Allison led them further, prepared at every turn for an attack that did not come. Jeremiah’s anxiety had been sharpened to an edge of excitement. He and his companions had faced death twice and had overcome the challenge. He had contributed. He was part of the team. A small seed of trust was starting to germinate, the roots tickling inside his chest. Then he stepped over another dead goblin and remembered that such friendships were impossible for a necromancer. He pressed on.
The corridor ended in a large stone door, hewn from the rock itself. Allison gestured with her sword and Bruno, crouched low to the ground, moved like a shadow toward the door, pausing frequently to listen or inspect the floor. Upon reaching the door, he spent several long moments scrutinizing it, its handles, hinges, and edges, before reaching into a pouch and producing a small metal cone. He touched the mouth of the cone against the door, his ear close to the hole at the narrow end.
The group waited in total silence. Jeremiah’s heartbeat thudded in his ears. He became all too aware of the metallic scent of blood covering Allison’s armor. He checked on Gus and found him in good health, nestled deep in the most protected pocket of his robes.
At last, Bruno returned, this time rather more like a man than a shadow. “Quiet as a tomb in there, and the door isn’t trapped or locked. I can feel airflow, though, so I think the room on the other side is sizable. But goddamn does it stink.”
Allison nodded and Bruno began the painstaking process of opening the door, one inch at a time, scanning for any sign of trap or alarm. Then it was fully open.
The room was enormous, stretching beyond the range of their Night Eyes in all directions. The smell—pervasive and thick, a carrion stench that coated Jeremiah’s tongue and seeped down his throat.
Allison peered into the darkness. “Can one of you make more light?”
Jeremiah and Delilah nodded together. Jeremiah conjured a ball of white light that hovered near his shoulder, casting a soft glow around the party. Delilah pulled out a thin glass tube and twisted it, cracking a seam in the middle. It flared almost blindingly bright, illuminating the space for at least a hundred feet in all directions.
The light revealed row after row of massive stone columns. Piles of refuse towered like sentinels all around them—bones, broken furniture, rags, animal carcasses, weather-beaten tools and weapons. The detritus was punctuated by wooden beams and large stones that must have crumbled from the ceiling high above.
After the claustrophobic press of the hallways, stepping into this space should have been liberating. Instead, it squeezed them tighter. Angular, alien shadows swarmed around them as they swung their lights, seemingly waiting for the chance to leap upon them.
“What is this place?” asked Jeremiah.
“No clue,” said Delilah, “I can’t imagine the purpose of a room this big, so deep underground. The fact that it exists at all is a marvel of engineering.”
They ventured further into the room, heads on a swivel. The stench grew stronger, adopting an acidic tinge that stung their nostrils.
Bruno’s expression turned to disappointment as he took a closer look at some of the refuse. “I’m not seeing anything that looks like treasure. There can’t be much more to this place, can there?”
Allison scanned the room, but before she could answer, a sound like rocks being crushed reverberated around the room. She whirled, ready to sprint for the exit. “Cave in?!”
They spun, looking for signs of falling debris. A movement caught Jeremiah’s eye.
One of the massive boulders heaved and rolled across the floor, great wooden timbers caught in its wake, and shuddered to a stop. The boulder began to rise, and Jeremiah finally recognized it for what it was.
Towering over them was a titanic creature, nearly eighteen feet tall. It had hands the breadth of wagon wheels at the end of long, flabby arms. In its wicked nails, it clutched a decomposing body in crushed armor, still clinging to a sword and shield. The creature’s grey, blubbery flesh oozed with boils and sores. But the sight that struck terror into Jeremiah’s heart was its head—a grotesque version of a goblin’s face, stretched to fit red bulbous eyes and teeth as long as daggers.
Jeremiah stammered as those horrible eyes bulged down at him. He stumbled backwards, unable to look away, and managed only a strangled whimper to alert the others.
“A Matriarch,” whispered Delilah, her voice filled with terror and awe.
“Get to the door, NOW!” Allison shouted.
