Undermind

“Which princess is she? The one you knocked up, or one of the others you tried to knock up?”

Saskia spoke softly, so as not to give away their presence to the great brute of a monster, who at this very moment was trying to shake the subject of their conversation out of a tree. Still, she was unable to keep a hint of annoyance out of her voice.

“Princess Vask,” murmured Rover Dog, displaying not a hint of remorse.

“Fantabulous,” said Saskia. “Let’s go save your girlfriend, then. She might be able to get her mother off our backs, at least.”

Ruhildi gave a dwarven eye-roll. “If we don’t act now, there will be naught to save but chewed bones.”

“Yeah yeah,” said Saskia. “Okay, let’s do this!”

In answer, Ruhildi pressed her hands to the dirt and tugged hard on Saskia’s essence. The ground shuddered, and the behemoth suddenly found himself—yeah, it was definitely a male—sinking into soft earth. At the same moment, spikes of stone rose up from the ground, stabbing into his legs and feet. Stones sprang into the air, detonating dozens of miniature explosions in his snarling face.

From the shuddering earth rose creatures of stringy sinew and dessicated flesh, flapping like torn cloaks from clattering bones. They came in a variety of shapes and sizes; some formed piecemeal from what must have been multiple incomplete skeletons. All of them were horrifying to look upon, and yet she couldn’t look away.

At the same time, the monstrous zombies raised from their recently slain aggressors lumbered and slithered and hopped into battle, biting and clawing at the behemoth’s legs.

Saskia gaped at her friend. Ruhildi had cast all those spells in seconds, without breaking a sweat. Not that she could sweat, but whatever the undead equivalent of sweating was, she wasn’t doing it.

Growling, the giant bipedal monster tore at his attackers, peeling them off and chomping down on them. Bones shattered. Blood sprayed. The skeletons and zombies were huge and hard to kill, but they wouldn’t last long against such a display of brute strength.

Deciding it would be prudent to keep her distance, Saskia hung back, hurling Jarnbjorn again and again, slowly slicing away the flesh from the beast’s throat. Rover Dog stood at her side, flicking rocks with his staff sling. Even Princess Vask contributed to the battle, firing a spear-sized crossbow bolt into the creature’s back.

The behemoth plucked the bolt out, crushed it between his fingers, and tossed the splinters aside. The wounds were already beginning to heal over. Frocking fantabulous. The monster was trollish in more than just appearance.

“’Tis taking too bollocking long,” muttered Ruhildi. The undead dwarf shot forward, lightning quick.

“What the hell are you doing!?” shouted Saskia.

Heart pounding, she ran after her friend. Rover Dog followed just a few steps behind. Almost immediately, the behemoth ceased his zombie dismemberment, regarding them with ravenous eyes.

His hand shot toward Saskia.

She leapt back with a cry of surprise, even as she flicked Jarnbjorn at the reaching fingers. Her shock wasn’t due to his action, but his sheer speed. The severed tip of a clawed finger flew through the air. But she wasn’t the only one to have scored a hit. Her chest burned, her armour flapped open, and she saw that the tips of a pair of razor-sharp claws had traced a red line down her midsection, tearing through wormhide and hardened troll flesh as if they were tissue paper. One step closer and he might have split her in two.

Rover Dog thrust a long wooden pike deep into the beast’s palm. It snapped and splintered as the hand drew back and the behemoth roared in pain.

Seizing advantage of the creature’s distraction, Ruhildi raced around the side and sprang up onto his back. He tried to snatch at the dwarf with a bloody hand, but she nimbly dodged aside, and continued her leaping ascent.

Throwing Jarnbjorn, Saskia managed to sever another of the beast’s reaching fingers. Again, he went for her. She dove between his trapped legs, slicing at his inner calves with her claws and axe. A trio of white fuzzballs leapt off her back, racing up the monster’s legs after the dwarf.

Then she too began to climb, her claws sinking deep into the thick skin as she shimmied up his back. Rover Dog joined her a moment later, grinning like a loon.

