Samuel Graves and the Akemic Chronicles

Snake This Way!

Dropping over the wall as a small village of massive lizard people who smell like a Turkish sauna are screaming in a panic is surprisingly easy, Samuel learned. Slinking in the outskirts of the assembled village in the murky courtyard of the crumbling keep, Samuel had more difficulty making sure he didn’t trip in the calf-deep water over an aquatic root than he had slipping by the Trogs undetected.

The children were all screaming and had been herded into one of the larger huts by the older Trogs. The women, far more slender and agile, had taken up primitive bows and stormed up the ramparts to peer out at their bellowing warriors as they sloshed through the mire after Leroy.

The little construct was making enough noise to scare the deaf back to a world of terrible, terrible noise. It sprinted, hopping from rock to log to riverbank, jingling and jangling about as if it weren’t being threatened by several tons of angry dinosaur-men. They’d tried chucking their ridiculous knives at it, they’d thrown mossy boulders they’d hefted from the murky water, they’d even tried going back to retrieve bushels of spears held together with fibrous ropes.

None of them seemed skilled enough to hit the dextrous little thing.

Samuel almost felt bad that it would power down when he created another one, it seemed like it was having fun.

“Come on, then!” Skelly said, scowling. He was annoyed, clearly, though Samuel couldn’t guess why. “We don’t want to dally, that won’t keep their attention for long…”

“Hol’ on then!” Wheeze gasped, lowering the impromptu harness that had allowed them to lift and drop Posnev’s massive frame from the outer wall to the inner. “Yeh act like I’m made o’ muscle, ya right bastards!”

“Shut up!” Needles hissed, pegging Wheeze in the head with a pebble. “We don’t want them to hear us!”

Wheeze gave him an amazed look. “Hear us? Yer jokin’, righ’? I can barely hear yeh, no way in ‘ell they will!”

“You want to test that theory and find out how well we can handle some twenty plus Trog archers?” Samuel growled next to him, sliding down the wall along the rope of Posnev’s harness. He hoped off at the lasts second, not wanting to anger the dual-hounds by stepping on one of their heads. “El, help me undo this crap, will ya?”

“On it!” She whispered back, pulling her trusted knife to sever the bindings that made of the harness. She petted Posnev on one of his heads, cooing at him. “Easier to cut you out, you two, just stay calm.”

They cut Posnev free, and Skelly motioned for them to follow closely behind. Samuel smiled; he loved stealth games! That this dream was entertaining his favorite scenario was amazing, considering how shitty it had been so far.

I’ll be a hero after this, he told himself as he hid behind a large barrel filled with de-limbed frogs. Get some coin, get away from the murderhobos, get Elena somewhere safe, and move on to become a great hero before I wake up!

His thoughts screeched to a halt when he heard a gasp and smelled a horrible mix of rotting fish and sulfur. Turning, he spied a Trog woman.

She’d come running around the building, quiver on her back and bow in hand. Her snout was mottled green and short, with smaller teeth just as jagged as the males. She was slim, maybe a hundred and twenty pounds, and wore a simple tunic/poncho thing over her upper body with a loincloth covering her lower half, a muscled tail twitching behind her. She hadn’t been expecting him, and once he startled her she’d dropped back onto her haunches and was rapidly trying to crab walk away from him, terror etched across her face.

Samuel shushed her before she could scream and waved his hands. “It’s okay, I will not hurt you! Stay calm, please stay calm!”

She stared at him, lower jaw trembling. As she sucked in a breath to say something, a dagger spurted out from her trachea, stained blue with blood. Her eyes widened before losing whatever luster they once had, her life slipping from her rapidly cooling corpse before she could even realize what happened.

Elena peeked from over her shoulder, a cheeky grin on her face. “Saved you!” She sang softly, yanking her blade free. “Now, help me hide the body! Don’t want them finding it and raising an alarm later, yeah?”

Wheeze loped up, hunched over to keep the cover of the buildings and containers as he moved. He stopped and frowned. “s**t. Weren’t supposed ta kill any, might catch the attention o’ tha others.”

“She was going to attack Sammy!” Elena protested, pointing at the gaping Samuel as she hissed out the whisper. “You okay, Sammy?”

Samuel’s eyes hadn’t left the dead Trog’s own orbs, his mind frozen at the intense moment of death the creature had just experienced. He snapped to attention when Wheeze grabbed his hand and yanked him behind one hut. “What?” He asked, quiet and low.

“Grab ‘er legs,” Wheeze instructed, moving around towards the dead Trog’s upper torso. “Come on, nab ‘em! We gotta haul ‘fore they smell ‘er death.”

Dazed, Samuel just obeyed and hefted up her lower body. She was about as light as he’d assumed and, before he could say anything, Elena darted forward and picked up her bow and the dropped quiver of cheap arrows.

“Leave no clues!” Elena giggled. “Basics of Blackheart!”

“Elves are scary…” Samuel muttered, shaking his head.

Elena slapped him on the back with a throaty chuckle. “You have no idea, Sammy! You have no idea!”

“Flirt later!” Needles hissed, slinking out of the shade of a smoking hut, a wrapped section of leaves tucked under his arm. “Move now, unless you want to fight an entire freaking village?”

