The Savage Caves - Chapter 17
The Savage Caves: Original Story by T.H. Lain
A Fan-Fiction Reimagining: Walthus Proudstump
Chapter 17
Fidul stepped over to the bleeding Dulf, blood pouring out of the sword wound that had taken his left foot. The severed appendage lay a few feet to the side, oozing bright red blood and the stinking bugbear was groaning and growling curses. Fidul looked over at the little woman - he’d rushed forward, barely catching her before she could run and had slapped her hard enough that it knocked her senseless. Her head drooping, he’d undone his belt and shoved her unceremoniously against his waist. The belt acted like a rope and tied her to him. She passed out immediately after.
“Help Dulf stand!” Dulf shouted and Fidul reached down to take his forearm. With effort, the two bugbears managed to stand Dulf up and he hopped a bit. Blood continued to ooze out of his leg and Fidul thought Dulf looked tired. He was sweating heavily. The crippled bugbear scooped up his morningstar as he hopped to it, looking back at the man that had taken his foot. He growled, shifting over to him and bringing the weapon up for the killing blow.
The man was defenseless and Fidul would’ve enjoyed watching Dulf smash his brains in.
But instead Fidul made a grunting noise. Dulf turned, looking annoyed.
“What?” He shouted. The spiders nearby shifted away from that noise and seemed focused on Tazerg’s unconscious body. Fidul, who hadn’t spoken since he was a child and his older brother Virdul had stabbed him in the throat, grunted. He gestured to the man and mimed lifting him on his shoulder. He pointed to the small woman at his belt, shaking his head and growling low in his throat.
The other bugbear understood, it seemed, since he didn’t kill the man. He sat down, his already poor balance suddenly even worse. Fidul eyed his morningstar for a long moment and made a decision. He walked over to the man’s sword; it was a pretty, shiny blade that felt strong in Fidul’s hand. He liked blades. They always felt good and cutting felt nice. He walked over to Dulf. The other bugbear was breathing heavily and looked up.
“Dulf need help, get back to Rezrek.” His voice was a little raspy but Fidul was sure he’d live even without a foot.
Fidul shook his head at his companion, kicking his foot out hard and knocking several teeth from Dulf’s reeking mouth. He fell back, whimpering and bringing his paws to his smashed face. He growled and Fidul kicked him again, shoving him closer to the edge of the bridge. The spiders simply watched, their glassy black eyes taking in the scene emotionlessly.
“Rezrek…know Fidul kill…Dulf.” The bugbear croaked out, trying to shift to his knees. There was too much blood though and he kept slipping.
Fidul smiled. He pulled his new weapon back and leveled it at Dulf’s chest. The simple armor there was barely enough to keep the tip from pushing right into Dulf’s chest. The wounded bugbear growled, softening his face.
“No kill, Fidul. Dulf friend.” He said, fear filling his yellow-orange eyes.
Fidul said nothing. Could say nothing.
The armed bugbear pulled the blade back and shoved it into Dulf’s chest. It erupted from his back in a spray of gore that splattered some of the nearby spiders. They chittered and moved away, closer to the giant mother that still stood watching Tazerg’s unconscious body.
“Dulf…friend.” Dulf said as he stared down at the sword sticking through his chest. His breath was a wheezing gasp, gurgling coming from deep in his throat. Fidul drew the blade out of his companion slowly, his hideous laugh covering up the sound of Dulf gasping as the blade scraped out of his body. The dying bugbear looked up, confusion and fear in his eyes. Fidul put his booted foot onto the other’s chest and gave him a hard kick, sending the bugbear tumbling over the edge just like two humans had. Fidul was sad he didn’t get to crush the man’s skull but now he had a nice new shiny blade.
And the other things the humans had. A shield. A stick. A mace. He looked over them and tossed each of them down into the dark waters below. He didn’t need anything but the sword.
collected these, grabbed the man’s unconscious body and slung him over his broad shoulder. Fidul passed Tazerg, thought better about leaving him to be eaten by spiders, and picked the little goblin up and shoved him right beside the small lady.
Rezrek would want Tazerg alive. At least for a little bit,
Fidul’s laugh filled the empty cavern and the spiderlings, along with their gigantic mother, shifted back into the shadows from where they’d crawled.
Jozan’s head swam. A deep, pervasive throbbing filled his ears and for a long moment all he could visualize was the ocean. He’d never seen an ocean. His cloister had been landlocked, with little access to such tomes that might hold tales from the oceans of Oerth and he’d never made a pilgrimage to see one. Other things had taken priority in his life or steered him in directions away from such natural wonders as great bodies of water. As he opened his eyes, which slowly focused on what lay below, he felt his stomach drop out.
