Logan was the last of them to climb out of the maintenance shaft. He wanted to make sure the gnomes had a boost to get out through the floor. The cobolds could still be heard somewhere distant in the network of tunnels below. At first there had been enraged screams at losing their trail, but that had faded as time dragged on with no sign of the intruders. Corbin said they must have been having a Hel of a time trying to find the group without the mental suggestions of Baetylus.
Grubble judged that they should be on the far side of the palace at this point, the opposite direction to home unfortunately, but far enough away from the cobold horde to regroup and come up with a plan to get out of Ul’kor.
“What part of the castle is this?” Logan asked Bipp, looking around at the strange place. The walls were dyed a turquoise color that, even covered with dust, stood out in stark contrast to the drab walls from earlier.
“Only poffers fancy enough to care about coloring walls is the clerics' guild in Hodric’s Hill,” Grubble said. “If you ask me, we can do without all the flim flam of different colors. It’s too distracting.”
“Be about right, if you see the runes carved overhead,” Bipp said, pointing straight up at the ceiling of the curved hallway. A large rounded stone was set overhead, with another old gnomish rune carved into it.
“It’s some sort of protection spell, right?” Corbin asked the scholarly little engineer.
Bipp nodded. He was impressed to hear someone else in the group knew something of ancient symbolism. “Cleric magic, to be precise. This is probably from the infamous Crow’s Guild.”
Around the corner, the hallway came to an abrupt dead end, splitting to either side and forming new paths.
“Which way do we go?” Corbin asked.
Bipp inspected the keystones above the entranceways. “Says Wisdom and Botanicals,” he translated, pointing at each in turn.
“Elder Morgana always said, When in doubt, choose the wisest path,” Logan joked, deciding for them.
“Did you just make that up?” Corbin said.
Logan shrugged.
Corbin searched for signs of life ahead. He scrunched his forehead, finding something peculiar. He turned and pointed down the Botanical hallway instead. “There’s something down there, but it’s not sentient,” he said. “I can’t explain what it is I’m sensing. Almost like a pulsing…”
“Should we check it out?” Bipp said.
“Alrighty then. Botanicals it is,” Logan said, turning about-face to the other hallway.
The path snaked back and forth, which was odd, as there were not many rooms off it. Each room was fairly barren. Some held nothing more than a mortar and pestle or even an alembic for alchemy, but most had been pillaged long ago by the invading horde.
Corbin let them know they were getting closer as the alien feeling grew stronger. They had to stop short around the last bend when the path ended prematurely. This time there were no other paths splitting off. Instead, it looked as if the entire corridor had been sealed away with a large stone plug that had been set tightly into the space.
“This is it!” Corbin said. “This is the source of the pulsing.” He tapped the hot stone, unsure what to make of the strange carvings covering it.
Bipp studied the area carefully, his concentration intense.
“Probably more human trouble by the looks of it,” Grubble complained, kicking the dusty floor while he paced.
“Hmmm…this is very interesting. These inscriptions are not just written in High Gnomish but are also from the magical dialect, so they are not only ancient but were also used by only the most advanced Clerics of Ul’kor,” Bipp said, thinking out loud.
“Huh, so ye can’t translate it then?” Grubble grunted contemptuously.
“Didn’t say that—did you guys hear me say that? That’s not what I said. Spent half my twelfth year at Pomk University learning High Gnomish, happens to be one of my specialties.” Bipp held his hands at his waist, beaming, but the group did not seem moved by his scholarly knowledge. “Right…anyhow, says here, more or less, that this area’s been sealed off.”
Logan slapped his own face in frustration, which the little gnome found puzzling. “Bipp, we know it’s sealed off. What we don’t know is why.”
The gnome looked up at him and nodded, turning back to the strange blockade. “Hmmm…says something about the Ul’kor rift and some such about an evil that—”
“Fer Thorgar’s sake, lad, just read the whole flippin’ thing out loud to us from the beginnin’!” Grubble snarled. He was clearly past the point of annoyance and even unlatched his battle-axe for extra incentive.
