B3Ch51-The ruins(Last Sarah Chapter) (Patreon)

By the fourth day the mountain had woken its defenders, and it was crawling with monsters.

They were belly-down under a shelf of rock with everyone else packed in behind them, and the thing in the sky wheeled around again.

Jace and Theo were going at each other across the bond, both of them scared.

There's no cover past this ridge. Theo, fast and tight. It comes down on us here, we're pinned. We break for the treeline while it's looking the other way—

Break for the trees and you're a stain on the snow. Jace said brusquely. Stay down.

We can't just sit here under it, Jace!

Your job is to take hits! My job is to hide! Let me do my job!

The Hospitallers were jammed into the rocks beside the team, and unlike the team they showed it. Two of them had their faces in their hands as they tried to melt into the rock around them.

Sarah lay in the middle of it and watched the sky. She wasn't afraid. Everyone around her was — she could feel it pressing in on the bond — but she just wasn't.

The thing was enormous. It looked kinda like a dragon, but it wasn't. Its wingspan threw a shadow that crossed the whole party and kept going, and the snow dimmed under it for a long moment before the light came back. It opened its throat and cried — a sound that started too low to hear and climbed until it rang in her teeth — and banked, and she watched the muscle work under its wings as it turned.

All she could think was how. How does something that big get off the ground? How does it hang there like it weighs nothing? She wanted to be up with it, the whole range dropping away under her and the clouds close enough to put a hand through, and she wanted it so much it startled her.

Then her perk cut through and screamed at her. Stay down. Don't move, don't lift your head, don't leave this rock — leave it now and you die. It had saved her life more often than she could count by now, and she pressed flatter into the snow.

The perk had saved them like that a dozen times in four days. Things they'd never known lived up here kept coming out of the rock and the sky, and every time, it gave them just enough warning to get everyone flat before they got smacked. It had to be the mana. There was no other reason a mountain that had only been dangerous all winter should suddenly be trying this hard to kill them. It was suddenly filled with Wargs, goblins, trolls, kobolds, chimeras, griffins, bugbears, and orcs. They had even crossed what she suspected was a dryad glade, from the deep sense of peace that came over her. It took a real effort of will to leave that fanciful place.

Mira had her Battle Caller running low and steady, threading stay down, don't move, stay down out along the bond and murmuring it aloud to the Hospitallers packed in around them, and where her voice landed the whimpering eased a notch. It came around one more time, low enough that Sarah could count the plates on its underside, and two of Sokha's people pressed their faces into the snow and shook.

Sarah didn't take her eyes off it. She couldn't have if she'd tried.

Then it lost interest. It gave one more cry, tilted a wing, and slid off south down the range in a long unhurried glide, and she watched it go the whole way and hated a little that it left.

It was majestic.

She waited until it was a speck, then a nothing.

"Okay," she breathed. "Jace. Go, scout."

Progress had slowed to a crawl.

There was no walking anymore, not really — just moving from one piece of cover to the next, fast and low, and waiting, and moving again when Jace said it was clear. Open ground was dangerous now. Bands of Blackjaw goblins three hundred strong roamed the passes now, where a month ago you'd have called forty a warband. Trolls the size of the one they'd killed on the first night were just — around, common as boulders, though none of the others had the stone in the head or the beam that came out of it.

None of it was more than they could handle. That was the problem. They could handle it, or at least most of it, one fight at a time. But it would be one fight, and then another fight and then a third, all the way to the Stair and all the way back, and even their own regeneration only closed a wound so fast. Fight enough of them, and the wounds started stacking up faster than the perks could heal them.

Jace slipped off to find the next hole to hide in, and Sokha came up the line to Sarah while the team caught their breath.

"I've been thinking," Sokha said. She kept her voice down out of habit now. "Maybe we turn around. Go back, bring the rest of the Order up, come at the ruins with all of us instead of a dozen."

Sarah didn't answer right away. She'd stopped wanting to argue with Sokha somewhere around the second day — the woman kept her people alive, kept her own head, and never once asked the five of them to slow down for her. And whatever she was doing with Theo, it worked; he came back from the quiet places faster when she was near. Sarah still couldn't say how she managed it. She was just glad someone could.

Mira got there first.

"I'd put money on the rest of your Order having to turn around too," Mira said. "Even at full strength you'd lose people just getting to where we're standing. You have no dedicated scouts. That thing today could've killed every one of us, and all we could've done about it is lie in the snow and hope it wasn't hungry."

