The Maid Is Not Dead

The fiendish horror confronting us now in the dark nightmare of Arden was well and far out of our league. Recognizing that, our only option was to run. Run, with all due haste. A seasoned warrior accepted tactical retreat into her hand of cards and felt no needless shame at turning tails. At least, I never did. Frankly, it was my number one preference, most of the time, in any situation, where I had no discernible cause to choose otherwise. So I took off.

The death wheel seemed to take this as the starting signal for a race and sprang forth in heated pursuit, precariously wobbling, skidding, alarmingly swift, sparing no pity for its fleshly components as it rolled merrily over them. We had to give it all that we still had left in ourselves to maintain the scant lead we started with.

Except, we weren't moving at all.

Not two steps into our desperate flight, Lady Mariel collapsed on her knees in a heap on the street.

"Dear me," she uttered. "The last of my strength appears spent. I go no further. You must leave me and save yourself."

I felt that if she still had the vim to deliver such lines, then surely she could have run a little further. But it was evident at a glance that the magician had no intention to take another step of her own will, even if it became the death of her. I briefly considered taking the proposal and leaving the witch as she was. Outrunning the wheel was still within my personal ability, if I only had myself to worry about. I would hardly have called it a challenge, even.

But—

I still gripped the witch's hand.

The frail hand of a human being. I felt the weak heat of her pulse on my fingertips and found myself unable to let go. It was the hand of a girl who had not done a day of honest work in her life, and the babe-like smoothness of it stirred strange sensations in me. Something of a maternal instinct, perhaps, dormant till this very day and hour.

I had a stake in her well-being, I told myself. She had promised to share her magic with me and I needed all the help I could get to break through the dungeon and return home. Yes. That was a reasoning I could accept. A valid justification for acting like a sentimental fool. It was certainly not only me being— as said—an inadequate person, unable to ignore the misfortune of others. Furthermore, there was no chance it was specifically the look and smile of another woman that could sway me to such an extent. That was rubbish.

My mind firmly grounded and made, I crouched by Lady Mariel, picked her up, and took off anew, dashing at top speed.

It was not effortless to race like so with another person in your arms, but the magician weighed quite a bit less than I'd braced for. She was startlingly light. If you were to ask me which one weighed less, Lady Mariel, or Master Vivian, I honestly wouldn't have been able to tell for sure, though one was five feet and five, and the other one hardly three and a half.

This person was as if made to be carried by others. If it were up to me, I would have made sure she never had to sully her feet touching the ground again—No, what on Earth was I thinking? What good was spoiling her even more going to do? There had to be some sinister charm at work to make me cast away common sense so quickly. A spell most vile, yes.

At any rate, I gave it even the inner strength I never knew I had in me to deliver us from that torus of torment hot on our heels. It made my personal best unfortunately look like nothing worth mentioning, but we weren't making any headway. My own best and the best of the good dead were quite about on par. It was a fair race between gods' equals.

"Far be it from me to trouble you needlessly," Lady Mariel said, looking back over my shoulder, "but they appear to be gaining on us."

"You imagine it."

"Couldn't you run a tad faster?"

"Do I look like a mare to you?"

I sought for a side path, a hollow, or any old stump of an alley to shelter us, seeing as making tight turns was our opponent's singular, glaring weakness. Attempting to outrun a wheel on the same tracks was dashed silly. Alas, we were tightly walled off on all sides, the houses raised close to each other, and all the many doors firmly shut and barred. The few branching paths were crammed full of clutter. The dwarf defenders' tactics to funnel the invaders down limited pathways turned tragically against us here.

But it was about to get worse.

For a while now, I had thought the architecture about looked mildly familiar, and now realized how foreboding that observation was. We were headed towards the plaza facing the district gate, as well as the undead mob assembled in it. It was a dead end ahead, if you may forgive the unintended play of words. We were caught between a rock and a hard place, unable to stop or retreat.

Was there truly no hope?

I wouldn't climb out of the street along naked walls with another person on me. I was not quite that buff, despite the exercise. Neither could I decimate the undead hordes ahead of us on the fly, nor take apart the wheel behind me. The situation had turned into a veritable bind—one I was not going to solve on my own. Speedy help was needed.

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Not daring to trust a hope, I addressed the mistress in my squeeze.

"My Lady Mariel."

"Yes?" she replied. "Have you changed your mind about throwing me off now? I knew it would be coming to that. It so often does. Rest easy. I have already made peace with eternity."

"Before that, a question, if you will. You wouldn't happen to have a fire Sigil, or a similar heat-based spell in your repertoire, would you?"

