Succubus 2 Read online

We continued in silence nearly a mile through the cave. The only things lighting our way were the fireballs that Alaria and others held in their hands. The ice sparkled around us with yellow and orange flames, and our warped reflections followed us like images in glittering funhouse mirrors.

  As we walked along I tried breaking the horns off the yeti skeletons. More to trade with Mo, I reasoned.

  Maybe it was the cold, or maybe it was the skeletons’ age, or maybe it was the game not wanting to reward me for something I hadn’t earned – but all of the horns cracked like eggshells under my fingers when I tried to pry them off.

  The cave finally opened up into a much larger cavern. I held up one hand and the entire company of pirates halted.

  I peered out at a vast underground hall. Ornately carved columns of ice appeared every twenty feet, apparently to support the cave ceiling above us. Hundreds of pillars stretched to the right, left, and in front of us before receding into darkness.

  The only reason I could see anything at all was that there were skylights built into the ceiling. Dim light and snowflakes filtered down through the holes. Hundreds of mounds of snow lay heaped on the ground under the skylights, like piles of autumn leaves covered by the first winter storm.

  I stood there, wondering how many hundreds of years it had taken the inhabitants to carve out an entire glacier. This was something worthy of a Great Hall of dwarves – except that all of it was created by goblins.

  But where were they? An eerie silence filled the chamber like no one had lived here for thousands of years.

  As we walked through the hall, I sent my All-Seeing Eye weaving through the pillars of ice.

  Nothing but more columns and piles of snow.

  “I thought there were supposed to be goblins,” Krug whispered.

  “Don’t say that,” Shee chided him with his own words from earlier. “You’re only inviting things to get worse.”

  “Maybe they all died of cold,” Alaria suggested as she circled her arms around her fur-clad body.

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” I muttered as we moved quietly through the gloom.

  “Boss?” Stig asked.

  “What?”

  “Why is that snow moving?”

  I looked at the nearest pile of snow and saw that, yes, it was beginning to sift away like sand running down a dune.

  Behind the sifting white, two glowing red eyes peeked out from the darkness.

  “They’re under the piles of snow!” I yelled, and immediately hurled Soul Suck at the creature.

  It burst out of the pile, screeching and running right at me. It looked exactly like the phantoms Dorp had conjured from the minds of the yetis: three feet tall, bluish-green skin, and covered in spiked, rusted plate armor. The only difference was this one was real.

  The goblin had almost reached me when every single demon in the company blasted it with their powers. It was basically vaporized within seconds, leaving behind only a jingle of silver coins hitting the ice floor.

  There was no time to grab the loot, because virtually every other pile in the cavernous room shifted. Two or three goblins sprang out of each, all of them heading for us with a barbaric war cry.

  They weren’t invulnerable – they were only 4000 hit points apiece, not much more than the dire wolves – but there were a lot of them.

  “Hit them with everything you’ve got!” I screamed as I started casting Doomsday.

  Unfortunately, we had let our ranks spread out as we walked through the cavern. Now we were cut off from each other and surrounded.

  A pitched battle began: demons versus heavily armored goblins. It did not go well for my side. Not that we were getting slaughtered, exactly – but for every three or four goblins that the pirates took down, we were losing a crewmember. I would immediately summon the demon back, but they only had half their hit points, which made them easy targets for another fast death.

  The good part was that a flurry of numbers kept shimmering in the air as the goblins bit the dust: 350 XP, 350 XP, 350 XP.

  That was the only good part.

  And then things got worse.

  The floor began to groan and pop as spiderweb cracks spiraled outwards beneath our feet. I thought for a second that maybe the floor was going to shatter, and we were all going to wind up plunging into some ice-cold underground lake.

  It wasn’t that bad… but almost.

  Massive, blocky figures made of ice separated from the surrounding floor, leaving grave-like pits in their wake. Once they stood up, they were as tall as Krug, and towered above the rest of us.

