\tFire flickered against the steel, a deep crimson glow in the dark tunnel. Ice rimed the wood and bronze, a counterpoint to the crimson. L\u00fdtling chuckled, and held his axe high, letting light bounce off the worked stone.<\/p>\n
\tHe had come here for treasure, like so many before. But he had come better prepared than the others. The thief had seen their corpses scattered about these ruins, some cut apart, others burned, each death a gruesome testament to their folly.<\/p>\n
\tL\u00fdtling would not fall into traps such as had caught them, and indeed, had not. He had survived pits, poison, and even the odd undead. The last one had been a particularly recalcitrant zombie. Now it was a small pile of ash. It really shouldn’t have let itself dry out.<\/p>\n
\tThe light revealed a glimmer in the dark, and he strode towards it. The tunnel emptied him out in a spacious room, and around him glittered rack upon rack of arms and armour, all ornate and adorned in filigree. One of those suits was the right one. The rest would kill him.<\/p>\n
\tA clanking sounded from deep in the racks. L\u00fdtling turned to see three armoured figures step forth, each brandishing a claymore. \u201cWell now, life could do with a little excitement, eh?\u201d He hefted his axe and shield, and stared down the foe. <\/p>\n
\tThey rushed at him, swords swinging in great horizontal sweeps. He dove left, slashing with the sharpened edge of his shield. Where the rim touched his metal foe, ice sparkled, then engulfed the iron form below the knee. Unable to walk, it died on the following swing of the axe.<\/p>\n
\tThe remaining two spread wide, seeking to come at him from both sides. The thief laughed and drove straight forwards, catching in the long thrust of the claymore on his shield and turning it aside. A stab with the spike of the axe sent flames bursting from the joints of the armour, and a countering stroke, brought it about in time to behead the third, charging him from behind.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cFools.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tL\u00fdtling continued his exploration of the racks of armour. He had heard that the armour he wanted had a \u00ferosm marked on the breast, a \u201cdark space\u201d. But all of the armour had designs in black or twilight upon them. <\/p>\n
\tAt last he gave up and dropped his weapons, climbing into the nearest suit of armour that would fit him. <\/p>\n
\t\u201cAhhhh.\u201d The cracking of bones filled L\u00fdtling’s head. \u201cIt feels good to be worshipped again.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t L\u00fdtling cursed. \u201cI worship no one but myself.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\u201cToo late for that, boy. You wear the \u00ferosm, now. And that means I get to feast.\u201d A terrible ripping sound filled the room, and the thief felt strangely empty.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cWhat have you done?\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\u201cFeasted. If you take the armour off now, you will die. So, death or me, boy?\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\u201cCan you make me rich, powerful, all that claptrap gods promise followers?\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\u201cNo. But I can make life interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\u201cFair deal. Lead on.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tThe suit of armour clanked from the room, a gaping hole where once the heart had lived.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Fire flickered against the steel, a deep crimson glow in the dark tunnel. Ice rimed the wood and bronze, a counterpoint to the crimson. L\u00fdtling chuckled, and held his axe high, letting light bounce off the worked stone. He had come here for treasure, like so many before. But he had come better prepared than […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[36,4],"tags":[19,21,22],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pRIK4-7g","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":526,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=526","url_meta":{"origin":450,"position":0},"title":"Snow White Sorrow","date":"July 8, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"A snow white sorrow. A crimson spill. There was love here. Once.","rel":"","context":"In "Flash Fiction"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":455,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=455","url_meta":{"origin":450,"position":1},"title":"Two Brothers","date":"March 4, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Thiasa waved his hand at the thousand campfires that sparkled in the night. \u201cPerhaps none have seen their end more clearly.\u201d Theoso, his brother, grunted as he stirred the last of the meat into the stew. \u201cWe will be the last of our tribe to walk through the gates into\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Flash Fiction"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":130,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=130","url_meta":{"origin":450,"position":2},"title":"The Sky Rained Ash","date":"May 4, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"The second piece in the JNY serial. This isn't standalone, so make sure to read the first short. The desert was cold, and the sky was ash. A week had passed since JNY-35197 had stared at the meteors. Half the grunts were dead, not that Jenny had known them well.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Other Writing"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":469,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=469","url_meta":{"origin":450,"position":3},"title":"Me","date":"April 8, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Light! Dark? Yet both at once... Strange. Perhaps I dream? Or are they yet me.","rel":"","context":"In "Flash Fiction"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":262,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=262","url_meta":{"origin":450,"position":4},"title":"Hollow Rage","date":"September 11, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"The ideas that occur while showering... I raged against the dying of the light, but it was an empty rage, a hollow rage. All but the last glimmers of the sun had gone, and the death that is twilight stole over the land. I knew this time had to come,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Flash Fiction"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":638,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=638","url_meta":{"origin":450,"position":5},"title":"Burning Down the Barn","date":"November 8, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"As before, this is an excerpt from my NaNoWriMo novel, so there are some spoilers lurking. They arrived at the edge of the docks to find them strangely empty, although there was one small boat beginning to row out into the harbour, and it was stuffed full of \u00c1\u00f0exe. Tarranau\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Tarranau"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}