Vergil had expected a panic once the world stopped shaking and the damage had been done. He’d expected a rush towards the stairs, a tumble of bodies into the depths of the walls to fend off the daemons pouring in.
Instead, the soldiers lay down their bows in orderly fashioned, drew their daggers and swords, and quietly descended in squads of three to five people. He’d been co-opted into one of those, led by a woman that hadn’t given her name.
“Can you fight?” she’d asked.
He’d nodded. Deal sealed. He was now a soldier defending the Rock from invaders.
It’s happening to someone else. It can’t all be happening to me.
They advanced in quiet formation through the honey comb that was the Rock’s outer wall. A cluster of narrow, unlit rooms welcomed them beneath, the place dark and cold and uninviting. Vergil felt quite at home in the labyrinth of rooms and exits. Luna would have probably even enjoyed the first moments of exploration.
“Clear.” One of the soldiers ahead lit a torch on the wall and the room was illuminated.
Spears hung on the walls here. Weapons and arrows. Two barrels of grease for crossbows. Odds and ends. More similar rooms followed, the only real change in the supplies stored.
By the noises emanating behind them, more were following the same route as them, picking divergence points and following those instead..
Another room. Another torch. Another sign to progress.
He was the odd man out, holding on to Tallah’s thin sword and his own hand axe, the last that he had from the Tummy’s set.
What am I doing?
He knew nothing about battling these things. Tallah had said they should get some silver or engraved weaponry, but there had simply been no time for it. She was fighting above. He was skulking below. It would all end in blood, probably.
* T’ fight is t’ live.
* Ye’ll never get yer balls t’ drop if yer always afraid.
Vergil blinked away the messages. He wasn’t afraid. The dwarf was being an arse and they both knew it.
“Clear,” the soldier in front declared again.
The torch caught flame. The room was lit. If they’d retreat, they’d have a clear way marked at least.
Any moment now they would happen across the beasts pouring in through the rent. Vergil’s hands felt too hot in his battered old gauntlets. His heart raced in anticipation even as sweat beaded on his forehead and ran down his back. A strange mixture of excitement and impatience flooded him, somewhere on the the wrong side of panic.
I didn’t freeze when the thing came for Tallah. I didn’t freeze at all.
Clear. Another room. Another step closer to the fight.
His heart drummed in his ears.
This was the first time he was heading to meet a fight rather than run from an unwanted one. He wanted to fight. It took all his will to stay at the back of the group and wait, wait, wait. The others worked together, covered one another, moved as a single unit. He was the odd man out, the barely-trained rookie that could get them all killed. But he remembered the sparse lessons Tallah and Tummy had administered and he set to his task with locked jaw and grim determination.
Clear. Another room. Another light.
Screams whispered through the closed doors ahead. Roars. Something growling. It was happening maybe two rooms over. Fighting. Killing.
His hands tightened on the handles of his weapons. Drew breath through his nose. Recognized the stench of blood nearby. Ammonia as well. Something more, bitter and gagging. Always the stench of rot wafting off the demons.
Clear.
The soldiers didn’t hurry. Didn’t take the rooms any quicker than before. Opened the door, peered in, walked inside back to back, swinging torches about. Two more followed. Then he did.
Then it was clear and they opened the next door.
A beastman burst out of the next room, wild-eyed and feral, swinging a broken shard of a sword. The soldiers in front parted ways and let it pass. So did the next two. Vergil found himself facing the goat-headed monster. He caught the mad look in its rectangular eyes, and his pulse burst into a storm as horns levelled at him.
The creature was incredibly muscular. It was unreasonably fast. Its charge had the potential to end him where he lay, gored on those two points.
Instead, he dodged aside and brought down his axe straight into the monster’s nape as it passed by. Bones crunched. Vertebrae shattered. The goatman gurgled blood as its head parted half-way from its shoulders, almost wrenching the axe from Vergil’s fingers. He held tight, pulled back and kicked out. The spasming body fell toppled to the floor, flailing its arms and kicking its legs in the agony of death.
