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Nametag:rook
LICH FATHER LICH SON
Red Sonja pulled herself off the man panting and sweating and
then just before she stood up yanked her dagger out of his
eye socket.
The still living man at her back spoke, "I am impressed.
There are few weapons that can slay a werewolf."
She half turned to him. He was a man in his prime. Handsome
in face and well muscled in body. Pity he was a wizard.
She considered throwing her dagger into his eye out of sure
principle but the four young women warriors he had clustered
about him had their bows drawn and she had no illusions that
doing so would be her last mortal feat.
Besides... werewolves. The cockroaches of the undead. It had
taken her forty minutes and cost her every weapon she had on
her to slay but one of them. And that thankfully because the
dagger she had pilfered from it's own sheath during the fight
must be enchanted. For everyone knew that normal weapons can
not kill a werewolf.
In that span of time the wizard and his four followers had
managed to kill twenty of the things. She calmly slipped the
dagger into her sword belt harness and turned fully upon the
wizard.
The wizard looked her up and down and then seemed to make up
his mind. He turned and motioned behind him as he now spoke,
"that fishing village you passed through. They are all
werewolves. Left over remnants of a shore guard for the
ferrying point to-" he cut himself off and turned to look in
the opposite direction over past her own shoulder and nodded.
They stood upon a rocky shore of large black stone twisted,
jagged, and cragged by eons of raging waves. The air was wet
with mist from the crashing sea and the sky was black over
head with spent storm clouds and white at the horizons with
the late after noon sun.
Over the wizards shoulder was a crumbling fishing village
that looked as if it had been made entirely out of drift wood
and tarred gray rope.
Over Red Sonja's shoulder and where they now all looked, a
black island thrust out of the turbulent sea. It rose like a
ship prowl upon the beating waves and cresting it was a large
stone structure of black rough hewn rock.
"Fortress Mandrake," the wizard finished his long paused
speaking with a frown and fell into a brooding silence.
Red Sonja cast glances around her for weapons to scavenge.
Other than her own broken sword and shattered shield and
cracked bow there were only the bodies of the dead werewolves
and the dagger in her sword belt. She sighed and then scowled
at the four young women in their shimmering armor under their
cloaks and their many hilts and drawn bows who smirked back
at her with deadly intent.
There was a low chuffing sound from the slight rise of hills
that lead back from the jutting shore. The wizard turned his
head rapidly in its direction and began to speak. "Most of
the pack have gone feral and live in the woods. We have been
lucky so far. Let's not press our luck any further. The
fishing village was never a fishing village but the point of
departure for thousands of prisoners to the fortress. Let us
hope the few who continued to live in the village kept up a
few of those boats or we are done for."
He turned to the village and he and his four companions began
to make their way towards it; their magical weapons glinting
under the black churning sky. He stopped suddenly and spoke
over his shoulder at the red headed girl. "We are making for
the island fortress. I have no idea what we will find there
but I am sure it won't be pleasant. Bringing a young girl to
such a place is far from kind, but leaving you to face a pack
of feral werewolves... well, you are welcome to come with us
if you-"
He didn't get a chance to finish his spoken offer for Red
Sonja was already silently sprinting past him. She now spoke
over her shoulder back at him, "if I find a sea worthy craft
first then you will be welcome to join me!"
There were no less than four of such craft. Two rotted in the
boat shed quays lay half sunk in the water. One was upside
down out of the water and the last was in the water of the
wharf shed and had taken on water but still seemed sturdy
enough.
The crafts were all very large and made of heavy black
timber. Designed to transport by oar forty prisoners at time
it was obvious that it would be a monumental work for all six
of them to operate one such craft in the tumultuous sea.
They eyed the vessel in dry dock and the open berth ready to
receive it. It would be best to see if they could lever that
boat over and into the shed's slip. But as they mused how
they could accomplish this task that would have required a
dozen men at least. There was the sound of grunting and
shuffling beyond the desiccated gray walls.