It was getting crowded up here. She and Rover Dog were racing up its back, Ruhildi had almost reached the neck, and the adorribles…

She winced, feeling a sudden sympathy for the monster. He let out a high-pitched yelp and clawed between his legs.

Now that was a case of blue balls she wouldn’t wish on her worst enemy.

Ruhildi drew to a halt on the back of the behemoth’s head. She pulled aside a flap on her satchel, and from it poured forth…

Spiders.

Bone spiders, to be precise. Saskia had seen her crafting them back in New Inglomar, but she’d had no idea her friend had this many of them. She counted six of the tiny horrors scuttling around the side of the behemoth’s face, heading for his eyes and nose.

Meanwhile, the dwarf pulled out a long, slender sliver of stone, placed it point-first against the back of the head, and with a powerful surge of magic, sent it spinning, boring its way through the immensely thick skull.

The beast howled and reached out seemingly at random, trying to pluck his attackers free—minus a couple more fingers, thanks to Saskia’s axe. He only succeeded in slicing bloody trails across his own flesh.

Saskia and Rover Dog reached his throat, and began peeling it back with their claws, but it was a token effort. The behemoth was already done for.

They all leaped for safety as he came toppling down, carving furrows into the earth as he twitched and died. Blood-slicked bone spiders crawled out of his ears and nose and the ruins of his eyes.

A minute later, Princess Vask stood before them, her gaze shifting between Rover Dog and the newly risen behemoth looming over them like a meat statue. Then she let out a squeal and tackled Rover Dog to the ground. “For your contribution to my glorious triumph, I have decided to grant you the honour of laying with me one more time, sweet Rover.”

“How generous of you,” said Saskia dryly. “But this is hardly the time or place for that.”

“Princess welcome to try,” said Rover Dog grinning up at the two of them. “Any time. Any place. I not mind.”

Saskia had no idea which princess he was referring to. Right now, she didn’t really care. She kicked him, hard, digging her claws into his butt. “Get up! We’ve got to get our wing back, before we have to fight off this entire howlscape.”

“You dare lay a claw on my claim?” shouted Vask, glaring at her. “Why you’re nothing but a…” The princess’s voice trailed off as she beheld the hard stone flesh across Saskia’s chest and belly.

Looking down at herself, Saskia remembered that with her armour torn open, she was flashing her boobs. She hastily began to tie her vest shut with a rope from her backpack.

“Princess Vask,” said Rover Dog. “Princess Saskia. Not need fight. Sharing better. At same time, perchance?” His expression turned hopeful.

Saskia couldn’t decide whether to laugh or kick him again, so she did both. “Up! Now! Life-or-death situation, remember?”

Meanwhile, Vask’s eyes were nearly bulging out of their sockets.

“She is a princess!?”

Rover Dog nodded.

“Of what queendom?”

“Earth,” said Saskia. Actually Old Ulugmir. And I guess I’m more of a queen, given that Calburn’s avatar on this world is dead. But let’s not complicate things.

“I have not heard of such a place,” said Vask.

“It’s very far away,” said Saskia. “Get the hell up, both of you. I’m not going to say it again. This isn’t a good place for a chat.”

Staring daggers at her, Vask rose to her feet. Rover did likewise.

“’Twould be safest if we sit astride my minion’s shoulders,” said Ruhildi, pointing up at the behemoth.

Saskia gave a little shudder at the thought of riding a mangled corpse, even if he didn’t yet smell any worse than he had when he was alive. The dragon was different, because it had no flesh and its bones were clean. Still, her friend had a point. That thing could walk faster than they could, and most predators would leave them alone up there.

“Oh alright,” said Saskia. “All aboard, everyone.”

A giant hand reached for her, and she stepped onto the upraised palm alongside her friend. The behemoth raised them gently up to his shoulder, and they stepped across.

The hand lowered for the other two trolls. Rover Dog stepped aboard, but Vask just stood there, wrinkling her nose. “I am not going up there!” she snapped.

“Oh yes you are!” called out Saskia. “It’s either that or we leave you here. You can find your way back to the dracken, or stay here and die, for all I care. Your choice, princess.”

