Ragnarok

Chapter 58 - Serpent

"Like tissue paper, eh?" Thorin asked Tyrion, a sarcastic twist to his mouth.

"Yeah, yeah," Tyrion replied, making sure his heavy plate mail was properly in place. "You're not the one who's going to have to tank all this crap."

The two were crouching near an overlook, about halfway down into the ashen valley. From here, the tower loomed over them, and they could clearly see the gateway back to Midgard; a large, crimson ring of fire, with a cloudy blue light in the center. The portal stood at the very summit of the black tower, a beacon of light leading the way home for any unfortunate travellers who had found themselves in the wasteland of Muspelheim. A very well guarded beacon, as it turned out.

The entrance to the tower was flanked by a pair of especially large, well-armored fire giants, who looked out over a monochromatic field of ash peppered with basalt outcroppings. There was little cover between the mouth of the valley and the entrance to the tower, and the steep side walls were riddled with caves, some of them quite large. In many of the larger caves, the flickering of fire could be seen, occasionally interrupted by inhuman shadows. Those caves that had ledges protruding from the stone walls were decorated with clusters of captured weapons and impaled skulls, once belonging to the same owners.

Tyrion grunted and made his way back to his feet, an impressive enough act in itself given the weight of his plate armor. "Nothing for it but to head straight in, I guess. I'm in the lead, just stick close behind me. Try and make use of what cover we can get."

"In other words, stick near the walls unless there's a good rock cluster to hide behind," Lilith said softly, one hand already on the hilt of her greatsword. "We probably won't make it very far before we're spotted, though, and once that happens, run for the center and keep moving. There are salamanders in those caves, big ones from the look of it. The kind with arms and metal spears, no less."

"Ah, joyous," Tyrion muttered.

"If you didn't want to get hit a lot, you shouldn't have been the tank," Tempest quipped. She was already half-hidden in the shadows, and if she hadn't spoken, Thorin wouldn't have even noticed her. If there was one member of their party for whom stealth wasn't an issue, it was their dark elf. Tyrion often joked that she could disappear in broad daylight with a dozen witnesses staring right at her.

The party descended cautiously into the narrow ravine, sticking close to the walls as Lilith had suggested. The ground was covered in several inches of ash, which helped mute the clanking steps of their more well-armored and less dexterous members. Moving carefully from shadow to shadow, the party was about halfway through the approach to the tower when Tyrion came to an abrupt halt, stumbling as though something had tripped him. Almost immediately afterwards, a serpentine figure with arms about halfway down its length erupted from the ashen ground and reared back, ash raining down off of it to reveal its scorched black hide, wreathed in flames.

It shrieked, a short-lived cry of warning that was abruptly silenced by one of Tempest's daggers suddenly embedding itself in its right eye. The reptilian beast fell back to the ashen ground, its flames guttering as it died, but its cry of alarm was already echoing across the stone walls around them. From out of some of the larger caves, there were answering cries as the salamanders began to pour out, their red-hot bodies clinging with disturbing ease to the sheer walls as they descended.

"Bloody fire snakes with arms," Thorin snarled, hurling Mjolnir at one particularly large individual that was starting to make its way down to the cavern floor. The hammer smashed into the monster's face, pulverizing its skull and sending its body plummeting towards the ground. Thorin jumped back to avoid the body, and nearly got impaled by another salamander coming up behind him. A blazing-hot metal spearhead suddenly thrust into his view from directly behind him; had he not jumped back to avoid the falling corpse, that might have gone right through his forehead instead.

Thorin whirled, knocking the spear aside as Mjolnir returned to his hand, and blasted the would-be backstabber directly in the face. It collapsed backwards, skull pulverized by the blow, but there were plenty more behind that one, dozens of them swarming down the walls. They were everywhere, and Thorin could see no way past them.

Then there was a flash of light and the strong smell of ozone, and Avril was behind him, standing back-to-back with him. "Watch each other's backs, everyone!" she shouted, putting word to deed as she slashed at a trio of salamanders that had been trying to flank Thorin. "Double up and keep advancing! Tyrion, keep us moving forward!"

"Easier said than done," Tyrion grunted from the front of their line, but the Axe of the Bloodlord was unrelenting in its harvesting of the salamanders' molten gore, and slowly but surely, they continued their advance towards the black tower. In their wake, dozens of dead salamanders hardened, cracked and finally crumbled into ash, their remains growing ever denser underfoot as they continued against the blazing tide.

As the tower grew ever closer, the salamanders began to slow their advance, then abruptly broke into a retreat. Thorin gasped at the sudden relief, finally given a chance to breathe for a few moments. Then he noticed the shaking of the ground, and glanced over at the fire giant guards. The heavily armored giants had evidently decided that the salamanders had already used up their opportunity to turn these interlopers into dinner; now they were mounting their own charge, and the salamanders were wisely clearing the way for them.

"Out of the frying pan..." Tyrion huffed, squaring himself to meet the giant's charge.