Fortress Al-Mir

“She’s still down there. I can see movement.”

“It’s too dark to make anything out. Did she bury the glowstone knowing we were watching or did they get buried in the rubble?”

“Can she summon the demon without sacrifices?”

“Don’t ask me how it works, human. You’re the spellcaster here.”

“Does she have sacrifices?”

“We saved the other humans.”

“What if some goblins fell in with her, could she use those?”

Arkk stared into the crystal ball, trying to glean anything from the dark orb. Vezta stood to his side while Olatt’an, Rekk’ar, John, and Hurtt peered into the ball. Ilya sat on the ground not far away, refusing to stay put near the Abbess despite her injury.

The wounded were laid out on the grassy field, recovering. Those who could still carry weapons, orc and human alike, stood guard, watching for any stray goblins or orcs. Those guarding the entrance had already found them, though they couldn’t be counted among the living anymore. Arkk had not dug into the barracks yet. If those inside knew their chieftain was dead, they would be far more willing to surrender without a fight.

“Not too keen on getting close to her magic,” Olatt’an said, speaking as if he were discussing nothing more interesting than the weather. “Seen it do some nasty stuff to those who cross her.”

“Can we just leave her there?” Hurtt said. “She can’t escape, right?”

Arkk shook his head. Vezta would have been able to escape with her teleportation circles. He didn’t know if the chieftain knew any magic like that—he thought she would have used it by now—but it was too great a risk. Even if she couldn’t do that, who knew what else her magic was capable of.

“Drop the barrows on her,” Rekk’ar said, spitting on the ground. “Bury her alive. A warrior’s death is too good for the likes of her.”

“Will that kill her?” Arkk said. He could do it. Two of his lesser servants had died in the tunnel collapse, but he could summon more if the remainder didn’t suffice. “Quickly, I mean. I’m not going to take any chances. She dies tonight. If she escapes, this will only have enraged her even more. She’ll flee and summon another demon another day. One that we might not have the fortune of knowing about in advance.”

A moment of morbid silence followed Arkk’s words. The villagers paled at the mention of another summoning and the orcs didn’t comment on the likelihood of her survival. With the powers she learned from that book on her hip, Arkk guessed that they genuinely had no idea.

“I could stand at the top of the pit and throw lightning down it until she stops moving, but I’m sure she can toss magic back up…” Arkk glanced over to Vezta. “I don’t suppose we can carry out your former master’s final orders and get some help that way,” he said, vaguely. He didn’t exactly want everyone present to know about the [HEART] or anything to do with it if he couldn’t help it.

Vezta, unfortunately, shook her head. “Not unless you’ve dug up a magical researcher without my knowledge. I would suggest we recruit the chieftain but one who resorts to demon summoning is hardly an ally I would take comfort in having at my side.”

Nodding his head in definite agreement, Arkk asked, “Any other ideas?”

“I could drop down there myself and tear her apart.”

“Could you survive her magic?”

“I have survived a lot in my time,” Vezta said with a wan smile.

“But could you survive her magic?” Arkk asked again, not willing to let her skirt around the question.

She just shrugged. “Unsure.”

“A bomb,” Rekk’ar said. “Black powder. Toss that down and boom.”

“Where are we going to get a bomb from?” Hurtt asked with a sneer. “We’re a farming village, not an outpost for the Duke’s army.”

Rekk’ar bared his teeth in response, flashing his tusks. Hurtt, to his credit, didn’t back away, though he did look back to the crystal ball with a contemplative look on his face.

“Could we get a bomb?” Arkk asked Vezta.

“I’m sure we could acquire the materials, but without a skilled craftsman to put it together, I imagine we will face disaster.”

“Does anyone know how to make a bomb?” Arkk asked, addressing the others. He knew none of the villagers would.

Unfortunately, his two hopes glanced at each other. Olatt’an and Rekk’ar shrugged their shoulders, not saying anything as they glanced back at him. If any of the surviving orcs knew, they weren’t saying.

Arkk scowled, looking back to the crystal ball. He wasn’t sure why. The image in the glass was just darkness. He started trying to think of all he knew, which was distressingly little. Lightning, possession—which wasn’t something to be used on enemies, according to Vezta—and a smattering of rituals. Most of which didn’t…

Arkk blinked, then let out a small chuckle. “Wait, I can make a bomb.”

