The Way Ahead

Time seemed to freeze as Edwin’s bag of high explosives clattered to the ground. He spared a panicked glance at the axe-wielding dwarf, who looked at him uncomprehendingly. Freed of some thirty pounds of ammunition, he dove away from the bag as fast as he could.

A moment of clarity made him twist in midair as to not land on his other bag of ammunition. Mostly empty it may be, but having them break open directly against his stomach would not be survivable. Once he was on the ground, though, he rolled over to present as slim of a profile as possible, covering the back of his neck with his hands and screwing his eyes shut.

A massive explosion followed a moment later, as almost all of Edwin’s steam and flash grenades went off in unison. The axe-wielding dwarf responsible for the mess was still in one piece, amazingly, but his front was covered in fragments of stone and mortar and had been blown off his feet. Edwin couldn’t tell if he had survived, but the dwarf wouldn’t be happy even if he had.

Edwin scrambled to his feet and beheld the greater carnage. Fragments of stone were buried in the tables around him, and, as Edwin realized when he tried to put weight on it, in his foot. Stifling a scream, he yanked out the offending piece of casing and carried on as fast as he could limp.

From beyond the hall, Edwin could hear more dwarves approaching. He managed to make it to the bottom of the stairs alright- if any remaining dwarves had been considering attacking him before, they seemed to be quite dissuaded after the last explosion. But as another squad of dwarves came around the corner, and he heard movement and shouting above, he checked his stocks to see what exactly he had to work with.

Edwin’s bag still held three each of sticky, and steam bombs, four slipstone, one flash, four filled with water, and lastly, one extra-large grenade entirely full of infused lime. He also had a decent amount of putty-hard supermortar. Overall, it was nowhere near enough. He had seen dwarves all but take a full-powered steam grenade to the face and Edwin probably hadn’t run into any actual high-level elites yet, who may well be able to shrug off his entire arsenal for all he knew. Scary thought.

Edwin started climbing the stairs three at a time, wincing every time the ball of his injured foot came down on the wrong angle, but didn’t let that slow him down any, pushing forward through every shot of pain. He was perhaps a third of the way up the staircase when dwarves came into view at the top. They had pretty obviously been hastily called from being off-duty (which made Edwin wonder where the on-duty ones were), as half weren’t wearing full suits of armor and the other half looked confused.

As they saw Edwin on the stairs, though, they seemed to come to some sort of consensus at remarkable speed, and two dwarves, one on each side of the group, pulled out crossbows and fired at him. Edwin hit the ground, but the bolts actually curved midair to try and follow him. Fortunately, though, they weren’t able to turn enough to strike him head-on, and so while one cut through his leather lab coat and gave him a long cut along the side of his back, the other just struck his backpack and stayed there. Edwin hissed at the pain, but he couldn’t stop now.

There wasn’t any cover on the stairway, and so as the crossbowdwarves began to reload, Edwin began to frantically think of some way to survive the next pair. Below him, another set of dwarves began to climb the stairs.

Fortunately, the latter problem helped solve the former, as the marksmen at the top of the stairs seemed unwilling to shoot Edwin while their allies were in the line of fire, and they lowered their crossbows instead of taking aim. Edwin was more than happy to take advantage of the time provided to keep climbing the stairs, pulling out his supermortar putty to try and fashion himself a shield. Not like he had any other option. Unfortunately, the momentary reprieve was broken by a familiar, bellowing voice.

“What are you doing? Shoot him!” S’Fashkchlil had arrived, apparently, and was yelling in dwarven at his minions. Something was said in response, but too quietly for Edwin to understand it. He certainly heard the reply, though, “To hells with them! They’ll live! Just don’t let him escape!”

Real inspiring leader there, Edwin thought, preparing himself to try and block the incoming shots. He hefted his makeshift shield, hiding his head and upper torso behind the magically-strengthened mortar. The first shot clipped him in the shoulder, making him involuntarily release his grip on his shield with that hand. His right hand, not strong enough on its own to hold up the solid rock, dropped just enough for the next quarrel to strike the center of his makeshift creation, instead of the edge, and the entire block of mortar just shattered, covering his hand with cuts of the fragmented stone.

How the heck-NOT THE TIME, EDWIN.

