8

Black Ice

By the time Licephus created a hole large enough to poke his head through, Cricket had only made seven clones.

Jeshu took a swipe at the vampire's mask, but Licephus pulled it back with plenty of time to spare and never made himself so vulnerable again until the wall of ice lay almost entirely in shambles.

"Come back," Cricket called to the druid. "He'll cut you in half with a single swipe."

The druid, reluctantly, retreated, only to find the clones engaged in an uneasy round of rock, paper, scissors.

"What are you doing?" Jeshu asked calmly. "There's no time—"

A final, decisive crack split the air and Licephus squeezed through.

"Okay," Cricket shouted in a panic. "Anyone who lost the first round, you're on defense."

Only two of the eight Crickets took a position at the vanguard as the other's ran deeper into the tower. Cricket, himself, released a deafening screech, and the vampire, navigating mostly by sound, veered into a wall, crashing solidly. His split form began to reconverge as he teetered back into the center of the hallway.

"We agreed to stand here!" Jeshu shouted as he ran along Cricket's side.

"Sorry, I realized we'll die if we do that. Don't worry, I have a plan."

Licephus split again as he regained speed. The shadows sent to delay him each tried to block one of the images. The one who blocked the actual Licephus was instantly torn to shreds and the other panicked, covering his eyes as the displaced image passed straight through him. Though, by the time he opened his eyes, he found himself far behind the feral vampire.

Cricket made two more clones as he ran, and the two instantly began a round of rock paper scissors at full sprint. The loser, honorably, sacrificed himself to the charging Lord, lasting twice as long as the first victim, as he managed to dodge one swipe.

"Crap, crap, crap!" Cricket swore as he neared a large antechamber, only vaguely aware of the circumstances behind him.

"Should have been four, right? Half of us lost the first round, and had to stall. But only two stepped up."

"Cricket, I saw you lose the first round."

"Wait, I did?" He tried to think back.

"And some of you may have tied."

Cricket and Jeshu came to a semi-circular room with a cage up against the flat wall. A thick rope, attached to the top of the cage, vanished through a hole in the ceiling. Nearby, a second rope dangled from a separate hole with a rusted iron weight attached to it.

"Hop in the cage," Cricket shouted. Jeshu obeyed, and two of his clones clung to the sides as well. Meanwhile, Cricket cut through the rope attached to the weight with a single smooth swing of his khopesh.

He turned and leapt onto the top of the cage, and eventually realized it wasn't moving.

"Was that your plan?" Jeshu asked, leaving the cage.

Behind him, the severed rope flew up through a hole in the ceiling.

An oblivious clone stood beneath the hole in the ceiling and the druid tackled him out of the way just as a cage came crashing down and burst into a mess of bent iron and shattered mushroomwood.

He turned back to Cricket. "You don't get how counterweights work. Why would cutting that rope make us go up?"

Licephus appeared in the hallway, slamming another clone into the wall, evidently attempting to bite him through the adamantine mask.

"We wasted all of our time arguing! That's it, anyone who tied a round, you're up!"

A single clone grabbed a khopesh in two trembling hands and hesitantly stepped toward the vampire while the others ran.

"That can't be right." Cricket started counting on his lower fingers while his upper arm produced four more clones.

The new shadows quickly threw down their hands, and three of the four relegated themselves to the front lines, according to the new rules.

"Why'd you risk your life to save a clone?" Cricket whispered to Jesh as they turned down an adjoining hallway.

Jeshu blushed. "I actually didn't think about it. But, in retrospect, you did say the others would remember. Perhaps I earned some good will."

"Let's lead him up to the portal. Maybe we can push him in."

"That's ten floors up!"

"Yeah, we don't... how much time do you think we have?" Cricket glanced back down the hallway, where he saw all three of the recent clones still waiting. "You don't think that one guy...?"

As he spoke, the lone shadow from earlier came running down the hallway, still in one piece, with Licephus in pursuit.

"Oh!" Cricket shouted in encouragement. "Way to represent!"

The tired clone smiled, and pushed himself a little bit harder from the morale boost, but Licephus gained on him at an impressive speed. The shadow swerved down a side passage and the feral vampire crashed into the wall, unable to slow himself in time. The three clones standing nearby lunged in.

Cricket looked back at Jesh. "I have one more idea. There's actually a floor below us."

"There is?"

"Over this way."

Cricket led the dryad down a small, dark, tunnel that tapered downhill, and the sounds of combat grew distant.