More followed from the room beyond. These were all goats, screaming in some odd cacophony of a language. The soldiers set to the task of killing. It didn’t take long and the floor was flooded with steaming, stinking blood. There were six beastmen in total. The squad took no wounds on this first encounter.
“Clear,” the leading woman called back. They lit torches and dragged the corpses out of the way to clear the retreat route. They formed an uneven pile in a corner.
Vergil wanted another kill. His heart sang with the thrill of the earned He’d managed it all on his own. None of the soldiers acknowledged it, but that was good too. He’d been just another arm for the fight, nothing more, and the anonymity felt good.
He was simply one of the men, silently relied upon to do a job. They didn’t know him, he didn’t know them. In the moment, they were all brothers.
More rooms followed. Walls adorned with the signs of the living having been there. Foodstuffs trashed by the passage of monsters. Personal effects scattered. Some corpses dismembered, their guts strewn across several rooms as if in mockery.
The spiders of Grefe had been hunters and nothing more. There had been no cruelty in their actions, just Erisa’s deep hatred despair and hatred. Cruelty had been a by-product of the girl’s fractured psyche.
Daemons, Vergil found, were grotesque. From their shape and stink, to what they left behind. He stepped in filth, offal and excrement. It hadn’t been a bell’s strike yet, but the animals were already mucking up the inner rooms, turning the fortress into a fetid nest. A memory scratched to climb to the surface of his thoughts, but he resolutely pushed it down. He didn’t care to remember cages and eyes, not now. Though he did remember ratmen and each foe he brought down was another of the rats killed in his mind’s eye.
I am not going to freeze, he repeated the mantra to himself. I’ve been fine so far. I just need another kill. And then another. And another. He could prove to himself that Horvath was wrong.
‘The man ye’ll never be.’ Those words had cut deep and he would’ve preferred they found at least a score more of beastmen to quiet the introspection.
Distantly, he recognized a change taking root somewhere within. He ignored it, sane as he did most unpleasant things that didn’t bear thinking about.
“Captain, there’s a storeroom to our left,” one of the soldiers said as they cleared another passage.
The chill night air whistled around them. Doors had been shattered. There were beasts roaming about. Vergil could hear them through the walls, on levels above and below.
Killing. Fighting. Dying.
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The captain raised her hand for a standstill, then pointed towards the left. They followed in quiet procession, turning a corner to be met by the sight of the heavy door splintered asunder.
Gruesome noises came from within the dark.
They advanced through the ruin, their torches ranging ahead. Swords out. The fifth soldier tapped Vergil on the shoulder and pressed a finger to his lips. He looked about about the same age, just sterner and more weathered by events. The soldier moved to his left hand’s side and raised his shield.
He’s protecting my flank, Vergil realised. I’m protecting his. How easily he’d come into this role.
They found the monsters where they fed. Bloated things filled the room, maggot-like, moving through and across the food stored there, fouling it all. To Vergil’s eyes, these were white, overgrown caterpillars skittering about on tens of sharp-clawed legs. On their belly, they were the height of half-a-man. When the first reared to meet the squad, its multi-eyed head brushed against the ceiling. Red orbs stared at them in expectation.
These abominations were not like the beastmen. Where those felt real and solid, these crawled with a feeling of uncertainty. Sight skidded off the great bulk, like staring at overheated air across a great distance.
Their stench was real and powerful enough to turn Vergil’s stomach. He swallowed down his revulsion and hefted the axe in his right hand.
There were three monsters waving long, scythe-like legs at them. Razor-sharp mandibles snapped with sharp squeaks of bone on bone, promising death. Each was armed with several sets of those.
Three monster, three pairs of soldiers. There was no order to attack. They just did.
