Chapter 13 - Reunion

  “You dare show your face in front of me again,” shouted the one-handed Baron of Westmarch. Robert had not seen the old fire mage since they had drawn an undead horde over him and his cohort back at Oakenshade Forest, leaving them all for dead.

  “What, a felinoid got your tongue?” he laughed with a hideous grin. “No enchanter to hide behind this time, cleric?” he added mockingly as he and a group of five marauders, along with his now one-eyed knight, exited a large cave carved out from the cavern wall.

  “Hello, Baron,” Robert replied, glancing over his shoulder toward Varg, who stood by the villagers’ cage with his big maul ready to crack it open.

  “Never in a million years would I have assumed the trial meant you, cleric,” the Baron said. Robert looked back toward him as Alice moved up to his right.

  “And what do you mean by that, Baron?” Robert asked with a sigh.

  “The trial, of course,” the old man replied as he continued to close the distance through the large cavern. “Slay the Holy Man,” he added with a wicked laugh. “What type of insane holy man would attack a base such as ours?” he asked. “But I guess we have our answer,” he finished as his dirtied silk robe dragged along the rocky floor.

  Robert was about to reply when the ground rumbled beside him as Brukk landed in a crouch from a long jump with a heavy thud. The Baron and his marauders hesitated at the orc’s entrance, stopping in their tracks as the big orc rose beside Robert, his dull red eyes focused, unreadable, on the enemy group in front of them.

  “You travel with this monster?” the Baron sneered in disgust.

  “Abomination!” the haggard knight shouted beside him. The knight’s right eye was covered with a dirtied cloth. The once well-maintained armor Robert had seen him wearing back at Lakeshire was now rusted, with specks of dried blood pocking its surface.

  What has this man become, Robert thought sadly. How badly has this new world corrupted him?

  “No further death is needed here, Baron,” Robert pleaded calmly. “Go find your holy man elsewhere.”

  “Hah,” the red-robed Baron chuckled. “You think you are the only one with an abomination?” he said, breaking into a louder laugh.

  In the darkness of the tunnel they had emerged from, the shadows stirred as a large figure began to step forward.

  “What in the gods’ name is that?” Alice asked beside Robert as the beast came into view.

  Ducking under the tunnel’s overpass stepped a large, hairy, bat-like creature, twice the size of Brukk even in his enhanced form. Atop it, on a black saddle, sat a bulky marauder dressed in thick red furs. The beast roared, its massive fangs bared, as it entered the cavern.

  “Varg,” Robert said, looking toward the wooden cage, his eyes wide with concern. The warrior understood Robert’s call and lifted his giant maul, driving it down and crashing it onto the wooden frame, shattering it across the icy pond. Then he bellowed, “You four, run!”

  “Hide in the tents!” Robert called next as the villagers began to scatter. At the same moment he cast a barrier around himself and Alice while Brukk charged the Baron’s group head-on without a word.

  “Get us to cover, Robert!” Alice called as a firebolt erupted against Brukk. The orc ignored the spell as his grey flesh sizzled and charged toward the raging bat while the Baron’s crew scattered around him.

  “Robert, go!” she shouted again, pushing him forward. They sprinted and took position behind a rock formation jutting from the ground in front of the tents they had originally passed through. The villagers, in shock and shaking from the cold, ran in all directions seeking shelter as Varg charged from the pool after Brukk.

  “I am releasing the shield. Are you ready, Alice?”

  “Yes, drop it now,” she replied.

  Robert released his shield as Alice loosed an arrow from her orc bow. It arced toward a marauder wielding a large spear who was charging to meet Varg. The arrow clipped his leg and he stumbled awkwardly, falling face-first onto the ground. The doomed man tried to push himself up quickly, but Varg’s new maul came crashing down on his back with a sickening crunch.

  Good God, Robert thought at the ghastly sight.

  Varg lifted his bloody maul from the dead man’s back and roared, drawing half the Baron’s group away from Brukk. The orc had somehow become pinned beneath the giant bat, its jaws inches from his face as he held its snout at bay with his single clawed hand.

  “Alice, the bat!” Robert called as he cast a Holy Bolt in its direction. The slower bolt of light traversed the cavern as one of Alice’s arrows flew past it and struck the bat in its hairy neck. The creature screeched in pain, meeting their eyes briefly before it jumped upward, flapping its massive fleshy wings as it lifted its enormous form into the air.