“Man makes a point!” Wheeze replied, picking up speed. Samuel had to race to keep up, the burly fighter practically dragging him along by the shared corpse they’d latched onto.

Skelly was waiting at the entrance, the tilted antechamber into the keep that once stood proudly within this valley. Now though? It had sunk, one side faster than the other, to where the entire structure seemed to be tilted almost twenty degrees off from the rest of the building, a nasty break in the ceiling and walls showing that the strain had been too much for the structure. They built it with massive bricks, no visible mortar present, or likely necessary. Samuel remembered reading how ancient Aztecs and Incas built their pyramids using math, a casual disregard for human life and safety and patience. Machu Picchu came to mind in terms of crazy archaeologist finds. They’d found it to have no mortar between any of its stone blocks, just a creative use of gravity that kept the stones in place.

Skelly noticed Samuel studying the walls, his frown deepening. “Admire the Dwarven craftsmanship later, we need to get out of sight. Now!”

Elena shoved him from behind, forcing him deeper into the musty hallway as quickly as he could carry a corpse. They sloshed through water, doing their best not to be loud, and made it some twenty feet into a wide hall that had probably once been used to impress visitors. It was easily fifteen feet wide and had an arched ceiling some ten feet high. The floor, covered by still, brackish water some ten inches deep, was littered with underwater roots and vines, and the occasional silver flash that made Samuel worry what could swim around their boots.

Wheeze, apparently deciding that they’d carried the corpse of the nameless Trog archer, dropped the half he was carrying into the water with a loud splash and stretched his back. “Ah!” He groaned as a series of pops went off like a line of firecrackers from his spine. “Damn back keeps hurtin’! Think I messed somethin’ up back in Spalsburg, ya know?”

Samuel, eyes widened now that he was holding the corpse by her bare thighs, her upper half sinking into the murky water, did what he thought was best at that exact moment.

He dropped her, hopping back as he felt his face heat. He slammed bodily into Elena, who grunted playfully and steadied him with her grip on his shoulders.

“Damn Sammy!” She chuckled, draping an arm over his shoulder as she peered at the sinking coprse. “You’re supposed to let a lady down gently! And it’s kind of poor manners to move onto another woman so soon after your first one died.”

“What?” Samuel gasped, turning to glare Elena. “What do you mean ‘my first one’?”

She shrugged. “Kind of obvious. You’ve never killed someone in cold-blood, have you?”

“I didn’t kill her!” Samuel nearly shouted, calming quickly before he could blow their cover. “You killed her, you little psycho!”

Elena stuck out her tongue as she smiled. “Never would have been able to if you hadn’t distracted her, and you know it!”

“Enough!” Skelly intervened, a flourish of his cloak behind him as he stepped between Samuel and Elena. “You.” He said, glaring at Samuel. “The Trog is dead because you weren’t careful. She saw you, they have found us out. The mutt did the right thing.”

Samuel frowned and looked away. Skelly then rounded on Elena, surprising her. “And you!” He pointed at her face. “You knew he wasn’t a real killer then?”

“Ah, um… well, you see…” She said, trailing off at Skelly’s glare before hanging her head. “I figured it out when he panicked over how we left Spalsburg.”

“How exactly did he ‘panic’?” Skelly pressed.

Needles spoke up, catching Skelly’s attention. “We had a tussle with some guards, a couple died. He seemed upset about it, more so than a casual adventurer would be. Claims to be new to the world, so may be from a different Realm or something.”

“Or something…” Samuel said, wiping at his face the gathered grime that had accumulated. They weren’t tears, and he’d Chargebolt whoever said otherwise!

“Not important.” Skelly said, surprising Samuel. “World is full of oddities, an off-worlder that has hang-ups about violence isn’t that odd when you consider some crazier things roaming the wilds.”

“We didn’t mention it earlier, probably should have…” Needles mused, scratching at his stubble. “Too late now, eh?”

“Again, not important.” Skelly replied, sloshing past the group. He reached into Wheeze’s backpack and rooted about for a minute before pulling a pre-wrapped torch from the bundle hidden within. He held it out to Samuel. “Here. Light it and carry it for us. You only need one hand for your spells, right?”

Samuel pulled up his skill list to check over his spells, taking a moment to make certain he was right before nodding. “Looks like. Thanks, I’ll make sure not to screw up anymore.”

“Good.” Skelly offered a grim smile, his heavily lined face dancing in the torchlight as Samuel spent a small spark of energy to light up the oil-soaked rags around the torch head. “Now, let’s go. Samuel, second rank behind Wheeze. I’ll be behind you, Elena and Needles in the back. Who hear can search for traps?”

Needles and Elena both raised their hands before sharing a confused look. “Huh,” Needles said, scratching at his scarred cheek, “never been with another trap-monkey before. Should be nice.”

“Just don’t get in my way, blinky!” Elena winked at Needles, with the eye that the scarred man was missing, Samuel noted.

“Okay then. Wheeze?” Skelly said, pulling a heavy cudgel from within his cloak.

“Yeah?” The mountain of a man tugged a massive blade from the strapped place on his back, pulling the canvas cloth off the freshly polished and sharpened silver weapon.

Skelly gave a feral grin. “Let’s go exploring, shall we?”