They ran for the exit. The entire room shook as the Matriarch gave chase on elephantine legs, triggering avalanches of refuse. The party darted around protrusions of timbers and tangles of rotted rope that attacked their ankles. The Matriarch bellowed, so close that Jeremiah felt the wind and the heat of her rancid breath. The roar rang through his thoughts, driving any sense from them.
“She’s summoning the Warren!” yelled Delilah.
The ancient door still hung ajar. As they hurtled toward it, lights began to appear beyond it. The tunnel flickered and danced with the silhouettes of hundreds of tiny forms rushing toward them, their wrathful screeches like steel scraping against steel.
Bruno suddenly planted a foot and rammed his shoulder into Jeremiah. Jeremiah stumbled against a pile of splintered boards, then felt a whoosh as the Matriarch’s decayed warrior flew past and smashed into the stone wall beside the door.
“DELILAH!” shouted Allison, “Burn that hallway, give it everything you’ve got! When we reach the door, we turn and kill this thing!”
Allison’s orders were suicide, but the authority of her voice was a comfort. At the wall, Bruno and Jeremiah turned, seeing that Allison had stopped earlier to interpose herself between them and the Matriarch as the massive creature plowed through the debris in her path. Delilah continued through the doorway and began heaving bottle after flask after box as fast as she could down the hall. Then she darted back into the room and slammed the door shut, just as a roar of flame drowned out the shrieks of pain. A bright white glow shone through the gaps in the door, but beyond it, the furious screeching soon rose again.
The Matriarch let out another roar as she lumbered toward Allison. Jeremiah recognized the large wooden square suspended from her neck like an oversized necklace to cover her chest. “It’s more Ironwood! She’s made armor out of it!”
Bruno began loosing arrows at the Matriarch, aiming for her face and neck. They stuck into her skin like needles, but she didn’t seem to notice. Then a shot connected with her oversized eye. The Matriarch clutched her hand over it and roared. Her advance staggered. Blood and other fluids ran down her face and her screams of pain turned to rage.
“Listen.” The stoic calm in Allison’s voice cut through Jeremiah’s panic. “She dies before those fires go out, or we’re done. Fight like a wolf pack: surround her and attack when she’s not focused on you. We can do this!”
Jeremiah willed his feet to follow Allison’s orders, but it was as though he were rooted to the floor. He watched as Bruno and Delilah fanned out to either side and, to his horror, Allison raised her shield and countercharged the Matriarch.
When they met, the Matriarch swung her fist so hard that the blow exploded stones from the floor. Allison however, had already twirled to avoid the blow and close the remaining distance. She slashed her sword up the Matriarch’s arm before driving it hilt deep into her prodigious belly.
Delilah rushed in at an angle to thrust her spear into the Matriarch’s stumpy leg, driving her down to a knee. Bruno continued his barrage of arrows, searching for the second eye.
The Matriarch was stunned for only a moment. She stood, dragging Delilah across the stone floor as she clung to the spear. The Matriarch yanked the weapon from her leg and from Delilah’s grasp with a growl and a spray of thick dark blood, and swung it at Delilah like a switch, snapping the shaft.
Allison used the distraction to thrust her sword into the Matriarch’s hip, penetrating the outermost layers of fat. Bruno abandoned his empty quiver to leap onto the Matriarch’s back, digging a shortsword into her side for grip. The Matriarch howled and swatted at him. Bruno dodged the massive hand, pulling himself up farther to hack at the heavy ropes around her neck.
The Matriarch spun with surprising speed, causing Bruno to lose is grip on his sword and threw him unceremoniously from her back to land in a heap of rotting meat some distance away. In the same motion, she caught Allison with a backhand that sent her sprawling. Jeremiah’s cheer at Bruno’s success died in his throat as he watched his friends tossed aside like ragdolls.
Still clutching the broken spear, the Matriarch turned her attention back toward Delilah. With a swing like a whip crack, she drove Delilah into the ground. Jeremiah heard breaking glass. The delicate sound seemed so out of place that it finally broke his paralysis.
