Limbo, page 12
The one below, between home and 4, was similar to an ancient Greek town, with olives, fields of cereals, cows, etc. Around the border of the region, where we crossed it, it was almost pure nature, with only a dirt road here and there to break it. After spending days in the ash and the arid zone of the maze, I felt very relaxed to be in the green finally, and that feeling reflected on the faces of my teammates too.
“Okay, guys. We will spend the night here, refresh our water, and ourselves, and leave a message in the village. If I remember correctly, there are only some carnivorous plants in the area to look out for, but it’s fairly peaceful otherwise. Alex, you come with me to the town, Hank, Shuan, please get all the canteens and refill them at the brook I hear close by. Massi and N’Gowu, you make food and get the campsite ready.”
“Okay, boss!”
Following a road, Alex and I walked into the town square. Scavengers knew to look out for messages from the scouts at places like this. Alex went around to scout the area and kill any aggressive plants, should he find them, and I sat down on a bench to write a report. I tried to keep it short, adding only the locations, their types, dangers, events (like the Decay of the maze sector), and the kind of loot to find. The maze required a bit of explanation, because the scavengers needed to follow our marks to get to the oasis. I also wrote a bit about our plans, in case something happened to us.
Once I was done, I took out a thick garbage bag from my backpack and packed in the books we collected in sector 1. I placed the report in as well, then closed it, making sure that it was airtight, and placed it in a visible, but somewhat protected place. I even marked the wall behind it with pink crayons. On the way back, Alex convinced me to try the olives, fresh from the tree. In Soviet Europe, he often traveled to the mediterranean region, and really loved the olives there. They tasted like nothing I had tried before, but I liked them, so we spent some time eating them and spitting their longish stones at each other.
On arrival, we only saw Hank and Shuan in the camp. They were looking at our bags, which were laying on the ground, unorganized, items removed from them. Seeing us, Hank held up his hand.
“Stop there for a bit. Did you guys see Massi or N’Gowu?”
“Nope, they should be here. What happened?”
“We spent some time taking a bath, then came back, and they were nowhere to be found. Our stuff was like this, and we found some strange footprints here.”
Now understanding why they stopped us, we took a close look at the ground. It was mostly grassy, so it wasn’t easy to see anything, but as we scouted closer to the camp, we found a muddy part with one fully intact footprint. At least, we thought it was one; the shape and size was significantly different from ours. At first sight, it resembled the shape of a kid's footprint, except it was longer, the ratio resembling more that of an adult, and instead of five toes, it had only two big ones. Hank and Shuan found a jewelry piece between the items in the camp, but it didn’t look like anything any of us would wear.
A few minutes later we were all standing in the middle of the camp, looking at the evidence.
“There is only one conclusion I can draw." I said, putting into words what all of us thought "They were attacked and captured by a non-human race. This, however, suggests that they were intelligent, or at least sentient to some extent. They are also not from this hex, which means that they can and do leave their home region. Based on where we are, they either live in the maze, where we didn’t see any sign of them, or the hex we wanted to visit. Anyone else have any other thoughts?”
“I was wondering how they captured them." chimed in Shuan "There doesn’t seem to be any signs of serious fight, which means they were captured quickly. They might be strong magic users.”
“Also, why did they capture them? Do they need a sacrifice, like a cliche in all those fantasy books? Or for some other reason?" added Alex.
“There is only one way to find it out. We need to go after them.”
“Sorry, Lau, I don’t think that is the right decision.”
I stared at Hank with wide eyes.
“What do you mean? We need to rescue them!”
“Look, I see where you come from, but think about this. They might be already dead, or die before we get close. In that case, we can’t do anything. With a little luck, they resurrect back at the village. But if we go after them, into a situation we know nothing about, a situation that so far never existed in Limbo… do you think we would survive it? I think we need to go back home, tell them everything, collect everyone capable of fighting, and handle this war as we should. With an army.”
Gritting my teeth together, I forced my brain to look at this objectively. Anger can be useful in battle, but it is the enemy of planning. I spent some time thinking it through, and then answered, not showing my frustration in my voice.
“You are right, Hank. That is what you should do. But I cannot with good conscience leave my kidnapped teammates to suffer an unknown fate. Collecting the army will take days, if not more. I can’t wait that long. I am going. You all can decide what you want to do.”
Alex shook his head sadly, and stepped next to Hank. Shuan, surprisingly, stepped next to me.
“Okay, this is it then. Hank, take everything home that you can. I left the report in the middle of the village, you might take that too. We will try to leave signs as we go, so you can follow us later, when the militia is here. Is that ok?”
With a guilty expression, he nodded.
“You girls be careful. We will hurry as much as we can.”
Despite our feelings, we hugged each other, and then Shuan and I picked up our bags, and started following the tracks in the general direction we thought they went. By tracks, I mean only damaged plants and misplaced stones, and the like, of course, not actual footprints. Those were still very elusive, but we didn’t need them for this. Hank and Alex also started packing. We knew that neither of us would get any sleep that night.
