21

Witchcraft

On the road home, Cricket attempted to activate the Jade khopeshes. He tried hitting them together which made a nice sound but produced no other results. At Jeshu's instruction, he tried hitting one against his chest, which produced fewer results.

"Wait until the rudra awakens," the dryad suggested.

Oydd, Cricket thought.

The rudra bounced along on Jeshu's shoulder with no sign of waking.

Oydd! Cricket repeated more intently.

This time the rudra placed a hand on his head and groaned. "Stop that. That's far too loud. That one was right in my brain."

"Oydd, help me figure out how this magic works. What's the enchantment?"

Oydd opened an eye groggily. "Some other time perhaps."

He attempted to close his eyes again, only to be startled by a loud clang, as Cricket struck the weapons together again.

After the third time, Oydd snapped. "You may not have the propensity to activate the enchantment. It takes a certain amount of innate intelligence. Otherwise it could take years of practice."

Even without looking, Oydd heard the insect frown, his mandibles rustling together.

"Besides," he offered. "The shadows came from the breastplate she wore."

"Not the blades?" Cricket repeated, disappointed.

"But I do sense dark magic. Obviously they're enchanted. At the very least for durability. There's not a scratch on them."

"Sort of boring to enchant them to be as hard as metal, when iron already does that."

"That's not the only enchantment..."

Jeshu set the struggling rudra down, where he wobbled a bit then asked for his staff. Jeshu passed the mimic-topped staff to Oydd and the rudra accepted with only modest reluctance.

"They displayed some sort of anti-magic. Which shouldn't be possible. I don't see how a weapon could have an anti-magic enchantment, since an enchantment is a type of magic."

"Don't you have a spell that can diagnose magic items? I saw you use it," Cricket said.

"I can't very well use magic to identify an item that dispels magic, can I?"

"Perhaps," Jeshu interjected, "it only dispels black magic. Elkennah is known for bestowing magic to resist or even annihilate dark magic."

"Not something I would know anything about," Oydd growled.

Cricket strapped the khopeshes to his side, using a sheathlike leather sling he had obtained from the assassin.

Jade's breastplate jangled on Cricket's back. He had attempted to put it on immediately, but the side straps needed let out a bit.

"What about this?" Cricket motioned over his shoulder with his thumb.

"Some other time. I'm in no condition. Besides, I told you, it is beyond your ability."

"Then help me," Cricket suggested.

"I can't make you smarter. And please speak more quietly. You're giving me a headache."

"You have before."

"What?" Oydd stopped in his tracks for a second, then started walking again.

"When you use telepathy. You've thought of complicated concepts, and I understand them when we're linked."

"Well that's... absurd," the rudra finished uncertainly.

Well, if you think it's too hard for you, Cricket added innocently.

Well I never! I already told you—oh! well that is dark, the rudra's mind trailed off as he focused on the breastplate.

"What?" Cricket said over his shoulder.

"Nothing..."

The group walked a moment in silence.

"What happens when you vibrate the breastplate?" Oydd asked.

With a quick flourish, Cricket produced a dagger and rapped it over his shoulder.

The jade breastplate resonated with a high-pitched ping.

Lower, Oydd instructed and Cricket stopped in the middle of the road. Jeshu smiled, but the azaeri squawked and looked about flustered.

Cricket pulled the breastplate from his back and struck in a few places until he found a spot that made a lower note.

Like this?

Oydd held a hand to his head. Not so loud!

Suddenly, the insect felt a flow of understanding from the rudra. Not in the form of words, nor emotions—it felt more like seeing a curved object from another angle.

Cricket struck the jade again, producing a low hum, and the object vibrated visibly, stretching into two as if he had crossed his eyes. Slowly the two images remerged.

"Don't try that again until I've had time to study it in my lab," the rudra ordered, though his tone had softened.

Cricket slung the armor back over his shoulder.

Ty'lek cawed again, with less irritation this time and more as a reminder that he was waiting.

When the group returned, they found Jiukec and a small group of ratlings waiting anxiously by the stables.

Oydd approached them. "Why are you standing about? There's plenty that needs done."

Cricket placed a hand on the rudra's shoulder, and the necromancer jumped.

"They want word on the battle."