A quick eye to the boat house unshuttered window showed a
dozen shapes blurring about the town's muddy streets.
With no choice, they tossed their backpacks into the gray
weathered black wooden craft shin deep in icy water and
locked oars designed for two men to wield a piece into the
chocks.
Tared ropes were cut causing the ship to bang against the
pilings like a roaring drum.
The water shed doors were chain locked. And a frantic attack
with axes by two of the young women guards set up a frightful
din as werewolves now began to attack the shed in bloodlust
fury.
The werewolves attacked the barred doors, tore at the window
jambs to squeeze through where shutters had long fallen away,
ripped at the roof and sides and even came from under the
side walls and front locked doors of the shed; as the walls
and gated sea ward door was a foot above the water's flood
line.
In an instant the interior and exterior of the large boat
shed was covered in foaming savage werewolves who had not
known their own human form in decades if not longer.
Magic spells and weapons wimpled and warped the air and blood
danced everywhere.
It was the teenage Red Sonja who willingly set everything
ablaze. Barrels of pitch and tar and lantern oil sat amongst
the hemp ropes and piles of rotted sail and cords of wood.
The nautical necessities of oils against water exploded in
balls of flame and in moments the entire shed was an inferno.
The door barring exit from the shed to the sea fell away in
cracking flame and hacking axe blows and the ship was
wrenched free from its mooring berth burning its self into
the heavy swells of the jetties head.
They lived. All six of them worked the back breaking oars as
the entire village went up in smoke and cinder and ash and
werewolves danced wreathed in flame back to their black woods
that topped the low hills.
Once free of the breakers there was several panicked minutes
where everyone bailed out water as fast as they bucketed it
in to put out their flaming craft.
But the ship was built for these waters and for hauling heavy
cargo. It was more a barge than at a proper boat.
Broad in breadth and shallow in draft the high sided boat
lugged this way and that half in cinder and half in flood
listing more side ways than prowl straight yar for the black
looming island of rock.
The distance to the island was not great. But because of the
sure size of their vessel and few number in crew it was a
long struggle that took the ends of the day to achieve.
They slammed into the docks and made fast at the roots of the
island well after nightfall.
It was a terrible and forboding place. Not a twig, not a
weed, grew upon its great expanse. A blasted spit of inky
black rock upon which a huge stone structure sat. All the
world looking like some foul huge king of toads upon its log.
It's unbroken malevolent gaze for the centuries to shudder
under.
In the dark with hip lanterns feebly gleaming they made their
way up the wide unkept uneven stone stair case from the
rotted half collapsed piers; up to the towering building
overhead.
The wizard began speaking again as they carefully ascending
picking their way in the dark and increasing winds. The
broken storm was mending its self and with nightfall coming
back with a fury of wind and thunder.
"It wasn't always a prison. Rumor is that in the second age a
race of giants built it to protect their shores from monsters
from the oceanic depths. In either case, it has been used as
a sea fortress for as long as men have known of its
existence."
"Not easy to man though. No fresh water or vegetation on the
island. Every drop of water and every mouthful of food has to
be porter in; thus the fishing village on the shore."
"The king of Mandrake took it by forfeiture in war with the
collapse of the Sea King's bloodline in my great
grandfather's time. His son, was served by my father, Elias.
A powerful wizard who won him many battles and thus extended
his lands and holdings into the Mandrake empire."
"When that king died my father then served his son, Mandrake
the third, Calvin, was his name. Under him there were no more
wars. Calvin was only interested in money and pleasure. My
father took up residence in this fortress and started an
extensive study in arcane sorceries long lost."
"Calvin, indulged him, and sent him many 'subjects' for his
studies."
"Then the mines went dry in the Elephant Hills and Calvin
found himself with thousands of prisoners and no mines to use
them in or war ships needing to be oared. So he declared the
fortress to be a prison and sent them there. Where my father
used them in increasingly twisted studies."
"It was around this time that my older brother, Malachi,
journeyed to join my father and take up sorcery studies under
him while assisting him in his experiments. His letters to me
grew increasingly unsettling."
