19

The Witch of Euna Brae

Pip landed near a growing puddle of rich, brown fomorian blood. He inched closer and began to drink. The undead ladybug feasted feverishly.

The pool of ochre liquid spread along the black stone and the familiar, his stomach full, opened his wings and took flight, landing on the fomorian's cheek.

A green light appeared in the fomorian's eye. It spread to the whites, then grew in intensity and darkness until it was pitch black. Still, it grew even darker, swallowing the meager light that fell upon it.

The veins around its eye bulged and blackened as well, rushing dark magic through the giant's corpse. Its muscles convulsed and contorted.

The ghastly fomorian stood. Black fumes rose from its splitting skin and a green heat radiated from inside the cracks. It opened its mouth and a slow, heavy breath escaped.

It shrieked—a long, clacking roar, like the call of a banshee—and curled its clawed fingers.

Oydd felt a chill beyond anything he had ever felt spread through his arms, and for the first time he realized he was back in his body.

Juhidra, too, froze in terror. And as the giant rushed him, the changeling feebly lifted an arm to protect himself.

The fomorian trampled over him in its haste, then spun about, backhanding the changeling and flung him across the room.

Juhidra crashed high against the wall and before he fell to the floor, the giant was upon him again, digging its claws into his belly and sinking its tusks into the nape of his neck. Juhidra lifted Bale's hammer to strike, but the fomorian wrested the changeling's arm from the socket with a quick lurch of its wrist, and dropped the writhing limb on the ground.

The other fomorian tried to subdue his comrade, but the ghast tossed him aside with one swipe of its arm and returned to its prey, clamping its jaw tight over Juhidra's throat until the changeling ceased struggling.

The other fomorian backed away in fear as the ghast tore away and swallowed bits of its former master.

Oydd's head throbbed with power and pain. When the fog began to clear from his mind, he raised a hand and focused on the ghast. Grudgingly it left its kill and chased after the other giant. Through blurred vision, the rudra saw his gigantic foe fall to his knees—heard its whimper as the ghast tore into its throat, spraying brown blood into the hot forge.

Next, Oydd lifted the adamantine golem from Jeshu and tossed it easily across the chamber with a wave of his hand.

The rudra stood and strode across the chamber. The wound in his side no longer hindered him. He saw the druid laying in a still heap and moved to his side. Oydd knelt and placed a hand on the dryad's shredded skin. Though it was faint, Jeshu's magic still hummed quietly—a soft green light that slowly mended the torn fibers. And, much like a pulse, it indicated that the druid was not dead.

The indestructible golem dashed again toward them, and Oydd had his giant ghast grab it by an arm and pin it against the floor. The adamantine construct struggled viciously, clawing at the giant's wrist—gouging into the ghast's magically hardened skin.

Calmly, Oydd opened Jeshu's pack, and searched for one of the druid's regenerative potions.

*****

The forgotten clone picked over the bodies of the dead goblins and sorted through their belongings as Gad and the ill-formed shadow watched. One of the goblins, the shortest of the bunch, appeared to have been a mage of sorts. He held a thin wand formed from spider silk, and wore a tiny ring inlaid with a chip of ruby.

The ring was too small to fit on any of Cricket's fingers, so he rifled through the packs of the other goblins until he found a bit of string and hung the ring around his neck. It felt oddly warm against his chest.

The shadow removed one of his daggers, dismissing it into nothing, and stored the wand in the hollow between his exoskeleton and his hip.

Other than the mage's trinkets, he found little more than a few silver coins on the bunch, which he offered to Gad first, and then the other shadow, but neither seemed interested.

Finally, he decided to continue on, taking the most worn path, as that had worked favorably in the past. However, the road, steadily descending deeper into Agoth, proved barren for several miles.

The air grew very hot, but it didn't bother him. The heat actually seemed to affect Gad the most, and the trollblood groaned in discomfort every now and then. Finally, he collapsed on the trail. Not unable, but unwilling to continue.

Cricket crouched at his side and patted the troll on the shoulder.

Gad looked at him in pain, and placed a plump hand on one of the iron plates Oydd had grafted onto his arm. The shadow gave him a sympathetic look, but saw no immediate solution.

The trollblood looked truly miserable. A polyp closed off one of his nostrils, and a lump growing on his brow now drooped over his eye, partially obscuring his vision.

