21 #5
“Hedgehogs certainly don’t.” Astarion took a firestarter out of his pouch and lit the mummy’s corpse on fire.
It ignited so violently that he jumped back to avoid singeing his eyebrows.
The flame settled after a moment, the wax melting and sliding off the bones beneath. It smelled strongly of pork tallow.
“Uck.” Den Suriel waved his hand in front of his face. “Let’s get out of here.”
The heavy door to the jail had no windows. Astarion slid his polished knife blade underneath and turned it back and forth.
“Two skeletons on either side,” he reported. “I can’t see any others ahead, but I can’t swear they aren’t there.”
Den Suriel nodded. “Stay back.”
“There’s probably—”
The paladin wrenched the door open, grabbed a skeleton around the neck, and yanked it back into the guardroom. It barely had time to flail before he bashed it against the wall and followed up with a sword pommel to the skull.
“—another way,” Astarion finished. “Or not.”
“Would you like to get the door this time?”
“Of course. Always happy to contribute to the mayhem.” Astarion pulled the door open. Den Suriel grabbed one of the confused skeletons milling around and pulled it inside to dispatch it.
By the third one, the skeletons had figured out that something was going on. When Astarion opened the door, there was a sword waiting. Den Suriel stepped aside as the skeleton tried to skewer him, caught its bony forearm, and pulled it inside. Astarion slammed the door again.
The fourth one just stood there, apparently resigned to its fate, and den Suriel knocked it down and stomped on its head.
“Right,” Astarion said. “Now, which side of the cavern did you come in on?”
The paladin had come in on the side opposite Astarion, but his directions on how to return were perhaps not as clear as they could be, since they relied on landmarks like “about twenty skeletons here” and “two mummies over there” that were presumably no longer in place.
Astarion eventually decided to just follow the trail of bodies and hope the priest hadn’t gotten around to raising the bones again.
They made it to the cavern wall and a good five yards down the road before the army of skeletons arrived.
That is a lot of skeletons. Even Cazador doesn’t keep that many around.
Each individual one might be a minimal threat, but dozens together?
Astarion looked around for somewhere to bolt.
No point going back to the prison. Could I get my boots off and go up the wall?
The wall on the right was living rock, but the wall on the left was mortared and only went up about fifteen feet, probably another chunk of ruin that had been repurposed by the cult.
Astarion opened his mouth to say something about the better part of valor, but then den Suriel lifted his hand and shouted, in a ringing voice, “The earth holds no place for such as you! By the gods above, by Lathander’s light, by the Badger’s wrath, I abjure you!”
He did not just say that.
He did.
If I weren’t undead, I would die of sympathetic embarrassment.
Bare skulls were incapable of expression, but Astarion could swear they looked appalled. He cleared his throat and said, “Just so you know, I’m not actually with—”
The paladin’s hand began to glow.
Terror engulfed Astarion, sudden and shocking, as if his heart had been plunged into ice.
Den Suriel’s hand burned like a miniature sun, but this had none of the kindness of his earlier touch.
This was the sun that beat down on deserts, relentless, scouring every shadow clean.
This was a sun that would strip Astarion’s flesh and burn his bones to char.
Light blazed in Astarion’s vision, and all he could do was run from it, knowing even as he did that the light would pursue him wherever he fled, endless, implacable, blazing through the darkness until—
“What on earth are you doing up there?” den Suriel asked.
Astarion wiped his watering eyes and peered over the edge of the building. The corridor was filled with lifeless bones. The paladin was no longer glowing. As Astarion watched, he tucked his holy symbol away, then looked back up with a puzzled expression.
Ah. Apparently, I do not actually need to take my boots off. “I’ve got daggers,” Astarion said. “Not terribly useful for fighting skeletons. I thought if I got up here, I could pry some rocks loose and drop them from above.”
“Oh, good thinking.”
“You handled it, though.”
Den Suriel smiled modestly. “It’s what I do.”
“So I see.” Astarion consulted his nerves. They were not thrilled about returning to the company of the paladin, but they were even less thrilled with the prospect of being flung back into a cell. “I’ll just…come back down again, shall I?”
It was easier said than done. He made it only halfway down before den Suriel reached up and caught him around the waist.
“Where were you when I was sixteen and daydreaming about heroes?” Astarion muttered.
The paladin set him on his feet. “Sorry, what was that?”
