Chapter 20

-Chase-

I kept my eyes locked on Dante while he made his way down to the bottom of the steep hillside. I was ready to protect him in case the trolls noticed him before he could change his form, but since they usually waited for the victim to wander deeper into their lands, Dante was relatively safe.

I wasn’t a big fan of having him with us. His inability to heal normally was giving me anxiety, and trolls were strong enough to rip anyone in half – for which they were famous for – so I was definitely worried. I felt bad for letting him risk his life, especially since we… didn’t really need him there. Zane, Aaliyah, Eru and I were more than capable of handling things, and having Dante with us made this mission unnecessarily complicated.

But who was I to tell him to stay home? I could’ve forced him to stay out of this, yes, but it wasn’t my decision to make. If he wanted to help, I wasn’t going to stop him. If he wanted to bash in some skulls, I was there to make sure no one did that same to him. Besides, I saw this as a great opportunity for him to get to know this new side of him. If things went well, maybe he wouldn’t be so afraid of himself anymore.

And I was dying to see that beast in action. Now that he wasn’t trying to – quite literally – eat my ass, I could finally take a better look at him. I couldn’t wait to see the transformation, although I hated the fact that it caused him pain.

“Are you sure about this?” Aaliyah asked with a quiet voice when Dante stopped to open his bag.

“Do you think he can’t win against some trolls?” I asked in return.

She smirked and turned her attention back to Dante. “I watched him rip through a steel door – five inches wide – when he escaped the lab.”

“Hmph,” Ben snorted in amusement, and we turned to look at him. “You’ll need antamare, loads and loads of antamare, to even hope to contain him when he reaches his full power.”

That should’ve made me worried, but for some reason, I was proud. Antamare, black steel from Njizrski, made human-made steel seem like paper.

“So he should be fine then,” Zane said.

“But he can’t heal, so we need to make sure he’s unharmed,” I reminded him.

“What?” Ben said, but I shushed him, taking a step closer to the edge of the gorge.

Dante was transforming.

“Man…” Zan breathed out when the beast emerged, letting out a blood-chilling growl that echoed in the rocky hills. The entire forest suddenly started moving as the trolls were waking up.

“Let’s go – stay out of his way,” I told Aaliyah, who nodded, and then I turned to look at Zane. “Don’t let us get killed,” I smirked.

“I’ll do my best,” he said, grabbing his sniper rifle.

Aaliyah practically vanished when she ran down the hillside. A short moment later, I could hear a troll yelling in agony somewhere in the woods. I turned my attention back to Dante just in time to see his transformation complete. That magnificent being landed on his four paws and sniffed the air before growling again. I couldn’t stop staring at him… I had never seen anything alike, not even during my trips to Njizrski.

I hardly even saw the troll that suddenly ran out of the forest, yelling in fury while attempting to attack Dante. The troll was much bigger than him, but the second it reached him, he jumped like a dog would jump to lick his master’s face. Or to rip his face off.

Part of me was shocked to see the troll fall to the ground after such a brutal death, but my god, I couldn’t help admiring Dante’s strength. Trolls were big, had a thick skin and vital organs so deep beneath their fat and muscles that they were hard to kill, but Dante did that in a blink of an eye…

Eru suddenly startled me out of my amazement by turning into her normal self. Another second later, I could hear heavy stomps coming my way and I cursed myself for not paying attention to our surroundings. A troll appeared out of nowhere, yelling in rage, holding a massive club high in the air, ready to turn me into an unspecified splatter of goo on the ground.

I had just enough time to set its face on fire to give us a few more seconds while Eru jumped at it, clasping her powerful jaws around its thick neck. With a quick shake, she ended its pointless life and turned her attention to the trees around us.

I took a hasty look at Dante, who was now facing another unfortunate troll, before focusing on spotting the trolls that had me surrounded. From the corner of my eye, I could see something explode much farther away from us – Zane’s doing, no doubt – and heard a lot of painful screaming. Those sounds made the trolls even angrier, and three of them decided to take their frustration out on me.

But I was ready this time with two handfuls of black fire. The second I saw movement, I threw one of them as hard as I could, setting everything in that area on fire. That troll now incapacitated, I turned my attention to the other two that were storming in my direction. The first one of them got turned into a torch, and it fell down on the ground in agony, but the third one wasn’t backing down.

As I readied another ball of fire, something red flashed right past me, running into the troll with such force that they both were sent flying on the ground. Only one stood up.

“That was mine,” I scoffed at Aaliyah, who licked her bloodied claws.

