Chapter 28 – The Spore Druid’s Castle

  They closed and barred the sally port behind them before pushing open the double doors to the courtyard. Rows of old, infested trees swayed in the wind and rain. Now out of the close quarters, Cole loosened his sling and raised his otherworld rifle, scanning for threats. The inner wall between the Kickers and the keep was beyond the orchard at the top of a sheer drop and had downward-facing spikes to deter climbers. It wasn’t likely that his leap would clear them. But Morganstern had a solution for that.

  The weakened Kicker spoke quietly behind him. “The proctors have a secret we use to bypass the main gatehouse to get inside the keep. It’s a ledge on the cliff face with rungs chiseled into it, and you’d miss it ninety-nine times out of one hundred if you didn’t know it was there. The good news is that the worst nasty we don’t cull is the castellan who regenerates in that gatehouse, and we’ll be skipping him entirely. The bad news is that the second worst nasties are in the orchard, and what we need is right on the other side.”

  The ground under their feet wasn’t even dirt or gravel anymore. It was entirely matted fibers from the corruption that suffused the old castle. Cole wasn’t sure if any amount of fungicide pills or armor inserts was enough to deter whatever they must have been kicking up into the air with every step. The rain kicked up a misty layer that swirled through the trees, obscuring any motion. The phantom shadows and specters made Cole jumpy. His enhanced acuity was going haywire with false impressions so badly he almost shot at a branch blowing in the breeze.

  When the attack came, Cole felt it through the soles of his boots before anyone else did. The rumble of massive footfalls at a gallop sent vibrations through the ground.

  “Incoming!” said Cole. He strained his ears for any sound of the approaching threat, finally hearing a branch snapping to his right. “Two o’clock!” he shouted, swiveling. “Roxy!”

  The shield maiden got out in front of him just as a twelve-foot-tall amalgam of man and horse galloped out of the mist at full tilt. The fungus had long since consumed and fused both creatures together into a bizarre red and orange weeping centaur with two heads of biting, gnashing teeth. It had an otherworld armament battleaxe with a blade the size of a Humvee hood grown into one grotesquely elongated arm, and it was covered with the red pustules of advanced infection.

  Without slowing, it swung the enormous axe at chest-level, aiming to split Cole and Roxy both with a single strike. At the last minute, Roxy burned a charge, and the axe hit her shield, rebounding and twisting the arm back at an impossible angle. The fused creatures shrieked in pain at the twisted limb, then again as it straightened and reseated itself.

  “Oh shit!” shouted Morganstern. “That’s the old King of Bricker’s expedition! He’s regenerated!”

  Cole looked back. “Second biggest nasty?”

  “Naw, fuck that, he’s the worst! Tough bastard held the entire courtyard while Bricker killed the druid.”

  Didn’t help him in the end, thought Cole as he raised his rifle. He tracked the old king through his sights until he felt the integrated damage buff click on and then let the bastard have it. The otherworld rifle barked and bucked. With the increased damage and recoil from the barrel, the thing had more muzzle climb than Jeff’s AR-10. But it packed more of a punch, too. The bladed rounds carved off huge chunks of flesh, but there was plenty left. The mutated undead king and his mount towered at least twelve feet high together and must have weighed two tons or more.

  Ken and Han opened up with their weapons as well, with Ken taking deliberate shots at the red pustules with his revolvers while Han sprayed it with some sort of side-loading automatic rifle that looked like something from World War II. Howie tried to reprise his freezing trick that he’d used on the spiders, nailing the flank of the horse with an ice spell in grenade form, but the frost just sloughed off as it circled around for another swing.

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  “Into the orchard!” ordered Morganstern. “Use the trees, don’t let him get up to speed.”

  “You’re clear behind you,” said Cole, gripping the back of Roxy’s pack and using it to guide her between the trees. She had her shield up and pointed toward the old king, creating space for the others to circle behind and get to cover.

  “I can only use my shield rebound two more times,” she warned. “If I go down, burn your last charge and get out of here.”

  “Fuck that, we’re both getting out of this,” said Cole.

  The fused king dug its hooves in. Cole let Roxy go for a few seconds to steady his aim, sighting through the rifle until he felt the damage boost kick in. As soon as Roxy fired her shotgun, he also shot, aiming for the small, red, weeping pustules. He managed to score a hit on one on the old king’s right flank. It gushed orange and red discharge, and the strength in the arm holding the axe went out. Instead of cleaving both of them in half, it bit into the dirt.

