Troy Denning - The Obsidian Oracle

The noble shook his head clear, then raised his eyes to the creature that had so nearly used the Way to kill them. When he saw what had crawled into the passage after them, Agis almost wished that the passage had remained dark. He was staring at a fanged behemoth with a black nose the size of his own head and a squarish snout longer than the skiff’s bow. The beast’s enormous jaws hung parted in exhaustion, the tip of a scarlet tongue just showing from between its lips, streams of drool running off the flews of its mouth. At the other end of the muzzle was a pair of tiny, fatigued eyes, set into a round, thick-boned skull covered by brown fur. Atop the head sat a pair of perky round ears, eerily gentle in their juxtaposition to the rest of the fearsome mien.

The rest of the creature was even more horrifying than its head. Long tufts of brown fur rose from the joints of the articulated shell that covered its entire body. Its bulky shoulders touched the passage walls on both sides, its belly rested on the stalagmites in the dust bed, and the ridge of its spine pressed against the ceiling.

“Ral protect us!” gasped Kester. “A bear!”

Shaking the cavern with a great roar, the beast pulled itself forward and raised a massive paw out of the dust bed. Agis dropped his torch and leaped off the deck, bringing his glowing blade down in a wild slash. The bear’s paw came down behind him, splintering the skiff with a single crunching blow.

With the terrified screams of his companions echoing in his ears, Agis sliced his blade across the black tip of the bear’s snout. He saw a deep gash open in both nostrils, then felt his feet plunging into the dust. A gray cloud rose up to engulf him, and the beast roared again.

Agis’s ankle scraped down the side of a submerged stalagmite, sending sharp pain up his leg as it turned against the joint. Fearful of sinking past his head, the noble grasped at the rocky column with his free arm. He tried to inhale, and it seemed that he took in as much dust as air. Coughing violently, he swung his sword at the bear’s gullet. The blade clanged off the beast’s throat armor without penetrating.

“Kester, help!” Agis croaked.

No answer came.

“Nymos?”

The bear opened its maw and lowered its dripping mouth toward Agis’s head. He tried to fight it off with his sword, but the blade did no more than chip the thing’s yellow fangs. Wheezing down what he feared might be his last breath, the noble pinched his eyes shut, let his knees fold, and dropped into the dust. He pushed himself blindly forward, grasping at a stalagmite’s smooth stone with his free hand and kicking at the slippery floor with his feet.

With a ferocious snort, the bear thrust its huge maw after him. Agis felt a swell of displaced silt surge over his body, then a sharp tooth scraped along his ankle. He jerked the limb free, kicking madly with the other leg. His foot found purchase on the beast’s snout and sent him forward. The muffled scrape of tooth on stone rumbled through the dust, followed by the muted crack of a stalagmite being snapped off at the root.

Agis pushed himself another step forward and rose. His nose barely cleared the dust before the crown of his head touched the bony armor covering the bear’s underside. As soon as he opened his eyes, they were coated with silt and began to burn horribly, but he could still see well enough to make out what was happening around him. He turned to find a pair of bleeding nostrils sniffing at the dust where he had been standing a moment earlier. Beyond the beast’s muzzle lay a few shards of the shattered skiff that had gotten hung up on a stalagmite and failed to sink. The smashed bow had been ignited by the torch he had dropped earlier. By the light of its burning wood, he saw part of Nymos’s striped tail curled around the top of a stalagmite. The noble did not see any sign of Kester or Tithian.

A knot of remorse formed in the noble’s stomach. If the tarek had died, he would miss her. Even the thought of returning to Tyr without his prisoner sickened him. Assuming he managed to find the king’s body, it would be a poor substitute for the public trial he had promised to Neeva and the dwarves.

Determined to accomplish at least that much, Agis shuffled forward as fast as he dared. He moved his feet cautiously along the floor, feeling his way around sinkholes and submerged stalagmites, trying not to draw the bear’s attention back to himself. When he reached the shoulders, he took a deep breath and plunged the tip of his sword into the creature’s armpit, pushing upward with all his strength.

The blade sank to the hilt, and hot blood poured down Agis’s arm. The bear bellowed in fury and wrenched its head around, snapping at its attacker with slavering jaws. The noble ducked beneath the maw and, fearing the dying beast would collapse on top of him, dived forward. The bear’s paw sliced through the silt after him.

It caught Agis just as he passed the base of a thick stalagmite. The stone pillar snapped with a muffled thud, then the noble’s body erupted into pain, and his mouth opened to scream. He found himself choking as silt poured down his air passage. In the next instant, the bear’s paw lifted Agis out of the dust, flinging both him and the broken stalagmite across the cavern.

Agis crashed into the wall, then dropped back into the dust and sank like a stone. Fighting back black waves of unconsciousness, the noble tried to push himself upright. His feet slipped into a sinkhole, and he lashed out with his arms, hoping to catch hold of another stalagmite.

Instead, he found a burly leg. A pair of powerful hands slipped under his arms, then he was pulled out of the dust and spun around in one quick motion. Agis found himself grasped securely in the burly arms of a tarek, his back to her brawny chest and two large fists clasped together over his abdomen.

“Kester!” The name did not escape his lips, for his lungs were burning from the lack of air, and his throat was clogged with silt.

The tarek pulled the heels of her hands into the pit of Agis’s stomach, at the same time bearing down on his torso and sending bolts of agonizing pain through his battered ribs. The last few breaths of air in his chest rushed out of his mouth, carrying along the silt that had been obstructing his air passages. The noble coughed several times, wracking his body with more pain, before the breath returned to his lungs. With it came the terrible pain of the three deep gashes that the bear’s claws had opened along the side of his body. Agis could only imagine what would have happened to him if the beast had not been forced to tear a stalagmite out by its roots to reach him.

Once Kester allowed Agis to return to his own feet, he realized that he had been knocked a short distance down the passage. By the dim glow of the burning bow, he saw the bear’s huge silhouette a few yards away. The beast had collapsed on its stomach, its lifeless muzzle buried beneath the dust and its immense bulk blocking the exit to their small passage. So completely did the creature fill the grotto that only a few feet remained between its back and the ceiling.

“Sorry to let ye do all the fighting,” Kester said. Beneath the silt, her hand was still on the noble’s elbow. “But by the time I got myself out of the silt and cleared my lungs, ye were under the damned beast, and I didn’t want to startle it.”

“It was a remarkable battle,” said Tithian, moving into the light of the burning bow. The king, shorter than either Agis or Kester, barely managed to hold his chin above the silt.

“Where were you hiding during the fight?” Agis demanded. He winced as a fresh bolt of pain flashed through his body. “A little magic might have been helpful.”

“And interfere with such an artful display? Never,” Tithian replied. “I saw Rikus kill a half-dozen bears during his time in the arena, and not one of those kills was as clean as yours.”