“Didn’t see you,” she shrugged.

“Incoming!“

In a split-second, Aaliyah looked up, then at me. She grabbed my hand and yanked me down on the ground before I could even think about why Zane was yelling at us. I could hear the sound of something big and deadly flying over our heads, hitting the ground in a massive blast somewhere below.

I pushed myself up from the ground and blinked at the destruction at the bottom of the gorge, suddenly feeling like I was suffocating. I looked up and saw Zane peering over the edge, wearing his big, ridiculous goggles.

“Dante is down there!” I yelled at him.

“Not anymore!” he replied, pointing somewhere at the other side of the gorge.

“He’s fast,” Aaliyah said, and I let out a sigh of relief when I saw Dante climbing the rocks, chasing a few of the panicky trolls. He quickly caught up with one of them and ended it. “We should follow him.”

I nodded and got up on my feet.

Making our way through the burning vale and the army of trolls was far from easy. Eru and Aaliyah handled the ones that got too close to us, while I kept bombarding the rest with my fiery missiles. Zane was clearly looking out for us since more than once a troll fell without us doing anything about it.

I couldn’t believe how many there were… A hundred? Two? At least it seemed like so. Dante was leaving an impressive trail of bodies in his wake, but more just kept on coming. The old man Benny had mentioned that it was a big herd, but this was getting ridiculous. I was getting exhausted. I wasn’t built for climbing up and down the rocky hills, and using magic was taking its toll on me. The only thing that kept me going was Dante. I was getting worried over him as the minutes passed by and he was nowhere to be seen. I told Aaliyah to go look for him, but she refused to leave my side now that we were under heavy attack.

“We need to find their leader!” Aaliyah yelled at me over the raging screams as we reached a road on the hillside.

I could almost see the lab from where I was standing… the road was leading straight to it but was now covered in rocks and branches and piles and piles of bones. I turned to look at Eru who was just finishing off another troll that had climbed after us. She, too, seemed tired.

“They look exactly the same! How can you tell which one is it?” I asked in frustration – there was still no sign of Dante, although the bloody trail leading to him was still there.

“They’re usually bigger and meaner,” Aaliyah said calmly. “Someone the other trolls can’t kill.”

“They’re all big and mean,” I sighed.

“We need to get moving,” she said, grabbing my arm.

Following the trail Dante had left for us, we ran as far as we could before getting stopped again. I slowly started to realize why Ben had never gotten any help to get his home back. This started to feel more and more like a suicide mission by each troll that came our way. I was getting really tired. I was getting sloppy. I failed to see the oncoming threat more than once, and I was painfully aware of the fact that I was still alive only because of Eru, Aaliyah, and Zane.

And for some reason, it seemed like the foes were getting tougher. And bigger.

There was an opening between the taller hills right in front of us, and a pathway leading down to another small valley. Dante had clearly taken that path, so we hurried after him. There were fewer trees here so it was easier to fight since we could see the enemy approaching us, but now Zane couldn’t give us support.

I was also getting really worried. The town wasn’t that far away… Not for a rampaging werewolf. But he had to be getting tired as well. He couldn’t even control his transformation. What if he had changed back to human and was now lying dead somewhere, torn in half?

I found a new surge of energy just by thinking that. We continued running, blasting our way through every obstacle we encountered. My fear was eating me up, and I was getting really mad at myself for not making Dante stay home after all. Why did I ever let him come with us…? Why?!

“Wait!” Aaliyah suddenly snapped, stopping me. She stared in front of us, sniffing the air. “Do you hear that?”

“What is it?”

She turned to look at me. “It’s Dante – it has to be. Come! We need to hurry!”

“What’s wrong?” I asked as we continued running down the pathway.

“I think he’s in trouble!”

“Go to him, now!” I ordered, and this time, she didn’t object.

I cursed myself for being so slow, but at least Aaliyah was now on her way to help him. Eru and I dashed through a small patch of woods where she had disappeared into, but as soon as we got past the trees, I slid into a halt.

I saw Dante. He was attacking the biggest and meanest of them all. The leader of the trolls had a tree in one hand, and a primitive spear in the other. It slashed at Dante with the latter. My rage spilled over when I saw the arch of blood in the air and heard the painful cry of my werewolf echoing in the rocky walls that surrounded us.

I summoned all the magical energy I could find. My entire body suddenly felt like it was on fire, the pain hitting me like a massive wave of pure agony, but I didn’t care. All I could register was the victorious shout of the troll as its victim fell on the floor. Aaliyah was all over it, but even her strength wasn’t a match to that ugly, massive being.

