Lost in Revery by Matthew Phillion

Author:Matthew Phillion [Phillion, Matthew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lost Continuity Press
Published: 2019-05-19T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13: Like us but more violent

Maybe an hour later, Jack emerged from the shadowy tunnel ahead of the rest of the group and held a finger to his mouth, silencing them. Morgan fought the urge to sigh.

Maybe I was just hoping we’d never find them at all, he thought. They’d been in plenty of fights together so far, but the overwhelming odds, and the carnage they’d seen on the surface, had his nerves in the red zone heading into this battle.

Jack raised his hands, outstretching all ten fingers, then again, this time retracting his thumbs. Orsun hadn’t lied—eighteen trogs ahead, Morgan thought. Then Jack pantomimed something that took several tries to get across, holding one hand high above his head, then out wide, then again, repeating what eventually became clear was an indication of size. He held up one finger, then mimed placing a crown on his head.

“One big one?” Tobias said. Everyone whipped around to glare at him.

Tobias shrugged.

“We were making enough noise already,” he stage-whispered. “If they were going to hear us coming, they heard us coming.”

“I give up,” Jack said. “Come with me.”

He led them down a winding corridor that opened into a larger cave, the group’s vantage point several feet above the ground. Jack belly-crawled up to the edge. Morgan did the same, then the others, so that they could all look down at the war band of trogs.

They really do look like us, but more violent, Morgan thought. Human aside from their misshapen hands and feet, and bigger, certainly—ugly as hell too, with filed teeth and heavy brows—but human nonetheless. They wore the ragged skins of unidentifiable animals and carried rusted metal or dirty bone weapons. The spoils of their journey to the surface lay all around—bundles of grain or produce, entire cow or horse carcasses, other kinds of meat that Morgan would rather not know the source of.

In the middle of the group one stood out clearly as the leader. A full head larger than the others, broader of shoulder, this one wore a headdress like a crown, spiked with a variety of teeth and bone. He carried a grotesque two-handed weapon that seemed to be little more than a staff that had been studded with every vile sharp instrument the trog champion had ever found.

“That one’s mine,” Cordelia whispered.

“I’ll help,” Ingo said.

“There’s got to be a way to thin them out a bit before we fight,” Eriko said. “I mean I could sneak down and backstab one, but that’s not super helpful.”

“I have an idea,” Tamsin said. “But I’d need a distraction, and another vantage point. Can we get to that tunnel over there?”

She pointed at a cavern opening below and to the right of them.

“There’s a path I found that winds around,” Jack said. “I can get you down there.”

“And I can come up with a distraction,” Tobias said.

“No,” Tamsin said.

“Trust the bard, sis,” Tobias said. “You said you learned an invisibility spell, yeah?”

“I hate this idea,” Tamsin said.

“Just do it,” her brother said.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.