There and Back Again

[Black Shadow]

Black Shadow pulled himself up the rope and onto the side of the mountain where there was a ledge, and the steepness of the peak was mild enough to climb. He grabbed the rope when he was done climbing, and began to secure it for when the king began to climb. Even though the king was much shorter than Black Shadow, he weighed nearly twice and a half his weight; the arrow in the mountain would not have been nearly enough. After the long and strenuous climb- on both the archer, and the king- Black Shadow made sure that King Hronzak was on secure land, before retrieving the arrow from the mountain and hoisting up the rope so that none could follow. Even if dwarves had seen the rope, there was no way they could replicate the ascent to the peak.

Turning to the snow capped mountaintop, Black Shadow began with one foot in front of the other, climbing higher and higher. King Hronzak climbed behind him, putting his feet in each of the steps that Black Shadow had made for him in the snow. Black Shadow looked back occasionally to see how the king was doing, but the surface seemed to be holding up. After a long and arduous climb, Black Shadow was only five feet from the peak. As he closed the final distance to the top, the pure white of the snow on the top was replaced with the endless view of the entire mountain range. Al Kitar was the tallest mountain in the range, and beautiful wilderness seemed to stretch as far as the eye could see.

“Incredible,” Black Shadow heard the king huff from behind him. “In all my years, I have lived in this mountain, I have never stood atop it. I have ruled over this kingdom, and my ancestors have ruled, and their ancestors have ruled, but never before have we viewed our kingdom like this.”

Black Shadow continued to look out over the landscape. Up at this altitude, there was a snowstorm that gave the whole landscape a whiteish overtone. Down on the scene, there were rivers and lakes, forests and massive tracts of land that seemed so majestic.

“My father once took me when I was a young prince, and told me to trek to the top of the falls on the far side of the mountain range, and all that I could see was what I would rule. I never truly understood the scope of what he said until now.”

[Gavner_Nahs]

With the hammer, Gavner began to smash the bench, breaking it into many smaller chunks. The vampire picked up a piece of stone that was douvle the size of his fist and hurled it at an incoming dwarf’s head. With a loud grunt, the dwarf dropped to the ground, and into an eternal sleep. Gavner looked up and met the eyes of a soldier who had been standing nearby to see the whole scene take place. He looked at the dwarf. The dwarf looked at him. Gavner looked at the rock in his other hand, and then at the dwarf. Flashing his sharp, ebony black teeth in a smile, Gavner whipped the rock at the dwarf who had now turned tail in a futile attempt to escape his fate.

The creature of the night began hurling stone after stone at all of the incoming dwarves, making the soldiers now jump behind benches to take cover, and think twice before storming the vampire. While the dwarves were distracted, the creature of the night took his opportunity to make a grand exit, and picked up the entire bench from which he was gleaning chunks of stone. He threw the bench to the far side of Al Konvar, and leapt toward the hole in the wall that he was making. While the dwarves began to charge to the opposite side of the hall where Gavner had thrown the bench, the creature of the night picked up the massive stone that he took from the throne base, and he once again threw it at the wall with all his strength. The wall collapsed in on itself a bit more, and the hole grew larger in diameter. Gavner looked at the wall, and then at the approaching horde of dwarves. And suddenly decided that the hole was large enough for him to fit through, before diving into the wall. The hole was just large enough for Gavner to fit through. If Gavner had but drunk one more glass of water, or eaten one more crust of bread, he would not have fit through the hole in the wall. Using his arms and legs to wriggle himself, the vampire slowly squirmed down the tunnel which he had opened up. When the dwarves had first dug into the mountain, they needed to dig extra shafts for air in case of cave ins. Gavner had just been lucky and found one of these closed off air shafts.

[Gavner_Nahs]

Gavner continued to crawl through the tunnel until he reached a small opening. He had now come across a real tunnel that clearly had been closed off because there was absolutely no lighting, and no lanterns. If it were not for Gavner’s vampire sight, he would not be able to see anything; however, he could see in the dark. Looking back, he noticed that he was not being tailed. Dwarves may have been shorter than humans and vampires, but they were certainly not skinnier. No, no dwarf was going to be able to crawl through that old abandoned air shaft like Gavner could.

Gavner began to duck walk through the tunnel. The passage was only the size of a dwarf- it must have been an escape tunnel at one point. Perhaps this tunnel could take Gavner directly to an exit. As he continued down the tunnel, the temperature began to rise, and Gavner grew hotter and hotter. The tunnel began to slope upward, and Gavner felt himself climbing upward in the mountain toward the summit. He began to feel relieved. Perhaps his escape would have been easier than he thought!