“I could bid my minion seize her,” suggested Ruhildi in a quiet voice.

“Let’s not go too far,” murmured Saskia. “I don’t actually want her as my enemy. She just rubs me the wrong way, is all.”

“Och, there’s a right way to rub you, then?” said Ruhildi.

“Oh yeah, there so is,” said Saskia, glancing pointedly at her troll with benefits.

Still glaring up at her, Vask stepped onto the behemoth’s hand beside Rover Dog. The undead creature lifted them up to his shoulder, where they sat next to Saskia. Then they were off, striding toward the looming rocky hill…which was actually Mr Underhill, the gigantic crab-thing that had snapped off the dragon’s wing.

“My outriders,” said Vask, peering up at the sky, which was now clear of both roptirs and giant bugs. “Where are they? I shall have them thrown in the dungeon for leaving me here!”

“Actually…” Saskia hesitated.

The silence lingered, until Vask demanded, “What is it?”

“I think they might be dead,” said Saskia. In the midst of the chaos of their crash she’d glimpsed one of the other roptirs falling from the sky. There’d been no sign of them afterward. And she doubted they’d just abandon their liege, no matter how annoying she was.

Vask’s face paled. Which was quite a feat, given how pale she was already. “I…hope that is not so.”

Saskia felt a moment of sympathy for the princess. Maybe there’s a decent person hiding under that prickly shell, she thought

“They should have fought harder,” added Vask. “Now I will have to pay recompense to their families.”

Or…maybe not.

“Just so you know, we’re heading straight into danger,” said Saskia. “The monster that knocked us out of the air—it tore off our dracken’s wing. We need to get it back.”

Vask glared at her. “You think I am afraid? A princess of Cloudtop fears nothing and no-one! I will slay the great lurker. In return, you will take me where I need to be.”

“Firespring,” said Saskia. “We’re heading that way ourselves. You’re welcome to join us—after we’ve retrieved the wing.”

The princess eyed Saskia disdainfully. “Yes, I see you are in dire need of a scouring. Have you no shame? Your skin is like rough-hewn granite. How could a princess let it become thus?”

Saskia shuddered. The whole idea of having one’s skin dissolved and regrown for the sake of vanity was just…nope. “Yeah well, you try being burnt to a crisp by an exploding worldseed.”

Vask stared at her, seemingly lost for words.

Saskia changed the subject. “I ask one more thing of you. After this is all over, you will try to get your mother to…uh, forgive what Rover Dog did. What we did when we made our escape.”

The princess barked out a single short, bitter laugh. “She will not listen to me. We had a…quarrel, over that very subject. I wish nothing but the best for my sweet Rover, but mother is a stubborn old…” She bit off whatever she’d been about to say.

Saskia sighed inwardly. Of course it wouldn’t be that easy.

“But if you, as a princess of a foreign queendom, lay claim to him…” said Vask. “She would have every reason to grant you both clemency. To do otherwise would be to risk war.”

Saskia turned to Rover Dog. “Could that work?”

“I not know,” said Rover Dog. “Minds of queens and princesses mysterious. Bodies less mysterious. Bodies, I like.”

“If you are truly a princess, how do you not know such things?” asked Vask.

“Princess, but not of Grongarg,” said Rover Dog.

“An exile?” said the princess. “That would explain much.”

“Enough questions,” said Saskia, who wasn’t in the mood to get into a discussion about her bizarre lineage. “Let’s just worry about getting out of here alive. Politics can wait.”

The princess didn’t reply for several long seconds. And when she did, it was with actions rather than words. She bit deep into her hand and held it out to Saskia.

Saskia eyed the bloody palm dubiously, recognising it as the trollish equivalent of spitting in your hand before shaking. Then she shrugged, bit into her own hand and pressed it against Vask’s.

When she saw how quickly Saskia’s self-inflicted wound sealed shut, the princess’s eyes went wide. “You have taken the divine dust!”

“Yeah, of course,” said Saskia. “My companion was injured.”