Her brow crunched up in a scowl. "Why such a mean-spirited question? You are surely aware that fire is among the fourteen Sigils that the Council of Linford once labeled verboten, and banned under the pain of death?"

"Oh, was it now?" I answered. "But your self-proclaimed goal of acquiring every Sigil implies you have no intention to respect the taboo. And I can't help but notice you dodged answering."

"Let us then entertain the far-fetched supposition that Ignis were among the Sigils I know. If you were to ask me to do away with the menace behind us, I have not nearly enough Power left for that."

"I did not think that was possible for mortals to begin with. I need but a spark, however small one. I would use the firestarter, but it is too far buried in my backpack to access on the run."

"What, precisely, do you have in mind?"

"In the closer side pocket on the knapsack is a sheepskin of oil. Can you reach it?"

"Suppose I could. Then what?"

"Then, if you could pass the oil container to me and ready the aforementioned casting, to be used precisely when and where I tell you, we might still live through this."

Lady Mariel considered my proposal quietly for a moment, and then made an effort to reach for my backpack past my shoulder. This brought the witch's collar and armpit disorientingly close to my face.

"In case we do survive, I recommend a long, hot bath with an extra helping of soap. For your own good."

"Here," Lady Mariel handed me the sheepskin alongside an insulted scowl from a point-blank range. I resisted the temptation to insult her more.

"Get ready."

I stopped and dropped off the mage. There were bare seconds to spare. With one hand I took the oil container, with the other my dagger, and cut open the topside seam, and then turned and threw the thing high up in the air. It landed on top of the target, the ripped sack spilling its contents over the merry-go-round of the dead.

"Now!"

At that moment, looking less like a malnourished stray and more like a magician, Lady Mariel drew the air with her finger and called out the incantation.

Elemental gate: Ignis (Verboten).

"Inferno Arrow—!"

An intense clot of livid fire appeared blazing in front of the mage's small hand. Then, in a bright, lively streak, the spell shot out, drawing a dazzling arc across the dark of the dungeon, and struck the rolling wheel, now soaked in the costly oil meant for my unemployed lantern.

The wheel, upon which the dead were bound, as well as the old corpses themselves, had not seen water in a long, long time, and were no less flammable than firewood dried many a summer in a windy shed. All it asked for was a way to ensure the fire stuck on long enough to take root, which the spriggan oil handled well enough. Fire was the natural enemy of the living dead, for which the barbarians of yore had always made sure to cremate their fallen. The wheels' mad spin seemed to only aid the spread of the arson.

Even all this could not finish off the grand amalgamation of fiends, as it was.

But neither was destroying the foe with our own hands necessary.

The heat served another purpose, which was to blind the preternatural senses of the dead, giving us the opportunity to throw the ghouls off our trail. The fire stole all of their attention. I drew Lady Mariel into my arms anew, cast her less gracefully into the side of the street, close by the nearby house wall, and myself on top of her. The flaming, smoking ring rolled on past us, a shrill choir of agonized squealing ejected from the many gaping mouths decorating it. The dead had forgotten us. Only escape filled their rotted heads, the faint spark of awareness in them distilled to its most raw, basic needs. Even in death, they dreaded death, the true, unfeeling oblivion from which there could be no return by any spell.

Even as the need for escape consumed them, they lacked the intelligence to tell how that might be achieved.

The only solution they knew was to go, and go faster. Faster, faster, faster. The wheel span on with such a desperate rush, we never would have gotten away, had it managed this mode from the start. And then, in an aching reenactment of the cyclic history of man, the grand carousel bolted down the street and rammed straight into the drowsy mob posted upon the plaza.

I had sometimes, watching a busy marketplace, pondered quietly to myself the calamity of a loaded carriage with frenzied horses charging into that population, and the scene I saw now gave a heartfelt portrayal of how that might pan out.

The wheel of fire passed fluidly through the crowd of ghouls like through muddied waters, not stopping until it struck the high rock wall of the overlook, upon which it shattered and fell apart in a flaming, screeching, abhorrent rain of broken wood and shrapnel and limbs, scattering farther and wider. And secretly, in some macabre, immoral sense, I couldn't help but think what unfolded there in its brilliance of color and richness of motion was a right thing of beauty. Then the moment passed and only fading embers and smoke remained.

No time to rest on our laurels.

The path the wheel had cleared for us was our way out, and we had best use it well before it closed again.

The rush of action had caused Lady Mariel to pass out, but that was fine. In this state, she couldn't complain about the rough manner in which I cast her over my shoulder, and then I urged my feet to run once more.