As the Matriarch raised the spear to impale Delilah like a sausage on a stick, Jeremiah launched an orb of acid directly into her long, pointed ear. The Matriarch screamed and reeled back, dropping the spear to frantically wipe off the acid, and some skin with it. To Jeremiah’s dismay, though, only the skin was blistering. Painful, but not nearly as debilitating as the spell had been on her smaller kin.
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The Matriarch turned from her closer meal and leapt toward Jeremiah, closing the distance in an instant. Jeremiah scrambled, trying to flee in two directions at once. A massive hand drove him into the ground. His head bounced off the stone, his leather cap cushioning the deadly blow to be merely dizzying.
As the world spun, Jeremiah felt those elongated fingers closing around him. He couldn’t bring his limbs to move. Instead, he struggled to focus his swimming vision on a figure, fast approaching from behind the Matriarch.
The armored form of Allison charged into clarity. She slashed at the back of the Matriarch’s ankles, looking for any part of the creature unprotected by thick blubber.
The Matriarch released Jeremiah and turned toward Allison, seeming to take account of the situation for the first time. Allison was battered but uninjured, sword and shield raised defensively. Bruno had pulled himself to his feet, a single sword still in hand. Delilah was stirring, shaking her head to clear it, and rummaging through her robes. The Matriarch’s dinner was proving an annoyance.
From his vantage point on the floor, Jeremiah realized that the once-bright glow from under the door was dimming rapidly. Countless goblins squabbled beyond the fading light. The Matriarch seemed to reach the same conclusions as he did. She began to laugh, a cold, cruel laugh that froze the blood in Jeremiah’s veins.
“KILL HER!” bellowed Allison, banging her sword against her shield to draw the Matriarch’s attention. The beast lumbered toward her, swinging her arms in wide, sweeping haymakers. Allison caught some blows on her shield, but even those sent her reeling. She was being battered like a cat’s toy, fighting for footing as she backpedaled through rubble, her shield beginning to crumple. A particularly vicious series of strikes ripped her helmet off and she counterattacked, hacking at the Matriarch’s knuckles and wrists, but the creature didn’t seem to mind, splattering blood in great arcs as she continued the onslaught.
Bruno jumped in to slash at the Matriarch’s injured knee, trying to give Allison a moment to breathe. The Matriarch punished his interference by snatching his legs with lightning quickness and swinging him at Allison like a club, slamming him into her shield and then tossing his limp form aside.
Delilah launched a ceramic pot against the Matriarch’s back. It exploded with a sharp bang and sent slivers of clay digging shallow wounds into her flesh. It seemed only to further enrage her attacks on Allison, who had been backed against a boulder and was now fighting fully defensively under the cascade of blows.
Jeremiah tried to summon the focus to cast another acid ball, but his head swam as he said the words and the force of will needed to shape reality eluded him. Behind him, the goblin’s frenzied shrieks reached a fever pitch. He glanced back to see that the glow of the fire was gone.
Delilah appeared at his side. “I’ll hold them. You have to help Allison, go!” She tossed two jars of gelatinous goo against the threshold of the door and braced her back against it. The door jumped open an inch as countless tiny bodies began slamming it from the other side, but she threw all her weight back against it to keep it closed. “Go!”
Jeremiah ran toward the melee as the Matriarch rained blows upon Allison. She had discarded her battered shield and was ducking and twisting to avoid the attacks. For every few attacks she managed to evade, however, she would take another on the armor, crushing the steel plates in lieu of her bones.
Jeremiah knew Allison wouldn’t be able to hold out much longer. He forced himself to ignore the ringing in his head, to draw upon his battle training and summon the focus that should still be within him. This time, the acid ball materialized, and when it splashed against the Matriarch’s back, she howled in pain and fury.