Vergil was his partner’s support, the extension of his sword arm. The soldier blocked and guarded, Vergil cut and stabbed. The maggot was faster than its bulk suggested, snapping at them with lightning-fast reflexes.
The soldier got the edge of his iron shield between those terrifying mandibles. They almost bit clean through. A grunt was the only sound the man made as he struggled to hold the monster. Vergil landed his blow the very next heartbeat, his axe cutting deep into where the head of the creature lay. There was no skull beneath the spongy flesh and the axe head buried itself deep between red eyes.
Vergil let go of the axe and stabbed at the eyes with his sword. Tallah had always insisted to go for the eyes whenever he faced a superior foe. No creature could hurt him if it were blind.
Again, the sword passed clean through. The orb bled red ichor. It did not slow the monster as it brought down sets of its legs against the shield, rapping on it like a hailstorm. Those were solid, their edges as keen as any razor Vergil had ever shaved with. Their strikes pinged off the shield and cut deep grooves into the metal.
Vergil found himself sandwiched between this monster, and the one the captain was fighting. That one thrashed and snapped at its quarry with blinding fury. He had to dive out of the way, landing in awkward roll just to escape being crushed.
“Take my sword,” the soldier called. He had to hold the shield with both hands and had dropped the blade. It lay at his feet and Vergil scooped it up in a single fluid motion as he dove under the second maggot’s claws.
“Keep to your own,” the captain called out from where she was duelling several of the razor legs.
Vergil studied the blade in his hand for a heartbeat.
It was silver and as light as Tallah’s long knife, but broader and longer. Intricate carvings glistened on the flat of the blade in the sputtering light.
Shadows of combat danced on the walls and made it difficult to read the enemy’s next movements. It flickered, like not fully there. It was a maggot and it was a colony, there and yet an arm’s span away. The soldier blocked its attacks with practised ease, kite shield held out with both arms as Vergil sought an opening.
It came when the monster drew its head back and spewed forward a stream of green vomit. It splattered over the soldier and his shield. He ducked and protected his face. Everything the vomit touched began to sizzle and dissolve, the sound like a swarm of flies. Their shield held out, but only barely.
As the monster drew back again, Vergil thrust forward between its scythe arms. The silver sword cut into the monster’s belly. It became fully solid for just that area and red ichor exploded out of the wound. He pushed the sword forward and up, flesh parting for the blade like soft butter, its blood gushing out together with stinking stomach fluids. It coated his gauntlets and the sleeves of his armour, and immediately began corroding. Whatever seeped through burned on his skin. He ignored it.
The sword was fine. The monster’s blood evaporated as it struck the silver.
It was a moment’s decision that saved his life. His partner dove forward and slammed the shield against the maggot’s face as it bore down on Vergil while he desperately tried to pull the sword loose. The monster jerked and the weapon was freed.
Heedless of the acid on his gear, Vergil spun in place and launched another attack. He drove the sword in a wide arc and was rewarded with a satisfying crunch of edge meeting flesh, cutting through, then meeting bone and going past. It hit the lodged axe and the impact juddered up his arm like a bell toll.
A chunk of the maggot’s head fell to the side, skull and thick brain cleaved perfectly through. It fell to the side without so much as a whimper. The stink increased as it settled into death.
The other two groups were still fighting, shields melted through, swords glittering pristine among the chaos of blood and green mucus.
With the acid eating through his gauntlets Vergil sprung at the next maggot as it bore on the captain woman and her cohort. They were both forced on the defensive, the monster’s attention consumed by the prospect of fresh kills.
Vergil drove the borrowed blade into the maggot’s back. He twisted it before the creature arched back in pain, and pulled two-handed on the blade to the side. The sword sliced through the thick midsection almost to the end. The captain dove in as the monster staggered, stabbed on the opposite side and did just as he had.
The twin wounds formed a complete cut.