Fortunately, Edwin had a slight reprieve as they reloaded, so his momentary distraction didn’t kill him. He fumbled for a moment as he pulled out his limelight pebble, and turned the heat on his blowtorch to the absolute maximum, boosting it and his Firestarting skill with as much mana as he could manage, admittedly not much. He couldn’t hold the torch steady due to his left arm being out of commission from the crossbow bolt sticking out of it- but at least Edwin was so high on adrenaline he barely felt it- so he broke open a grenade of sticky mortar and used that to glue the blowtorch to his glove, so he just needed to angle the lime in his hand to make it glow bright.

From the cries above, he gathered they were blinded by the light almost entirely, and before they could get the chance to accustom themselves to the brightness through whatever other unfair skills they had, Edwin charged up the stairs, head down and peering through heavily squinted eyes as fast as his bruised and battered body would let him- admittedly not all that fast.

After a moment, the chaotic shouting became more organized and Edwin cut off the light, angling the pebble of lime so it wasn’t in the flame anymore. There was a momentary delay, but everything was quickly plunged into inky blackness. The lime was making it as bright if not brighter than a sunny day, after all, and the halls were dimly lit. Eyes, human or presumably dwarven, just couldn’t adjust that fast.

Of course, Edwin wasn’t taking the chance they somehow could, so he brought the lime back into the flame, bringing daylight back to the underground cavern. Then pulled it out, flickering the light to make it almost impossible to adjust to the changing conditions. Naturally, it affected Edwin as well, but all he needed to do was judge how far it was to the next step. It wasn’t exactly easy to do with just a single eye barely a hair open and the other tightly shut, but it was manageable and helped Edwin keep his night vision.

Then he was at the top of the stairs, and Edwin cut the light one last time to let him get his bearings.

There were perhaps a dozen dwarves, only two armed with crossbows, in various states of disarray- Edwin’s light must have been even more effective than he was anticipating- surrounding him, and another ten to twenty arranged in a loose semicircle around him. Behind the line stood Lord S’wordfish himself, staring Edwin down.

“So this is how you repay my hospitality? Attacking my citizens?” he asked in English, and Edwin scoffed.

“Hospitality? Hah! Don’t make me laugh,” Edwin knew the lord was just stalling for time to get his soldiers re-adjusted to the current light level, but that was fine. Edwin needed time to think as well, “I just want to leave. If I am truly a guest, let me walk out of that gate,” he indicated at the massive doors, “And we can go our separate ways.”

“After you assaulted my kin? You have an interesting sense of humor, Outsider. You’ve violated hospitality. You shall never see the light of day again. You will-”

Edwin didn’t let him finish. Instead he darted forward, trying to break through a portion of the semicircle. Behind him, he broke two of his slippery bombs- one was a dud- and cured it with a tap of his foot. The dwarves around him surged forward, but without knowing that particular trick, didn’t know to avoid the slipstone, and it sent the first dwarf flat on his back, triggering a cascading effect of his fellows tripping over him.

Every step sent daggers of pain into Edwin’s foot and up his leg- there must have still been a bit of rock stuck in either his shoe or foot- but he couldn’t stop now. Guards moved to intercept him, but Edwin fished out a steam grenade and threw it at the closest dwarf. It detonated with a bang and sent its target staggering back. It didn’t matter how many times he had seen it. It was just flatly unfair that the dwarves could survive a grenade to the face. This time, though, there were marks on its target, and his face was a bloody mess. Maybe Edwin’s skills were finally getting high enough to help counteract whatever defense they had? Would be nice if that was what was happening.

His bomb had created just enough of a gap for Edwin to slip through the line, and he sent his last two steam grenades at the next-closest dwarves. He missed one of his throws- the bomb arcing off into the distance- but it still bought him enough time to pull out a sticky grenade and glue the next dwarf to the ground. Edwin vaguely realized he must have somehow poked a hole into his bag, as a stream of sand started pouring out the bottom, scattering across the ground. Interestingly, the guards still trying to pursue him halted their advance, avoiding the scattered sand. Edwin, now on the narrow bridge crossing the channel of molten metal, was momentarily confused, until he realized what happened and bit back a laugh. They didn’t know he was all but out of tricks and that the sand spread across the ground was just used as packing material. They just knew he had disabled a bunch of their kin with what looked like rocks, and didn’t want to take the chance that this was something similarly harmful. Perfect.