"Oh," Oydd grumbled and headed to his lab, leaving the crowd to the insect.

The ratlings turned their attention to Cricket.

"For those of you who don't know, Agena fell in combat, along with his entire group, except for Scorpion who is severely wounded."

Jiukec looked about confused, and Ty'leck translated the insect's words in a string of clicks and hisses. Suddenly a dark look passed over the lizardman's eyes and he hung his head.

Cricket continued. "We tracked down the assassin responsible, and killed her."

This part Jiukec understood without translation. He hissed and tapped his pinky claw twice against his chest, a sign of thanks.

"I'll release the names of the dead later today. For now, everyone get back to work."

The ratlings scurried off. More than a few went straight to the stables, even though Cricket knew they weren't assigned there.

Ty'lek translated for the lizardman, but Jiukec just wandered off and looked down the road leading away from the Warrens.

After Oydd retired for the evening, Cricket rigged a bit of leather string on the jade breastplate and managed to secure it somewhat loosely around his back. He wandered toward the prison cells, where the rudra wouldn't hear him.

Only he and Oydd possessed keys to the main prison door. The Warrens had not taken any prisoners in years, and Cricket's style of discipline revolved around assigning extra training, which meant the cells had sat empty since Damien's rule.

Cricket opened the door as quietly as possible, and locked it behind him. As he walked he noticed several sets of tiny pawprints in the dust—more recent than he expected. He followed them to the deepest level of the dungeon, where he found several open cells filled with a variety of oddities. Each cell contained a black candle—some melted, others new.

In one cell he found dozens of empty bottles and a few full of fermented liquid and strange ingredients he did not believe to be magical—ratling droppings, dried mushroom, lye soap, eel eyes, and whole worms, among other things.

One large jar was filled with nothing but fur.

The adjacent cell contained dolls of all shapes and sizes. One resembling a rudra, one resembling a lizardman, and several ratling dolls. Cricket found one doll made of grey bat fur dyed brown so that it strongly resembled the ettin, though the proportions were way off. It was three times the scale of the rudra and a third of that was due to the oversized heads alone. It held a tiny spear and hook carved from lizard bones, and a bloody toenail protruded from the chest.

Once he saw the toenail, Cricket checked the other dolls and found many of the others had little "treasures" concealed in the chest cavity. One of the ratlings had two bone dice inside. The ones that went missing from Bones the day he accused Patches of cheating.

The insect checked the rudra doll and found the tip of one of Oydd's quills, still stained with dried ink, nestled among the clumps of fur.

A chill went up his antennae, and yet, Cricket didn't really know what to make of it. Which meant it could probably wait.

He plopped on the ground, pulled out a dagger and began to pound the hilt against the jade armor until it made the perfect note!

*****

Clang!

Cricket woke lying on the floor of the dungeon. He couldn't remember how he got there. And as a rule of thumb, that meant he was allowed five more minutes of sleep. But the din above him simply wouldn't allow it.

He heard another impossibly loud crash of metal against metal, this time accompanied by shouts and yells. Which, among other things, meant the prison wasn't a great place for soundproof practice.

Cricket jumped to his feet and ran to the upper prison. He heard the sounds of a large fight almost directly above him, mapped it out in his head, and figured it was roughly coming from the entryway. Cricket grabbed a jade khopesh in one of his upper hands. He felt the cool stone against his palm for a moment, deciding how to proceed, before grabbing the second khopesh in his other upper arm. He relegated the sickles to his lower arms and sprinted out of the prison, leaving the doorway open behind him.

He ran into Jeshu in the commons, shouting orders at a group of new recruits. Fully-armed lizardmen poured from the armory, marching toward the upper levels, clearly more organized than the ratlings.

"What's going on?" Cricket yelled.

"Ghajan," Jeshu growled.

"The ettin? They turned on us?"

"Just Ghajan," the druid answered cryptically.

"Turtle me!" Cricket cried frantically, tapping the figurine on his chest, clearly eager to run off.

Jeshu held out a hand, and Cricket felt his shell hardening, without even looking down. The grace felt more intense than normal, and his hands began to squeak as they tightened. Cricket opened and closed his fingers a few times to test his range of motion, then smiled and darted off.

