The Soul Forge (5 page)

“And what is it you want to talk about?” he asked, looking around the room.
There were lit candles and barrels, but little else. There were also three people standing around, one short boy with a full head of black hair and a birthmark on his right cheek. He didn’t look older than twelve, but his eyes said differently. Two other men stood at his side. They appeared to be twins with blond hair and a parallel scar on their cheeks. They also were both built like small mountains.

“We have a job offer for you,” the woman said, sitting next to him on the impromptu bed composed of a table. Their thighs touched, and she looked at him almost bashfully.
If it wasn’t for the fact that a chill ran up his spine, Thomas may have done something rash then and there.

“A job?
Doing what?” Thomas’ eyes narrowed. Somehow, he doubted this was a job he would readily apply for.

“We need something… procured,” the woman responded, “from a client. If you collect it, we’ll be able to reward you for your efforts.”

Thomas knew he should turn her down flat, but to do so in their territory where he was not only an outsider but completely at their mercy seemed a foolish thing to do. Stalling for time, he replied, “and what’s this item?” 

“A staff.
That once belonged to King Ofan the Dark Priest.”

Thomas’ blood ran cold. Even he knew that name, and the vile deeds attached to it.
Wars had been waged, people had died because of that name. Their entire civilization had been threatened because of that name.

And this woman wanted him to steal something with that name attached to it? Not likely.

“Sorry sweetheart. But I want nothing to do with this.”

“Oh don’t be so quick. You haven’t heard the best part.”

Thomas made to stand up, but her hand was suddenly on his thigh and he found he couldn’t move it.

“What’s the best part?” Thomas asked out of necessity, not curiosity.

“If you don’t help us… a lot of people are going to die.”

Thomas looked at her, eyes wide.
“W… what?”

“You see, we aren’t the only ones
that want the staff. And if our competition gets it, they are going to start a war with it.”

“Start a…” Thomas simply stared at her, his mind unable to process – or
believe – what she was telling him. “How? Why? Tell me from the beginning, what’s goin’ on here.”

“I will… but only if you promise you’ll help.”

“I ain’t promising a thing, ma’am. Cause I don’t know if anything you’re saying is true. For all I know, you’re the ones planning on hurting people.”

“We have our sources. The castle will be invaded, tonight, by a group of well-trained assassins. They’ll be trying to get the staff and return it to the Dark Priest.”

“The Dark Priest is dead,” Thomas interrupted, “killed by General Chromwell.”

“And General Chromwell put the staff into a vault,” the woman continued, “we need to get it
first. You have no idea the power that staff has.”

“This doesn’t make sense.
None of it.”

The woman looked torn, but eventually she shrugged
and snapped her fingers. Immediately, one of the twins turned and walked out of the room, and he heard a familiar whinny sound from the back room.

“Look,” the woman said, “we don’t have time to debate this. You’ve got a pretty horse, and…”

“You hurt…” Thomas choked out, a rage he had so rarely felt pouring through his blood, “one hair on that horse…”

She held up a hand to silence him. “We won’t hurt the horse as long as you cooperate. I’m sorry, I really am, but we have no time.”

Thomas shook in his anger, but he knew his hands were tied. He wouldn’t risk any hurt coming to the horse.

“What…” he could almost feel the bile crawling up his throat as the words were torn from him, “what do I have to do?”

The woman, for her part, did legitimately look saddened at what she was forcing him to do, but that hardly mollified him. All he could do was go along with the job, and hope against hope that he could find a way out of this mess.

Under the cover of nightfall, Thomas moved as quietly as he was able towards the concrete walls that blocked off the castle. Bathed and given a new set of clothes,
he would have been grateful save for the blackmail he was operating under.

Though to be fair, his role in the theft was rather simple.

“Help!” Thomas shouted as he approached the castle gate. The two guards stationed there turned to him, one drawing his sword just in case. Thomas limped forward, holding his leg to sell the deception. The guards moved towards him, and he collapsed to the cold stone street.

“What’s happened to you?”

“I was…” Thomas coughed, inventing a stomach injury, “attacked by two thugs. They were twins, I think…”

“The Trask twins?” one of the guards said as he helped Thomas to his feet. Thomas reached out and grabbed hold of the other guard a
s well, ostensibly using him for support.

In reality, the aforementioned twins
used the opportunity to sneak past the guards and into the guard shack. Thomas didn’t look at them, letting the guards either help him or leave him there. He had fulfilled his purpose.

The sound of commotion reached his ears, and Thomas almost swore.
Looking towards the source, he heard several shouts and then an alarm rang out.

“Stay with him!” one of the guards yelled, running for the
raised portcullis that usually guarded the entrance. The other guard put his arm around Thomas, helping the former stable boy stand. Then there was a scream of pain and fear, and the guard immediately set Thomas down to lend aid.

