CLASH! Tournament 3: Round 2

Well that’s kind of dumb, Eldon thought. What’s the point of traveling all the way to the Darklands and searching in and around the Dark Lake just to find a key that we aren’t even supposed to bring back with us?

But rules were rules, Eldon supposed. For whatever reason, The Elven King had decided this was how Gulon’s champion would be determined. That was fine with Eldon; he had already succeeded at one challenge and now had his trusty dragon-wolf Rex to help with the next leg of the competition.

He was sad to see Alasse eliminated from the tournament, but at least he was still here. He admired the elf’s skill and perseverance in the face of adversity, but now he had to focus on the remaining contestants. There were only four of them left, and that number would be cut in half by the end of this round. Eldon kept a particularly keen eye on the sorceress who called herself Lady Onyx; he had spoken with both Saninthos and Aris T’ellorn after the first round and discovered that the woman had powerful magic indeed, having been able to assume the form of a panther and communicate directly with the dragon-wolf in the common language. It was going to be a tall order for a mere tailor’s apprentice to beat someone with such power.

Eldon noticed Onyx’s tanned skin, waist-length black hair, and striking emerald-green eyes. She was a little on the petite side, small enough that she might be the only other competitor who Eldon rivaled in height and weight. But Eldon knew better than anyone that appearances could be deceiving.

“C’mon, Rex,” Eldon said, climbing into the saddle the Guardians had helped Eldon strap onto his dragon-wolf. “We’ve got a key to find.”

The dragon-wolf took to the sky, flying Eldon toward ominous purple and gray horizon that led to the Darklands.

    

Onyx watched Eldon lift off, thinking to herself that she’d have to keep an eye on that one. It was one thing to conquer a dragon-wolf using powerful magic like hers, or years of intense combat training like some of the others. But he was just a young kid and he managed to tame a creature that wasn’t exactly high on the list of commonly domesticated pets.

She would definitely have to make sure she didn’t underestimate him like his last opponent had.

“We better get to it,” she said to Black Wind, nudging her favorite horse forward toward the Darklands.

    

From his vantage point high in the clouds, Eldon could see the entire countryside. The air was crisp and clear up here, and the wind tousled his hair as Rex approached the Darklands. The moment they cross that border, the sunlight dissipated and both land and sky were filled with a murky gray light.

“The Dark Lake is supposed to be at the center of the Darklands,” Eldon said to Rex. “And I’m pretty sure I know where the center is, but I don’t see any lake.”

Indeed, at the nexus of the Darklands, where only the faintest glimmer of sunlight could be glimpsed on the distant horizons, there was no lake. Instead, they found a mountain. It looked like the mountain extended throughout the entire Darklands, from the foothills right near the border, through an ever-increasing slope of hills, until - at the very, very center - single peak formed, stretching high into the dark clouds.

“Maybe it’s at the top?”

Eldon guided Rex higher and higher, climbing to where the air was thin. It was hard to breathe up here, and Eldon felt a little lightheaded as Rex set down on the rocky shores of a small basin at the summit of the mountain. At the center of the basin was a small pool of water. It barely looked big enough to be called a pond, let alone a lake.

Is this the terrifying Dark Lake? Eldon mused. A tiny watering hole?

Rex moved toward the water and sniffed it with interest a few times. Then he began to drink, lapping at the water like a thirsty puppy.

“Rex, no!” Eldon cried out, running to the dragon-wolf. “That water will drain your soul! There’s not a single living creature that can ... survive ... these ... waters ...”

Eldon trailed off as he noticed the movement in the water.

“Except for those fish, I guess? And those ducks?”

Sure enough, in the middle of what Eldon was about ready to rename “Dark Pond,” there was a small school of fish swimming happily around, and a family of ducks waddled over and started swimming around in the mini-lake. Obviously they were horrendously mutated, twisted, dire versions of fish and ducks (this is the Darklands, after all!), but still their presence couldn’t help make Eldon question whether they had truly found the Dark Lake or not. All signs seemed to be pointing to ‘no.’

    

Lady Onyx and Black Wind charged through yet another band of roving kobolds as they continued their trek up the mountain. Although the talented sorceress was easily able to fend off her handful of diminutive attackers, she was quickly beginning to think that Eldon had the right idea and that perhaps she shouldn’t have relinquished her flight-capable dragon-wolf just yet.

