Towering Trouble: A LitRPG Isekai, page 50
“We don’t have time for this,” growled Freygi, stalking toward the novices. “Get you going, lads, afore we make another mistake.”
Startled, the novices turned and ran in the opposite direction. The injured one didn’t even bother to collect his wand.
Rather than heading for the front door, the dwarves hurried up a flight of stairs and climbed out a window on the second floor. Outside, they dashed between walls and hedges and stone spires ducking out of sight of several guards searching the nearby streets. In movies and games, it was here, just as they thought they were home free, when they’d be spotted, and start a fight or chase scene would ensue.
None of that happened tonight, to Saskia’s relief. They made their way back across the city and down into the Stone Bastion without incident.
As they sat around the cookfire discussing the long day’s events, Ruhildi spoke with barely contained rage. “When I asked him to call halt to his folly of a plan, he accused me of being in league with the leaf-ears. Me! Working for them! Things got a wee bit heated, and I may have tried to sink him into the floor…”
Saskia groaned silently. Ruhildi-style diplomacy at its finest.
“Next thing I kenned, I’d a poisoned dart in my neck. I don’t ken what would have happened if you hadn’t come for me.”
“He was going to extract your focus from your chest,” said Saskia.
Her face turned ashen. “But that would have…”
“Killed you,” said Saskia. “Yeah I figured as much. The medica tried to talk him out of it. He pretty much said he’d rather have you die now than live on with the alvari ‘corruption’ inside you.”
Ruhildi let out a long breath. “He’s lost his mind. Pap weren’t always easy to be around, and I weren’t the most compliant daughter. After Nadi…we couldn’t see eye-to-eye after that. But ’twere never this bad afore.”
“It’s been a long time, Ruhildi,” said Saskia. “All that time, he thought he’d lost you. I think he’s been channelling his grief into this funnelling project. Vengeance against the elves, at all costs. He’s not going to let go of that easily.”
“Aye, there’ll be no talking him down now,” said Baldreg. “And the other shapers still answer to him. We just made enemies of the whole Guild.”
“I don’t think it matters,” said Saskia. When the others glared at her, she clarified, “Well obviously it sucks that Mangorn is being such a loony about all of this, but I overheard him talking to one of his underlings. He said there’s nothing he could do to halt the shapers even if he wanted to. Whatever they’re doing, it’ll happen before any messengers could possibly reach them.”
“If there’s nothing we can do, why did Calburn send you that dream?” said Ruhildi, looking defeated.
“There’s nothing we can do,” said Saskia. “But there may be someone who can do something. And I’m sorry, you’re not going to like this pointy-eared someone.”
Book 2, Chapter 16: Screaming
High on a hilltop, beneath the fading eldergreens, he walked a silent, lonely path to the world’s end.
The song of life was still and silent. There were no birds; no bugs; no peremalkin dangling from overhead branches. All that reached his aching ears were the creak of frozen trees, the sigh of escaping air, and the wheezing gasp of his laboured breaths.
The trees parted before him, and he looked out across the ruin of Laskwood; the crater where had once stood Wengarlen and the seed of life. Blackened stumps swathed in ice, for as far as the eye could see.
First had come fire; a seething fury that had seared away the forest and boiled away the sea. Then darkness and creeping ice and slow suffocation. One by one, his people had succumbed to the slow doom. He may very well be the last alvar to walk the boughs of Ciendil.
And now his time had come.
He teetered and fell backward into a mound of hard-packed snow. Gazing up at the blackened sky, his final breath fleeing from frozen lips, he wondered if this had been Abellion’s plan all along.
“Probably,” said the dark-eyed dwarrow. “Your god’s an arse. But the shapers who did the deed were much closer to home. You could’ve stopped them. And yet here you lie, impotent keeper.”
A fist pounded against his chest. Garrain blinked and spluttered and gasped in a lungful of searing air. Nuille peered into his eyes, her brow knitted in concern.
“Deus, I thought you were dying for a moment there,” she breathed, sagging back against his chest.
