The First Lich Lord
Chapter 49

“I knew this was a bad idea!” Maxwell shouted as we ran through the forest.

“Just shut up and run!” I yelled back.

After spending a few days traveling through the mountains, we came across a large valley full of massive trees. The trees were so big, the valley hadn’t seemed very deep from the mountain shoulder we’d crossed. The trees were reminiscent of redwoods, but with tough, black bark.

We’d been exploring the forest, right where the map indicated the enclave was. At first, the valley had seemed empty of wildlife, until we started seeing signs of large elk-like creatures. We never actually saw any of the elusive creatures, but the tracks and shit left behind indicated their existence.

Things changed when a howl arose behind us. It didn’t take long to determine what the natural predator of the large elk were—a pack of dire wolves hunted this forest. At first, we thought to stand and fight the wolves, but when the first level sixty wolf emerged, it was painfully obvious they were more than we could handle. The dire wolves had caught the scent of prey that couldn’t easily escape them, like the elk, and now the pack was on our tail.

Fortunately, the one advantage we had was our near superhuman stats, giving us the ability to run faster than most of the wolves. Periodic howls from the pack chasing us continued to confirm their pursuit. Then the howls came from the side. The faster of the pack was seeking to get ahead and cut us off.

A thick clump of trees and boulders came into view. If the wolves caught us in the open, we would be in trouble. Maxwell would be fine, but if I died it would take a long time for my phylactery to have the power to bring me back. Assuming nothing found and destroyed it in the intervening time. From the diligence of the church, I thought it was unlikely the cave would remain hidden without me around.

“Over there!” I shouted. Despite sprinting for almost half an hour at this point, I wasn’t winded. A benefit of not needing to breathe.

Maxwell on the other hand gasped for breath and only grunted in agreement as he changed course toward the grove.

The change in heading brought the wolves on our left closer and gave the ones behind us an opportunity to close the distance.

As I darted, I barely caught the sight of something hidden in the debris and stepped over it out of reflex. It was a snare trap. “Watch the ground for traps!”

Maxwell, who’d been running next to me, barely avoided another trap. As we reached the start of the dense grove of boulders and trees, I glanced behind. The dire wolves were barely twenty meters away, their red eyes glowing with hunger.

A crack and a yelp of pain came from behind me. One of the wolves now hung by a leg several meters off the ground. The dire wolf snarled and thrashed as it tried to free itself. Seeing the wolf hung up like that allowed me to truly appreciate their size. They were easily the size of lions, if not bigger.

Another crack and yelp of pain resounded as I ducked into the grove. We pushed into the grove and it quickly became hard to progress as limbs of densely growing saplings and boulders blocked the way.

The sound of the dire wolves closing in grew louder, and we forced our way through.

The limbs snagged and tore at our clothes. I didn’t have a body that was susceptible to the scrapes, but Maxwell wasn’t so lucky. By the time we broke through onto a hidden path, Maxwell was covered in scratches. Blood dripped from several deeper gashes on his arms. He collapsed to the well-packed earth, taking in great lungfuls of air.

I looked up and down the path in surprise. It was well maintained and out of place amongst the dense grove. As I was considering what to do, the dire wolves snarled from within the dense grove—they were insatiable.

“Let’s not wait here for them,” I said, pulling Maxwell to his feet, and we dashed down the path away from the valley.

Glancing behind as we ran, I just barely saw the first dire wolf burst through the thick trees, covered in scratches and missing chunks of fur. Its eyes glanced toward us and howled as we rounded a corner.

The path passed between two larger boulders, and as we passed, I noticed they weren’t just boulders, they were cliffs causing the path to narrow. The cliffs met high above our heads, forming an arch.

I whirled and placed myself in the arch.

“What are you doing?” Maxwell asked, coming to a stop farther up the path.

“What does it look like?” The first dire wolf raced around the corner. “We can’t out run them, and eventually they’ll catch us. This is the best defensible position we’ve seen.”

I reshaped Mercy into a broad boar spear. Due to the inherent size of Mercy, it was a short spear, but it would be enough. This narrow path was a perfect place to use the blade-staff in a defensive fight.

The dire wolf hunched then launched at me. A discordant sound shook the air and the wolf staggered. Maxwell had acted faster than I expected. Changing my grip on Mercy, I threw it like a javelin at the wolf. My aim was true, and the sharp blade sank into its side.

