Everyone sailed into motion either taking up positions or securing gear they had already checked and secured once if not twice already. The rope was tied off after Lucas jerked it once and then the Brazen Boys dove into the water with armor in hand, going in one by one. They pulled themselves along the rope as they went to the other side. Dexter sighed looking at his bowstring held carefully out of the rain until now. Eva sighed and touched it and it glowed with red crystalline light and she nodded him forward.
It wasn't long until Micheal handed off his sword spear to Vivian and got Jack to follow him in. He pulled himself along the rope and through the tunnel with his lungs burning before he reached the other side. Jack dog paddled pathetically gasping for air right beside him and the Brazen Boys helped pull him up. Goblins were dead and leaking blood about the room and there was one orc dead near the large door to a descending hall ahead of them. Water ran from the ceiling and everything had the look and smell of once being underwater or at least buried in marshy mud. The sound above was even louder here and ran through the hall ahead giving them fortunate cover that both he and Jack needed as they came out of the pool of water noisily. But it wasn't only the battle above making noise now. There was a screaming down below that was could only be described as twisted ghostly howls. It grated at Micheal's insides and at his mind. Jack let out a low whine and kept close to his side as he heard it.
Micheal comforted the creature patting his soaking wet fur, finding comfort in the creature's solid form pressed against his own. Those screams stirred at something deep inside him, but this place provided a feeling like that all its own. Like it was a place he was not supposed to be. It was a temple after all. Perhaps in a way it was holy ground after a matter of fact. He had never written of these specifically, but had always had a thought to expand the lore of elementals and their lords were bound to the world. Maybe here he would learn how the mysterious nature of this world had filled out beyond the vague outlines of his writing.
Jack let out a huff and stood from panting at Micheal's side. The creature shook once, water spilling off him everywhere, and then he came alert. His nose took to the air, and his dark eyes took in the dead forms of goblins all around them. Jack's lips pulled back from his teeth baring his inside his huge maw.
Vivian and the others followed soon after. Luna looked a little sad totally wet, but she pulled her harp out from its case totally dry. A rope came with Julia who was near to last, being tied to Leah on the far side. Micheal and Forgen joined her and she gave the rope a tug before it went slack as Leah plunged into the water on the far side. Then it went to heaving the heavily armored girl through the water. She came out gasping with her hands wrapped around the hammer and struggled to pull herself up onto the slick stones.
“Watch your footing.” Micheal told her as he helped her up. Lifting the armored girl wasn't nearly as much of a strain as he expected, certainly not after hefting Jack out of the water, but it surprised him all the same.
She smiled up at him with her visor raised, but Sarra was watching keenly, almost consuming all the other light in her eyes. Leah's expression was worried, her gaze meeting Micheal's eyes earnestly before nervously glancing over each member of the group. Her lips moved as if she were speaking to herself, her hands wringing the grip of her hammer. The question of what she was saying formed in Micheal's mind as he found the answer. He saw her picking out each person's name. She was counting them, and the tension of her hands only left when each person they had started out with was accounted for. Then her hands stopped wringing the hammer's grip, and she focused ahead.
Micheal gently put a hand on her arm before he could think. She smiled up at him as Vivian came close with Micheal's spear in hand ready for him to take. They didn't exchange words, but a lot was side inside the gaze as Leah's expression tried to hide the pain she was holding inside.
Everyone who wasn't formed up went to their places then and Micheal got his first glance inside the hall. Jack was at his side and the scouts were making their way ahead. Dexter held his bow at the ready and already had an arrow knocked. The small room they were in was nothing compared to the hall beyond that descended into the earth stone stairs, ramps, and terraces decorated with small ponds and streams.
It must have been some fifty yards wide, and at least three times as long going down a slope with columns, terraces and pools made into the stone in huge flat terraces all the way down. Here and there earth seemed to have poured in through the walls and broken stonework loose, but at the same time it had an almost intended look to it. There were pools about the hall ahead in each of the terraces. Fish swam under lily pads, and went from pool to pool through the streams. Frogs croaked somewhere further in and goblins sat near small piles of bones that looked to be frogs and fish harvested from the little pools. Pelanna came to stand beside Micheal, staring at the first of the empty pools, and her face became hard and angry.
