[71]

My scramble back up the mountain passed by in a hurried blur. Most of the acidfog had dissipated further downwind than they were, but during my second ascent it was still a problem. I gave the horrible black smoke a wide berth, not wanting to risk suffocation again by traversing through it. The memory of not being able to breathe was still fresh in my mind, and I wondered if I would ever have the resolve to seal out air ever again. Only time would heal that trauma, I decided.

“Harald!” Joy shouted the moment she spotted me. Instead of rushing after the warlock like I had envisioned, the four of them sat near the rock exactly as I had left them. Their inaction annoyed me, but once I fully saw the state that they were in, I realized that their decision was a valid one.

Raxx lay slumped against the boulder, unconscious. His low Willpower continued to vex him during periods of long spell casting, and I could not imagine how hard maintaining that breathing ward had been for him. The man I had amputated was likewise comatose, but I was happy that he was still breathing. His partner stared off in the distance next to him, appearing to have given up under the continuous horrors thrust upon him. A small part of me envied him for that, but I crushed it down as quickly as it surfaced. As long as Reynold Kestev lived, I would not rest. I did not have the luxury of withdrawing into myself.

Joy alone could continue onward as she was, save that she was absolutely furious.

“What the hell was that!” the Wildling screamed, stomping over to me and kicking rocks and dust along the way.

When she got to me, she cocked back a hand as if to slap me. Then realizing she could not reach my face, turned it into a punch at my stomach. A decision she immediately came to regret.

“Ow! Ow! Ow!” Joy yelped, hopping on one foot, and waving her hand in the air, while I looked on apologetically. “Stupid armor!” Joy seethed.

“I’m sorry you hurt your hand, but I’m not apologizing for what I did. It was the right thing to do, Joy.” I said earnestly.

“Hah! Next time you try an ape-brained hero scheme like that, I’m going to shoot you. Let’s see your armor save you from one of my breaker headed arrows.” Joy said, folding her arms across her chest to indicate she was not over the issue.

“The plan worked,” I said, motioning toward the others.

“Oh? You killed the Doom Champion by yourself?” She said, arching an eyebrow.

“No, Gene Pew is down there fighting it. I need to go after the warlock and Reynold before they finish. I’m not sure who will win that fight. Either way, we have little time.”

“Fuck you! You are not a one-man army. I don’t care how ‘angry’ you are. If you had died, we would have faced that thing without your Haunt ability—with most of our group down!”

“My emotions had nothing to do with it. I wanted to give you time, and I did. I would do it again.”

“If you’d kept it near, my Necrosis would have finished it, you moron!”

“Not before it killed and reanimated you,” I countered. “You had nowhere to run. Besides, Haunt didn’t work like it did before, and I would not have been able to fight it for long without air. You couldn’t even hold your bow at thirty feet! It was the right call. I’m sorry that I upset you.”

Joy growled at me, spun on her heel, then stomped back toward the others.

I understood where she was coming from. Feeling useless and incapable of helping was exactly how I felt when Sabine had supposedly gotten captured by bandits. Like me, Joy was a person of action, and did not do well with helplessness. After Joy realized she was angry at herself, she would have to work through it on her own.

“Do you have anything that can wake Raxx up?” I asked her, following behind and changing the subject.

“Maybe,” Joy said. A second later, after thinking about it some she added, “But I don’t think he will be at 100%.”

“None of us are,” I said.

Joy nodded and dug through her backpack for a potion. Producing a green vial, she uncorked it, then gently poured the contents down Raxx’s snout.

The effect was instantaneous.

“Wha--!” Raxx said, jumping to his feet. His uncoordinated paws struggled to find purchase on the rocky ground, and he slid back against the boulder he had been sleeping on.

“Are you all right?” I asked him after a few moments.

“My head is killing me,” he said, massaging his temples.

“We need to go after the warlock,” I said.

Raxx nodded.