Edwin was so distracted by the sight of the dwarves avoiding some scattered sand that he didn’t notice S’fashkchlil until the dwarf had Edwin’s forearm in a vice-grip, glaring daggers at Edwin, “No more tricks.” He yanked on Edwin’s arm, and Edwin yelped as he felt and heard something crack, “Your escapade ends here.” The dwarf’s grip kept tightening, and Edwin felt like the bones in his arm were about to shatter under the pressure, “You will regret not completing your task, you will-”

“See, that’s where you’re wrong,” Edwin’s mind was racing at a mile a minute, and his mouth was running basically on autopilot. Hopefully it was saying something clever, he couldn’t keep track of it, “I’m doing exactly what you tasked me with.”

Desperate for any kind of escape, Edwin’s free arm blindly groped in his almost-empty bag, and fingers settled around an extra-large sphere. He broke his final weapon over the head of his captor, scattering Infused lime dust all over S’fashkchlil’s hair and beard, sadly none getting in his eyes.

“You Tasked me with impressing you.”

The dwarf just snorted derisively, wiping some of the lime out of his beard, “Ha! Is this the best you have, Outsider? I knew you wouldn’t be any sort of threat. Your kind needs far more time to-”

Edwin wasn’t listening, his hand moving once more. His fingers closed around one of his final two slipstone spheres, and he crushed it against the ground, curing it in a blink, rendering the bridge almost frictionless.

The next thing he grabbed was one of his water grenades, and while it was snatched out of the air by the enraged dwarf and crushed like a paper bag, it did get what powder stayed on the lord’s hand thoroughly wet, and Edwin felt the skill he had been pushing to try and use finally have a bite.

Firestarting.

As S’fireface’s hand ignited into brilliant white flames, he yelled in anguish, involuntarily releasing Edwin’s arm from its death grip. He staggered back, trying to smother the magical flames, but didn’t manage anything save spreading the chemicals to more parts of his body and his feet flailed, trying and failing to find traction on the slipstone all around him.

Edwin broke his final sticky grenade on his own foot, giving him enough traction to throw all his weight against the dwarf. He barely managed to budge his captor and his shoulder felt slightly singed from coming so close to the reacting infused lime, but it was enough. A last barrage of water-filled casings, Infused with as much mana as he could manage caused S’firebeard’s torso and head to erupt into more flames, only intensifying his struggles and making him susceptible to one last push by Edwin, “Are you not impressed?” he asked, eyes hard as he toppled the dwarf, making him fall into the river of molten metal below.

Edwin dashed for the exit, ignoring the dwarf’s tortured screams, and made it thankfully unaccosted as he reached the massive doors. Unfortunately, they refused to budge, even when he put his (uninjured) shoulder into it as hard as he could. Looking around, he saw an archway built into the wall, and ran into it. Inside was a younger-looking dwarf clearly terrified of him. Glancing back behind him- several dwarves were trying to pull out their lord from the molten metal river, but a pair was still pursuing Edwin (still trying to avoid the sand, from the looks of it). He didn’t have time for anything clever, so he took the fastest route.

“Open doors and I won’t,” he threatened the dwarf in dwarven, hefting his second to last grenade, a flash bomb. The dwarf seemed reluctant to do so, but Edwin mimed throwing it, and his target quickly ran to… an unmarked portion of the wall? Ah, it was a hidden door. Made sense they’d want to have a quick entrance or exit. The terrified dwarf pushed it open, and it swung out, letting daylight, actual daylight, spill into the tiny room.

“Good dwarf.” Edwin absently said in English, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the blessed sunlight. Behind him, he heard the first of his pursuers curse in dwarven as the light once again shifted. He threw his flash bomb at them as a final farewell present, and was about to do the same with his last grenade- a slipstone bomb- when he looked out at the massive Blackstone road in front of him, dipping and running down the side of the mountain. It would be an absolute pain to try and run down that, especially with pursuit, unless…

A smile played across Edwin’s lips, and it grew into a full smile and then a laugh.

Freedom.