He dangled upside down. Below him lay an expanse of black water, dimly lit by the lichen strapped to his body. Dark ripples rolled away from him in a constant pattern, as if the water beneath him were striking a shore out of his vision and returning to him, endlessly shifting. The thought to reach his hand out filled his mind but the priest shook his head. The vertigo he felt worsened considerably and he sighed loudly.
“A poor choice.”
The silence of the place greeted his comment. He looked down - or up, he supposed. He could see his legs, trapped in a thick white webbing that clung to a stone wall on one side and a collection of jagged rocks jutting from the water below. They looked like a great beast’s teeth; all sharp edges and promises of death dealt if someone fell on them. The webs had caught him, he realized, as the memory of his head being crushed flowed back to him along with an intense headache. He felt his ears. Surprisingly there was no blood but the sides of his head were so very sore. He gingerly touched them but still winced.
The bugbear had almost cracked his skull open, like an overripe melon. He shuddered inwardly. He looked around for Naull. As he fell, the priest was certain she’d also fallen. The web, he reasoned, must have been hers. He blinked his eyes but his vision would not clear. He needed to get his right side up before he could do anything else. He tried to pull himself up but it was no use; he wasn’t strong enough to hold his body up, not with all of his armor on. He gave up after a few tries, looking around through his hazy vision in an attempt to find the young mage.
“N-Naull?” He called out, answered by the echo of his own voice. He felt he sounded very scared in that moment and bit back the fear crawling up his throat. He needed to free himself. He looked down - considerably easier than the other option, and could only guess how far the water was. Less than ten meters, he thought. The fall would hurt but it shouldn’t kill him.
He hoped. Swimming was also not something he had any particular skill in, especially in such heavy armor as his scale. He considered cutting the leather straps that helped keep the armor in place but it was no use. It would be very difficult to worm his way out of the armor and then he’d be defenseless. He’d lost his mace, Regdar’s shield. Losing his armor would help no one.
“Pelor,” he called out in the soft blue hue surrounded by darkness. “Please. Your servant begs for your grace. How can I free myself? Where is Naull?” There was no answer - only the sound of water lapping against stone.
I am strengthened by His presence, which is ever with me, Jozan thought. He fumbled for his holy symbol, feeling another wave of dizziness pass over him. He held the symbol tightly and tried to imagine the light of Pelor radiating out from his body. If he could burn the web, he could be free of it. Then he might find where Naull was. Or he might drown. Jozan closed his eyes and tried to focus. From his right, outside of his field of vision, he heard a soft noise. He twisted his body, swinging back and forth, trying to see what it could be.
Naull was laying above him, just at the edge of his vision it seemed. The young woman was face down in the webbing, her left arm hanging through one of the many spaces created by the thin strands. She groaned softly. He felt a sudden worry spill over him and he called out to her.
“Naull! Wake up, Naull! Are you alright?” His voice echoed again and he pushed away whatever dark thoughts he had about creatures living deep beneath the soil in this water that concealed everything. He almost succeeded.
She stirred.
“Come on, Naull. Please. Wake up.” He squeezed his hands on the symbol and called to mind the words for a simple spell; one he’d learned in the cloister as a much younger man. A gift of Pelor to the scholar.
“Sacred Sun,
Light-Bringer.
Give your servant grace through your flame,
Eternal and unquenchable.”
A small, ghostly golden flame appeared around the holy symbol in Jozan’s hand. He closed his eyes, imagining it caught in a gentle breeze and sighed. The flame, dancing slowly and softly, shifted away from his symbol and coiled towards Naull. The twinkling candle flame hovered in front of the woman’s face for a short moment and she groggily opened her eyes, blinking several times as she did so.
“J-Jozan?” She said, nearly falling through the holes in her own spell. She yelped and Jozan shook his head.
“Yes, I’m here. Below you.” He dangled, slowly shifting back and forth.
“Oh, well - that’s not the best place for you to be, now is it?” Her voice was a little harsh and Jozan suspected it was all the screaming as they’d fallen to their deaths. He must sound awful as well.
“Better than the alternative, I think.” He tried to spin and look at her but the webbing resisted, turning him away once more. “Thanks to you. You saved us.”
“Luck saved us,” she replied.
“Lidda will be happy that at least Olidammara looked kindly on someone today.” He said with a soft chuckle.
Naull laughed in turn but disagreed. “No, she’ll damn him for not making her the lucky one.”
“You’re a quick study of people, Naull.” Jozan said with more seriousness than he’d expected from himself.
She said nothing but he could feel her move. She was gingerly moving over the webbing towards him. She crouched, her boots sticking to the material and seemed off balance.
“Let’s get you out of this.” She finally said, looking over where his foot was caught - he dangled perhaps three feet from where the bulk of the web stretched the expanse and held them in place. He nodded.
