And as Helesys slipped the knife and set to the rope net, she looked to Taunauk’s brawl, but saw only the fishman that had broken off to avenge its fallen leader—the fishman swimming in a fury toward her. Its wake splashed and broke wide, blotting out everything behind it. It screeched mad and drowned out everything else.
The elf envisioned the brave Taunauk overcome at her moments tumbling underwater—the fishmen having slain him or left him wounded in the shallows. She envisioned that behind this screeching fishman was his brethren, come to tear her apart.
Helesys raised her gauntlet and felt the arcane violence churn again. She screamed and the fishman was nearly close enough to touch before a massive axehead descended like a starfall and cleaved the screaming creature in two. The shallow water split and exploded like a blastshell had been dropped.
And when the roar of the splash settled, Taunauk stood over her, staring at the crackling energy at her fingertips.
The elf lowered her weapon and cut thrice more at the net to free herself. She stepped out and pushed the net away in the shallow water. Meanwhile the barbarian stared at her wand-arm.
“Clever sheath for a wand,” Taunauk said and gestured to the metal arm. “Elven?”
“I do not know,” Helesys replied, turning her hand over. It looked or was made to look like a sleek gauntlet—it was anything but.
“Do you remember your teachings?”
The elf shook her head again. “I called upon the magic of the wand with merely a thought… I do not know what else it can do.”
Taunauk nodded. “The memory lies somewhere within you. I could not remember battle, yet the weight of my axe is familiar.”
“An echo,” Helesys said, recalling the barbarian’s comment in the first room.
Taunauk half-smiled in the gloom and gestured for her to walk with him. She wondered if that was the extent of the outlander’s expression.
~
The two waded through the knee deep water of the flooded room with less worry and passed the carnage of their battle. The smell of oil and fish was heavy in the still air. Pockets of deep red blood mixed with the still-bobbing water. The fishmen seemed more numerous than before, but Helesys suspected that was from their being cleaved in two—by Taunauk’s axe and by her magic cannon.
But the numbers did not match: There was one that nearly came upon her in the net-trap. The first that Taunauk had killed in a single leaping blow and the fishman-weaver who Helesys had blown apart with magic.
“There should be one more body,” she said.
“It swam away. Down the well,” Taunauk pointed out a ways toward the corner of the room where the water turned a deep, dark blue. Who knew where the underwater passage led.
“Will it return?”
Taunauk grunted, “Not for a time. Fishman was smart to run. May muster allies and return, but not for a time.”
“Then we will be long gone,” Helesys replied.
She was ready to be away from there and back in a dry passage. Now that the excitement of battle was over, the cold was returning. The water was not icy—not deathly cold—yet she knew that prolonged exposure would sap her strength. Strength she would need for whatever else lay ahead in this cursed place.
Taunauk grabbed the torch that lay propped on the body of a fishman; the single torch that stayed lit. They searched the flooded room. Both scanned around and below the waterline, weary for anymore traps that might be waiting for a wrong step. When they were sure there was no other way forward, the two waded toward the rusted prison.
“I did not expect anything to escape your axe,” Helesys said in a quiet attempt at conversation.
“The two split. One for you and the other for the well.”
“Ah, so you diverted to help me?”
Taunauk grunted in affirmation, then shrugged. “I see now that you needed no aid.”
Helesys smiled. “I am not so proud as to turn my nose up at help.”
They were nearly at the hallway when the barbarian paused as if gripped by a thought.
“We must relearn strategy,” he said.
She raised an eyebrow at the giant human. “Do you think we used to know each other?”
Taunauk stared at her, his eyes hidden in the dim. “This life echoes. I feel it with you as well.”
Helesys stared back. She could not say for sure that the barbarian was wrong. There were things she knew inherently. She felt her wand-arm and managed to call upon it. She knew of the hidden knife on her hip. But she did not feel the same about him. She did not feel him as an enemy, ally, lover, friend or kin.
She hoped that it was merely her muscles remembering a little quicker than her other faculties.
Taunauk must have sensed her lack of commitment. “It is no matter,” he added, turning toward the hallway. “I trust that all things will come back to us in time.”
“What about strategy?” Helesys asked. “I feared I would catch you in the blast.”
“Good eye for the weaver,” he said, ignoring her concern. “His chant was a hex upon my axe. They would have died more swiftly.”
“Then I will target weavers and archers,” Helesys said. “What will you do?”
“I will go first. And I will give your magic a wide berth.”
~ ~ ~
The Rusted Prison
The first floor of the twisted structure was almost completely collapsed, no higher than the knee-deep water of the cavern. The fishmen could possess a passage beneath it, but none befitting an elf and a human.
They had to climb to reach a passable level of the twisted structure. Taunauk went
