Emily was unconscious, but breathing. Burin was attending to her. Terry stared down at the body of his former boss, then shot him a few more times, just to make sure. He turned to see Gregor standing there, arm raised for a high five.
Terry…is not nearly as strong or balanced as Gregor. It was impressive that he managed to not fall down, to be honest. I called Greta and let her know it was over. She sounded excited, almost sexually so, knowing that we’d been victorious.
Burin managed to rouse Emily. The girl got up and walked over to the body of the woman, Kuro. If looks could kill, the hatred in the girl’s eyes would have turned the body to ash. Instead she satisfied herself by ripping off the woman’s necklace.
Greta and Anastasia returned shortly thereafter, and Greta bounded over to me. She kissed me hungrily, then took my hand and pulled me over to Typhon Lee’s corpse. Once there, she stabbed her other hand into the upper part of the old man’s gut. There was a wet, tearing sound, and she yanked out a red-brown mass. Oh, right. His liver.
Her teeth tore into it, blood smearing her face. She barely chewed, simply swallowing the large chunk she’d torn off. She then bit off another piece, smaller, and offered it to me. “You should have some. It’s good for making babies.”
How do you answer that? I stared at her for a moment, and decided to go with the diplomatic approach. “My love,” I said, “If you want me to eat liver, I will do so. Cooked. And from a cow, or a chicken, or a sheep. But I’m not a winter wolf. I’m sorry, I’m just not comfortable eating a person’s liver.”
She cocked her head as she regarded me. “Sometimes I forget,” she admitted. “Of course. But I will slaughter the sheep or cow myself and it will only be barely cooked and then eaten immediately. It is important.”
I nodded. “That’s a fair compromise.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Emily watching us curiously. Before I could say anything, Terry pulled her away from Kuro’s corpse. “Don’t even think about it. Your mother will kill me if I let you eat people.”
“I wasn’t!” Emily protested, but it was clear she had been considering it.
After picking the corpses clean of any valuable gear, we made our way back to the hut, and Gregor produced the keys. They were a crude pair of dolls, one about half the size of the other. He tossed them into the cauldron and then asked Baba Yaga’s doll. “So, where are we going this time?”
“To the beginning,” she answered. Gregor looked unimpressed with that answer.
“So, you’re made of wood? How’s that working out for you?” Burin asked Baba Yaga, finally voicing a question that had clearly been on his mind for a while. But she didn’t answer.
Exhausted from our day, we all turned in fairly early. I had the strangest dream. At least, I think it was a dream. I hope it was a dream. I REALLY hope it was a dream.
In my dream, I woke up feeling a little hazy. So I got up and went to go grab something to eat, and maybe some coffee. Irish coffee, even, since I was pretty sure my headache was caused by the wine I’d drank before bed.
I heard Emily’s voice, so I stopped in the hallway. “I came close. She beat me. I think the bird lady killed me. Thanks to Mister Burin, though, I came back. But I heard her voice. ‘Remember,’ it said. And I did. I remembered all the times I died when the evil lady had me. It was as clear as the TV.”
“I see,” said the voice of the Coffin Man. “How did that make you feel?”
There was silence for a few moments before Emily answered. “Before, I didn’t get why Dad said he liked to kill people. But I get it now. It felt good seeing her dead.”
The Coffin Man grunted approvingly. “That makes your life easier. Sometimes heroes have to kill people. It’s like that cartoon rat. Micksy, was it? And the war veteran duck. Sometimes heroes save people. Sometimes they execute those who would hurt people. Either way helps.”
I had no idea how to respond to that. After all, my entire short career as an adventurer had involved death on a scale that would have been unthinkable back on Earth. So, I left without saying anything, instead grabbing the last swig from my bottle of wine before going back to sleep.
Like I said. I really hope that was a dream.
When I woke up again, I found Gregor in the common room. His skin collection was spread out all around him and he was looking it over. “Maybe you could make it into a display and charge viewing fees?”
“As some kind of skin circus?” the fighter asked. “Yes, that could work. That way, I could make money from them, without losing them.”
“Where’s Terry?” I asked.