Bipp gulped and read from the beginning.
‘Through this portal lies the heart of our Kingdom,
Sealed forever, protecting Vanidriell,
from the Traitorous fiend Hublin.
Goodly gnome turned to the path of Evil,
Power he sought, our kingdom he split.
Never release these cursed grounds,
Lest you free Shadows upon the land once more’.
The message was clear and foreboding. None of them intended to try to get past this seal.
“So all this time,” Grubble whispered, “it was a gnome what caused the fall of Ul’kor?” He sounded as if he could hardly believe his own realization.
“Well, Grubble,” Logan said, “at least now we know it wasn’t human trouble after all, eh?”
The little warrior growled and punched the stone seal several times in a rage. A crack of light blinded them and they found Grubble on his back.
“I wouldn’t mess with that thing if I were you,” Logan said.
Grubble got to his feet and glowered up at him before spitting on the ground at the seal’s foot. With that, he turned and stomped back down the hall, muttering and cursing the whole way.
“What has gotten into him?” Logan innocently asked.
“Seriously, Logan?” Corbin asked. “Sometimes I don’t know what to do with you.” He shook his head and chased after the warrior.
“What?” Logan asked again, still not understanding why Grubble would be so upset. He looked at Bipp and shrugged.
“Ye have to understand this is a shock to us,” Bipp said. “All our lives, we knew Ul’kor was cursed. But not to be hurting your feelings, general consensus has always been that it was something the humans did to our people. For us to find out now, after all these years thinking otherwise, that it was one of our own what did this to our race…well, it’s a lot to take in.” Bipp knew Logan did not mean any real offense and reasoned that sometimes the young man was just too dumb to know any better.
Corbin bolted back around the corner, looking frazzled. “I don’t know where he went off to! One minute he was there and the next he was gone!”
“Did you search for him with your mind thingy?” Bipp asked.
“When I put that shield on us, it blocked him from me as well. If I take it down, that exposes us all to Baetylus again, and he’ll know I still live to boot.”
“That’s not good,” Logan said.
“Most likely he just needs time to stew,” Bipp said. “As I said, it’s a lot to take in.”
Logan nodded. “Okay, but it’s going to be dangerous to stay in one place, especially cornered in this dead end.”
“Look, let’s retrace our path to the other halls,” Bipp said. “He couldn’t have gone too far.”
Logan and Corbin agreed. They wanted to be rational about their approach to finding Grubble.
All the way back they saw no sign of him. Bipp began nervously fidgeting his thumbs, worried that their companion had been captured. They traveled as far back as where the path first split and decided to follow the alternate route until they came to an exit, bringing them back outside into the night air.
“There is no way we could have missed him in there,” Logan insisted, looking back at the castle walls.
An arrow hissed through the air, clipping the wall just beside him. Weapons
were immediately drawn and the trio fell into a triangle formation, ready for the fight.
“Oh, sweet mother of pearl,” Bipp croaked, astonished at the horde surrounding them. There had to be at least thirty cobolds blissfully unaware of their presence as they searched the courtyard for the intruder’s whereabouts. The archer who had actually spotted them and thought to make a name for itself cursed its luck at missing the unsuspecting target.
“Well, boys, it’s been fun, but I think it’s time to RUUUUUNNN!” Logan yelled.
Bipp hopped up, his little feet pumping in midair, and landed barreling full speed ahead. The archer called out to alert his clan, jumping and pointing at the fleeing intruders.
They ran straight for the edge of the spire, where a massive stone bridge, lined with gnome statues of guardians and wide enough to fit five carriages side by side, arched across the yawning chasm. A band of cobolds ran to block their escape as the horde behind them sprang into action, clambering over one another to get to the intruders and howling in glee.
