Cole

The tunnels of the cave blended together for Cole. It didn’t help that everything was shaded gray to him. Even for a half-elf, his eyes could still see a fair distance into the dark. He didn’t stop to look if his companions were with him, or if the monsters were still coming. He was running to exhaustion putting himself far away from the subterranean beasts. When Bréag grabbed him by the waist, Cole panicked and threw a wild punch. The blow caused Bréag to shout. Blood stained the part of his bandanna where his nose was.

Bréag seized Cole by his shoulders. “Settle! I don’t hear them anymore.”

Cole didn’t lower his fists. He was tense all over.

“I was…unprepared for this.” Cole admitted. He tried a smile. Tried.

“I have ears and you have eyes,” Bréag said, “if both of us run wild then we won’t find our way out of this.”

“What about the others? Frost and Azeroth?” Cole pressed his back to the tunnel wall. He felt defeated before the creatures even touched him.

“I don’t know, but that’s not our concern. They can take care of themselves. Let’s focus on us.” Bréag was afraid, but he still took command of the situation.

He tightened his bandanna, the blood from his nose bothering him none. “I’m not great at fighting people, but beasts I know. You’ve read on this continent, did you recognize those centipedes?”

“Yes. Gigantepedes. They make twisting nests under the dirt of Athshin. Two to a nest. Their legs are a staple of Athshin cooking.”

Bréag put a finger behind his ear to better direct where he was hearing from. “If they’re a staple of the diet, that must mean they’re hunted. Did your book make any mention of how?”

Cole scratched his head. No, Land to the West didn’t include information on how gigantepedes were hunted, but he knew he had seen it somewhere. “There was a cookbook...27 Dishes I ate in the Athshin’s Confederacy by a hob named Yipes. Awful prose, but each dish featured a long description of how it was made. It said that gigantepedes could be lured to the surface, then caught with ropes to pull it out so hunters could stab it with spears. They’d also set up horizontal stakes in the tunnel and drive the gigantepedes into them.”

Cole waved his finger at the middle height of the tunnel to demonstrate where the stakes would go.

Bréag clicked his tongue. “We’re lacking for ropes and trap making supplies but that does tell me they’re vulnerable in the face area, or at least less armored, and if they are so easily driven into traps in their own nest they either can’t see very well, or are phenomenally stupid.”

Cole gaped. Bréag was talking through this methodically and logically in a way he hadn’t for their confrontation with the phyrn or the guards. He was better suited to beasts than people. The pair crept further through the tunnel. The idea was to pause at each intersection to check for signs of their allies or enemies. At one intersection Bréag pressed himself and Cole against a wall, claiming he heard one of the gigantepedes further down a tunnel. Cole thought he saw the silhouette of someone running ahead of them, but before he could call to it they vanished.

"You’re probably wondering about what Solind said back there…” Bréag was nervously wringing his right ring finger.

Cole gave him a cock-eyed look, then dryly gestured to their surroundings. “Not really the right time for that.”

As if to prove his point they heard a clash echo from one of the chambers they just passed. There was also a roar. Something mammalian, not insectoid or reptilian. The pair chased the sounds. At the end of one tunnel they saw shadows cast by a flickering light. They heard Solind shout in surprise. Through these shadows Cole saw something large and beastly fall upon Solind. Solind forced the creature back with the fire then stabbed forward. For a moment the fire light vanished and a horrible groan filled their ears.

When they reached the tunnel’s end Solind was already burning his heels to escape. On the ground, with his back resting against the wall, was Frost. He was in his shifted form, the reason for the fearsome shadows they had seen. He was holding a tight hand over his chest. A waterfall of blood was escaping the gaps in his fingers and pooling in his lap.

“You’re safe” Frost grunted. His eyes weakly lit up when he saw Bréag and Cole.

“—And you’re not.” Cole replied. He had to make a joke, otherwise he might panic at the state of his companion.

“I thought I could ambush him. He was easy to track by smell. I was too blinded by anger from what he did to that girl, to those people.”

“You need healing.” Bréag said.

“Wechers are hard to kill when we shift. If I don’t revert, then the wound won’t kill me.”

Cole wanted to explain how that didn’t comfort him, how it simply sounded like Frost was delaying death rather than stopping it, but his words were stopped when he felt a presence behind him. He turned so recklessly he fell backwards. Rerume had joined them.

“Solind did this?” Rerume asked the obvious.

Cole and Bréag nodded.

