Chapter Forty-One—Razul al...

As they ran through the chamber, the water on both sides began to stir and spash with agitation.

“Shiro!” Ali called. “Something is in this water!”

“I know!”

He didn’t stop. He wouldn’t stop for a bit of a disturbance in the water when whatever was happening in the next chamber beyond could mean the life or death of the man they were here for.

But suddenly he slid to a halt as a something jumped out of the water and into the path ahead of him, his stomach knotting up with apprehension.

It was a small… monster, it’s face that of a gaping fish, it’s maw filled with long sharp teeth and its eyes gleaming green and glinting in the light of Shiro’s torch. In its left hand—in the webbed and clawed finders—was a silver trident.

“Move!” Shiro shouted, giving the spiny fish-like creature a chance to leave him.

But it screamed, a wet cry between a hiss and a growl, and lunged at him. Shiro batted the trident aside as Ali and Debaku grunted behind him. The metal on metal from, Shiro’s contact with the creature’s trident was repeated from behind him as his friends fought the other monsters.

“It is an ambush!” he called.

Shiro kicked the creature in the midsection and it flew back into the water.

“Haha!” Ali cried triumphantly. “These monsters aren’t so tough, Shiro!”

And then the water all around them began to agitate.

“I think there are more,” Debaku said.

Suddenly five or six more jumped into Shiro’s path. “Fight!” he called, and lunged forward, cutting the first fish man in half from the forehead down.

Three lunged at him, hissing and growling, their sharp tridents thrust forward. Shiro batted them aside, sidestepped the third trident, then came back with his torch and hit the creature, the hot portion of his makeshift weapon hissing against scales. The fish man whaled shrilly as he flailed back into the water.

Debku grunted from behind and Shiro saw the outline of a dark form move above him before the Mar’a Thulian landed in front of Shiro behind the other fish men and attacked, killing two before they even realized what was happening.

Shiro slashed at his final target, but the monster squealed and jumped into the water, disappearing with a traveling ripple of water.

“Into the next chamber!” Ali called and passed Shiro up. Debaku turned and preceded him out.

The torches in this chamber were lit, revealing the men still alive at the end of this corridor, which was steaming and hot.

“Why is the water so warm?” Ali asked. “And why are there fish men underground in the mountains?!”

“Later!” Shiro said. “We need to help Razul and his men.”

Ahead of them in the oval-topped frame was a closed portcullis of silver and black metal, barbed with points that Shiro could easily see, that if touched, would make a man bleed.

There were men on the other side.

“Help!” one called in Imperial Abassir.

“They’re going to kill us!” another screamed.

“Open the gate!”

A man further inside the chamber beyond cried out, and another thunderous sound crashed through toward them, hot water splashing forward.

The men at the portcullis, bleeding, shirtless and desperate, cried out. One fell, a spear point sticking through him and almost striking Shiro in the face.

“Why do they have chains?” Ali screamed. “Why do you have manacles on your arms, man!”

“We are prisoners! Save us! SAVE US!”

And then the men were swarmed by the little fish monsters, at least twenty or thirty of them.

It was difficult for Shiro to see beyond the portcullis into the next chamber that glowed with a blue luminescence that only glow rocks or prolonged magic could maintain, but he thought he saw a man in there, swimming in the hip-deep water.

Shiro tried to move closer, but the water pouring out, hot and steaming, was too strong—the mist obscuring everything from view. “How do we get in there?” he called.

A man within bellowed a battle cry as he used his strength to perform some unknown martial action. There was a metal on metal clash and a monster—much larger than any of the others he had seen—whaled, the horrible sound travelling even better through the water.

“There!” Debaku called as he pointed to a platform up above. There was a visible chain leading to a latticework of gears and mechanisms unseen inside the walls.

The monster beyond cried out again, and the water that rushed through the portcullis came through even more thickly. Shiro could see that even the fish monsters had trouble in the current, as many of them were stuck against the portcullis, their grey-blue blood filling the water around the gate.

“I won’t make the jump from within this water!” Debaku called. “You need to help lift me out!”

“All right!” Shiro called. He moved to Debaku, but the current started pulling him away, back toward the end of the chamber from where they came.

“Shiro!” Ali bellowed. He was hugging a statue as he reached out.

Shiro took his arm and Ali pulled him forward.