“No wonder the spirit of the lake is angry.” She whispered softly. “The orc filth defiles her temple and dines on her subjects. I am no elementalist or druid, but this breach of the lake spirit's holy temple cannot go unpunished. When the orcs are gone I--and many others--will see her temple set right.”
The crash of water spilling in from above and the distant shrieks of the spirit of the temple almost drowned out her words, but Micheal could make them out as such and the vicious anger in them. Again it grated at him, and the wrongness of it increased. He forced his mind to turn back to tactics so he would have a good understanding of his surroundings.
The doorway would be an excellent fallback point if there were not a thirty yard swim for an exit. Each of the halls Lucas had mentioned wouldn't provide secure passage for the smallest goblin, and were filled with fallen rock, dirt, and oozing mud. Ahead each step of the terraces and shallow pools would be great cover and vantages for archers and spell casters, but the melee would have to be contained to the stairs and various artful ramps of stone. Even then the wet ramps could send whoever stepped on them crashing down into the host of orcs that were for now sleeping in the room with their steep angle.
Micheal would wonder how they slept if he wasn't already so familiar with the brutes. They slept wherever they could once they were full and satisfied or when they got bored. And once asleep they generally stayed that way until they were ready to get up or made to by force or hunger. Noise or smell, or any number of other factors didn't matter to the animals. No, not animals. Orcs were worse than any animal he had met. Even pigs were cleaner, and less foul.
The scouts moved ahead along the terraces keeping low to make the most of the cover they offered and they managed to silently kill a number of goblins without making more noise than the waterfall allowed.
“Hey Gurz.” An orc bellowed from below having come out from further inside the temple. “Where's dat stinkin gobbo. GURZ!” It yelled coming into the hall with a crude club of misshapen metal in hand. It slapped an orc awake with the side of his axe.
“Da Shaman wants to know what's going on outside. GET UP YOU LOT. Something's happenin'. Patrols are missing. Boss says we gotta be watchin'.” It said and then suddenly sniffed the air going stiff and alert.
It never noticed the creak of bowstrings or the sound of mail over the noise of the water falling about the various parts of the room.
Dexter's arrow took him in the throat and half a dozen others took arrows in the neck and face as the scouts loosed on that orc and the one it had woken. Micheal made his way down the stairs carefully with Jack at his side and took one of the terraces down from the scouts with Vivian at his side. The goblins shrieked and cried out all around them as the orcs below began to bellow as they came awake despite the attempt to silence their fellows at range.
Micheal came face to face with an orc as it rose, but easily took it in the neck with a single thrust of his spear as it scrambled for its club at its belt. Jack tore into the goblin host who had been sleeping there in a pile on the terrace and sent them tumbling with great wounds off the platform. With more than enough room to swing in the hall he thrust forward and took the next orc in the arm, but it wasn't enough. Micheal stepped back and almost slipped as the orc surged forward ripping it club free and pushed his sword staff into the air, but Micheal quickly choked up his grip, swung down and caught the orc in the cheek with the blade and quillons of his weapon before it closed on him. The orc's eyes rolled and its limbs went limp as it ragdolled into him, blood fountaining from its neck, blinding him, making him stumble back and into the stairs he had just come down.
His blood was pounding in his ears as Mike and Lindsey made the platform behind him as he blinked away the orcs' blood from his eyes and spat, lifting his veil once he tasted its blood on his lips and tongue. Lindsey threw spell after spell targeting orcs who had bows below. Lances of ice took them in arm and neck, it disabled their arms and kept them from firing for the moment but they only growled and urged the horde of terrified goblins back up with them as they bled. Arrows came down from above, deadly black darts streaking down the incline, doing much the same. Dexter jumped down to their terrace while firing slow deliberate bow shots that punched into armor and deep into the torsos of orcs with a force that couldn't all have come from that bow. Every orc he shot was punched clean through by the heavy shafts or driven into the ground when the broad head found bone. His face was a dark mask of killing intent made darker by the heavy leather headband he wore keeping his dark mass of hair held back.
