I ripped away the bandages, showing the black vine that looked like stitchwork winding across his belly, ending with a bright red rose. “You are Healed! Go!”
Flush with the rush of Healing magic, the Northman looked at me, I looked back at him, the scream of a wounded man sounded from the hall, and he swore and got to his feet with renewed energy, a berserker cry coming from him as he charged for the door.
The other man stared at me as I pivoted over to him, holding up my hand. I paused, and he eventually nodded, grimacing as lines of darkness swirled, blood seemed to pulse inside them, and he gasped as his cloven collarbone and hanging arm were stitched back together, sealed up, and he was suddenly able to fight again!
He clambered urgently to his feet and went pounding out to join his brethren. I glided after him.
There was a mess of combat going on in the main room, a dozen or so Northmen being pressed back by twice that number of humanoids, with a half-dozen of the former and over a score of the latter sprawled on the ground, dead or bleeding out.
Looked like hobgoblin wolf-riders, dismounted and their mounts following them in here, hacking with crude scimitars or thrusting with short blades. There were a couple towering, brutally-muscled ogres among them, laying about with spiked clubs and patchwork breastplates, engaging what looked to be the leaders of the defenders.
Hanvol extended his staff past where Guy had leapt in to parry a hacking scimitar and Invoked his Burning Fan spell from the tip of it.
The gout of flame blew through the middle of the hobgoblin formation, torching three of them and two wolves, relieving some pressure at the front line. It looked like Horn had come in from the side and opened up the nearest ogre’s belly with the side charge from the flank, while Buck had squeezed through the mass of legs and plunged his shortsword into the groin of the other, precipitating a great bellow as the eight-foot brute dropped his club to clutch at his nethers. A swinging axe chopped through the front of the wounded ogre’s neck and he fell, gurgling and spraying a thick fountain of blood from his neck.
I threw out the Mass Cure Light Wounds, excluding the humanoids and wolves.
Swirling black skulls with roses for eyes streaked out and down upon the fighting and fallen Northmen, four of the latter six jerking and their eyes opening as rose petals fluttered and new life pounded through them.
That left two more on the floor, with Cure Mortal Wounds ready to go… but first, to gain some time.
A black rose vine flowered into a very red blossom with black skulls on its petals, thorns tipped with scarlet ire. All of the humanoids turned to stare at me as I invoked some nonsense I didn’t need to and they saw the display, then the Thorns hissed out at them.
There were fifteen Thorns, one for each of them. Screaming black skulls accompanied each Shard variant, and the humanoids barely had time to yelp before they were hit, their bones blazing inside their skins. Then they were dropping, flesh already falling off them as vivus blazed an artificial black all over them, while shadows of their spirits wailed as ghostly tendrils dragged them down, down, down.
The ones pressing in from the outside suddenly squealed in reaction, their wholesale push becoming an equally pressed retreat.
I walked up through the sudden stillness, while armored Northmen gaped at me and the other new allies in their midst. Black and scarlet, skirts billowing about me, black thorned vines wrapped and ready as skulls oriented on them in grinning readiness, black eyes blazing ruby wrath…
Okay, I was totally blazing edgelord gravitas, and everyone was totally eating it up.
There was a preemptive attempt to launch some arrows at me from a couple hobgoblin riders out there, which hit the doorway and stopped, falling uselessly to the ground.
I sat there and glared at them, ten feet away, just daring them to enter, unable to hear the calls and cries of those without.
I pointed off to the side without looking, and Cure Deadly Wounds went off on the closest dead human.
Skulls poured down on the fellow, and one of them took on his face and hue with a cry, drawing gasps from all the watching Northmen. The great bludgeoning blow to his skull inflated, closed, blood and brains swirling and vanishing back where they’d come from.
The man gasped and groaned and blinked, awed shouts rising from those watching.
The other was a woman, her neck nearly hacked through and covered in blood that stained her mail.
More skulls swirled around me, and one of the five I sent at her took on her features as it flew, shrieking as they all plunged into her.If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
The blood on her mail burned and was sucked back into the gaping wound at her throat, which black vines stitched closed and sealed with a rose. Her head jerked, choking and spluttering, and then rose petals blew out of her mouth as her lungs cleared and her eyes opened, also returned to life.
I glared at the hobgoblins outside, who hadn’t seen any of that, but they could see the cheers of the Northmen behind me.
“All of you Northmen, gather up behind me,” I ordered icily, and there was only a moment of hesitation before almost a score of the brawny warriors hastened to do so.
Now the hobgoblins could see them. They could only watch as the Mass Cure Light Wounds went off again, and injuries disappeared before their eyes, blood vanished, black vines stitched crimson wounds closed, and roses bloomed on pale skins.
Another snap of my fingers, and Mass Bane to Goblins ignited on all the Weapons behind me.
