Death After Death

Simon tried to get up from where he’d fallen as quietly as he could and whispered, “Aufvarum Oonbetit,” to cut the ropes on his hands free, but in the dark, every sound seemed to carry, and stealth was, ironically, impossible. As loud as whispering had seemed, though, moving was worse. As he tentatively stood, the debris he was on top of skidded and clattered down a slope of other disgusting refuse, and he stumbled as he almost lost his footing.

For a moment, whatever was in here with him froze at the sound of his tumble, and then it began stomping toward him with increasing speed. Thinking fast, Simon picked up the nearest rock and threw it to the opposite side of the cavern or wherever it was that he was at, now.

That made the monster freeze again for a moment, but when it started moving, Simon was pretty sure that its direction hadn’t changed. It was coming right for him.

Simon continued to ease himself down the midden heap, and he reached out for anything he might be able to use. This time, when he found a bone, he whispered, “Aufvarum Barom,” as he threw the thing overhand as hard as he could overhand away from him.

The bone burst into the pale yellow flashlight beam that he’d envisioned, and it tumbled end over end through the dark thanks to the word of lesser light he’d used. That only lasted for two or three seconds before the creature it illuminated lashed out, shattering it and sending glowing fragments in every direction.

Those two seconds were enough, though. Up until now, the biggest thing that Simon had dealt was a troll. Technically, the Wyvern was bigger, but he’d been pretty far away from it when he struck it down, so that didn’t really count.

If the troll had been ten or twelve feet tall, then this ogre was easily fifteen feet. It was impossible to say in the eerie location that was this cavern. What he could say, though, was that the thing was a tough old bastard. Its body was covered in scars, and one of its eyes was milky and useless. None of those features distracted him from the thickly knotted muscles that covered the too-wide creature or the treetrunk club that it had just used to such deadly effect as it turned a single ulna bone into fifty ulna fragments that twinkled like stars as they rained down across the ground.

It was beautiful in a strange, savage way, but that didn’t stop Simon from picking up speed. In the brief flash of light, he saw the glint of metal from a rusted blade and grabbed that, too, even as he darted into a darker part of the cave. It was a good thing he’d done so, too, because he’d only gotten a dozen feet when he heard the ogre’s club swing down hard on the pile of bone and filth he’d been standing on only moments ago.

He felt pieces of bone and stone spray across his back, which was painful since he lacked his leather armor, but he did not cry out. Instead, he ran for another second, and as soon as the sound of debris stopped, he stopped, too.