Micheal pulled his sword staff away from the weight of the dead orc and watched as the goblins clawed their way back up screaming defiance and profanity. Each had a dagger, rusty spear, or small bow in hand. He dodged and ducked poorly aimed arrows and shot back with snaps of the butt end of his enchanted weapon using the one ranged attack he had. Mike was doing the same as whips of flame leaped from his blade on the terrace next to Micheal. Eva was throwing fans of crimson daggers into the horde with contemptuous snaps of her obviously magical staff from the steps leading down to their terrace. On the other side of the hall colored boxes tumbled down and into the horde launching confetti and spraying multicolored snakes over the screaming horde of goblins along with a spray of marbles and colorful wooden spinning tops that uselessly spun in any direction growing larger over water, and up walls and over the bodies of those near them before they poofed out of existence with no regard to gravity or sense.
The orcs raised shields and so did the goblins while pushing each other forward. The metal of the orc shields sent arrows and spells aside, but the simple wooden affairs of the goblins broke apart after one of two arrows if they weren't pierced through in a shot. Spells crashed and knocked down their numbers but they charged on. An orc in the back ran away into the main hall below with an arrow in his arm. And that was the last Micheal had time to notice as the bow wielding goblins became his focus.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Come on then! Come on! You dirty bastards!” Mike shouted, banging his sword into his shield.
Lindsey worked her wand this way and that, and flicked messy volleys of goblin arrows out of the air with little movements. She looked like a badass doing it. Her eyes shone cold as one after another orc shield splintered and fell to her magic. There was enough time for her to pull back her wand and launch a fireball, a proper area attack, into the midst of the goblins, they scattered diving out of the way at the last moment. Still the blast caught enough of them up to have them be riddled with arrows as they broke apart before firing arrows, throwing stones and sometimes their weapons in her direction.
That was the last before they were close enough for the melee to begin, they broke formation at those last moments, and what seemed like a wall of little green bodies rushed up the last terrace ramps and stairs to them. Micheal raised his weapon as he heard the first cord break open on Luna's harp as she began to sing. It filled his ears and his whole being seemed to beg for violence with the strength of his friends at his side.
He remembered all the evil he had witnessed goblins enjoy. He remembered being beaten by orcs. And he wanted to kill. He wouldn't let them near his friends! They wouldn't so much as touch them! Rage ran through his limbs like liquid fire and he was moving.
“JACK!” He roared and charged forward out of line with Mike and Vivian to break into the charging goblins with his weapon carving great weeping arcs of blood through the air before him with a strength he didn't know he had and didn't care to question.
Vivian yelled something, but it was completely drowned out by Jack's roar. He hit the ground on the terrace below after cutting and bashing through shields and skulls alike of the little vermin; Micheal's sword spear started whirling as he broke in among their sloppy lines. Jack crashed in next to him, ripping and throwing little green body parts seeming suddenly larger and more vicious as he easily fell into a back to back defensive stance with his master. Micheal lashed out, slashing, beating and clubbing goblins two or three at a time until his mad whirling was stopped by the presence of Mike and Vivian at his sides as they covered his flanks from the other terraces. Arrows tore into the back line near Vivian from the scout company on the right flank now free to use their bows as they were bearing the brunt of the attack and drawing attention toward an easy isolated target on the left.
The orcs that sought the chance to overwhelm them in the press of the attack fell to the covering arrow fire until one of their number started screaming and hauling them back into position.
Micheal was still seeing red as Vivian dodged back out of the way of a lightly armored orc with a two handed axe. Micheal charged forward and took its head almost clean off with a hacking blow of his sword staff. He deflected a goblin sword slashed at his legs with the haft as they rushed up the stairs stumbling and reaching over each with the butt of his weapon and danced back to strike with Vivian at his side. They worked together using their spears like pikes to drive the orcs and goblins both back down the center set of double wide stairs. Mike and Jack held the other side for now with Dexter and Lindsey above shooting down on the next level of the terraced ponds.
This wasn't to plan, he knew that, but he was seeing red. He hacked at goblins that pressed each other up the rise to the terrace and kicked them down on their fellows and shot out spells at the shields of orcs to blow their guard open with the force attack. His sword staff worked in his hands like he had used it in a dozen battles already. The magic inside its length singing with his rage, its blade soaked crimson and cutting through flesh, bone, and crude armor with ease. Jack roared and chased the last few goblins down the far stairs while crushing one's neck in his jaws. Micheal had no idea how many of the goblins he had killed, but they lay broken and dead in the shallow ponds of the hall and at his feet in heaps. The orcs however were coming up in a cluster of about thirty, and each of them were armored, but they would only be able to get at their terrace three or four at a time.