"A few years latter I came of age and expected to join my
father and brother but was instead directed by them to
journey to the distant lands of Ser'an and take up a
residency study there. It had all been arranged without my
prior knowledge but as the younger son I was lucky to have
had any prospects what-so-ever. So off I went and spent the
last ten years in study in the arts of magic and ancient
lore."
"My exchange of letters with my brother continued. My father
was not much one for letters or talking. But as the years
wore on and my brothers letters grew stranger and fewer I
became increasingly alarmed at the state of things in that
fortress prison."
"It seems in those final years, Calvin, who was now seeping
into an early old age brought on by too much excess of women
and wine, had become very interested in my fathers studies of
life extension. Of spells and enchantments designed to cheat
deaths triumphal hour."
"He began to pour his dwindling coffers into my fathers hands
and in the last years of his life took up permanent abode in
the fortress its self. Leaving his tattered country to wither
up and eventually be cut up by neighboring kingdoms without
lifting a finger or showing the slightest concern."
His army, his revenues, everything gone. The entire kingdom
became just Mandrake Fortress Prison and the sliver of
hinterlands of the jetty and shoals and that fishing village
now a smoldering ruin. Apparently he had enough treasure
brought with him to keep the fortress supplied through
merchant trade for it is impossible that his ghost of
holdings could have been taxed or farmed to feed what
remained inside that blasted hulk of rock."
"I am not sure when he died. My brother's letters had stopped
before then. But all of them sealed up in those ghastly walls
were all insane by that time. Of that I am sure. I completed
my studies and taking my leave of my master I decided to come
here and see what traces remain of the last years of my
father and brother. For this place fell into silence to me
and all outside its walls over four years ago."
The wizard stopped having somewhat breathlessly reached the
top of the winding staircase before the huge iron gate of the
vast low stone structure.
Red Sonja pushed past him and hissed over her shoulder, "if I
give you my last ten pieces of silver would that shut you
up?!"
*************************************************************
The stone structure virtually covered the entire surface of
the barren isle. Some of it had in fact melded into the sea
as tides and time had shifted things.
Despite this it was a seamless structure. A single building
housed entirely in heavy stone. Its cyclopean nature
consisting of huge stones without mortar so clean jointed
that not a parchment could be wedged in their hair thick
fissures. It rose up a hundred feet to a stone flat roof of
the same mammoth construction.
The gate was of heavy iron so thick that its rusted pitted
surface could have stood centuries more before feeling the
red bit of corrosions chew.
It was bolted from the inside and even if it had not it would
have taken a team of twenty oxen to swing its heavy forty
foot tall doors wide.
Red Sonja passed an experienced thieves hand over the
irregularly shaped but well fitted stones. Before dropping it
to her side. "We had better search the areas sunken to the
sea and hope some collapsed point will gain us entry for
nothing in steel or sorcery is going to force its way in
here."
"There are windows on the seaward docks approach. Heavily
barred and combined with the islands rock base a good two
hundred foot climb but far more likely for entry than
submerged structures in a seething sea." The wizard rubbed
his chin as he gazed at the massive door and then sighed and
turned his step back along the stair case to where it joined
with the sharp rough rocks that made up the structures base
and eventually would take them to its side overlooking the
docks and where several large barred windows sat.
Red Sonja said nothing but joined the party as they picked
their way carefully through the razor sharp rocks that gave a
thin uncertain ledge to the base of the building.
The difficult task of moving around the side of the building
to its front where it towered sheer above the wharfs's was
made no easier by the storm now raging in wind and lighting
and rain.
The climb up the rock face of the building would not be an
easy one even for Red Sonja's experience and when she offered
to climb with a rope coiled around her shoulder to which she
then intended to fasten it to the bars of the window and
drop it down to ease the ascent of the others; not a single
voice was raised in protest, nor a single eye showed the
slightest dissent.
