The moonlight above washed the huge form of the Axe Dungeon in alabaster beams, cutting through the humid night of the Ak-Thanon jungle. There was a chill in the air, a hint of the coming winter, that moved through the fog like a specter.
Tarn watched Isca move through that mist, placing one fist-sized crystal down after another. As each touched the deep jungle grass, they lit up with an illumination matching the moonlight, and sent a small beam of energy at the closed door to the Axe.
Though they looked scattered at random, there was apparently an order required to the placement. A frustrated Lash had struggled to get them to understand the logic behind it, but the pattern had remained only obvious to the gremlin’s mind.
Or so they all had thought. How long had she been planning this?
She had not noticed his approach. Her hands shook as she held the half-dozen remaining crystals. Her brow was furrowed, her antenna crossed with concentration. Struggling to remember Lash’s design perhaps, or still wrestling with her choice.
He wrestled as well. He had known where she was the second Lash had suggested Isca knew how to perform the opening, so some part of him must have suspected this. He wasn’t sure if he had hidden it from himself, but there was nothing subtle about the change in her behavior as this night had grown closer.
“What is she doing?” Bog’s whisper was just quiet enough to be lost among the chorus of insect chatter, but distracted or not Isca would notice them soon.
“Let me handle this.” Tarn motioned for the others to wait in the jungle while he stepped into the clearing. Almost immediately he heard the heavy footsteps of Bog, closely followed by the tiny ones of Lash. He didn’t need to look back to know that Urthin was there too. He sighed and shook his head silently. He supposed he understood – she was their friend too.
“So, were you going to say goodbye?”
She froze as Tarn’s voice filled the clearing, bouncing off the vast gray metallic door of the Axe and echoing back. The remaining crystals fell from her arms one by one, each landing on the thick grass with a dull thud. Her shoulders dropped slightly as her translucent wings folded closer to her body
“I – I don’t know.”
She was frozen, her back to him. Caught between the dungeon and her friends, her past and her future. Tarn knew what that moment was like, and the damage regret could do later.
“Isca, look at me.” He kept his voice, steady and calm. She needed that right now. His fears could wait. “Please.”
Slowly, she turned to face him, the tears in her eyes visible through the moonlight. All the customary fire had gone from her stare, replaced by indecision. Doubt. Worry. They looked alien on her face, as strange as she had seemed to him once.
“Tarn.” Her voice was soft, unsteady. “I don’t know. I came here… almost without thinking about it. I’m not even sure what I’m doing.”
“Opening door!” Lash folded his arms as he marched forward, his tiny form scowling at Isca. “Wing-girl knows what she’s doing. Leaving behind friends! Maybe she doesn’t know why?”
“I think that is implied in her statement, Lash.” Urthin whispered dryly to the gremlin.
Tarn took a step closer, then stopped as she held out her hand.
“Wait, I need to think.” Her voice shook, her shoulders trembled. “If I go in there now… alone. I think that’s it – why I’m here. No one gets hurt but me if I do this now. No one else dies because of me. I lost … Tarn, I lost one team already. I – I can’t lose another.”
The guilt of her team, her family. She had spoken of it briefly, but never allowed Tarn to delve into the subject much. He had respected her boundaries, all the while knowing that kind of self-directed anger and pressure had a way of exploding at the worst possible times.
Times like now.
“By leaving us.” He gestured back to the team. “You would be losing us. And we would be losing you, you have to see that.”
She shook her head, her antenna waving with the effort.
“But you wouldn’t be dead!” Isca pointed back at him, hand shaking. “Not because of me. My mother – my brother and sister, Tarn. My cousins. All dead, back in the Sword. Because of me, my mistakes. I –I won’t go through that again!”
“So you go in to die without us?” Bog’s shout came from behind Tarn. “What could you do on your own?”
“I don’t know, Bog.” Isca looked down at her hands, and the crystals scattered on the ground. One final crystal appeared in her fingers, drawn from a pouch at her belt. “But my world… may not even be there anymore. He may not be there anymore. Do you really want to throw your life away on that chance? On your promise to me? Now you won’t have to!”
She lifted her arm high, ready to smash the shard upon the ground.
“No, wing-girl!”
Lash’s shout froze Isca’s arm in mid-swing. She held it there, staring back at Tarn with unsure eyes.
“Need all crystals,” the gremlin rasped. “All charged. Take months to replace.”