The Matriarchs next punch was wild, granting Allison a rare opportunity to counter. She rammed her sword deep through the Matriarch’s wrist and twisted the blade. Jeremiah launched another acid ball into the beast’s shoulder, willing her to break off the attack, to come for him, anything to spare Allison her fury.
Instead, the Matriarch’s eyes flashed with cold cunning. In a flash, she snapped the rope holding her armor, then swung the Ironwood door at Allison as if swatting a fly with a book. Allison shouted in pain as the blow connected. She was slammed back against the boulder and in a surprisingly graceful motion, the Matriarch thrust the edge of the massive door into Allison’s shoulder, crushing the armor as well as the bones inside.
Allison let out a blood curdling scream. The Matriarch grinned, ignoring the sword still piercing her wrist. A thick tongue parted the Matriarch’s purple lips and wetted them with slime as she savored Allison’s helplessness.
Allison kicked and swore, clawing uselessly at the improvised weapon with her free hand. When she met Jeremiah’s eyes and saw him preparing to throw another acid ball, she screamed directly at him. “KILL HER!”
The world moved in slow motion for Jeremiah. He saw Allison, moments from a grisly death. He saw blades reaching through the growing gap in the door as Delilah strained to hold it shut. The fog in his mind gave way to clarity—he had no choice. Kill the Matriarch. No matter the cost.
The bag slung over Jeremiah’s shoulder was a gift. His teacher’s warning echoed in his ears. “I don’t give this lightly. This is your ‘no-win scenario’ solution. Understand this: it will kill anything and everything it can. You will, at best, be able to suggest what it goes after first.”
Jeremiah upended the bag, his heart pounding. Boney human remains clattered onto the floor. Tendons formed neatly-folded joints, connecting skull, spine, torso, limbs—a complete skeleton. The bones were blood red and looked slick and wet. The tips of its fingers, toes, and teeth were sharpened to needle points, and its skull was deformed into a crown of boney spines. Jeremiah throat was dry, but he spoke the practiced words and focused his willpower into the skeleton. He found it already brimming with necromantic energy; reanimating it was as easy as firing a crossbow.
Jeremiah struggled to maintain his mental connection with the skeleton. It seethed at his control, accepting instruction only with the promise of violence. Like a picket fence on either side of a raging bull, Jeremiah could only offer the suggestion of direction, and pointed it directly at the Matriarch.
The red skeleton exploded into motion, moving so fast toward the Matriarch that dust lifted in its wake. A small part of Jeremiah’s mind was stunned at the speed, but the rest was devoted to imbuing the skeleton with an all-encompassing drive to kill the Matriarch. Kill her.
The skeleton leapt onto the Matriarch’s back, who was leaned over Allison, jaws wide. The sharpened bones on the skeleton’s toes dug into her skin, and it slashed with its claws with such speed and ferocity that they were a blur, tearing out gobs of flesh and fat, digging into the Matriarch’s body as if it were made of sand. The Matriarch spasmed in pain, her good eye rolling and her face distorting in agony. She released Allison and the door and flailed with frantic desperation to dislodge the source of torment.
The skeleton sank its teeth in the Matriarch’s back and tore out great mouthfuls with superhuman strength. It leaned back and opened its jaw wide, rib cage expanding as though breathing deep into non-existent lungs. Instead of drawing air, however, the blood began gushing from the Matriarch’s wounds like a geyser, spraying into the skeleton’s mouth with such force that it dug in its claws to keep from being blown off her back. The blood exploded out the back of the skeleton’s skull like a waterfall against rocks, coating everything nearby in a thick layer of blood.
The Matriarch staggered, her blood pressure suddenly dropping. What would have instantly exsanguinated a human only weakened the Matriarch. The skeleton’s leaned forward again as if exhaling, allowing the blood geyser to cease. Then it ‘inhaled’ again, streaming blood from every scratch and cut into the skeleton’s mouth.
Jeremiah’s focus was already being taxed with controlling the skeleton. He knew that losing it would mean the death of everyone, including him and his friends. But there was more to be done.
