A twinge from Stonefist betrayed a back-handed swipe, and Ravon’s sword was there to greet it. He felt the shudder of the blow ring in the bones of his arm. He spun away and then around again, pricking the gnoll’s upper arm.
Stonefist didn’t feel it, not yet. But it riled him. “How Finner like new sword?” He lunged, missed, lunged again, as Ravon backed up.
Ravon feinted toward the gnoll’s left side, then sliced his sword right. Stonefist sprang back. The gnoll was solid on his feet, and strong, but his blade was not as long as Ravon’s. The forge master would die. But he was stronger than Ravon, so as much fun as the foreplay might be, it was time to finish it.
Behind Stonefist the orcs watched uneasily. They’d be the next fight, Ravon knew. He wasn’t going to walk away from this battle, but he’d take a few of them with him.
Stonefist was swaying, warming up for his next lunge. “I give your eyes to the goblins for a meal!” he brayed.
Ravon shook his head. “But Stonefist, that would be vulgar.”
“Vulgaaar!” Stonefist yelled in joy and rushed forward. Ravon jumped onto the inner rim. Then, the movement of the rim taking him past Stonefist’s position, he hopped back on the outer one.
Now behind Stonefist, and before the gnoll could turn, he swung the great sword in an arcing slice at the creature’s neck, knocking his head half off. It lay on his shoulder, the stump erupting with thick blood. Absurdly, Stonefist tried to put it back on, managing to tip it back into place. The forge master staggered around to stare at Ravon.
The gnoll stood as still as a rock outcropping, his gaze lit with understanding.
Ravon kicked a boot forward. “For Finner,” he said, connecting hard enough to send Stonefist staggering backward. The gnoll teetered on the edge of the forge for a moment, then plummeted.
A roaring noise. The artificers sending a bolt of searing wind, no doubt. But then the roaring continued, and as Ravon became more aware of his surroundings, he saw that every window, door, niche, outcropping, ramp, and hole held a slave or five, and they were all cheering. The orc guards, who had started to approach Ravon, looked up in alarm.
The real battle of the genesis forge began at that moment as dwarves, gnomes, humans, halflings, and all the rest surged onto the rings, tearing the guards apart and throwing the pieces after their master. From above, the artificers sprayed bolts into the throng, burning many, but seeing the sheer number of slaves scrambling up the sides toward them, they retreated.
The traveling rim Ravon stood on had come around to the back side of the forge, and Ravon looked for a new way to enter the forge. He had another duty to discharge. Now that he was alive, after all.
Inside, chaos ruled as the cell blocks emptied, their occupants armed with pieces of wood, old iron implements, and broken bottles. Ravon heard the roar of dwarves taking command, directing the melee, even as their meaty arms swung improvised weapons against orcs and goblins. Carnage filled the halls, but Ravon stalked through, heading for the north stairs.
The shrieks and cries of battle receded as he rushed down, fumbling with Nastra’s keys, looking for the red one, finding it. He inserted it into the hot door. Then down again, this time in silence, or in as much quiet as could exist in a manifest zone poised over the Lake of Fire that was Fernia.
When he arrived in the cavern, he was sweating heavily but still stoked from the combat. The churning madness of Khyber stirred his thoughts. That was good. When facing death, it was best not to be in one’s right mind.
He shouted, “Death hag! By the Devourer, by the Dark Six! Death hag!”
Mists swirled around him. He bellowed again. “I bear a message for the lovely hag!”
The room stilled, as though his ears were stuffed with straw. He pivoted, looking in all directions, hating, like any warrior, not to hear his enemy, not to have every sense alert.
From behind came a singsong voice. “Sweet meat.”
He spun. The death hag leaned over him, tall and spectral.
“I bear a message.” He let his sword drop to the ground. If she would only listen.
“Speak your last words,” she breathed, with breath like a month-old carcass.
“Listen until the end, hag, for your master will want to know.”
“Oh, bold, bold.” Her eyes rolled back and came around again. Ravon had to admire the trick.
The witch crooned, “I shall take your blood with especial pleasure. Sip, sip.”
By Dolurrh, she was ugly. But he held her terrifying gaze and said, “I’m a bitter man. You may not find my flesh to your liking.”
“I shall eat your tongue first, then decide.”
He devoutly hoped she would kill him all at once and not save him for the occasional cannibalistic treat. He must remember to enrage her to that point. He’d always had a knack for annoying people.
Ravon hastened to say, “Here is the message from Stonefist. The baron of Cannith doesn’t need you or your demon lord. Once you open the pipe, it will stay open. Cannith will ignore you. You’ve been duped.”
The hag grabbed his shoulder, her nails strong as meat hooks. “Stonefist would not say so to such as you.”
“You’d be right except I was in the process of killing him when he let it slip.”
The hag screamed, smashing him down to his knees. “Where is Nastra?”
“I don’t keep track of her. Sorry.”
The death hag looked over his shoulder, peering into the caldron of smoke, watchful, perhaps desperate. Turning back to him, she yanked his hair, pulling his head back to expose his neck. “Bitch, bitch, bitch!” she howled.
“Know what you mean.” His head was bent so far, he thought his spine would snap. He managed to spit out, “But the elf has her good points.”
The witch hunched over him, her face very near, her breath vile. “You do not fear me, manling?”
With all that was left of his voice, Ravon whispered, “Not so much.”
And he didn’t. He was wholly occupied with trying to figure out what number his death was going to be at the hands of the hag. Was it the three hundred and eighth way to die, or the eight hundred and third? By Dol Dorn’s mighty fist, it was important to know.
By the time he decided both were wrong and was wildly recalculating, he found himself lying flat on the trembling ground, no one else in sight.
The death hag had gone.
Well. Perhaps his innate charm had won out.
As Ravon raced up the stairs, he felt the treads shaking beneath his feet. Splinters of stone fell from the ceiling.
The pipe. They were opening up a portal to Fernia after all. They didn’t believe him. The hag didn’t… but the shuddering continued, worsening. He barely got through the hot door as the stair collapsed behind him.
Summoning his last strength, he raced up the remaining flights. Somewhere above him the fight raged on, but even a battle could not drown out the booming roar of what was coming.
Charging through the halls, he bellowed, “Out, out! It’s coming apart. Get outside!”
The forge itself heaved from side to side. And grew hotter with every minute.
Fernia was coming up. Not in a controlled pipe, he decided. It was coming in a flood, an eruption. It would blow the forge sky high. “Out, get out!” he roared as the slaves started to heed him. He grabbed a dead orc’s pike and struck down a pair of goblins coming at him from a side hall. “Out!”
Then in a general stampede, those who yet lived raced from the corridors, cells, and crannies of the forge, heading for the door out. Bodies lay everywhere, orcs draped over dwarves and goblins over halflings, as though in a last embrace. The slaves rushed outward and Ravon followed.
Once in the clearing, he looked back to see gouts of fire erupting from the forge’s window slits, and a pillar of purple smoke spiking up into the sky from the artificer’s keep.
Even orcs gave up on the fight and stared. Then in a mass surge, they and everyone else turned and raced for the jungle.