Dragon Slayer P2

              Sweat soaked the man encased in the dark gritty armor hours later as he rounded another turn in the maze of hallways that had lay beyond the far door of the perfect hall. The narrow stone halls he strode through now were that of any fortress or castle he had walked, gray stone and torches that lay too far from each other to throw a sufficient amount of light to guide one’s way.

              A dozen turns later the knight caught the slight curve in the wall, the shallow ripple in a pond one would not notice unless they were looking for it, the walls ran in a circle, one so monumental it appeared square. The swirling in his mind ceased, endless images of stone corners and hallways ten paces long, the flicker of dim light at the end of each that he had been chasing for hours. He gritted his teeth and made a turn away from the curved wall, sound coming back to him, heavy boots clunking softly against the stone underneath, so softly he could barely hear, as if he was incased in these halls, as if he was halfway to the city in the earth.

              What should have been a right turned into a left as he persevered, as if the halls were not straight, as if they lay out in circles and angles beyond the perception of a man. The nothingness inside the stone halls weighed as well, the same thin layer of dust over the gray smear of stone barely lit by the torches that stank of animal fat. Not a scrap of filth nor the bones of the dead occupied this place, an empty barrier meant to drive men mad.

“Have you had enough yet brave night? You’ve been in my maze for quite some time” A raspy voice wrung in the knight mind.

              He ignored it as he made several more turns, clicking and clunking through hall after hall as the last bits of dirty rain evaporated off his armor while he cooked in it. A thousand souls wrung in his sheath as he pondered the worm’s words, to let pride kill him in these halls rather than face the death this monster would guide him into. He had only made the journey here over the mighty mountains that took two of his fingers, and the wide rivers and bogs that had nearly took him to the murky depths, to slaughter and die, to find a death worth calling his own.

He stopped halfway down the hall, gloomy and silent, his sword pierced the air as he drew it.

“Your left… then right… straight until your mind is gone” the host began in a whisper that turned into a screech.

              The knight closed his eyes tight behind the helmet that embraced his head, opening them to the small holes that made up the shield across his face. Iron that had been smashed out of the earth a mile from where he had been born, men worn to death hauling it out of deep black tunnels. He took his next right, followed by a left, and began walking backwards to find a shallow incline back in the direction he had thought he had come from. The ramp led up high for a thousand paces before it began widening, like the mouth of some great fish he had escaped.

              The room that graced his eyes as he crested the top of the ramp that had turned to stairs several paces before the top was immaculate. Clad in stones and steels that would take a generation for the greatest of the royal families to procure and ten times that to harvest. The floor a translucent blue and white, the black below not allowing vision past as if he was on the sea again, staring down into the foam that hung above the depths.

              A speck of dust could not be seen amongst the walls and shelves, the cabinets and fireplaces, some so far of sight they looked as pin pricks on the line of vision. It was as if one had built a hundred ballrooms into one, the common areas containing chairs and tables, to the ports for kitchens that slaves had once managed, to the instruments that sat in piles in every corner. One source of light hung here, made of horn and antler, a chandelier that had slaughtered entire species from the land, one so large it would take a hundred men to raise it to the ceiling high above.

The shine of orange fire glittered off everyone in the room.

Piles of brass nearly blinding.

“Warrior!” a deep voice sounded out as a hulk of armor clad in hides and skins advanced into the center of the huge room, spreading arms wide to reveal an axe the size of a man in one and a dagger as long as the knight’s sword in the other.

              Hundreds now came, the figures of starved humans wearing servant’s garbs that had gone out of style hundreds of years ago, snatching up items, organizing and sweeping nonexistent piles of dust away. Several gathered up instruments and began to play, crude melodies that screeched into an echo, wringing against walls and finding their way into the knight’s ears only to make him wince and shudder as more piled on.

“Reminds one of the hunt, does it not?” the armored figured bellowed out as it strode closer, “horns blaring and a sweet little prize at the end of an arrow… when an arrow bores a man he finds more interesting ways to take his prey, I was never a fan of the arrow you see, my father butchered hogs when I was a boy many years ago, you cannot replicate the joy I felt placing a long knife into one of those beasts”.

 The knight growled as his hands bit down into his sword once again.

“I am obligated to ask you your name” the huntsman growled as the two made their way towards each other.

              Instruments squealed and rasped out notes that made no sense, culminating in a roar of sound that wrung off every surface of the room, enough to shatter a mans mind had he not been prepared.

              The two met in the center of the grand ballroom, the heads of preserved animals screaming as their blades crossed, throwing hot red high up into the hot air while a piano player’s corpse was pulled away to be replaced by another. The knight shoved hard against the meeting, placing himself out of the reach of the axe the massive figure carried a moment before it swung out in a heavy arc, pulling hot air and screaming notes from brass instruments along.

              Lashes from steel carried their weight into the knight, numbing his arms and throwing pain through knees and elbows as he was swatted around the large room. The axe crashed against his sword driving him down into the ground as he rolled, only to be hauled up by a fist around his gorget a moment later.

“How did stock as weak as you find your place in my room?” the armored monster roared out before tossing the knight into a pile of instruments and slaves.

              Light so hot it could bake a man flashed across his armor as he lay weightless and limp in the air, fingertips growing loose and so weak before the crash, one that wrapped slave and brass around him in the same manor. Hot iron shot into his shoulders and neck as he found himself against a bookcase, knowledge spattered in blood. The knight tore a trumpet off his forearm and shrugged off what was left of a man off his shoulder.

He grasped onto the piano his body had sheared the end off and began to heave.

Booming laughter wrung out from two voices.

              The knight spun several times before he released the piano, it sailed in a heavy arc across the ballroom as a bird swoops low and pounces upon its meal, smashing into the hot fire that had found itself so close above them as they had traded blows.

“Well done brave knight” the huntsman stated, dropping his arms as he took in splintering wood and a thousand years of bones.

              The shatter sent piles of fire and horn across the room as the steel clad figure he had been fighting was turned to a gory pulp under the weight, only to be seared a moment later. The slaves, if they were even that were not tardy to tear away at the cooked flesh of what had once been their master,

“Well done indeed” the voice sounded again, igniting every instrument in the room to a cacophony of painful screams from the slaves.

“I will see you soon” the knight stated in a low growl as he made his way across the blood soaked room, stepping around emaciated men and women gobbling up their master, only to find himself gazing upon the huntsman.