CHAPTER TWENTY

“Taker easy now, little ‘un...” warned Doetrieve mounting multiple cautious steps across rock. The dwarf, atop Waspig with Bathiel beside, shot his arm forward and his pet obeyed. Launching, Waspig’s wings whipped into a wild frenzy, the rode pet soon circling the cave repeatedly. Doetrieve drew his bow. An arrow knocked and loosened, and Waspig reared itself back to block the projectile with its stinger. Succeeding, the manuever’s recoil amounted in the dwarf’s flinging, his stout form twirling, Bathiel executing a leap swooping its master off his feet. But he continued to bounce on, barreling straight into the elf only halfway through his next knock.

“Stop! By The Ponderous--”

“MELEE INCREASED TO 15”

Doetrieve crashing down, the dwarf seized the lull in combat and made for the exit, creatures in tow. But where Doetrieve had once stood, Giltgrief and Sowsmith haunted.

“Ain’t no sense in this, dwarf.”

“Com’on now, it’s His word.”

Jerking to his left, the dwarf hopped back aboard Waspig and grabbed Bathiel by the scruff, it making up the difference in speed and horizontality with its own flapping. Waspig blasted the trio forward down a long tunnel opposite the elves. As opposed to vines and spiders, they buzzed by clumps of webbing stretched across various surfaces and between walls. The dwarf gulped knowing the size of what he’d seen crawl in barn attic corners. But even the deepest swallowing of his fears couldn’t have prepared him for the sight past the last right.

A massive natural stretch of cavern, its ceiling glittering with magic runes sending showers of light below, housed a number of glass barred cages locking away an array of massive arachnids. Some took on sizes five times the dwarf, he observed, and different types of hair, even scaling, draped across each separated spider methodically. Something about the sight struck him in a similar chord as to the collective sound of mooing, each cow with their own stable. Indeed it appeared this way, and the dwarf hesitated upon reaching the other end to move, his gaze transfixed, certain shattered pens lacking reassurance--until Giltgrief and Sowsmith rushed down to the same level shouting. The dwarf glanced to his side and beheld another console. He looked over the elves once more; Waspig; Bathiel, and brought mighty blows down upon the controls, several glass spheres retracting and releasing eight legged crawlers aplenty, many of whom seized upon the two elves, the dwarf making haste to avoid the same fate following his pets into yet another winding tunnel. He didn’t look back.

Further the three descended down spiraling runs of darkness only infrequently lit by the odd rune or shaft suggesting an outside world still lived. Lefts spun left for so long they began to feel right, and rights the same. But penetrating deeper into the dungeon beneath the elven city in the forest, the dwarf realized he had returned beneath his former cell, stack of shattered concrete laying exactly where he’d left the pile, hay decorating stone below. Knowing the leftmost tunnel to be the most immediate exit of the cave, he directed Waspig towards at once--and reeled back as substance sailed across the room sealing the hole in web. The dwarf turned round and met from few feet far the chittering maw of a nine foot assassin, its array of eyes intimidating him in the same manner Waspig had so long ago. But he could offer no potato, and the spider began splattering saliva across rock, its legs directing the abomination to its little prey.

The dwarf bolted for a free tunnel. A lobbing of web directed him to another and then another, and then all exits sealed themselves--all except one. The dwarf took Waspig airborne, Bathiel in tow, and forced the trio to strafe endlessly in loops, as if to spin the spider’s eyes into confusion. The dwarf considered the tactic valid, no further sprays of web and certainly no venom yet dispensed, the creature transfixed. Then he jerked Waspig with his other hand firm on the wild locks of Bathiel and up the three shot back into the dwarf’s former cell, straw sent whipping past glass bars. The dwarf fell onto his back and fought for air, his two swinesects alternating between panting and lapping up biscuit crumbs.

Though he had escaped the spider--somewhat--realistically the dwarf did not see the door coming open even with new aid. But he became spared the grief of further planning for a web blew right through the dwarfen made hole followed by a vibrating slam from beneath rattling all. Subsequent silence gave no hint of what was to come until yet another blast of force rumbled. Before long the dwarf realized its plan, but he could call upon no further energy and only laid still to await the inevitable. Again and again the spider slammed, dust spraying from the cracks above. And suddenly before the cell door stood Captain Locust.

“Damned dwarf!” he roared. “I should be ever so grateful His guidance brought you back to your rightful home, even if you’ve unauthorized cellmates.” Locust shook his head and his long hair stirred.

“What in hell is happening below us?”