Robert had his axe across his knees and didn't lift his head. "Only way anybody reaches those ruins is by sneaking. And we've got one of the best scouts alive doing it for us." He rolled his neck. "We trust Jace. He hasn't done us wrong yet."

Sokha looked at Sarah. It was hers to call.

Sarah thought about it. Sokha had earned that much. Then she nodded.

"He's right." She kept it low. "Your people are strong, Sokha. But they need another couple of months up here, farming perks before they can trade blows with the things that live in it. We're only surviving because of a few choice perks we were lucky enough to get."

Harold's voice went through the back of her head. Keep your perks quiet. All of them, all the time, even from allies.

She looked at the small woman who'd hauled her people through days of this without complaint, and decided to break the rule a little.

"Look."

She pulled up the perk and turned it so Sokha could read it.

 Minor Foresight (Rare)

You feel a threat before it comes. Gives up to seven seconds of warning. The worse the danger, the earlier it lands.

Sokha read it once. Then she read it again, and went very still.

"How," she said. It came out almost angry. "How do you have that? How is that even a perk?"

Behind her, Theo winced.

Sokha rounded on him and smacked him across the arm. "How could you not tell me?"

She paused. "Wait. Did you know I was going to hit you?"

"Don't be mad at him," Sarah said. "I told him to keep it shut."

Sokha threw up a hand. "No — you're right, of course you're right. Everyone counts everyone's perks up here." The schoolteacher was gone, but she looked hungry. "Where did you get that perk?"

Theo opened his mouth, but he shook his head and closed it again. Robert answered for him.

"A bird," Robert said. "Some kind of peregrine, but bigger, and fucking mean. It hunted us a full day — came down out of the sun, hit one of us and was gone before you could turn. Our own regeneration was the only reason none of us died." He shook his head. "It nearly finished all five of us, and we had every advantage we've got. That's not a fight you go looking for. We only killed it because Theo set off an explosive potion two feet from his own chest and knocked it out of the air."

"And it still got back up before I put a second arrow in it," Mira said. "Worst week of my life. We had to hide in this dirty cave with barely any water, and it was so boring." She glanced at Theo. "His too. Five days before he could walk straight."

Theo just sighed. "It was a bad fight, Sokha, but I can show you where we got it if you want after we're done."

The fight had been a joke at their expense — a whole day of the fastest, meanest thing Sarah had ever chased, making fools of all five of them. But the perk they had gotten from it had saved every one of their lives a dozen times since. It had helped that it had upgraded to Rare when they had gotten it. 

Come to me. Quick and quiet. Jace, on the bond. Goblin band coming up the draw. A whole hell of a lot of them, and they're being led by a couple of ugly-looking orcs.

Sarah got to her feet.

"Up," she said. "We're moving."

They moved for two more days like that — hole to hole, Jace out front scouting. The fights they couldn't avoid were short and ugly and never quite the last one. The Hospitallers were as good as their leader had claimed, and she was glad to have them along.

On the sixth afternoon they were tucked into a stand of rock, waiting on Jace to clear the next stretch, when his shock came down the bond and stopped every one of them where they sat.

Jace? Mira, sharp. What is it? What do you see—

I— I don't know. He never showed anything like this. He was stuttering. This place is beautiful. Sarah. You're going to love it.

What about me? Theo put in. Am I going to love it?

It's not a white monster, Jace said. So probably not.

Theo's face fell. My name is not Kyle, he sent, wounded, and Sokha — who couldn't hear a word of the bond and only saw the big man deflate — reached over and patted him on the leg.

Sarah rolled her eyes at every one of them.

Is the way clear? she sent. What can you tell us about the approach?

Jace pulled himself together. Follow the path I marked. It winds a while, until you hit a cut through the rock — rough climb up through it, but stay on it and it spits you out onto a ledge over a little valley. That's where I am. I can see the stairs to the ruins from here. He paused. This key had better be worth all this.

Sarah turned to Sokha. "Pick up your wounded. We're moving."

Sokha's people got the two hurt ones up between them. They still hadn't spent a healing potion on either — no telling what they'd need once they were inside the ruins, and the regen would close the wounds on its own, slow as it was. The two had gone down the day before, off a pack of little goblins with blowpipes that Robert had called gremlins. Sarah didn't care what they were called. Mira had been screaming kill the ugly little things into all their heads on the Battle Caller, and the team had rushed the dart-blowers and run straight into a nest of traps the things had laid. That was where the two Hospitallers caught it. Jace had said they were smarter now. He wasn't wrong.

