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Chapter 122: Gollum
🕑 Added 2023-10-29 14:44:56 +0000 UTCThe tower captain went back to his workspace, which was a single, impractically large stone desk set in the center of the first floor. It was an inefficient use of space to set it in the middle like that, but made sure that the forces under his command were aware of who was in charge at all times. He spent a great deal of time at that desk, despite having very little work to do there beyond drafting his daily reports back to his commanding officers.
Suddenly, there was a clatter at the side of the floor. He looked over, and saw the bear had knocked over a mug, and was now alternating between looking at the mess he had made and in the captain’s direction. His ursine jaw was opening and closing, as if he was considering saying something and repeatedly deciding against it.
The captain had never been able to figure out exactly how the bear managed to get posted here. It was unusual. At the moment, there was nothing the captain would like better than to run across the room and berate him again, but the bear’s uncertain status was holding him back. Chances were good that the bear’s presence at his tower was a mere paperwork mix up, but it was at least vaguely possible he had saved or bribed someone important to get what he thought would be a cushy job. The captain was not in the habit of tempting fate, and restrained himself from taking advantage of the satisfaction that slapping the bear around would provide.
That being said, the bear had his attention. He watched as the bear’s mouth worked silently, up and down, without stopping. After a few more moments of this, he stood halfway up, lifting the table off the ground with his thighs as he did so, before suddenly dropping to his seat again and letting the table hit the ground with a loud bang. The others had already left, meaning that it was just the two of them on the floor, and his annoyance was building.
After the bear managed to knock another plate off the table while almost-but-not-quite pointing at something, the captain had enough. He stood and began slowly walking towards the corner, feeling smugly satisfied as he saw the bear’s beady eyes filled with terror.
“Are you really having that much trouble keeping quiet and still? I know you lack in the brainpower department. As failings go, yours are pretty hard to miss. But this shouldn’t be too difficult, hmm?”
The bear didn’t answer. He sat there, in a dead panic, his eyes darting back and forth, apparently looking for some form of escape.
“Oh, I see you are very quiet now. No broken dishes, no words, just as I ordered. Would it have been hard to do this five minutes ago? Did something change for you? Please, enlighten me.”
The bear still didn’t answer, which was suspicious. The usual problem was getting him to shut up. Somewhere in the back of the captain’s head, a sort of queasy worry that he couldn’t quite put his finger on began to build up.
“Why aren’t you speaking?” The bear’s eyes had not stopped darting back and forth between the captain and some unknown direction behind him. The captain suddenly noted that the terror in the bear’s eyes didn’t exactly diminish when it looked in the other direction. In fact, the bear seemed less frightened when he looked at the captain.
He would have thought he was pulling some kind of prank, but the bear simply didn’t have the mental powers to conceive of one. Suddenly, horribly, the captain was sure something was going on behind him.
He wheeled around, and just behind his desk was a human, arm outstretched, just now grasping the communications crystal from its desktop stand.
“Oh, hey,” the human said, as if his presence was the most natural thing in the world. “I just needed this. Sorry, I’ll be going now.”
He then hopped several feet through the air, grinning as he fell down through a brand-new hole in the floor.
—
The tricky part about digging out the tunnel hadn’t been moving the actual dirt. That was pretty easy to do, and had only taken a couple of hours. Instead, the hard bit was digging a tunnel under the tower without anybody noticing and without the tower falling down on Matt’s head.
“Matt, the look on that commanding officer’s face when he saw you… just, well done, sir.” Lucy was ecstatic. “It will live rent-free in my head forever now and warm me in lonely times. I’m so happy.”
Matt was about halfway down the tunnel when the commanding officer and that poor, scared-looking bear dropped through the hole after him, although the bear looked more rabidly bloodthirsty now that he had been called into battle. They yelled and charged after him, which would have been bad if Matt hadn’t dug multiple tunnels. Technically, he was running AWAY from Artemis and the others, at least until the tunnel looped back. That part had taken forever, comparatively, but it was necessary to keep Artemis’ sight lines clean.
“Now, Artemis!” Matt yelled. He was too far away to hear the twang of her bow, but glanced over his shoulder as he heard the first arrow bash into the supporting pillars he had left in place under the tower. He had left a thick layer of dirt clinging to the bottom of the tower, so stones wouldn’t fall out of the floor and expose him during all the digging, and that layer was held up by thin supporting masses of earth Matt had left in place. If Artemis was able to shoot those out, the entire tower would come down. Probably.