Up the waif went. In a sea storm. Up a sheer rock wall of
well fitted stone. A hundred feet above a crashing sea full
of needle sharp breakers. Up. In lightening dance and sky
fury. Up. As sky and sea became one. Up. Beyond compass
point. Beyond senses. Up. Until her muscles cracked and her
bleeding fingers went numb. Up until all of existence was her
ragged lungs burning and her shaking limbs motion in a wash
of endless blackened gray. Up.
She reached one of the barred windows over a hundred feet
above the lashing waves and was amazed at its size. The great
arch was the size of a city gate and its iron bars the width
of her narrow waist. She could easily walk through their
gaps. Giants indeed!
She fastened the rope around the shaft of one of the iron
bars and tying a heavy knot in its end to give it some weight
she flung it downwards.
Even with the rope it would be a dangerous and long climb for
the rest of the party and the young girl's curiosity had her
turning her attention inside past the barred window to what
lay in all that deepening darkness.
*************************************************************
Past the bars she inched. The downpour had almost put out her
hip lantern and it sputtered in that abysmal abyss. She
opened its glass casing and fidgeted with the wick until she
could do no more about it. She could wait for her backpack to
come up with the others or she could take a quick peek at
what was beyond that inner window sill of stone.
She closed the lantern and headed further inside.
Unlike the outer wall where the sill of the great window was
flush with said wall, the inner wall had a proper sill of
stone. To this sill, wooden staircases had been abutted long
ago, to allow access to the windows. No doubt, so they could
be used as watch posts, when the fort was still a fort
against distant sails.
These wooden stairs lead down to a stone ledge where a
creature of say fifteen or twenty feet in height could indeed
have used the windows for the same ancient purpose of say
keeping a look out for an armada of krakens.
This stone ledge ran the entire length of the six large
windows ending in a bookend of a large stone stair cases
which in turn fell sharply to a very wide ledge of stone that
apparently ran the entire circumference of the large stone
structure for it fell away into shadow beyond the windows and
her light.
Wooden stairs had been built upon each tread of the stone
stair case as the steps were almost half the height of a man.
Passing down these wooden/stone steps Red Sonja was quickly
astonished to see that the entire structure was mined on the
inside. That the floor had been cut away down, down, down
into the black rock.
Staring down into this quarry answered one question that had
been itching the young teens mind since arriving upon the
island. That being, 'Where had they gotten all that black
rock from to build such a massive structure?' It would have
been difficult indeed to ferry so much stone to an island.
But now she could see that the ancient builders had dug down
into the solid black stone of the island and used the stone
for the building its self.
As they had dug down they had left huge cross braces of
untouched stone that ended either at the quarry walls or at
mouths of huge iron doors. And thus were both braces and in
some cases bridges.
Along the sides of the dug stone pit huge staircase led down
to numerous stone ledges that seemed to run evenly stripping
ever wall.
To these barren stone walkways and staircases wooden
structures and platforms and staircase had been built.
And everywhere. Everywhere as far as the dim light would let
her see. Where iron cages. They sat empty. Innumerable. Of
all shapes and sizes. Iron cages to house thousands.
To this was heaps of trash. The refuse of human occupation
had piled up into rotting piles and covered every surface. It
filled open cages and closed and cluttered about the stone
ledges and wooden walkways so that it looked like a forest in
autumn; such was the trash that it looked like a forest of
fallen leaves.
The smell was awful.
Red Sonja moved down the wooden stairs sat between the stone
stair risers built upon every tread and made her way down to
the wide stone ledge. The mixture of waste and worth was mind
boggling.
In a pile of dried humane excrement as high as her shoulder
and wide as a forage sat several racks of armor and weapons
half buried. Full racks with good well made arms and armor.
She passed these by and instead plucked a good sword, if a
little heavy for her, off the matted trash pile that was like
carpet and proceeded on.
She would pause now and again to inch to the edge of the wide
stone lip and its questionable footing of slimy trash loam
and wonder why they had not simply thrown all the refuse over
the edge instead of leaving it to pile until it was
underfoot?