“Get back!” I yelled when I reached my final limit. Aaliyah reacted as fast as a vampire could, giving me the opportunity to release all that magical energy I was too weak to control, knocking myself out before I could see the carnage I just caused.

The darkness surrounded me, but the pain faded away. I was barely conscious… Barely knew I even existed.

And I heard laughter inside my head… No… it was more like a slow chuckle that ended in a deep sigh.

“The things you do for that creature… Not really surprised, but that was a bit too reckless, even for you.”

“I really don’t need your lecture now, Roe,” I muttered.

“Hmm… Your body can’t handle that much mridi – you do know that, right?” he asked, his voice echoing all around me in the darkness.

“I needed to save Dante,” I replied, and then realized something. “I need to wake up – he’s wounded!”

“You can try,” he snorted. “But I’m afraid you zapped yourself quite hard this time. It’ll take a moment before your body can recover. That was… pretty unnecessary, if I may add.”

“That thing tried to kill Dante!”

“So you blew him up? You could’ve just snatched his weapon and cut off his head, but no…”

“I didn’t have time to think that far,” I grunted.

“Really…? But it is too bad that your shiny stone won’t accept troll spirits,” he spoke with a condescending voice.

“I was trying to protect Dante,” I hissed. “This has nothing to do with my stone!”

“No, of course not,” he chuckled. “But it has everything to do with your restless spirit, the chaos that resides in you.”

“We’re not having this conversation now. I need to wake up!”

“Go ahead then. Go save the love of your life – the man you met a few weeks ago.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” I asked, getting really pissed now.

“You know what I mean,” he said, and I could feel his presence fading.

“My feelings are genuine, you hear me?!” I shouted after him but didn’t get a reply.

“Chase?”

I blinked, suddenly seeing Dante hovering over me with a worried expression on his face. I blinked again and his worry had turned into relief.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Am I all right? Are you all right?!” I gasped, sitting up so fast that I nearly puked. Eru poked me with her giant nose, letting out worried meows. I scratched the back of her neck and turned to look at Dante.

“I’m fine,” he muttered, but he was holding his hand against his side. I ignored the nauseousness and hurried to push his hand and shirts out of the way to reveal a nasty wound. It wasn’t as big as I had feared, but it was still bad enough.

“What happened?” Aaliyah asked as well, and I turned to look at her. Then behind her.

“Oh, uhm…” I mumbled, staring at the massive hole in the ground. On the wet, red ground. “I… killed the troll?”

“Killed? More like evaporated him,” Aaliyah said with wide eyes.

I ignored her words. “What about the rest of them?” I asked, looking around.

“Fled right after you killed their leader,” Aliyah said. “Mission accomplished.”

“But why did you faint?” Dante asked, looking like he was about to pass out too.

“I used too much magic – I’ll explain later. Now we need to get to that lab,” I said, standing up on my wobbly feet before laying my eyes on his wound. “We need to get that fixed.”

“Just a flesh wound,” Dante said dismissively, but I shook my head, placing my hand on his chest, suddenly feeling strengthless when the relief of having him back safe and sound washed over me.

“We have no idea what happens if we don’t stop the bleeding,” I said sternly, but he reminded me of the gunshot wound that was left untreated for hours. “Doesn’t change anything,” I replied.

He let out a light sigh and brushed his hand through my hair. “You scared the hell out of me when you collapsed…”

“I thought that ugly son of a bitch killed you,” I whispered, wrapping my arms carefully around him. He hugged me back, making me feel a lot better.

“We should get going – they might still try to attack, and we’re pretty banged up,” Aaliyah said quietly.

I nodded and let go of Dante. As we walked – wobbled – towards the road, I could hear the van in the distance. We hurried the rest of the way the best we could and got back to the road just in time to see the van trying to get past the rocks and fallen trees, but had to stop when there wasn’t enough room anymore.

Zane jumped out the second Benjamin stopped the car and ran the rest of the way to us, giving us all worried and excited looks.

“We did it?” he asked.

“We did it,” I smiled.

“Hell yeah,” he cheered quietly, but then noticed Dante’s wound. “Is it bad?”

“I’ll survive,” Dante muttered.

“I have bandages in the van,” Zane said and quickly returned to the car.

“You need to go sit down,” I told Dante, but he shook his head.

“I want to see the… lab.”