Sadly, the arrows didn’t seem to be doing a lot to the dirt, even charged with whatever techniques Artemis was dumping into them. After three arrows, he looked back to see she had taken out exactly one of the pillars, which wasn’t nearly enough. Suddenly, Matt decided to use what he had overheard and trust the judgement of the commanding officer a bit, rather than giving up right away. He had said the bear was dumb. It was time to test that opinion.
“Artemis, shoot the bear! With something painful!”
Again, Matt couldn’t hear the arrow. But he could absolutely hear the aftermath. Whatever Artemis had hit the bear with had hurt. He could hear it bellowing and thrashing around, even though the tunnel had curved enough that he couldn’t see him. Better, he could hear column after column fall as the bear thrashed through them.
“Stop! Stop, you idiot!” The frantic voice of the commander came soon after, and Matt grinned at that.
Matt made it through the tunnel and back around to the others just in time. The tower didn’t seem to have moved much, yet, but that changed as it suddenly shuddered, then came completely apart as its foundation failed.
The tower didn’t pose much trouble after that. Over the day, they had enough chance encounters with various demons to make it clear that whatever tracking was attached to Brennan and Artemis’ skills didn’t work very well this far out. They still held back from using their skills as much as possible, just to be safe. But this wasn’t a situation that called for all-out fighting. The few demons that managed to stagger out of the wreckage of the tower were pretty banged up, and fell without much trouble to Derek. Within fifteen minutes, everyone was back in front of the trench, looking in pride at the devastation.
“That worked surprising well. Good job, Matt,” Artemis said.
“No kidding, Artemis. How many kills does that count for?” Brennan was clearly regretting not being part of the action, but that did nothing to keep him from approving of the results.
“Twenty, at least. And that’s complete kills. I barely helped with collapsing the tower. And then at least half-credit on at least a dozen more.”
“What’s this credit?” Matt asked. It was the first he had heard of it.
“It’s pay. Money. It’s not from the system, it’s something the Church pays out. 20 kills and an outpost is worth… I don’t know, but it’s worth a lot.” Derek was grinning. “Even my share is a lot. Full, humanoid demons are worth a ton. Mostly, I’ve just been paid for demon-variant animals before. Too bad we can’t bring back proof.”
“I gotta be honest with you, I don’t even know what I’d do with money at this point. I haven’t used any in years,” Matt replied.
“Oh, there are things.” Brennan said. “Armor, weapons, lodging. Those all are useful, and they cost money. I don’t know how good of a combat shovel you could get, but yours seems fine. At the very least, you could improve your armor.”
“And we will vouch for the kills. In these kinds of circumstances, a commander’s estimate can usually stand in for proof.” Artemis was still gazing at the tower with a satisfied look. “There’s no way we’re going to let you go unpaid for this, don’t worry.”
Suddenly, something shifted behind the party, and a huffing, gasping sound emerged from the trench. As each party member moved to draw their weapons, a paw reached up and grabbed the edge of the trench. They all watched in shock as the bear-demon virtually catapulted out of the trench and then hauled ass away from them in the opposite direction from the tower.
Artemis nocked an arrow, taking careful aim at its back.
“Aw, I liked him.” Lucy said. “Or at least I liked him more than the others. I know he’s a bad guy, but it’s kinda sad.”
“Can we not shoot him, Artemis?” Matt asked.
She lowered the tip of her arrow just a bit, and glanced at him. “Why not? They’re going to find this tower eventually, and he’s running back to the demons. There’s a good chance he’ll eventually find someone to warn. It’s better tactics just to take him down.”
“I know, it’s just… he’s a Gollum, okay? He was useful once, and he’s sort of pitiful, and he’s already having a bad day. He doesn’t seem smart enough to be that effective, anyway. I just get a feeling that letting him go might be the best move here. Like with Gollum.”
Artemis began to argue, then stopped as she saw both Brennan and Derek nodding along.
“Okay, fine. It’s stupid, but fine. But I expect all of you to do double speed for the next few hours, understand?”
Everyone understood. They made their way past the ruins of the tower, watching carefully for signs of life as they did. None were apparent. Then they ran off at what Artemis told them was the correct angle to avoid being chased, and one that would put them more parallel with the next observation tower.
After another half-hour or so of running, the red soil started to give way to patches of grass, then a fully grassed fields, then trees, bushes, and other plants. They were back in human territory in feel as well as fact now. At Artemis’ insistence, they kept running full tilt for another full hour, or at least as fast as the slowest member of their party would allow without them splitting up.
It was only after they finally slowed their pace and took a short break to catch their collective breaths that Artemis finally broke down and asked the question that had been eating away at her for the last few hours.
“Okay, tell me,” she said, clearly annoyed at being out of the loop, “in clear terms, exactly what the fuck a Gollum is.”
Comments
Jake Holland
Poor bear
