Monsterworld, p.122
Monsterworld, page 122
part #1 of Monster Slayer Series
All around me, I heard the screams as my companions were attacked by the vicious vampire-sex-faeries. All except one of my companions:
Lace, who’d managed to keep away from the mess of bodies.
Her claws shicked out just as the blonde faery launched herself at me. I ducked, everything seeming to slow down Matrix-style as she soared over me, turning her head to try to chomp on my ear but just missing. She landed amidst the naked battle beyond, where Misha was barely holding her opponent at bay with her outstretched hands. Eve and Vrill were ass to ass, blocking attacks from another two faeries. Silk was down, nasty bitemarks on her forehead, a faery standing over her like a wild beast defending its kill. Chastity was right in front of me, stricken with fear at the turn things had taken.
The blonde, still on the floor, grabbed at her ankle and bit it.
Chastity shrieked and kicked at the faery, dislodging her. Blood streamed from the wound.
That’s when Lace arrived.
She slashed her Wolverine claws from side to side, a spray of blood bursting from the faery that had been standing over Silk. The faery went down hard, throat opened as her eyes rolled back. There was a sound like the grinding of gears and my eyes focused on the spot.
The door. It had opened an inch or so. The game had changed.
“Kill the faeries!” I shouted, reaching down to drag my pants up over my hips and then extract my hammer from its loop. I raised it over my head and then slammed it down on top of the blonde. She rolled extraordinarily fast and my hammer hit only the carpeted floor.
Vrill and Eve managed to break apart to each face off against one of the faeries, but the creatures moved with such speed their attempted attacks caught only empty air. This was going to be harder than expected.
“Retrieve your weapons,” I ordered everyone. That was our only chance to get an advantage. This was the faeries’ turf and they’d caught us off guard by literally undressing us and leaving us in our most vulnerable positions.
I jumped in front of the blonde, who looked ready to spring at Vrill from behind while she was distracted by her other foe. Eve understood the technique: give each other cover so we could compose ourselves. While I held off the blonde and Eve held off two other faeries, we walked Vrill over to her clothing and weapons. When she bent down to collect them, the three faeries went berserk, perhaps realizing their advantage was fading.
I caught one in the jaw with my hammer but that allowed one of the others to get in close and snap at my neck. I instinctively recoiled, but one of her teeth still managed to scrape along my skin, drawing a line of blood from side to side in a curving arc, like a smile. Thankfully, the wound wasn’t deep, and I managed to shove her away again. Vrill was on her feet now, quickly dressing and unsheathing her twin blades, each of which shone like fire under the glow of the red wall sconces.
She turned toward me and said, “Duck.” I’d fought alongside Vrill enough to be ready for the unexpected and I obeyed her command without question, not a moment too soon as the dagger left her hand, whizzing past overhead. When I turned I found where it had hit.
A red-haired faery gripped the hilt with two hands, eyes open in shock. She pulled the dagger from her chest, right over her heart. She looked at it as if it was some foreign object, slick and dripping with her own blood. And then she fell to her knees and slammed face first onto the carpet, which was pooling with her blood.
The blonde hissed again, grabbing the knife and charging at me with reckless abandon.
I drove upward, grabbing her wrist in the process. Though she was slender, her strength belied her size and it took all my God-power to stop her from stabbing me in the back. Which, of course, left me vulnerable from the front.
She bit my ear, hard, rearing back to tear a chunk of it away. Blood gushing down her chin, she spat it out and smiled a crimson smile. Like she was Mike Tyson chomping on Evander Holyfield.
“Not cool,” I said, and then slammed her hard onto the floor, dropping her directly onto her head.
She crumpled, unmoving.
I looked about me, taking in the carnage. The others had won their battles as well, except for Silk, who’d remained unconscious for the duration of the fight. “You good?” I asked Vrill and Eve.
Vrill nodded. Eve said, “Never better,” as she retrieved her own clothes and began to slip them back on.