Pyramid Scheme
The track led us straight towards Sector No. 4, to the absolute surprise of neither of us. While walking, we quietly discussed the appearance of these apparently sentient enemies. No one ever met any sentient enemies in Limbo, it was pretty much one of the basic rules that the enemies are always mindless. Seeing them act like this was a huge warning flag. Despite my actions, I did agree with Hank, and I was grateful that he had a cooler head than me. We didn’t know anything about the numbers of the enemy, and unless there were not more than ten, we didn’t have much of a chance. Maybe a quick snatch and grab at night, if they camp somewhere, and their guards are not really good at their job. I suddenly realized that we should have more spells and tactics ready for sneaking jobs, like silencing victims, dark sight, and so on. I shared the thought with Shuan, so if either one of us survives, the idea does too.
At the border of the zones, we stopped. At first, it seemed that the middle of the sector is one tall hill, then looking more into the details - and shamelessly using my binocular ability - we discovered that it is actually a Mayan style pyramid. As soon as I understood what I was seeing, I signed for Shuan to get down. Laying in the grass, we kept observing the place, and making notes.
As opposed to the South American pyramids from our world, this one housed a good number of these sentient beings. As it was still daylight, although barely, I spent some time observing them. If the Mayans were 4 feet tall on average, with oversized hands and feet, and an evil looking face with pointy chin and nose, then this is how they could have looked. Which is to say, these guys looked more like goblins or Santa’s elves, than humans. They had mainly stone and obsidian weapons and tools, but I saw copper or bronze here and there as well. From the size of the pyramid, and the visible people outside, I guessed there could be hundreds of them here.
“This looks pretty hopeless, Shu. There are at least a dozen floors, full of these… whatever they are.”
“True, but look at their sizes. The only one that can host human sized people is the ground floor. If they are imprisoned, I’d bet it’s down there. Shit and dirt moves downwards, so the top is where the rulers live, while slaves and prisoners are at the bottom.”
I looked at her with a shocked expression.
“What?”
“Did you just say ‘shit’?”
“Yes! I am under pressure, okay? I can swear if I want to!”
I jumped on her, pressing my hand against his throat like a knife.
“Who are you and what did you do to the real Shuan?”
“Get off me, you idiot! This is not the best time for jokes!”
Grinning, I let her up.
“What happened to you, Lau? You were so angry and nervous a minute ago, how can you grin like this now?”
“Easy. We have a plan. I know what we will do, so I don’t have to be nervous anymore.”
“You are crazy! … So what is the plan?”
We rested there for a few hours, eating and drinking some, and continuously observing our foes. We also spent a considerable amount of time discussing how we should name them. We couldn’t just call them goblins, because they were not green, and otherwise fairly human looking. ‘Gomans’ and ‘hublins’ were downvoted by Shuan. I wasn’t a big friend of her idea of just making up a new word for them, like ‘salks’. Somehow ‘Florby Borbs’ also entered the discussion, but both of us denied coming up with it. Admittedly, that was the worst one by far.
“So, how about Pings?" asked Shuan.
“Pings?" I tasted the word on my tongue "It’s not bad, but why?”
“No reason. Just came up with something so that we can get on with the story.”
“That’s fair.”
Night has fallen, and the pings started lighting torches. This was good news, namely that their night vision wasn’t any better than ours, which was also terrible. That was the bad news in the situation. I hoped that our magic sight would help a bit, but wasn’t very optimistic about it, as we didn’t see any signs of serious magic usage anywhere. On the other hand, that was promising for our friends chances to get away.
In any case, we waited until most of the activities quieted down. There were visible guards all around the place, but they were stationary. Since the pyramid was surrounded by rich vegetation, we were fairly sure that we could approach the base of the place without being spotted.
Once we arrived at a place where we had good visibility of the entrance of the pyramid, we stopped in the shadow of some plants, and started observing the situation again. Two pings were guarding the way in, which was actually a simple opening, no gate or anything. We could see inside, it seemed like a fairly big, open area, but not especially well lit, so we couldn’t make out the details. After checking the angles, I was pretty sure that no other guard could see the ones standing at the entrance, which was a massive security oversight, but also, an opportunity for us.
“Okay, the plan. We approach them from the sides and kill them silently, then we will sneak in and look around.”
“How do you know that they are malevolent?" asked Shuan, genuinely curious.
For a few seconds, I was just looking at her silently, mouth open, trying to process the brainfuck I just had.
“Fuck. So, the plan, we approach them from the sides and render them unconscious, but we do not kill them. We bind them and put something in their mouths to stop them from making noise. Then we go in and look around.”
She answered with a thumbs up, and we jumped into action. Surprisingly, it went without a hitch, and in a few minutes, we stood at the entrance, ready to sneak in and find our friends. Moving in, we saw that the open area wasn’t actually very open. The original design left this space as a yard, with columns keeping the next floor up, and kind of forming a natural square grid. In these squares, there were a lot of things stored in crates, chest and barrels, often stacked up on top of each other, naturally separating the place and forming a complicated labyrinth. Our assumption was that any cages or jail rooms would be built next to the walls, simply for efficiency, so we kept to the sides of the maze, and tried to stay as far from the middle as possible.
