Like a Bat leaving the danger-zone
Fantasy while listening to Kenny Loggins!
I’ve got a new short story I wrote I hope you like this one. I’ve recently written it as a challenge for a contest, but I will occasionally post longer pieces.
Jakob, aka - Fast Fingers, placed the map down on the table. This route was Jakob’s idea, and Garth could see his pride. The awful toothy smile, and the jingling of his purse signalling a near hopping step, was painful for Garth to hear, and not do anything about. You don’t work where you eat. Garth focused back on the conversation in the cellar.
“Who’s more crazy? One who suggests the plan, or one who believes we can pull it off?” Luminous Sentinel Sandrak turned to grab his greatsword. The candle light flickered as if a shadow crossed one’s grave, or in this case the breeze from the massive blade passed by stirring the soot filled air.
“Speak for yourself. This plan is insane. I’d like to see you in Hell.” Garth Posycrak chimed in, turning to Jakob.
Garth looked up at Jakob’s full height. Jakob towered over Garth so, he was used to looking up a lot. But his neck was straining today and so Garth couldn’t see his eyes today. Garth adjusted his robe, brushing some dirt off. Unlike Jakob, Garth was the fastest one there. He could disappear into a shadow and take one’s robes out from under one’s robes.
“We will need a guide, according to the notes. The path out isn’t the entrance,” Sandrak said. Sandrak’s creaking armour sang of his unease. Garth winced at the scraping sounds.
“Remind me again why this is a good idea?” Dame Freida Herga said.
Dame Frieda scratched behind the crown of vines sitting on her antlers, tapped her hooved foot twice, and then again for good measure. The taps felt like thuds through the packed dirt floor. She pulled a twig caught in her dress and stared at Amath’tol. She always smelled like soil and fresh plants, Garth noticed. Today it was peppermint and eucalyptus. It wasn’t as vexing as other days, and he had asked Dame Frida if it was a perfume she wore. She smiled and told him she was natural and her race could adjust their smell just like a wizard might adjust his spells daily.
Clan Leader Amath’tol Jengratum listened with his slightly pointed ears and sniffed at their steaming mug filled with a hot black drink. They drank in small sips as they surveyed the map. It was barely enough vellum to clean Garth’s face, but it held clues to saving one of their own from the worst place imaginable. Beside the map was a tiny booklet, which Garth knew was written in blood. He had lifted it from a very dangerous collector a week ago, and his side still ached from the scrape of a trap that nearly tore him in half.
“Just say it once, please, Amath? We are going to break-” Jacob pleaded.
“Break her out of Hell. It isn’t hard to say, Jakob. But saying it and doing it is two different things, and I for one don’t like things that are uncertain, we are all fond of her, but I am also fond of my soul, and you are not begging me to give my soul to the cause? That is exactly what we’re planning to do.” Amath’tol flipped another page in the blood booklet.
“Dame, you planned for our animal guides?” they asked.
Dame Freida nodded and tapped her hoof against a cage sitting beside her.
“You can’t summon one, once inside, so I prepared this small covered cage with various runes. That should protect it from the heat. There’s little visibility, and according to that booklet, the black glass walls are unidentifiable and hot to the touch. Mechanical devices fail and the walls will melt any tool that is not enchanted.”
Garth’s left eyebrow rose and disappeared under his hood. He glanced across the room at the booklet, only a few moldy pages, certainly older than his begotten ancestry. The room was suddenly too cold and damp for his liking. He climbed the short ladder to the street above and sat down beside the building, shifting his weight until he felt more at ease with the shadows. He pulled out his favourite blade and a whetstone and honed the edge again. He knew they would figure out a solution. His job was to ensure everyone came back alive. Garth didn’t really care about the rest.
—
Sarina was chained naked on an ancient metal X frame, hanging with her feet over her head and heavily leaning forward. Her wrists were bloody and her face was bruised without an ability to recognize her face. Her skin was lacerated from whipping and caked in dried blood. A bucket sat below her, catching the dripping blood from a fresh wound. Garth couldn’t understand, in this Hell, why anyone would care about the floors.
The leader and Jakob were fighting off the demonic jailer, and Dame Frieda and Sentinel Sandrak were dealing with a creature with three heads. That left Garth the duty to free Sarina. Getting to her was simple. The shadows were everywhere in this place; shifting through the shadows flowed. The shadows here were freeing, as the sun was to Dame Frieda. Garth needed the right shadow, close to the chains. Some sort of oil supply fed the fire-lamp bowl to keep burning. The flames flickered to a supernatural breeze that Garth did not feel with his skin but through his bones.