Cricket sat down next to Gad and the other shadow hovered nearby. They sat for hours. Cricket assumed it was nighttime when the trollblood finally stood, but he didn't know how to reasonably tell time in Agoth.

He looked at Gad and pointed back the way they had come with one arm and onward with the other.

Gad stared at him, breathing heavily and finally started again downhill, deeper into Agoth. Cricket followed.

*****

Jade hung lifeless from the dire widow's web, her shell nearly as shiny as Crickets. She moaned softly as the poison took effect.

Cricket placed the vial with the antidote on a thin chain around his neck and drew his weapons. He strode boldly into the spider's chamber, eyeing the recesses in the rock for movement.

The dire widow lowered herself from the ceiling by a single, thick strand of web.

Cricket struck a cool pose.

The demonic spider lunged and he lifted a khopesh quickly to block.

Cricket's arm hit into an iron bar, and he woke with a start. He yawned and stretched, then reached out in the opposite direction and connected with another rusty bar.

Cricket sat up. He found himself in a dangling cage, just large enough to house one prisoner. He pressed his face against the bars and looked down. He saw nothing but fog below.

"We're near the top of the tower," Scorpion responded from a nearby cage.

"How do you know?" Cricket yawned again.

"I tossed down some debris and never heard it hit the ground. Oh..." He pointed behind Cricket. "Also, a few minutes ago, the fog cleared enough I could see that big shell on the ceiling. It's like... a stone's throw away."

Cricket stared off into the wafting vapors for a moment before turning his attention to the other cages. Several hung within view. And he made out the rough shape of two more half hidden in the fog.

Scorpion dangled nearby, and a little further away, he saw two unfamiliar ratlings. Beyond them was an empty cage and then a stone terrace several yards further with an archway leading into the tower.

Cricket waved at the ratlings, and one waved back. The other concentrated on whittling a bone with his front teeth and did not look up.

"Where's Ty'lek?"

Scorpion shook his head sadly. "He wasn't here when I came to."

"Do you know how long I was out?"

"Hours."

"Looks like Bax isn't here. Maybe he managed to hide."

"Oh, no... sorry. I am here." The gnome's voice came from a seemingly empty cage. "But I'm hiding. Next time they open this cage, I'll jump out!"

"Good thinking. Hey," Cricket tried to get the attention of the whittling ratling. "What are you making?"

The ratling looked up at Cricket for only a brief moment then back down anxiously. "A weapon."

"Oh, you're sharpening it. I'm calling you Shiv."

The ratling smiled to himself proudly.

"What's your name?" Cricket asked the other ratling.

"Sank."

"Shank? What a coincidence! Wonder what the odds on that are."

"With all the billions of coincidences that could happen," the gnome interjected,"it would be quite odd if some didn't."

"Fair point. I guess it would be weird if his name wasn't Shank."

"It's not. It's Sank," the ratling corrected, a bit dismayed.

"Weird. How'd you get that name?"

The ratling hesitated, and before he could answer, an elder azaeri appeared on the terrace, announcing her presence with a curt, barking caw.

The old matron's neck bent like a vulture from her humped shoulders. Though her head was entirely devoid of feathers, which gave an almost diseased look to her visage, a thick, black down covered her hump, and a few especially long plumes protruded from her arms. Many had lost their vanes and color, giving them the appearance of bleached quills.

She wore the accouterments of a shaman, carrying a gnarled wooden staff, likely from the surface, draped with the bones and skulls of some smaller birds, or perhaps young azaeri. Ratling bones hung from her belt, and rattled like ghastly chimes. She had two holes drilled in the side of her beak, from which bone beads on twine dangled. Her long tail dragged along the stone, collecting dust, and she walked slowly toward the ledge over which the cages hung.

A sizable troll followed the azaeri, holding most of an uprooted tree as a club. Beside it stood two azaeri spearmen, slightly more muscular than Ty'lek, though they looked scrawny next to the massive troll.

The azaeri matron pointed at Sank's cage and whispered something under her breath to the attendants. One of the spearmen ran and jumped, gliding to the cage, where he perched on the top, near the chain. He gave two yanks, and squawked up into the fog. A moment later the chain lurched and the cage dropped an inch. It bounced, and then slowly began to rise through the fog to the clicks of some unseen mechanism up above.

Sank, the azaeri, and the cage all vanished in the mist, after which the old matron turned and slowly made her way back into the tower, followed by her attendants.

