Chapter Forty-Nine #3
Archer drowned out the traitor’s taunts, focusing on the clash of blades. The mountain rumbled underneath him and both fighters almost lost their footing. Archer recovered first and stabbed his sword through Noah’s middle.
Noah choked in surprise and looked down at his stomach, at the blood already spreading across his shirt.
Archer withdrew his blade and kicked Noah aside, striding away without another glance back. The Bellacostan traitors were a nuisance, but they weren’t the cause of the chaos.
Every time the mountain rumbled, the nearby houses shifted and shuddered. A scream tore through the night as one collapsed to Archer’s left. He ran toward the wreckage, grabbing rocks to try to unbury the family inside.
A hand reached out and clasped his, and Archer pulled them up. Their weight and the strain on his muscles surprised him. Are they caught on something? But as he pulled, he noticed the cold, rough texture of their skin.
A face poked out of the rubble. Another face flashed through Archer’s memory, an ice sculpture leering at him from the riverbed as it held Silas underwater. But that had been a frozen statute. It could only cling to Silas as Archer and Griselda dragged him out of the water. It couldn’t fight back.
This was a freely moving creature, one shaped from the stone wreckage of the cottage.
Archer released the hand and stepped backwards, holding his sword at the ready.
The creature crawled forward, stones rattling as they gathered around it, drawn in like a magnet. Once it had absorbed enough, it rose to its feet and lunged at Archer.
He raised his sword to block, then gritted his teeth at the force of the blow. His arm painfully jolted under the strain. He inhaled, bracing himself, and pushed back until the creature stumbled away. He slashed at it, but the edge of his blade glanced off a clump of stone.
The creature didn’t react to his counterattack. It simply shrugged off his sword and reached for him, intending to wrap its stone hands around his neck and crush his throat.
Archer dodged and changed tactics. If a sword wouldn’t cut through it, he’d find another way to break the thing. He dropped his weapon and picked up a huge, broken hunk of stone. He raised it high over his head and slammed it down on top of the creature.
The creature shattered beneath the force of the blow, tumbling into a pile of dirt and rocks.
Archer tossed the stone to the side and continued digging through the rubble until he found the hatch to a cellar door. Sighing in relief, he cleared the stones from on top of it and flung the door open. Three dirty faces peered up at him, a parent with their children.
“Your Majesty,” the father said, relief washing away his fear.
In times of danger, the citizens would normally evacuate to Castle Arn. With the mountain crumbling down around them, Archer didn’t know how much longer the castle would stand. “Go down the mountain,” Archer ordered. “Get as far away from here as you can.”
A heavy weight slammed against Archer’s back. He stumbled forward and caught himself on a mostly intact wall. He turned around to find that the creature had already reformed. And there, right in its center, was the stone Archer had previously used to bash it apart.
If Griselda were here, she would have been cursing magicians and their bullshit magic. Archer was tempted to say a few curses himself but didn’t bother wasting the breath.
He eyed the creature, noticing its slow, jerky movements. Archer took several long strides away from it. The creature lumbered after, dragging its feet across the ground with the low scrape of rocks colliding against each other.
A crossbow bolt pierced its chest. Stone and dirt crumbled to the ground as the creature lost half of its structure on its left side.
“They’re tough, but slow!” Kern called out behind Archer.
He turned to find two of his soldiers loading the crossbow again. The huge arbalest required two people to man, but it had the strength to pierce straight through a steel shield.
As soon as it was loaded again, Kern triggered the mechanism and shot the creature, this time demolishing its malformed head. “We’ve found that breaking them keeps them busy for a bit!”
“How many are there?” Archer demanded.
“No idea! Seems like every time—”
The mountain shifted beneath them again. A small avalanche of rocks tumbled down from the peak.
“—that happens, there’s more!”
Archer turned his attention to the top of the mountain. That’s where Alistair is. He stepped toward it, only for another stone creature to lumber into his path.
The soldiers behind him were occupied with the other one, so Archer broke this one apart.
As soon as the stones were piled at his feet, he pushed forward, only for another creature to intercept him.
Every time it seemed like he’d defeated one, a new one was already waiting to draw him into another fight.
Gritting his teeth, Archer slowly carved his way through Alistair’s creations. Adelaide said Penn had a plan to deal with Alistair. Archer hoped she was right, that Penn could take care of the mage. No matter how many of these things he would have to break, Archer would fight to defend his home.