I headed over to Lace, who still had her claws out, chest heaving. Three dead vampire-faeries lay at her feet, slashed to ribbons. I touched the cat-woman’s shoulder and she flinched, swiping at me with her claws. I ducked the blow and said, “Whoa.”
She said, “Sorry,” and quickly retracted her claws. “I hate this room.”
“I’m with you there,” I said. The door was now open most of the way, but not all the way, which meant at least one of the faeries was still alive. I spotted Misha and Chastity helping each other up—they looked none the worse for wear. “Help Silk,” I said to Lace. She nodded and headed over to the other cat-woman.
I shifted toward Beat, who was leaning over a fallen form that was still twitching. The last living faery.
She had the creature in a chokehold, pressing her thumbs deep into her throat. The creature’s eyes were bugging out and she was gagging. “Beat,” I said.
“Not now, Ryder,” she said. “Kinda busy.”
“Hold up. I want to talk to her.”
Beat looked back at me and raised an eyebrow like I was crazy. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” I said, which was the honest answer.
She shrugged as if to say, “Your funeral,” and then released a measure of the pressure.
The faery immediately bucked and thrashed, trying to escape. I sat on her legs, wondering how someone with a form so beautiful could harbor such rage and violence inside her. She hissed at me, spittle flying.
“Why do you yearn for our blood?” I asked.
She hissed again, but this time there were words in the sound. “It takes away our pain.”
“Explain.”
“Their minds are spikes. They stab us in the dark. They pierce us like a crown of thorns. The blood of others is the only remedy to our pain.”
I felt bad for these creatures. Who knew what or who they were before the Morgoss captured them? Were they happy? Were they kind? Maybe, maybe not, but that choice had been taken away from them.
“If I release you, will you try to kill us?”
“Yessss.”
“What do you want?”
“To die. Please. Kill us.”
The way she said ‘us’ when referring to herself made shivers run down my spine. It was like she was part of some hive mind, driven to kill on behalf of a larger, more powerful entity. Which was probably the truth of it. She killed for the Morgoss.
“Beat, your spear,” I said.
I gripped her arms and positioned myself higher so she couldn’t fight back when Beat released her throat. Beat retrieved her spear and pulled on her clothes as well before returning to my side. By then, Eve, Vrill, Misha and Chastity had joined me. “Give it to me,” I said to Beat, gesturing for her to hand me the spear.
“I got this,” Beat said, and then smoothly thrust the tip into the faery’s heart. The air left her lungs and she arched her back.
“Thank you,” she said, and then she died.
“This is one fucked up place,” Misha said.
“Yeah,” I said. “But at least the door is open now.”
~~~
We left the blood-soaked sex room. Silk was our only serious injury, though several of us had been bitten. I carried Silk for now, her unconscious body draped over my arms.
Typically leaving one room in Annakor meant you walked into another room filled with a different kind of challenge. For the first time, however, we stepped into a tunnel. It was arrow-straight and lit with fiery tracks along the walls, fueled by lines of demon’s blood painted on the stone. It might’ve been the path to Hell, if one believed in that sort of thing.
Where are you leading us, assholes? I thought. I could almost picture the Morgoss sitting back on Laz-E-Boy chairs made of the bones and skin of their victims, watching our images on the wall as we made our way through their Not-Fun House.
We walked for an hour, at which point Lace stopped and said, “What the fuck?”
It was a fair question. It was also a good time for a break, so I placed Silk gently on the ground. “I’m guessing if we turn back and walk the same distance in reverse, we won’t find a door,” I said.
“No chance,” Beat agreed.
“You can’t know that,” Misha said, frowning.
“Yes, we can,” Vrill said. It sounded a bit like a shutdown, but I know she didn’t mean I that way. She was simply stating a fact. Annakor didn’t abide by the same rules as we were used to.
“Then what do we do?” Misha said. “Keep walking until we die of starvation?”
