Death without Direction: A Modern Sword and Sorcery Serial (A Battleaxe and a Metal Arm Book 1) by Samuel Fleming (novels to improve english txt) 📗

robe where she had cut it free from the stone door—it was unmarred. Not a stitch of fabric was torn. She had been renewed, body, metal, and cloth.

“What do you last remember?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

“The maw of the Hydra. Death. Blackness,” Taunauk’s reply was calm and measured. Forced.

“I saw you die…” Helesys trailed off, remembering the battle cry of her companion and how it was cut short at the moment of his death. It was a reprieve to see him. “I fared no better.”

She felt the edge of metal against her stomach and pulled the wolf crest from the pocket of her gray robes. The metal glinted in the torchlight. It appeared to be the same eight sided disc with wolf silhouette, though the geometric designs on the back—the side they thought was a key—were too complex to say if they had changed.

“Do you think we were wrong about the relic?” Taunauk asked.

Helesys glanced from the relic around at the stone room that seemed so familiar and yet was not. The sconces were different… or reset, like pieces on a game board. But even that was not quite right because the wolf crest was still in their possession. She felt no magic from the relic or the stone around them, yet they were alive.

“I wish I could remember more,” the elf finally said. “Magic, no matter the kind, works with rules. We must learn the rules of the dungeon and the rules that govern our rebirth if we hope to make it out.” She slid the wolf crest back into the front of her robe.

The barbarian grunted in affirmation.

Dungeon… Why had that word come to mind?

Then he walked over to the line of sconces on the wall and tore one free with the same easy strength.

“What of the Hydra?” Taunauk asked.

“My blast only killed one head, but after your passing the head started to regrow. When one head dies, two more take its place. My next shot I aimed at the columns…”

Then Helesys realized why he was asking. It was not out of curiosity or comradery. If the dungeon had been reset like a gameboard or like the sconces on the wall then they would likely need to deal with the beast again.

There it was again… Dungeon—a place underground for keeping prisoners.

“It is no matter,” he said, having seen her expression. “We will find a way past the beast or we will give the fishmen a wide berth.”

Helesys nodded and added, “You go first.”

The barbarian chuckled and loosened his grip on the battleaxe. The elf weaver followed just behind him.

But then Taunauk paused at the hallway and was still. She could not see anything past his massive frame and could not even see his head past the fur cloak on his shoulders.

She grew impatient. They had a long walk ahead of them and the unending chill of water—that she had not forgotten. She shuddered at the memory of the cold. But as the moment stretched on Helesys began to fear that he was caught in some magical trap.

“Taunauk,” she whispered, afraid to move.

“You must see for yourself,” he said and stepped to the right.

She hesitated, but told herself that if there was danger Taunauk would not move aside. In spite of the thought, Helesys’s every muscle was tense as she moved forward in a crouch. She looked left down the hallway. It stretched impossibly far into the gloom again.

It was the same as before: A sharp left. Ten paces wide. Stone-lined. Impossibly long. No torch sconces. She thought again of the blasted flooding.

“I do not understand—”

—The elf weaver’s breath caught in her throat as she turned back toward the barbarian, for on the right was another hallway where before there had been only one. Both equally long and dark.

Helesys dropped to a knee and glanced again down both paths. Had she really expected a second chance? Another chance to sneak past the fishmen and avoid the Hydra?

From behind her, Taunauk said, “I think we should go left again.”

The weaver paused, trying to weigh two unweighable options. Worse—another thought scratched at mind her like a spider crawling in her hair: Death likely waited for them. Death and rebirth.

“Okay, Taunauk. Let us see just how much about this dungeon has changed.”

NEXT TIME ON A BATTLEAXE AND A METAL ARM

Book 2:

KNEEL BEFORE ZHUG

Spoiler-Free Excerpt from BAMA 2

 

Sneaking through the hall of the barracks was painfully slow. A hundred paces after the last bunk room brought them to a hard corner as the hallway turned to the right. Taunauk carefully peered around the corner.

“There is another bend up ahead,” he whispered, then gestured with his hand to make a Z-shape.

“Good place for an ambush,” Helesys replied.

The barbarian shrugged. There was little choice in the matter. Trying to sneak back past the ninety sleeping goblins was likely more dangerous.

“I will go first,” he said. “Wait here.”

Helesys felt eyes over her shoulder again, something watching. Something there and yet invisible. Intangible. She looked back over her shoulder and up and, for a moment, thought she saw something standing above her. She blinked and the image was gone, and the elf questioned whether she had seen anything at all.

Helesys alternated between watching her partner stalk the hall, which might’ve been another hundred paces to the next bend, and keeping watch on the hall of sleeping goblins. Her heart was beating in her throat. The arcane hum of her gauntlet was a small comfort.

Taunauk was halfway down the hall when he stopped cold and stood straight. He stepped to his left, flush with the stone wall so that Helesys could see.

Six goblins stood at the far end. They were all the same small, hunched build, except that these goblins wore haphazard armor. Their shoulder pauldrons and leg grieves were oversized, like they had been made for a man—or stolen from one. Helesys’s mind wandered back to the piles of broken armor and wondered how they had come to pass. The goblins also