Logan called for his companions not to slow their pace, running hard into the group blocking their way to the bridge. He did not waste time with hand-to-hand combat, taking one of the beasts out with a laser blast to the chest and slamming the butt of his rifle hard across another’s forehead. Corbin spun his voulge low, knocking three of the monsters to the ground, while Bipp barreled into another headfirst, hurling the screaming creature over the edge of the cliff.
As gruesome as their onslaught was, the cobolds quickly recovered. The little hairy humanoids were stabbing, bashing, and slashing at them with all manner of crude weapons. As soon as one fell, another was there to take its place, rushing in from the side.
“There are too many of them!” Logan shouted before blasting another cobold pointblank in the chest. He looked over his shoulder at the incoming army of humanoids.
“We have to get past them to the bridge,” Corbin yelled. “It’s our only hope!” He danced backward, avoiding a dagger, and swung his weapon in for a fatal blow.
The horde was close enough now that they could rain a barrage of tiny arrows down upon the trio, callously taking down a couple of their own kindred in the process. One pierced Logan’s thigh. Howling, he missed an opportunity to block, catching a dagger across his forearm. Corbin saw his brother go down, but there were too many of the little monsters around him, and the horde was closing in quickly. The eager cobolds jumped up and down, stomping on Logan as he tried in vain to protect his head with a blocking arm.
One of the laughing monsters’ head went flying past its friends as a roar announced Grubble’s arrival on the other side of the horde. Corbin took full advantage of the moment, slashing brutally against the pressing beasts. Both of them worked furiously to cut a swath through their enemies while Bipp helped Logan, who had begun blindly firing off rounds with his plasma rifle, hoping the take down some of the incoming attackers.
Their path clear, the companions took flight over the massive stone bridge. If Bipp had taken a second to look down over the edge, the engineer in him may not have been able to cross, realizing how high they were on a centuries old, unkempt stone overpass. Logan took up the rear, blasting deadly shots into the wall of snarling pursuers. The horde broke once on the bridge, with lone cobolds splitting off in different directions, and a couple even slipped under the suspended platform, scurrying upside-down on all fours.
“Did you know they could do that?” Logan asked Bipp in bewilderment.
“They’re cobolds!” Bipp replied, as if that were answer enough.
Grubble shouldered one of the beasts hard, shoving its flailing body off the bridge. “Less talk, more killin’!” he growled.
Corbin ran from side to side, cutting down the humanoids as they scrambled from beneath the bridge, trying to get behind the companions and box them in.
Logan felt an icy chill as more and more of the monsters flooded toward the overpass from inside the city. There seemed to be no end to their numbers. There had to be hundreds of them! As if that were not bad enough, something large was making its way through their ranks, flinging cobolds in the air to clear its way. Logan took another newcomer down then decided he did not want to be on the welcoming committee for whatever was coming. He turned and sprinted farther onto the bridge.
Over his shoulder, he spied the hulking form of a gigantic, shiny, black rhino beetle as it rammed through the blocking horde. The bridge shook as it stomped heavily onto it. On its back rode the cobold king, swinging an eight-foot flail with a spiked ball at the end. Grubble barely had time to move out of the way before the weapon smashed past his shoulder. The chain still caught him, throwing the gnome spiraling in the air across the wide bridge.
Logan stopped short and let off a blast of his rifle, just missing the gloating rider’s spinning weapon. The king directed his attention toward Logan, confidently gritting his thick fangs before charging the armored beetle straight in his direction. Pulling on chains bored right into the armored hulk’s head, the king forced his pet to thrash the three-foot horn at the tip of its face as it came on. Logan rolled out of the way but was forced to drop his rifle, which was mangled to a pulp under the sheer weight of the mount’s stomping legs. Skittering to a halt, the chieftain turned around, pulling hard on the reins with one arm while swinging his mighty flail with the other.
