Heart of Fire
The caves smelled. Not of the usual dank and damp of caves, not even of simply stone. No, there was something else, something fetid and smoky, faintly familiar, but try as he might, Lancelot could not place the stench. "What is that smell?"
Merlin huffed a laugh and looked briefly over his shoulder. "Do you truly not remember the smell of kobolds?"
"That's it," Lancelot replied, rolling his eyes. "Don't know why it was eluding me."
"Maybe because the last time you tangled with a group of them, you wound up face down, ass up in that swamp."
Lancelot winced. "Don't remind me. I think I forgot the smell because I tried to scrub that whole debacle from my mind."
Merlin snickered, because he was a jerk like that. "Hopefully we don't run into them. The smell is a bit stale and faded, so I don't think they're in this part of the cave anymore."
"How does a stupid video game know the precise smell of kobolds?"
"Just one of many questions on my ever-growing list, but I feel the answer to most, if not all of them, will be 'Maleagant'."
Maleagant. He'd been their enemy, especially Arthur's, since long before Camelot.
Prince Maleagant of Gorre, often called the Land of No Return because, well, no one ever returned, heartlessly slaughtered for any number of trivial 'crimes'.
It had been one of those senseless murders, and the kidnapping of an innocent maiden living a peaceful life in a convent, that had first spurred Arthur into Gorre.
He'd done plenty of killing of his own to avenge a murder and save Guinevere, who at the time was little more than a girl.
After that day, they would not see her again for nearly seven years, when she'd journey with several other nuns to the newly made Camelot and decide to remain, forsaking the vows she'd never really wanted to take anyway.
That Arthur had later married her, made her his queen, had only enraged Maleagant further.
Arthur had broken his power, won over his people, and stolen his woman.
Even though none of that had ever truly been his, and he had only himself to blame for losing them—or, in Guinevere's case, never having her at all.
So Maleagant had obtained different powers, different followers, falling into a darkness from which there was, ironically, no return.
He was little better than a demon now, and his driving force was wiping first Arthur and Camelot from the earth, and then razing the earth and remaking it according to his desires.
All because Arthur had freed his people and not tolerated the way Maleagant thought kidnapping was an appropriate way to court a woman.
The most depressing part was that, in all the centuries since, practically nothing had changed.
It left him deeply worried about who Maleagant was in modern day…
and where Guinevere was. Maleagant had already found and imprisoned Galehaut, and that boded ill for who else he might already have in his clutches.
Lancelot sighed. "This is going to get so much worse before it gets better."
"Well, for that fuckhead, it's only going to get worse and worse, so chin up," Merlin said—then froze. "The smell is growing stronger."
"Oh, goodie," Lancelot muttered. "Can't wait to relive slicing apart kobolds and smelling like them for days, because with my luck, that damned stench will follow me right out of the game."
Merlin shuddered. "I really prefer nothing follows us out, not least of all because that will mean all my efforts to keep our location secret will have been in vain. If Maleagant can find us in the real world this soon, we're fucked."
"Why does it seem like he's had longer to prepare for this, while we're waking up years behind with no chance of catching up?"
"It's how the magic works," Merlin replied. "I asked for a delay, and that delay was one of centuries. Maleagant had his victory stolen and must fight for it anew, and so he gets the advantage."
"So we have to be heavily disadvantaged, and we have to pay some unknown price." Lancelot made a face. "Magic can be incredibly stupid."
"Magic simply is. It's people that make it good, bad, stupid, or otherwise." Merlin started to say more, but a familiar wet growling sound drew their attention.
Lancelot drew his sword and shield.
"Still can't believe your sword is a katana," Merlin said with a snorting laugh.
"Shut up," Lancelot muttered, and then they were surrounded as the kobolds came literally out of the walls, slippery, shadowy things that they were, pustulant and putrid. Seriously, how had he forgotten this smell?
Arondight flashed with blue-green light as he plunged into the fight, slicing kobolds into pieces and battering others with his shield.
