This is it. It’s going down tonight.
The sky is clear and the wind quiet. The moon is dark, hiding them with her blessing of shadows. After days of scouting, planning, and waiting for the necessary specialists to get back from assignment…
Everything is in place.
He inspects the crew’s final preparations, looking for any last-minute problems. There’s always something.
Barbas the Wizard inspects his Staff of Light, checking the crystals that power it for leaks. His mastery of the Titan’s artifacts is unrivaled. He’ll be essential to bypass the defenses.
Their infiltrator, Nina, inspects her teeth for chips. He knows she won’t find any. The things barely fit in her mouth, but they can chew through almost anything.
Big Kevin gnaws on a dry splinter of bone. The name says it all.
These three plus himself, who some have taken to calling Sarge, are the Kingdom’s last hope to pay-off their debt. This has to work.
Sarge approaches Barbas, who frowns over one of his crystals. “Problem?”
“Depends,” the wizard says, scratching at his whiskers. “No magicite leaks, but this triple-snout crystal is low on charge.”
Sarge clicks his tongue. Why do I always have to be right? “Doc didn’t have any more? He got a shipment from the Catacombs recently.”
“Those were double-snouts, Sarge. They don’t fit the staff.”
“Will it last for the Vilebeast?”
“Has to, doesn’t it? It’s all we got.”
Goddamnit.
He turns to the scout, cringing by the wall. Poor kid doesn’t know what to do with herself. “Relax, kid. We don’t bite. Most of us.”
Nina chuckles faintly.
“The intel’s good? Map’s accurate?”
“Yes sir-uh, Sarge! Sarge sir!”
“Alright, then get out of here. Go tell the extraction team we’re going in.”
The kid sprints off into the Underriver, back to HQ. Sarge dusts off his heavy coat, frayed and graying from the abuse it’s taken over the months. Showtime.
“Squad, sound off!”
“Barbas, locked and loaded!”
“Nh’inh’a, ahm gh’ood!”
“I go,” Big Kevin rumbles.
With two fingers pointing forward, Sarge signals Nina to start the infiltration. “No chatter from here on out.”
Nina starts on the wall the scouts indicated was closest to their goal. Within seconds, wood chips fly in all directions as she carves through the Titan’s Stronghold.
Then comes the pink enchanted foam, deadly to most. Nina plows through without slowing. She’s the best for a reason.
Soon they’re through, coming face-to-face with a barrier of colored tubes.
“Stop!”, Barbas hisses. Sarge pins him with a glare. “What did I just say?”
Barbas whispers in a panic, pointing at the various hues. “These are magical traps! The red and black are certain death, only the green is safe!”
Shit. This is why you get a wizard for these jobs. Sarge points at Nina and Big Kevin, miming his instructions. Nina. Chew. Big Kevin. Lift.
They nod. Nina tears through the green tube, careful to avoid scratching any others. When she reaches the dangerous metal core, she flinches…
But nothing happens. With a sigh of relief, she finishes the job. Big Kevin squeezes into the gap gnawed into the barrier, and lifts. Walls crack and the tubes groan, but Big Kevin could lift the world onto his shoulders. They dash through.
Into the Stronghold.
The Titan’s hold is exactly as described, a dark and lavishly appointed hall, as are most of the Strongholds of these demigods. Before them lies the Titan, asleep in its throne. Great snores shake Sarge to the bone.
The giant’s visage is illuminated by its scrying mirror, left activated and displaying far-off shores. Whether somewhere on this world or another realm entirely, none can say. The mirror is key to their infiltration, and the greatest point of failure.
The squad follows behind him as Sarge sneaks closer to the Throne, searching for what they know will be near.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Big Kevin spots it. With a point of his thick finger, he reveals their greatest obstacle. The Vilebeast. It rests beneath the scrying mirror, seeming almost dead. None of them are fooled.
They step carefully and silently, making their way to the foot of the throne without issue. Thankfully their steps fall on soft wood, muffling their passage. This would be impossible to pull off in the Great Towers.
Barbas taps on Sarge’s shoulder. “Remember: stick, egg, downward-tail. The tail goes down!”
Sarge scowls at the wizard. Does he think this is my first op? With a roll of his shoulders and adjustment of his stance, he leaps. The throne is woven, easy to hold onto with his sharp claws. Sarge climbs without a sound.
Hand-over-hand, exerting his long experience, he reaches the overlook to the Titan’s lap. The artifact controlling the scrying mirror is exactly where the scout said it would be, half-buried in the crevasses of the throne’s construction.
The kid’s good… She’s gonna go far.
Sarge drops silently beside a Titanic hand, reaching for the artifact. With a quiet heave, the black tablet is pulled from its confines. He pounds the arcane combination into place, trusting the Wizard to have researched beforehand. Stick, egg, downward-tail.
The scrying mirror changes to display loud chanting in the rhythmic ululations of Titans. The Beast stirs.
Shit! Barbas!
With a rapid thrust of his hand, Sarge initiates the backup plan. In front of the Beast’s face emerges a red circle, cast by Barbas’ Staff of Light. The enchantment will only hold it for so long.
What the hell happened? Sarge frantically inspects the artifact, searching for what went wrong.
There. At the bottom, in the Titan’s script, the snout symbol points downward. Sarge can’t decipher it, but he’s seen wizards charge their objects with crystals before. The snout is meant to point up.
Damn thing’s upside down!
“Sarge, hurry!” comes the call from below. He allows himself a glance. The light is flickering.