Corbin sprinted in, using his voulge to pole vault high over the mounted cobold leader. As he passed overhead, he swung down in an arc, cutting the laughter from the monster along with half its ear. Corbin cursed his aim. It was a prime opportunity lost. Bipp had no time to watch the spectacle, holding off circling cobolds while Grubble recovered his senses.
The king roared and brutally charged in another attempt to crush Logan. He was in a murderous rage, having been cut by the other sneaky human.
To avoid being crushed, Logan desperately threw himself over the edge of the bridge. His metal fingers dug deeply into the crumbling stone and stopped his fall, and he dangled dangerously from its side. As the rhino beetle barreled past where he had been, it crashed right through a towering gnome statue, shattering it in a shower of rocks and dust that rained down all around Logan’s cringing form. The king peered back at Corbin, coldly laughing over his victory.
A shocked cobold stared Logan in the face. He was hanging right in front of where it had crawled across the underside of the bridge. Logan seized the moment of surprise to disarm it with a smile then grabbed its neck with his free hand and yanked down hard, dropping the screaming monster down the dizzying heights into the yawning abyss below.
Above, Grubble had risen to his feet and was viciously cutting down cobolds left and right. The chieftain reined in his beast, seeing his men go down, and slammed his flail across the warrior’s back, ripping pieces of his armor off in chunks. Grubble roared, thrown by the weapon’s momentum into the air again. He let his axe fly from his powerful grip, and it spun through the air, head over hilt, to land sure and true into the horned mount’s cheek. The beetle’s high-pitched screech of pain was so loud everyone on the bridge had to stop for a moment and cover their ears. Then it barreled in to eat the little gnome, oblivious of its master’s commands.
Corbin threw himself swiftly across the ground, redirecting and cushioning Grubble as he hit the bridge. Another statue was shattered on the other side of the ancient bridge, and the rider’s flail dug a chunk out of the stone at their heels.
“You okay?” Corbin asked the wounded gnome.
“Fit as a fiddle,” Grubble growled, wincing and unlatching a sickle from his belt.
Logan took Bipp’s offered hand to help him back onto the bridge. When he tried to release his clutching metal fingers, a heavy piece of stone came with them. The king was just getting ready to crush his brother’s exposed flank with the deadly swinging flail, and Logan acted quickly. He almost fell forward throwing the chunk of bridge as hard as he could muster.
He could not help laughing as his aim
hit the cobold leader square in the side of the head, almost wrenching him off his saddle and causing the flail to slip from his grasp. The head of the weapon went flying into a nearby group of cheering cobolds, who were gored by the deadly spikes.
Logan called for his companions to retreat, running past the stunned king to the far side of the bridge.
“He’s turning about!” a wide-eyed Bipp warned.
Logan’s brother stopped in the middle of the bridge, spreading out his feet for support, and harnessed his voulge behind his back.
“Corbin, are you out of your mind?” Logan screamed.
Corbin blocked him out and channeled the psychic aether around him, letting it build up inside him until it felt likely he would burst. The monstrous horned beetle was nearly upon him. Opening his eyes, he screamed for Elise and let the pent-up energy shoot out like a lance, burning and tearing into the beast’s mind. The beetle stopped its charge, screeching again and standing upright on its hind legs, while the other four legs scrambled in midair.
Logan let out a massive electric blast from his fist, cooking the rhino beetle’s exposed underbelly and ripping its insides apart. The vicious king tried to escape his mount as it flipped onto its back, but he was not fast enough. It fell on top of him, crushing half his body under its weight. The bridge shook violently as the hulking beast crashed down on its back.
No sooner did it lay still than Grubble made his way over and pulled his battle-axe from where it was stuck in the vanquished beetle’s armored face.
The cobold horde fell silent, watching in horror as their great and mighty leader was bested by the foul, greedy humans and gnomes.
