Mark of the fool a progr.., p.36
Mark of the Fool: A Progression Fantasy Epic, page 36
“Don’t I know it,” Thundar groaned, looking painfully down to the metal mace by his side.
Even with all that shaggy fur covering him, the weapon must have been hot and burning his leg. Alex couldn’t help but feel for him.
“We’re almost there,” he said, trying to keep his voice cheery. “Just a little more of a walk and we’ll be there. We’ve got plenty of water left, or at least I do, and I’m willing to share. I swear I don’t have pox or anything.”
He laughed at his own bad joke, and was surprised to hear all three of his companions chuckle weakly too. The heat must have been getting to them. “Just a little longer. As long as we don’t run into anything else.”
They pushed harder, trying to open distance between them and their pursuers, all while keeping their eyes on the goal ahead. The heat had seeped into Alex to the very bone. If anything, that just spurred him harder. He’d done well so far in this test, and he’d already learned more about how to use his forceball in new ways just by wielding it in true combat. The class was already proving to have value.
Besides, after coming so far and training so hard for it, he couldn’t help but have a little pride at the thought that he’d succeed. Alex Roth, the Fool of the Heroes of Thameland, was close to passing a test of ability given by Generasi’s own chancellor. Proving himself here would strengthen his own confidence, open new opportunities, and help convince anyone who might suspect him of being the Fool that he likely wasn’t.
The challenge was tough, but less dangerous than he’d feared.
He glanced ahead, peering into the horizon through the shimmering air, and took another long sip from his waterskin.
All he had to do was keep putting one foot in front of the other.
The ground ahead had broken.
At a point close to the base of the escarpment, the terrain shifted from flat, dust-covered wasteland, to cracked and broken rock that was crisscrossed by narrow canyons and crevices.
“Oh shit,” he groaned, and the others groaned with him.
Some of the rocks were angled and would need to be maneuvered past with great care. Others had wide gaps between them that needed to be jumped. To make things worse, anything could be hiding in those crevices, waiting to attack.
And a lot of their party’s strength had already been drained.
Alex glanced back over his shoulder. He was starting to be able to make out their pursuers as they were getting closer—their forms were becoming more apparent.
“This is going to be tough,” Isolde said, eyeing a section of the ground that was angled up like a dagger sticking out of the earth.
“Yeah, and we’re going to lose time and those little demons’ll get closer.” Alex jerked his thumb over his shoulder.
Khalik examined the crevices, then looked to Thundar. “How much strength do you have left, my friend?”
Thundar grunted. “More than I’d hoped, less than I’d like.”
“Okay.” Khalik stood in front of the first crevice, watching Najyah circle above the plain. “We are almost there. If you and I can help Alex and Isolde in making some of the jumps, then we should be able to cross quicker and with no issue.”
“Khalik, if you try to bridal carry me over the canyons…” Alex looked at him.
“I would never.” Khalik grinned. “Now, Thundar might.”
The minotaur grunted at Isolde and Alex. “You’re both getting thrown.”
Najyah landed on a stone ahead as they began crossing the crevices. When the gaps were narrow, the entire group easily stepped over or made the short jumps needed to get from one massive stone to the next. As the gaps widened, the athletic Khalik would make the running jump to the other side and wait. Isolde would go next, starting a jog with Thundar behind her, his arms braced under her armpits, and then she’d jump with the minotaur’s massive arms helping to propel her forward across the gap.
Khalik would catch her on the other side.
Alex felt a little pathetic needing to be half-tossed across the gaps like a sack of potatoes, but he consoled himself with the fact that he’d only really been training for a month now. None of the training had involved jumping. Something he would correct soon. That is, if he survived this place. For now, he’d swallow his pride, since missing one of the jumps and plunging fifty feet down one of those crevices was something he’d rather avoid.
Najyah circled around them, eyeing each crevice for any sign of muupkaras or any other hidden threats.
