The Herald of Som: Chapter Three
Previously:
Tyruc’s attempts at self-preservation lead him into a Merrosian healer’s tent, but when monstrous creatures are unleashed upon the battlefield, Tyruc runs from another opportunity to help others.
The night had darkened, yet the flames had spread. Bodies littered the ground, a tripping hazard for those who were running for their lives.
Black smoke poured out of the port-listing Merrosian airship, but it continued to fire upon The Roc’s Wing and the troops below.
In his flight from the tents, Tyruc had become unsure of which way was which. Choking fumes coated the sky and obscured the stars. The howls of jackals echoed such that it was impossible to pinpoint from where they originated. All Tyruc could do was run, and he was sick of running.
Get somewhere safe, get somewhere safe, was the mantra looping in his head. But where was safe? Where could he go that the possibility of death would not follow? He had spent his entire adolescence convinced of his mortality, and now he was striving with every ounce of his being to make it through one more night. Get somewhere safe, get somewhere safe.
The smoke morphed Tyruc’s vision into an opaque approximation of reality. Something snagged against his foot and toppled him head-over-heels downhill until he dropped into a freefall over a hidden ledge, and he landed on his side at the bottom of a deep trench.
His right side screamed in pain from the impact, but he counted himself fortunate that he did not land on the pointed end of the healer’s dagger still in his possession.
He staggard to his feet. The smoke had not yet entered the trench, which clearly extended away from Tyruc in two directions. He stepped first one way, then the other, before committing to the path on his right and barreling forward. Get somewhere safe.
The sounds of war beyond the trench were muffled, which lent an eerie quietness to the twisting corridors of dirt. Tyruc thought he heard something moving at pace with him in the dark. If he stopped to strain his ears for the stomping of enemy boots or the padding of monstrous feet, he was met with silence. But soon as he moved down the path again, the maddening noise followed.
It’s an echo, he reasoned and quickened his steps.
Occasionally the path branched at right angles, and Tyruc took random turns in his desperate quest for safety. The longer he went, the surer he became that he was not alone. Was it a soldier? A jackal? Either one could be the end of me.
Tyruc turned down path after path, and the sky overhead dampened further due to the roiling smoke. Another turn, and he was met with a black void ahead. He knew the path continued on, that what he was seeing was just the result of the poor lighting worsening, but he could not help but fear what could be waiting in the emptiness before him.
His hesitation alerted him to a step behind him, but before he could turn and slash at it with the dagger, one hand slipped over his mouth and another pushed him against the trench’s wall.
“You’re being hunted,” a lilting voice informed him in a whisper. “And not just by me.”
A low growl came from the darkness ahead. So it was both, Tyruc thought before the stranger’s hand moved away from his chest and took the dagger from him. The stranger shifted, and what followed was a whoosh, a sharp yelp, and the scampering of multiple legs moving away from them.
“Bah, quick little bugger.”
Tyruc swallowed hard before tapping on the stranger’s hand still covering his mouth. The stranger released him, and Tyruc asked the first question that came to mind.
“Are you Orynian or Merrosian?” Neither side would be friendly to him, but knowing that detail would be pivotal to crafting whatever lies he needed to tell to get out of the interaction intact.
The stranger chuckled. “I always forget you Plainfolk can’t see in the dark. It must be terribly frustrating.”
One of the Deepfolk.
Without being able to see the man in front of him, he imagined the stranger looking like a caricature of the denizens of the dark: midnight skin, ram’s horns, and red eyes. They were generally a friendly people, but their strange looks and preference for subterranean living led many to adopt funny ideas about them.
“As to your question, it probably doesn’t much matter at this point.” The stranger shuffled, and Tyruc imagined he was now leaning against the opposite wall.
“How do you mean?”
“With the state of things out there, what country you belong to is the last thing on anyone’s mind. The ones who were fanatical about king-and-country were on the frontlines, and they’ve likely all been properly slaughtered by each other by now. The regular folks just want to see tomorrow, I’d wager, and being beset upon by monsters gave them the excuse to stop butchering other people and run for their lives.”
“And,” Tyruc dreaded to ask, “which are you? One of the regular folks, or…?”
He could hear the grin in the stranger’s reply. “I’m a hunter. I saw you take a header down the hill and decided to give chase.”
Tyruc’s blood ran cold. He was practically blind, so running was not a viable option, and neither was fighting now that his dagger had been flung by this stranger. “Why are you after me?”
“I’m not exactly.” That response would have relieved Tyruc had it not been for the follow up. “It wasn’t the smartest thing I’ve ever done, but I was given orders to hunt down those beasties loose on the field.”
“Do you mean that jackal?”