They moved, following the marks Jace had cut into the trees, until they found the slot in the rock he'd taken. They squeezed through it one at a time and climbed the rough path on the far side, hauling themselves over boulders and passing the wounded up hand to hand, until the walls opened and spat them out onto a wide ledge.

Below them the valley opened up into a sweep of frosty green.

It was some of the most beautiful country Sarah had ever seen. A waterfall came off the far cliff, crystal blue, throwing spray as it fell, and dropped into a wide lake on the valley floor. Something winged turned slow circles out over the water, and a scatter of big birds turned with it. The trees down there were enormous — bigger than the redwood-sized giants they'd gotten used to up here, big enough that the ones by the lake looked like another kind of thing altogether.

And above all of it hung the ruins.

Some old fortress, or a watchtower — she couldn't tell which from here. Its towers stood up over the cliffs at the head of the valley, and even broken they held a clean line of sight for miles down the mountains. Whoever built it had wanted to see anything coming from a long way off.

The giddiness came up in her before she could stop it. This. This was the whole reason she was out here — the map filling in under her hand, new country, things nobody she knew had ever laid eyes on. She wanted to tell Harold about it so badly it was almost a physical thing. He'd love it. He needed something like this, somewhere in all of it — he'd been making waves on the forums, and he was buried, she was sure, trade shut down and a war coming — but still. He should make time for a thing like this. She'd make him.

Robert came up behind her and ran a hand slowly up her back, and she shivered.

"Not a bad view," he said.

She wasn't sure if he meant the valley or her.

"No," she said, quiet. "Not a bad view at all."

She let herself have it for one more breath. Then she made herself look at the way in.

The path to the ruins ran down off the ledge and along the valley wall to the foot of the stairs, and it wasn't empty. Statues stood along it at intervals — she counted four from here, tall figures the weather had worn faceless, set to face out over the valley like they were still watching for something. And the staircase itself, where it climbed the cliff to the towers, was ornate in a way nothing else up here was: carved rails, carved risers, robed figures worked into the stone on both sides all the way up. It was beautiful, and it made the back of her neck crawl. Who had made this? What kind of power had made them abandon it?

Whatever built this had meant it to be walked with respect, or not walked at all.

"Quiet and low," she said. "Those things over the lake haven't seen us, and I want it to stay that way. Sokha — your wounded come with us. Nobody stays up here alone. We get to the foot of the stairs, find cover, and rest before we go up."

They went in twos, hurrying from cover to cover, the two hurt Hospitallers carried low between their people. Twice something crossed the sky over the lake and the whole party pressed into the rock and held still until it was gone.

They reached the foot of the stairs as the light started to go. There was a run of broken wall there, old and furred with moss, that would keep them hidden from the sky. She opened her mouth to set a watch.

Then her perk went off like a bell swung into her skull.

—the statue, the statue, MOVE—

The knight at the foot of the stairwell turned its head and looked at them.

She'd walked right past it. Stone, half again as tall as Theo, a greatsword grounded point-down between both fists. Her heart slammed as it came off its plinth.

"STATUE!" Sarah screamed. "Weapons — Theo, the wounded, NOW—"

Theo was already moving. He got his shield up and his body between the knight and the two men on the ground, and the greatsword came down on him like a dropped wall. He caught it. It drove him to one knee and split the flagstone under his boot, but he held —

— and it was already swinging again. No wind-up, no reset. The knight cut back the other way at head height before Theo had his feet under him, and he threw the shield up on instinct and took it screeching along the rim.

"A little HELP," Theo bellowed.

The statue, it never stopped. It didn't pause between blows the way a living thing had to. One swing poured into the next, the greatsword tracing loops in the air, the knight walking forward into every cut like it had all the time in the world and nowhere better to be.

Sarah came in on its flank and cut at the back of its knee with everything she had — and her sword skated off the stone and left a scratch she could barely see. The shock rang up her arm and into her teeth.

Stone. Of course it was stone.

"Edges don't bite!" she shouted down the line. "Don't blunt your blades on it — ROBERT—"

He'd already worked it out. He stepped in past the greatsword while the knight leaned into Theo's shield, set his feet, and swung the axe two-handed into the knee she'd wasted a cut on. The edge lit with his mana as it came down, and the stone cracked — a hand-span of fracture splitting the joint. Sarah's breath caught. She'd never seen anything take one of Robert's powered cuts and only crack. It should have come off at the knee.

The knight felt it, though — and it didn't turn like a statue. It whipped around fast and Robert ducked gracefully under it and took Robert's next swing full in the chest to do it — a chunk of its breastplate flaking away — the price of getting its own blade back around at him.