“By blood and rage I give my companions Blades of Crimson!” Eva shouted in a loud chant.
“In the name of the Goddess Olivarch I extend my will to grant Protection of the Light to my allies!” Pelanna chanted alongside Eva.
And above it all Luna's song rang out in a wordless haunting song that sent chills down Micheal's spine, his heart beating, pounding, with each strum of the harp that seemed to echo through the earth at his feet. Each strum of her harp played out as if it were the only thing making noise in the room, it couldn't possibly compete with the noise of battle, but was undeniably heard and granted its effects to Luna's allies. Magic effects seemed to flare in Micheal's blood and body. His weapon shone with a new radiant crimson edge given to him by Eva. His armor shone as if freshly polished in the noonday sun where it did not drip with mud, dirt, blood, and worse.
The first group of orcs stormed up the stairs on the other side only to be met by several of the Brazen Boys with Julia at their head. Julia's fists and armor shone just as he did and each of her quick strikes seemed to make blood erupt from mouths of the orcs she hit, dipping, ducking, and dodging as she fought like a little boxer from hell in her tiger faced helm.
The little cat girl growled and grunted as she fought, driving them back and down like piles struck by the rapid fire sledge hammers that were each of her fists. It didn't even seem to matter if she hit flesh or armor as each of her strikes sounded or flashed with energetic reactions of magic. She screamed with an animal sort of rage as she kicked or clobbered foes to the ground. Her magic, the energy of it rippled and raged around her as well. Her strikes were landing so fast it was like orcs were getting hit three or four times all at once as they came up her side of the ramp. The ones that didn't just drop dead from fighting her clung to their chests and faces as blood poured from their broken insides and pulped organs. Where ever she fought orcs and goblins fell dead; the petite girl a true terror in battle despite her cute appearance and small frame. If they had ten of her the orcs wouldn't have stood a chance in these tight confines. And she was only sixteen, not yet fully grown or matured in mind, body, or magic. She had barely been set loose upon the world a year and the little cat eared fae born girl was a devastating force on the front line.
Pride in his friend filled Micheal's chest and seemed to leap out toward her in the moment her assault seemed to slow. Whatever he did struck her and she cried out again, in vicious victorious rage, and began tearing into the orcs anew.
Meanwhile Micheal and Vivian began working their spears at the on coming orcs. They reached out with short brutal polearms, mancatchers, bills, and the like, as well as great crude axes, but could not reach them. Vivian would open their guard and he would stab that one or drive a halberd-like strike into its shoulder and punch through the armor with his cross guard as deadly and effective as a crowsbeak hammer, but they were slowly being pushed back.
Micheal didn't hear the order from Forgen, but Leah was suddenly pounding down the stairs and hit the first orc with a shoulder tackle that toppled him backwards and onto the others, arresting her momentum. The deadly little charge collapsed a column of orcs that threatened to overwhelm them with their number. Then she put her hammer to work. She took the head off one orc with a violent first swing, and then crushed the arm of another as she came back around. After that she choked up on the haft of the hammer and started using it to methodically strike at faces, hands, and torso's to deadly and staggering effect with almost slow workman-like pacing. Each blow hammer a head or arm into uselessness like a carpenter would slam home pegs into a nearly finished piece of work.
Weapons deflected off her armor and helm and she laughed her sweet little laugh as orcs began to moan and scream under her assault turning away with broken limbs or crushed faces. Of course she wasn't alone as Micheal and Vivian pressed back into the fray working the length of their weapons at her side.
Dexter on the terrace above Micheal was working his heavy bow with an easy rhythm. Every time he shot an orc screamed and clutched at the thick arrow piercing some small weakness in its armor near Mike and Jack to Micheal's left. The pair were working in a wonderful tandem with Mike getting their attention as the first thing visible on the stairs, and then Jack would strike and hamstring or rip at the unarmored backs of their thighs or calves with his jaws and claws. Already a number of orcs were piled near them laying dead giving further cover for them as the corpses filled the narrow stair.