Shiv looked rather distressed.

Cricket frowned. "Where are they taking him?"

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"I don't know," the terrified ratling responded. "But I don't think we'll see him again. There were four of us at first, and... they never come back."

"Well, isn't that a good thing? Not coming back to a cage?" Cricket offered pitifully.

The ratling did not respond. He stopped working on his shank and curled up in a ball on the bottom of his cage.

"What do we know about that old hag?" Scorpion asked.

"She's nasty," Shiv answered. "Baba Kesu. She does experiments on prisoners."

"How did you end up here?" Cricket asked. But the ratling pretended not to hear.

"Well..." Cricket sighed, looking at Scorpion. "Bax is invisible. Shiv's making a shiv, and Zit’s out there somewhere. We've got multiple pots in the fire. I feel good about this."

"Zit?" Scorpion said. "Are you calling the mimic Zit?"

"Yeah, short for Ixitl."

"How do you think he's going to rescue us?"

Cricket shrugged. "I'm just listing options."

"That's like the one name Oydd asked you not to use... Zit," Scorpion complained, plopping down on the bottom of his cage.

"Tell on me!" Cricket glared.

He tried to shake the bars of his cage, testing each one, but began fiddling with the padlock. He pulled one of the hidden knives from his carapace and tried to pick the lock. After nearly twenty minutes with no progress, he tried grinding up the inside in the hopes it might open if it were damaged enough. When that failed, he grew frustrated and bit the padlock in half with his incisors. After inspecting his dull, dinged up dagger, he opted to toss it from the cage.

Cricket opened the door. He looked off into the fog where Scorpion said he saw the titanic shell, and tossed the padlock in that direction. He listened, but heard nothing.

"You said a stone's throw."

Scorpion sighed. "Maybe two."

Cricket climbed to the top of his cage and leapt toward Scorpion's. When he kicked off, the cage swung with the force of his jump, and he only flew half as far as he intended. The insect gasped, barely grabbing hold of one of the bars. He latched on, upside-down, and bit the lock open, then climbed to the top and jumped to Bax's cage.

The cage wobbled dangerously when he landed, and he heard the invisible gnome slide against the bars.

Before he had a chance to open the lock, the troll reappeared on the terrace. It sauntered toward the edge, evidently lured by the sound of jangling chains, and only noticed Cricket at the last moment.

Mostly unarmed, and unable to easily leap to the ledge, Cricket circled to the far side of Bax's cage for cover.

The troll smiled a heinous grin, and chuckled to itself as it strolled forward, lifting its tree trunk to toss at the cage.

Suddenly, without so much as a yelp, the troll dropped straight through the floor.

Stunned, Cricket leaned around the cage, and peered down into the mist for some sign of the falling troll.

"Oh!" Bax said, excitedly. "I forgot. I made an illusion to make the ledge look like it extends further than it does. He's halfway to the ground by now!"

"Oh, that's very helpful." Cricket turned to Scorpion's cage. "See, lots of pots in the fire."

"I'm glad I remembered before you tried to make a jump for it!"

Cricket's eyes widened in horror. He licked his mandibles, before opening the gnome's cage and then Shiv's.

The insect returned to Scorpion’s cage. The ratling poked his head out, staring at the ledge that the troll had fallen through. "How far is the real ledge?"

"Oh, I haven't the foggiest," Bax replied.

"What? You can't tell where the illusion ends?"

"Wouldn't be much of an illusion if I could. Isn't it convincing?"

"Very convincing," Scorpion said, critically eyeing the illusion.

Cricket pointed. "I'm just going to jump to there. Couldn't be much shorter than that."

"Do we have something we can toss?"

"Um..." Cricket fished out his last dagger and lobbed it onto the terrace. It dropped through the floor and vanished. "Okay... maybe a bit further."

Scorpion swallowed hard. "Wait!"

"I'll just jump as far as I can. Can't do more than that, right?"

"Wait!"

"The other option is to stay here. That's not safer."

Scorpion looked down, but eventually nodded in agreement.

"Hold on tight. I'm going first."

Scorpion wrapped his tail around a bar for extra support as Cricket leapt onto the terrace. He overshot his original mark by quite a bit, and landed in a rough roll. Seeing he had hit solid ground, he dropped to his belly and crawled back toward Scorpion, feeling with his arms until they sank through the illusionary stone.

