“I will.” He cackled, and then moved. His form became a blur as he shot toward the edge of the tunnel and perched on the opening above the stairs. “He’ll regret the day he faced you, Master!”
“Bertha, leave me in the soul forge,” I messaged her.
My beautiful champion nodded, retreated quickly to the forge, and placed me by one of the grasping fingers.
I let my consciousness flow out to my two champions. While I took comfort in the magical essences that flowed through their bodies, Bertha’s didn’t feel quite right. The arcane substance inside her seemed to be leaking out at a slow but steady rate. The bruises and the scrapes she’d accrued while fighting her family hadn’t healed. No wonder she’d felt the need to rest before. I reached out and touched her with my consciousness. The half-troll relaxed as if comfortable with the touch of my mind.
“When are you building me a replacement bed?” she asked me wordlessly, a playful smirk touching her face, despite the circumstances.
“Gavin first,” I answered her. “Rewards later.”
I took my remaining Infernal Essence and focused on her minor wounds. They were dried but still causing her pain. I examined her in the same meticulous manner I’d done with my stairs, antechamber, and the tonnes of stone and obsidian I’d consumed. She moaned softly with pleasure as I caressed her wounds, infusing her body with the Infernal Essence.
The scrapes, bruises, and cuts flowed over emerald skin and became whole once more. So that was how I kept my champions at fighting strength—I just needed to feed them Infernal Essence.
Damn, I was learning fast.
It would’ve been nice not to have a huge fucking troll breathing down my entrance, though. Even before he graced my tunnel, I could feel his footfalls vibrating from above, his massive weight causing the ceiling on my dungeon to shudder.
“He’s coming,” I warned my champions.
A massive troll with bulging muscles beneath wart-covered skin exploded through the entrance. He lifted a pig-like snout and roared between two curved tusks shoving through his lips. A hefty mace built from gnarled wood rested in his palms, a huge chunk of stone bound to the top of its handle.
Something about the weapon was distinct from those I’d seen so far in this world. A rune was carved into the wood, just beneath the weapon’s rocky head. I could detect Infernal Essence empowering the magical symbol, infused to this mace in the same manner as the cable cars and soul forge. I muttered a wordless curse. It made sense that I could infuse weapons with essence.
Gavin made another bellow, a deafening sound that reverberated around the sleek walls of my lair. I mentally winced at the noise but ignored it and then flowed back toward my Spring Trap.
We had one chance at this. We needed to cripple this prick before he could throw a further spanner in the works.
The muscle-bound troll charged down the stairs, and I couldn’t help thinking that next time I decided to get all genocidal on a family, I was going to make sure to be thorough about it.
“Where be you, Imp?” Gavin roared as his feet crashed against the stairs and cleared them three at a time. “You killed my pretty! And my Jeff!”
Bertha stepped out of the soul forge alcove, and I made a mental note to come up with a sufficiently awesome name for the space later. The half-troll’s green skin glowed with the light from my gem and the forge itself. Her weapon seemed to shine in the same light, but even that was nothing compared to the lethal brilliance now shining from her eyes.
“I killed her, Gavin. And Jeff. All of them.”
Gavin pulled to a halt, momentarily shocked at Bertha’s appearance. “Bertha? Did Charlie make you do it?”
“Charlie is dead. My master made Jeff kill him.”
“Master?” Then Gavin’s face hardened into a mask of unadulterated hatred. “Weakling! You will pay.”
Well, so far this was going swimmingly. Gavin had the same number of brain cells as Jeff. Bertha smirked and twirled her poleaxe while she shifted her weight from foot to foot. She tilted her head as she looked over her stepfather, radiating confidence and defiance.
“They were weak. And old. They left Lilith in the shadows, just as you have. As everyone has. And they paid with their lives. I serve the Viceroy of the Goddess now.” The smirk widened into that berserker grin of hers. “You will fall, as they did.”
“That’s my girl,” I whispered to myself.
Gavin lunged forward far faster than his bulk suggested he could, and I caught sight of some kind of tattoo branded into his back. It could have been mistaken for an old wound, but a closer inspection told me it was a tribal marking, a crescent moon stained the color of blood. It was the marking Bertha had spoken of, and I could sense the Infernal Essence radiating from it as it fed the weapon in Gavin’s hand. The substance didn’t stop there but surged through the weapon and back into his body. It was enhancing his speed somehow, and I knew this fight would be far more difficult than our brawl with Jeff.
The huge troll raced at Bertha, covering the space of my antechamber in a few striding bounds. Every footfall reverberated through me, and I felt the point of impact precisely where they fell. I could predict where his next step would go, and realized he was going to run straight past my only trap.
True to my prediction, he vaulted straight over the section of floor. Magical energy swirled around his tattoo and fed the mighty weapon as he swung. He put his muscular bulk and his momentum behind the swing of the club. My jewel seemed to tighten as I envisaged the stone head cracking Bertha’s skull and sending