He dug deep into reserves of strength he didn’t know he had. He extended a hand toward the rotting corpse the Matriarch had thrown. The body stirred and pulled itself up, hands still clutching the shield and sword in its rigor mortis grip. At Jeremiah’s will, the zombie heaved itself toward the door, stabbing its sword into the gap to impale goblins on the other side. Delilah recoiled in horror but did not question a source of aid. With the zombie’s help, the door began to inch closed again.
Jeremiah extended his will into the corridor beyond to those goblins who had just fallen under the zombie’s blade. The fresh corpses sprang to life and began slashing and biting at their former companions. The pressure on the door ceased as bloodlust gave way to confusion and pain, and Delilah and the zombie heaved the door closed.
Jeremiah was nearing his limit. He collapsed to his hands and knees. Controlling the red skeleton was like trying to hold a hurricane in his mind.
The Matriarch had finally conceived a plan to deal with her attacker. She threw her back against a stone column, forcing it to move lest it be crushed by her bulk.
The skeleton crawled around her body like a spider. In a moment, it was perched on her face where it immediately dug claws into her upper lip. It pulled away two huge bloody chunks, then inhaled blood straight from the ruined eyeball. The Matriarch bellowed in pain and fear. She swung wildly and managed to bash the skeleton off her face. It clattered along the ground, then dug its claws into the stone and sprang back toward her.
Allison was struggling to her feet, looking on in shock. Her mouth worked wordlessly and her broken arm hung at her side. Jeremiah noticed her dazed expression and a small part of him was glad that he wasn’t the only one to get battle shocked. “Allison!” he called. “Give it a weapon!”
Her expression settled into one of grim comprehension at his words. She unhooked the axe from her belt and tossed it toward the skeleton as it sprinted toward the Matriarch. The skeleton caught the weapon without even a glance, then leapt over the Matriarch’s grasping hand and latched onto her arm, whipping the axe into her elbow. The axe rose and fell, a blur of metal removing hunks of flesh and bone in moments.
The Matriarch howled as her arm was shredded. She turned and shoulder charged a boulder, crushing the skeleton between her massive body and the stone. The skeleton disappeared under her girth. The Matriarch screamed as geysers of blood erupted from her wounds again, streaming toward the skeleton pinned against the rock. She slammed against it again and again even as its claws reached for her, scrabbling for purchase.
At last, the skeleton dropped to the ground. The matriarch raised her elephantine foot and stomped, exploding the lower half of the skeleton in a splintery crunch of blood-soaked bones. The upper half had not yet been dissuaded and dug both claws deep into the flesh of the Matriarch’s foot. The Matriarch yowled and brought her foot down again with a mighty crunch. The hurricane in Jeremiah’s mind blew out like a candle.
The Matriarch had no time to recover from her battle with the skeleton before Allison recommenced her attack. In a single motion, Allison scooped Delilah’s broken spear off the floor and hurled it into the Matriarch’s fleshy neck. Then she kicked up the axe the skeleton had dropped into her open hand and charged the Matriarch, screaming a desperate battle cry.
The Matriarch grunted as Allison’s axe sank into her knee, finally severing something critical. She pitched and fell forward, where Allison was already waiting.
Allison caught the spear lodged in the Matriarch’s neck as the creature fell and pushed it with all her remaining strength. The Matriarch’s body followed the direction of her twisting neck and rolling onto her side. Allison yanked the spear free and thrust it deep into the Matriarch’s wounded eye socket.
The Matriarch’s body went rigid. She seized Allison, trying to crush her armor in her grasp. Allison unleashed a litany of curses, and wrenched the spear, slicing it through whatever it had punctured deep inside the Matriarch’s head. The Matriarch’s body went limp and silent.
Every goblin beyond the door began to scream. The corridor erupted in the sounds of battle, of feral violence, of fleeing feet back up the hallway and into the distance.
There was quiet once more. But Jeremiah saw the darkness on Allison’s face as she pulled herself free from the dead Matriarch’s grasp. For him, the danger was graver than ever.