NPCs (15 page)

Figuring out what had happened didn’t take more than a little bit of mind and Gabrielle had far more than that. She understood that this man, whose name she’d never known, had put himself in the way of an attack meant for her. The bubbling of rage that was becoming so familiar surged as she watched his body finally slide free of his killer’s arm.

So stupid. Why did he do that? Why did he feel the need to protect her? Gabrielle’s anger wasn’t at the man for his action, or even at the demon for capitalizing. Gabrielle was mad at herself, for still seeming like the kind of person who needed to be protected. She didn’t want to be weak; she didn’t want to be kidnapped. She didn’t want to be a damsel, and the fact that she’d just become one again really pissed her off.

Fortunately, there was a clacking-clawed outlet for her aggression mere steps away.

* * *

“Back!” Thistle ordered, flinging one of Sierva’s daggers forward and impaling a Scuttle that had popped out from under a seat. The children squealed in terror, nearly falling over as they scrambled away from it. Thankfully, Thistle’s blessed blades sundered the smaller demons with any hit on the main body. Its twitching had nearly stopped by the time the dagger reappeared in the sheath at Thistle’s side, and he motioned for the children to move forward once more.

While most people in the vicinity of the monster’s exit had been sent flying off to the side of the arena, Thistle’s central position and gnome stature meant the force was powerful enough to hurl him into the stands. How he’d emerged from the pile of splinters unharmed was thanks, most likely, to Grumble, either directly, or through the divine perks of servitude. Thistle’s first instinct had been to leap back into the fray; however, the sounds of terrified tears had drawn his attention.

Under a nearby seat, clutching each other and crying softly, were Mayor Branders’s children. It seemed a reasonable guess that they had been separated from their father in the confusion and opted to hide. With a weary sigh, Thistle called them forward and assured them everything would be all right. Whether it was his paladin’s aura, or just sheer desperation, the children immediately latched onto him and agreed to come along.

Navigating their way out of the stands proved tougher than Thistle expected. Between damage from the explosions, groups of other people trampling about, and the roving Scuttles popping out all over the place, he’d nearly gotten everyone, himself included, killed twice before they made it out of their original section. Thistle noticed that the bulk of others he saw were moving west and that almost none were coming back in the other direction. That meant either there was a way out or certain death. Fifty-fifty was better than his chances if they stayed put, so the group pressed onward.

The one blessing of their journey was that the Scuttles they encountered moved singularly rather than en masse. A group of them easily could have overwhelmed Thistle and the children, yet they encountered no more than one at a time. Such behavior bothered Thistle, who had seen them moving as a unit earlier. Even without his blessed daggers, outside of their group these creatures were weak. It made no sense for them to spread out like this. Assuming they weren’t as intelligent as the Claws, sheer instinct should still have kept them bunched together.

Thistle wished he could have seen how the fight below was going; unfortunately, between the debris, constant movement, and fact that his own height was barely greater than that of the children’s, he had to resign himself to listening to the ordeal below. From the sounds, it seemed like things weren’t entirely lost. The majority of the shouts he heard were ones of direction, not terror or surrender. Hopefully, that ground demon was built more for intimidation than practicality.

Another Scuttle popped up, this one letting out an odd, chittering screech before Thistle’s dagger chopped it in two.

“I don’t remember the others making a noise,” he mumbled after calling back his blade, staring at the spot where the demon’s remains were oozing onto the wood.

Before he could say anything else, the wooden chunks blocking his sight to the arena below fell away, and he immediately wished they hadn’t. The wood, along with the entire section of stands where they were situated, had been smashed away by the giant ground demon that was now waiting below with an open, salivating mouth. The floor, no longer supported by anything other than habit, fell away, sending them falling toward the waiting mouth.

“Aaaaaaah!” the children screamed.

“Aaaaaaah!” Thistle screamed right along with them because this was a damned good moment to scream. In the back of his mind, where his logic lived, an epiphany struck as he finally realized why the Scuttles had spread out in such a manner.

They were a detection system to find the ground demon more prey.

