Erlking

The Erlking watched Benjamin harvest the white wolf. He was satisfied with how everything had turned out. He had been working on the wolf pack fix for the last few days, in preparation for this moment. His biggest question mark had come when he tried to decide what elemental wolf to send out first. He had ended up picking by rolling a four-sided die.

He worried what the Arbiter would think though, he was waiting for a visit from the entity now. Assuming he would come pay him a visit once the situation had been resolved. Sure enough, he heard the portal door open up into his space and the arbiter walking in.

“Greetings Arbiter,” he said without turning around. “Did things turn out to your satisfaction?” the Erlking was as calm as he could be in the face of such overwhelming power.

“Greetings Erlking. Yes, you played your hand flawlessly. Benjamin Vryce was able to ‘save’ a few goblin creations, and gained a few worthy battle creatures as well. Granted he can’t make use of any of them yet, but I feel that this will motivate him to remove the seal that much faster.”

The Erlking looked to the Arbiter as he finished speaking. He looked very human in his grey suit, he hadn’t gotten fancy with his avatar at all. He hadn’t thought the entity gave a damn about any of them. That was quite the speech about something he didn’t care about. It worried him, the Arbiter was too powerful to ignore should he start meddling with the souls training.

“Thank you, Arbiter” was all he could say. He hoped that would be the end of the conversation, but he wasn’t that lucky.

“Yes, what will you do with Vryce now?” The Arbiter asked, watching beside the Erlking as Vryce finished harvesting the wolf and began absorbing patterns.

“I plan to take him to my tower. I have decided he is too prone to get into things he shouldn’t. So, I want to keep him confined until he is ready to venture outside areas set aside for the souls.” The Erlking answered honestly. The tower was a great place for his problemed charges, and he could always just add new floors if he needed too.

“Your tower. I believe Miss Benz is currently in residence, yes?” the Arbiter asked.

“She is, along with a few of the others. She is still stuck at the second room however; she can’t seem to figure out the trick. I am going to let her out before Benjamin gets there.” He said reaching up to scratch the base of his antlers. He hoped the Arbiter wasn’t going where he thought he was.

“Why? They have to work together eventually, why not now.” The Arbiter asked, realizing the Erlking’s fear.

“Eventually yes, in fact I think that the tower is the perfect place for them to meet. However, Benz is still…unwell…removing her from her habit has helped but until Vryce can match her ogre’s strength, the outcome of a meeting is likely to be… undesirable.” The Erlking said, hoping his reasoning would get him out of a bad first impression of his two most promising human souls.

“I can understand that, very well Erlking.” He said looking at his clipboard, “I will be watching; the souls need to be ready soon. If the corruption continues to spread, this universe is doomed.” He said letting the clipboard vanish, while turning to his portal door.

“Easy for you to say, when you can just leave whenever you want.” Erlking muttered under his breath as the Arbiter walked away. His words must have carried to the powerful entity though, as he stopped walking. Without turning around, he answered the quite words.

“On the contrary Erlking, the creator was…unhappy with my failure. After sending me and the human souls here, this universe was sealed and cut free of the multiverse. The corruption cannot be allowed to spread. Live or die, we all do it together.” The Arbiter said straightening his jacket as he continued his walk to the door.

The Erlking whipped around in horror and stared at the entity that just dropped such a truth on him out of nowhere.

“What about the souls?” he asked desperately, “the human souls. Would he really let them die out here?”

“Please Erlking, you know who was picked for the duty. Old souls, reincarnated hundreds of times. Given every opportunity to mend the way they lived their lives and failing every time. Even now they have been given a chance. Just, no longer on their earth.”

What was he supposed to do with this knowledge? It was bad enough before but, now? He watched the arbiter reach the portal door. Franticly thinking of any question he might ask, anyway he could avoid the death of his entire universe. He was too thrown.

“Erlking, I tell you this only because I believe the knowledge may actually help you in your plans. This conversation stays between us for the time being, am I clear?” he asked. Mutilated hand on the beautiful door, carved to ever remind him of the ones he failed.

“I understand.” What else could he say? As the Arbiter’s door vanished, he turned back to his meditation chair. He had to revisit all his plans, and reevaluate every asset.

* * *

Jade Benz

She had been here for a week at least. The first few days she tried to solve the puzzle, which was too hard without the focus chair. Then she went back to trying to brute force the thing open. Ignoring the door entirely she had her boys try the walls, the floor, the first door.

Nothing worked. She had eventually gotten desperate and had Tik kill her. That had worked, she ended up in the white room. Her ogres hadn’t come this time, she could see them as outlines but they weren’t here. She figured that out after she sat down. It was because they weren’t dead, so they stayed behind in the room.

Jade felt the connection between them. She knew she could pull them too her with a thought, but also knew that it would use her glowing power pool and that wasn’t as full as it had been. She decided to leave them where they were, while she worked on the puzzle.