“Nothing.” Astarion brushed at his clothes, removing enough dust to reveal an exciting new layer of dust underneath. He gave it up as a bad job. “If we can get to what’s left of that tower over there, I can climb up and see if there’s a way out that doesn’t involve quite so much mayhem.”
“I don’t mind the mayhem.”
“I didn’t think for one moment that you did.”
The view from the ruined tower was not as good as the one from the overlook high on the wall, but it was enough to confirm Astarion’s suspicion.
There was simply no way to reach the plaza holding the relic that did not involve a hundred skeletons, minimum.
There were rooftops he could have snuck across, but the amount of open ground increased the closer one got to the plaza.
And then I have to assume that there are alarms on the relic and that if I trip one, the skeletons from all over the cavern will converge on me. Which is, what, a thousand of them?
If I had a potion of invisibility, and perhaps a very large distraction…
The large distraction at the base of the tower shifted from foot to foot.
I would still need the potion, or something similar. I can’t do it right now. But if we’re up against undead, I’m sure I can convince the gentleman to come back down here and smite some of them while I get to work.
Astarion smiled to himself. This could be the beginning of a very profitable relationship. And if worse comes to worst, I can always take a vial of his blood to Cazador. Probably not enough to win the old bastard’s favor, but you never know.
This wall was easier to climb down, but den Suriel reached up to help him anyway.
Even with gauntlets, his touch was confident and careful, the grip of a man who knew his own strength but did not fear it.
Astarion entertained a brief pleasant fantasy, which was rudely broken when another skeleton came around the corner and den Suriel bashed it over the head.
“Any luck?” den Suriel asked, stomping on the bones until the phalanges stopped wriggling.
“I can get us out, but I do not think I can get us to the blood without infuriating at least a thousand skeletons.”
“Hmm.” Den Suriel rubbed his chin. “Well, if my back is to a solid wall and there are no mummies, I suspect I could take forty or fifty before they brought me down. Do you think you can handle the remaining nine hundred and fifty?”
“Alas, any more than nine hundred is likely to prove insurmountable.”
More love stories to choose from.
Visit Lokepub and find a novel you like.
Den Suriel’s teeth flashed. “Do you want to try anyway?”
Astarion was beginning to get the impression that his new companion had something of a death wish. “Or we could come back later? Maybe with a plan?”
The aasimar looked like a small boy deprived of a treat, but he said, “I suppose that’s an option, too.”
It took Astarion a moment to mentally map the best route, during which den Suriel murmured something over his sword.
Astarion caught the words “Lathander, Morninglord, grant your blessings upon my blade.”
He would have rolled his eyes, but then den Suriel ran a mailed finger up the blade, and a spark of golden light followed in its wake. Astarion’s ears popped.
“We go this way,” Astarion said once the sensation had faded. “Hug the cavern wall. It will take longer, but there’s fewer of these unpleasant individuals in the way.”
Most of the skeletons came in ones and twos. It wasn’t until they had reached an area den Suriel recognized that they encountered another large group, standing in front of a rough archway cut into the stone.
“That’s it,” den Suriel said.
Astarion glanced around. There were multiple bridges that passed over the main street here, but they were all crumbling to the point that his weight would likely bring them down, let alone the aasimar’s.
Even if he could get close to the group on one, the best he could do was drop rocks.
Chipping away at the group, rock by rock, could take hours.
“May I charge?” den Suriel asked. “If you don’t have a better plan? Please?”
“Far be it from me to deny you your fun, but—”
Den Suriel charged.
“—there are a lot of them,” Astarion finished. “Why do I even bother?” he asked the nearest skeleton, who tilted its skull to one side and then tried to hit him.
Astarion kicked its kneecaps out but hung back from the rest, just in case the paladin decided to turn some more undead.
This time, however, den Suriel’s approach was much simpler.
The aasimar just lowered his head, raised his shield, and plowed into the ranks of skeletons like a dog scattering chickens.
Since most of them weren’t carrying weapons, the effect was extraordinary.
Astarion wished for something better than a dagger. Stabbing a skeleton was an exercise in futility. He could probably take off one of his stockings and put half a brick in it, but his stockings were the only things that might survive the night’s adventures intact.
One of the dead…more dead…skeletons left in den Suriel’s wake had an intact femur.
Astarion picked it up, hefted it, and tested the makeshift club on the back of a nearby skull.
The skeleton went to its knees, and Astarion’s second blow took its head clean off and sent it flying.