Lindsey worked carefully stepping around the wounded orcs fallen and firing point blank ice lances into their crude helmets with deadly effect. Once an orc tried to climb up from the terrace below and Lindsey smiled as she stepped forward in a rapier thrust, her wand striking its face and sprayed the orcs below with a shower of gore using her new attack. Already though she had downed one of her blue little potions. The work was getting to everyone even as quick as the battle might have seemed though.
The fighting had that slow motion sort of effect that made it feel to the mind like it had been days down here in the watery temple. Micheal had never been in a true melee like this, and the length of his polearm was saving him wounds and battering Mike was already taking on his shield. Still his limbs were burning even with all his training and his breaths were coming out ragged. Vivian beside him was moving with untouchable grace, her delicate seeming spear lashing out beside his own to summon up squalls of gore each time it flashed down upon an enemy. She didn’t even seem winded yet.
Eventually after what felt like hours, but must have been only minutes they pushed the orcs back with less than half their number retreating from their held terraces in the long steep hall, but the party didn't get long to celebrate. At the end of the hall coming through the next pair of doors was a number of massive hulking pig-faced things with green skin standing on two legs.
Judging from just their size alone the others might have thought them trolls if they had never seen them before, but Micheal knew them at a glance. His body shook with half remembered terror before he could push the memories down, now just wasn't the time.
Still watching them come forth like a pack of two legged pigs, sniffing, and squealing, and jostling each other as the orcs behind them pushed them ahead made Micheal sick to his stomach. They had massive tusks, most had swollen bellies, fat and muscled bodies like one might expect on an ogre and a pig's head and nose. They were mostly green, but some of the older ones had skin that faded to gray, and they had dark thick hair like wild boar. They had an appearance that stank. They were mostly naked, and barely wore the clothes they had on. The orcs looked positively civilized compared to these beasts.
Micheal saw his companions stagger back at their appearance, but heard his own response, a snarling howl of rage, come from his own lips. Orcs behind them pushed them on as the bent to smell at the corpses and blood running down the slope. There were almost two dozen of them and they were huge if not only in height, but in sheer body mass. They were fat and squealed like the animals they resembled, bestial things that Micheal had never seen much of during his time in the camp. Gorgaan hated them for the cross breed beast spawn they were, and wouldn't keep them in his camp. It was perhaps the only thing for Micheal to be thankful for being made to stay in Gorgaan's camp…
They looked up and one of them died with an arrow through its neck dropping face first into a shallow pool on level with the door. They weren't armored, but were monstrously sized with thick and leathery hide akin to armor many of the group wore or more. They squealed and screamed as their comrade died and a few of them fell upon its body to tear and rip it with thick bluntly clawed fingers. They devoured nearly half the corpse before the orcs behind were able to whip and beat them off it and push them toward the slope.
“PEL!” Julia yelled, her voice breathy, but nowhere near done.
“Got it! Go Julia do it!” Pel answered and suddenly Luna's song shifted and changed to something upbeat and wondrous.
Julia pulled a mana potion from one of her pouches and started a quick, ridiculous chant, and little dance.
“I've drawn the lucky card and all the mystery boxes are mine, they're mine, but oh I'll share them all with you! BIG MYSTERY BOX SURPRISE!” She yelled and then threw up her hands before wavering and then unstopping the potion and tipping it back as her conjurations took form, poofing into the air comically with sounds and jingles like someone had won a prize.
One of the Brazen Boys ran to support her and the others came up covering her from a tide of rushing, terrified goblins that were attacking as much as they were running from the pig ogre things. Micheal was half terrified as a cold part of his mind remembered things of his home world, his knowledge of explosions, the travel and effect of shock waves, and their increased effect when set off within contained spaces. Inside like this a concussion would likely deafen or kill them all from one of her large explosives, but before he could act Pel began to chant.
“In the name of Civilization and the powers granted to me by the Goddess I summon a Bulwark of Protection!” Pel shouted as Julia's mystery boxes tumbled down the stairs by the dozen in a deafening roar and landed in pools and on top of orcs, goblins, and the new ogre-like foes.
Then a twenty foot wall that went nearly all the way up to the ceiling smashed into place ahead of them coming down like the fist of a God to settle perfectly in place ahead of their clustered foe sealing them off for the time being with the magical conjuring.