That was the second thing. It would trade. It would give up a piece of itself every time, gladly, if the trade put its sword through one of them.

Robert got clear by a hair, the greatsword close enough to lay his coat open.

Mira was already throwing the order wide on the Battle Caller. "LEFT SIDE, GO!" she called, out loud for the Hospitallers and down the bond for the team both, and everyone who moved on it moved a half-beat sharper than they would have alone.

Sokha was already shouting her own in — two hard words to each of her team leaders — and the Order took the knight's flanks, spears out, hemming it, making it choose who to kill. It chose Robert, every time — and punished whatever got in its way. A Hospitaller sank a spear into its side, and the knight turned into the spear, snapped the shaft off in its own ribs, and backhanded the man clean off his feet and into the rocks. He didn't get up.

One.

"It doesn't CARE what you do to it!" Sarah shouted. "Hit and get out — nobody gets greedy—"

Jace was already living that rule, in and gone, in and gone, working his short sword into the crack Robert had opened and never in reach when the blade came around. Sarah stayed low across its front, drawing its eye, close enough to feel the wind off the greatsword every time it swung and missed. And it was getting faster. Every crack Robert put in it, the thing moved quicker, meaner, like the damage was waking it up instead of slowing it down.

"Is it speeding up," Theo panted, back on his feet, one edge of his shield chewed to splinters, "or am I just dying?"

"It's speeding up," Mira said.

"Oh, good."

Sokha drove her spear two-handed into the fractured knee. Her version of a penetration perk punched the point deep into the stone, deeper than steel had any right to go — the crack spread, chips flaking, but the joint held. Her mouth went flat. "It's not enough," she snapped, wrenching the spear free. "I can get in, I can't break it—"

"You don't have to break it," Sarah shouted. "Just keep it open — ROBERT, same spot—"

Robert came back through the gap the Hospitallers tore for him and hit the knee again, and this time the whole lower leg blew apart. The knight dropped onto the ruined joint with a crack Sarah felt through the flagstones — and kept fighting, listing, one hand flat on the ground to hold itself up, the other still swinging.

That swing nearly took her head off. The greatsword came around backhand and low, and Foresight lit and she threw herself flat, and the blade went over her by a finger and carried on into a second Hospitaller, catching him across the thigh. The man went down screaming and stayed down.

Two.

Sarah's body answered before her mind did — fear gone, the world dropping half a step slower, Gravebound Resolve already hauling her toward the screaming man. She caught it and held herself back. He had his own people. She had a knight to kill.

"HOLD!" Sokha roared, her voice breaking on it, and her people closed the hole where the man had fallen and held anyway, spears back up.

It didn't get easier with the leg gone. The knight fought all the way down — crippled, on one knee, more crack than stone, and still throwing everything it had, still trading, still trying to take one of them into the rubble with it. It caught Sarah a glancing blow off the shoulder that spun her into the dirt, and she came up cradling the arm, and it still wasn't done. Robert kept working, steady as he ever was, chipping it apart a fracture at a time, the lit axe biting, Mira reading every crack as it opened and calling the next before he got there — until she called the one that mattered.

The neck, Robert — the crack in the neck—

Robert ran in with a grunt, slid under a last desperate sweep meant to take his legs out, and put the axe through the knight's neck with everything he had. The axe shone brilliantly as he did something only he could do.

The head came off. The knight came apart where it knelt, a long slide of dead gray rubble, and the greatsword rang once on the flagstones and went still.

For a second nobody moved. Then everybody did at once, sagging where they stood.

Sarah pushed herself up off the flagstones. Her shoulder shrieked, and the regen was already crawling into it, warm and slow and sickening. The party was wrecked. Three of Sokha's people were down — the two the knight had put there and one more curled around an arm bent the wrong way — and every one of the rest was bleeding from somewhere, and the two they'd carried down the mountain hadn't even gotten to fight. Theo sat down hard on a broken block, what was left of his shield hanging off his arm, and started laughing, low and cracked, the way he did when a thing had come too close.

"For the record," he announced to nobody, "I hate it here. I miss the Landing."

"I would kiss Harold to use that bath right now." Mira had a split lip and blood in her hair, and she was grinning at him through it.

Sokha was on her knees over the team leader the fist had caught, both hands pressed to his chest, the man breathing in short wet pulls while the regen fought to catch up with what a stone hand had made of his ribs.

"He'll live," Sokha said, more to herself than to anyone. "They'll all live." She looked up, and for the first time since Sarah had met her the schoolteacher looked every one of her years and groaned. "Please tell me what's up there is worth this."