* * *

Eric was moved the least of the four by the explosion, reflexively diving to the ground moments after having been launched in the air. As a result, he got an upfront seat for the horror that was the giant ground demon. After the first casualty, archers and knife-throwers let loose volleys of attacks, all of which bounced off the interlocking scales of the demon, leaving scarcely a scratch. The next volley was one of magic, a rainbow of different spells bouncing off its flesh. One or two seemed to wound it slightly, but the demon paid them almost no mind at all.

Instead, it focused on eating more people. It would smash into stands intermittently, tearing away sections of wood and gobbling the people who had been standing there moments prior. Occasionally, an adventurer using a melee weapon would draw too close to it and be speared by one of its endless legs, but these occasions scarcely grabbed more than a few seconds of its attention.

A dull ache in his hand drew Eric out of the trance he’d fallen into while watching this vast monster. It took him a moment to realize he’d been gripping the hilt of his sword so tightly it caused the metal to dig into his palm. He wanted to do more than grip his weapon; he wanted to hurt this demon that was killing so freely. Eric licked his lips and watched the waving legs swing through the air. Maybe, just maybe, he was fast enough. Maybe he could get in close enough to swing his sword and take off some of those legs. If he was lucky, he might even get a strike in on its side.

Eric took a tentative step forward and immediately felt a hand close on his arm.

“Give it a moment,” said a thick voice to his side. It was one of the armored people he’d watched so attentively, the dwarf with the massive club. “When it goes to hit the stands, its legs slow up a bit. That’s when our kind has the best chance of hitting.” The dwarf hefted his melee weapon to his shoulder, leaving no doubt what he’d meant by the words “our kind.”

“Thank you,” Eric said.

“No need. This works better if more of us charge it,” the dwarf told him.

Eric realized that all around the demon were adventurers with their weapons out, braced to charge, merely waiting for the right moment. Most of the parties he recognized were split, members forming triangular patterns around their massive target. Later on, Eric would realize that was so that if the demon attacked an area where one of them stood, the others would still have a chance at killing it. When he understood their brutal, selfless efficiency, he would be all the more impressed by these warriors.

They didn’t have long to wait until their opportunity came. The demon, reacting to some unknown impulse, pulled more of its body out of the hole and smashed into a section of the stands with its head. As it did, the waving legs slowed and the adventurers rushed forward. Eric was with them, trying hard not to think about the lives of the people in the stands. It seemed cruel to have waited for it to kill more of them, but there really hadn’t been any other way. He kept his eyes on the monster, not wishing to see the deaths of more innocent people. His ears, unfortunately, were not so easy to turn away.

“Aaaaaaah!”

Eric looked, unwillingly, as the sound of frightened children reached his ears, which is why he was watching when Thistle let out his own, gnomish scream. The three figures tumbled through the air, right toward the waiting jaws of the demon.

“Thistle!” Eric had no idea what he hoped to accomplish by yelling. It wouldn’t stop what was about to happen, it wouldn’t bring back his friend, and it wouldn’t make him feel any less useless as he watched the gnome die.

Still, Eric yelled just the same.

14.

Kicking children was, by and large, not an activity associated with paladins, at least, not with paladins of any god one could pray to in a respectable temple. So Thistle felt a touch awkward about the fact that his final action in this life would be sinking his small gnome feet into the torsos of the mayor’s children, and pushing with all his might. Before the job change, it likely wouldn’t have been enough, but his paladin strength gave him the extra boost to send both children hurtling in a new direction, one that would hopefully place them outside the ground demon’s range. This also had the effect of moving him closer to the demon’s open mouth. Such were the ramifications of mid-air readjustments.

As he tumbled through the air, Thistle pulled both of his daggers from their sheaths. It was a useless gesture. This monster would crush him in a single snap of its jaws, but he was determined to fulfill his duty to the end. Paladins always went down slashing; Thistle would not be the one to break that grand tradition.