As they closed on the escarpment, their spirits began to rise, but so did their tension. Now they could hear their determined pursuers’ cries and shrieks, and they were growing louder. The muupkaras could climb well, while they needed to pause at the crevices to cross safely.
“Oof,” Alex groaned as he half-jumped, half-landed after being thrown into Khalik. “Isolde, what tier is a flight spell again?”
She grunted. “Third.”
“First thing I’m learning when I hit third-tier is a flight spell, I swear to the Traveller—” He paused. “Oh hell, look at them!”
He pointed up to the south. Two figures were flying over the landscape—the students that had tried it before. They were at speed, though only about half as fast as Najyah, and kept looking back over their shoulders.
“They must have waited until they were close enough to make the whole journey with their mana,” Thundar grunted in disapproval. “Left the rest of the group behind.”
Khalik’s eyes narrowed. “From their body language, they look… scared, don’t they? Najyah!”
The eagle swooped to the south, passing the flying wizards. She halted, fluttering in the air, then swooped down and gave a loud cry.
Her master swore in his mother tongue. “We have to move! There’s only one of their group left, and they are being chased.”
Isolde looked at him sharply. “More muupkaras?”
Khalik’s face turned grim. “She said it was much larger. That… it was white and had many spikes.”
The young woman paled. “It’s the bonedrinker! Hurry, we have to reach the escarpment!”
Chapter 44
The Bonedrinker
The group pushed as hard as they could, trying to scramble over broken rocks and ground. Dust scattered. Stones and pebbles shifted. The heat blazed mercilessly and their goal aggravatingly refused to get any closer.
The Barrens were starting to come alive with sound.
The flying students who had abandoned their companions reached the top of the escarpment and disappeared out of view.
Now that they were getting closer, Alex could see a narrow, circular flight of steps cut into the side of the escarpment leading up to the top. He swore. He’d hoped that reaching the foot of the escarpment would mean the test was over, but since there was no sign of the chancellor, he realized their ordeal wasn’t over. It did make more sense for Baelin to be on top of the escarpment, using his magic to observe them during the test.
“Najyah has checked the escarpment! She says that the ‘horned one’ is at the top!” Khalik called as he scrambled to the next crevice over a massive stone. “The chancellor waits up there!”
Hope had entered his voice.
The noises around them continued to build.
Explosions sounded from the other side of the escarpment. More battle. Shouts were coming from the south, mixed with some sort of hideous clicking.
Like rheumatic bones rolling against each other.
Meanwhile, behind them, the muupkaras continued to gain. Alex glanced over his shoulder. He could see them clearly now, and there were a lot of them. Fifty, perhaps more. They loped along on all fours like a pack of feral dogs, crying and shrieking to each other. Alex remembered how easily their claws had sunk into the rock, allowing them to scale the canyon wall. If they reached the broken area, they would quickly overtake them.
Thundar grunted. “Dammit, I was saving this for a big fight!”
An incantation flew from his lips.
Silver-grey mana materialized around him, emerging from his mana pool and seeping into his physical form. For an instant, he was outlined in his mana before it completely vanished. His muscles tensed and swelled, and his fur bristled.
“Hang on to me!” He reached out and grabbed Alex and Isolde, tucking each beneath an arm, feet first. The smell wasn’t pleasant, but Alex had no time to dwell on that.
Thundar’s hooves slammed against the stone as he jumped effortlessly from the edge and over the nearby crevice, despite carrying two fully grown humans.
“This won’t last forever,” he grunted to Khalik. “Keep up.”
“Yes!” Khalik cheered.
Alex hung on to Thundar and kept his eyes on the troop approaching the crevices.
As Thundar and Khalik jumped from stone to stone, Alex and Isolde bounced against the minotaur’s sides. Alex kept his mouth shut to avoid biting his own tongue. More screeching and battle noises echoed from all around, sounding like the other groups had dragged a horde of enraged muupkaras with them.
