“Oh, researching the right spell to use on an artifact can take days. Weeks. And… uh… we have much less time than that.” The wizard nodded to Gorm’s hand.
“What do ye—thrice-cursed bones!” Gorm cursed as he looked at the ash swirling around his hand like a cloud of flies. “Drop ’em!”
He hurled the stone out into the black depths of the cavern. It dropped, as stones do, followed by those thrown by Gaist and Jynn. The air thrummed as three clouds of dust and ash swarmed after the artifacts down into the darkness, like bees after their queens.
Gorm and the heroes took the moment to join ranks as the clouds bore their stones back to their platform. “They just keep coming back,” he growled.
“So how do we stop them again?” Heraldin asked.
“That’s the million-giltin question,” said Kaitha. “It’s a trick fight.”
“Thrice curse it,” swore Laruna.
Jynn shook his head. “A wha—”
“A trick fight,” snapped Gorm. “Ye wizards are always makin’ traps and artifacts and weird creatures, right? And you’re always trying to make ’em invincible and foolproof and all that, right?”
“If you mean wizards generally try to make their creations succeed, then yes,” said Jynn.
“Right. Only nothin’s invincible. Nothin’s foolproof. A potion of fire resistance washes off in water, right? A spear keeps cavalry at bay, but it ain’t so useful once the enemy’s in close.”
“A knight’s armor has holes in front of his eyes which, as it turns out, is a great place to shoot a knight,” Kaitha offered. “And sometimes a wizard gets close enough to perfecting their creation that there’s only one or two ways to kill it. You can’t overpower the threat. You have to know the trick. They’re very dangerous”
“They’re thrice-cursed obnoxious, that’s what they are,” said Gorm. “Only silver lining is that usually the trick is killin’ all the wizards.”
“I doubt that would help in this case,” said Jynn.
“Not directly, anyway,” Gorm grumbled.
Kaitha ignored him. “Heraldin, try hitting one with water. Gaist, see if the stones have any loose bits or carvings that come off. Jynn, go through our potions and your spells for ideas. Laruna, can you get a stone hot enough to melt it?”
“Maybe?” said the solamancer. “It depends on the enchantment around the carving.”
“Well, it’s worth a shot.” The Elf fired off a silver arrow for emphasis. “We need to figure it out before we tire.”
“And if we don’t happen to be fortunate enough to be lugging around whatever their weakness is?” asked Jynn.
A thrumming, buzzing chuckle filled the air as the corpses of the Golden Dawn advanced.
“Then start praying to any god listening that Gorm and Niln had a point with all their talk of destiny.” There was no humor in the ranger’s smirk as she shot Gorm a sidelong glance. “Because we’ll need some help from above to survive this.”
“Please! Please! A little longer!” Thane’s aimless prayers rode on ragged breaths as he barreled down the twisted passages of Mount Wynspar. He sprinted past the nameless horrors and lesser monsters that scrambled unheeded from his path. He leapt bottomless chasms with barely a thought. Traps fired and misfired as he trampled their ancient mechanisms; their darts and arrows bounced from his thick hide, their blades bent and broke against the force of his charge.
Still he ran on, gasping words to someone who could not hear him, and running all the faster so that she might. “I’m sorry… I’m sorry I left… I will be with you soon… hang on.”
Sometimes he ran in total darkness. Some of the corridors he traversed were illuminated by glowing fungus or shimmering crystals. Ahead, his eyes caught a faint glow that seemed both fainter and larger.
His foot crushed an old pressure plate, causing stone walls to slide in place around him. Presumably the tiny chamber would soon start filling with sand or water or poisoned gas, but the Troll didn’t pause to find out. He crashed through the wall with a punch like a rockslide, rounded a corner—
And bounced off something more solid than the mountain around him.
Thane shook his head and looked up. A wall of emptiness blocked further passage. The barrier glowed faintly the color of an evening sky, and behind its sorcerous light he could see the rubble of the trap wall and his own panicked face staring back at him.
The Troll leapt to his feet and pounded on the barrier. It rang with a sort of distorted silence whenever he hit it, but otherwise his blows had no effect. His impotence was as alien as the wall itself, and an unfamiliar panic began to well up inside him before he remembered a side passage.
It took a precious minute or so to double back through the broken trap room, where green acid was dribbling from broken pipes in the hole Thane had punched through the wall. He turned down the side path, ground through the machinery of a crushing wall trap, blew through a scarg nest, and found himself face-to-face with the same enchanted surface. This barrier had a slightly different curve than the previous one, bending back and toward the top of the hallway like the edge of some massive sphere. Otherwise it was identical to the other wall, and just as immovable.
“No!” he cried, pounding on the wall, and the resulting boom of silence drowned out his own sobs. “I need to get to them! Let me pass!” On the last command, he swung his fist at the barrier for emphasis, but it never connected. The barrier began to disintegrate at his words, beginning at the point where his fist would have slammed it. The hole widened rapidly, shedding particles of faint light that twinkled like miniscule stars before falling like snow. The momentum of Thane’s punch carried him stumbling through the gap to the other side. By the time he looked back, there was nothing left of the barrier except a line on the floor where the dust and mold stopped, leaving only pristine stone carvings that put Thane in mind of his old garden.
It was confusing and unsettling, but there was no time for it now. With a weary groan, Thane hurled himself down the passageway as fast as his tired legs would carry him.
Exhaustion kills.
It was one of the first axioms Gorm learned as a professional hero, a painful if not terminal lesson that every young adventurer comes to grips with quickly in the field. A shield offers no defense without the strength to lift it. A sword is just a sharp accessory without the energy to swing it. Armor is more weight than protection for a hero at the end of his reserves. There were potions and enchantments and magical gear to help prolong a hero’s endurance, but even they had their limits, and when they reached their end the hero using them tended to as well.
That was the worst part of facing the undead. Worse than the unsettling smiles, their stench, and the stains they left everywhere, was their unholy stamina. They might have been slow, clumsy, weak, and predictable, but the restless dead did not tire.
And if he couldn’t put them down before he did…
“Doesn’t look good,” Kaitha panted beside him.
“Keep tryin’ things,” he said, glaring at the undead half of the Golden Dawn on the other side of the walkway. “What about acid? We tried acid?”
“Three varieties,” said Heraldin. “Now they’ll burn your skin if you touch them.”