The maggot slid apart into two pieces, both wiggling on the floor, legs and jaws spasming. For safety, Vergil crushed the soft skull beneath the tread of his boots. It became solid in death, the shifting, shivering outline resolving into a final morbid mask of terror.
His companion aided the last group and they managed to bring down that quarry too.
The stench of the place was gagging. Two soldiers raised their helmets and vomited over the already cooling remains.
“Clear,” the captain called out, voice shaky. “Good work, everyone. Rest up.”
Vergil didn’t get a chance to sit down. Something boomed on the level above, The ceiling cracked.
“Out!” the captain screamed. They all scrambled and obeyed, tripping over the corpses in a rush to escape the room.
They got clear without a heartbeat to spare. The room collapsed, the upper level coming down in an avalanche of stones and bodies. Dust exploded through the shattered door and the walls shook and cracked.
“What’s going on?” Vergil asked. He got no answers.
Instead a huge ape-like creature stumbled out of the wreckage. It filled the entire corridor as it scrabbled out on all fours, its forelimbs dragging it away from the crash. It was bloodied. Short fur had been matted with blood and there was a gash running the entire length of its stubby torso. Drool and blood ran down from a distended gash of a mouth set on a near-human face.
It managed three steps before a red tentacle burst from the room behind and grabbed it by the throat.
The monster squealed as more of the slimy appendages wrapped around its limbs and dragged it back. A massive shape slithered out of the room beyond. This one dripped blood and offal, as if it were made of the stuff. The ape squealed in terror, the sound climbing so high and shrill that it almost became silent.
Vergil watched in stupefied fascination as a group of writhing tentacles grabbed hold of the creature. In a single twist, they ripped it limb from limb. A great maw of teeth and bones opened up in the jelly-like substance, and crunched down on the pieces.
All six now stared at the writhing monster. It, in turn, disregarded them as it slithered forward, dragging itself towards the door on the opposite end of the corridor.
“I knew you were pent up, Anna, but this is deranged,” a familiar voice said from the ruins of the storeroom. “That thing’s grotesque. I’m ashamed to know you.”
Tallah walked out of the dust. Her eyes widened as she caught sight of Vergil and the soldiers, and her lips creased into a wide smile.
“Fancy meeting you down here, bucket-head. Hunting’s going well?”
Vergil leaned back against the wall, slid down into sitting position, and let out a tired sigh. “You’re insane,” he said. “I nearly shat myself.”
“Seconded,” one of the soldiers said.
“Same here,” the captain said. “Pretty sure I’ve pissed myself at the sight of that thing.”
“It’s harmless,” Tallah said, as if the monster she commanded hadn’t just become the most terrifying thing in the whole Rock. “I’ve cleared the upper level. Sent the rest of the soldiers down here. Some should be coming through the hole soon.” She rolled her shoulders as the slimy thing gurgled ahead. It packed itself through the door and slid oozed into the next room.
Something brayed in terror, followed by the sounds of bones grinding together and snapping.
Tallah made a face at that. “Must you share the taste? What’ve I ever done to you?”
Anna was having petty vengeance it seemed. None of the soldiers said anything, but they drew ranks and were already moving in the opposite direction from Tallah’s creature.
“Coming with?” the captain called back.
Vergil looked at Tallah and she, in turned, raised an eyebrow at him. “Do you need my permission or something?” she asked. Maybe it was his imagination, but he could swear her eyes sparkled at this.
By how she walked, Vergil could guess it was Bianca’s aid that kept the sorceress active. He felt it more prudent not to point this out. But with two ghosts aiding her, his help wouldn’t be needed.
He pulled down his helmet properly and shook the gore from his axe. He’d managed to save it from the collapse in the nick of time.
“Nah.” He answered her smile with a grin. “Hunting’s good. And I get to do more with them than with you.”
“Good lad.” She tapped him on the shoulder as she and the monstrosity continued down the way. “Find me at the tavern when you’re done. Daylight breaks soon.”