With a wave of her hand and a flick of her wrist, the remaining kobold sizzled and popped and disappeared in a shower of sparks and light.

They kept going, but it wasn’t long until Black Wind noticeably slowed as the incline steepened. As close as Onyx could tell, they still had more than half the mountain to climb and there’s no way a horse - even one as dependable as Black Wind - was going to get her there before collapsing.

Onyx spotted a small cave a little farther up the trail and decided that a rest might be in order. They were still in a race, but she’d be a lot slower if she had to go about her task on foot. When she reached the cave, though, the sorceress discovered it wasn’t actually a cave at all, but rather the beginning of a tunnel too perfectly-formed to have occurred naturally.

“What do you think, Black Wind? Do we keep going up the trail, or see where the secret passageway takes us?”

    

Eldon reached out and dipped a tentative fingertip into the pool of water. He waited for a few moments, pondered, then waited a little longer.

“Hmm. I don’t feel like my soul is getting sucked out. I dunno, Rex. I don’t think this is the Dark Lake. Or if it is, boy it’s lost a lot of its potency over the years.”

Rex wasn’t pay attention anymore, wading out into the shallow pond in pursuit of the creepy ducks and disfigured fish. Eldon waded after him, catching the reins and hoisting himself up into the saddle again.

“C’mon, boy. Let’s keep looking.”

As Rex wandered to the center of the tiny pond, they both felt a tremor make the ground shudder as something shifted under their weight. Rex and Eldon both waited, not daring to move.

“Rex, any chance you can take flight without pushing off the grou--”

And suddenly, they were falling.

The rocky basin gave way, water and stone - and Rex and Eldon - plummeting down into the heart of the mountain. Eldon, blinking against the wind and falling debris, looked around and had a startling realization; the inside of the mountain was hollow! This was followed near-instantaneously by another realization; it was a long way down!

Eldon struggled with the reins in an effort to get Rex right side up.

“Come on, boy! Roll over!”

Rex maneuvered around and got himself righted, then started flapping his wings, creating drag and slowing their descent until they were airborne again. They had plummeted down the neck of the mountain and now hovered a few hundred feet above the ground which they discovered, thanks to the kerplunking rocks and fish and ducks, was comprised almost entire of black, inky waters.

“The Dark Lake,” Eldon murmured as Rex did a fly-by of the underground cavern.

The lake rested at the very center of the mountain (or what was more aptly called a volcano at this point), easily stretching to the limits of the cavern with only a thin lip of elevated rock encircling the caldera that held the water. It was just wide enough for two humans to walk side-by-side, and several arterial tunnels were carved into the rock leading in multiple directions.

“Okay,” Eldon said. “Find the Dark Lake. Check. Next up: find the key.”

He scanned the lake and its surroundings, but was distracted by the sound of hoofbeats approaching. Emerging from one of the tunnels, Lady Onyx appeared and drew Black Wind to a stop at the edge of the Caldera.

Correction, Eldon thought to himself. Find the key FAST.

Lady Onyx looked up at Eldon and his dragon-wolf, then farther up at the caved-in ceiling that shone the slightest bit of gray sky at the very, very top.

“I see you took a more direct route to get here,” she mused. “Been searching for the key long?”

Eldon shrugged, trying to look tough. Inside, he was afraid she would zap him with her magic and transform him into a newt or something.

Lady Onyx surveyed the Dark Lake, her brow furrowing. “I don’t see anything except the lake itself. Nothing on the outskirts, no convenient island in the middle with a pedestal at the center ... nothing!”

“Nothing,” Eldon muttered to himself, wheels spinning.

“It must be in the lake,” she said. “You might want to stand back for this, boy.”

Eldon nudged Rex a little higher as Lady Onyx dismounted from her horse and approached the edge of the caldera. Channeling her power through her staff, Onyx chanted in an ancient tongue Eldon didn’t recognize and motioned with her staff. The caliginous waters rippled and began to part.

It was as if someone had divided a bowl of porridge in half, pushing the contents to each side of the bowl and creating an empty rift in the middle.

With the deepest concentration imaginable, the shapeshifting sorceress descended into the caldera and walked on now dry land to the center of the Dark Lake.

Eldon watched from his elevated perch with interest, but something still nagged at him.

Waters that can draw out your soul. No markers in or around the lake. Gulon ... imprisoned in a warhammer...

His eyes went wide. He found the key.