At his back, Merlin fought with magic, earth to Lance's water.
Arthur had always found it vastly entertaining that they were so much alike despite all the ways they should have been complete opposites.
He fought until his body ached, until he started to feel nauseous from the exertion.
The worst thing about kobolds was that they came in large packs or not at all.
He'd never fought less than thirty at a time, and this group, by the time he was able to slow and then finally stop, clearly numbered well over a hundred.
If they weren't smaller and easily taken out in twos and threes, this would have been a much nastier fight.
"Fuck, that was exhausting," Lancelot said, slumping down to sit on a relatively clean boulder.
Merlin trudged over to slump right next to him, face dripping with sweat and Kobold blood.
They both smelled like the ass end of a garbage dump half-filled with dead bodies.
Thank god for nose-blindness, though even that couldn't entirely solve the problem.
Groaning and stretching, Lancelot then sank to one knee and pressed his hand flat on the ground, eyes slipping shut as he concentrated.
"There's water…that way." He stood on stiff legs and headed off, Merlin just steps behind him, the pair trudging through the dark, grimacing at their own stench.
After several minutes of walking, he could hear first a trickle and then the rush of a current, until Merlin's bobbing mage lights revealed a beautiful underground lake lit by glowing lichen and churned by a waterfall that must be at least twenty feet high.
"Thank the gods," Merlin said, and immediately began stripping before wading into the water.
Lancelot followed suit after sweeping the area one last time for any potential threats he may have missed on first look. Thankfully, all seemed peaceful. If Maleagant had plans other than kobolds—or, gods forbid, more kobolds—he was biding his time.
He dove into the water and went down, down, down, relishing the dark and cold unique to the bottom of a lake.
Here, without sunlight, he could see nothing, floating in a void where the only sensation was the delightfully biting cold of the water.
The water sang and chattered, sharing stories of every inhabitant, every stranger that had ever wandered through.
Even though it was a brand new video game, and such things shouldn't be possible. He was starting to think the game was less…well, a game, and more like a pathway to some strange world secreted away so the fight could continue away from all else.
He pushed off the bottom of the lake and swam up, breaking the surface and searching out his companion, who was sprawled on a flat rock nearby. "Merlin, are we in one of those isolated worlds you used to talk about incessantly?"
"Pocket universe is what they call them now, but yes, I think that is precisely what is happening.
The game is the gateway, or transition point, or whatever you want to call it.
When certain requirements are met, the game shifts to the pocket universe.
Not what I expected when I cast the Second Chance spell, but that is the danger of high magic.
It's never what you think, and often bites back harder than it helps. "
Lancelot smiled wryly. "The solution is worse than the problem? That doesn't surprise me. Hopefully we'll work it out, anyway. Regardless, we had no choice. Better to pay a steep price to try for victory than pay nothing and lose everything."
Merlin nodded.
Lancelot drifted easily through the water, staring up at the cave ceiling, the pointed rocks hanging from it like nu-art chandeliers. He could never remember if they were stalagmites or stalactites.
"I know you feel the water differently, I know that," Merlin said, "but it still boggles me you're not freezing to death while my balls tried to crawl back up inside my body."
"I have anti-freeze in my blood," Lancelot said with a laugh.
"Not the term I would have used back in the day.
Mama only ever said our blood was 'made differently' than that of humans, and when she took me in, she adapted me accordingly.
I looked it up one day while I was working on getting my sick leave from work.
Anti-freeze proteins, fun stuff." He dipped his legs down and swam to shore until he could walk, leisurely dragging himself out of the water to dry off and warm up where Merlin had built a fire.
After he was done, he went through his inventory for fresh clothes and armor.
Things he hadn't owned before Merlin worked his computer magic somehow to get them both nicely set up.
"Wonder if we'll ever get a chance to, you know, play the game, acquire some of the more useful stuff you can't get for us by cheating. "