  Ice golems. Living ice statues.

  They weren’t nearly as numerous or fast as the goblins, but they were far more powerful. One got into a fistfight with Krug and slammed him to the ground with one punch. I kept having to replenish the grey demon’s hit points because of the damage he was taking.

  Between all the Self-Sacrifice spells to keep the others alive, and the occasional re-summoning of a dead crew member, I was getting quickly depleted of mana. If it dropped to zero, we were going to be absolutely screwed.

  “Form a circle – fire throwers on the outside, everybody else on the inside!” I yelled.

  The crack of Alaria’s fire whip reverberated through the cavernous halls, as did Shee’s sonic attack. One of her sound waves could blast a golem’s arm into ice cubes, or send goblins flying like bowling pins.

  Shee was definitely our most valuable asset – at least until Dorp joined the battle.

  Suddenly fire sprang up all around us, racing across the ice floor and enveloping the golems.

  The goblins screamed and began running away. The ice golems panicked and tried to brush the fire off their icy hides, sometimes striking themselves so hard that they ended up breaking off a hand.

  Strangely, though, I felt no heat from the flames.

  “What the hell?” I asked, then turned around and saw my answer.

  Dorp’s eyes were squinting in concentration as two fingers touched his temple.

  I laughed out loud.

  Attaboy, Dorp!

  The most annoying member of our group had turned the tide of battle. Now we had an opening – and we had to make the most of it.

  “Everybody run for it!” I yelled.

  Our beleaguered crew sprinted through the columns towards the opposite end of the hall. Dorp even sent a sheet of fire out in front of us, scattering the goblins in our path.

  Then a screeching voice echoed through the cavern.

  “It’s an illusion, you fools! There is no fire! Attack them!”

  The goblins poured in from all sides again – tentative at first, then more confident when they saw they weren’t going to burn to death. They took massive casualties as they attacked us, but they slowed us down enough that the ice golems caught up.

  Then the fight became truly brutal. No matter how hard we fought back, the pirates were getting flattened left and right.

  An ice golem grabbed hold of Krug’s leg and swung him around like a baseball bat right into one of the ice columns.

  BAM!

  The pillar cracked from floor to ceiling, though it remained intact.

  I noticed something interesting: every goblin near that pillar looked at it in fear before running away. Almost as though they were frightened of something happening to it…

  We were down to just 16 pirates, plus me, Alaria, Stig and Dorp. Our hit points were far too low. We kept getting hit by too many goblins, and the ice golems took forever to take down.

  My own hit points were at 50% because of all the Self-Sacrifice spells I kept casting, which drained away my Health. The main problem, though, was my mana, which was at a measly 25%. Another twenty or so Self-Sacrifice spells and it would be entirely depleted.

  Which meant we were all going to be dead in less than two minutes.

  But when I saw that column crack and the goblins scatter, I got an idea.

  “Attack the columns!” I yelled. “Ignore the goblins and the golem
s, and destroy the columns of ice holding up the ceiling!”

  The remaining pirates looked at Krug for confirmation. He seemed doubtful – but Alaria and Stig leapt right in and blasted fireballs at the already cracked column, and I hit it with a couple of Darkbolts. Within seconds it blew up, strewing jagged rubble across the floor.

  Above us, a few small cracks appeared in the ceiling. The ice golems ignored them, but the goblins immediately gave the area a wide berth.

  I was guessing this hall sat underneath several thousand tons of ice. Maybe even several million. If we could take down enough supports, we might be able to destroy most of the hall and the entire goblin cohort along with it, making our trip back a whole lot easier. If nothing else, at least we could crush some ice golems.

  It might have been suicide, but at least we could go out like Samson and take a few bastards with us.

  “Next column! That one!” I yelled and pointed.

  This time the remaining members of the pirate crew joined in. Sonic blasts, fireballs, electrical strikes, force beams – within 10 seconds, the next column was toast, too.