Soon, only a handful of crevices lay between them and their goal.
Then, a human-sounding scream rang out from the south.
It seemed to last forever before abruptly disappearing and reappearing at the top of the escarpment. An instant later, it disappeared again. The bonedrinker’s prey must have been teleported to Baelin, and then to Generasi.
“I can see other students now! And a lot of muupkaras,” Thundar shouted.
Alex craned his neck but couldn’t see much around the minotaur’s bulk. He exchanged a look with Isolde, who appeared more tense than a cat around Brutus. She was muttering beneath her breath again.
He glanced up, noticing their little pursuers reaching the edge of the broken rock area. They streamed over the stones, climbing through the crevices like ants swarming a fallen piece of meat.
“Shit, guys, they’re getting close!”
“So are we,” Thundar grunted.
They landed hard after one last jump, and he set Alex and Isolde down. They’d finally reached the bottom of the escarpment. Now only the stairs lay between them and their goal.
Snorting, the minotaur glanced to the south. “We’d better keep moving.”
Alex followed his gaze and gasped.
Approaching them at frightening speed, the bonedrinker crawled over the crevices. It was huge—at least as big as a carriage—and twisted. Its body was massive and ill-shapen, like a deformed, giant shelled creature. Spikes and calcified protrusions rose from its back and limbs. Its head was crowned in misshapen horns. A long tail that looked like vertebrae swung behind it, capped by a needle the size of a longsword. The creature was humanoid in shape, but it crawled, moving with the same sinuous movements as a lizard.
From what Alex could see of its head, its massive crowned skull was also humanoid, with endless rows of fangs and bony protrusions sticking from its cheeks. Its mouth gaped open, glistening with slimy, white, pulsating flesh. Its eyes sat on a pair of long tentacles like the eye-stalks of a snail. Bone shifted and shimmered along its form as it moved, and more protrusions appeared on its back.
“Oh hell no!” Alex shouted. “Run! Holy shit! Run!”
They didn’t need to be told twice and everyone sprinted for the narrow staircase on the side of the escarpment. They climbed, running as fast as they could over the rough, rocky stairs. The steps were ancient but stable. As they rounded the side, they looked down and saw other students—a group of three—running from a troop of muupkaras toward the stairs.
The selachar woman and the two Doberman-like beastmen scrambled over the stones, firing behind them with bolts of blue and green light that tore rock apart or blasted muupkaras in their chests. The selachar student shimmered as though she were coated in armour made of liquid and shadow, and when she cast spells at their pursuers, blasts of water emerged, which froze on impact. Ice coated some of the muupkaras and the ground beneath their feet, sending them slipping and falling into the crevices.
Another exhausted-looking group of students appeared, tearing across the landscape. Nothing pursued the foursome. Behind, they had left a trail of blackened craters and the twitching bodies of burnt monsters.
“Get back!” one of the group of four shouted. As he roared an incantation, fire danced around his hands and then a glowing orange orb shot toward the back of the muupkaras chasing the other three students.
Boom!
Half the pursuing troop was swallowed by fire, reducing them to burning corpses in an instant. The rest of the group shrieked and scattered.
“I’m out of mana!” the fireball slinger shouted, exchanging nods with the other group of students as they came together, and all seven raced up the stairs. The troop of muupkaras that followed Alex’s group started to swarm toward the escarpment, then pulled back when they saw the bonedrinker. They didn’t flee but watched from a distance.
The students were a quarter way up the escarpment when the massive bonedrinker reached the bottom of the rise. It was too large for the steps, so it let out a gurgle from deep within its chest like it was choking on liquid, then flexed its clawed hands.
It slammed the claws into the stone, biting deep into the rock, and started climbing up the escarpment walls after the fleeing students.
“Run!” Alex shouted. “It’s coming!”
It climbed at a frightening rate, much faster than the running wizards scaling the ridge.