“He’s locked in his room,” Burin answered. “Been there all morning.”
The door to Terry’s room suddenly opened. “While you all have been distracting yourselves – and I can’t blame you, we have basically nothing left to do now – I’ve been hard at work. Behold!” From within the room came a robot about eight inches tall. It just walked in and waved. Terry was beaming. “I’ve managed to make bullets that allow me to take control of the mindless.”
Gregor picked up the robot. “Not practical in fight. Looks…weak.”
“That’s just the test subject. It’s what’s inside that counts. I filled that one with explosives.”
The door to the library swung open, and Emily walked in, bags under her eyes and looking fairly pale. Terry took the robot from Gregor and handed it to her, beaming proudly and ready to explain what he’d made. But the girl just wordlessly took the robot and flopped on the couch, hugging it.
“Should we really let a little girl have a bomb?” Anastasia asked me.
“It’s fine,” Terry answered. “I’ve got more.” He considered it for a moment. “I’m sure even her mom would be okay with it.”
Burin rolled his eyes and got up, taking the robot from Emily and handing it back to Terry. “Come on,” he told the girl. “Let’s go see what we can scrounge up to eat around here.” Wordlessly, she followed him.
It wasn’t too much longer before we finished our trip and the hut came to a “stop”. So we gathered our things and headed out the door into the hut’s new inner configuration. Not too far from us, we spotted a tree that was about eighty feet tall, were I to make a guess. So, since it was the biggest landmark, we headed in that direction.
Below the rocky outcropping holding the tree was a waterfall that dripped into a pool. It was pleasantly warm – at least for me, though the others didn’t seem bothered by the temperature – if perhaps a bit humid. Terry pulled out his little bomb bot and set it on the ground. “I want you to go hug that tree. Go boom if it tries to attack us.”
From within the tree, we heard a woman’s voice, speaking in Russian. “You have come far, wanderers, but the threads of fate have finally led you here to Grandmother’s Cauldron, the root of Baba Yaga’s Dancing Hut. Here was Baba Yaga’s past made, and here will her future be decided. Know then that I am Vigliv, ally and mentor to Baba Yaga, for I am norn, and hold the golden thread of her fate in my hands.
“Baba Yaga has been trapped within the doll you hold by one of her own blood, her own power turned against her to do so. But to free Baba Yaga from her prison and gain mastery over her betrayer, you must pay heed to the wisdom of the universe and homage to its fate. Here, in Baba Yaga’s Dancing Hut, lie the very fundamental essences of Baba Yaga’s being. Should her treacherous daughter recover these, she would gain great power over her mother, possibly enough to destroy Baba Yaga once and for all.
“Therefore, you must seek out these elements of Baba Yaga’s nature first. You must first take the fate of Baba Yaga into your hands, then find her power, her death, and her life. Lastly, you will need the blood of Baba Yaga to finally free the Old Crone. Only in this way can you defeat the daughter who betrayed her, and in so doing, save your own world. I can guide your steps in their quest. Your search begins now.”
As she spoke, the figure of a fey being appeared standing next to the tree. Her skin was green and unkempt, and her skin the color of bark. The little bomb bot, unsure what to do, stepped back a bit, but then held its ground, ready to charge if the tree or the woman who looked like a tree tried attacking.
“Hello!” Burin called out. “We’re trying to help Baba Yaga. You said we need her fate, and you have it, right? Any way we can get that from you?”
The woman nodded. “I will conjure it from its hidden place within the waters. If you watch the water, you may see something of interest.”
We gazed into the waters and saw a crude hut within a clearing. A young woman and her child sat outside. The little girl was playing with a crude ball made of leather, while the woman was sewing something. The woman looked up from her work towards the forest at the edge of the clearing and smiled when she spotted the man walking towards the hut. He was carrying a bundle of wood over his shoulder.
The little girl got up and ran towards the man, hugging him enthusiastically. He scooped her up with his free hand and carried her to the woman, who he kissed enthusiastically. She took the child, and he set down the wood.