  Cracks on the ceiling began to splinter outwards from the first to the second pillar – or rather, where they had been.

  “Next column!” I shouted.

  Before we even destroyed the third pillar, the goblins stopped attacking and fled, leaving only the golems to bludgeon us to death.

  We were down to eight pirates, plus me, Alaria, Stig, and Dorp. Now it was just a race to see how much damage we could inflict before we died.

  “STOP!” the screechy voice bellowed. “What madness is this, to destroy the thing you seek to conquer?!”

  Ah – now we were getting somewhere.

  “We’re not here for you!” I shouted, my voice echoing through the cavern for you, for you, for you. “We’re here to fight the frost elves!”

  frost elves frost elves frost elves

  I still kept throwing my Darkbolts at the fourth column, and the pirates kept up their attack.

  There was a second’s pause as all the goblins looked around at each other in shock – and then the screechy voice screamed, “Stop your attack and I will stop mine!”

  “Everybody, stop what you’re doing!” I yelled.

  As the echoes from my voice faded, silence descended on the entire cavern – except for the occasional pop and crack of the ceiling above us.

  Then there was the clank… clank… clank of metal boots on ice.

  The goblin army parted, and a single figure stepped forward from the shadows. He wore the best-preserved suit of armor I’d seen so far, along with a circlet of knives fashioned into a crown on his helmet.

  The goblin king stopped about 20 feet away from us and raised the shield on his helmet. Beneath it was the ugly, warty face of a goblin – except his skin was more blue than green, and his eyes glowed red.

  “You really seek to enter the Kingdom of the Frost Elves?” he asked, his voice lower and more reasonable when he wasn’t screaming.

  “We do,” I said. “We have no interest in fighting you – we’re only passing through.”

  The scaly eyelids squinted at me, and the goblin shook his head. “You are a greater fool than I thought, then.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “You were not doing so well against my forces, and you want to face down the frost elves? Oh, I’ll admit, you were inflicting casualties – but another five minutes and you would have all been dead.”

  Actually, he was being generous with the ‘five minutes’ part.

  The goblin king looked up at the ceiling’s web of cracks, then glared at me again. “Of course, you would have liked to have taken all of us along with you, wouldn’t you?”

  “That was the plan.”

  “Why throw away your lives?”

  “I’m a warlock and these are my demons. I’ll resurrect in the nearest graveyard no matter how many times you kill me, and then I’ll summon them again – so you might as well let us pass in peace, or we’ll all be back very soon.”

  The goblin king spat on the ground. “Warlocks. You and Saykir are two of a kind.”

  “You know Saykir?”

  “Do I know Saykir,” the goblin king repeated, then laughed bitterly. “Decades ago, ice goblins ruled all the Northern Wastes. Then Saykir came and slaughtered us. Now only a fraction of our empire remains.”

  “Well, maybe I can solve the problem for you,” I said. “Let us through – both on the way there, and the way back – and I promise you we won’t do anything else to harm your people.”

  The goblin king stood there for a long moment, then smiled nastily.

  “I suppose I win either way. Either you take care of Saykir, or he takes care of you. Either way, I don’t have to expend any more effort on killing you.” The goblin king paused, then nodded. “You may pass unmolested.”

  Sometimes diplomacy works.

  Although I wonder if it’s still diplomacy if the other person thinks you’re going to die.

  “You have my thanks,” I said, allowing myself the tiniest bit of sarcasm.

  “Kill Saykir for me, or die yourselves and never come back,” the goblin king retorted. “That will be thanks enough.”

  12

  The goblin king was as good as his word. He and his men escorted us through the cavern, past ornate sculptures and homes carved into the glacier. We emerged from a pair of giant iron doors onto gently sloping steps carved from the ice.

  Twilight had fallen. It was no longer snowing, and the wind was still. There were only a few clouds, and the moon had just risen over the horizon in the purplish-blue sky.

  “I need time to resurrect my crew here,” I said as we paused on the steps.