“He’s fast, I’ll give him that, and he knows these tunnels better than us.” Rerume still had the distant look in his eye that came from his active oath. “I can see him throug the walls. He’s turning back this way…”

The light that appeared at the end of the tunnel confirmed this. Solind was running from something, and that something was Azeroth. The half-orc was much faster than Solind, allowing him to catch him in a forceful tackle. Once he was on the ground, Azeroth pummeled Solind with hard fists. Solind’s dropped spear extinguished. Azeroth snapped it up and chucked it behind him, far out of Solind’s reach. Solind responded by summoning a cloud of stinging hornets that forced Azeroth away. Solind looked forlornly past Azeroth where his spear was, then he looked to his opposite side to confirm that he was cornered.

“It’s over Solind!’ Cole shouted. He felt like this was the appropriate time, and he always wanted to say that.

Solind’s upper lip curled into a defiant sneer. The tunnel quaked. Dirt fell on their heads. Was he trying to bury them by bringing down the tunnel? Cole took a cautious step back. He felt like running. No story was worth this.

There was an explosion of sod centered on Solind. Cole covered his eyes to avoid getting debris in them. When he opened them there was a new opening adjacent to Solind, with one of the gigantepedes creeping out of it. Solind bowed to both ends of the tunnel before squeezing through the opening the gigantepede had created. The gigantepede clicked its mandibles. It leaned from side to side as if considering which direction to go. It decided on the end with the most prey. Rerume and Cole stooped to help Frost up, but the wecher was too weak to walk on his own. Bréag walked backwards, firing arrows at the dire arthropod. Cole’s heart was drumming on his ribs. They couldn’t move fast while carrying Frost. As morbid as it was, Cole was waiting for the sound of Bréag screaming when the gigantepede reached him first.

Cole looked back to gauge how much time they had left. His jaw dropped when he saw that the gigantepede was struggling to move forward. It was hard to tell in the mass of writhing limbs, but it looked like Azeroth had grabbed the rear of the creature. The half-orc had dug in his heels and was ripping off every flailing appendage within arm’s reach. This wasn’t enough to stop the gigantapede entirely, but it did slow and disturb it. Bréag stood his ground. He had his bow drawn with two arrows nocked. The gigantepede wasn’t far from him now.

The bow string snapped forward. The two arrow buried into the gigantepede’s face. The beast convulsed wildly. Azeroth didn’t stop his assault. The gigantepede’s body fell limp to the ground, the only movement coming from the residual twitching of its many legs.

Rerume and Cole lowered Frost.

“That was amazing!” Cole clapped his hands over his head. He ran to Bréag to congratulate him.

Bréag was panting like a dog. “It’s been so long since I had to do something like that. Azeroth: I owe you my life.”

“Get in line.” Azeroth was once again lacerated, this time from the flailing legs at the gigatepede’s rear. He had to squeeze past the dead body to reach the others.

Rerume didn’t congratulate the others. He didn’t even wait to plan and consolidate. He strode past Bréag and Cole to pursue Solind through the hole the gigantepede made. Bréag tried to stop him but Rerume shrugged him off. “I made my oath, I must see it through. He is unarmed. You four should find your way back to the surface.”

Cole couldn’t argue with the logic. Bréag looked dismally into his quiver. He was out of arrows. Azeroth had drained his strength holding back the gigantepede. Frost was weakened from his chest wound. That left Cole as the only back-up Rerume could conceivably have, which wasn’t much.

Rerume was gone. Azeroth was still strong enough to support Frost on his shoulder. They were going to avoid the path Rerume had taken, and the way forward was impeded by the dead gigantepede. They could pass the dead creature single file, but they couldn’t move Frost through it. The only option was to retrace the path Cole and Bréag had taken and hope they could stumble upon the entrance.

They made barely ten paces before Bréag swore in frustration. He beckoned the other three to halt. “The other gigantepede. I can hear it up ahead. We need to take our chances with the other paths.”

“We won’t make it far.” Azeroth said darkly.

They all knew he was talking about Frost. Even in his pain, Frost was still with them. He hadn’t said anything for a while. He blinked slowly at the ground, not mute, just lost in thought.

Cole felt the strong urge to reassure the wecher. “We’re not leaving you behind.”

In his shifted form Frost’s face was more wolfen than before. He stared back at Cole.

“I never would have asked you to. I’m not ready to die. Not now. Possibly not ever.” Frost pushed Azeroth away from him. After three wobbling steps he found his footing and was able to stand without collapsing. “I won’t be a burden and I won’t allow myself to collapse here while you all die.”

At the shadowy veil where Cole’s darkvision reached its limit he could see the fringes of the gigantepede scurrying towards them. Frost put himself between the creature and the others. All he had was his cleaver. The hairs on his back bristled. His muscles tensed so tight Cole imagined one couldn’t even pierce them with a sewing needle. Frost reminded Cole of a cornered wolf, ready to bite and claw for any chance to survive. Frost snarled, despite it clearly causing him pain.

“What is he doing?” Azeroth asked.