The idyllic scene was shattered by sounds within the forest. “Take our daughter and hide!” the man told his wife. They ran into the hut and climbed down into a root cellar whose entrance was hidden by floorboards.
From the woods came a group of armed men. They demanded tribute, and when the man’s offering was insufficient, they beat him unconscious and tied him up. They then searched the house, but did not find the hidden cellar.
So they dragged the man off to answer for his “crime” to the local lord. Sometime later, the woman emerged from the cellar with her child, and wailed in grief at the sight of the blood. Her fingers turned white as she clutched her hands tightly, rage quickly replacing grief. She cut her hand and offered of her blood to any who would hear her and grant her the power to reclaim her husband.
A voice answered, and it sent shivers down my spine. “I will grant you the power you seek. In time, you may nurture it into strength beyond imagining. But my boon does not come without a price. Will you pay it?”
“I will,” the young woman answered, unhesitating.
“Then you know what you must do,” the demon that now stood before her said.
The woman nodded, her face hard as she grabbed the thread she had been sewing with and… I looked away as she did it, though I could not block out the sounds of the woman strangling her own daughter. I doubt I’ll ever be able to truly forget those sounds.
When I opened my eyes, the image was gone and all that remained was a bloody piece of golden thread floating within the water. And I wasn’t the only one who had been unable to watch. Anastasia was still closing her eyes as hard as she could, looking even paler than normal. “I am not entirely sure freeing Baba Yaga is best idea,” Gregor said.
“She has a tendency to kill those close to her,” Burin said. “Do you think we’ll die when she takes back the mantle?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But if we don’t free her, the world is doomed. So I’m still not seeing much of a choice.”
“I’ll miss its magic,” Burin said as he approached the water. “But you’re probably right.”
“I don’t feel magical,” I heard Terry mutter.
Burin reached out carefully with his axe and fished the thread from the water. He then took the thread and tied it around the matroshka doll that held Baba Yaga. The doll cracked and opened, revealing the smaller doll nested within.
“Hello Miss Baba Yaga,” Emily said, addressing the doll. “Are you okay?”
“I am quite tired, but I feel better,” the crone’s voice answered.
“That’s good. How do we open the others?”
“Vigliv can tell you more. Now let me rest.”
I looked up at the fey creature. “I take it you’re Vigliv?”
She nodded. ““You have taken Baba Yaga’s fate into your hands. You must now reclaim a symbol of her power. I will turn the pool into a portal. Step into it and follow in her footsteps. Witness the site of her first act of strength, as she first brought her wrath down upon those who drew her ire. Claim the crown of the lord whose orders sent the men to her home, and return here.”
We walked into the warm waters and found ourselves standing in a clearing outside of a cave. Young Baba Yaga stood over the corpses of over a dozen bandits. She was holding a severed head by the hair, looking into its eyes. “Why did you do this?!” she demanded.
“Our lord bade us collect tribute, and your family did not have enough to offer. An example had to be made.”
Her eyes burned with hatred. “I will show your lord what I have to offer,” she said, tossing aside the head, which landed with a wet thud. “Demon!” she called out. “I require more power.”
The demonic voice answered. “The power is yours for the asking. You know the price you must pay.”
She nodded grimly and walked over to her husband. The bandits had crippled and blinded him. He moaned in agony as she touched his face. “I promise,” she said, “I will make them pay for what they’ve done to you.” She then plunged a dagger into his heart. There was a crack of thunder and her eyes glowed with a cold blue light as she absorbed a fraction of his soul, the demon taking the rest as his payment.
She teleported away, and then the demonic presence manifested. “Interlopers,” he said, addressing us. “I will not allow you to interfere. This place will be your grave!” So this wasn’t just a vision of the past. We were actually reliving it in some way.
From within the cave came a great roar and a massive crocodile charged forth. Correction. It was no mere crocodile. It was a demonic crocodile, complete with giant wings.
Terry tossed out a couple of his little robots and fired at the croc. “A lizard? This thing is tiny compared to a real lizard! We faced the dragon. You’ve got nothing on him!” The crocodile responded by casting a spell. Blood trickled from Terry’s mouth, and smoke wafted from his ears. “Okay, that’s it. I’m done playing. Emily, summon your mother.”
