber I knew we were heading for. A room nearly identical to the expansive one in which I’d seen that strange carving. 

I saw another one, now. And I felt it tugging at my mind just as the last had. Started moving towards it, hearing Morlo and Vara speaking but not interpreting what it was they said, like my mind was somehow deflecting their words. I moved forwards, held a hand out—

Then Morlo tackled me to the ground, which felt exactly like having an armour-clad Grynkori smash into me at full speed.

Not the most pleasant way to be snapped out of a trance, but apparently having my fight or flight instincts forcibly dialled up to their maximum output was the way to go about doing it. I found myself thrashing in Gruin’s grip before finally coming to, my eyes settling back onto the stone carving, my body trembling.

“What the fuck is that thing?!” I snapped, turning to Morlo.

His face was the most chilling thing I’d seen yet.