*****

Ghajan swung a massive hammer forged from a bluish metal. He swiped three lizardmen away in one strike, leaving a stain on the wall, then brought the hammer up and swung it down at a fourth, impossibly fast, flattening it in its armor.

Ghajan roared. Beside him, a bloody spine protruded from his shoulder in Onubi's place—the flesh torn roughly and brutally. In his free hand, Ghajan held his brother's severed head. It dangled from his clenched fist by a lock of hair.

A black vapor rose like steam from Ghajan's skin. His flesh had darkened from bronze to an earthy umber, and his tusks curled nearly to his own eyes.

The ettin punched an unfortunate ratling, knocking him off the ledge to the lower quarters. A horde of deep goblins poured steadily past Ghajan from behind, and a group of lizardmen devoted themselves to the smaller game, avoiding the giant at all costs.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Cricket made for an opening in the ranks to charge Ghajan, and the giant turned his full attention on the insect. Lifting a khopesh above his head, pretending he intended to block, Cricket ducked below the giant's swinging hammer at the last instant, barely fitting between it and the ground. The wind from the hammer whipped his antennae to the side. The insect moved toward the swing—assuming he'd have more time to act before the ettin countered—and made two quick slices against his foot with his sickles, barely drawing blood.

Cricket grunted and circled the ettin as Ghajan swiped with his fist, clipping the insect's shoulder. The force from the blow sent him tumbling to the ground, and the Giant tried to stomp him once, twice, and then swung his hammer overhead. Cricket lifted both Khopeshes in a cross before his face.

The hammer slammed through the guard, and Cricket's form dispersed in a wave of heavy black mist along the ground. Ghajan paused only momentarily before looking up and surveying the ranks of his enemies.

"Interesting trick, Cockroach. Come! See if you fare better!" He tossed Onubi's head and it rolled down the ramp, landing at the foot of an unshaken lizardman.

"Damn he's fast!" Cricket stuck his head around a corner, careful not to let the ettin see his green breastplate—a dead giveaway that he was more than just a congealed shadow!

Cricket threw a shuriken at a nearby goblin. It covered its throat in time, taking the spinning blade to its forearm, but the distraction gave a nearby lizardman the opportunity to run it through with a trident.

"Maybe I need a trident," Cricket whispered to himself. "No! No! I just got these."

He threw a few more shurikens into the mix then shouted, "Fall back! He has an advantage on that narrow ramp. Draw him into the open!"

Though it seemed unlikely anyone had heard him over the hissing shrieks of the deep goblins, the lizardmen fell back instinctively. An arrow flew over their heads and stuck in the ettin's chest, only penetrating a couple inches. The ettin brushed it away like an annoying bug, and the arrow clattered to the ground, as thin black lines spread from the opening in his chest.

A second arrow came from the side, glancing off of his elbow. Cricket looked for the second archer but couldn't pinpoint the source. Which was probably good?

Cricket clanged the butt of a khopesh on his chest, unsure if he could produce another shadow. The breastplate resonated and a black form nearly formed at his side but flickered away when the vibration stopped. He tried again.

"You're too worn." He heard Jeshu's voice from behind. "It's better to wait than to try again."

"What happened to him? He's bigger than before, I swear."

"I believe he sacrificed one of his heads to Bale."

"You mean Onubi," Cricket emphasized the name. "He sacrificed Onubi to Bale."

Jeshu groaned in pain at the thought.

"Can you grow?"

Jeshu knit his brows. "Not to his size. I think I'd be dead in a matter of seconds."

"I want to hold back too, but our men are dying."

Jeshu grazed a deep goblin by the neck with his hammer and sent it flying several feet, where it twitched uncontrollably on the ground. He yelled, "Fall back!" and his voice boomed over the din, much more clearly than the insect's had.

The struggling lizardmen gladly followed the order, slicing down a few goblins as they repositioned to join the druid and several nervous ratlings.

"Phalanx in front," Cricket pointed to the few, frazzled lizardmen. "Ratlings and I guard the sides.

The lizardmen held up their shields in a wall, resting their spears over the top, in a fairly pathetic display.

"Keep that position, but retreat slowly."

Ty'lek continued to fire at the ettin, while Aka'su, the other azaeri archer, picked off goblins.