Eventually, they came to a dead end with a high, vented ceiling and a grate in the floor.

"I found it while exploring. I think it's a dungeon."

"You want me to squeeze down through that tiny opening?"

"Oh... well I hadn't thought about it. It will be small for Licephus too."

"Cricket, that's not a dungeon, it's a sewer. I can smell it from here."

"Yes, it smells. It's a ruthless dungeon. They must drop bad goblins down there and then just forget about them. That smell's probably dead bodies."

"That's not what dead bodies smell like. It's what sewage smells like. I don't want to drop down into a cramped tunnel full of sewage."

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Cricket counted his four remaining clones, and looked confused again. "Did we lose a couple?"

The hallway behind them became eerily quiet. Cricket grunted. "You did it again," he said to the druid, with an accusing tone.

"Did what?"

"You wasted all of our time arguing."

Cricket made two more clones and staggered sideways into the wall, looking lightheaded.

"You've made too many. You need to slow down."

"There's still... a ton of energy in my khopeshes."

"How do you know that? You don't want to spend too much."

"Because it still burns." He passed the khopesh down to his lower hand, and displayed his palm to the druid. The shell had blistered, and bubbled, and even turned white in a few places."

"Cricket! You should have told me."

"I did. I told you it burned."

"I... didn't realize you meant literally."

Cricket made another clone, then crashed sideways into the wall—headfirst this time.

Jeshu caught him as he fell, and laid him on the ground. "Cricket, it doesn't matter how much energy is stored in your blade. It still takes a toll on you to use dark magic."

Cricket nodded weakly as the druid began to heal him, sharing his meager remaining stamina.

A rock skidded down the tunnel toward them, unseen around the bend. Licephus had stalked in silently, but now grew close enough that Cricket could hear him sniffing the air.

He looked to his clones. "Get the mask off. Priority one. If we don't get that mask off, we're all dead. Abandon all caution!"

"Don't abandon all caution," Jeshu pled with the clones. "But it doesn't look good. Can you stall while I tend to Cricket?"

The shadow he addressed directly saluted—a very serious look on his face—and managed to rally the other clones into a loose vee formation, guarding the druid and lining the sides of the cramped room.

*****

When Patches' lone paw ran out of strength, she dropped to the ground and made a few futile leaps at her dagger to retrieve it. Eventually it fell too, leaving a blue skid mark on the stones with the mixed blood of the two rudra—one trail darker, and already partially coagulated. Gingerly, the mouseling grabbed it by the handle and lifted it before her eyes for inspection.

Oydd hissed in pain nearby. He held onto his staff with a trembling hand and dropped to one knee, leaning heavily on the shaft to prevent himself from falling entirely.

The mouseling came to his side and nuzzled him with her cheek.

"I'm really sorry," she said. "But it wasn't my fault."

Oydd took a steadying breath. "I don't blame you. You were trying to help."

"I did help," Patches contested. "I scared him off."

Oydd nodded absently. He gripped the tip of his severed tentacle tightly, trying to stop the flow of blood.

Patches held up her bloody knife before the rudra. "I got some of his blood." She placed it on the ground, then retrieved a tiny bottle from her satchel and pulled the top with her teeth. She held the bottle steady on the ground with her amputated paw and began to scrape the darker blood into the vial.

"Looks like you got mine too."

Patches frowned.

"Is this for a totem?" the rudra asked. "I just want you to be careful."

"The blood doesn't look the same. I can just get his." She held it up to the rudra again and he nodded approval. "When I make a totem, my plan affects the spell a lot. So, I won't accidentally get you."

Still, the mouseling hopped away to avoid any further questions. She ran inside and scurried among the litter in the witch's old laboratory, stopping short of her hole.

"Pip, I need you to come inside with me and see if it's safe."

She looked around and remembered the lady bug had not yet returned. She only lowered her voice slightly and continued anyway. "We need to get the yarn..."

Despite her words, the mouseling stood quite still near the entrance, her eyes peeping into the darkness. The shadows moved—only so, so, so slightly—toward her, and the mouseling squeaked, retreating back toward the rudra.

She heard Oydd's voice behind her. "What did he take? It's impossible to tell among all this clutter!"

A few azaeri guards rushed through the room, and the mouseling was vaguely conscious that it was not safe to wander until they located the old rudra.

She returned to the ledge and tried to spy the lady bug flying through the thick dust, but gave up and curled into a ball.

"I know you'll be fast Pip, so I'll wait for you..."