“What about them?” Joy said, pointing at the two defeated soldiers.

I squatted down next to the man, staring off into space. “Hey,” I said, placing a hand on his shoulder. The contact jolted him out of his reverie, and his eyes struggled to focus on my features. He looked around, dazed, before coming to his senses part-way.

“Huh?” he asked.

“You need to get him down to the horses,” I said, pointing at the amputee. “Can you handle that?”

A glint of recognition entered his eyes when he saw his friend and fellow trooper. He nodded.

“Good,” I said, releasing my hand from his shoulder.

After we stripped the wounded man of his armor, I assisted the man tasked with carrying him on removing his own. There was no way he could carry the man to safety, burdened as they both were under plate mail. Thankfully, the act of moving with purpose seemed to bring him further back to his senses. Or maybe it was the promise of finally being done with this awful mountain.

Once we finished loading his partner onto his shoulders, I instructed him to go west, then south, circling back around toward the man waiting at the foot of the mountain. I feared they would run into the Doom Champion if they tried to make a straight path. Even now, it might be stalking its way toward us for vengeance.

Joy fed each of us more potions, stating correctly that we really were in no shape to take on a warlock. She insisted we drink a blue substance that my skill identified as a fortitude elixir, which greatly improved our energy. The liquid went down like a raw acid to the throat, but I could not argue with its effects. Less than a minute after ingesting the substance, I felt jittery.

Joy, who weighed probably less than half of either Raxx or myself, had an even more pronounced reaction, bouncing from foot to foot with anticipation.

I wished I had taken one of these during my flight.

“We have about three hours before we crash hard.” Joy informed us.

Knowing what was at stake, we immediately resumed our pursuit of the warlock.

The scene behind the boulder we had hidden behind was one of utter destruction. Joy’s arrows had pierced the weaponized zombies, causing them to prematurely explode. Her attacks set off a chain reaction among the undead, as the leaking acidfog dissolved the others closest to the zombies she penetrated, which then in turn did the same. All told, the size of the horde she slew had to have been tremendous, probably numbering in the hundreds. The exterior of the mountain, and the slope we were currently ascending, was covered in black stained alchemical fallout. The crazy warlock had wasted an exuberant amount of resources to slay us.

Lingering smog poured out from the mouth of the cave.

“Do you see that?” I asked the others, pointing toward the wisp of fog trickling outward.

“Yep,” Joy said, unable to contain a huge grin.

“What about it?” Raxx asked, confused.

“It means that the fog worked its way inside the mountain. Because the horde was so large that the acidfog killed the ones coming out to greet us, before working its way up to those still in the tunnels. The fool must have tried to keep more in reserve in the tunnels.” I laughed.

It was the first time I received good news in what felt like forever. I hoped that the alchemical had wormed its way through the tunnels, killing every single thing in that mountain. Barring that, I would settle for the deaths of Reynold and the warlock who caused all this mayhem. If the Gods had any justice, the crazed old bastard would have gotten the death by acid he so righteously deserved.

“Wait,” Raxx said, looking at Joy. “Did you get essence for all that?”

Joy shook her head. “Hah! No, I wish. I only got credit for the few I killed with arrows. My god rewarded me with the recipe for acidfog though.”

All three of us laughed at that.

“Well, is it safe?” Raxx asked after the humor died back down.

“Is going into the undead infested Blacknails safe?” Joy asked sarcastically.

Raxx rolled his eyes. “You know what I mean. Is the fog going to be a problem?”

“I doubt it,” Joy said.

No one spoke after that, and we picked our way through the fouled blackened earth. A smell not unlike rotten eggs and cow shit from everything coated by the residue, unexpectedly assaulting my enhanced sense of smell. I almost vomited right there on the spot, and Raxx did. Fortunately, Joy had another solution for us, in the form of a minty paste that we rubbed under our noses.

That done, we entered the cave, planning to end this madness one way or another.