Garth shadow-walked to the ceiling where the chains went through a large hole upwards. He travelled through the hole where one end was anchored. He followed the second chain back to the cell. Finally, he found the lock and examined it and the trap within this trap. The bone chill breeze was shifting, so Garth adjusted his planning. There was no more time. He shadow-walked to Sarina, and first pulled smelling salts under her nose to wake her. She jerked awake, her eyes widening in surprise and then relaxed again upon recognition of Garth. Sarina was the gentlest, and he was surprised at his anger when she was caught in a trap for him.
Garth adjusted her chains to free her head, so she could drink from his flask and eat the healing herbs that Dame Frieda had prepared for Sarina. He looked into her eyes and she nodded at him, ready to make their escape.
Three things happened simultaneously - Garth broke the lock, Sarina fell into his shadows, and the fire-bowl slammed on the ground smothering the fire. He grabbed her arms over his shoulders and helped her to her feet. As they escaped the cell, the others came running down the passageway. Loud cracks in the building formed and a heavy slamming sound echoed.
“What happened?” Garth said as dust and dirt rained on him as they ran down a passageway.
“That dog thing escaped from the trap we set!” Dame Frieda said, eyes wide but a half smile on her face.
“That demon, I think it freed it from the last chain holding it back,” Jakob coughed from the rear. “Keep running!”
“Quiet! The mind labyrinth is ahead,” Amath’tol said. He went to the front and jumped toward a passageway and jammed a trap with a rock. Then he took three steps backward and reached towards the wall. The wall clicked and a new passageway opened. The darkness was a wall of heat and black, so dark that Garth’s mind twisted. It felt greasy and smelled of death. The smell sucked all the air out of him, and he gasped for air. Everyone was frozen from the smell, except Dame Frieda. She wrinkled her nose and closed her eyes and walked forward to the furnace. As she passed, Garth could breathe again, as a sharp smell of citrus and an undertone of vanilla wafted into his nose, freeing him.
Garth moved behind her and followed. The secret door closed behind once Sentinel Sandrak passed through. The temperature was painfully hot, and he had to take a rag and wipe his forehead to keep his vision clear. Garth was half merged with the shadow and half holding the hand of Dame Frieda to help her move through the blackness. She could see in the low light, but this pure blackness. After a timeless period going around the furnace, Garth reached a glass-like wall. He turned and was near blinded by the light blasting from the furnace, pouring heat into Hell.
“The fires of Hell are actually maintained like a fireplace? It isn’t some supernatural thing?” Jakob yelled over the clanging sounds, and screams through the furnace as fuel was being fed to the fires.
“I don’t think those screams are just normal ones,” Sandrak said. “They are souls being fed into the fires. I feel it.”
Garth looked back at the group. Sarina was fading out of consciousness. The only one who couldn’t get a supernatural blessing at the priest this morning before we left, Dame Frieda, was tired, half carrying Sarina with Sentinel Sandrak. Jakob was alert, but he had a gash wound on his arm that was larger than the bloody bandage holding it together. Amath’tol was the only one like Garth in fighting condition. He took out the small cage that was attached to Dame Frieda’s back and removed the cover, revealing a few bats.
“They see with sounds,” Frieda said. “They also will hate this heat, so if anything can find their way out, it is them. Careful to only release them once you find the start of the passageway.”
Garth took the cage and ran up to the glass walls. He could not touch them as the heat from the furnace made them so hot it melted the tip of his sword when he got too close. He probed the walls carefully. Step, touch with the blade, see the sizzle, then move again. Finally, an opening.
“Get them! The prisoner escaped into the labyrinth!”
Garth quickly opened the cage and followed the flapping wings as the bats flew through the black glass walls.
“Follow me now!” Garth called, all attempts at stealth thrown away. They rushed along a long tunnel then started turning and weaving. Sometimes they had to jump a short wall, other-times they crawled under, careful not to touch the molten glass walls. The demons fell behind as they hurried through the passageways.
—
Denny Galdrick, the third, a merchant traveller, waited five days beside the great rock mountain. He was paid a large sum to wait with carriage and tents and tack for a month at this location. He was not a bright lad, and he knew his father would never let him inherit anything without him proving himself, something in his mind, nigh impossible. Something always went wrong on every deal he worked. So he took this job and sat around the campfire, down on his luck, hoping the job would pay. A crew of four other merchants and a bard kept him company. He collected enough coin, that he was willing to camp out with friends, one whom was a bard, for a week if nothing else. The past few days were in drunken revelry, regaling tales and tall stories.
He was taking last watch and it was just after dusk when he noticed a smoke cloud appear from the jagged rock. He called his sleepy companions over to see the strange phenomenon.
Where it emerged from the stone,
A black shape at first alone
Followed by two others surrounded by smoke.
Then they came three by three
The rescuers and the rescuee
Down the rocks, they all fell
Following their bats,
Out of Hell.