“Back, beast!” another of the group of four shouted.
He screamed another incantation and launched a glowing orange ball down. The bonedrinker gurgled again, withdrawing its slimy tentacles into its eye sockets and slamming its bony face into the stone for protection.
Only its bone carapace was exposed when the fireball went off.
Boom!
The spell tore along the side of the rocky elevation, bathing the creature in flame-magic. There was a hiss and whine as its flesh heated in its bony covering, and it let out a scream that was like the hiss of steam escaping a pot lid.
The monster raised its head and gurgled at them. Some of its bones were blackened, but it started to climb again, undeterred. The fireball wizards raced up the stairs, but the bonedrinker pulled itself up even faster.
One student was falling behind, winded by the sprint. The bonedrinker’s tentacles flailed wildly and it surged toward him.
Its tail whipped back then lashed out.
Crnch!
“Aaaaaargh!”
Alex knew he’d never forget those sounds until the day he died.
The student wailed, falling backward, impaled through the arm as the bonedrinker’s tail held steady. The young man’s arm began to collapse as his bone liquified. His scream intensified.
Then he shimmered and was gone.
The creature paused, then bolted up the wall after the other students. Its carapace shifted and another protrusion formed on its back. It had absorbed the bone of the injured wizard.
Alex’s stomach churned.
“Dammit!” Khalik swore. “We won’t be able to outrun it!”
Isolde glared down at the creature. She trembled, but her eyes were set and dangerous. “Get back from me!”
She raised her hands and began to chant an incantation. Lightning shot between her fingers, then creeped down her hands and arms. Thunder rumbled as she shot her hands down.
Bang!
With a crack, a lightning bolt flew from between her arms.
The electricity magic crackled as it struck the bonedrinker—while it again pressed its head into the wall—and blue and white light flashed over the stone. The creature groaned, stiffening, then fell.
It hit the stone with a colossal impact, snapping many of the protrusions on its back. It lay still, and for a moment, Alex’s heart jumped. The other students caught up with his group, and he grinned, happy to see them.
“You see that?” He laughed. “One boiled bonedrinker courtesy of our resident thunderstorm, Isolde Von Anmut! We… are… Oh shit!”
With a gurgle, the bonedrinker rolled off its back and climbed back to its hands and feet, shaking itself like a wet dog.
“Do you, uh…” He glanced at Isolde. “You got another one of those in you?”
“Not without drawing on my lifeforce. Not a spell that grand. I can cast one of the lesser electricity bolts, but then I’ll be done.” She gritted her teeth. “Infernal creature.”
Alex grimaced, watching the monster shake itself. It definitely wasn’t unharmed. It wasn’t dead or badly wounded, but it definitely wasn’t unharmed.
“Hey.” He glanced at the other students on the steps. “That fall did not do that thing any favours, but it’s gonna keep coming. If we can get higher and drive it off the wall again, it might not get back up.”
“Good idea! Plan as we run!” Khalik shouted, and the other students tore up the stairs after him.
Alex kept glancing down to the bonedrinker as its tentacles emerged from its eye sockets. He watched them turn and twist in the air, then focus on the fleeing students above.
So, that was how it saw…
He called his forceball close to him.
They climbed as fast as they could, making it halfway up the escarpment before Thundar glanced down. “It’s getting closer!” he warned.
Alex whirled. “I’ll distract it! When it’s distracted, everyone do whatever you can to get it off the wall!”
“Can you really divert its attention without getting killed?” the selachar woman asked from her armour of seawater.
“He can. You should’ve seen him do his tricks with the muupkaras!” Thundar said.
“I’ll open up the road,” Alex said. “All of you just have to run it!”
As the creature closed on them, he shot his forceball down.
The glowing crimson orb shot between the bonedrinker’s eye-tentacles. They twitched. The monster hesitated. He shot the forceball back at it, skimming around its tentacles to the right. Then he swung it back around, swinging to the left.