"What do you want me to do?" Jeshu asked.

"Stay in the back and heal the wounded?"

Jeshu nodded.

Ghajan walked slowly down the slope, brushing aside the tiny arrows that pierced him, until the defenders had retreated nearly back to the commons. Then the giant charged, keeping a forearm in front of his eyes. He barrelled down the ramp, knocking a few of his comrades aside, and stopped in front of the laboratory door. With a quick twist, he brought his hammer down on the iron frame, smashing it in. Thick crags of ice appeared around the rocky doorway, crackling loudly enough to be heard from a distance, and chunks of stone fell from the archway.

Dozens of goblins poured through the opening into the laboratory.

"Oh, crap," Cricket shouted. "Where's Oydd?"

"I assume in his lab," Jeshu said somberly.

"Crap, oh crap!"

"Stay here," Jeshu appealed. "We need you."

Cricket took a deep breath. "I know."

Before the dryad could react, Cricket charged toward the ettin, cutting down two of the black-horned goblins on his way.

"Jhet bhami!" One of the deep goblins yelled, and the group scattered. One bumped into the ettin as he ran.

"Coward!" the Giant roared and stomped it to mush.

Cricket looked over his shoulder. "What did it say? Jet bammi?"

Black death, Oydd answered.

"Oh, Okay..." Cricket looked around, not seeing the rudra. Wait, where are you?

I'm fine, can you stall for a couple minutes?

"Black death," Cricket whispered. "Wait, I'm Black Death?" Cricket smiled, then tuned back in to Oydd. Yeah, a couple minutes? No problem.

The insect swerved after one of the deep goblins, chanting "Jet bammi!" to their absolute horror.

However, soon the ettin charged, almost immediately forcing Cricket to retreat.

As Ghajan gained on him, Cricket prepared to dodge, but considering how blazingly fast the giant had struck his clone, he wasn't sure he could! At the last moment, he faked left and then darted right, just barely avoiding the ettin's hammer.

As he circled around the giant he felt a crisp pain in his shoulder and looked down to see leaves of frost spreading on his carapace.

Cricket yelped and blew on the ice like a burn as he ran, then placed a hand there for warmth, but his fingers stuck to the frost. He yanked them free with another yelp, then ducked into a passage too low for the ettin.

Ghajan ran up to the opening and knelt, staring Cricket in the eyes. "And what now, Cockroach? Will you hide while your men die for you?"

Cricket ran down a side tunnel to the kitchen and looked around. His eyes darted from the knives—no better than his daggers—to the dirty pots and rack of drying eel meat, finally settling on a black kettle on an open flame. He eyed a second exit that led back behind the ettin.

Ghajan swiped his hammer behind him, keeping a trio of lizardmen at bay, then peered back in the low tunnel. Cricket's head popped back around the corner, and Ghajan laughed. "While I don't expect much of you, Cockroach, from our one battle together I had thought you better than this..."

The insect's face flickered and the Giant turned just in time to see a kettle of boiling stew flying at his face.

*****

Patches woke to a cacophony of clangs and hisses in the morgue. She peeked out of her hole just long enough to identify the intruders. The mouseling waited for the perfect moment, darting behind a table and then a bookshelf. She slid away the sheet of rusty metal covering her escape hole and slipped through. She made her way through a series of secret tunnels small enough only for her and came to a lookout above the commons, where she had stashed a bag of potatoes and cheese from the surface, along with a set of throwing knives. The bag of cheese, she noted, looked empty, and she vaguely remembered a previous emergency that no longer felt pressing.

Patches grabbed the knives and spied down on the commotion. She threw a knife at a goblin, but withdrew her head before she saw whether it hit, and then she was too afraid to peek out again for a while. When she did, she saw the ettin... no, just Ghajan. She saw Ghajan kneeling and staring into the kitchen. She stared where Onubi had been attached, feeling a pit grow in her stomach. Then she ran back down the tunnel to a maze of passages and hurried along until she popped up from beneath a mat in one of the locked cells of the dungeon.

Patches slipped easily through the bars and sorted through her totems until she found the ettin. Not where she placed him.

The mouseling picked up the doll by the teeth and carried it to the center of the room, and dropped it by one of her black candles.

