Chapter 28: Chapter 28: The Great Escape

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

The Great Escape

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The others were doing fairly well fending off the troop of lizardmen—because what else would I call them—thanks to a combination of Brunhilde’s wind magic and Morph’s sturdy shield, which, if I recalled, had been enhanced by Liara’s custom rune. Dess, with her spear, and Lohgan, with his daggers, cut down the lizardmen that Brunhilde and Morph managed to tie up, with Delphine’s red-feathered bolts finishing off the ones that they didn’t get.

However, for every lizardman they defeated, two more appeared to take their place like a certain many-headed serpent I’d once heard about from Divah that she’d faced on an adventure in the dark elf realm of Svartálfheim. Thankfully, these lizardmen were no hydra, and, with me and Liara finally joining the fray—both of us quite eager to offload some of our anger onto our enemies—we collectively beat almost two dozen low-level lizardmen and gave ourselves some room to breathe and think and plan.

“Wasn’t so bad… Maybe we stay here and hunt the wee bastards one by one,” Delphine suggested. To which Liara and I both said, “No.”

Liara further clarified our stance by explaining that there were more powerful enemies among this horde of monsters, although she didn’t mention the wolf that had murdered Zen as she probably didn’t want anyone to shit their pants.

“Let’s go to the rear gate and Mistress Lorelai can tell us what to do,” Dess urged.

No one argued with the fairy, and so our group began our journey south—with each inch we earned costing us in blood, sweat, and tears.

Hobgoblins appeared to block our way next, and there were far too many of them for us to just ignore. I blew some of the fire-toting monsters away with Volcanic Step, but their natural resistance to fire magic ensured more of the hobgoblins remained on their feet.

They lobbed fireballs at us that Liara shot down with her ice spikes like she was some magic gunner from the frontier realms. The few that she missed were blocked by Morph’s and Dess’s shields. Soon enough, those shields would be so burnt and broken that Dess and Lohgan had to let them go, which meant we just lost our ability to tank.

It was Brunhilde, however, who saved us from getting surrounded and burned alive. She cast a powerful spell that gave birth to the tornado that wrapped around our party, blowing away fireballs and shunting hobgoblins out of our way so we could continue onward. Regrettably, Brunhilde used up the last of her magic for that spell, and the fatigue that came with depleted magic reserves cost her deeply. None of us even noticed her stumble until it was too late.

“Go!” the half-giant was kneeling on the craggy ground, her hand stretched out toward us. “Save your—”

The first of the fireballs to explode against her back caused the warm smile she’d just flashed us to turn into a pained grimace. To her credit, Brunhilde didn’t scream. The next three fireballs made her cough up blood.

“Bastards!” Lohgan screamed.

Surprisingly—at least to me—it was the wood elf who turned around first to try and rescue Brunhilde. Lohgan flung dagger after dagger at the hobgoblins who were swarming our half-giant teammate while screaming her name like a curse against the monsters. But, as we followed after him—our warcries spilling from our mouths—Brunhilde raised her hand, and with what little strength remained to her, she cast one final spell that sent the wind to blow us all away from harm’s reach.

I heard her yell, “Go!” one last time, and then that low, soft-spoken voice never spoke again.

It was funny how most jötnar were aligned with the realmsverse forces of evil, and yet the half-giants I recently met were honorable and good and worthy of my respect.

Sadly, we lost Lohgan soon afterward.

Whether it was rage born from losing a rival or love interest—they do say teens liked to bully the people they liked—Lohgan became a demon who cut down every monster that appeared in our path. Like the berserkers of old, he stabbed hobgoblins, gutted lizardmen, and slit the throats of the snake women who’d tried to hurl hexes at our party. In exchange for this berserker fury, however, Lohgan accumulated wounds that we couldn’t heal as there were no healers in our party and our stock of potions was depleted.

Eventually, the wood elf succumbed to his wounds, but not before he killed the hobgoblin who was near twice the size of his fellows—a real-life abomination—who appeared just as we drew close to the rear gate. We helped him, of course, with me and Liara burning a lot of our magic to give Lohgan the opening he needed to slit the throat of the bastard who was blocking our way to the rear gate.

Morph and I carried Lohgan between us as we ran for the adventurers defending the rear gate, but I felt him go limp in my arm long before I dropped to my knees at Mistress Lorelai’s feet.

“Help… him,” I wheezed.

Our dökkálfar instructor took one look at the wood elf’s lifeless face and closed his eyes for him.