“That one and the two others that followed you down here, yeah.”
A beat passed before Tyruc responded in a frantic whisper, “You mean there are three of those things down here and we’re just standing around chatting?!”
“Well, I’m sorry,” the stranger said entirely unapologetically, “but do you know a better way to lure the blighters to us?”
Tyruc groaned and beat the back of his head against the dirt wall behind him. One thing after another, after another, and another.
Somewhere down in trenches with them, the characteristic howls, yips, and cackles resounded, and they seemed to be coming closer.
“This makes no sense. Why would you come down here?”
The Deepfolk stranger rustled, unsheathing something from the sound of it. “I told you; I’m on the hunt.” He paused before adding, “And it was the right thing to do.”
Arcane light flashed as the stranger threw something flat and rectangular down the passageway. For a split second, the object illuminated the jackal loping at them with its tooth-lined jaws yawned open, but it yelped when the shining projectile sliced down its gullet. A series of three more flashes, this time flung the opposite direction, revealed the other two hounds crouched and slinking toward the men. Every missile hit flesh, though Tyruc could not figure out what the thrown objects could be, nor did he get a view of the deadeye stranger.
The jackals scampered away, and the Deepfolk man cursed under his breath. “Hit-and-run tactics. I hate it when they do that. Guess I’ll just have to keep hunting.”
Tyruc felt an internal pull for the third time that night.
He had an impulse to go back and aid the two doomed conscripts. He felt responsible both to the Forestfolk healer and to the wounded in her tent. And now he felt it again; a desire to help this stranger and see him live out the night.
He could offer to help the stranger dispose of the jackals in the trenches, to not leave the man alone to face three of those beasts on his own. But no pangs of conscience could change the fact that Tyruc was a coward.
He dug his own grave, Tyruc rationalized. He came down here knowing what he’d find. He’s either capable of fending for himself, or he’s incredibly stupid.
As though he could hear Tyruc’s thoughts (which Tyruc was reasonably sure Deepfolk could not do), the stranger told him, “Run ‘til you find an exit. The buggers hold a mean grudge, so they’ll be after me instead of you.”
Tyruc was locked in indecision, not sure if he could flee for a third time from someone in trouble.
“Tick-tock, my friend. Either square up or get moving.”
Tyruc fled down the passageway, hating the stranger for his bravery but hating himself most of all.
Have I been here before? Tyruc wondered more than once.
The loamy walls bore no marks to distinguish one section from another, though it was not until he accidentally kicked something on the ground that he became certain of his circuitous path.
It was the healer’s dagger, flung there by the Deepfolk man.
He picked it up. There was no sign of the stranger nor of the jackals.
Tyruc came finally to a decision. The trenches were as good as a labyrinth, and there would be no escape from them by continuing to wander the earthen halls.
He dug the knife into one of the walls at the height of his thigh, scraped out a fist-sized hole, and then tested it with his right boot. The dirt foothold held up to the pressure. Emboldened, he carved out several more spots to facilitate his exit.
As Tyruc climbed his make-shift ladder, a strange thrumming sound pervaded the air beyond the trench. He pulled himself up to the lip, his arms supporting him across the ground and his hands scrabbling for purchase when he saw the source of the intensifying sound.
It was the end of the war.
In the sky to Tyruc’s right, electricity surged about The Aerwolf’s hull and up the prow. A steel orb on the bowsprit’s tip gathered the energy, concentrating it, creating that awful hum that vibrated Tyruc’s bones. It aimed across the sky at The Roc’s Wing, but the opposing airship had become a vibrating blur.
Tyruc blinked hard once and then rapidly, but it did nothing to dispel the mind-breaking image. The Roc’s Wing and the sky around it fluttered as though it were a painted portrait being violently shaken.
Then, the Orynian airship jittered forward in the sky, covering the vast distance in a blink to ram The Aerwolf in the starboard bow. Groans of breaking timber and bending steel wrenched through the air, as though the Merrosian vessel was screaming. Orynheim had struck a fatal blow.
But as the broken ship drifted back and split apart, the glowing orb on the bowsprit dimmed for only a moment. It then resurged, burning blindingly brighter, the thrum in the air growing unbearable, until all at once it detonated.
The explosion tore apart the forward halves of both ships. A concussive wave burst across the wasteland.
Tyruc was flung back into the trench and buried in several inches of sediment, which poured into his mouth and choked him. Disoriented and struggling for air, he clawed through the dirt, unsure of which way was up. Morbid hysteria raced through his mind, telling him he was already dead and buried.
What could be safer than your own grave?
Coming up in Chapter Four:
Tyruc’s desperate attempts at survival seem to have been for naught, but an otherworldly encounter could change everything.