Ilya glanced up, scrutinizing Arkk. “Since when could you…” She trailed off, frowning. The frown quickly turned into a wide grin as her eyes widened. “You’re going to explode her.”

“I’m going to explode her.” He paused, looking at Vezta. “I haven’t exploded a spell since… then, but I haven’t really tried. I feel more in control of my magic, but that just means I should be able to let go of that control for this. Right?”

“Her blood,” Ilya said. “She was using it on the altar.”

“Perfect,” Arkk said, jumping to his feet. One of the lesser servants was already squirming over toward the barrows, ready to dig through to the room where the altar had been.

While the servant started digging, Arkk started ripping grass out of a large patch of ground. He wasn’t sure if the grass would interfere but definitely didn’t want to mess this up. Or rather, he did want to mess it up, but in a very specific sort of way. Tearing up the grass wasn’t easy. There was too much, and it was all too small.

Vezta saved him, gently moving him aside before a tendril swept across the ground. It left a thin smear of oil on the ground that ate the grass before quickly dissolving into nothingness, leaving dirt behind. She gave him a nod of her head before stepping aside, hands clasped together in front of her navel.

Arkk wasted no time, scrawling the tracking ritual into the cleared ground.

By the time he finished, the lesser servant had accomplished its task.

Vezta and Rekk’ar accompanied him into the newly dug tunnel, just in case there were still goblins clinging to the walls or if the chieftain had a surprise up her sleeve. However, they found nothing.

The altar was there, lit by a bowl of glowing stones in one corner. Arkk, having grabbed a leaf outside, smeared it through the still-damp blood on the surface of the heavy stone altar. What had to have been hours of work drawing out the intricate ritual were ruined in a second. Having what he needed, he turned to go.

“That’s it?” Rekk’ar said with a bit of a snort-like scoff.

“That’s it.”

Rekk’ar snorted again before grasping the side of the altar. Muscles bulging, he pushed. A bit of a creaking groan in the unstable ground had Arkk taking a few steps back down the tunnel, but Vezta stepped forward to assist. She grasped the altar with a myriad of tentacles and flipped it into the deep pit.

Screaming echoed out. Anger, not pain, unfortunately.

Rekk’ar looked to Arkk and shrugged. “Was hoping it would crush her. Now hoping it screwed up whatever she was surely planning down there.”

“If nothing else,” Vezta said, tendrils disappearing under her dress, “the glowstones may provide insight into her actions.”

“Well, shouldn’t be necessary now,” Arkk said, clutching the leaf tight.

He hurried back out of the barrow and rushed over to the ritual he had scrawled into the ground. Setting the leaf in the triangle, Arkk took up his position opposite from it. Just as he had done with tracking the stag, he poured just a little magic into the circle.

Ethereal silhouettes formed in his vision. He ignored the bush he had plucked the leaf from and focused downward. The orc chieftain glowed, appearing through the ground. She was working on something down there. From her movements, Arkk guessed that it was a ritual circle carved into the walls.

Not knowing what it did and definitely not wanting to find out, Arkk started to focus more magic into the spell. With the stag, the spell had started to fade and he had panicked, flooding it with magic in an attempt to keep the spell going.

Here and now, he opened the floodgates to their fullest intentionally.

The bush started to sparkle and crack first. Smoke drifted from its withering twigs. But Arkk’s eyes were on the chieftain down below.

She noticed something was wrong. Her scrawling stopped and she stared at her hands. That lasted a mere moment before she started panicking. Arkk couldn’t tell exactly what she was doing, but it didn’t matter.

Wincing, snapping his head back reflexively, Arkk grimaced at the sight.

He could see the chieftain’s blood, having used blood in his tracking spell. It was everywhere. The pit had a fresh coating all around its bottom. The largest mass of blood, presumably the remains of the chieftain, barely looked humanoid anymore. Just a smattering of ruined meat.

A cheer from behind him drew his attention to a whole crowd that had gathered around the crystal ball. A few of them, especially the villagers, looked like they were going to be sick. Hurtt, however, let out a loud whoop and promptly slammed his fist into Jorgen’s shoulder. The orcs were a bit more subdued in their reactions, though Arkk did not miss a glance exchanged between Olatt’an and Rekk’ar. The former nodded at the latter, a barely perceptible dip of his head.

