Teller of Fate
Fifth Movement: The Power Under Glyph
Chapter Forty
* * *
After the Soldier had gone, Dævara sat in the cubby slowly ordering the cards and thinking of her own love. She hadn’t seen Bradwold in weeks and she missed him.
The Teller had a few minutes before her appointments with her carnal clients began and had a thought that she might just see where he was and when he might be here again.
The following thought was, ‘Why not?’
She shuffled and dealt. It felt a little like spying on him, which made her grin.
* * *
Dævara returned to herself from a grim reverie of her mother’s death to find her hands still on the cards scattered on the wooden surface; the room still as it was who knew how long ago.
She’d done her spying—Brad would be here very soon—and then later recalled the tragedy from her past that had made her a Teller.
She shook her head to dislodge the phantoms and began to gather the cards. As she did so, Dævara made a mental note to clear her schedule so she could give her lover all her attention.
The sudden return of the babble of the inn startled her. She looked up into the gold-filled grin of Gregarrt, owner and proprietor of the Griffin. “You’ve got clients waiting, Dæv.”
His smile slipped slightly when he saw her expression and the cards scattered on the tabletop, but he forbore to comment on what was for them an old argument.
She noticed his look and replaced her frown with a smile, stuffing the cards into the bag and making them disappear into her dress. “Who is it, then?”
“The Tork brothers.”
“All three?”
Gregarrt nodded, smiling.
“A dhiabhail [1]!” Her first session of the day was going to be a real workout. She should have taken some time to stretch rather than spy on Brad. “I’ll need a full bath after. An hour with them I’ll be a sticky mess, so I will.”
The big man laughed.
* * *
Bradwold, the Above-the-Hipbone Disemboweller, roared as the ettin, a two-headed eight-foot mass of ugly, scored his right thigh with its greatsword.
He knew that blade was poisoned. If the fighter didn’t treat his wound quickly it would be fatal. He had to finish the monster now.
He charged, screaming his war cry, and swung at the beast with his double headed axe in a flurry of strokes, most of which went wide.
They did succeed, however, in driving the creature back against the stone of the crypt. It lost its balance and fell sprawling across an ancient tomb.
Wasting no time, Bradwold waded in and hacked off the closest head. The sound of metal hitting stone echoed around the chamber. Greenish brown ichor gushed over the lid of the tomb, flooding the deeply incised runes carved into its top.
The stench from the thing was unbelievable. The ettin only grunted as it tried to stand. It was too stupid to know its wound was mortal and would continue to fight until blood loss killed it.
Bradwold didn’t have the time. Dancing around the struggling form, he tried for a twofer but succeeded only in burying his axe across the remaining face, splitting it below its bulbous nose.
The ettin started convulsing, ripping the axe from Brad’s hands. He ignored the loss. The Ettin would realize it was dead soon.
The fighter backed off and went for his pack.
Pulling out a potion of Cure Poison, he chugged it. A potion of Healing followed. In a few seconds, he was as good as new. He went to retrieve his axe.
Five frustrating minutes later, Bradwold had succeeded in working the axe loose from the ettin’s skull. A search of the body didn’t improve his temper.
A handful of silver, three gold coins and one flawed ruby. Eight hours cleaning out this dank and rotting dungeon and he had precious little to show for it.
Large, sparsely decorated blocks of unpainted grey stone defined the room. Two large entranceways to his left led back the way he came and on further into the catacomb. In the center, the tomb defiled by the bleeding corpse rose three feet above the flagstones.
A greenish light clung to the edges and corners of the space. It gave enough illumination to see by, though just barely.
Brad stood for a moment, jiggling the pathetic collection of swag in his hand, and thought about carrying on down the corridor.
He turned and looked at the tomb. The monster sprawled across it twitched still. ‘What the hell,’ he thought.
Leaving his gear by the nearest entrance, Brad walked over to the corpse. It didn’t look or smell any worse now that it was dead.
Skin he knew would look greyish in better light was scaly and greasy. It was built like a barrel on legs like bloated pig carcasses.
One four-fingered hand still clutched the ill-made sword it had used.
Brad climbed onto the tomb, figuring to push the ettin off. The cleft through the remaining face actually decreased its unsightliness a bit.
As Bradwold leaned over the thing its stench nearly cost him his lunch. He had to finish before it overwhelmed him.
This monster had so far proven to be the most annoying aspect of a most annoying day’s treasure hunting. The streak of poor luck continued.
The beast’s heavy uncured vest, which added to Bradwold’s olfactory joy, acted like rubber mat. The beast might as well have been glued down.
In the end, Brad ended up using its sword to lever it up and off the top of the tomb.