Debaku was in front of the statue on the other side. He turned and began to climb it.

“Oh no!” Ali snarled in complaint. He pointed to the water ripples with his scimitar. “Those fish monsters are coming back!”

“They are called squimen,” Debaku yelled as he climbed the statue.

“I don’t care what they are called!” Ali hissed and swung his sword into the water, a blue expanse spreading and washing away with the tide. “Haha! I got it!”

“You forget!” Debaku said. “You had questions before, Abassir man.”

“Do not be over confident!” Shiro called, and swiped at the fish coming near him. Even these little squimen had trouble fighting them in this current.

Shiro almost lost his balance as he moved to reposition his knee behind the statue so he wouldn’t be dragged away.

Debaku grunted loudly as he jumped from the head of the statue to the platform on the other side.

Shiro turned as he lurched again and took hold of the chain. His body weight pulled it down, the mechanisms within clanking and sounding to a general churning.

The portcullis opened, filling their chambers with dozens of the little fish monsters. Shiro turned and parried the attacks of at least three of the creatures as each one tried to get a hit in as it flopped past him through the water.

“The water!” Ali called. “It’s lowering!”

“Good!” Shiro said, glancing at Debaku who held on to the chain with one hand, his boots two paces from the floor.

He dropped, plashing into the water.

“We need to stay near that lever!” Shiro said. “It’s the mechanism that resets the trap!”

“Yes!” Debaku said, still holding onto the chain. “Ali, take the chain.”

But the Abassir must have not heard, because he rushed through the archway into the chamber beyond, where blue-grey blood filled the water.

Shiro trudged after him.

There was a monstrous form ahead, its armor sparkling among the coral in the corners of the room with iridescent beauty.

The man before them, his back turned to them, completely shirtless and covered in ink growled and grunted as he swung a weapon at what was clearly a dungeon guardian, dead, bleeding out in the water.

Ali did not approach the man directly, but skirted to the side somewhat. Shiro did the same, taking Ali’s cue and moving to the man’s opposite side.

Is he dangerous?

When Shiro’s eyes landed on the man’s face, he realized that he was covered in the creature’s blood. He didn’t seem to notice them as he hacked a luminous jewel out of the creature’s body.

He lifted it, grinning like a man who had just found a treasure vault and laughed. Then his eyes lowered, flicking from Shiro to Ali, then back to Shiro. “Have you come to rescue us, strange foreigner?”

“Razul?” Ali said from the left.

The man glanced at him and paused. “Ali? Is that you, Ali? By the gods, man, what are you doing here?”

“We came to get you.”

“Well,” Razul said with a laugh. “I know my exploits travel, but I did not know our foul predicament had become so widely known.” He gestured with the glowing orb as he spoke. “Oh!” Razul shouted excitedly as if he had forgotten something. He bent, feeling in the water. “Where is it? Where are you? Damn you, you whore’s—Ah! Got you!”

He lifted a sword out of the water, gleaming in an iridescent blue-silver and shaped like a curved fish’s fin. In the hilt rested a blue sapphire.

“Good gods,” Ali said. “That is quite a find.”

“Yes, it is. And this too!” he hefted the glowing orb.

“Razul! Razul—you are alive!”

Two of his men appeared at an opening on the other side of the chamber. They strode through the door, the trim of which was carved like that of a fish’s lips, its eyes containing sapphires in the wall.

“Look!” Razul said, pointing above the door frame.

The men who had just entered glanced up. “Ahahaha!” they laughed. “We are rich!”

“And even richer now than most of your men are dead,” Shiro said, his eyes lidding halfway. He did not like what he was seeing.

Razul smiled, walked up to Shiro and tapped him on the shoulder. “We all know the risks.” He smiled and strode past Shrio. Then glancing over his shoulder, to his men he said, “Get up there. Yes, yes—boost him up. Yeeessss—just, pluck them out with your dagger. No, you fool, not like that. There. Perfect.”

Shiro glanced at Ali and Ali held his stare and shrugged, seemingly in an almost apologetic manner. “Well,” Ali said. “We have our man.”

Razul strode out of the chamber like he owned the dungeon.

After a moment, Debaku said from the other chamber, as he was unable to leave the lever that controlled the portcullis, “I am concerned about the quality of ‘our new man.’”

“Kami-sama…” Shiro breathed.