Death After Death

Chapter 105: Bump in the Night

Simon tried to get up from where he’d fallen as quietly as he could and whispered, “Aufvarum Oonbetit,” to cut the ropes on his hands free, but in the dark, every sound seemed to carry, and stealth was, ironically, impossible. As loud as whispering had seemed, though, moving was worse. As he tentatively stood, the debris he was on top of skidded and clattered down a slope of other disgusting refuse, and he stumbled as he almost lost his footing.

For a moment, whatever was in here with him froze at the sound of his tumble, and then it began stomping toward him with increasing speed. Thinking fast, Simon picked up the nearest rock and threw it to the opposite side of the cavern or wherever it was that he was at, now.

That made the monster freeze again for a moment, but when it started moving, Simon was pretty sure that its direction hadn’t changed. It was coming right for him.

Simon continued to ease himself down the midden heap, and he reached out for anything he might be able to use. This time, when he found a bone, he whispered, “Aufvarum Barom,” as he threw the thing overhand as hard as he could overhand away from him.

The bone burst into the pale yellow flashlight beam that he’d envisioned, and it tumbled end over end through the dark thanks to the word of lesser light he’d used. That only lasted for two or three seconds before the creature it illuminated lashed out, shattering it and sending glowing fragments in every direction.

Those two seconds were enough, though. Up until now, the biggest thing that Simon had dealt was a troll. Technically, the Wyvern was bigger, but he’d been pretty far away from it when he struck it down, so that didn’t really count.

If the troll had been ten or twelve feet tall, then this ogre was easily fifteen feet. It was impossible to say in the eerie location that was this cavern. What he could say, though, was that the thing was a tough old bastard. Its body was covered in scars, and one of its eyes was milky and useless. None of those features distracted him from the thickly knotted muscles that covered the too-wide creature or the treetrunk club that it had just used to such deadly effect as it turned a single ulna bone into fifty ulna fragments that twinkled like stars as they rained down across the ground.

It was beautiful in a strange, savage way, but that didn’t stop Simon from picking up speed. In the brief flash of light, he saw the glint of metal from a rusted blade and grabbed that, too, even as he darted into a darker part of the cave. It was a good thing he’d done so, too, because he’d only gotten a dozen feet when he heard the ogre’s club swing down hard on the pile of bone and filth he’d been standing on only moments ago.

He felt pieces of bone and stone spray across his back, which was painful since he lacked his leather armor, but he did not cry out. Instead, he ran for another second, and as soon as the sound of debris stopped, he stopped, too.

The dim lights of his initial spell were already starting to fade, and the brightest details were charcoal gray against the black of the cave. From where Simon was standing now, trying very hard to control his breath, he thought he could see light leaking from the entrance to the monster’s lair, but he didn’t run toward it. He didn’t even breathe. He just stood there, trying to ignore the stink and the feeling of blood dripping down his back as he waited to see what the creature did next.

It apparently had a similar thought because it also waited quietly. Well, almost quietly. It still shuffled and snorted, but it did not rampage or do anything else that might hide the sounds of its quarry. Instead, it stood there breathing in out of those giant lungs that sounded like wheezing bellows, and Simon reminded himself that he was well inside the range of its weapon still, and anything he did to draw attention to himself might well be it for this run.

That would be intolerable, he thought to himself. This is the thirtieth floor, and that ugly piece of shit is the only thing that’s standing between me and finding out the truth about what happened!

It was frustrating, but not so frustrating that he didn’t stand there and take shallow breaths as he thought things through and wondered when the bastard would lose interest. He’d already used a major word and a number of lesser words during the witchhunt, but he thought he could do just about anything he wanted within reason.

The only obstacle was the darkness. Well, not the only obstacle, he corrected himself, but certainly the main one. The fact that it was huge and stronger than a bull were certainly problems as well, but the fact that he couldn’t see it to precisely target it was the biggest problem of all.

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If he wanted to use force, he was going to need to keep it pretty focused to penetrate so much bulk, but if he wanted to make sure he hit it, the strike would have to be wide. There was no good overlap between those two strategies.