Here again the answer came slow as she continued along the
wide ledge until she reached the first great wide stone stair
case leading down.
The answer was from what she could make out. They had moved
themselves steadily 'downwards' as time had gone on. For the
trash of the lower ledges were increasingly nonexistent.
This was troubling in face of the idea of the men living here
so consciously turning their back on the only way out or in
and moving steadily down over time.
She wondered what the wizard would make of that? His father
and brother and their King and his men and their ever
lessening body of prisoner/slaves all moving to the next
lower level as the one above filled with sewage and waste.
Insane indeed.
But as she reached the next level and then the next. There
was no doubt about it. Less and less trash and waste and
fewer cages. As each ledge gave way it was like digging
downwards through strata's of the past into a nearing
present.
At the third level down the air was so still and stifling
that she had to pause to rest and breath as the sweat run
upon her lithe young body.
At each level she wondered how much deeper could this shaft
go? Even now at the third level she could make out dimly one
more at least.
But she had noticed that with each descending level the ledge
its self broadened. It grew wider. So logic would persist in
thinking that in just three more levels at most it should
surely be a full floor of stone. The gap having closed its
self utterly and completely.
She doubted she could descend much further and not suffocate.
Nothing she had seen before in her life.
Not the slave pit mines of the north nor the ancient ruins of
the dwarves could compare to the sure volume of earth that
had been removed here.
She thought of retracing her steps and finding the wizard and
his guard. But with every step she had found a better weapon.
A better harness. Even now she was equipped in her
comfortable and well proved scale mail bikini and had matched
it with a new bejeweled harness and a slender long sword
blade of outstanding craftsmanship.
A second dagger to match her enchanted one and two matching
sheaths for them both.
A long composite bow, rare in these parts, and an entire
brocade quiver full of the legendary green arrows of the
fletcher N'Gath of Behemoth.
A new pair of silver embossed black thigh high boots to
replace her soft sole thief ankle boots which had become torn
to tatters upon the sharp rocks of the island.
A magnificent hooded cloak fit for a Queen.
A never worn pair of wrist gloves matching to the boots.
Black with silver embossing.
A new backpack to replace the ripped and sea water sodden one
the wizard and his cronies were lugging about somewhere above
her now.
And ample flint and lamp oil and tinder and taper to fill
said backpack and even a new hip lamp to replace her bashed
and leaking one. This new one made in the visage of a hawk
head. With clever opening beak to service it and large glass
eyes for the light to shine through.
Here indeed was usable treasure aplenty.
It would seem that each time they had moved down a level they
had dragged the best of their riches along with them. And yet
at each level had seen less and less worth in anything they
had.
She had re-kited herself to a splendid degree simply by
picking up the discarded and tossed.
Considering the ample array of female rich garments as well
as male Red Sonja considered asking the wizard if there had
been a queen? Or if perhaps Calvin had been a cross dresser?
As far as monetary treasure. There were no piles of gold or
chests of riches but every now and then a discarded pile of
soldiers uniforms had a leather pouch or two and the
occasional silver piece was usually found.
What troubled her was the lack of bodies. The upper levels of
trash had now given way to two levels of almost pristine
cleanliness. The occasional dropped garment. The harness and
sword laying here and there. And no cages. None.
She pushed on to the fifth level almost panting with breath
at the thick dead air. And here she saw the first signs of
habitation. Above had been moldering wrecks of broken or
discarded life. Abandoned waste. Here was tables and chairs
and crates and barrels and chests and more tables and more
tables all covered in arcane instruments but orderly none the
less. Even beds! Fit for a king!
She had gotten the idea upon reaching the second level to
begin setting those abandoned brazers she stumbled across a
lit as well as fixing up rag and oil torches and wedging them
into place here and there. Lanterns and hip lanterns she set
upon the steps and lit. So that a slow erratic few feeble
swamp gas or worm glow showed a dotted path back up to the
second level.