Vask looked at her blankly, apparently not getting the connection between arlithite and healing others. Understandable, perhaps, if she didn’t have any non-troll friends.

At that moment, something leapt up at them from the shadows. Saskia raised her axe to hurl at whatever it was, but before she released the blade, the behemoth snatched it out of the air, hurled it onto the ground and stomped on it, leaving a mangled, bloody pancake in place of the would-be predator.

“This magic of the dead you wield,” said Vask. “I have never beheld its like. Your queendom must indeed be powerful, to covet a worldseed that can bestow such a wondrous gift.”

“You mean it doesn’t creep you out?” said Saskia, surprised at the reaction. “Anyhow, that’s not me.” She pointed at Ruhildi, who had hopped up onto the back of the giant undead bird, with the adorribles sitting behind her.

The princess frowned. “That is a corpse too.”

“No, the dwarrow riding it—oh, I suppose she’s also…” Saskia still had a hard time thinking of her friend as a corpse.

Vask didn’t answer, but her astonishment was writ plain across her face. Undead beings who retained enough sense of self to cast spells were unheard of on this world, even if that kind of thing was a dime a dozen in video games and fantasy novels. There was no word for lich here. The term Hilmyr had used for her—revenant—was not spoken outside of the Skaenwyr Isles. None of her friends had heard it before—not even Ruhildi, who was supposed to be the expert in all things dead. In their experience, the dead were mindless automatons who acted out scripts devised by their necrourgist masters, not sapient creatures in their own right.

As they neared their destination, Saskia’s minimap stopped flickering, and map markers once again began to appear on it. This was a much faster recovery than last time lightning had disrupted her oracle abilities—presumably because the electric shock she’d received this time had been minor in comparison.

The dark violet marker on her map was telling her to get the hell out of here. If only she could.

Soon, they found themselves approaching the hollow beneath Mr Underhill’s rocky shell. The pincers and head must be lurking somewhere in there.

As for the wing itself, she could see…pieces. The bones were all there, and mostly intact, though chipped. But some of the metal blades had been broken off. Others were missing. Her oracle interface revealed no sign of them, so she could only assume they were inside the monster’s belly. Maybe it would choke on them.

Saskia exchanged a worried glance with her friends.

“We’d best dismount now,” said Ruhildi. “My minion will try to hold off the lurker, while we grab what we can. We won’t have much time.”

That made sense. The behemoth would be the biggest, tastiest target, so he’d serve as a distraction, while the three trolls hauled the wing pieces away. She was about to run in, when Ruhildi raised her hand, forestalling her.

“I’ve thought of a better way,” said the dwarf. She frowned in concentration, tugging on Saskia’s essence.

The scattered dragon bones began to wobble, then flop across the broken rocks, dragging the metal blades behind them.

“We’ll still have to fetch the snapped-off metal parts by hand,” pointed out Saskia.

“Aye,” said Ruhildi. “But let’s away these bones first.”

It was a good plan, with just one flaw. The clatter of bones and metal across the rocks made a huge racket.

A spindly forelimb emerged from the hollow, followed by a chitinous head, covered in swivelling eyestalks. It bore only a passing resemblance to a crab, up close. The pincers at the end of the forelimb were about the length of a troll—tiny compared to the limb itself—but there were several sets of them, snapping together like scissor blades. It was…a very odd creature.

“Change of plan,” said Saskia. “Time to send in the distraction.”

The behemoth lumbered forward, sending up clouds of dust as his feet pounded into stone and smashed aside boulders. Smaller skeletons and zombies hung off his body and swarmed in his wake. They were tiny gnats compared to the colossal crab-thing, but there was no reason to hold them back now.

Mr Underhill’s eyes swivelled to face its new meal. Then it darted forward, reaching with four limbs, and twelve sets of pincers. The behemoth leapt aside at the last moment, flattening an undead snake, before continuing its charge.

“Now!” said Saskia.

She and Rover Dog and Vask broke into a sprint, rushing forward to pick up the loose metal blades, and fling them to safety.

