The Shrine of the Skull III – The Light Returns

This is part three of an ongoing series. Follow the links to parts one and two

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Boots struck stone as Lofric raced through the maze, turning right at every corner. The darkness danced back from the glow of the cheap potion smeared on his shield. The musky scent of the beast was thick in the air, the promise of blood and death.

The right-hand branch to this madhouse had led nowhere, but he heard bellows echoing in its depths. He did not find its source on the left-hand path, which left only this central way, one with far fewer turns than the other two. Whatever lurked in the lightless tunnels must be here. He rushed towards his fate.

From time to time, he passed a pile of bones.

“Come here!” he yelled. “Come and find me, you spineless worm!”

He did not expect an answer, but an answer came.

The beast’s bellows bounded off the walls, shuddering in the air, and shattering the rhythm of Lofric’s steps. He stumbled on the next turn and slammed into the wall, coating his shield in grime. The glow faded. Lofric cursed and righted himself, directing the half-light at the hall ahead of him. It illumined an immense shape.

“Ventrasulf,” he gasped.

The figure stood half a head taller than Lofric, and an immense head it was, with wicked, curving horns. That huffing, bestial face sat on shoulders far broader than any man’s, though roughly human in shape. In fact, everything below the neck was broadly human, though immense.

It bellowed and stamped its foot.

Lofric was not a religious man, but it never hurt to hedge your bets in a desperate moment. He called on the Striker and hurled himself forward.

“Caidas!”

He crashed against it like a tidal wave–but the creature was a cliff. He broke against it. One great arm slapped his sword aside and a brutal shoulder struck his shield, hurling him to the ground.

He groaned.

The stamping foot came fast, but Lofric twisted aside, and it landed on solid stone. He skittered backward as the beast tried to stamp him again. He scrambled to his own feet.

Now it was the creature’s turn to charge. Black immensity rushed at the fighter and bowled him backward, pinning him against the wall. He tried to thrust with his sword, but it was pinned against his shield. He was being crushed between his shield at his shoulder and the stone at his back. The beast pressed harder, and the air rushed from his lungs.

Then a horn struck the wall beside his face. He had no breath to curse. The immense head twisted and sent the other horn crashing into the wall to his right. He felt flecks of stone pepper his cheek. The head twisted again, and the creature’s horn struck far too close to his eye.

He would be crushed, or he would be skewered through the face. He had a brief vision of the creature eating his entrails.

As Lofric struggled, he brought his right bootheel down at a very specific angle. There was a scrape and click. The fighter shifted his hip and kicked the creature’s calf with the small blade now jutting from his boot’s toe, and ripped out sideways.

The creature grunted, then shrieked. He kicked again. Having made some space, he drove his sword hilt into the beast’s snout. Then he struck it with his blade. He struck it again, now shouting as blood flew. The creature tried to bellow but could only gurgle.

Lofric screamed as he killed it. The tunnels echoed with the sound.

When those long seconds of butchery had passed, he was not yet finished. By the fading light of his grime-smeared shield, he found the monster’s horns. Again, his sword rose and fell. He hacked them from its skull.

Lifting high his bloody trophies, Lofric bellowed at the darkness.

     *     *     *

Comillas raced through the black tunnels. The screams grew louder as he skidded around the corner. Lofric was bent over an immense corpse. His shield lay on the ground beside him, slick and shining in the brightness of Comillas’s witch light.

“I’m late?” Comillas asked.

The warrior turned his crazed eyes on the mage and lifted an immense horn in his left hand. He yelled.

“You have a trophy,” Comillas observed.

The fighter grinned and gestured at the bandage holding his companion’s ear in place. “You have a scar!”

“That I do.”

“Good! This tunnel is ours!”

“Lead on!”

Lofric howled with delight and turned back into the blackness. Comillas went forward with him, towards the depths of the underhill, towards the heart of the shrine, towards gold and glory.

To Be Continued…