  Roxy turned and tackled him out of the way where the massive blade plowed a furrow in the turf. Dirt and fibers sprayed over them, and they scrambled back to their feet.

  “Keep hitting those red sores,” said Morganstern. “That’ll slow him down.”

  “Ooh, weak points?” called Howie. “Why didn’t you say so?”

  The mage bombard summoned another shell and stuffed it in his launcher. When he fired it at the old king, instead of coating it in a layer of frost, it split into two discrete bolts of fire that each lanced into one of the bubbling boils on the front of the creature. It crumpled, squirting fluid from both wounds. One of them sprouted rapid fungal growths from the bolt he’d installed in Howie’s otherworld launcher.

  The way it lost strength, it was like the creature was being held up by hydraulic lines that were being severed. But even as Cole watched, the wound Cole had shot sealed itself, and the axe arm thickened enough to lift the massive weapon again. With two more parting shots, he turned and caught up to Roxy.

  “Did we get it?” asked Roxy, running towards the group.

  “Just slowed it down, I think,” said Cole.

  Shots ran out from up ahead.

  “Contact front!” shouted Ken.

  Cole glanced at Roxy. “Go clear our egress,” she said. “I’ll watch our six.”

  Breaking into a sprint, Cole dashed toward the muted muzzle flares dancing in the mist. He came up on Ken and Morganstern, the latter leaning on the former and both using their opposite hands to fire sidearms at bark-men and weeping shamblers emerging from the trees. He stepped up and added his own rifle. The heavy 7.62x51 rounds blasted massive chunks out of the advancing creatures. When his bolt locked open he dropped the empty magazine, not bothering to recover it as he slapped a new one home.

  Even as spry and quick as the creatures were, bounding between trees at break-neck speed, Cole’s enhancements let him track them and fire effectively. The Lewis field had made him superhuman with just a handful of levels, and as he dropped one of the advancing creatures, he was hit with the ice-bath sensation of gaining yet another level.

  He didn’t have the time or attention to divert to pondering what his class evolution might be, as three of the multi-headed ogres appeared in the orchard to their right.

  “Contact right!” Cole shouted, pivoting to put rounds in the larger, tougher creatures. One of them went down to his fire and the second staggered before his bolt locked open. He didn’t have time for a reload. He dropped the weapon to his sling and grabbed his spear, extending it to its full length.

  Before the closest ogre crashed into him, a waist-high furry torpedo plowed its legs out from under it. It tumbled back onto its ass, and Cole wasted no time rushing forward to plant his spear in the ribs of the downed wood ogre.

  “What the hell? There’s something else in here with us!” shouted Howie.

  “Friendly!” yelled Cole, twisting his spear in the wood ogre’s gut. “That’s Nutmeg! Besson’s dog!”

  The monster impaled on Cole’s spear shrieked and writhed around the blade for a moment before beginning to sublimate. Han appeared on his right, a large flame-covered claymore swinging in his hands as the other ogre came up. Han shouted a war cry before cleaving the thing from shoulder to hip. It folded over backwards, chopped almost in half, both sides of the wound wreathed in flame.

  “Nice one,” said Cole, wrenching his spear free. He stowed his spear and reloaded his rifle. But there was no time to loot the ogres. “Let’s go, come on!”

  “No telling me twice,” huffed Han, out of breath. Enormous blade resting on his shoulder, he ran to cover Ken and Morganstern, who had cleared the fungal zombies and bark-men coming at them from the front.

  “That’s not… nevermind.”

  Cole moved back through the group. “Eyes out. If Besson is here, then so is Ram-head. We’re going to have company real soon.”

  “He’s lighter-footed than he looks,” said Morganstern.

  As if to make matters worse, Roxy called up from the rear of their column. “Heads up! King Centaur is back on his feet.”

  Sure enough, a massive shadow was moving through the mist parallel to them, galloping through the orchard.

  “Where’s Besson?” demanded Howie.

  “Waiting for his shot,” said Cole, breathing hard as he ran. A tree jumping in his way was his only warning before a gigantic pole-axe swung towards his head.