The concrete beneath the four gave sudden way with one final tremor, the floor collapsing into the cavern below in thick jagged chunks, a massive cloud of dust enveloping all space possible. Somewhat immobilized, deeply dissociative, the dwarf had not tensed his muscles and became spared a severe fate on landing--though his head rattled. He sat up and observed Waspig and Bathiel flutter down, shafts of natural light behind them diluting into rune fed luminescence. Captain Locust came up from the rubble next, jumping at the corpse of the creature caught beneath heavy slabs. He turned to the dwarf with, as the dwarf noted, an intense elven fury, blinking and blotting ink into his eyes. The elf drew a saber and sauntered close, his face dark. The dwarf roused himself up but felt, in the few seconds he could rationally process, there would be no escaping the elf’s intent. The dwarf stuck his foot hard onto the concrete and kicked himself back as the prediction came realized, Locust adjusting in his own few seconds to continue the descent of his sword.

Bathiel leapt to the dwarf’s defense and fell in two.

The dwarf’s heart kicked at the bones of its cage shivering his stout form from beard to bottom. In one moment, it was very nearly him slain--and because it wasn’t, Bathiel was. Next the elf would bring the blade down on him or his Waspig. The dwarf held only bloodied hands--no thickness of finger could stop his fate. Then the concrete around all shuffled, and the great nine foot arachnid crawled out from its cover as if a cow shaking off grass. The elven leader hesitated, and in this moment of chance the dwarf flipped himself up and onto Waspig just steps away. Locust turned and, in realization of his foolishness, brought his saber up again into the air, a glint blinding the dwarf. When vision returned, the elf had sailed through the air and nestled himself into a wall of rock, the spider advancing after its easily swept prey. The dwarf grabbed at the fallen sword so frequently having taunted him at the prospect of death. The hilt refused to fit right, so he awkwardly held the thing by the outside. With two hands, having been escorted over by Waspig, the dwarf brought the blade down on webbing and sawed, freeing up the tunnel to the lake. Intent on not inducing a stabbing in the remembered darkness of the water slide, the dwarf tossed the borrowed weapon away, hopped onto his sole remaining pet, and re-entered the exit.

“ANIMAL HUSBANDRY INCREASED TO 20”

But whatever turn he had taken before did not properly materialize for the dwarf blasted out a spout and into a massive chamber of chiseled stone and fine wood, dirt still making up much of the floor not dominated by the moat of which the dwarf crashed and splashed into. It--the moat--did not run deep. Waspig’s wings guided it atop a heavy root. The dwarf soon reached the shore and joined his pet, he then awestruck at the behemoth of oak before him, its branches rising into obfuscation, its roots running along all sides of the specialized room. Whatever the size of the tree that’d damned the dwarf paled in comparison to what could be none other than The Ponderous.

“DDDDWWWAAARRRR...”

Upon closer inspection, a sickly splotch lied died center--the face of it. The dwarf watched decaying bark attempt to enunciate, its words choked. He could not help noticing the many mushrooms sprouting out its head, dotted sinister shades of black and red.

“AAAAARRRRFFFFFFF...”

Its tone screeched so miserably, the dwarf felt sympathy well up inside him. Guiding Waspig, the two ascended up off the ground and towards the collection of fungus so suspect. He took stalks into both of his cartoonish grips and entertained, for but a brief moment, the warning he’d decided against heeding. The dwarf tore the mushrooms out from the wood. The things shriveled fast in his hand, and at once sap spouted out the Ponderous’ fresh wound. But despite, color slowly seeped into His face which began to radiate autumn. It settled into what the dwarf registered as concern, and he drew near.

“THANK... YOU, DWARF... BUT... ARE YOU... REALLY?”

The dwarf explained his situation as best as he could with the few sentences he felt able to breathe.

“I SUSPECTED... AND NEVER GAVE... SUCH AN ORDER... HEED ME, FALSE DWARF. IN THIS WORLD... ARE OTHERS SIMILAR... BRANCHFOLK NOT AS... PONDEROUS... BUT ENOUGH.”

Waspig nibbled at a fallen branch. The dwarf nodded.

“THEY CAN... HELP YOU... I CANNOT.”

Before he could respond, the dwarf watched the bark wretchedly writhe. The Ponderous Tree died, its gnarled mouth hung agape, its sullen eyes drooped, its sudden golden hue fading as fast as its arrival. The dwarf stared into the dead wood and felt overflown with gratefulness that he would not ever be able to articulate, its recipient gone. The weight then, of all time passed since last saving, brought the dwarf’s head down. He gazed at the tip of his beard and felt nothing. He looked at Waspig and saw Bathiel and Pistol and the others so mercilessly lost. Waspig’s nose sniffed curiously a cobweb getting the stuff stuck on, a rampant scurrying ensuing. Feeling something at this, he remembered the lives the two still lived. The dwarf turned to exit the chamber and watched large double doors kick open and allow in a worn and wounded Captain Locust with saber gripped and injured Doetrieve behind.

Though at first powered ahead by pure rage, Locust’s elven eyes widened connecting the shriveled dotted heap on the ground to the gaping wound atop The Ponderous Tree. Beheld then was its empty face and lack of soul. While Doetrieve began to weep soundlessly, the elven captain swung through the air twice in the dwarf’s direction, distance uncomfortably close.

“Right here, right now, dwarf, shall be the hour of your execution.”