Ilbur struggled, burning pain searing up his arm. He was on his back, a giant star-nosed badger pinning him down and slowly rending him open with its claws, like he was soft mud being dug into. The beast had a fleshy ‘flower’ on the tip of its nose, the raw pink flesh extending into five whip-thin tendrils that coiled around his upper arm, stinging him with hundreds of poisonous barbs.
Its long claws raked vicious lines his belly, his calves.
Again and again, he stabbed it with his knife, his burning arm wrapped around its throat to keep it from retreating back down its den. Blood gouted across him, his own and the badger’s mixing and running down his hands.
It was a messy, brutal fight, and Ilbur won. He won by the barest of margins, by the fury that grew in him at the edge of death. A final hard sink of his knife into its neck severed the spinal column. It slumped atop him, and he let out a ragged, relieved sigh, shuddering with pain as he rolled the dead weight off his aching body.
From out of the badger’s den, the fox and her kits emerged. Each of them carried a small, limp bundle of white-black fur hanging from their jaws.
Grunting, his fingers slippery, he hoisted the badger onto his back and stumbled forward, bent under its damp, furred weight.
Ilbur could barely walk. His limbs rejected the very idea, trembling, and his world swayed, his head slumped on the end of his neck. If a predator happened by- but no, none did, even as he trudged slowly back, fighting to keep one dizzy foot in front of the next as the uneven ground of roots crawled by.
Almost falling down, he dropped the corpse and knelt himself by the glimmering coals of last night’s fire, scraping two fingers across a large, flat stone smeared with a lumpy paste that glowed blue. Healing plants were common here, and the fox-mother taught him to find them among the thorns and brambles.
Applying it to the strips of rag that were left from shedding his clothing, he bandaged his wounds, feeling the fire-itch sensation of magical healing spread over the lines of pain carved in his stomach.
Soon he would have to learn to make linen out of the plants. His supply of bandages was almost out.
Orcs scarred fast and hard. Over years, a warrior would build up a vicious plating of rigid tissue that protected him. In days Ilbur was growing his own crop. They were a faint tan color, lighter than the russet-brown of his skin and darker than the almost-white of his underbelly.
Tomorrow he would have a few more. Lying back, he let his eye close.
When he blinked awake again, it was night. Three moons of dark green floated ethereal above the canopy of glass leaves, which were limned in the silver-green light, dripping with dew that fell from one crystalline leaf to the next with a resonating patter.
He groaned, climbed up, and began to work on supper. The fire going out was an endless pain, forcing him to laboriously gathering kindling, small sticks, and finally great rotten stubs of log, the flames he coaxed from a flint leaping from one to the next.
Two greenwood boughs stripped of leaves and driven into the earth to either side of the campfire had been split at their tops, providing a ‘y’ shape. He hacked away chunks of badger-meat and ran them through with fire-harden spits, setting the skewers across the bough-stands to roast as the flames died down to a hot, low dance.
When he turned around, two of the black-pawed little fox kits were staring at him. Their noses lifted to catch the scent of rich, gamey flesh slowly browning, dripping out its juices in little drops that went sizzling into the fire.
His body ached too much to play the usual chasing-games, so he threw a stick, and then quickly snapped around to catch the third creeping towards the roasting meat.
“Go on. Git.” Ilbur shooed it away, claiming the meal for himself. His tusks bumped the skewer as he ripped away shreds of fire-charred, pinking-inside flesh. Half-cooked blood ran down his chin. It was heaven. The burnt-to-charcoal bits stuck to his tongue in bitter crumbles of ash.
If he’d been less exhausted, there were wild spices and herbs in the woods. The fox-mother gave him lessons, nudging him towards the edible ones and letting him experience the less deadly poisons firsthand. Those days made for lessons he would never forget.
There was a shuffling in the underbrush. He turned to see the glass golem returning, carrying an enormous head over its shoulders. It was the feathered, scaled skull of some enormous predator, like a toothed bird, its savage yellow eyes glazed and covered in swarming flies.
It went in the pile. The crown jewel atop weeks of efforts.
The glass golem had woven a sled of vines and branches, piling it high with teeth, pieces of exoskeleton, and wilting flowers. Everything the Dungeon might want. A claw from the badger would join the pile before they returned, as would parcels of choice plants the fox-mother had led him to collect.
It knelt by him, examining his wounds. Pointing a glass finger at the sky, the golem made a turning motion with its hand, and pointed to the sled.
“Tomorrow? We’re returning tomorrow?”
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A nod.
Ilbur’s heart beat with excitement. Over just half a month, he had grown stronger than ever. Two weeks and his body was lined with hard-won scars. If he could show the Dungeon his worth, maybe he could honor his father still.
Maybe he could convince it to free his people.
“Tomorrow.” He said, nodding. The word seemed to carry an almost magical power. Tomorrow.
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The next day they set out. The glass golem dragged the sled by vine leads, and Ilbur scouted the way, watching for signs of danger.
There were things in these woods even the glass faun couldn’t face. There were behemoths.