She scratched her nose, picking at Onubi's neck with her teeth.

Due to the size of the doll, and the bitter taste of the brown dye, this took nearly a minute. Patches felt a chill as the head came free and she tossed it aside.

She paused, looking at the dismembered doll head, then pointed at the candle wick with her tail and spoke. "Ingorii."

With only a faint spark at first, the wick began to glow. The mouseling pressed her thumb on Onubi's toenail with the bit of dried blood, and spoke the words of magic, followed by the name Ghajan. A few fibers of the doll turned black. Patches repeated the words again, four more times. Each time another thread of fur smoldered, leading to one of the limbs.

Finally, the mouseling pinned the ettin down with her paws and began to heat her knife in the candle's flame.

*****

Ghajan roared as the hot soup splashed on his face, burning his eye. Chunks of chopped roots and wrinkled eel skin dripped down his chin.

The ettin swiped at Cricket, but the insect dropped below his fingers, rolled and came up running. The deep goblins scattered, and those who scattered too slowly perished—torn apart by sickles, or stabbed through with jade. One took an elbow to the throat so brutally that Cricket almost apologized as he ran on.

Ghajan followed close behind. Cricket didn't dare look back, but heard his footsteps getting closer, and then even felt the giant's muggy breath on his shoulder.

Cricket started to screech, but cut the sound short and ducked into Oydd's lab, hoping the rudra was ready with whatever he had planned.

Halfway down to the laboratory, he passed Gad, huddling over the red corpse of a deep goblin, feeding. Then he heard a roar that he first mistook for a cave drake, and the ogre from Vestu Peska stood in the entryway, its amber skin wrinkled and dripping with pungent liquid that stung the insect's eyes even from a distance.

The towering ghoul's blackened veins contrasted oddly with its yellow skin. The brute dragged the gigantic mace it wielded when Cricket first encountered it, which he realized had been absent from the armory for some time.

The ogre rushed and Cricket pressed himself against the wall to let it pass. A second later, its deep primal roar echoed back down the passageway.

For a moment, the insect stood there motionless—his mandibles limp. Then Oydd passed, the blood of a deep goblin staining his metal staff.

"Come on," Oydd said in irritation.

Cricket cleaned his eyes with his wrists then followed.

When they reached the commons, the ogre and the ettin squared off in the open, while the remaining goblins and ratlings ran about the edges of the chamber like ants at their feet.

Cricket hesitated to engage again.

"What are you waiting for?" Oydd prodded. "He needs your help."

"What can I do? He'll tear me in half."

"Do you have an enchanted shuriken?"

"No way!" Cricket shook his head. "I only have one left."

"You'd rather die than use it!" Oydd shouted.

"Uh-huh. Wait, are those the only options." Cricket squirmed, thinking.

"It could make the difference."

"Couldn't you do a spell or something?"

"He's literally fuming with black magic. It would have no effect."

"Mmmm," Cricket tapped a sickle on his knee repeatedly, then ran into the fray.

"Cricket!" Oydd shouted after him, but the insect pretended not to hear.

Cricket circled behind the ettin and waited until just after it dodged a swing from the ogre then lunged forward picking at its heels with his sickles. The weapons barely nicked its tough hide.

The insect dodged back as Ghajan swung his hammer, and a trail of ice covered the ground where he had stood a second earlier.

Instinctively Cricket reached for his shoulder, remembering the weird freezing burn from earlier. He sighed and plunged back in with a khopesh. When the enchanted blade touched the ettin, instantly the black fumes whipped away and the edge drew blood.

If the effect hadn't startled Cricket more than the ettin, he could have dug deeper. As it was, he fell back and hid behind a crumbling wall as the two titans grappled.

Cricket stared down at the jade weapon. "Anti... magic?" He asked the khopesh. After a short silence, he nodded to his own question and readied a khopesh combo he had seen the assassin perform.

But by the time he rounded the corner, the ogre lay in a broken pile beneath Ghajan's raging fists, and the scene caught him so much by surprise that the ettin managed to backhand him, sending him crashing back ten feet into a wall.

Cricket's vision flashed white hot and he heard his weapons clatter to the floor.