Upon the last level and this one she lit no such fires. For
fear of even the slightest breath of air being used up by the
flame. Even her new hawk head hip lantern burning with brand
new wick and oil and clever glass light did so weakly so even
her hands and arms fell away into shadow if she held them out
in front of her.
It was also here that she found the answer to the question
that had been itching her wary eyeballs and had her fingers
worming her hilts; where were all the bodies?
Thousands of prisoners. Where were their remains?
And here they were. In a great pile. Massive in size. It was
far more than a few thousand dead piled up in the middle of
the pit floor. It was tens of thousands. The pile of dead
covered the entire lower floor and rose up to engulf the
staircase that would have lead down to it.
It may have covered TWO or THREE more wide stone staircases
and levels for all she knew?!
It was horrifying to look upon. No wonder the level she was
on was filled with the tables and chairs and beds of the
living for the dead so filled the basin that one could go
down no more floors. The dead rose in a pile of such a
rounded heap that out in the center of the pit its crest was
higher than the level she stood upon.
Never had the she-devil of countless battlefields seen so
many dead. A great cadavers pile of desiccated corpses that
could have buried the fishing village they had fled and from
that base shore rose higher than the low hills of the
werewolf wood.
She had reached the bottom for all intensive purposes. And
now she cautiously searched the wide ledge of its stores. She
found a sandal wood box full of scented silk clothes and
quickly tied them about her lower face against the stench of
death and thick foul air. Even with a cloth over her mouth
and nose she seemed to breath easier with that cleaner scent
masking the fouler.
The wide staircases were staggered. Set in opposite corners
from each other so one was forced to walk half way around a
lege to reach the next staircase down or up. As such her
descent with its haphazard searching and scavenging had eaten
up the better part of the night and its storm. Day had broke
outside and from the distant great windows high above great
beams of light slatted through the stale air widening and
lessening in their strength and only managing to turn the
black to a muddy brown upon the level she was on. But still
she could see a little better.
The huge iron doors she had seen porch'ed upon the great
crossbeams of un-hewn stone were unreachable. She found as
she descended that each door and its brace stone walkway was
set 'between' the ledges depth and not on the same level as
them as she had first guessed.
As such there were no way to reach the massive structures.
She could only fathom that each door lead to another level of
structure outside the walls of the fort deep underground its
self and that of the walkways allowing passage to these
hidden levels.
She considered this now. For there for the first time set in
the massive wall was one of these unreachable iron doors in
reach directly before her bewildered gaze.
Up close it was monstrous. Towering like the gate outside
forty feet in height. But not as wide as the outer gate's
seventy feet, being more narrow at twenty feet in width. The
outside gate had been two gates drawn together that opened
out separately from its position imbedded in the thick stone
wall.
This appeared to be one gate. More a door than a gate. There
was no sign of hinges so it must open inwards.
The iron door was wrought with strange designs and was
several feet think.
She could tell its thickness as someone at some distant time
had taken the laborious task of eating away a hole in it's
base with what appeared to be acid or intense heat?
She guessed acid by the way the stone floor was also pitted
and gutted at the door's makeshift dog door.
The hole in the door was of such size that she could bend
over with her huge tits getting spanked by her knees to pass
through it; but she would at least not have to get down on
her hands and knees and crawl through it.
She eyed the hole and hesitated. She had found the dead
bodies and the living quarters of where obviously the father,
brother, and king had spent their finally days. Surely if she
searched this last ledges level she would find some journal
or record or even remains of these three men. Did she really
need to go poking about in some nasty looking rat hole? She
wasn't getting paid to do this after all. The chests were out
here. If there was any treasure to be had it would be out
here where it was bad enough to breathe.
She sighed and crouched down and entered the hole in the
door. For like most women, her curiosity was more powerful
than her reason.
*************************************************************
The door would have opened into a sepulcher, if the door
could be opened. In this case, a short passage into a large
single room, where upon a massive stone throne, sat a dead
giant. It sat naked upon its burial throne. Its skin the
color of dust. It seemingly having slept untouched by decay
through the centuries. One of deaths great works.