“How do you plan to do so?” He asked, another wave of vertigo washing over him and making his stomach lurch. He felt like he was going to vomit but he closed his lips, pressing his tongue against the roof of his mouth. A trick he’d learned on his travels. Ministering to the sick had given him more insights than even the cloister had.
“Honestly, I have no idea how long I was out. I’m surprised that the spell is still functioning-”, the mage was cut off by her own scream as the spell unraveled beneath her feet. Jozan was suddenly free - to fall headfirst into dark water almost a dozen meters below. He flailed, luckily managing to get his feet underneath him as he slammed into the water. He felt as if he’d struck solid ground; the air was forced out of his lungs and he felt the weight of his armor drag against him. He pumped his arms, trying to swim up even as he realized he didn’t know what direction that might even be,
He managed to surface, gasping and sputtering for air. He grabbed for something, anything to hold onto but there was nothing but more water. He cried out, trying to see Naull through the water and fuzzy vision he still had from hanging upside down for however long it was. He felt his leg, the one caught by the web, cramping. It seized and pain shot through his body. He had to keep swimming. He had to or he would die. He paddled, still sputtering and water got into his ears. He couldn’t see much, couldn’t hear much and realized that the water was freezing cold.
Jozan knew he would die here. He was going to drown.
Jozan heard garbled words, maybe in Naull’s voice, as his strength gave out and he began to sink.
The priest closed his eyes, asking for Pelor’s mercy for Naull.
Let her live, Pelor. Let your light guide her, please.
There was a surge of moving water beneath his feet and Jozan knew some great, terrible creature was swimming up between his legs to drag him further into the dark depths. He instinctively kicked down, feeling something hard but yielding against his boots. It felt like he was kicking flesh but the water made it impossible to understand what it was - and he was blind, drowning and panicked.
The creature slipped between his legs and he had the most uncomfortable, but familiar, sensation as the thing and Jozan started to rise. It felt like he was astride a horse. The water rushed around him and, though his eyes were still closed, Jozan knew he was moving upwards towards the surface of the blackwater. He breached it suddenly, gulping air and coughing from the effort of holding his breath for so long. He spit water out of his mouth, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand as he desperately looked around for Naull. The young mage was softly treading water, looking soaked but well enough. She held a long piece of parchment, vellum he thought, in her left hand and there was a strange misty white smoke spilling off of it as she held it aloft. The mist swirled around and drifted towards him. It seemed to form the translucent figure he now sat upon; an ethereal black horse, with a grey mane and tail. The horse seemed to be formed from smoke, which constantly shifted and ebbed like it was in a soft breeze.
Jozan felt unnerved but grateful. The horse was keeping him from drowning. But how? He looked down and noticed its hooves, which were insubstantial smoke, stood right upon the surface of the gently moving water without disturbing it. As if it walked upon the water. He was taken aback. His hand instinctively went to the saddle and there a fine leather saddle sat, along with a bit and bridle that led to the horse’s inquisitive-looking face. It whinnied at him and nodded.
“What is this, Naull?” He asked, turning to see the woman let go of the parchment. As it floated away from her, the entire thing seemed to unravel before the priest’s eyes; as if it were made of some gossamer that could not sustain itself in the water. The vellum disappeared into the dark water and Naull paddled her way towards the horse. Jozan reached his soaked hand down but the woman shook her head.
“Sadly only the rider can be held aloft by the spell,” she commented, wiping her wet hair from her face as she tread water. She motioned to the gravity defying steed and smiled. “A gift from my mentor, Larktiss. A phantasmal horse - potent, indeed, I would say.”
“I would as well. A fine steed.” He patted the creature’s neck and he found it to be surprisingly solid. The horse responded by shifting its head back and forth, apparently satisfied with the pats. “Can it move?”
“Oh, it can do quite a bit more than move. But you command it.” Naull said.
“Why not summon it for yourself, then?” Jozan asked, his tone confused.
“It seems of the two of us, I am the one that can swim and I’m not burdened with armor. Seemed the right choice to me.” She smiled at him and he couldn’t help but return the smile. The priest nodded in response.
“Clever, as always.” He commented, turning his head to look for a place the girl might swim to.
“Sometimes,” she said with a somewhat sad tone. He looked at her but she shook her head. “Another time. Let’s find a dry place to be.” She looked around and then back at him. “You can command the steed to move, Jozan.”
He looked confused for a moment but nodded, taking the reins in his hand and gently turning them over his wet palms. They certainly felt real enough and he was reminded of his other horse, the one he’d left in Fairbye. He hadn’t even named the horse, he thought.
Smokey would be a bit too on the nose, he mused.
He was happy to see that the summoned horse was not soaking wet. He squeezed his thighs and the horse nickered, moving forward along the surface of the water. He marveled at the fact that it didn’t disturb the water and just - floated, really. It was interesting but bizarre all the same.