Cole thought it was obvious, but then he realized Azeroth was talking about something else. Wisps were trailing off of Frost’s exposed skin. It was hard to tell exactly what it was, given how Cole was seeing everything in gray, but it resembled steam rising from a hot spring. The longer Frost did this, the less his wound seemed to bother him. His growling was labored before, but now it was loud and defiant.

The gigantepede was halfway to them. Frost clasped his cleaver with both hands. He swung it overhead, not attacking the gigantepede, but the ceiling of the tunnel. At his strike a tremor shook the tunnel that caused the ceiling to crack and shudder far beyond where he had struck. He did it again. Large chunks of dirt landed on the gigantepede but it did not slow. Was it this naturally ravenous, or was this all Solind’s manipulations? Cole felt he should run, but Frost’s actions compelled him to stay. The same was true for Azeroth and Bréag

“My name is Frost Wildoath, and I am not afraid of you!”

The third strike carried more force than the ones before it. Dust clouds obscured Frost and the gigantepede. The sound of the insect’s clicking legs was drowned out by the rush of sound that came with the ceiling collapsing on top of it.

Azeroth, Cole, and Bréag stood slack-jawed at what they had seen. The tunnel was now blocked by dirt and rocks. Frost’s body calmed. The mysterious steam had stopped. Whatever Frost had done, it sapped the last of his strength and forced him to collapse from exhaustion.

Azeroth and Bréag ran to help him. When they drew close the dirt shifted. The gigantepede’s head shot out, wrapping its mandibles around Bréag’s arm. Azeroth shouted and quickly pulled Bréag back, causing his arm to gash from the arthropod’s sharp mandibles. The gigantepede wasn’t dead, but it was trapped and angry. The more it moved to snap at its prey, the looser the dirt burying it became. With how erratically it was moving Azeroth and Bréag were too cautious to move near enough to pull Frost away. The gigantepede hadn’t noticed Frost yet, but it soon would and then its sharp mandibles would sink into the wecher’s neck.

Cole found himself running. Not towards the monster, but away from it. He wasn’t acting out of cowardice. His mind’s eye kept showing him a memory of his cousin trapped under a rock while a hodag clawed at him. Cole didn’t remember darting past the gigantepede Bréag and Azeroth killed, but when he was done Solind’s discarded spear was in his hand.

Azeroth was trying to bait out the gigantepede’s attacks, but his reflexes were slowing down from exhaustion. Cole charged forward with the stinger spear, doing a wecher roar of his own. Azeroth and Bréag stepped aside when they saw the boy coming. The gigantepede’s mandibles shut one last time before Cole buried the blade of the spear into its head. The tip of the spear burst out the base of the creature’s head. This time there was no final convulsion. The gigantepede was dead.

Cole wiped sweat and dirt from his face. He had to sit down to regulate his adrenaline. He felt warm breath against his cheek. Frost was looking at him through slitted eyes, his snout inches from Cole’s face.

“That was impressive.” The wecher whispered. Frost shut his eyes and breathed softly. Cole was sure he wasn’t asleep, just conserving his energy.

“I sincerely hope that there were only two of these things.” Bréag exhaled.

“I sincerely hope as well,” Azeroth concurred.

They only afforded themselves enough of a rest to calm their bodies after such an encounter. With two exits blocked, they had no choice but to go through the path Solind and Rerume had taken. The tunnels were still a maze, but it seemed less intimidating now that the primary threats had been vanquished. At one of the many intersections Azeroth took a hard left without explanation. Since he was the one carrying Frost (who had still not unshifted) Cole and Bréag had no choice but to follow.

They found themselves in the largest room yet. This resembled the outpost upstairs. Grey colored crates were stacked high. An unlit lantern hung on a hook. One of the crates was pried open, revealing them full of silver ingots. There were two exits to this room. At the opposite end was a long straight tunnel large enough for a grown horse. A crude sign above it read “Sráid.”

The second exit looked like all the others they had encountered in this place, except for the two men standing in its opening. Rerume had Solind by the collar of his golden robes. In Rerume’s right hand was his red dagger. Solind’s cicada medallion was at their feet.

“I can give you all the silver in this room.” Solind begged. Neither had noticed the others arrive.

“You’ve given me everything I need.” Rerume pierced Solind’s chest with his crimson dagger.

In a final act of desperation Solind raised his hand out and cried: “Silesia, rescue me from this fate!”

There was no response.

“Your god isn’t here,” Rerume hissed, “just mine.”

Solind screamed. Rerume wasn’t just stabbing him, he was carving. He released Solind’s collar and used his free hand to reach into the cavity he had made. He ripped free a lump of red flesh. Solind’s heart.

Solind’s dead body fell forward. Rerume tossed aside the severed heart and sheathed his knife.

“Oath ended.”