With punches to the controls he introduces the code, this time pressing the tailed symbol in the corner of the matrix. Why the giants would design their magicks like this is beyond him.
The mirror shifts.
An enormous Vilebeast stalks through the forests of some unfathomably distant land, dark stripes on its burnt coat. The Vilebeast is drawn to it, entranced.
The squad exhales.
Sarge deftly makes his way back down, smacking Barbas upside the head as they begin to head to their true target. “Next time just say it’s the one in the corner, wizard.”
Barbas grimaces.
‘Facing down’... I’ll leave you facing down in a ditch, how about that… His grumbles dissolve as the squad halts, mesmerized.
The Vault lies before them.
Among all the Titan’s hordes of riches, only this is worth the risk. As tall as Nina standing up, as wide as Big Kevin’s tail is long, covered in a white cloth that only adds to its allure.
Cheese.
“Ah ca’hn s’ell it h’rom here,” Nina sighs. Sarge silences her with a gesture. Plenty of time for that later, and they’ll have to sell most of it anyway.
The target is protected by a high-grade invisible wall, impossible to see and noisy as hell when scratched. But in both his Winters, Sarge hasn’t yet seen a Vault that can keep out Nina. He signs his orders. Down. Go.
Nina scurries under the Vault, to pierce it from its wooden bottom. They watch the hole slowly form on the other side of the see-through wall, great yellow teeth crunching the Titan’s defenses into nothing.
When it’s wide enough for Big Kevin to pass, Nina disappears below the Vault’s raised bottom again.
“Oh! There’s ‘ore of i’!”
What? …Wait.
A sharp inhalation. “Nina, wait!-SNAP
Too late.
“...God-fucking-dammit.”
They weren’t supposed to lose anyone. Needles of pain stab into Sarge’s palm, but he can’t stop clenching his clawed hand. It never gets any easier.
“The Titans guard their treasures jealously,” Barbas says. His eyes are downcast, and he holds his Staff tightly. “We have to finish it. She performed beautifully in all we asked of her. It is up to us now.”
Big Kevin nods solemnly. “I go.” He is first into the breach. The show must go on.
Averting his gaze as he enters, Sarge joins his large companion in the Vault. As soon as Barbas enters, Big Kevin drags the exquisitely worked tank of fire-potion the Titan keeps along with the Cheese, covering their entrance. By the time the Titans figure out how they did it, they’ll be long gone.
Grabbing one side of their prize each, Sarge and Barbas wait for Big Kevin to provide the exit. While the invisible wall is impossible to grip stealthily, necessitating their alternative entrance, it can be pushed from within. A thick tail is pressed into the ground for support, and Big Kevin exerts his prodigious strength. The wall hinges open. All that’s left is the exfiltration.
The three remaining operatives share the load of their hard-won prize, carrying it back to the tunnel already being expanded by the extraction team. The enticing smell summons greedy thoughts, but Sarge dispels them easily. It would be a slight to Nina’s memory.
Carefully stepping across the Titan’s shadowed halls, Sarge watches their way out slowly coming closer. He keeps his guard up. It’s only over when it’s over.
The room changes.
The faint remnants of light from the scrying mirror illuminating the room change from green to white, then a shifting array of other colors. Sarge’s head whips around to look behind them.
The great Vilebeast is no longer on the mirror, the artifact now showing a Titan holding some form of potion. The watching Vilebeast looks away. At them.
“RUN! Go, go, go!”
Their flight is frantic and ungainly. Their statures and speeds jostle the precious haul, and the extraction team is too far away.
Sarge glances back. The Vilebeast is hissing and screaming, its terrible maw filled with spears. It’s gaining on them. Fast.
We’re not gonna make it.
Big Kevin lets go of the Cheese.
He stops, looking between the Vilebeast and the countrymen awaiting them. Most are thin, with visible ribs. It’s been a tough year. With a deep breath, he turns back.
“...I stay.”
“Big Kevin, NO!”
“PUMP THOSE FUCKING LEGS BARBAS! MOVE!”
Sarge runs for all his old legs are worth. He won’t waste the time paid for with a life.
A terrible yowl sounds in the Stronghold, answered by a hero’s roar. And then there are only impacts.
Sarge and Barbas the Wizard carry the treasure into the arms of their surging fellows. They help bring the Cheese into the tunnel widened by many, doing as a team what Nina would do alone. The sounds of a legendary struggle fade away as they walk back through the tunnel. A bittersweet victory. This is the way it always is.
Sarge exits the Stronghold into the night air, victorious cries erupting all around him. He sits among the tall grass, and sighs.
A brown form slumps to the ground beside him.
The cold wind bends the emerald blades in waves. Sarge waits.
“...Why do we keep doing it?”
Barbas stares at his Staff, thrown carelessly to the ground. His eyes are haunted. “Every time, it’s like this. Heroes and martyrs, born and broken in seconds. For what? Cheese?”
“For them.” Sarge nods to the team carrying away their hopes for the future, all in a silken bundle. Light, all things considered. The weight of many lives rests on it.
“I’ve seen talents greater than any alive today fall in the pursuit of Cheese. But it’s not the Cheese we die for. It’s the children. The Kingdom. For them.”
Barbas turns to Sarge. “...I don’t know if I’m strong enough.”
“Me neither, son.” He stands up with a groan, hands on his knees. “That’s the thing. I’ve been luckier than most, but one of these days it’s gonna be my turn. And I will die in peace. Because we’re rats.”
Sarge turns to the wizard with a grin.
“I know another will rise up to take my place.”