"Okay, it stops right here."

"That's not so bad," Scorpion replied.

"Bax, can you make that jump?"

"Not at all."

Scorpion looked at Bax’s seemingly empty cage and thought.

"Cricket, can you jump with him on your back?"

"Um... if the cage's weren't swinging, I'd say yes."

He looked over at the other ratling. "Shiv, are you coming?"

The ratling clung to his sharpened bone with both paws and simply shook his head.

Scorpion grunted. "Bax, you stay here with Shiv. We'll come back for you."

*****

The top levels of Euna Brae seemed unusually vacant, in Cricket's opinion. Likely, most of the azaeri guarded the lower levels, despite the few archers that manned the giant shell. The fog penetrated the fortress itself, which made it difficult to tell where they were going, but also made for some good cover.

Cricket and Scorpion came to a landing with a set of stairs running along the curved outer wall. To the left, the stairs rose, and to the right they descended.

"What do you think," Cricket whispered. "The portal is probably down a few floors."

"And the witch is probably up."

"Huh?"

"They took Shank up, which means that's likely where she is," Scorpion reasoned.

"No, I get that part. What do you mean by witch?"

"The witch," the ratling's voice cracked. "The old azaeri witch. You saw her."

"What, that granny? She seemed harmless."

Scorpion stared back, dumbfounded. "Are you daft? Shiv said she does experiments on prisoners, and she was clearly a witch!"

"Experiments don't have to be bad. Oydd does experiments."

"Would you want him to do any of those experiments on you?" Scorpion raised his voice a bit beyond a whisper, and the noise caught the attention of a nearby sentry. The two heard a few short cacks and caws down the hallway, followed by footsteps.

Scorpion signaled to hide and the two slipped through the archway leading to the stairwell and secreted themselves, one on each side. Cricket pointed at his lone, bent antenna, and Scorpion, interpreting the gesture, listened to the footsteps and held up two fingers. Cricket nodded.

While they waited, the ratling stooped and grabbed a loose pebble. When the guards drew close, he tossed it down the stairs. The first guard stepped through to investigate, and Cricket waved to draw his attention as Scorpion leapt onto his back and dug his two front teeth into the azaeri's neck. Quickly, Cricket grabbed the azaeri’s spear, twisting it in a circle to wrest it from the guard's hands, feinting with a quick stab through the doorway to slow the second guard.

The first opened his beak to squawk a warning, but the ratling wrapped his tail around the tip and held it mostly closed. He gouged at the azaeri's eye with his only hand, digging the claw of his thumb beneath the yellow eyeball. The azaeri dashed backward, ramming him into the wall.

Cricket sized up the other guard, who also wielded a spear. He raised his own shaft at a defensive angle, stabbing down into the azaeri's thigh with the same motion, and circled around his opponent as he retracted. To his surprise, when he pulled back on the spear, it hooked the guard's femur, yanking him from his feet. The spearman crashed to the ground with a dull thud, and the insect hastily crushed his throat with his foot.

When he returned to the stairwell with a spear for Scorpion, he found the ratling still struggling with the first guard. The two grappled on the ground, the azaeri's beak now clamped over one of the ratling's legs while the other wrapped around his neck attempting to choke him.

Cricket waited patiently.

"Help, you idiot!"

"You're being too loud," Cricket whispered in a panic.

"Help!"

Cricket looked over his two spears, opted for the clean one, and poked half-heartedly at the downed guard's face. Eventually, Scorpion managed to dislodge his leg, and Cricket shoved the spearhead into the azaeri's open beak. He gripped it with both left arms and plunged toward the back of the guard's neck. The azaeri stopped squirming instantly.

Scorpion rolled onto his back panting, before limping to his feet.

Cricket yanked the spear from the guard's wide open gullet and presented it to the ratling.

"What am I going to do with that, with one arm?" Scorpion began whispering again. "Can you snap it in half?"

"That would be too loud." Cricket wrapped his jaws around the shaft near the spearhead and clipped through half of it, then rotated and bit a second time to minimize the snap.

He handed the makeshift dagger to Scorpion. "Down?"

"I think our equipment is likely up," Scorpion suggested. "Witches tend to... collect things."