---

General Xnias was pacing in the hall in front of the throne. Down at the table where the council once sat, his commanding officers were reporting.

“I don’t care that nobody can fit through that tunnel, just find where it goes!” He shouted angrily. “Ever since day one, that vampire has been nothing but trouble. He has escaped me for the last time.” The officers began to go out and command ranks of men to go and search tunnels throughout the mountain. “Unless…” Xnias thought out loud.

“Captain!” Xnias said.

“Yes general?” The captain replied.

“ He isn’t trying to go covert. He is going to try and escape, that coward! Send all your ranks to the hot springs.”

[Gavner_Nahs]

Gavner was excited at this point. He smiled as he began charging through the tunnel at an accelerated pace, when he ran directly into a pile of stone, barricading the tunnel. He fell back on his heels and rocked further onto his back with a grunt.

“Xzcunge!” The creature of the night cursed, “Cave ins.” He looked at the barricading stone with fury. How was he to escape now? Suddenly he became aware of the sound of running water below his feet. “The royal hot springs,” Gavner muttered to himself. He pressed his ear to the ground. The floor of the tunnel he was in only seemed to be several inches thick. Something he could easily break through. Stepping back, the vampire took out the hammer that he had stored on his belt, and he prepared a blow.

“One, two… three!” Gavner brought the warhammer down onto the floor of the tunnel. He saw a dent in the stone and cracks that spider webbed to the walls of the tunnel.

“One, two, three!” Gavner said again as he smashed an even bigger dent with more cracks into the tunnel floor. “Come on,” he said, “just one more time!” He panted and raised his hammer before drawing in another big breath. “Three!”

One moment Gavner was swinging the Warhammer with all his might, and the next, he was freefalling- plummeting- in a long unsettling drop in the dark. He did not scream, he did not think, he simply fell for several seconds before he was plunged into the blood warm pool of hot water which he had just bathed in previously that day. He was in the royal hot springs of King Hronzak.

Popping his head out of the water, he took a deep breath in before looking around. The high cavern ceiling sounded out an insidious cracking sound which spread throughout the entire cave. Gavner looked up and noticed the admonishing stalagmites sticking directly down in a daunting manner. The ceiling of the cave must have been eroded throughout the years in the history of the mountain and worn down the escape tunnel’s floor so that it was nearly a few inches thick. Looking around, Gavner saw no inlet for the water, but the soothing trickle of running water he could hear echoed throughout the cavern.

He saw a medium sized tunnel with an overflow level which must have been the outlet, and he began to swim for it when he heard footsteps in the entrance to the cavern.

“Xzcunge.”

[Gavner_Nahs]

“Quickly, this way!” Gavner heard a gruff voice, followed by the boots of others.

“There he is!”

“In the water!”

“I see him!”

“What are you waiting for? After him!”

Gavner booked it to the overflow where he pulled himself up onto the tunnel of the floor. He looked back toward the entrance and saw hundreds of dwarves flooding the entrance to the cavern. They began to jump in the pool of water and wading toward the escaping vampire. He had to think fast.

“Think, think!” Gavner said to himself looking around. Hundreds of dwarves were now in the cavern, and more flooding in. With the sheer amount of volume displacement in the pool, water began to rush up through the overflow and flood the passageway. Gavner looked down at the hammer that was still in his hand, and then at the ceiling of the cavern. With a well placed throw, he hurled the Warhammer at the spot next to the hole which he had created in the ceiling where the tunnel was, and the same angry cracking noise came from the roof of the cavern. However, this time it was angrier. This time the noise came back with a vengeance. A stalagmite fell down from the ceiling and skewered an unlucky dwarf who was standing in the entryway. Suddenly, another fell, and then another.

Before the catastrophe could play out fully, Gavner turned toward the exiting water in the overflow and began to run down the tunnel, his feet sloshing through the warm resisting water. From behind him, in the previous cavern, Gavner heard the sound of a massive piece of the ceiling being dislodged, and the eerie silence that followed as it was falling. Then came the screams of fright and anticipation. Then the massive splash. Gavner knew what was coming, so he ran as fast as he could, but there was no way he could escape it. He heard the eerie whisper of water approaching, and then he was overtaken by the tidal wave. Gavner took a deep breath before he was consumed and the tunnel was completely filled with water.

The vampire was battered and smashed against the sides of the tunnel as he was shoved though the passage. He could feel himself being forced into a smaller tunnel, as the water speed increased, and he was battered much more, until finally, the pressure in the tunnel was released, and he burst through the side of the mountain in a brilliant, steaming waterfall.