Death by Cliché (29 page)

“For instance,” Henchman said, considering her. “He’s given me very specific instructions on what I can do while preparing his women. Before tonight, I’ve never done them.” He leered at her, and she went cold. “While there are certain things I can’t do to you and keep you fresh, there are many, many choices left open to me.”

Henchman smiled and stood, smelling of wood chips and fur preservatives. He reached up and jerked her dress out of the way with a single pull, leaving her shivering and exposed in her shift.

“Very nice.”

She screamed.

Chapter
Fifty-Four

“And that isn’t funny at all.”

—Bob Defendi

raldolf had made it maybe fifteen feet when he
heard the fighting in the hall. He retreated to his throne room and glanced at his guards on either side—there were twelve total. The girl would have to wait for later. The guards moved to block the way behind him, and Hraldolf waited.

A single dwarf came around the corner, his ax drawn and glowing with fell power. His chest heaved, but if Hraldolf knew dwarves, that had nothing to do with exhaustion and everything to do with excitement. The dwarf
ached
for this battle.

“Little One,” Hraldolf said, beyond his wall of meat.

“Who you calling little, Nancy Boy?” the dwarf growled.

But his expression was one of surprise. Their eyes were locked and the dwarf must be shocked to have survived the process. Just like that, it would have been over yesterday. Yesterday.

“Your name is Gorthander, correct?”

“Oh, aye,” the dwarf said.

“Are you ready to die, Gorthander?”

“Do you think you can kill me?”

Hraldolf stroked his clean face and shrugged. “Perhaps not anymore. But my guards can.”

“How about you and I?” Gorthander asked. “Single combat.”

“Why do I have the urge to say
yes
to that?” Hraldolf asked. “Good gods. That’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard.”

“Stupider than letting us escape?” Gorthander asked.

“I had to know.”

“Know what?”

“If I was the hero or the villain,” Hraldolf whispered.

“And what do you think the answer is?”

Hraldolf didn’t need to think anymore. He closed his eyes and felt the tears welling up inside. Dear gods, he knew. Maybe that was actually why he’d let them out in the first place. He knew.

“I’m the villain.”

“Then it’s time to die.”

The dwarf charged into the guards, and Hraldolf turned away. He was the villain. He was actually the villain. Dear gods, what did that mean?

The grunts and the howls of combat echoed behind him. He didn’t watch.

Gorthander hacked and growled, ax and sword and armor ringing on one another.

The villain. He couldn’t be the villain. He’d done all of this for his people. He’d done all of this for Humanity. Even destroying the world had been for the good of his people.

But why?

“Die!” Gorthander screamed.

The grunts and the hollering intensified. Blood splattered loudly on the plastic mat, like paint on a tarp.

The villain. The villain. Dear gods, the villain. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He had to decide what to do. He had to plan his next move.

With a grunt, his final guard fell.

He turned and Gorthander stood there, doused in blood, a great statue in tribute to slaughter. A mighty visage of death and strength and terror. The Dwarven warrior, so iconic he was a cliché in and of himself.

The guards sprawled around him, hacked and carved into torn chunks of red meat, pieces of twisted armor peeking through the mess. This was only slightly more coherent looking than one of his guards after he’d displeased Hraldolf. The Overlord had to admit it: the dwarf got the job done.

“You killed my guards. Twelve of the best guards in the world.”

“I’m a Player Character,” the dwarf said.

“Gorthander,” Hraldolf said, falling into talking mode,
villain
mode he now realized. “Gorthander, what do you expect to accomplish?”

“I can see your face, and I ain’t blown up,” Gorthander said. “What do
you
expect to accomplish?”

“I don’t need to blow you up, Gorthander,” Hraldolf said. He scanned the dozens of dents and tears in the dwarf’s armor. “You sure you don’t want to heal up before this fight?”

Gorthander watched him suspiciously. “What’s the trick?”

“No trick. Stand as far away as you like.”

Gorthander backed up until he could watch both the door and Hraldolf and cast a healing spell on himself. The dwarf shimmered, then drew to full height. Perfect. New.

And he could defeat twelve of Hraldolf’s guards in melee combat.

“I still don’t get it,” Gorthander said.

“You’re no good to me wounded.” Hraldolf
smiled
.

His gaze hadn’t worked passively on the dwarf—they probably didn’t find Humans all that pretty to begin with, but now the dwarf’s eyes lit up in delight and he fell to the stone floor, his chest heaving in rapture. He gazed on Hraldolf, and he was the Overlord’s slave.

“Master!” Gorthander said.

“Yes.”