“Vezta,” Arkk said, silencing the celebration with that single word alone. “Can you get me down there?”

“You wish to descend into that?” she asked, pointing a slender finger that dripped with a little tar toward the crystal ball. “Would you like to look first and reconsider? She appears to have suffered injuries quite incompatible with continued life.”

“I want to make sure.”

“It looks pretty sure to me,” John mumbled, averting his eyes from the crystal ball.

Vezta ignored him. “Very well,” she said, not offering any other argument as she walked to Arkk.

Together, they returned to the barrows. Vezta split apart into a mass of tentacles, losing her human guise from the waist down. Arkk raised an eyebrow but didn’t otherwise protest as she wrapped one tendril around his waist and under his arms while her arms wrapped around his shoulders, securing him in a harness made from herself.

The rest of the tendrils jammed into the rock walls of the pit. Using them as anchors, she started descending, jamming new tendrils into the walls as they went.

Arkk had experienced many strange things in the past several days, but this was probably the strangest. Still, he didn’t complain. Vezta was only doing as he asked.

The scent of viscera stung Arkk’s nose as they descended. He tried to breathe through his mouth alone, but it didn’t quite get rid of the pungent scent. It only made him taste a metallic note in the air.

He tried not to think about it.

He and Vezta soon reached the bottom. She kept hold of him, making sure that he stayed well above the pool of blood that had gathered at the bottom of the pit. The glowstones were coated in blood, making the light they put off an unpleasant, violent red color. It probably made the entire pit look worse than it was, but not by much.

Arkk… couldn’t take his eyes off the… thing. If someone had told him that it was an orc a few minutes ago and he hadn’t known better, he wouldn’t have believed them. There was absolutely no skin left anywhere that had been exposed to air. He could see flaps of green flesh clinging to the interior of the cowl, which had also been thrown off the chieftain’s head. It had no eyes. No… anything. Bone. It had bone. The skull looked like something had tried to escape from inside it.

Arkk couldn’t help it. He vomited. Vezta kept hold of him, even going so far as to lightly pat his back.

“I did try to warn you,” she said, voice gentle.

“Yeah,” Arkk said, wiping the corner of his lip. “I… Remind me, if I ever want to try something like this in the future, to not.”

“But it was so effective.”

“Too effective. There have to be better ways of dealing with an enemy in a situation like this.”

“If you insist,” Vezta said with a sigh. “Shall we return?”

“Yeah, we—” Arkk paused, eyes roaming down the body of the orc chieftain. “Wait. Lower me, just a bit.”

“Lower?”

Though she questioned him, Vezta did as he asked. Arkk reached out, brushing aside now loose chains. The black book the chieftain had was, improbably, still black. It had managed to avoid the coating of blood that covered everything else. Arkk wasn’t sure if it was that its owner was dead or simply that he could easily grasp it, but the moment he touched it, he felt the [HEART] acknowledge it as his property.

The book vanished in a flash, reappearing on a shelf in his library for later perusal.

“Master,” Vezta said, her gentle tone absent from her now harsh voice. “I hope you are not planning something unbecoming of a Keeper of the [HEART] of Fortress Al-Mir.”

“I’m not going to summon a demon, Vezta,” Arkk said with a small sigh. “But if someone else has a similar book or similar magic, I want to know what they can do.”

Vezta hummed. Hugging him tighter, she somehow managed to turn Arkk around to face her. She didn’t say anything. She just stared into his eyes with her luminous golden suns.

“I promise,” Arkk said.

“Good.” Vezta moved her head closer, dropping her chin on his shoulder. She didn’t speak anything more, choosing to remain quiet aside from her tendrils puncturing the rock as they ascended the pit. When they finally reached the top, it felt like there was some reluctance in releasing him.

There was still much to do. The other orcs in the barracks needed to be dealt with. The wounded still needed tending. He needed to figure out what to do with the orcs they had rescued.

Their dead needed to be buried.

And yet, despite that, Arkk felt like a pressure had been removed from his back. The possibility of a demon appearing was no more. They could take their time. Do things carefully.

Arkk let out a soft sigh, wondering how an amateur hunter had wound up in this position.