“I could stop her.” Urthin was suddenly at Tarn’s side.
“Don’t.” Tarn said, shaking his head. He didn’t want to think about how the monk planned to get to Isca and prevent her from destroying the shard, but he was sure he wouldn’t like it.
“You’re right, grease monkey.” He looked back at her, holding her gaze. “You don’t have to let us. You can take our choice away from us. But think about what you said yourself, the other night. About Lash.”
Her mouth opened slightly as she released a gasp.
“Boss said maybe Lash shouldn’t go.” The gremlin’s small voice carried strength as he stepped forward, coming alongside Bog and Tarn. “That bugs wanted him, wanted to use him to hurt people. But wing-girl argued. Said Lash should get to choose. Now you take his choice?”
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Isca remained frozen, the crystal now held even more tightly in her hands.
“I just… I’m scared. I care about you… all. I don’t want you to be hurt.”
Tarn’s mind brought him back to the darkest moment in his life. Not arriving at the orphanage, or attacking Lurim, or even seeing poor Sin pulled into the maelstrom of the Sword Dungeon’s heart. Those had been bad moments, but the were not the worst.
Watching his team be arrested for his own choices, that had been the worst. That moment had scarred him, chained him and imprisoned him more effectively than any cell in Baltoro. Watching their lives end for all he knew at the time, all for his decisions and their loyalty to him.
“I know.” Tarn closed the gap and held his hand out. “Isca, I know what you’re trying to avoid. The guilt. Believe me, I’ve been there. So, listen to someone who has been there and gone through this hell. You’ll regret this. I wish I had listened to my friends, understood that they were making their own choice. That’s what this is now. We want this too, and we will do it with you. Together, as a team.”
Tarn looked into her eyes, seeing the conflict there. He understood that battle of emotions there, hell he even envied it. Five years ago when he had stormed into Lurin’s Tower with his team at his back, he hadn’t even considered trying to stop them.
Of course, he had never lost anyone either, not like Isca had. Seeing her family cut down in front her, knowing that she was the only survivor. Worrying about the moment when she’d face…
I don’t even know if he will be there.
Her father. Tarn hadn’t considered that she might have to tell her father what had happened to his wife and children. That Isca had been there, but had not been able to prevent it.
He closed the distance to her, holding out his hand for the crystal.
“Whatever happens.” He held her stare, seeing the anger and fear soften. “We will be there, right beside you. Because that’s what we want.”
She pulled in a deep breath, filling her lungs with the damp jungle air. With a sigh she dropped hands to her sides as all the tension from her muscles faded.
“I’m … I’m sorry.” She looked at Tarn, and then past him, her face blushed with shame. “I – I just acted without thinking. I don’t know what to say.”
“Nothing to say,” Tarn said with a soft smile. “Like I said, we’ve all been there. And wanting to keep us safe, we can appreciate that.”
“Right, wings!” Bog laughed. You’re part of the team!”
“The team.” Isca whispered the word to herself, shuddering. “I think I’ve been afraid of that. Afraid to have those connections again.”
“Not your call.” Tarn laughed, and kissed her on the cheek. “You’re one of us now, whether you like it or not.”
“Ugh, so much talking!” Lash marched up to Tarn and Isca, standing between them with his hands on his tiny hips. “Moon not staying forever you know! Problem solved, can we go to next problem now?”
“Alright, alright you little menace.” Isca laughed. It was a faint sound, but Tarn admired its bravery all the same. “What would you say at a moment like this Tarn? Looks like we’ve got a job to do?”
“Finally!” Lash stomped forward, holding one hand out. “Give Lash crystals, he set this up right.”
Brow furrowing, Isca slowly dropped the crystal into the small gremlin’s hand.
“Set it up right? I … don’t understand. I did set it up right - I followed your instructions to the letter, Lash. I paid close attention.”
Lash giggled as his tiny form raced around the clearing, moving each and every crystal Isca had placed.
“Silly wing-girl, Lash knows when someone is watching. And he knows why. So, he set it up wrong in front of you, in case you try this.”
As Isca gaped, Tarn chuckled at the wonder of it all. Lash had been studying each of them, guessing at all their motivations. The roar of Bog’s laughter filled the jungle, and after a moment Isca joined in with her.
“You little monster.” She feigned a strangling motion with her hands. “I’d choke you if I didn’t think you were so wonderful.”