If Healing all the Northmen up before them hadn’t done the job, seeing that Flame ignite in the same pale green hue of their own blood, a Fire that screamed hunger for their lives and souls at them, was definitely enough to send the hobgoblins into retreat.
The absolutely delighted Northmen were more than happy to shake all those weapons, dancing green Banefire filling the doorway and letting the goblins know they were very unwanted within.
Four different corpses ignited underneath me, just to drive the point home. Black flames edged in white devoured them with unnatural speed, the spirits of the damned writhed and clawed as the flames dragged them down, and all the hobgoblins could do was watch in horror.
Then I slowly closed the door on them, probably forced open by the power of the ogres, and let them consider what to do outside.
I turned around to meet a lot of blue and green eyes, all of them looking at me in a mixture of admiration and fear. “I have a rhetorical question for you,” I stated, looking at each and every set of eyes. “Who is in charge here?”
There was silence behind weapons Burning with unnatural fires, fires the hue of goblin blood. The warriors there stared at me, and I focused on the biggest and brawniest of them.
He swallowed, very carefully lowered the axe he had in his hand, and right atop the corpses of hobgoblins, wolves, and ogres starting to Burn with white-edged black fires and burgeoning white mists, he slowly went down on one knee.
It took only another breath for all of the other Northmen to do the same.
“Excellent.” I looked past them at the half-smiling, half-fearful lads of my party. “Buck, you’re in charge. Get a big, BIG breakfast going for everyone. I think they’ve earned it. Ignore the dead, they’ll be gone soon, just dump them and their stuff into the midden after you strip them of anything valuable. Guy, lead the stripping. Horn, show them where to dump the things. Hanvol, talk with that elder there,” the one with the prominent Hammer symbol on his chest, “and find the story of these fellows we just saved.
“Jeeves, get me a glass of wine. Buck, I want fruit and butter on my flatcakes.”
“Yes, Lady Edge!” the hyn shouted, slapping three of the Northmen and both women among them, while others jumped as my Phantom Servant appeared behind the bar and quickly poured me a glass from the selection there, which I was totally familiar with. “You’re with me! Let’s get cooking!”
A little startled, the picked warriors nevertheless quickly followed the hyn back into the kitchen, where orders rang out, armor was pulled off, weapons put down, and pots and pans began to rattle as the stoves were ignited.
-------
The warband of Northmen had been seeking a legendary treasure here in the North, drawn by tales of an ancient building in the Broken Lands, said to be home to great secrets that no man had returned from.
They’d also stirred up quite the hornet’s nest hacking through a lot of the humanoids in their way, and thus ended up in the situation they were now in.
Bjorn and Hargold Skifnerson, the two big blond brawny fellows who led the group, were stuffing themselves at my table as I calmly had some excellent flatcakes with blackberries and strawberries. I was still a growing girl, so I still needed to eat.
Neither of the fellows was being anything but carefully respectful of me, couldn’t imagine why, with the two of their number I’d saved from actual death prime evidence of that. Those two were being bugged by their fellows to see if they’d seen Vairholl or could remember greeting Grimr, Donner, or Vindler.
I nodded as they finished their tale. “I can open the doorward and allow you to leave,” I told them. “But I do not think you will make it home alive. The hobgoblins have already sent out riders, and a horde is coming to camp this place, and perhaps even push in again.”
They both looked glum and grim. Neither of them was a fool, either. “Where did you come from, Lady Edge?” Bjorn, the older of the two, asked them. “Were you hiding in the basement?” he wondered, a bit confused, because they had hastily explored the building and found no one else here, despite so much being ready to be used and untouched.
“No. We came through the magical Portal down there. Did you not see it?”
They looked at one another, and shook their heads. “We did not check the basement again after entering yesterday,” Hargold confessed, frowning.
I nodded once. “It would have risen with the full moon. It opens for three nights, then is closed until the moon is full once more.
“For us, it is our only way out of here. If we pass the door, time itself will wipe us away, and we will be no more.”
“Time will kill you? Fate is upon you?” the confused warrior asked.
“No. We come from fifty years in the future. I entered this building in the common year of 990, fifty years from now. My companions entered it in 985.”
They stared at me, then at each other. “It is… 927 in the southern years, I think?” Bjorn asked, stroking his short beard. “You… are from the future?”
“Yes. A future where we already exist.” I nodded at the door. “If we walk out that door, time will wipe us away like a passing breeze. We already tested it on a goblin. We threw it outside the door, and it didn’t even hit the ground before it was gone.”
Both of them grew very serious. “Will this affect us?” Hargold asked urgently.
“Right now? No. If you go back in time with us, yes. You go back all the way, until it starts to loop, or you die. The reason nobody has returned from this place in legends is because they couldn’t leave, and they died when stuff entered from the door or from below, or when they went through the Portal and fought something they couldn’t handle in the past.
“You’re welcome to join us in the past, or I can open the Ward on the door and you can take your chances with the native tribes outside.”