“We’ll die of dehydration first,” Beat pointed out. “Though I wouldn’t want it to come to that. Ryder, if I ever complain of being thirsty, can you stab me in the heart with my own spear?”
“Sure, anything for a friend,” I said.
“No! I want to do the stabbing!” Vrill protested. I blinked. Vrill had just made a sarcastic joke in Annakor, the place of her darkest nightmares. That was a great sign.
“We’ll do the stabbing together,” I said, playing along.
“Can someone tell me what the hell is going on?” Misha said.
Lace opened her mouth to reveal her fangs. “The idiots are being idiots,” she said. After opening up to me about her own self-doubt and insecurities, it was good to hear her say something that was so Lace-like I could’ve predicted it.
“Fine, you can do the stabbing,” Beat said to Lace.
Lace shook her head.
Misha and Chastity exchanged an odd look.
Maybe we were losing it. Maybe that was the point of this challenge: to see who lost their minds walking in this endless tunnel. Regardless, we needed to figure a way out.
“Any ideas?” I asked.
“On how to stab Beat in the heart?” Eve asked. Oh gods, now even she was in on the joke. Vrill chuckled. Beat slapped her knee, pretending to laugh. Lace rolled her eyes. Silk, well, stayed unconscious. Based on the quality of our jokes, I wondered if she would ever want to wake up.
“No,” I said. “On how to get out of this goddesses-forsaken tunnel.”
“Hit stuff?” Beat offered.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “Like the walls?”
“Sure. It worked the last time we were underground. Use that big ol’ hammer of yours.” She licked her lips lasciviously just in case I didn’t catch the innuendo.
“Just hit the wall?” I said, considering it.
“Hard, yeah. With your big hammer. Pound it in. Again and again and ag—”
“I get the picture. Thanks, Beat.”
She smiled sweetly. “You’re welcome. As long as you get the picture. You know, about the hard pounding.”
“Anyone object?” I asked, searching the faces around me. All I got were shrugs and looks that said, “Go for it, ace!”
What the hell, I had nothing to lose, right? Or so I thought…
I turned toward one side of the fiery tunnel wall, the side furthest away from where we were congregated. I drew my hammer, gripping it with two hands, the top hand choked up fairly high to start. I set my legs shoulder-width apart, aiming for a portion of the wall beneath the part that was roiling with smokeless fire. And then I swung with everything I had.
The chunk I took out of the wall was satisfying, the medium-size stone cracking away and landing on the tunnel floor, bouncing several times before rolling to a stop. It felt good to do something, and I pretended the wall was one of the Morgoss. Just as Beat had suggested, I kept hitting it, the individual sounds of hammer on stone joining into a longer drumbeat, the staccato sound of rock chips skittering across the ground playing harmony.
I focused on a single hole about two feet high by two feet wide, digging into the wall like a man trying to tunnel out of prison. Except I had more than a sharpened spoon to dig with. With each hit, magical light flashed and the damage was far greater than what it should’ve been. Soon I was in about three feet, to the point where I couldn’t really get my hammer in any further without widening the hole.
I stopped, turning around and expecting to be hit with another innuendo-laced comment from Beat about the size of the hole I’d made and whether it was bigger than I could handle.
Instead, I froze, hearing nothing but the sound of my own heavy breathing.
No one said anything to me. Because no one was there.
Gone. They were all gone.
Like the walls had grown mouths and swallowed them all whole.
TWELVE
MORGOSS
It was a joke—had to be. While I was fully focused on the task at hand, Beat had pressed her finger to her lips and motioned for all of them to run down the tunnel until they were out of sight. Right now, they were probably cracking up, knowing I would turn around and be shocked to see them all gone.
I also knew I was deluding myself.
This wasn’t a real fun house, where people played practical jokes on their friends. This was Annakor, and the only ones who got any fun from this place were the sadistic Morgoss. “Hello?” I shouted, my voice echoing down the endless tunnel, getting softer and more distant with each iteration.