“He died like a true drengr,” she sighed.

A large bipedal boar—a razorback—charged the shield wall protecting the rear gate, but it fell quickly to Mistress Lorelai’s spear as it pierced the monster’s chest and then exploded out of its back.

“Interrupting me while I mourn my student… you’re just asking for a violent death,” she snapped.

Mistress Lorelai’s spear returned to her hand to the cheering of the adventurers gathered around the rear gate. Among this gathering were people I recognized; the Brothers Grimm, Bjorn the Viking, Tessa Nimbus, Elias Driftwood, the raven-haired green cloak, and freaking Anal. Yep, the cockroach was still alive.

“Zen,” Liara began but she couldn’t finish. Her lip was quivering too much.

Helm Grimm laid a hand on her shoulder. “We know. Einarr told us.”

“Nothing you could have done, lass,” Koby Grimm reassured her.

Mistress Lorelai shoved the brothers aside and then raised Liara’s chin so that their eyes could meet.

“Death comes to us all. We cannot choose the time or place, but we can choose how we die,” she reminded Liara. “Mr. Goremonger died fighting monsters. Weep for him if you must, but praise him too for the deeds that have earned him his place in Valhalla this night.” 

As she said this, Mistress Lorelai’s gaze drifted to the body that Dess had just wrapped her cloak over.

“They’ve both earned their place in the All-Father’s great hall,” Mistress Lorelai insisted.

“They were adventurers,” I added. “They were awesome.”

Yep, even Lohgan had shone brightly in the end that I almost forgot how much of an asshat he’d been. Almost. He deserved my respect now though.

“Indeed,” Mistress Lorelai agreed.

While our dökkálfar instructor helped me to my feet, a new wave of monsters was gathering just beyond the tip of our protective circle, and it was obvious that we would soon be swarmed by them.

“Any of you have any salt grenades or iron shrapnel left?” Delphine asked.

“Nay, lass… we’re all out of supplies now,” Lieutenant Doyle replied.

“Even blessed oil?” Delphine pressed. “I’ll settle for a barrel of blessed oil to burn these wankers in.”

“We don’t have that on hand, but,” Lieutenant Doyle’s gaze snapped to Mistress Lorelai, “if you’re ready to give the signal, mum…”

Mistress Lorelai looked at our soot-streaked faces for a half-second before she said, “These novices are the last to arrive. No one else is coming.”  

It was a harsh assessment, but, as I glanced over my shoulder and saw the ongoing chaos behind me, I knew that our dökkálfar instructor was probably right. No one else would make it to the rear gate because the path to get here was already blocked by a horde of monsters that was slowly making its way to us.

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“Burn it all down,” she ordered.

“Aye, mum,” Lieutenant Doyle saluted her.

He raised a flare gun upward and then pulled its trigger. Then, moments after a four-leaf clover flashed in the night sky, a second and then a third clover appeared to illuminate the heavens. These other signals had come from deep within the basecamp.

“There are still LEPRCON agents in there,” I realized.

“Aye, laddie,” Lieutenant Doyle gave me a grim expression, “so, we best make sure they don’t die in vain.”

“Let’s go, novices,” Mistress Lorelai ordered. “We’ll mourn our dead later and sing praises to the valkyries. For now, this funeral pyre will have to do.”

We didn’t bother with a counterattack. There weren’t enough adventurers gathered at the rear gate to bring us victory against such a large horde of monsters. Mistress Lorelai’s order was to flee, and so we did.

Around twenty adventurers—less than a fourth of the number that had been present at basecamp that night—escaped through the camp’s rear gate. Together, we ran past the dead earth and broken gravestones, and we didn’t look back. Not even after the sounds of explosions hounded us from behind.

From the corner of my eye, I watched Lieutenant Doyle lower his bowler hat for the first time since I’d met him. Possibly in honor of his fellow agents who’d just sent a shit ton of monsters to join them in death.

Once we’d made it far enough that the blackened earth that had been corrupted by Lugh’s Lament had changed back to greener pastures, Mistress Lorelai ordered a brief rest.

“Two minutes. That’s all the rest I can give you. We must move again before we’re tracked,” she insisted.

“Where are we going?” the raven-haired green cloak asked.

“Kells Falls,” I assumed.

Well, it was the only nearby town, and I assumed there were more LEPRCON agents there to help bring order to its residents while they waited for news of our success.