“Yeah, yeah, Lash amazing. He know.” Lash was already barely paying attention, now eyeing the position of the moon with the last crystal he put in place. He held one finger up to the glowing orb in the sky, comically closing one eye and squinting.
“Big Bog, come here,” the gremlin said. “I need you.”
Bog looked at Tarn, her confusion matching his own. None of this had been in the practices that Lash had run them through, though he supposed probably all of that was part of the gremlin’s fiction.
Shrugging her shoulders, the big orc walked past Tarn and moved to the center of the clearing, where Lash waited for her, impatiently tapping his foot on the ground.
“Everyone so slow,” he muttered. “Does only Lash want to see what fun in dungeon?”
“I’m here, you little whip-cracker!” Bog chuckled as she towered over him. “Now what do you – ow!”
Lash’s hand had shot out in an emerald blur, grabbing one of Bog’s fingers and stabbing it with a needle.
“Need orc blood.” He looked back at everyone’s shocked expressions, while Bog pulled her hand back, sucking on her fingertip. “What? Why surprise? Orc jungle… orc moon… orc crystals. Need orc blood!”
“You didn’t need blood to open the Sword.” Bog said, scowling. “And you could have warned me.”
“Lash thought Big Bog would be happy.” Ran around to the various crystals on the ground, touching each with the tip of the needle. “She always talking about ‘feel my pain, show my pain. Pain, pain, pain.’ Now she have pain, and she complaining?”
One by one, the crystals began to glow with a crimson light. It was faint at first, but grew steadily with each new stone Lash administered Bog’s donation to. Squinting, Tarn could see a series of faint lines running between all the gems as well as the massive metallic door of the Axe. It looked like a gossamer web, shaking in the moonlight.
“When we in Axe Dungeon last, Axe like blood. Wasn’t sure, figured it would want it though and … look!”
As if on queue from the gremlin, the array of crimson lines suddenly pulsed, all coalescing on the single crystal Lash now held in his hand. The remaining gems all emitted a loud crack as they shattered, leaving just a single glowing stone in Lash’s palm.
Grinning from ear to ear, he deposited the crystal into Tarn’s hands.
“Here Boss, go open door now.”
Tarn could feel the warmth of the gem through his gloves, pulsing like a heart. Tiny ripples of energy radiated from it into the night, while he could see a bubbling liquid filling its interior.
Axe likes blood. It certainly did.
Tarn walked forward toward the door to the Axe dungeon. The smear of blood and innards that had graced the door since it sliced the Progenitor General in two had long since been washed away by the jungle rains, but a faint, acidic smell persisted here.
The decaying half of their former opponent still slumped nearby, its corpse rotting in the jungle humidity. The local animals, birds, and even insects seemed to avoid it, though the orc shamans seemed sure the ants would consume it on their return.
Tarn brought the glowing crystal up to the vast door and looked up. Far above him, its end almost lost in the night clouds, the titanic handle of the axe stretched for thousands of feet.
“So I just… touch it to the door? That’s it?”
He could have predicted Lash’s sigh of annoyance at his delay.
“Why Boss think everything so complicated? Just like last time. Touch key, door open. We all go through. Door close.”
“What about opening it again?” Tarn heard Bog as from behind him. He could hear the hope in her voice, the desire to return when all her work was done. Just as he had with Isca, he made himself a silent promise he would see to it that she could.
“Just as before,” Lash answered. “Up to dungeon to let us out. Lash only know how to get them to let us in. It different each time, but Lash smart. Once bugs are beat on wing-girl’s world, he find Big Bog a way back.”
‘Once bugs are beat’. Tarn chuckled. To Lash it was that simple.
But it wasn’t simple. Isca was right, they had no idea what they were getting into. Even finding the route through the Axe might be a problem. They had a map from their previous visit, but the dungeons had a way of reconfiguring themselves.
To say nothing of the Bridge. Tarn was sure there would be one, and their last trip through the strange passages between the dungeons had nearly killed them.
But those problems were further down the road, and there were too many variables between then and now for Tarn to even calculate them. Sometimes, old Rykin would say, you just have to make that first move and see what happens.
Wishing the old man could be with him now, Tarn raised the glowing key to the dull metal of the Axe Dungeon’s massive door and felt it tremble as it made contact with the surface.
The only thing he was sure of was that he’d never stand here again.