  “Take all the time you want,” the goblin king replied sourly. “We’ll be repairing the damage you inflicted on our home.”

  I wanted to say, Probably shouldn’t have tried to kill us then, but I decided it would be better not to burn any bridges. We would have to return through the hall again when we defeated Saykir, and I really didn’t want to face down those ice golems again unless absolutely necessary.

  “My apologies,” I said. “I hope the damage wasn’t too severe.”

  I guess my apologies weren’t good enough, because the goblin king spat again in disgust. “May you and Saykir kill each other.”

  Then he turned around and walked back into the hall with his hundreds of remaining goblins.

  The doors swung inwards and closed with a reverberating BOOM-OOM-oom-oom.

  “Hrm,” Krug grunted.

  “What?” I asked.

  “If anyone talked to me like that, I’d kill him.”

  I scowled, irritated at having my manhood questioned. “We need to stay on his good side for when we go back to the ship.”

  Krug shrugged. “Still would have killed him.”

  “Maybe you should have, then,” I snapped, “back when his ice golems were kicking your ass.”

  Krug glowered at me, and his grip tightened around the grip of his cutlass.

  Dumb, Ian, DUMB. The demon had just been talking about killing people who mouthed off to him.

  Also, not very smart to play nice with an asshole and then go and insult an ally.

  “Look,” I said, forcing myself to calm down, “I’m here for Saykir, not the goblin king. We walked away unscathed. That’s a win in my book.”

  “Just don’t expect it to happen again,” Alaria warned me. “Saykir won’t be so merciful.”

  I would have hardly called the goblin king ‘merciful.’ More like ‘realistic,’ since we were about to cave in his home.

  Still, point taken.

  Krug just grunted and walked off.

  As he and the remaining pirates talked amongst themselves, I took Alaria’s arm and led her away from the others. “Is there anything I should know about Saykir that will help us defeat him?”

  She considered for a second, then shook her head. “Not really.”

  I tho
ught of the pirate queen and the… ahem, ‘interesting’ way Alaria had tried to dispatch her.

  Most people come into the world via vagina, but very few go out that way.

  “You obviously had a plan to kill Tarka,” I said. “Do you have a plan for Saykir?”

  “No.”

  I stared at her. “No?!”

  “No,” she said, like I was crazy to keep asking.

  “So we tromped all the way out here in the middle of nowhere just to get our asses handed to us?! Why’d we go after him if you have no idea how to beat him?!”

  “He was one of the few ex-masters whose location I knew for certain, and the only one I know of that we absolutely needed an airship to get to.”

  “Great,” I muttered.

  “Don’t worry – we improvised on the first two and they turned out fine.”

  “I don’t know if that should be our game plan every time,” I griped.

  She kissed me on the cheek. “Don’t worry, something always comes up,” she said, then grabbed my crotch. “Just like this.”

  Then she winked and walked off.

  “Ha ha,” I said sarcastically, then started the process of resurrecting the crew.

  They were all alive again within ten minutes, but we had to rest and let everyone’s hit points creep back up to full. Not only that, but my mana definitely had to recharge.

  While we waited, I looked around the plains in front of us. We might have been on top of a glacier, but there were even more mountains and cliffs ahead of us.

  I walked down the steps and into the freshly fallen snow in front of the gates, and immediately sank down into two feet of fresh powder.

  A lot of snow had probably piled up on those mountains in the distance…

  “Hey Shee,” I called.

  Lemon-colored Quasimodo came over. “What?”

  “If you ever hear me yell, ‘Hit it,’ I want you to aim a sonic blast wherever I’m pointing, okay?”

  Shee frowned. “Why?”

  “I’m thinking we might could use an avalanche to our advantage when we battle Saykir.”

  Shee made a Hm, that might just work face. “Alright – I’ll watch for your signal.”

  When everyone’s Health had recovered and my mana was back up to full, we started off.