37

Even when he’d been fit, back then in the Triassic period, Alex hated running. He hated cardio exercise in general. Mr. Lipkowitz, his old kickboxing trainer, used to joke about how Alex would rather get the runs than get to running – that’s how much he hated exerting himself. Seeing how eager he was to run like hell now, however, Hunter was starting to think Mr. Lipkowitz hadn’t been using the right kind of motivation. The rabid horde of malformed aberrations that was hot on his heels was working wonders.

When alone, low-dwellers weren’t much of a threat; they were more-or-less blind, cowardly, and frankly, not the sharpest bulbs in the sky. Banded together, however, they were a different story altogether. Hunter couldn’t fight them, he couldn’t escape them, he couldn’t hide from them. It was too late for any of that. All he could do was sprint from one corridor to another and hope he could keep going long enough for Fawkes and the Brethren to free themselves, catch up, and come up with a new way to deal with their little low-dweller horde problem.

Fyodor was by his side, running and panting too, probably wondering what the hell Hunter had been thinking. Biggs and Wedge were bringing up the rear, lagging behind long enough to curse a few of the uglies with Ill Omen and hopefully slow them down a bit. Not that it would make much of a difference. The low-dwellers were simply too many. Maybe Hunter should take a page out of the direwolf’s playbook, and send the ravens make sure help was on the way.

“Biggs, Wedge” Hunter projected. “Go back to where the low-dwellers were. Go get Fawkes or the Brethren. Bring them back to me.”

With a mental nod of acknowledgement, the familiars immediately split off and vanished into a side corridor. Hunter hoped they’d got the message. Hell, he hoped Fawkes and the others were already on their way to pull his ass out of the fire, because he’d severely overestimated his stamina and ability to run for dear life. His lungs were burning and his legs didn’t feel like his own anymore. It was simply a matter of time until he tripped or ran out of breath and dropped his pace. In either case he’d die a brutal and horrible death, but at least it would be quick. Thank god for silver linings.

“Alexander Fucking Rulin, a.k.a. Hunter the Transient” he thought to himself as his mental focus was beginning to slip, too. “Bad decision champion for twenty-something years straight. Quite the surprise tactician indeed.”

He’d almost completed a whole circuit and was the corridor where he’d spotted the low-dweller horde in the first place when things finally turned his way. Biggs and Wedge sent him a wave of excited chattering through the mental link they shared, but his brain was too numb to make sense of what they were saying. Not five seconds later, a torch-wielding figure stepped out of a side corridor about a hundred feet ahead of him. It was Brother Aurochs, and he was carrying the biggest, most wicked-looking greataxe Hunter had ever seen. The big man dropped the torch to the floor, wielded the axe with both hands, and planted his feet firmly on the floor, as if bracing himself for the skirmish that was undoubtedly about to come.

“No, run, they’re too many!” Hunter said–or at least he tried to. What little breath he could muster was cut short, taken away in surprise when Brother Aurochs started to change.

Illuminated only by the torch’s flickering firelight, the large man’s silhouette started to grow and meld into something even bigger–and so did the horned buffalo skull headdress he was wearing. His already thick arms and thighs grew to massive proportions, and his chest and torso grew so tall and broad it hardly looked humanoid anymore. Hunter saw the man transform into a buffalo-headed, minotaur-like creature before his very eyes, and in real time too. Beside him, Fyodor was terrified. He let out a panicked yelp and almost slowed down and bolted in another direction, but then Fawkes’s familiar, silver-haired head peeked from the around the corner ahead of them and waved to them.

“Over here, quick!” She shouted. “Don’t slow down!”

However unnerving the sight of Brother Aurochs turning into a twelve-foot axe-wielding were-buffalo was, seeing Fawkes alive and well and offering them a way out of their predicament gave both Hunter and the direwolf a new, much-needed burst of energy. They ran past the gigantic, buffalo-headed Brother Aurochs, who didn’t spare them a single glance, and dove into the side corridor where Fawkes and Sister Peregrine were waiting, weapons in hand.

“Stay behind”, Fawkes told him, her eyes already burning with anticipation for the fight that was just a few moments away from breaking out. “Catch your breath. We may have to run again.”

Hunter and Fyodor did just that; they ran a couple dozen feet past the swordswoman, then almost collapsed to the ground. The sheer intensity of the aura Brother Aurochs gave off was enough to fill Hunter with primal fear, pure and unthinking. He’d felt that kind of power once before, when he’d faced the short-lived but absolutely overwhelming wrath of Arjen, the bear-shaped aspect of an ancient forest god. That, of course, added even more to the sky-high pile of questions he already had about, well, everything, but he wasn’t about to look a gift were-buffalo in the mouth. Not when he was just a few short breaths away from being eaten by a rabid horde of low-dwellers.