No response. The silence was killing me. I would’ve taken a growl from a monster at this point. Being attacked by a monster would at least give me something to do. I was in trouble, I knew. This was Morgoss territory—they made the rules. If they wanted me to wander a never-ending tunnel for the rest of my days, that’s what I would be forced to do. And as for what had happened to my friends, I didn’t want to think about it. Especially with Vrill, who’d already endured horrific rounds of torture at the hands of the demon overlords.
I was supposed to be a God. That should mean something. I should be able to snap my fingers or wiggle my nose or something and teleport to my friends. I should be able to tear down this dark fortress and rip the Morgoss limb from limb. Shouldn’t I?
I took a deep breath. That line of thinking was unproductive. Although a place of goddesses and monsters, gods and demons, Tor still had rules. I was made into a God, not born one. That seemed to make me somewhat different to the Three, each of whom were born goddesses with uncanny abilities over their individual elements: Air, Earth, Water. But what did I have power over?
Nothing, really. I was strong as hell and a powerful warrior, but that didn’t make me special. Shit, Beat could claim those same two things. I could, however, communicate with the Three. I was pretty sure none of the others could do that, not even Eve. Going into this mission, I had been determined to not need their help. Not because I was so stubborn to think I was invincible, but because I wanted them to rest up and be at their best for the final battle that was to come. Now, however…
I was out of options.
I was in a tunnel, so Airiel and her wings couldn’t do much for me. Persepheus was on her deathbed, plus it’s not like there was a stream or other body of water nearby. Which left Minertha.
Thanks for thinking of me last, Minertha said in my mind.
You’re reading my thoughts?
Not intentionally. You just think really loud sometimes.
As if that made it any better. I wondered how many of my thoughts she’d read over the last few months.
Not many, she answered, still reading my thoughts. It only happens when we’re scrying you. Like now. We’ve been watching your progress through Annakor. Sorry you’ve had to go through all of this for us.
We’re doing it for ourselves, too, I said, feeling defensive all of a sudden—I think because I was still feeling the emptiness of having lost my companions when I was bludgeoning the wall.
We know that, but we still appreciate what you’re doing.
I felt a little bad for underestimating the Three again. They were trying to change their ways—I needed to give them credit for that. Thanks. But I need your help. As you know, the Morgoss took the others.
No, they didn’t, Minertha said.
I spun around in a circle. Umm, yeah they did.
The others think the Morgoss took you, she said.
I frowned, and it took my brain a second longer to change the paradigm I’d created the moment I’d turned around to see my friends missing. There was dark magic afoot here, just not the kind I’d originally thought.
Thank you, I said, refocusing my attention on the tunnel.
That’s when I finally saw the shadows that had been there the entire time. They weren’t moving much, probably because they were doing the same thing I was, looking around and scratching their heads, wondering what had happened. They were also close together, which made all their shadows meld together with mine, making it difficult to discern individuals. And yet they were there, even if I couldn’t see anything but their shadows. Kind of like the shadow creatures we’d faced in battle. No, I thought. Exactly like the shadow creatures.
I stepped further down the tunnel, ensuring my own shadow would be easy to see. I watched my shadow, turning at the right angle so they’d be able to see my entire form. I lifted my hand, watching my shadow mimic my movements. Then I waved.
While I moved my hand back and forth, I kept an eye on the mess of shadows that represented my friends. If anyone noticed my shadow, they weren’t showing it. I kept waving, making my hand motions bigger, like I was a father trying to embarrass his teenage daughter by getting out of his vehicle and waving to her when picking her up after school.
Still, nothing. Dammit, come on!
Finally, one of the shadows separated from the others, moving slowly, head cocked to the side. Stopping before my shadow. I stopped waving, waiting to see what this shadow would do. I was pretty sure who it was based on the size and shape. Beat’s shadow raised its hand and gave the Trekkie sign of greeting, separating its pointer and middle fingers from its ring and pinky fingers.