  [Skill Leveled Up: Holy Bolt (Level 6)]

  Robert returned his attention to Varg, who was locked in melee with the Baron’s knight wielding a short sword and two other marauders carrying crude axes. They all swung wildly at the nimble warrior as he ducked and weaved through their slashes before counterattacking with a brutal strike from the block of steel atop his maul.

  Behind the group of warriors clash of steel, the Baron stood with a weaponless marauder hovering behind him as the old man unleashed an inferno of fire toward the wounded Brukk, who was still trying to rise from his skirmish with the bat.

  “Alice, take out that bloody Baron!” he shouted as Alice unleashed an electrified arrow. The arrow zipped toward the Baron before crashing into an invisible wall. It dropped to the ground as the Baron’s marauder bodyguard stood with his hands outstretched, casting some kind of invisible shield.

  “That shield caster still lives!” she shouted back as her eyes suddenly glanced upward behind him. “Robert, watch out!”

  Before Robert could turn, he felt his boots leave the ground as the bat that had circled the cavern lifted him by the shoulders of his cloak into the air. Robert screamed briefly as he flailed helplessly and saw one of Alice’s arrows arch upward in front of him. The black bolt missed its target as the rider above him steered the raging bat into a sharp turn.

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  “Put me down!” Robert roared as he shot a Holy Bolt upward into the bat’s chin. The creature roared back as its brown fur sizzled where the weak bolt had struck. Then it hurled him backward with both claws, releasing him into the open air.

  “Aaahh!” he screamed as the feeling of weightlessness fell over him.

  Robert spun as he flailed his arms, as if trying to swim his way through the air. In a panic he began fumbling through the sight, trying to equip his levitation spell as he flew across the cavern, arcing past the center pool toward the jagged rock of the floor below.

  He had just managed to equip his Levitation spell when Varg crashed into him from the side. The warrior had leapt from somewhere below, catching him mid-air. Robert could see the man had sustained significant injuries as they both hit the ground in a sudden crash, skidding across the rock before slamming into a stack of wooden crates set in front of one of the larger tents.

  “Heals, priest,” Varg rasped.

  Robert obliged, casting his Basic Heal spell on the man as he caught his breath while still laying on his back. He held off on healing his own minor injuries given his low mana, but his heal on Varg was quickly undone as the rabid bat snatched Varg from where he knelt, lifting him upward into the air as it had done to Robert.

  “Varg!” Robert cried as he tried to push himself upright. The blurry figure of a knight came leaping through the air to his right, and with a sudden strike Robert was pinned against the floor as the knight’s short sword impaled his battered breastplate.

  Robert’s voice caught in his throat from the sudden burst of pain as he tried to scream. The Baron’s knight towered over him, grinding his sword back and forth within Robert’s shoulder, hatred blazing in his one good eye.

  With one hand grasping the blade and the other still on his staff, Robert cast a heal on himself, steadying the pain for a moment before it returned as the knight ground the sword back and forth, trying to find his heart. Robert felt his vision begin to fade after casting a second fleeting heal when the knight who was trying to end his life vanished in a golden blur.

  “What…” Robert said weakly, looking up toward the cavern ceiling.

  With the sword still protruding from his chest, a grey shape appeared in his blurred vision directly above him.

  Carrot, he thought in confusion. Had he died and his trusted donkey come to meet him to carry him forward into the next life that awaited him, he wondered with a clouded mind. Robert’s thoughts were moments away from accepting this fantastical idea when the donkey grasped the sword still impaling him, its buck teeth gripping the steel handle, and yanked it upward as the blade came loose in a spray of Robert’s blood.

  The pain snapped Robert from his dreamlike state and he cast another rapid heal on himself, nearly draining the last of his mana.

  “Arg… Carrot? Where in cursed hell did you come from?” he asked the grey donkey standing beside him, staring at him blankly.

  Robert rose to one knee and turned to his right, finding the source of the golden blur. To his surprise, the ghoul was circling one of the marauders atop Killer, one of its bony hands gripping the reins of the majestic stallion while the other wielded a large wooden club. It swung the club underhand at the axe-wielding man, sending him flying across the cavern. The marauder crashed into the center of the pool and vanished into the icy water.