That guard disappeared into the darkness, leaving Thomas alone on the cold stone. He
lay there, his pretend injuries forgotten, when he heard a whisper he would have very much liked to ignore.

“Thomas, something’s gone wrong! Get in there!”

He turned to see the woman hiding in the shadows, motioning him to get moving. Thomas looked at the darkness of the castle courtyard, and hesitated. If something was in there that neither the twins nor the guards could handle, the odds weren’t in his favor.

But Lucille was on the line, and so Thomas picked himself up off of the floor and ran into the unwelcome dark.

The moment he crossed the threshold, the sounds of battle reached his ears. He immediately hid behind a bush as he tried to determine what was going on.

He could barely make out the twins, engaged in battle with black-cloaked intruders. Sword met sword in a clash of sparks as the combatants circled each other. The twins stood back to back, guarding
each other’s flank as their dueling partners tried to breach their defenses. Thomas was lost in the back and forth of the battle as steel clashed.

The bush rustled beside Thomas, almost making him jump out of his skin.
A moment later, he was joined by the woman, looking very disheveled.

“Okay, change of plan,” she said in his ear.

“What’s goin’ on here?” Thomas asked, gesturing to the battle.

“No idea. No idea
who these men are. But the twins should be able to handle them. Unfortunately, there goes the element of surprise. So we’re – you and I – are going to have to sneak in and steal the staff.”

“No way,” Thomas said, “I did my part. I distracted the guards.”

“Yes, you did. But this is so much more important now. Don’t you see? If other people are trying to steal the staff…”

“We’ve got no proof that’s why they’re here. They could be here for a hundred different reasons.”

The woman nodded, but her face split into a smile. “Would any of those reasons let you sleep soundly tonight?”

Thomas had no answer, mulling over the options.
They could be thieves after the same prize, or they could be assassins looking to end the King’s rule. Any way he thought about it, he couldn’t believe the black-garbed attackers were there for any saintly purpose.

Then again, neither
was he. But when it all came down to it, the woman was right, and he had a job to do.

“Where we goin’?” he finally said, and his voice carried every ounce of his regret.

“That way,” the woman pointed, “towards the stained glass on the left of the stairs.”

Thomas immediately started runni
ng in the direction that she pointed. The window in question was the picture of the King, holding in one hand a golden scepter while in the other he was casting out a dark figure covered in black and purple – the Dark Priest, Thomas had to assume.

The woman smashed the picture to shards with the butt of a sword.

“Here,” she said, offering the weapon to Thomas.

“Sorry
ma’am. I’m not a fighter. I’d end up impaling myself if I had a sword.”

The woman shrugged in response and disappeared into the dark confines of the castle.
Taking a deep breath, Thomas reluctantly followed her. Instantly, they were surrounded by darkness. Thomas looked around, but he couldn’t see more than a foot or two ahead of him.

A hand grabbed his, and he jumped on reflex.

“Do you always scare this easily?” the now-familiar voice of the woman asked with a chuckle.

“Not usually,” Thomas replied, trying to get his heart rate back down to normal.

“Well, we need to get something so we can see. It’s far too dark down here.”

Thomas silently agreed, looking around even though he still couldn’t see anything.
He could only follow the sound of her footfalls, echoing in the chamber they found themselves. How the woman knew where to go was anyone’s guess, and Thomas wasn’t foolish enough to break the silence and ask.

The darkness was pressing in
on Thomas, speeding up his heart rate as he tried to control his breathing. To make matters worse, he kept tripping over stuff that littered the ground, round things that felt like stone and other objects that cracked when they stepped through them. Between the two of them, they were about as stealthy as an agitated horse.

Then he heard a noise that didn’t belong to him or the woman. It was a low hiss, like something from an animal
.

“You hear that?” Thomas whispered.

“Yeah,” the woman immediately replied. For the first time, he heard a note of fear creep into her voice. “I wish I could see.”

“Didn’t happen to bring a torch, did you?” Thomas asked. Her pointed silence was all the answer he needed.
Then a new thought struck him, one that he wasn’t too keen on exploiting. But the hissing was growing louder, and so was the knot in Thomas’ stomach. If they couldn’t see, then they had no chance of making it out of this basement.

Thomas took a deep breath and struck his hands
together, sliding them back and forth like he was trying to warm them. Just as he thought, sparks erupted from where his hands continually met.

The woman didn’t show her surprise (not that he would have seen it if she had) but she did let out what at first sounded like a squeak.

“You’re a magic-caster,” she said. It wasn’t a question, and Thomas didn’t feel the need to answer it anyway. Instead, he kept rubbing his hands together, using the very frail light to keep a lookout for where they were going.