While Onyx was still concentrating on holding the water back and searching every square inch of the bottom of the center of the Dark Lake, Eldon rummaged around in his pack and pulled out one of his wineskins. He quickly dumped the contents and nudged Rex down toward the surface of the water.

“Careful, Rex.” Eldon urged. “Close, but don’t touch.”

Rex hovered over one of the churning halves of the lake, just enough so that Eldon could reach down and capture some of the obsidian waters in his wineskin. When it was full, he urged the dragon-wolf a safer distance above and capped the wineskin. As he was securing it, though, Lady Onyx had returned to shore and released her hold on the water, causing it to crash back together and spray upward.

For a sorceress like Lady Onyx, defending herself was a matter of a little wind spell here, a little shield spell there, and she and Black Wind didn’t get a drop on them. For the non-magically-inclined, however, they had no such protection. Eldon tried to get Rex as high as possible, but a few droplets of water still sprayed Rex and Eldon.

They both shuddered as the water touched them, feeling coldness permeate their very center. Rex veered and wavered, dangerously close to crashing into the churning lake. At the last minute he was able to use one of the tunnels as a makeshift runway, gliding, then impacting and skidding to a halt several yards down the passageway.

Eldon watched in surprise as the droplets of black water seemed to glow. At first he wondered where the sudden luminescence had come from, until he realized it was coming from him. Every droplet of water that had landed on Rex and him was drawing glowing, precious life force out of their bodies. Eldon felt exhaustion consume him as he helplessly watched the little droplets drain him.

And then it stopped. With Eldon barely clinging to consciousness, the feeling subsided. He was now covered in brightly glowing droplets which were even more strongly accentuated by the fact that he and Rex looked positively skeletal at this point. Their skin was pasty, their eyes sunken. The life had truly been siphoned from them.

Eldon grabbed another two of his smaller wineskins, emptying them out on the ground. He collected as many drops as he could off his own body, adding them to one wineskin, then repeated the process for the shimmering droplets on Rex, adding them to the other wineskin. It was a laborious process, made all the more difficult by the fact that all Eldon really wanted to do was curl into a ball and go to sleep. If these were the effects of just a few drops of the Dark Lake’s water, he grimaced at the thought of what this place could do to someone who waded in or, worse, was completely submerged.

Best not to think about those things.

“Too bad,” Lady Onyx observed as she and Black Wind trotted by. “Seems like your trip back won’t be quite as fast as your trip here. But I like what that does to my odds.”

“Where are you going?” Eldon asked as she passed them by.

“There’s clearly nothing in or around the immediate vicinity of the Dark Lake,” she replied. “It must be something right outside one of these tunnels. Good luck with your search.”

She smirked as she kept riding, leaving Eldon and Rex to their own struggles. But once she had gone, Eldon didn’t look forlorn or upset at all. On the contrary, he was smiling.

“Come on, boy,” Eldon said to Rex, doing his best to help the dragon-wolf to its feet. “Why don’t we walk home so you can rest those wings?”

The dragon-wolf looked at him with relief and appreciation in his eyes.

As they started walking, Eldon looked at the three wineskins he was carrying.

“You know, it’s a shame she was such a jerk,” Eldon commented, the faintest twinkle in his eye. “Otherwise I might have told her where to find the key.”

Rex cocked his head in Eldon’s direction.

“If Gulon’s soul is trapped inside the warhammer,” Eldon explained, as if it were perfectly normal for a kid to explain magical workings to a sentient lizard-canine hybrid. “What better key to draw it out than water that can suck a soul out of something? The key wasn’t in or around the lake. The key is the lake. Did you see the way it literally pulled the life force right out of us? I’m betting the Elven King has someone who knows how to use this water to draw Gulon’s soul out of the warhammer and put it back in his body.”

Rex nodded appreciatively.

“And if I’m right,” Eldon said, patting the other two wineskins, “I bet that person also knows how to get these little liquid bits of soul back into us.”

They continued on until they reached the end of the tunnel, then started making their way down the mountain. Off in the distance, Eldon could barely make out the shape of Lady Onyx, still scouring the hillside for some hint of what the key might be.

“C’mon, boy,” Eldon said, scratching Rex’s scales right under the chin. “We can take a rest as soon as we get to the bottom of the hill. I don’t think there’s any rush to get back; she’s not going to be finding her ‘key’ anytime soon.”


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(2,716 words)

Entry for "CLASH! " . Prompt: "T3 - Round 2 - The Key"