The low-dwellers in question, on the other hand, didn’t pay much heed to the new threat that was blocking their way. They were too frenzied, or too stupid, or both. When their prey turned escaped to yet another corridor, they ran after them–only to be met with an earth-shattering roar. One brutal swipe of his gigantic greataxe decimated at least three of them right there on the spot, launched another two in the air, and stopped almost all of the rest dead in their tracks. Even the three or four that managed to slip through weren’t much luckier. Sister Peregrine loosed her arrows faster than Hunter could count them, and each one of them found its target with precision that seemed almost impossible; and Fawkes danced her deadly waltz with immaculate grace, slicing and dicing and cutting her unfortunate foes down almost effortlessly.

Anyone, anything would be mortified by such a swift and brutal show of force. Not the low-dwellers. The low-dwellers weren’t built for fear; they were built for serving as fodder; unthinking, unflinching, murderous fodder. Instead of turning on their heels and running away for dear life, they set their sights on a new target, overwhelming a foe as it was. A few of them rushed the transformed Brother Aurochs head on, drawing his attention. He destroyed them with a wide sweep of his greataxe, not so much slashing them as crushing them with the heft of the massive weapon. The rest, however, instinctively knew the ruse for what it was. They circled around the were-buffalo, tearing at his powerful legs and launching themselves at the small hillock it had for a back, aiming to reach for the throat. They were almost a dozen, and, given the chance, they might have done Brother Aurochs enough harm to bring him down.

Fawkes and Sister Peregrine, however, were there to ensure that such a chance would never be given to the monsters. Sister Peregrine loosed another salvo of arrows, aiming for the low-dwellers that were trying to climb on her Brother’s back. Fawkes, on the other hand, took care of those who were trying to hamstring him. And the were-buffalo himself, unable to use with huge but unwieldy weapon at such a short range, simply punched, stomped, and pulverized anything that was unfortunate enough to be caught in range.

Hunter was planning to catch a few breaths, then join the fray himself. By the time the were-buffalo crushed the last of the low-dwellers under his hoof, though, both he and Fyodor were still winded, and their other companions hadn’t even broken a sweat.

“Are you alright?” Fawkes asked him, wiping the black blood off her blade on one of the corpses at her feet. “Were you injured?”

“That’s…” Hunter wheezed, still trying to catch his breath. “That’s my line. What happened?”

“Went off to scout ahead”, said Sister Peregrine as she was picking among the carnage, looking for arrows that weren’t too damaged to salvage. “Got ambushed.”

Hunter looked at her, waiting for a more in-depth explanation. He got none. Her face hidden under her hawk-shaped headdress and illuminated by nothing but a couple of torches, she was even more inscrutable than before. What Hunter did notice, however, was that she avoided to look at her Brother.

The man-turned-werebeast was still standing among the dead bodies of the low-dwellers, calf-deep in spatters of viscous black blood. He didn’t seem like he was paying attention in anything, now that the skirmish was over; he simply stood there, massive greataxe in hand, staring at the darkness of the Halls.

“We were careless” Fawkes told Hunter and patted him down, taking a look at his now-almost-healed injuries from the previous day. “We took on more than we could chew, and the damn things corralled us to a corner. We had to retreat to one of the vaults and wait until they lost interest. Turns out they can be very patient. The rest... well, the rest you know.”

“What about him?” Hunter cocked a thumb and started to ask, but Fawkes cut him off with a sharp glance. Too late. Sister Peregrine had already heard him.

“He did something he shouldn’t have done to save us” she said, and her voice grew very bitter, very fast. “To save you.”

“Not to sound ungrateful, now, Sister, but–” Fawkes intervened, but the Sister gestured to her to stop.

“I do not wish to sound ungrateful either, pardon me. It is just…” She took a deep, pained breath. “To be Brethren is to sacrifice. Still, some sacrifices are too big even for us.”

“I feel for you” said Fawkes, “even if I cannot fathom your pain, or the significance of your Brother’s sacrifice.”

“And I thank you for that.”

The two women set to act as if they were straightening up their gear and cleaning their weapons, fooling nobody. The awkwardness in the air was almost palpable. Fyodor, haggard from the overexertion, licked Hunter’s hand and looked at Brother Aurochs’s way, visible concern painted on his lupine face. Hardly anybody talked for a while. Hardly anybody moved. Then, as if having just snapped awake, the werebeast that Brother Aurochs had become turned his head towards the dark, let out a bone-deep sigh, and started walking.

“Come” said Sister Peregrine, following after him. “It’s time to put an end to all this madness, once and for all.”