Above them, a battle of titanic proportions waged. Claws raked. Pincers snapped. Jaws fastened around flesh and chitinous armour. It was a battle that could have only one outcome. The only question was whether the behemoth and his entourage would keep his larger foe occupied while Saskia and her companions got what they came for.

The answer: almost.

Saskia had snatched up her third wing blade when a shout rang out. “Get out of there, Sashki!”

As if Ruhildi’s warning weren’t enough, an expanding pool of red light appeared across the ground around her. Hurling her burden out of the way, Saskia dove backward, landing awkwardly on the jagged rocks just at the edge of the telegraphed death zone.

A terrible grinding crash sounded at her heels. Rocks sprayed outward from the tips of twitching pincers gouging the earth behind her. Spears of stone drove into them from both sides—Ruhildi’s attempt to pin them in place. But it was the stone that broke, not the monstrously hard chitin.

Rolling to her feet, she kept running, even as her eyes frantically sought the other trolls. Vask was half-collapsed on the ground by Ruhildi’s side, breathing heavily. But where was…?

Her jaw dropped.

Rover Dog dangled from the tip of a snapping pincer, while the adjacent pincers clacked shut around empty air. Each of his swings took him narrowly out of reach of serrated chitin-blades that sought to cut him in half. Above the troll, a long blade of metal jutted from the inside of the scissor-like appendage. Between snaps, Rover Dog wrenched it free and tossed the shard of metal to the ground at Saskia’s feet.

Then, with a gravity-defying leap, he hurled himself onto a tall rock. Sliding down the side of the rock ahead of a flurry of swipes and snips, he hit the ground running. Mr Underhill kept up its furious assault, carving up the earth around him as he zigzagged and cartwheeled. Passing beyond the limits of its reach, he stopped and dusted himself off, while furious pincers ploughed the earth behind him.

Idiot, thought Saskia. This is the point in the movie where the shark leaps out and bites your head off.

The moment Rover Dog drew near, Vask turned and raked her claws across his face, before sweeping him up in a fierce hug.

“You bone-headed demoniac!” shouted the princess.

For once, Saskia was in complete agreement with her.

“Let’s pick up the pieces and get out of here,” she said. “I don’t know how fast that thing can move its hill-home, and I’d rather not find out.”

It was a slow journey back to the dragon, with the trolls hauling the assorted bones and metal parts as best they could. They had to stop several times to fight off predators along the way—although the corpses of said predators served as useful pack-mules thereafter.

By the time they returned, the sun had just begun to wobble below the horizon, and an uneven darkness was closing in. They found the area around the dragon strewn with huge animal corpses, churned up dirt, and smashed trees. Kveld stood guard in his obsidian form, while a pair of adorribles sat watchfully atop the dragon’s spine. Zarie sat inside, nursing her head. Saskia’s blood had run its course, and the tempest was much improved, but not yet fully healed.

“You have been busy,” said Saskia to her dwarven friend.

“You found the wing!” said Kveld, watching as they set the wing bones in place, and Ruhildi worked her magic to bind the bones together. He looked at Vask with a curious expression.

“Most of it,” said Saskia. “We’re missing a few of the metal blades.”

“’Tis but a temporary measure,” said Ruhildi, eyeing the bones with a critical expression. “Normally, my skeletal minions would collapse into a pile of bones the moment I release my magical hold on them. This dracken is not like that, though. The metal and arlium holds them together even without my magic. Necrourgy only serves to awaken them. But as for this wing…”

“It’ll fall off if you let your spell fade,” guessed Saskia.

“Aye,” said Ruhildi. “And I can’t repair or attach the blades here. For that, we’ll need a forge, and some spare metal. The dracken won’t fly like this. But it can walk.”

“Is there a forge at Firespring?” she asked the other trolls.

Rover Dog nodded.

“I guess we’ll be going the slow way then. At least it’s not that far from here.”

They piled the wing blades—and themselves—inside the cabin, and began the slow and shaky march to Firespring, surrounded by a growing entourage of Ruhildi’s pets.

There, they’d make their much-needed repairs, unearth the secrets of the Night’s Dream, and no way in hell was she going anywhere near those scouring pools.