The whispers started again on the fourth floor, just past the bodies of the savage ogres.

  Blinding Shard

  The darkness had expanded in my mind over time. The spell struggled, uncomfortable there, straining the boundaries of my mind, and the boundaries of reality, but the risk was small. My strength held it there, secure.

  Was my increased talent a sign of virtue, or vice? Even the torturer who made torture an art was still a torturer.

  It was easier if I just declared it good or bad. Once done any action became simpler, I’d even fought off addictions simply by deciding, truly and finally, that they were wholly wrong. But I didn’t know.

  It was about two and a half hours to the centipedes’ lair. There, I swallowed my gorge and lifted my things from the floor, securing them to my pack.

  It was only dust.

  Only dust and the refuse left by a thousand insect legs.

  Centipede feet weren’t dirty. Surely.

  I tried to force myself to place the objects in my pack, but I couldn’t do it. They’d ruin the pack, then everything inside would be dirty and—

  Gently.

  I could teleport. I would. I grabbed and shook my own hands as a promise to myself. The moment I was done.

  I filled my pack as quickly as I could and strapped my bow to the side. I also took the one foot pole and the iron spike, but left the twenty foot pole as it would make navigating the tunnels a trail. Then I swung the whole thing on as quickly as I could and—getitoffgetitoffgetitoff—

  True Teleport III

  The spell was gone by the time I reappeared.

  Leave an alder in the desert, why did I risk that? Why did I have to risk it?

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  The bubble helmet was still on my head.

  I returned to the cultured ogres’ room. From there I took the bag of marbles and the disguise kit. Both had their situational uses and I had the room and strength for them for now.

  I was just finishing securing the lashes on my pack when I heard the heavy footfall and click clop of hooves on stone.

  A horse, underground? Only Attar had horses as far as I knew. It would be a nightmare to fit them through most of the narrower passages.

  The horse snorted from the neighbouring room, the one between me and the stairs back to the others. The room I’d come to think of as the tattoo parlour. A heavy thud followed; someone setting down a sack.

  I readied my spellbook and crept toward the door.

  “Hail! Who goes there?” I called.

  The horse snorted again and then let out an indignant yodelling grunt. A low. That was a bull, not a horse. By the time I’d made the connection the creature had already burst through the open door.

  It was neither horse nor bull.

  It was a man, a foot taller than myself, with an overly large horned helmet in the shape of a bull’s head. In his hands he held a large maul. Drooping back behind him swished a bull’s tail, similar to the tails of the huldra. He was otherwise naked.

  The man drew up short just inside the room and let out a snort, then he rotated his head from left to right and right to left, to allow each eye to survey the room through the strangely widely set apart eye holes in his helmet. His eyes were dark glittering spheres, with dark hair around them. The helmet was not just an affectation it appeared, or not entirely one.

  His left eye locked with both of mine, and he once more lowed in rage. Then he lowered his head and charged, maul held high.

  Sword, Scorch, Scintillation

  The poor thing didn’t stand a chance. I summoned my sword horizontal to the ground and perpendicular to his charge right in front of him, and braced it in the air like a spear. His charge overpowered the 1936 lbs of my sword, but the sword slowed and stumbled him, and cut him open to his spine.

  The taur bellowed in fear and his bare feet scrambled on the ground, but he’d already lost too much blood. A moment later he slumped to the floor. He let out a low moan, and then was still.

  I gingerly walked up to him, but he did not move. His maul must have weighed twenty pounds. It was huge. Even in his nearly naked state, fear warriors would dare test their mettle against such a beast. I was lucky to have my spells, and have them working.

  The stitched together parts of man and bull seemed another cruel experiment of the warlocks, and sure enough, I could see the marks around his wrists and ankles where he’d been chained. He must have escaped.

  “May you return to the sun in freedom,” I bowed my head to the poor man’s body.

  Then I stepped past and back into the room I’d come to think of as the tattoo parlour.

  One day, the warlocks would meet their reckoning.