Cricket, impressed, pointed at the ratling and nodded, as if to say "nice thinking," then began to climb the stairs. The stairwell was wide, spacious, and infrequently covered in troll dung. The insect gave the steaming piles of dung an extra wide berth, partly because of the smell, and partly because of the greasy black substance that oozed from each pile into the stone, leaving a hazardous oil slick.

"How many trolls, do you think?" Cricket asked.

"More than one. Definitely more than the one."

"I doubt they come up here much."

"What makes you say that?"

"Trolls... just kind of tend to move downhill."

"That sounds like a guess..."

"It's an educated guess. They're unintelligent, lazy brutes."

"So you haven't actually seen them behave that way?" Scorpion asked.

"I... have not seen them tend uphill..."

"Hush," Scorpion pointed at his ears, and Cricket quieted.

The stairs ended at a second landing, where a single archway led into a laboratory that appeared similar to the old morgue at the Warrens in many ways, only far more filthy, with an empty brazier in the center of the room surrounded by wicker tables stained with blood. The dried, mummified remains of a ratling lay on the farthest table, covered in dust. Jars and containers of all sizes lined the walls, filled with curiosities, from petrified bones, to pickled fetuses, and pungent elixirs.

If Cricket didn't know better, he might have thought the laboratory abandoned. Three separate archways led from the entry room into similarly stuffed, disheveled, and neglected auxiliary chambers—two of which were lit by candlelight.

He passed the unlit chamber, and smelled the rot before he even saw the piles of bodies—ratlings, azaeri, lizardmen, even one of the smaller brown insectoids, all in various stages of decay, which created a nauseating bouquet of fumes.

Cricket exhaled from his vents as he passed to alleviate the burn. He passed by the second chamber, which contained mostly wicker cages as well as iron cells built into the wall at only about three feet in height, so the occupants would be unable to stand.

Scorpion passed through the third archway before the insect. A moment later, Cricket heard the ratling retch, and he rushed in to find him crouched next to a marble altar. Ty'lek lay on top, his beak removed and sitting next to his head in two pieces—half of his face flayed to the bone.

The ribs of his chest splayed outward, revealing his internal organs—several of which had been removed. One of his arms bulged, the scales pale and discolored by acid, the skin splitting open like the cap of a mushroom. A greenish liquid still sizzled on the exposed, blackening bone.

Cricket suppressed the urge to vomit as well.

Scorpion wobbled and leaned against the altar. "What is this... was he... sacrificed?"

"No..." Cricket answered. "This was an autopsy."

From the altar, Cricket saw a rope bridge leading out through the fog.

He heard a heavy footstep some distance behind him and tensed.

"Troll!" Cricket looked around the room and then out to the rope bridge. "It's too cramped here!"

"I'm not going out on that rope."

"Agreed." Cricket ran back toward the stairs. He heard the troll grunt like an ox around the bend–even saw a whiff of his hot breath on the air. Instinctively, he reached for a khopesh, and then for one of the absent daggers. Finally, tightening the grip on his spear, he let out an impromptu war cry and rushed down the stairs, almost immediately slipping on a fresh, tarry pile of dung.

As he fell, Cricket rolled onto his back, and tucked his head. He crashed down several steps like a toboggan on his slick shell, actually gaining speed as he skidded over an even fresher mound of dung. He flew past the troll as a shiny black blur, before crashing headfirst into the wall and bouncing down the next flight of stairs.

Dizzily he covered his head with his upper arms. He skidded across another landing before he managed to slow himself down, partly by scraping his spear against the wall and partly because the stones had ground the shell on his back rough and raw, which made him less slick.

An azaeri approached through the fog.

Cricket readied his spear as he wobbled to his feet. He faked a limp, and pretended to hold the weapon awkwardly until the guard drew close, then he lunged and finished him with a quick flourish. Two archers approached from the stairs above, where he had just slid past, and Cricket ducked out of the stairwell to avoid their arrows, nearly colliding with a second spearman.

He feigned a stab and brought the butt end of his spear around, connecting solidly with the azaeri's temple. Cricket crashed into him afterward, trampling over the stunned guard, and almost immediately slipped on the same foot as before, which was still slick with troll dung. He slid into the far wall and collapsed to the ground, landing on his elbow. The insect bit down hard to avoid screaming in pain.

He indulged in a moment of lying flat on his back, feeling sorry for himself, when he saw the silhouette of another insectoid coming toward him through the fog, brandishing four straight blades.