An icy chill seeped into his bones, in spite of the warm body pressed against him. It had felt as though he were dying. The dreams had been getting more dire each night since their return to Wengarlen.
No, not just dreams. Warnings.
“Demon be damned, we must go back,” he murmured.
“Go back where, ardonis?” said Nuille.
“To the dwarrow den. To finish what we started.”
She let out a long-suffering sigh. “I know you want your revenge for what they did to Ollagor, but have a little patience. And stop worrying. Those dwarrows will get what’s coming to them just as soon as the Chosen returns.”
The elders had said much the same thing. They’d assemble a warband when Thiachrin returned to lead it, and not a moment sooner. It irked him that none of them—not even Jevren—had taken his warning seriously enough to sanction a more immediate response.
“You don’t understand,” said Garrain. “We’re running out of time. And Thiachrin…he’s not a good person, my light.” He stared up at the ceiling. “I don’t know what will happen when he gets back.”
Nuille sat up in their sleepsack, arms folded across her breasts. “What do you mean? He’s the Chosen now. If Abellion saw fit to bestow his blessing on the blademaster, he must be worthy of it.”
“I just don’t know any more,” he admitted. “Everything we’ve been taught—about the Chosen, about alvari and dwarrows and demons, about the Arbordeus himself—what if it’s all lies?”
She stiffened. “Why would you say such a thing? You know, you’ve been acting strangely ever since we got back. You’ve barely been sleeping. You regained your magic but not your focus. There have been whispers… Something’s not right, and I’m not talking about those devious little stoneshapers. What really happened down there, ardonis?”
“I…want to tell you,” he said. “But if I do…if anyone else should learn of this, I don’t know what she’ll—I may lose it all over again.”
She cupped her hand to the side of his face. “We’re lifemates, Garrain. Our fates are bound. Whatever it is you have to say—I can’t promise I’ll be happy about it—but I won’t betray your secret.”
He lay there silently for a long moment, gazing into her exquisite amber eyes. Then he smiled up at her. “You’re right. I should have just told you from the start. Saskia, if you’re watching this, know that you can trust Nuille. She deserves to know the truth. And if you don’t like it…you do what you have to.”
Nuille glanced about the room, before turning back to him, looking bewildered. “Who is Saskia? Why are you…?”
He placed his fingers to her lips. “Now who’s the impatient one, my light? That’s what I’m about to tell you. You see, the demon isn’t—deus!”
At that very moment, the housetree shuddered so violently that their sleepsack popped off its hooks and deposited them in a heap on the floor. They clung to one another as the floors and walls creaked and swayed around them. A rumbling sound filled the air, drowning out their hammering heartbeats. Finally, the shaking and the tumult receded, and they picked themselves up off the floor now scattered with fallen debris.
“W-what the fuck was that?” said Nuille, sounding as shaken as he felt.
“It is as I feared,” he said. “This is the dwarrows’ doing, I’m sure of it.”
Throwing on some clothes, he slid down the central pole to the ground floor and rolled open the door.
“Don’t forget this!” said Nuille.
Garrain deftly caught the staff she threw at him, eyeing the gnarled witherbark, inset with arlium at the tip. He’d taken to carrying this counterfeit focus with him wherever he went, so he could cast spells without arousing suspicion. He probably wouldn’t be able to keep up the pretence indefinitely, but for now, only Nuille knew that it was fake. As far as Jevren and the other elders knew, he’d pulled the arlium shard from his old, broken staff, and grown a new staff around it.
The ground outside was littered with sticks and leaves and fruit shaken free by the disturbance. Down the path and across the stream, a nude alvessi knelt on the grass, her face a mask of confusion and fear. A trickle of blood ran down her neck. Nuille rushed across the stream to tend to her injury, which had resulted from a falling branch that had struck her on the side of the head.
They were fortunate no-one had been seriously hurt, but a sinking feeling in his gut told him this would only get worse. Until the dwarrows were dealt with, no-one would be safe.
“Keeper Garrain?”
He spun to face the new arrivals: a trio of wardens, standing with spears and shields at the ready.