*****

A faint, violet glow hinted at the vampire's proximity long before Cricket could see him. Licephus sauntered slowly down the tunnel, as though he had forgotten his prey, until he came around the last bend and sensed the group huddled back against the wall.

Licephus paused. Cricket heard the tendons of his jaw snap, as his maw opened wide and the feral vampire began to salivate. Again, a grey saliva dripped to the floor from behind the mask, and he sprinted forward, still on all fours.

When Licephus neared the opening to the small room, Cricket released another loud screech, and the charging vampire careened into the wall–not so forcefully this time, as the vampire, brutish though its intelligence may have been, slowed itself until it regained its full sense of hearing.

While it paused, two shadows, secreted on the high ceiling, dropped onto the vampire lord's back. One missed his mark, landing on the ground beneath the beast, and began wildly swinging his weapons against the impossibly hard armor, leaving no more than a scratch here and there.

The one that landed on its back began struggling with the vampire's mask, cutting into the leather straps of the muzzle with his shadowy daggers.

When Licephus raised his divine claw to skewer the clone beneath him, the shadow mounting him hooked the sickle-end of a khopesh beneath his armpit and yanked upward, but the effort neither slowed its attack nor penetrated the gap in the corrupted silver.

Licephus moved over the fallen clone, pinning him, then impaled him in an instant with a blow so powerful it sank several inches into the black rock.

The clone dispersed in a heavy cloud of blackness, and Licephus dug his face into the ground, biting at the dissolving shadows as several more clones circled and attacked.

Cricket, himself, still leaned against the dryad, until Jeshu left him to join the fray.

With each swipe of his claw, the vampire extinguished a clone. And he proved unusually agile for his lack of sight, dodging the more serious blows, though he had trouble dismounting the shadow on his back, which slowed him considerably.

Jeshu stepped in with a sideways smack of the hammer, which caught the vampire's attention. Enough so that he dodged the druid's second swing, and countered with a backhand that barely missed Jeshu’s throat. A thick shell of ice grew on the vampire's armor, spreading along the shoulder. Jeshu butted him in the chin with the head of his hammer, shattering the shell, which sent a second, thinner crust of ice along the mask.

One of the clones brought a khopesh down on the vampire's shoulder with such incredible force that it couldn't withstand the rebound. The entire clone poofed into a burst of shadow that crashed against the vampire like a wave, washing along the grooves in his armor.

As Licephus cut down the remaining clones, Jeshu scored another direct hit to the vampire's forehead, and then to the nape of his neck. Licephus shrugged off the blows, and the druid fell back toward Cricket, huffing and puffing.

"Why are you so tired?"

"My... mana is my strength," Jeshu managed between breaths. "And I am running dry."

"Here." Cricket held out one of his khopeshes.

The jade crackled with black energy. And the dryad stared down at it, almost in revulsion at first, until the final clone fell. Then he gripped the handle in one hand, still holding his hammer in the other.

"For you," he said, sadly, as he charged the vampire. Black magic spread through his veins, and the druid grew a foot, and then two. Holding it with only one hand, he swung the great hammer with greater strength than when he wielded it with two. The druid radiated darkness, emanating shadow in every direction—so heavy that it dimmed the room.

He struck the side of the vampire's head again, and this time sent it flying into the wall with a resounding dong!

Black ice instantly enveloped the vampire. Jeshu struck again, shattering and creating more ice. But with each blow the ice grew until it was over a foot thick.

Licephus waved Bale's arm, which burst free, forcing the druid to circle to the vampire's weaker side. Finally, Jeshu dropped the khopesh, gripped the hammer with both hands, and brought it down over the vampire's head, splitting the ice and connecting with the adamantite with a sickening crack.

Licephus twitched, and a series of involuntary tremors spread from his broken neck. His head drooped, even as his divine tail and arm continued to thrash. And then the mask fell loose—the leather straps cut from his earlier scuffle. It skidded down the ice and along the ground, stopping at the druid's feet.

Jeshu looked into the vampire's dead, white eyes, and gasped, not wanting to see his friend. But he only hesitated a moment.

"It's not him," he said gravely. "It's not even him anymore. There is nothing there."

Licephus snapped at the air, unable to even turn his head toward the druid. The left side of his face sunk in, with flaps of bone and pale, bloated skin waving from the force of his gnashing. Black, dried blood dripped from his eyes, and his nose, and his ears.

"It's not even him," Jeshu repeated as he raised his hammer for the finishing blow.