She got a few new sections solved, letting the energy flow out a little faster. Then the horny dude had popped up on the TV and booted her back to the tower room. Looked like she wasn’t going to be able to cheat her way out of this one.

Eventually, Jade just sat. She had her eyes closed, trying to find the puzzle. While her two ogres walked around the room, randomly smashing a fist or foot into a new section of wall or floor. She honestly didn’t expect that to do anything, but she could feel their desire to help her. Something that hadn’t been there before, and wanted them to feel useful.

Tok gave out a grunt as his foot impacted the floor, she didn’t expect to hear anything other than the meaty thunk of flesh on a solid surface. It came as a surprise then, when there was a crashing noise followed by the eight-foot-tall ogre disappearing through the floor.

She jumped up and went over to the side of the hole, Tik reaching out his hand in an unconscious supporting gesture. Wrapping her hands around his wrist thick index finger she leaned over the opening.

There wasn’t much light down there, but she could see Tok standing in a shallow puddle, perhaps ten feet down.

“Good job, Tok” she congratulated him. They had been stuck here for so long that even the ogres were starting to look frustrated. The stone-grey flesh of his large face split into a gap-toothed grin at her praise.

“Looks like we found our way-out boys, Tik lower me down, Tok grab me and for hell’s sake keep me out of the water.” She gave out her orders and the ogres were quick to obey. Once she was handed off to Tok, Tik jumped down into the hole. Managing to splash water all over Jade who was being held in Tok’s arms.

He looked so abashed that she had to laugh it off, even though she wanted to scream at the dumb ogre. Instead, she looked around. The ceiling down here was about ten feet tall but it sloped downwards some. There were two passageways leading away in either direction. Looked like she had dropped into a natural tunnel under the tower’s floor.

“Pretty shitty workmanship,” she said. “Who builds a damn tower without checking the footing?” As her voice echoed out, she heard a scrabbling sound from both directions. “Tell me those weren’t rats. Please, tell me those weren’t rats.” She looked back and forth, then back up the hole they came through, to the locked room beyond.

“Guess we’re gunna find out, aren’t we?” she said at last. “Alright boys, what way should we go?” she asked her companions. She laughed again when Tik pointed left, and Tok pointed right. “I heard somewhere that when in doubt, go left. So, that’s what we will do.”

She looked down at herself. She was a little surprised, she hadn’t thought about what she was wearing at all since she got here. Back home, clothes were everything. Here, there was no one but the boys to see them. She shook her head, her pink streaked blonde bangs flopped around with the movement. That was all though, the rest was done in a pixie cut and pretty much stayed put.

“These are not the shoes for a wet cave.” She said aloud, looking at her black loafers. She checked the rest of her outfit out while she was at it. A black pantsuit, with a white shirt beneath. It wasn’t her first choice of clothes. Her dad had had a formal dinner, and she had…ok now she remembered why she hadn’t looked at her clothes, fuck.

“Let’s go boys, maybe we can find something to kill down here.” She said and laughed again when the ogres each started walking in different directions. “This way,” she pointed down the left-hand passage, discerned from how she had come in. They were dumb, but they made her feel better.

They hadn’t slogged more than one hundred yards through the ankle deep water of the tunnel when it opened up into a larger space. There were at least a dozen giant rats in there. Three feet long and maybe a foot high at the shoulder. She grinned when she saw them, this was a perfect way to work some anger out.

She didn’t even have to say anything, Tok put her down and both ogres moved forward to smash their foes. The giant rats looked small compared with eight feet of muscle, but they were having a hard time pinning the rats down. They swarmed her ogres, biting then moving before the hands could come down.

A few were dying, but not quickly enough. She could feel the damage being inflicted through their link, not actual pain, just knew they were being hurt. She pulled on her energy source and began the slow process of healing them. The puzzle still blocked much of her power flow.

One of the rats having climbed onto Tik’s shoulders launched itself at her. She screamed as she saw it coming and squeezed her eyes shut. Flailing her arms, frantic to keep it off her. She needed a barrier, a wall, a window, anything between them. She needed to keep it away so her ogres could deal with it.

She opened her eyes. It should have been ripping into her flesh by now, when it hadn’t, she had to see why. It was still there, on the floor now and scrabbling madly at a nearly invisible barrier. Her hands were still raised in front of her and she saw a translucent shield tinged with pink between her and her attacker.

Tik took a step toward her and smashed the giant rat to paste. Even the spray of gore was stopped by the translucent pink shield. Holy shit, did she just make a force shield? She focused on it the same way she looked at her connection to the ogres, sure enough it was drawing down the power from inside her.

Worried that she would run out, and need it she stopped the flow. The four-foot square, wall, disappeared. Her boys were pissed at how close she had come to being hurt just then however, and started to rampage.

When the blood started flying in earnest, she tried to put the shield back up, if only to keep it off her face. It didn’t work, she tried again, nothing. Damn, why wasn’t it working? Well, she would just have to figure it out. Maybe the next batch of rats could give her some incite before they were also smashed to paste.