Then he used it to check where they had been, and he had to stifle a scream.

He caught the brief glimpse of a skull on the ground, smiling up at him, before a hand reached out and attempted to take his. Startled, he turned away and pushed the woman and shouted, “run!”

They did just that, not bothering to try and watch their path but simply seeking escape.
The hissing grew louder still, and both of them stopped as the noise reached their ears.

Thomas leaned forward hazardously and rubbed his hands together again, as fast as he could. Sparks erupted from his hands
that he lit up the entire room for only a moment. What they saw was terrifying.

They were completely surrounded by… things.

They looked mostly humanoid, but they just weren’t. Their skin looked wooden and they were naked, and where there should have been eyes there were only black sockets. There were also roughly a dozen of them.

T
homas only got a brief glimpse of them, because the sparks went out from his hands. Darkness pervaded for a moment before a flickering light replaced it.

His hands were literally on fire.

He didn’t jump, he didn’t shout and he didn’t breathe. He just stared at his hands, in shock. The woman was saying something, but her words didn’t register. All he knew for sure was that there were flames crackling in his palms, and he didn’t know quite how to deal with it.

Then one of the creatures hissed two feet from his face, and he remembered he had bigger concerns.

On instinct alone, he pulled his fist back and punched the hissing creature square in the face. It was pushed back, but the only pain appeared in Thomas’ fist, which was ringing from the force of the blow. It felt like he had punched a tree. Even worse, the fire in the hand had gone out, as did half of his visibility.

As it turned out, half was just barely enough.

“Here!” the woman shouted, and Thomas heard something that sounded a lot like a door open. He followed her voice through it, and slammed it behind them the moment he was through.

“What… was… that?”
Thomas huffed, his breath far more labored than it strictly needed to be.

“I have no idea,” she huffed back, hands on her hips. “I’ve never
seen anything like those before. Maybe they were zombies.”

“You say that… very casually,” Thomas said.

Her first response was a shrug. “There are some foul things in the deep places of the world.”

Thomas had no answer to that, so he followed another train of thought. “But what are they doing in
the castle?”

To this, she had no answer.

They were now in a brightly lit chamber, of which Thomas was quite thankful for. At least if anything creepy or terrifying was out to get them, they could see them coming.

It was
when that thought crossed his mind that the door burst open and the creatures followed them into the room. They immediately backpedaled before turning and outright running from the creatures. The creatures followed, slowly but inexorably towards Thomas and the woman.

Fear warping his brain, he
realized he had once again not bothered to find out the name of his beautiful companion.

“If we live through this,” he shouted as they ran, “remind me to ask you your name.”

He heard what may have been a chuckle, but he was too busy running to think about it. They made it to the opposite end of the hallway, one with a heavy iron door blocking it. The woman grabbed the handle and pulled, but it didn’t budge. Thomas took a turn, but it stayed locked for him too.

“What do we do?” Thomas asked, turning to see the hissing creatures were gaining on them.

“Burn the lock!” the woman suggested, pointing to the keyhole. Thomas stared at her as if she was insane, but the pressing danger forestalled any objection.

He moved forward, rubbing his hands together to make sparks. He rubbed faster and faster, and eventually fire was kindled in his palms. He tried to direct it to the lock
, but the fire couldn’t work up enough heat to even warm the lock.

“Hotter!” the woman commanded, watching with dread at the approaching creatures.

“I can’t make it hotter,” Thomas sneered, “I can barely make it at all!”

Sure enough, the flame he could make wasn’t enough
to even singe the lock, and the creatures were closing in on them. The woman drew her blade, but there were many of them and Thomas doubted they were even capable of being hurt, being as he suspected they were made of wood. They’d need an ax to cut through them.

Or…

He looked at his hands, a new thought striking him. Maybe he couldn’t generate a lot of flame, but it was still flame and he could utilize it against them.

He lit his hands again and stared at them, standing his ground despite the fear pounding through his blood.
When they finally closed the gap and jumped at them, Thomas reached out and grabbed the nearest one’s face.

It caught fire a moment later.

Thomas backed away as the creature squealed and ran into more of its kind. Predictably, they all caught flame and suddenly the hallway was full of hissing, burning creatures.

Which wouldn’t have been nearly as big of a problem if the burning destroyed them.

Unfortunately, this was not the case.
Instead of falling to the ground, defeated, they all looked at Thomas and hissed even louder.

“Any other ideas?”

“Run. Runnin’ sounds good.”

“There’s nowhere left to run!” was the screamed response.
She was right; there were no other doors or exits from this chamber. The only way out was through a locked door, or a dozen or so burning creatures.

Thomas and the woman
moved closer together, neither one willing to admit how terrified they really were. The hissing creatures moved towards them, arms outstretched and moaning…