“Magic,” he said aloud. A very different sort of magic than he was certain of.
As Naull tread the water near the horse, Jozan guided it forward. The beast was only happy to clop its way across the water. He hadn’t expected it to make noises as it walked on water but its movements were completely silent. Somehow that was more unnerving than the floating. The light blue of their moss showed the way; this was a large, open area that was filled with water and a huge collection of fallen stones, some so large that with the simple illumination that they had Jozan could not see their ends.
They passed a floating body as they followed the slow moving current, Naull keeping pace but looking obviously tired. Jozan took the reins and draped them down for her as they drew closer to the corpse. “Here,” he said, motioning to her. “It may not be able to carry you but this might make it easier on your arm.”
She seemed happy to oblige. She wrapped her uninjured arm into the loop of the reins and winced, settling herself as comfortably as she could. They reached the corpse and Jozan realized it was one of the bugbears from before. It lay face down, clearly dead from the gaping hole in its chest. It had become stuck against a stone before sinking, it seemed. The creature reeked and though it was clear it hadn’t been dead for that long, it certainly smelled like it had died many days before.
“Do you think this means Regdar and Lidda killed the two bugbears?” Naull asked.
“Maybe. He didn’t do this to himself but I can’t be certain. I would need to examine the body more thoroughly and that’s not possible I think.” He held his hand to his face, covering his nose. “Nor would I wish to.”
She nodded. Jozan guided the horse away, which stared impassively at the dead thing as if it barely even registered it.
“Does the horse sense things?” He asked her after a few moments, the two passing through a small slit in the natural stone through which water flowed more quickly. Down perhaps, Jozan though.
“It can, though it is limited. It isn’t a creature like those summoned from the planes, though.” She shifted and continued. “It lacks substance and is chiefly a quasi-real creature.”
“Strange.” He touched the horse again and felt its very real flesh beneath his fingers.
“But useful. I’ll have to thank Larktiss, again, when I see him after this.” She commented.
“Has it been long since you’ve seen him last?” Jozan asked.
She shook her head. “Not at all.” She chuckled.
The two passed further into the crevasse, surrounded on all sides by high stone walls with jutting rocks that looked razor sharp. Honed over years of water wear. Jozan and Naull could not see the top, save for a few jagged stones that seemed to reach down towards them; the hungry fingers of some lost giant. The priest heard Naull breath deeply.
“This place is ancient.” She said with a mix of awe and what sounded like reverence to the older man. He looked at her and in the blue light she seemed somehow more than he had thought before their fall. She was not worldly. But only in his own terms for such things. Her knowledge was considerable and that needn’t threaten him, even if her methods struck difficult parts within him.
They shifted forward for a short time but it was difficult to gauge the passage of such, deep in the ground without the sun above.
The path led further, deeper down, until finally spilling out into a wider cavern. Several small outlets, like underground rivers, seemed to lead this way. In fact, Jozan realized as the horse bore them forward, it was a huge cavern. The largest they’d come into so far and it seemed to stretch out forever. There was a small shore of dark colored pebbles and sand. Jozan directed the floating horse, which leisurely made its way to dry land and Naull rolled onto her back as they stopped. She breathed more comfortably and Jozan dismounted, somewhat poorly, and moved to her to administer healing.
“Just a moment and I’ll ease your shoulder. It may linger somewhat afterwards, the pain, but you’ll be able to use it without too much discomfort.”
She smiled, placing a freezing hand on his arm. “T-thank y-you, J-Jozan. I think t-the water was c-c-colder than I e-expected.” She was shivering and he nodded, drawing his hand over her shoulder and closing his eyes to focus himself. A clear mind made calling upon Pelor’s power much easier; a skill he had driven into him by cudgel and viciousness. But one that had served him.
The priest looked around, seeing that there was little other than the river they’d come in on and that continued deeper into the massive cave. The summoned horse shifted back and forth, now fully touching the ground. Several very tall boulders, conical in shape, sat roughly ten meters away and for a moment, in the dark, Jozan thought he saw movement at one of the bases. But as he watched, nothing moved. He shook his head.
As Jozan called the words of power to his lips, he realized he was also freezing but for whatever reason had not felt such astride the horse. He wondered if the beast also calmed the rider. He turned his mind to his healing, feeling the familiar warmth spread out from his palms and suffused the woman’s wounded shoulder.
He did not see the slow moving, hidden tendril that gently shifted through the dirt towards the two of them.
He did not hear the soft shifting of rubble as it drew closer, seeking their warmth.
He did not feel the weight of the creature’s gaze as it drew its massive, unnatural maw open in the deep darkness just out of their light, hungry for more than simple goblin flesh.
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