I felt so bad for him at that moment. I had seen the way his eyes twitched every time that word was mentioned. I could’ve told him to go wait for us in the car, but again, it wasn’t my decision to make. He had helped us drive off the intruders. He had risked his life and didn’t even once try to come after us, so there was no need for me to treat him like a child.

“Let’s just patch you up really quick,” I said.

He didn’t object. After Zane returned, I cleaned the wound the best I could and taped a thick layer of bandages over it before we all turned our attention to the buildings that were looming up ahead.

“I can’t believe I’m here,” Benjamin said when we started walking. “Home…”

The rest of us let him dwell in his emotions while quietly keeping an eye on our surroundings. Eru seemed calm and composed so I assumed the trolls really had decided to take a hike. At least for now.

And then we reached the buildings. Two small sheds and an old, wooden house. My heart felt heavy when I stopped to stare at the broken windows and the partly collapsed roof. The front door was long gone and the small glimpse I saw of the interior didn’t give me any hope.

“It’s completely destroyed,” Aaliyah whispered.

I shook my head, refusing to believe that we had encountered yet another setback, and stomped through the broken doorway. The kitchen – what was left of it – was immediately on my left and a broken staircase that once led upstairs on my right. The floor was covered in dirt, bones, broken glass, chipped pieces of wood… The trolls had destroyed everything. Even the walls had massive holes in them.

I grit my teeth together, refusing to think that this had been a waste of time.

“Follow me,” Benjamin said, tapping my shoulder gently as the rest of my group stepped inside. “My lab is underground.”

I followed him to another doorway that was also missing the door and walked down a set of stone stairs into the darkness. Once we reached the bottom, I conjured a bunch of candles with the last of the strength I had left. And then…

I stopped.

We were in a big chamber. Chamber of broken tables, broken shelves, broken chairs and vials and books… Even the ceiling was crumbling down. I couldn’t see the floor under all that shit… There was a big cage at the back of the chamber, but it, too, had seen better days.

There was a piece of paper on top of a collapsed bookcase. I picked it up carefully, trying to wipe it clean of the dust. It was torn and tattered. The ink was so faint and the dirt was so thick that I couldn’t read a single word. I looked around, trying to find something, anything usable… There were a few books lying around, and I went to grab one of them, but when I lifted it up, the pages fell off as a big pile of muck. Another book shared its fate since the floor was so wet and covered in filth.

I dropped the books and turned to look at the paper in my hands, trying to hold it gently so it wouldn’t turn to dust.

“I failed again…” I whispered, the emotions finally taking control over me.

I hadn’t even noticed that I wasn’t alone. Dante was right next to me, but I didn’t realize it until he had pulled me into a hug. I buried my face against his shoulder, clinging onto his clothes because I had nothing left to keep myself together at that moment.

I failed. Again…

“We tried,” Dante whispered in my ear.

“I can’t thank you enough, young man,” Benjamin spoke softly right next to me, and when I looked up, he smiled at me. “You gave me my home back.”

“But there’s nothing for us…” I muttered.

Ben gave me a sympathetic smile and turned to look around the chamber. “You know, this used to be a wine cellar. When my dear friend caught the disease, I turned this area into a laboratory so I could study his condition.”

I didn’t really care about his story, but his memories were now the only thing we had left. So, I listened. Ben walked to the closest wall, placing his hand on a decorative archway – a remnant of the times the place was meant for wine, not blood.

“As his condition got worse, and the beast grew stronger, I realized that I had to make some changes around here. That cage in the corner wasn’t holding him much longer,” he said, yanking a loose brick off the archway, putting his hand into the hole that was left behind.

I heard three loud bangs. The entire house started shaking all of a sudden, and I could hear quiet roaring somewhere… somewhere below us. And the wall inside the archway started moving!

We all stared at the moving wall. It wasn’t the only one either – at the very end, right next to the cage, was another archway, as was on the left side of the chamber, and the wall was moving upwards inside all of them.

“I asked the king of dwarves to help me out – he sent his finest engineers to rebuild my entire home,” Benjamin spoke over the loud screeches and grumbling of old machinery. “They are very skilled at building underground. It cost me a fortune, of course, but I had to make sure there was no way my friend could accidentally escape the lab.”

And then it stopped. Silence fell upon us. The three archways were now turned into massive doors. My mind was not quite ready to handle such a thing, so I just stared at the door that had risen from the ground.

“It’s… That’s… What?” Dante muttered with wide eyes.

“Welcome to my home,” Benjamin said, opening the door with a wide smile on his face.