I summoned Mercy back to my hand before the dire wolf even started to recover. It snarled in pain and lunged again. The distorted music from Maxwell made the wolf misjudge its attack, and when it leapt, I let it use its own momentum to impale itself on Mercy.

The dire wolf let out a gurgling yelp of pain. I twisted Mercy, managing to plant the wide blade between the ribs, and as I twisted again, the ribs spread and cracked. The hole I opened was wide enough to reveal the wolf’s still beating heart. The wound was likely lethal, but to make sure, my hand shot forward. A black bolt of energy shot out and into the wound.

The dire wolf shuddered and died, the black energy ripping apart its heart. I’d decided not using my magic because it was ‘evil’ was stupid. It was a part of me, and denying it existed was a problem. That didn’t mean I would stop using my illusion spell or that I would use the dark magic around villagers though.

As I pulled my spear out of the now dead dire wolf, two more bounded around the corner. Maxwell was building his music and enhancing my abilities. I moved faster and more fluidly, but the dire wolves had over ten levels on me. The first one had been disoriented and alone. Wolves were pack hunters, and far more dangerous when fighting as a group.

Fortunately, where we had chosen to make our stand was narrow enough that, at most, only two wolves could engage me at one time.

The growling of dire wolves rumbled as they stalked closer. I acted first, throwing Mercy at them, but they nimbly dodged out of the way. For a moment they thought I was unarmed and rapidly closed the distance between us. I summoned Mercy back into my hand and brought it down on one of the dire wolves, using the broad-tipped spear like an ax.

I struck the wolf in the head and it snarled in pain, but didn’t fall back like I’d hoped it would. The blade was now wedged in its thick skull, and when the dire wolf turned, it snarled again and grabbed Mercy’s shaft in its jaws.

The second dire wolf lunged at me, and my firm grip on the shaft of my weapon proved to be my downfall, as I wasn’t able to leap back as I intended, my momentum halted by my grip on Mercy.

The lunging dire wolf slammed into me, and I reflexively tried to protect my face from its powerful jaws. I held it off for a moment, but I was in serious trouble. Then the dire wolf staggered under the impact of something. It happened again and again in rapid succession. Maxwell was just standing there in shock.

One more impact rocked the dire wolf, and that’s when I saw a heavy crossbow bolt sprouting from the side of its head. It shuddered and collapsed onto me, dead.

By the time I extracted myself and looked around, a pair of dwarves with heavy repeating crossbows were coming down the trail. While they weren’t pointing their weapons at us, they still held them in a manner to allow them to remedy that if we proved to be hostile.

“Who are you?” the dwarf with a pitch-black beard demanded when he stopped several meters away from us. The second dwarf had a reddish-brown beard and remained silent.

They wore studded leather armor and each had a quiver of crossbow bolts on their hip. Along with the crossbow, each had a short-handled ax. They had pale skin, big noses, and wide-set eyes. Everything you expected a dwarf to look like.

“Umm…” I glanced at Maxwell, hoping he would do the talking.

“We’re explorers,” Maxwell explained—we’d already decided it was best they didn’t know we were from the kingdom.

“Explorers, you say?” the black-bearded dwarf asked. “We’ve heard stories about people from the kingdom to the east in these mountains.” He gave us a hard look. “They aren’t good stories.”

“We mean you no harm,” Maxwell assured him. “As you can see, we stumbled across some unfriendly wildlife and they chased us here. We would have never found this place otherwise.”

Maxwell was right. The only reason we’d come into the grove was to escape the dire wolves, otherwise we would have assumed nothing was in here. There was far too much land for us to cover, and neither of us felt much of an urge to try very hard to replace the enclave.

Evidently, fate had a different idea.

“There is a rather large pack of those nasty buggers out there,” the black-bearded dwarf agreed. “My name is Dorfin, and this is my brother, Talfin.” He smiled at us and I instantly felt guilty about deceiving the people who just saved us. “Follow me. We can’t just let you freely into our home, but sending you out right now would be certain death.”

I glanced back at the slain dire wolves, wishing I could retrieve the death core.

Dorfin saw, mistaking my worried look. “Don’t worry about them. We’ll have somebody clean this mess up and reset the traps you triggered.”

“Good,” I nodded, trying to hide my worry. “I wouldn’t want them to rot on the only path in and out.” I was even more worried now. What if whoever came to clean up the bodies found the death core? There were only so many explanations as to how that could be there.