In the span of seconds, he’d fallen into its mouth, a wide, red canyon filled with hundreds of razor-sharp teeth. The world grew dark as its jaw shut, sealing away the daylight. All that illuminated the space around Thistle was the set of daggers clutched desperately in his hands, which gave off a faint white glow. He wasn’t sure if this was magic Sierva had put on them, or a side effect of the blessing; he just knew he was thankful for it.

Thistle flew past the first few rows of teeth, the kick-generated spurt of momentum carrying his small body through at high speeds. When he finally landed, he was partway down the demon’s throat, just past its tongue. Immediately, the muscles of the throat constricted, coming together to force this delicious tidbit all the way down to the waiting stomach. Before it could fully surround him, Thistle dug both daggers into the soft flesh, plunging as hard and deep as he could manage.

“Hope you can’t swallow right for a week,” Thistle muttered, one last dash of spite against his killer before his inevitable death. With the damage done, he waited for the throat to crush him into pulp.

Instead, the entire arena got a very attention-grabbing surprise.

* * *

The demon’s scream made nearly everyone present clutch their ears in pain. It rang out across the tournament field, causing a section of the stands to shake and collapse, then continued onward where it startled some unsuspecting birds roosting a mile away. As horrible as the sound was, it might as well have been the starting flag at a joust, because it signaled just what all the adventurers had been waiting for: an opportunity.

They poured into its lair like a spilled potion, surrounding the demon as it churned and bucked, battling some unseen foe. Eric was with them, hoping against hope that if he were fast enough, somehow, there would still be time to save Thistle. Maybe if they opened up its stomach, he’d still be alive and could be healed. It was a silly, delusional hope; Eric understood that quite keenly. That didn’t stop it from fueling his focus as he slashed at the demon’s arms with his blade, taking them off cleanly with every strike.

Around him, others were having varied success. Those with more physical strength, or magically-enchanted weapons, were able to duplicate Eric’s feat of taking every limb they swung at. Others, unfortunately required three or four hacks before severing an arm from the demon’s body. Even with the beast’s attention elsewhere, this left them vulnerable for too long and often resulted in them getting stabbed, if not outright skewered. Still, as they continued their work, more limbs fell away, and fewer adventurers found themselves injured. Whatever was distracting this demon was doing an incredible job. All they could hope was that it would continue long enough for them to start on the body.

As Eric finished off the last of the tentacle-like arms in his area, he slashed at the demon’s hide with his sword, cutting easily through the hard scales as blessed metal tore infernal flesh. Thick, gooey blood oozed out from the wound, and Eric redoubled his efforts. His friend was in there, alive or dead, and he’d be damned if he allowed Thistle’s final resting place to be inside some glorified demon worm.

* * *

Thistle was, at this point, doing very little resting. Point of fact, he’d never worked harder in his life. After the monster’s scream, one that had left him with twin trails of blood trickling from his ears, and had very nearly forced him to release his blades, the constriction had finally begun in earnest as the demon tried to dislodge the discomfort in its throat. However, for once Thistle found his size to be a boon, rather than a burden. Big as the creature was, it had clearly been bred for large meals and its physiology reflected that. Had Thistle been a touch bigger or lacked the dagger handholds, he’d surely have been sent down the express route to its stomach and impending digestion. As it was, he was just barely able to hang on against the pressing muscles pushing him downward. While the constriction failed to dispose of Thistle, it did succeed in moving him and the daggers slightly downward, rending the demon’s flesh as it went.

After a particularly hard thrust, the constriction relented. Thistle took this opportunity to pull out one of the daggers and slam it back into an unharmed bit of throat, slightly higher than the previous wound. While it didn’t result in another ear-splitting shriek, Thistle felt the creature jerk and twitch, shuddering in pain.

He had no idea what he was trying to accomplish. Perhaps a dim hope of climbing back up and out of the demon’s mouth flitted about his head, but the logistics of getting past the teeth would have crushed that delusion as easily as the jaws would crush Thistle. No, this was not an attempt to survive, a break at freedom, or even some stupid belief that he could kill the demon from the inside. This was merely Thistle showing the quality that had defined him most in his youth: relentless stubbornness.