Grubble stalked around the armored hulk, all the while contemptuously eyeing the monstrous horde. Their chieftain was squirming, desperate to get out from beneath his mount, but his legs were pinned. He fell still at seeing the angry gnome stalk over to him. Grubble spat on the ground toward the king’s clan. Without taking his eyes off their ranks, he lifted his battle axe high overhead and slammed it down with a furious cry.
The blade cleaved the king’s head off with one mighty swing. Grubble bent down and picked up his prize, lifting it high into the air for all to see, then spat again and threw it far across the bridge into the mob of humanoids.
“Go back to Hel where ye came from!” Grubble shouted to the monstrous horde then strode back toward his companions, ignoring his serious battle wounds in his moment of triumph.
“They’re not following,” Logan said.
“They’re confused with no one to tell them what to do,” Corbin reasoned.
A bolt flew from the crowd, piercing the center of Grubble’s back. The gnome warrior staggered forward a few steps, opening his eyes wide and sucking in air.
Burgoth, the shaman, grinned cruelly from inside the horde to see that her shot found its mark.
Grubble stood still, staring at his companions while the air behind him filled with a cloud of raining arrows, one after the other thudding into the proud warrior’s back. He stubbornly marched toward them, flinching with each stab.
Corbin and Bipp ran out to pull the gnome across the rest of the bridge. Shaman Burgoth snarled, “Slay the defilers!”
The cobolds hooted and squealed, racing across the bridge toward them. Corbin and Bipp made it to the other side, pulling Grubble off the bridge, and Logan aimed his fist high into the air, shouting for his brother to hurry.
Corbin shot him a puzzled look.
“I’ve got an idea,” was the only explanation Logan gave as the small compartment on top of his mechanical fist opened.
A tiny pill shape zipped into the air high overhead. There was a smoky spiral in its wake, and Logan turned his head, shielding his eyes and motioning for Corbin to do the same.
A loud explosion rocked the entire cavern. The moss ceiling lit up with a wave of fire. Corbin finally understood the wall of rocks he had found beside the sauria while tracking Logan as gigantic stalactites dislodged from the ceiling, pummeling the bridge to pieces and smashing their enemy to a pulp.
The cobolds howled fearfully, scattering in every direction, some jumping right off the bridge in their mindless terror. Within seconds, the bridge, which had withstood centuries of time, was obliterated by the falling ceiling, and the vicious cobold horde was sent fleeing back into the cursed ruins of Ul’kor.
Logan did not have time to savor their victory as Bipp’s sobbing drew his attention. Grubble lay still in the dirt on his side, blood leaking out of him faster than they could possibly hope to stem. Corbin was speaking quietly to the old gnome, trying to keep him aware while he broke off the arrows one by one.
The warrior grabbed his forearm with a grip strong as a vice to stop the pointless effort. “Never ye mind that now, lad. It’s to the halls of Valhalla for me,” Grubble said, accepting his fate. He was proud to die a warrior’s death.
Corbin offered a heartfelt apology, trying to voice how sorry he was that they had let him down.
“Ye did nothing of the sort,” Grubble said, his voice like grinding stones. “Yer some of the good ones, don’t ye be doubtin’ it. I’m proud to have fought beside ye. Truer warriors have never been seen.”
“For humans, eh?” Logan stammered through the pain clenching his throat, forcing the gnome to laugh painfully.
“Aye, even fer humans…best man-folk I ever done met, lad,” Grubble admitted as he closed his eyes for the last time in Vanidriell. Many years of his long life stretched out before him, all the dreams, all the moments of happiness and sadness, the taste of butterscotch, the meaninglessness of anger, all of it passed through an empty void that whispered his name.
Grubble’s aching chest stopped moving, and his grip loosened on Corbin’s wrist as a look of content washed over him. Corbin could dimly make out the proud warrior’s soul leaving his body for the afterlife, wondering aloud if his beloved wife Annit would be waiting for him, and he silently wished the gnome good speed on his journey.
CHAPTER 23