Emily instead cast a spell, conjuring a tyrannosaurus. An albino tyrannosaurus, at that. “This is a job for a bigger lizard!” she shouted. It lunged forward, sinking its teeth into the croc’s tail. The beast roared in anger and snapped at the dinosaur.
Spotting the opportunity, Gregor and Burin charged forward. The dwarf sunk his axe into the croc’s neck and Gregor punched it several times from the other side, driving it further onto the blade. The hits caused the steel to sever something vital, and the croc thrashed for a moment, the collapsed, bloody foam dripping from its mouth. Terry’s little robots stopped and began cheering at the victory.
Emily walked over and patted the dinosaur’s bloody maw. “Good job,” she said. “You can go back to your pokeball now.” The dinosaur seemed to nod and then disappeared.
“Cute,” Terry said. “Now stop playing around and summon your mom.”
Emily’s eyes blazed with defiance. “You’re just mad because my Zeus actually did something and yours didn’t even reach the fight. You should have left him as a steed. At least he was useful.”
Terry’s eye twitched, but before he could respond, Gregor clapped his shoulder. “Come, I need your help checking the corpses for any indication of where they came from.”
The pair found us a map of the region on one of the bandits. “We could fly there,” I suggested.
“Running would be faster,” Gregor answered.
“Maybe for you,” Terry said.
“Then perhaps teleportation?” the fighter responded.
“That’s a possibility,” I said. “I’ll need fifteen minutes to prepare the spell.”
“We’ll make a pyre while you’re doing that,” Burin suggested. “We can’t just leave them here like this.”
For normal people, making a pyre big enough for a dozen corpses would have taken hours. But we’re definitely not normal. After taking the croc’s skin, Gregor started punching down whole trees, as if this was that game I used to play with Daddy when I was little. Umm…Minecraft, I think it was called? And Burin grew large so he could hew the fallen trees into manageable logs, which he stacked up. Terry went to work scraping the trees to make a sizeable pile of wood shavings to use as tinder while roughing up the logs to give them more surface area to burn.
Emily sat down and watched me as I was readying my spell. She was quiet, doing her best not to distract me. She really can be a good kid when she’s not arguing with her father.
The pyre was just about prepared by the time my magic was ready. So we lit it and teleported to the city on the map where the local lord lived. And boy, were we not prepared for what we saw.
Every building within the city was covered in ice. Baba Yaga had spared no one. Innocent and guilty alike died by her hand. Those that had offered resistance were impaled upon jutting spikes of ice. The rest had simply been frozen.
We made our way to the throne room. We found the lord decapitated, his head nailed to the throne with ice. His guards, lay dead all around him. But they didn’t stay that way. We heard the demon’s laughter as the guards rose to their feet.
But these were no ordinary ghouls or zombies. They were baykoks, an incredibly dangerous form of undead. Had it been normal people, it’s likely that that many of the creatures would have slain them. But, as I’ve already mentioned, we’re far from normal people.
Burin cast a spell, encasing a number of the undead in ice as Terry tossed one of his bots to Gregor, who surged forward with incredible speed. “Better Zeus, I choose you!” Emily called out, sending the albino tyrannosaurus into battle.
Gregor threw the robot at a group of guards near the dinosaur, and Terry took aim. “Remember, Daddy loves you,” he said as he shot the bot. It exploded, destroying several of the guards…and Emily’s summon. “Better Zeus, huh?” the assassin asked.
If looks could kill, Emily’s gaze would have caused her father’s head to explode.
The fight was pretty much over at that point. I lobbed some fireballs. Gregor and, to a lesser degree, Burin hacked and smashed apart the undead. Terry shot them. And Emily pouted.
Once it was done, we thawed the lord’s head and took his crown. And I teleported us back to the giant tree, so we could break the seal on the next layer of Baba Yaga’s prison, though we were definitely all having second thoughts about freeing her now.
Still, it was the only way to prevent her daughter from killing possibly millions of people and enslaving an entire world. So, what choice did we have?
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