“You have been summoned, keeper. Please come with us.”
“What’s the meaning of this?” said Nuille, glaring at the newcomers.
“Perhaps in light of this morn’s disturbance, the elders have decided to take heed of my warning,” said Garrain.
In truth, he rather doubted that. The elders could have sent a messenger skrike, after all. But the last thing he wanted was for Nuille to make a scene and get herself in trouble with the wardens.
Garrain followed them into the heart of Wengarlen, to the drackenwood grove, where stood the ring of elders, all watching him with blank expressions. Even Jevren withheld his usual friendly smile.
Well, he thought, at least they aren’t laughing at me.
A large band of wardens and rangers stood to one side of the grove. He recognised many of their faces. He’d trained with them and fought with several of them against Ruhildi’s minions, but they offered him not a hint of acknowledgement.
Addressing the elders was a familiar silhouette. Familiar and yet…changed. Garrain recognised the impressive size and musculature, as well as the claymore at his back. But the hair was gone from the top of the alvar’s head, and on his face was set a rigid mask, pale as bleached bone.
Garrain stepped up to Thiachrin and the elders, his stomach a knot of dread.
“Imagine our surprise when we learned that a certain fledgling survived an unsurvivable fall,” said the Chosen, turning to face him. “Tell us, fledgling, how did you accomplish such a remarkable feat?”
Thiachrin’s appearance wasn’t all that had changed. He’d never referred to himself with the plural ‘we’ before. Garrain didn’t know the full extent of a Chosen’s abilities, but he had serious doubts about his ability to tell a convincing lie to his former mentor.
“As I told the elders, the demon…” He swallowed. “I landed atop her. She broke my fall.”
Technically, that wasn’t even a lie. The only deception in his statement was the order in which those two events had occurred. That unfathomable creature she’d briefly become had broken his fall by snatching him out of the air—smashing his leg against a wall in the process. He’d landed on top of her just as she folded in on herself, assuming, once again, the guise of a trow.
“Indeed,” said the Chosen. “And where is the demon—the caedling—now?”
Garrain stared into the pale eyes behind the mask, now looming over him, and swallowed again. There was no way to answer this without earning himself a slow death, or telling an outright lie. He chose the latter. “As far as I know, she’s but a lump of meat splattered across the rocks where we fell.”
Thiachrin was silent for a long moment before he spoke. “Really, fledgling, you may have fooled these…” He gave a derisive grunt. “…elders, but you can’t deceive us.”
“It’s the truth!” lied Garrain. “I know how implausible this must sound but—”
“Garrain, we have a serious proble—oh crap.” Saskia’s voice burst into his head, cutting through his denial like a heated blade through a putrescent squashfruit. Garrain cast his eyes to the sky, letting out a resigned groan. This was it. He was finished.
The Chosen barked out a single laugh, loud enough to hurt Garrain’s ears. His eyes blazed behind the mask. “Caedling. You have a faultless sense of timing.”
As one, the elders pointed staves toward him. Standing among them, Jevren flicked him an apologetic hand gesture, though his expression remained unchanged.
Thiachrin tore the faux staff from Garrain’s nerveless fingers, and with a casual flick of his wrists snapped it in twain. Something flicked toward him, impossibly fast. The next thing Garrain knew, he was lying on his back. His ears were ringing. He couldn’t move.
“Take him to the cage trees,” said the Chosen.
Darkness descended.
Garrain awoke to the sight of an eyeless face peering down at him. Purple leaves sprouted from the open eye sockets, rustling in a stiff breeze.
Whisperer.
Here was a greenhand who had betrayed his duty to the Circle; forced to nurture the flesh-eating plants that had slowly devoured his eyeballs, while he stood vigil over the damned.
More gaunt, disfigured forms stepped out of the shadows, gathering around him. Dry, leathery hands tore away his clothes, leaving tattered rags flapping in the wind. A booted heel smashed into his back, sending him tumbling into a stinking, mud-filled hollow beneath a twisted trunk. At the flick of the whisperers’ wands, a cage of writhing tree roots closed around him.