Exhausted and stinking, the fighter finally turned to the slab covering the grave.
Hopping down, he tried pushing it aside.
Naturally, it wouldn’t budge.
The fighter used one of his daggers to pry up a corner of the slab a couple of inches to peer into the gap.
There was a lip.
Swearing colourfully, Brad walked around to the far side of the tomb and returned, dragging the ettin’s huge sword again.
Five sweaty minutes later, the sword was jammed under the lid of the sarcophagus. Brad walked around to the far side again and pushed. His grunt was drowned out by the screeching rumble of stone on steel as the top slid leaving a three-foot gap.
Lighting a torch, he peered inside. What he saw left him speechless.
After staring for a few seconds, Brad ran back to the archway he entered from.
Holding his hands to either side of his mouth, he shouted, “Hey, guys! Little help here!”
* * *
Bradwold, standing in the tomb atop a lifetime’s worth of treasure, was filling his fifth bag with swag when he heard, echoing down from above, “Whatth the deal—oh my godth!”
He looked up fifteen feet to the lip of the false tomb.
Darmorel the Well-Spoken looked down at the three open chests visible from her vantage. One held gold coins, one gems, and the last one bolts of shimmery fabric.
“Where are the others?” Brad asked. “Never mind. Get down here, I need help.”
“Right.” She didn’t argue. One never did when this much loot was involved.
By the time she was down the rope he’d rigged up, the others had arrived. The dwarf fighter-healer, Elian Kneecapper, followed Darmorel down without even a greeting.
When the last member of their party, the female mage Quolamin the Well-Manicured arrived, Bradwold had her stay above to levitate the bags as they were filled.
The band of adventurers had been questing for this trove for most of a year.
The large chamber at the bottom of the shaft had been hiding the legendary Hoard of King Melvyn the Slightly Evil Demi-Bastard.
The legends hadn’t been exaggerating, for a change. By Brad’s estimate, half the treasure on this world’s hemisphere lay buried here.
In the end, they ended up using most of their spells, all their magical holding bags, and a good part of their energy to get everything.
It also took the rest of the day but was well worth the effort.
After dividing the swag up and paying off the debts they owed to various armourers, potion makers, and provision sellers, the four would still be able to loaf around and play Missions & Manor Houses® every day for weeks.
The hoard made a hugely impressive pile beside the skewed lid of the faux crypt.
At least it did until Quolamin did something wavy with her hands and made it go through a hole in the air. She would bring it back to them when they returned to Glyph.
“Let’s head back,” rumbled Elian in his from-nightmares voice.
Brad looked to Darmorel who nodded, and to the mage who said, “I’m low on spells.”
“All right, then. Let’s go. Who’s got the map?”
“I do,” said Darmorel.
After a few seconds consult, they headed back the way they came. They’d gone about a dozen steps down the corridor when the noise forced them to stop.
Coming up behind them were a dozen more ettins, just entering the room the band had left. The two headed monsters were moving fast.
“Run!” shouted Brad.
He took two steps before noticing the goblins coming toward them from the other direction. “Damn it!”
“Over here!” Without waiting to see if they would follow, Elian Kneecapper trotted back up the corridor a few steps and into a side hall.
Follow they did.
The hallway they entered was short, narrow, and ended at a door.
“See what’s in there,” Brad told Quolamin. “Darm, I want you in the second row using your bow. Elian and I will take the front. Quol?”
“Empty,” the mage called from the room behind.
“Good. Leave the door open. We can retreat there if it gets too much. How many offensive spells do you have?”
“Three Fireballs, a Chain Lightning, and about a dozen Magick Missiles,” spoken as she returned to the hall.
“Thought you were low on spells?”
“Low on non-offensive spells.”
Brad raised an eyebrow.
“Do I tell you how to hack things to bits?” Quol replied, looking her haughtiest.
“Fair enough. Get a fireball ready. Lob it into the main corridor as soon as you see the ettins. Everyone ready?”
Nods all ’round.
Brad pulled out his double-bladed axe.
Beside him, Elian already had out his huge, obscenely spiked mace. His eyes glittered; he was panting.
They didn’t have long to wait.
The goblins arrived first. The short, bandy-legged lumps of ugly began to die. There was little art to the battle.
The hall was narrow so there was no chance of the little buggers slipping past them. Darmorel fired steel-tipped arrows between the Brad and Elian, skewering a goblin through the head each time.
Brad and the dwarf, the latter of whom was screaming something nasty sounding in his own language, just short stroked down over and over splitting or crushing skulls.
