Tartarus Beckons by Edmund Batara (reading an ebook .TXT) 📕

turning the ice elf to mush looked at his massive weapon and wonderingly touched the messy gore his victim left behind.

Isn’t the spell supposed to just confuse them? thought Tyler. They act stupid, not confused. Okay, stupid and confused. Moronic even.

Then one of the gigantic wolf-creatures lazily turned its head towards its rider and suddenly rolled on the ground, catching the ice elf by surprise. Free of its rider, the vargyr took a few moments to stare at its dislodged partner, and then jumped on the startled elf, its fanged mouth agape. Biting off the head, it hungrily wolfed down its newly dead meal. Growls arose from the rest of its giant brethren. The right side of the ice elf mage Tyler noticed earlier was abruptly bitten off by its mount, and as he fell, another vargyr had its fill of the body, leading to a biting and clawing struggle between the two beasts.

Pandemonium immediately exploded as base instincts and racial natures took over. The field erupted in gore and ferocity as other vargyr turned to their riders and other creatures for their food. Sutr’s humanoid minions promptly attacked Ymir’s host, their hatred for their age-old enemies coming to the fore. Magical spells crackled as they ripped their way towards their victims, flame creatures engaged ice elves in deadly combat, and in the middle of it all, fire and ice beasts taking no sides but venting their fury and hunger on whoever they could catch.

Amid the raucous sound of battle and the terrible cries of the dying, Tyler looked down on the party. Most were confusingly stupefied at what happened, though the young mage saw Tyndur and Astrid looking up at him. Several loud crashes caught Tyler’s attention as the bulk of the wild melee neared his makeshift fortifications. He immediately blocked the entrance. The battle was rapidly deteriorating into bestial savagery among the gathered jotnar.

“Time to leave, sire?” he heard Kobu ask calmly.

“I don’t mind if we do, Kobu. When the main force of Ymir’s reinforcements arrives, that battle is going to be quickly over, and they’ll be free to turn their attention to us,” replied Tyler. The mage then looked down.

“Hey, get to the cave entrance!” he shouted.

Without waiting to note if they followed his order, Tyler immediately made his way down. By the time he got to the ground, the party was already on its way up the incline led by Tyler, though Habrok stayed behind to wait for Tyler and Kobu.

“That was a show, sire,” observed the ranger as they ran to catch up with the rest.

“It won’t last long,” said Tyler. “Spells do have a time limit, but I hope by the time it expires they’re already deep into the business of killing each other to mind its disappearance.”

Habrok laughed heartily.

“Well, Orm was in conniptions when he saw what was happening,” answered the ranger. “He had a weird laugh.”

“That I could imagine.”

As they reached the top of the incline, Tyler saw it was a large flat area, though ruins of ancient structures and petrified trees could be seen. He felt the presence of faint wisps of magic, used in anger and hate, the telltale signs of the emotion which drove their casting still tainting the remnants of the structures after so many years. The mage looked at his companions ahead of him and saw that Tyndur had stopped and was addressing the rest. The einherjar was pointing to some peaks to their right. Just before he followed, Tyler took a last glance back and saw that the muddled, savage fracas was still ongoing, though he could see that some of the fortifications he had created were shaking from the impact of bodies and blows hurled against it. He knew the walls wouldn’t last any longer. In the distance, the approaching cloud of dust was a lot nearer.

The way to the cave entrance was thankfully uncontested. Tyler could see giant dead spiders in burned groups along the way. Sford clearly didn’t have an easy time reaching the cave. The closer they got to their destination; more toasted arachnids came into view. They were, as Kadir said, large monsters. And Tyler still had to see one the size of a dog. So far, the smallest of the blasted freaks was the size of a donkey. There were a few spiders which had arrows in them. Obviously Habrok’s handiwork, and it occurred to the mage that the earlier visit of the two scouts must have stirred up the spider colony inhabiting the fissure, to the disadvantage of Sford and Kadir.

Sford must have had a difficult time, mused the mage. I hope they’re okay. Spiders breed fast, and it looked like we’re the first to come this way in a long time.

Finally, the party stood before the mouth of the cave. It was a large one, and it bore evidence of Sford’s passage. The sides of the entrance were black, evidence of massive fire blasts. Smoke still lingered and came out of its depths, together with the nasty smell of burned creatures. Tyler looked around. They were in a mountainous cul-de-sac. It was a ravine marked by a few more stone ruins, and he could see that the end of the gully was blocked by tall basalt peaks. Around them were more dead arachnids, especially in the waiting cave entrance. Even a solitary calcified tree was on fire, caught by a magical fireball. Yet what caught Tyler’s attention was a tall stone marker beside the entrance. Though time had eroded the deeply engraved glyphs on it, most of it was still readable.

“Tyndur? You’re familiar with that language?” asked Tyler as he pointed to the stone marker.

“Looks Alfar to me, sire. Unfortunately, I never bothered with them. Too wily and weird for my nerves,” said Tyndur.

“Permit me,” volunteered Magna as she stepped forward.

Tyler kept his silence as the dokkalfr warrior moved to the marker. Sford was inside the cave, but the human mage wanted to know something about what they’re getting into. If the peculiar mage was in a tight spot,