“There’s a whole platoon of agents and high-ranking adventurers patrolling Kells Falls,” Lieutenant Doyle confirmed. “The Red Beard’s there too.”

“Red Beard?” I repeated.

Holy freaking Hel, if that was true, then making it to Kells Falls was a must because if Red Beard—a former guildmate of Divah’s—was nearby then this horde of monsters didn’t stand a chance. Especially because Mistress Lorelai had yet to go full-throttle on our enemies herself. And, if even half of what Divah told me about her old teacher was true, then the dökkálfar plus Red Beard equals a certain victory for our side. At least that’s what I believed.

“How far is Kells Falls?” Liara asked.

“Not far. Maybe fifteen minutes away by automobile,” Lieutenant Doyle answered.

“That’ll take us twice as long to reach on foot… Maybe more with how tired we are now,” I figured.

I shouldn’t have said that out loud because it made everyone feel worse.

“Why is this happening?!” Tessa cried.

“How are there so many monsters outside a dungeon?!” Elias chimed in.

The satyr had a fair point. It was a fact that ‘roamers’ never appeared in large groups. Not even dark realms like Svartálfheim. A dozen at most, but a whole freaking horde—that was the stuff of old wives’ tales about dungeon breaks, which turned out wasn’t so far-fetched after all.

“Is this really a dungeon break?” I asked our teacher.

Even mentioning out loud sounded ridiculous. But, the uncertainty of Mistress Lorelai’s expression suggested I might have struck gold there.  

“There hasn’t been one of those in nearly two hundred years,” she stated. “I know. I was there.”

“You were?” I asked.

“So were our Grandmaster and Master-of-Arms,” she revealed. “Come to think of it, I believe that’s where Doomsday earned his Executioner’s Blade.”

Reminiscing about the past didn’t stop Mistress Lorelai from parrying the vine-wrapped arrow that came hurtling at Dess’s face. She stopped the second and third arrows from hurting Tessa and Elias too. A fourth arrow found its mark on Bjorn the Viking’s neck, however, as he had been too far for our mistress to save.

“The enemy’s found us!” one of the adult adventurers reported.  

I looked over to where the green pasture met the blackened earth and saw that the first of the monster horde had found us. Seriously, it hadn’t been two minutes yet. These bastards were way too fast. Even worse, the monster that had just fatally wounded Bjorn the Viking was one of the few maenads that had escaped our battle inside their secret garden, which meant his death was on us.

“Run!” Mistress Lorelai ordered.

We picked ourselves off the ground and ran, leaving our fellow apprentice behind. To Bjorn the Viking’s credit, he didn’t die right away as we’d expected. When I glanced over my shoulder to see if we were being followed, I watched him get back up.

“Thor’s thunder,” I whispered.

Even with an arrow piercing his neck, Bjorn the Viking gave the approaching maenads the middle finger. Then he pulled his battle ax from its sheath on his back and charged the monsters. Bjorn the Viking beheaded one with a mighty swing of his ax, while the other one was slain by a combination of my Firebolt, Liara’s Ice Spike, and a red-feathered bolt launched from Delphine’s crossbow.

That’s when Bjorn the Viking fell to his knees, and he didn’t get back up again.

A third maenad arrived to harm his kneeling corpse, but Mistress Lorelai’s spear impaled it in the chest.

“What are you standing around for?” she screamed at me, Liara, and Delphine. “Run, you fools! Run!”

We ran another ten minutes. In that time, we lost the satyr, although no one knew if Elias had been killed or escaped to somewhere else.

With all his injuries, Anal was lagging behind our party, and a human adventurer I’d only met tonight dropped back to help him, costing the adventurer his life. A massive wolf similar to the one who’d killed Zen but with a patchwork of red and brown furs appeared right behind them. True to his nature, Anal pushed the man toward the beast, letting him die for him while the bright elf ran for his life to reach us.

I might have strangled Anal for what I just witnessed, but there was no time for justice. The red wolf wasn’t our only problem. Thanks to the light of the full moon and the conflagration raging behind us, we could all see the man in the patchwork fur cloak who now blocked our way to the road that should have led to Kells Falls.  

Turned out the man I’d seen surrounded by monsters wasn’t just a mirage after all. More importantly, he wasn’t alone. The man with the patchwork fur cloak was flanked on either side by two more wolves that were nearly as large as horses. One of these wolves had fur that was a variety of gray shades, and its all-too-human yellow eyes were fixed on me and Liara.