Garrain hauled himself into an awkward crouch—there wasn’t room to stand—peering up between the roots at the feet of his captors.
This had all gone so badly, so fast, it just didn’t seem real. But it was real. They’d thrown him—a keeper—into the cage trees! He was so stunned he didn’t even feel angry. Not yet. The anger would come later.
His days as a free citizen were over the moment Thiachrin saw the demon behind his eyes, and laid bare his lies.
As though she’d just read his thoughts—a notion that seemed as likely as it was terrifying—the demon spoke into his ears: “Dogramit, I’m so sorry. I really frocked this up.”
“Haven’t you tormented me enough?” he muttered. “Why are you still here?”
Immediately, he regretted his words. She may be a demon, and the cause of his predicament, but as long as she remained with him, he wasn’t alone. He didn’t want to be alone down here.
“I came to warn you about…well, it seems kinda pointless, unless you can break free somehow.”
“Tell me,” he said. “It appears I suddenly have a great deal of time with little to do but listen.”
“Not as much as you think,” she said with a wry chuckle. “You were right about the stoneshapers, Garrain. They are up to something. And it’s bad. Really bad…”
He sat in silence, his despair growing deeper with her every word. He’d suspected this was coming, but not so soon. In as little as a fiveday, the dwarrows’ dark design would be realised, and everyone and everything he knew would be consumed by fire.
He began to make a sound that was half-laugh, half-sob. Even to his own ears, he sounded broken. “If you’d come to me with this news just a pinch of days sooner, I might have been able to do something about it. The elders were being useless as ever, but I could have gone with Nuille and Morchi and perhaps one or two others to pay the dwarrows another visit. In all likelihood, most of us would have perished down there, but not before we crippled their ability to carry out their plan.”
“Why didn’t you? You knew they needed to be stopped this whole time, didn’t you?”
He rested his head in his hands. “Why? I’d have though that was obvious. I didn’t act because of you, demon. I didn’t want to risk having you steal away my magic when I needed it most. And I thought there’d be more time; time enough for the elders and the Chosen to assemble a proper warband.”
“Crap!” she said. “I…well maybe you still can do something about it. If you could break free…you know, do something magicy.”
“Perhaps I could break out of here,” he whispered. “They don’t know I still have my magic. But then what? I wouldn’t make it a hundred steps. And if by some miracle I did manage to escape Wengarlen, I’d be alone, with no chance of defeating the dwarrows. No-one will join me now. Probably not even Nuille. I was so close to telling her about you. So close. But now she’ll doubtless hear of it from Jevren or Thiachrin. I’ll be a traitor and apostate in her eyes. But none of that matters, because of one simple fact: I can’t get there in time to stop them. The journey from dwarrow den to Wengarlen took us nine days. Nine. Even if I ran myself ragged, it would at best save a pinch of days, and I’d be in no condition to fight when I got there.”
“Oh. Crap.”
“There might be one person who could get a warband there in time, but there’s no chance…”
“Who!” she demanded.
“The Chosen. Thiachrin. His predecessor had a form of travel magic that allowed us to go for days without food or sleep.”
“Well that’s just frocking fantabulous. The one person who might be able to save us is the bad guy. Who came up with this stupid plot?”
The sound of a raised voice interrupted their conversation. A very familiar voice. “I said let go of me, you fucking bald clod!”
Thiachrin laughed. “Such a feisty little malkin. A pity you have such poor taste in lifemates.”
“Fuck the lot of you with a splintered staff!” shrieked Nuille. “When I get my wand back, I’m going to—augh!” A loud thwack filled the air, and she fell silent.
Ice ran through Garrain’s veins. “Thiachrin!” he shouted. “I need to speak to you!”
“In good time, fledgling,” said the Chosen. “We wish to see you wither a bit first.”
“This cannot wait! It’s a matter of urgency, not for me, but for all of Laskwood, perhaps Ciendil itself. If you don’t like what I have to say, you can do as you wish with me. But please, hear me out.”