It was naked and the room was barren. She turned and left the
burial vault and bent low and passed through the door again.
Even as she exited the room she saw the dancing lights and
heard the muffled noises and guessed that FINALLY the wizard
and his guard had managed to catch up with her. She was going
to need their help in unbolting that main gate door on the
top level and levering it open. She certainly did not favor
the option of shimming back down that outer wall from the
window. Not if she found some treasure down here worth the
taking!
But as she straightened up from the egress of the door, she
came shocked face to skull face with her first lich. One's
first meeting with a lich usually goes like this; meet lich.
Die. Again and again. For lich's are masters of necromancy
and never let a good thing die just once or even twice, if
they can help it.
A lich is what happens to a powerful wizard who tries to
cheat death utterly. Having mastered necromancy the wizard
decides to use that power to raise the dead to now fob off
death its self of themselves.
The result is little more than a skeleton with a layer of
skin stretched over it. Looking a lot like the type of girl
certain confused males liked to date before they come out of
the closet.
Not only is it a horror to look upon but it's nasty. Really
nasty. Maybe because it can only get dates with truly
desperate old men in penny loafers who want to talk about
their collection of ceramic cookie jars into the wee hours of
the morning.
In any case, a lich hates everything that is alive; which
despite its best efforts, it really is not.
As such lich's kill on sight anything and everything and then
raise it from the dead to kill it again. You just haven't
known true numbing horror until you have been vesicated alive
multiple times.
In Red Sonja's case her first lich encounter went like this;
She straightened up. Saw a robed floating skeleton
immediately before her. Screamed like a little girl and
franticly smashed it in the chops with her sword.
And while this physically had no real effect upon the lich.
The fact that she was simultaneously, as she smashed it in
the chops with her sword, shouting out a string of
obscenities so foul and coarse, that even the undead had to
blink in blanched shock at it; and of course lich's have no
eyelids, so this apparently made it recoil and pause for a
second instead of blinking at such a vulgar little girl.
But only for a second. Then it issued that high pitched bird
like shrill screech of theirs and set about as business as
usual. That business as sated being killing anything and
everything again and again.
Red Sonja used the lich's pause to circle around it and see
that there were two more lich's engaged in combat with the
wizard and his four guards.
The wizard and his guards had magic and magical weapons and
were therefor still alive... for now.
Her weapons were nice but not magical. She seriously doubted
the value of her magical dagger on a lich. A werewolf was one
thing but a lich might just take it from her and use it for a
toothpick after it got done eating her brains. If lich's ate.
Which they don't.
But it still might chew on her brains for a while and then
spit them out just to use her only magical weapon for a
toothpick. Lich's are like that, real pricks.
For some reason the lich's drew back. Drifting out over the
pile of corpses where they couldn't be reached. Floating
there above a tangle of twisted limbs. They hovered there
shrilling at them.
This seemed odd to all five of the adventuring party who
stood crouched and waiting to be attacked. Odd until the
lich's began to cast their magic. Green oozing oily strands
of smoke issued from their bony fingers.
But instead of the magic attacking them it instead sunk into
the pile of corpses which began to shudder and move.
"Oh oh." Red Sonja began to sprint to the wide stairs leading
up; fast upon her heals was the wizard. By the time she was
half way up the giant staircase to the next level the four
guards had passed both her and the wizard.
Both Red Sonja and the wizard cursed the fast healed guards
who did not slow down or stop at the top of the stair case
but raced across the wide ledge to the distant catty-corner
to the next staircase leading up.
As they ran for their lives, the lich's slowly drifted up
into the air, spinning in place, to follow them. The whole
pit, below their grimy skirt hems, green in that foul spell.
So they slowly rose, keeping level with the racing Red Sonja
and the wizard, and so they spun in place, facing them as the
two breathlessly fled, all the while the green mist filled
the entire excavated quarry below them.
It was up two full levels before the guards pointed and
shouted but never stopping in their sprint that Red Sonja and
the wizard looked over their shoulders and saw the horde of
undead who were racing up the staircases after them.