In a daze, he climbed back up to his knees and looked up at the bloody ettin walking toward him.

"This is the end, Cockroach," Ghajan said. "You... get... gred... blood."

"What?" Cricket smirked.

"Agham... brar..."

One of the ettin's eyes rolled back in his head and he groaned. The skin on the right side of his face drooped as if his lip melted around his tusk, and spittle dripped down his chin.

Cricket retrieved his khopeshes, leaving the sickles on the ground. He circled around the giant's limp side. The ettin switched the hammer to his good arm, and the insect took the opportunity to wave his shadow out from the kitchen. The shadow flickered erratically, as if it might disperse at any moment. It threw a khopesh, which dissolved in the air long before it reached its target.

Still, the distraction proved sufficient to allow the real Cricket to make a pass at the giant, slashing at his knee twice. The black vapor surrounding Ghajan reacted violently to the jade, and the blades drew a dark blood that sizzled on the ettin's skin.

With a sideways glance, the insect saw his shadow scatter on the wind. Ghajan held a hand against his affected eye, and steam rose from behind his fingers. Not like the black vapor. Rather, it smelled burnt, like skin poked by a branding iron.

The dark aura around the ettin began to fade entirely from his right side. Still, the brute moved with impressive speed and strength, nearly catching the insect more than once.

Cricket waved away a spearman brave enough to offer support. "I got this. Your weapon won't hurt him anyway."

The insect charged in again as he spoke. He dodged to one side to avoid a hammer blow but caught a left hook to the cheek. With a loud crack, the insect sprawled backward through the air, somehow managing to land on his feet, and immediately rushed back in, stabbing one of the jade weapons deep in the ettin's knee.

However, the insect had committed so much to the single stab, that Ghajan managed to grab him. He lifted the bug off the ground and began to squeeze. Cricket screamed as his magically hardened shell creaked.

Jeshu rammed into the ettin's wounded knee, barely nudging him, and wrapped both arms around the leg. Black brambles sprouted vigorously from the ground and wrapped around the giant's foot. The ettin's hammer grazed Jeshu's shoulder and a line of frost crystals erupted down his back, crackling the air.

Cricket used all four arms and one leg to try to resist the ettin's fingers. Once he had enough room to breathe, he shouted down to the dryad, "Grow, dammit!"

Jeshu roared and slowly grew to about half the ettin's height as Cricket worked a dagger free from his hip and rammed it into the giant's palm.

The brambles grew as well, wrapping fiercely around the ettin's foot, and with an embarrassingly shrill grunt, the druid managed to knock him off balance. Ghajan's head slammed into the wall and the insect slipped from his fingers. Immediately, Cricket leapt off of his hind legs and plowed a khopesh into Ghajan's exposed throat.

The ettin swatted him away, leaving the blade dangling from his thick hide.

An arrow struck the ettin’s good eye, and the eye exploded. Thin black tendrils instantly spread from the wound, weaving inside of the empty cavity.

Still the brute stared defiantly for a moment, spit curdling from the right side of its mouth, before he finally toppled to the ground.

"Ungh!" Cricket grunted, shoving another khopesh in its neck, then placed a foot triumphantly on the felled giant.

Oydd approached the enormous corpse. "What did you do?" he asked suspiciously.

"Just gave 'im the ole stabby stabs."

The rudra hovered over the smoldering wreck then stooped to stare Ghajan in his remaining bloodshot eye.

Mouseling! Oydd called harshly.

"Did he have a stroke?" Jeshu asked, astounded. "That seems impossibly lucky."

"Yes, it does," Oydd agreed. Mouseling!

Cricket surveyed the battlefield then ran off to kill one of the last goblins. He noticed a group of lizardmen searching from room to room as the ratlings hid behind them.

Meanwhile, Jeshu began to move among the dead looking for those he could still treat.

In a short time the mouseling appeared, with the charred ettin totem in her mouth. She dropped it at the rudra's feet. A tiny dagger penetrated one side of its head, and protruded from the back. The hot blade had singed the fur of the doll when it entered, and the melted hair stuck to the metal in clumps.

The rudra paid the doll no heed. He scowled at the mouseling. "Bring me a scalpel and my orb."

He wandered off to speak to Cricket.