Eventually, things turned in his favor, and the beast grew restless. It started groping through the pile of shattered bones, looking for a corpse to feast on. Simon took that opportunity to slink away and pick up a few more stones. Then, in rapid succession, he used the words of lesser light and started tossing them around the room near the ogre.

It was enraged, of course, and bellowed so powerfully that Simon could smell its awful halitosis from here, but at last, he could see the thing, and the five stones scattered between here and there gave him a good sense of depth, too, which was all he needed for the spell that game next. “Gervuul Vosden!” he yelled. Greater Earth.

The new word tore its way out of his throat much more harshly than any of the words he was more familiar with, and he tasted blood and brimstone, but he didn’t let that dissuade him. He’d never tried a spell like this before, but he had no doubt it would work. More importantly, the odds of him missing in a serious way, like he might with force, were a lot more minor.

The first time he’d tried this magic, it was to dig a small hole, but this time it was for something far more brutal. The floor around the ogre and the ceiling above it suddenly sprouted stalagmites and stalactites that started to devour it like the maw of an angry dragon.

The creature bashed through several, but even as it did so, others continued to grow, tripping it up, and as it rose to its feet, the stalactites that hadn’t been destroyed above it continued to grow, pinning it down.

“Vosden!” he yelled again. He wanted to use the major power word, but he didn’t trust himself to hold up under that level of abuse, and he didn’t think he’d need that much extra power to finish this thing off.

Flesh, even flesh as strong as the orge’s, offered no real resistance to stone, and the sharp points of rock that continued to extend by the will of magic extended forward without regard to the creature’s bellows of agony as it was speared and pinned simultaneously.

Apparently, none of the things hit somewhere vital, though, because it roared in anger so loudly that the whole cavern shook. For a moment, Simon was deafened, but then he heard the worst sound of all: the sound of stone cracking.

He darted forward, intent on striking this thing down while it was still tied down like Gulliver. He was too slow for that, though, and the thing was already rising to its feet by the time he reached it. The thing was pierced over and over again by fire hydrant thick stone, and in places, the flesh was entirely torn where the ogre's skin had torn before the pillar had shattered.

It was a breathtakingly brutal sight but not as brutal as the look of rage in the thing’s one good eye. It was completely bloodshot now, and if he could kill with a look the way the basilisk could, he’d already be ground to paste.

It couldn’t, though, and when it raised its arm with its club, both of them found out simultaneously that it couldn’t kill him that way either. Its arm was still connected at the shoulder, but halfway down the forearm, there was only a bloody stump and a bit of dangling flesh that was its two-foot wide hand.

Simon had the brief thought that he didn’t actually need to kill this thing anymore. He just needed to keep away from it while it bled out, but it seemed to sense that and began charging forward on its hand and knee, forcing him back and further from the exit.

Now, he was in trouble. Behind him and to his left were rough stone walls, and to his right was the uncertain footing of the midden heap he’d landed on. There were no good options here, but every moment he delayed, he lost ground and escape routes. He could see there was going to be no easy way out of here, so Simon reached back and threw his rusted sword in a powerful overhand throw.

Miraculously, it struck the creature’s eye point first, embedding deep into the thing’s eye socket. Unfortunately, though, the eye it embedded into was the already blinded one.

Simon stumbled back as the ogre roared and lashed out at him. It wasn’t trying to get him, though. It was trying and failing to grasp the slender thing with its arm-sized fingers. For a moment, Simon was too dazed at watching this ugly, bloody fumbling, but then, before it could wrench the thing free, he kicked out hard, slamming his boat into the hilt, forcing it another few inches deeper.

“AGHHHHH!” the ogre roared in pain, batting him aside like a rag doll and sending him careening painfully against the nearest wall.

He should have been grateful that the ogre was already so close to death that most of its strength was gone. If it hadn’t been, he would have broken more than a few bones from that impact. Instead, he merely lay there dazed for a moment before he whispered, “Oonbetit,” slamming the sword deep into the creature’s pea-sized brain and going halfway to the hilt.

The ogre continued to move even after that, but they were the twitchy, spasmodic movements of a corpse and nothing that prevented him from laying here a moment longer and basking in the afterglow before he finally rose to his feet to prepare for what needed to happen next.