The lich's found this very funny and they shrilled their
mockery of laughter. They kept up this bird calliope in harsh
brass notes until a great colossal hand reached up from the
green fog and grabbed it. The hand pulled it down slowly
where it was met by another such hand and the two easily tore
the lich into pieces.
The spell the three lich's had cast had raised the giants!
The thundering slam of immense iron doors rang and echoed
through the great stone hall. And looming shapes leaped and
climbed smashing with fury at the horde of undead and the two
remaining lich's.
"They on our side?" The wizard shouted over the roar of
battle as she staggered on and upwards. Even as he spoke a
huge hand swung over their heads just narrowly missing them.
And in the distance another giant's huge paw just missed
crushing the four guards as they screamed like girls and ran
even faster.
"I don't think so. Run!" Red Sonja grabbed the Wizard who was
knocked almost off his feet by the giant's near miss and was
staggering sideways about to lose his footing and plunge into
the green mist and the tumult below.
"We need to make the windows. We will never make the main
door and open it in time." Red Sonja shouted into his ear.
She could see the four guards had already come to that same
conclusion for they had reached the staircase leading up to
the giant windows and were fleeing up them a full level above
them.
"Who knew they were so fast?" The wizard wheezed and laughed
as they staggered on shoulder to shoulder now.
All three lich's were dead now. Or even more undead than they
had been. Having been torn into many itty bitty pieces. But
an undead battle royal of thousands of undead versus giants
was taking place even as the green mist of the spell was
dissipating and the fortress was taking the brunt of it!
Great chunks of rock began to splinter and crack and fall
away. "This whole place is coming down!" Red Sonja screamed.
She hoped that when she had screamed upon seeing that lich
that she had not sounded so girlish and frightened as those
four girl guards had at nearly being turned into jelly by
that giant's slap. Of course they might all die and no would
ever know about it.
A large piece of rock slammed down with such force inches
beside them that it's shock-wave sent them skittering out
over the edge of the ledge where they now dangled by their
finger tips.
Hanging there about to be overtaken by undead or giants or
falling to their death's into a pile of withering corpses Red
Sonja decided that there were worse things than living down
being known to having once screamed like a little girl in her
life... such as dying in any of the above mentioned fashions!
It was the four guards who raced back and saved them; 'and
their paychecks,' Red Sonja somewhat unfairly thought.
Two helped them back up over the edge of the ledge as the two
fought off undead that plowed up the stairs.
Once back on their feet they made their way up the final
staircase to the windows and began to climb down the rope.
The wizard setting fire to the wooden steps in between the
larger stone ones to slow down the undead horde even more so
as they waited their turns to escape.
They made it out to open sea in their almost swamped boat
just in time to see the entire structure of Mandrake Fortress
Prison come tumbling down. The island which had been almost
entirely hollowed out came down with it a second latter and
disappeared into the lashing sea.
"For the best," the wizard said as they tiredly worked at the
oars.
Red Sonja pondered her losses and gains and decided she had
come out a head and added her nod as well.
"We have a shore full of werewolves no doubt brought down at
the sound of the sinking island," one of the guards pointed
at where the shoreline was indeed a mix of smoldering ruins
and slinking hulking furry shapes.
"I suggest we let the current take us to the next town," the
wizard eyed the shore and winced.
"That's ten nautical miles in a leaky boat?!" Another guard
whined.
"We must have lost the buckets in the storm when we tied her
up and abandoned her to head inside the fortress." Another
guard added as she looked around her in the knee deep water.
"Well," the wizard grinned. "If Red here takes off that metal
brassier brassiere of hers I am betting that will do the job
at a fraction of the time. It obviously holds more than a
bucket at a single cup and it comes with TWO! Ha! Ha! Ha!"
Red Sonja stood up and threw him overboard.
"Good riddance." One guard sighed and they all stood to wave
goodbye at his receding spitting splashing bobbing form.
Then all four girls sat down upon the benches and sighing
removed their tops and began to bail.
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