  Between the ghoul and himself, the Baron’s knight was dragging his body toward Robert, hatred still burning in his one eye as he clawed forward with his useless legs trailing behind him. Robert knelt low, gritting his teeth through the pain as he searched for the knight’s sword with one hand. But before he could reach it, the ghoul leaped from Killer’s saddle across an impossible distance and landed with a crunch on the fallen knight’s back.

  The next few moments played across Robert’s mind as if time had slowed. As the ghoul brought down his crude club against the knight’s head, the giant bat flew wildly across the cavern, swooping low over the pool as Varg was somehow atop one of its wings, tearing it in half before being thrown toward the ground. The bat’s rider dangled lifelessly from the reins, an arrow protruding from his neck, as the bat tumbled toward the cavern floor.

  The great bat crashed with a sudden impact that echoed across the cavern as it skidded to a rest in front of the Baron and his shield caster. The fire mage paused his casting, turning his attention from setting Brukk ablaze toward the fallen monster, where it was writhing across the rocky floor in pain.

  Robert then looked toward Alice, still by the rocks where they had originally taken cover. She was using one of her arrows like a dagger as she stabbed downward at one of the marauders in a desperate battle to the death.

  Standing uneasily on his legs as blood dripped from beneath his breastplate, Robert took a step toward Alice when an orange fireball arced through the air, catching his dazed attention. He raised his staff, attempting to cast a barrier, then realized he lacked enough mana for the costly spell. He watched as the fire raced toward him just as the ghoul leapt into its path in front of him, the fireball exploding in a burst of red fury.

  No, Robert thought, just before he was thrown backward by the blast.

  Scattered fire lit the ground all around Robert as he pushed himself back up into a sitting position from the blast. One of his trouser legs was on fire and he snuffed it out with a bare hand. In the distance, past the wounded bat, stood the Baron with fire gathering in his one good hand, the shield caster positioned with his hands outstretched at his side.

  Robert winced in anticipation of the impending inferno when the Baron’s eyes went wide in sudden fear and a bright pink light began to illuminate the cavern. The unknown light source flew rapidly over Robert’s head, arcing and spinning forward across the cavern and growing in size as it neared the frozen-in-terror Baron. It is a sword, Robert thought.

  “Oswin?” he whispered, before his eyes went blind from the enchanted sword’s earth-shattering explosion.

  Blinded with his ears ringing, Robert felt around him, finding his staff as he pushed himself back up to his feet with it. His vision began to return as Oswin shouted out behind him.

  “Surrender your weapons, marauders! Obey or face our wraith!” he said awkwardly.

  “Cursed enchanter, who are you talking to?” Varg coughed out somewhere to Robert’s right. “You blew them all up, they're in bloody pieces!”

  “Oh dear,” the enchanter whispered.

  Robert could see him now as the pink halo faded from his vision. Oswin was limping toward him, covered in pig wallow, his wand glowing red hot.

  “Are you okay?” Robert asked Oswin weakly.

  “Never better, my good Robert,” he replied.

  Robert nodded, then looked back toward the opposite side of the cavern. Varg was walking toward him as Alice rushed to check on Brukk, who was a charred heap against the far cavern wall. If he still breathed he would have a chance, Robert thought, but my heals will do him no good.

  “What in bloody hell is that thing?” Varg scoffed as he approached.

  Robert turned and found the ghoul who had just saved him from the Baron’s flame crawling toward him across the ground with one skeletal arm. His other limbs were gone and his black robe was burnt and shredded over what remained of him.

  His heart sank at the sight as the ghoul’s pleading black eyes looked up toward him. Robert knelt and grabbed the creature’s hand, turning him onto his back.

  “Priest, put that ghoul out of his misery,” Varg said with disgust.

  As he met the dead man’s pained eyes, Robert remembered the grand family portrait in the Swamp Baron’s dining hall. A young lad with blond hair had stood tall to one side, his bright eyes hopeful and full of life, not sharing the cruelty reflected in the expressions of the others in the painting.

  What did Driana do to you, you poor soul.

  “He is the one that saved us at the manor, Varg,” Robert replied somberly. “He is Druffus Blackfen, an honorable man.”

  “Thank you,” Robert said with teary eyes as he held the undead man’s hand. His heal lit the floor around them as he held Druffus’ hand through the pain of holy flame, so the good soul before him would know he was not alone as he was finally allowed to rest.