Once or twice, Brad’s axe got stuck, but he could yank it free without too much trouble. By the time, the ettin’s showed up, the pair were both splattered in green ichor.
Bradwold didn’t notice the two headed giants until the Quolamin’s fireball sizzled overhead and splashed against the far wall of the main hall.
Two of the giants were caught and rapidly became fat torches. The rest hesitated, buying time to kill the last of the goblins.
The thirty or so goblin bodies made a fair barricade.
Ettins were nasty, but they were also slow and clumsy. After a brief consult, Brad decided to take a couple of steps back, while Elian stood off to one side crouched behind the dead goblin barricade.
Owing to the narrowness of the corridor, the Ettins could only come single file. When one made its way over the bodies, Elian Kneecapper would honour his patronym and Brad would lop off heads when they fell. Quolamin and Darmorel would direct Magick Missiles and Arrows respectively beyond the barricade, hopefully slowing the ones queuing to get at them.
Things were going well until one of Elian’s over enthusiastic swings missed its mark and buried itself in the ettin’s groin, where it stuck.
This had depressingly little effect on the monster’s rate of progress. Also, it stripped the dwarf of his weapon as the monster’s forward movement ripped the mace out of his hands.
Brad ducked the two headed beastie’s club, the head of which was fully half the size of the dwarf. It whizzed over the fighter’s head.
He tried an awkward swing as it passed, but only grazed it. Right past him it went, headed for the women.
This left the next ettin free time to climb the barrier with no one to lob incendiaries or arrows at him and no one to crush kneecaps.
As many as six others were lined up behind it.
Things might have gone badly if there weren’t four of the huge corpses already piled around. Darmorel and Quolamin dodged the ettin and hid behind one of the dead giants. Darm fired an arrow straight up one of the ettin’s four nostrils and into a brain.
Quol blew the other head clean off with a Magick missile.
The Ettin fell, majestic as an oak, back onto another of its deceased comrades.
Meanwhile Elian, robbed of his primary weapon, used his long dagger to hamstring the buggers.
The dwarf was mostly successful. The first two went down well and were dispatched by Brad.
The third one, however, managed to stagger over the barrier upright and swung a sword down surprisingly fast.
Brad managed to avoid a split skull, but the blade delivered a glancing blow to his shoulder, crushing the armour there and biting into his flesh.
His arm went numb. He couldn’t effectively wield his axe anymore.
As the ettin raised its blade for a killing stroke, Brad backpedalled right into another corpse, slipped, and fell prone. ‘That’s it,’ he thought. ‘I’m boned.’
Darmorel came leaping over him and delivered a wicked slash with her longsword.
Goo gushed across Brad’s legs as Elian came up from behind the ettin and did a proper job of cutting its legs out from under it.
Quolamin, of all people, joined the melee.
Robes flowing, she jumped the ettin from the top of two stacked bodies of its comrades.
Clinging to its hide collar, she buried the same dagger hilt deep into its four eyes in multiple quick tabs, grunting as she did so.
The beast tumbled backward as she rolled free, over the barrier and into the main hall.
Sliding on her knees, the mage came to rest, laughing and punching the air with her free fist.
Then everyone noticed that the hall was empty.
“There were a couple more, weren’t there?” Brad asked.
“Yeah,” Quolamin, from her vantage in the larger hall. “I can just see them heeling and toeing it away.” She was still chuckling. As she wiped down her knife, she stopped and frowned. “Ah shit!”
“What?”
“I chipped a nail.”
* * *
Elian did his healing thing.
Brad was the only one with a substantial injury, though everyone was banged up a bit.
After looting the bodies—waste not, want not—they hobbled back to the entrance, encountering no more significant resistance until just before the end.
An hour later and four levels up, they moved into the large room from which the stairs out of the dungeon led. The band of adventurers could actually see the greenish daylight of this world.
Between them and freedom were about thirty more goblins.
The band of adventurers were tired, dirty, smelly, and hungry.
Brad sighed, “Quol?”
The mage stepped forward and unleashed Chain Lightning.
It was loud crackling and roaring.
It was spiky blue light you had to squint at to see.
It was ten seconds of barely heard screams.
Finally, it was smoky air filled with the disturbingly appetizing smell of barbequed dungeon monster.
This time, they didn’t bother stripping the smoldering little corpses of their coin.
Picking their way over charred flesh, the troupe finally made their exit.
The portal was a five-minute stroll across this world’s healthy yellow vegetation under bright green skies.
Purple fur, the smell of vinegar and “Sporulate” opened a white vortex, and off to the Nonspace City they went.
[1] “Oh, fuck!”
— Gideon Jagged
Innsmouth, August 2026
© Gideon Jagged
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