On the way, we checked out a few boxes and barrels, but they only contained produce, food items, such as honey or jerked meat, or simple alcoholic beverages, ales and meads mostly.
In the flickering lights of the torches, it was somewhat hard to be sure about this, but fairly soon I was convinced that someone was following us. This was an obvious sign of intelligence, shadowing the intruders instead of mindlessly attacking them, and also, maybe, just maybe, a little sign of hope that they were not, in fact, aggressive. My magic sight didn’t help here much, because the pings apparently didn’t have strong magic, or possibly, no magic at all.
So, without showing any signs of being aware of the pings tailing us, we continued to look around, following the wall as closely as possible, but ready for an assault. Along the whole wall, there were little buildings, like storage sheds, holding tools for gardening, and so on.
“They seem like a totally normal primitive tribe. They grow food, keep cattle, etc. There is a chance that we can live along them peacefully and even establish some kind of a trading relationship. Good call with that question, Shuan.”
She only smiled, and we kept sneaking around. From her movements I saw that she also spotted our tails, and checked on them time and again. Somewhere around the middle of the side walls we spotted something we were looking for: rooms made from stone, with metal and wooden bars and reinforced doors. Jail cells. These were empty, though, our friends were nowhere to be seen, but at least we knew now that we were at the right place.
“You know, I have a good feeling about these guys. Maybe we won’t have any issues…”
I was rudely interrupted by a cloud of darts swishing towards us from several directions. There were many of them, and they were spread out so much that even with our enhanced reflexes we didn’t have a chance to evade them.
Funny thing about darts. They usually have only a short spike at the end, and when they are launched from blowpipes - as they were in our case - they were not strong enough to penetrate armor. Thanks to this, we both came out of the attack with only superficial wounds and ready to fight.
Drawing our swords and casting our simple shield, we looked around, ready to jump on any approaching enemy, but there were none. Apparently, the failure of their dart attack disheartened them enough to stop there. Then I started feeling dizzy.
Funny thing about darts. Because they are not very effective against armored enemies, most tribes who use them with blowpipes tend to apply some kind of a poison to the needle. That way, even a superficial wound is enough to stun, paralyze or kill the victim.
“Shit. Why do I have to lose my consciousness again?!" was my last thought before I lost my consciousness.
Welling Up
When I finally woke up, I was in one of those cells we saw earlier, legs chained to the wall. Shuan was lying right next to me, still passed out. Our bags and weapons were removed, but I found some food and water in the corner of the cell. I still wasn’t sure what the pings wanted with us, but this was a sure sign that they treated us with some amount of respect, or at least treated us as humanoids. My impression of them being a peaceful race was just further enforced by this. I wasn’t sure whether our people would give them the same kind of treatment if the situation was reversed.
After a short inspection of the chain, then the door, I was fairly sure that I could leave the cell in a matter of minutes if I had to. Shuan also looked okay, her breathing was deep and regular, like she was just sleeping normally. Which might have been the case, actually. There was no magic around us whatsoever, except the ever present purple things. As a side thought, I realized what it reminded me of: a neural system, zoomed in to the level where we were inside the brain. Not that I could do a lot about this idea at this point of time, though, so I just stored it for later examination. Checking the food and the drink I didn’t feel any weird taste or smell, so I consumed a bit of both, and then started to wake Shuan while waiting for any poison effects.
I only had to shake her shoulder once, and her eyes opened up immediately. It took her a few seconds to focus them on me, and she kept silent for a short time after, probably taking inventory of her own body and feelings.
“What happened to your hair?”
Surprised, I touched my hair, then held a few strands of it to where I could see them, but I didn’t see anything.
“What do you mean? What happened to it?”
“Nothing. It looks normal. I just wanted to ask something other than the stereotypical ‘Where are we?’”
“Oh, I see. I could also ask ‘What happened to your butt? Who kicked it raw?’, except first I would make sure it wouldn’t be a pointless question.”
“Oh, Lau, that’s kinky! Tell me more!" she reacted with a sultry voice, and I couldn’t resist the laughter bubbling up in me anymore.
A few minutes later, assuming that any poison effect would be showing now, we both ate a bit of food and drank some of the water, and then started discussing the plan to escape. It was mostly about deciding when to go, right away, or wait a bit and observe the outside to see if there were any regular patrols. The decision was made for us, though, when we heard a group of people approaching the cell.
“Ok, let’s pretend that we are helpless, and when they leave, we will also escape a few minutes later. If they want to do something to us now, then we attack. Let’s try not to kill anyone, ok?”
She nodded, and we waited there, sitting seemingly lazily with our backs to the wall, but our legs under us, ready to launch us any time.
The door was unlocked, then a pair of spears entered, closely followed by the guards holding them. They stood next to the door, one on each side, holding the tips of the spears towards us. It didn’t feel really threatening, more like just a warning to not do anything stupid. I suspected that either of us could neutralize them in seconds, if we wanted to, but for the time being, we just went with the flow, not making any movements.
