His skin scrawled not for the danger to himself, but the danger to the people who trusted him. He’d brought them in here. Even though Adriana offered to go, he knew she wouldn’t have thought it a choice. She would go wherever he went, even if that meant following him to his death.
And something told him the next dungeon lord who came across her wouldn’t be anything like Keaton.
Then I’ll just have to fight like hell to stay alive. Hadn’t planned on doing anything else, anyway.
Following behind the larger, taller Emvolas, he started to feel the effect of claustrophobia. The walls were made of the same refined, clay-like material as the buildings up above, only these were carved with some language he didn’t understand, the letters running in a perfectly straight line along the center of the walls.
“Do any of you know what this is?” he asked in a whisper.
“The language of Hestian, the god the snakekin worship. He is the patron of tombs, and his words are often scrawled across the walls of crypts,” Adriana explained. “The dungeon lord has either repurposed an existing crypt, or he wants visitors to be intimidated.”
“What does it say?”
“I am afraid I do not know the exact translation, but it is believed to be the last words someone hears before they cross over into the afterlife.”
Pleasant.
“Let’s just… keep moving,” Keaton said, holding his torch high as he followed behind Cassia.
The two Emvolas detected a couple traps throughout. One that released a noxious gas from the mouth of a snake carving, the other that shot poison darts. Neither were something Keaton was able to acquire with his gauntlet, and he wondered if this dungeon was too advanced for him.
“I think the lord of this dungeon did just inhabit a crypt,” Adriana said, whispering to him. “If that’s the case, these traps are ancient. Even he wouldn’t have been able to break them down.”
“That makes me feel slightly better about my incompetence,” he whispered back.
Only to be overshadowed by Cassia’s loud “shhh!” Her hand was up in a signal for them to wait, and she sent her two warriors forward, to the fork in the path.
It should have been Keaton doing the scouting. He had the experience sneaking about. He could avoid traps now that he knew to look for them. Yet he had a feeling if he brought that up, Cassia would fight him on it; say he was “too valuable” to risk himself like that.
Something about the sentiment bothered him, but for now Keaton resolved to do what he could. He crept closer, sword in hand, and held his breath. The sound of something hard and ridged scraping against the ground filled the passageway, then a distinct rattling noise.
He saw only the glimpse of diamond-patterned scales before the snakekin was being slammed against the distant wall by one of the Emvolas, her spear braced against its throat.
“Don’t kill it!” Keaton hissed out through clenched teeth, pushing his way past Cassia.
The warrior turned to look back at her commander, a mistake even Keaton recognized.
“Don’t take your eyes off of the enemy!”
A loud rattle shook the walls, vibrations moving outward in waves that rattled sand and other debris from the ceiling. Keaton could even feel the movement beneath his feet, as if he were standing atop quicksand.
He realized too late that the creature was using its tail to make that noise, the ridges seeming to vibrate and produce a frequency lower than what Keaton could perceive.
Before the snakekin had the chance to keep doing it, Cassia lunged forward and drove her halberd through his neck. This was already a disaster, and they’d just gotten here.
“I gave orders,” he said in a harsh whisper.
“He was sounding the alarm. You can’t expect me to let him finish,” Cassia fired back, wiping the snakekin’s green, acidic blood into the sand.
“More will be coming.” Adriana’s voice trembled slightly, but to her credit she didn’t hide behind him.
Straining to hear, Keaton was able to catch something in the distance. That same sound of something hard and segmented scraping across the ground. He took the briefest moment to understand what he was up against, looking down at the dead snakekin.
It — he — looked humanoid from the torso up, with sandy brown skin and sharp, reptilian features. His jaw was set in a strange way and a forked tongue lolled out of his mouth. There were some bumpy, bony protrusions on his forehead, but other than that, he just looked like a man. Until Keaton reached the lower torso.
Skin began to transition into copper-colored scales offset with darker brown in a diamond pattern. The body tapered into a thick, muscular tail that served as the creature’s lower limb, that hard, ridged part encasing the end of it like a shell.
The snakekin was armed, he noticed, with a finer weapon than he’d ever had the privilege of wielding. A gleaming scimitar was strapped to the creature’s side, and he was quick to retrieve it.
“Hissers on the way,” Orbon called out, far above a whisper.
With any luck, the scimitar would function at a level half as good as it looked, because he had a feeling he was going to need it.
21
Snakekin slithered in from both sides, faster than Keaton would have ever assumed they could move in such confined spaces. He realized belatedly that their tails were gripping the ground and helping to propel them forward. A neat detail, but one that was ultimately meaningless in the face of preparing himself to not die immediately.
He knew there was no chance of talking this through — not right now. Not right here. So Keaton brandished the scimitar, standing in front of Adriana. The hobgoblin had forced his way in to the right, his large body blocking much of Keaton’s view. Cassia stood before him to block the left package, her warriors taking one side each.
The clash of weapons and flesh was sudden and brutal, happening with far more strength behind it than Keaton had prepared for. The hobgoblin was forced back a step, a whirling dervish of blades hurtling toward him. Keaton shot a glance to his left to see Adriana locked in combat with a snakekin who wielded a flail and considered his skills to be best utilized by Orbon.
Of course, he had no plan of fighting far. Crouching low, he picked up a handful of sand and minerals, throwing the clump into the attacker’s face. The snakekin hissed, slashing blindly. It gave the hobgoblin time to block with his bone club and allowed Keaton to duck under one swipe to get behind their foe.
It was just these two who’d come from the alarm, it seemed. Something that seemed really lucky for them when Keaton slashed into the thing’s back with his scimitar and… very little happened. A gash opened up, just not as deep as he would have expected. That bright green blood trickled out, yet the wound closed up mere seconds after he’d made it.
“You have to strike a lethal blow!” Adriana called, pressed against the wall of the passage. “Nothing else will work.”
A lethal blow. Easier said than done, when the snakekin were covered in their own personal armor. Every time he tried to get a slash in, his sword just skittered to the side, the feeling of it against the scales making his teeth ache for some weird reason. He needed to focus; needed to deliver one precise strike that would end it. He’d done that with the first one, getting them right in the neck. That had to be the key.
That, too, was easier said than done. The snakekin wove their long necks around, using them as a way to confuse, to grapple, and to disarm. He’d very nearly had his sword swiped already, and every time the snakekin made a pass at him, it did so with its full body. Keaton sustained another slam, the muscular form sending him sprawling against the wall. His arm hit hard, the scimitar practically wrenched from his hand by the sudden shock of pain. He scrambled to grab it but couldn’t manage to move fast enough.