Chapter
Fifty-Five

“No joke now. Writing.”

—Bob Defendi

amico and Omar sprinted through the halls of the
Heart of Light, tearing around corners, racing up stairs. Damico’s lungs rasped. He wasn’t pacing for distance. He burned calories like a ton of bacon fat in a coke furnace.

They burst out onto the top floor of the palace, staring down the hall into the necks of ten soldiers, in front of a door. Those necks were each the size of a torpedo. Their arms could tear the roots out of mountains, and their swords would have made Damocles’s entire family cower in fear.

Damico didn’t have time to worry or think. He charged.

Omar surged ahead, his sword out, screaming a bloody battle cry, but Damico’s feet hit the floor and twisted out from underneath him. He barreled into a tumble, barking both his knees and knocking the wind from him.

Omar filled the hallway, hacking and cutting and generally being Omar. Damico stared down at his foot. It felt funny.

It looked funny too. Or rather it looked exactly like it was supposed to if it were transparent. He could see the floor through it, the wall, the stairway at the end of the hall. Everything. Then it solidified.

“Dammit.” He rolled back on to his knees and rose. He felt like Marty frickin’ McFly. What was going on here? Had he finally brought too many people to life?

Or was he dying?

“Dear God, no.”

That was it. He was dying. He had slipped away in the real world, and now his soul was without an anchor. He had what, five minutes? Ten? Thirty on the outside? This was it. The big question mark. Death. The Reaper. His mortal coil had taken up square dancing.

No.

He stepped forward, carefully placing his feet which seemed happy to comply for the moment. He stumbled more quickly toward Omar who had already dropped the first bad guy. Damico held up his sword, and it flickered with power. Carl had seen this coming, all that time ago. He’d given them these weapons, just for this palace. This was it. He was at the end of the adventure.

But the end how?

Omar bellowed and hacked down a second foe, then one of them thrust a lucky blade through his defenses and into his belly. Crying out, he fell back.

“Tag!” Damico screamed, leaping into his place.

He parried and hacked as Omar pulled out a potion bottle and uncorked it. Damico could hold them now. First one attacked then the other, then Damico found his opening. It happened like that over and again, and he didn’t have trouble with the multiple foes. They took turns.

Carl must have been rolling separate initiatives for the bad guys. Damico had to hand it to him. The boy had heart. That was a lot of damn bookkeeping.

Damico hacked and hacked, cutting through their hit points, whittling away until the first one dropped, gasping. Then he started on the second, his initial stance defensive until he figured out the new pattern of initiative rolls.

And then he hacked again, the niggling pains of his own whittled hit points aching. He wished Gorthander was with them. Omar loomed behind him, and he cut and dropped a second one.

“Tag!” he shouted, stepping back.

Omar leaped up into position, and Damico could barely stand still from the anticipation. He wanted to be first. He
needed
to be first, but the numbers clicked through Damico’s head, and he knew that under these conditions, Omar had a higher damage per second. He was best at being a Viking.

But still the images of Lotianna ate away inside his head. He could see her there in his mind’s eyes lying under a grunting Hraldolf, raped by his own brother. The gorge rose in Damico’s throat, and he had to fight.

But he couldn’t. He had to sit here helplessly for her sake. Omar could cut through this brute squad faster than Damico in his wildest dreams.

Another wave of shakiness passed over Damico, and he fell to one knee. He held up his hand and could see through it now. At least he was taking a breather, not playing
Johnny B. Goode
. He shook and stared at the hand and willed it to become solid again. Somewhere, his body lay dying on a bed because
his soul
wasn’t in it. He knew if he could just be there, he could give his body the will to fight. He had the strength. He could do it.

But he couldn’t get there. He was trapped here, and that was the end. Dead in a hallway. Faded away to be replaced moments later with an NPC simulacrum. Carl wouldn’t miss a beat, he knew. Somehow, he knew Carl knew that he knew. They were connected, the two of them. He could sense the reality of this place with a certainty he found inexplicable. But it was here. He knew how it worked. He knew
why
it worked.

He struggled to his feet again, and Omar had only two guards left. Then he hacked, and there was only one.

Omar fought not like a banshee, not like a berserker. In truth, he didn’t even fight like a Viking anymore. He would call out battle cries now and then, but he no longer held the excitement he carried at the beginning of the battle. Now he cut with a perfect economy of movement. Twist just so to parry. Feint ever so slightly thus—attack, parry, riposte, and his blade bit the bad guy. Now that the battle had gone on this long, Omar wasn’t a barbarian or a madman, he was a professional. This was what he did. And nobody did it better. Cue Carly Simon.