Ilbur had heard them more than seen them; the tyrant roars, the earth-shaking steps, rending the night apart. He’d learned to treat them with no more regard than passing storms, turning over in his sleep and hugging his meagre bedding tightly.
In the morning the faun would sometimes take him to see the aftermath; the trees reduced to splinters, the canopy torn apart, the light losing that strange blue complexion it gained by passing through so many crystalline leaves. Vast footprints indented the earth, pooling with rainwater.
And strangely, there was life everywhere. In the fresh-churned mud, hundreds of green sprouts poked up their heads. From the stumps of the broken trees, new growths sprouted.
The forest was unbreakable.
Being considerably more fragile himself, Ilbur was cautiously scouting the way. Even besides the behemoths, there were creatures the faun avoided rather than fought, and Ilbur searched the trees for their territorial signs, the earth for their footprints.
Something stung again his neck. He slapped his hand down, expecting an ant, but what came back in his fingers was a tiny arrow.
Another sting. Ilbur yelped, scrambling over the roots back towards the glass golem. An arrow stabbed into the back of his calf.
From the trees above, hordes of little insect-men were descending on buzzing wings and dragonfly mounts.
And in the distance, he heard footsteps. Large, trodding foosteps.
Ilbur felt fuzzy. His vision was dissolving into many, many grains of colored sand, and they were buzzing about, like little bees. Stinging little bees. He cried out in agony as his feet tangled against a root and he went down, stings digging into the backs of his legs.
It would have been so easy to fall asleep, to collapse right then and there. The darkness was waiting for him. It was on the edge of his vision already, creeping in on the distorted fuzzing static of the world. In the distance something roared.
He fought his way up. He put one foot in front of the other, although little needle-arrows rained down on his back.
A cold, smooth hand gripped his shoulder. Ilbur fell forward into the glass faun’s grip.
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A cold, wet nose nuzzled him into consciousness. Every ray of light was a brick lobbed through the windows of his soul.
Somewhere above him, the glass golem was fighting desperately against an enormous lion with a mane of biting snakes. The serpents sprayed gouts of black bile from their open mouths, melting the faun’s glass body where they landed, and the beast swept out with its claws, threatening the golem’s weakened flesh.
The fox-mother stood above him, a dead faerie clutched in her jaws. She prodded at him, and when he only let out a weak grumble, slashed his cheek open with her claws.
Ilbur, for the millionth time, lifted himself from the dirt and leaves of the forest floor. His whole body was a sore pain. His eye refused to see distinct objects, only blurs of color. The golem was a spreading stain of green, the lion a vast blot of gold.
The sled…
The sled!
It was being pulled away by a swarm of faeries, straining together in a great flock of fluttering, iridescent wings.
Ilbur ran forward, seizing the vine ropes and giving them a hard, whip-crack shake. Tiny bodies flew in all directions, and where they struck the earth Ilbur brought his mud-stained boots stomping down over them.
Shouldering the reins, he turned and began to run in the opposite direction, towards the silver door, fighting to keep his legs underneath him as the tips of his toes tangled on the snaking tree roots that slithered across the ground. The sled bumped and lurched behind him, spilling off treasures.
And the faeries rallied. Pain slashed across the backs of his legs as they made bombing runs, cutting at him with tiny sabers, the wounds burning hot with poison. He lifted a hand to shield his good eye as arrows pelted his face, making his cheeks swell.
Behind him, there was a musical crash of glass breaking.
He turned, eye going wide, to see the glass faun staggering back. Its right arm had been completely broken away, the sword stuck through the lion’s left shoulder. Serpents coiled around the faun’s legs, trying to trip it up. Trying to pull it down so the lion could rip it to pieces.
In that moment, the glass golem let out an ear-piercing, violent harmony. A crystalline noise on the very edge of perception that rose and rose in intensity. Ilbur clutched his ears, diving to the ground, as above him, the faerie riders suddenly began to fall from the sky. Their balance simply left them as the note rang out, causing them to topple from their dragonfly mounts.
The lion let out a confused, pained whimper, the serpents of its mane losing their coordination. With one slash of its sword, the glass golem severed its legs free and vaulted away before the beast could recover.
It ran past Ilbur, and he rose, seizing the vines of the sled again and pulling on. The poison was threatening to overwhelm again, making the world come apart into drifting particles of static. He fought through. His lungs burned, unable to suck in enough air as he desperately ran and ran and ran-
Somewhere in the blind run, as his whole body seemed to tighten with strain, on the verge of breaking, he heard a roar. Not from the lion, or from a distant behemoth. It was the sound of his father, boiling over with anger at their captors, bloodlust in his veins and burning in his eyes.
But his father wasn't here. It was him. Somehow, with barely enough breath in his chest to keep him going, he was letting out a long, victorious howl. A last surge of strength took away his exhaustion. His legs flew across the ground, without weight.
And suddenly the air was different, cooler, full of the deep and comforting damp of the underground, the bitter taste of stone, the loamy scent of fungal forests. His feet met hard rock instead of soft soil. He let himself topple forward, exhausted, as the last of his vision blurred to a confused nothing.
He was home.
Home.
When had it become home?