The Last Guardian

The tunnel undulated and curved until Artemis’s internal compass surrendered what little sense of direction it had. He traipsed behind Mulch’s glowing rear end, glancing down at his unconscious friend in his arms. She seemed so small and frail, though Artemis had seen her take on a horde of trolls in his defense.

 

“The odds are against us, as they have been so often, my friend,” he whispered, as much to himself as to Holly. He ran a rough calculation, factoring in the desperate situations they had endured over the past few years, the relative IQ of Opal Koboi, and the approximate number of opponents he had glimpsed aboveground. “I would estimate our chances of survival to be less than fifteen percent. But, on the plus side, we have survived, indeed been victorious, against greater odds. Once.”

 

Obviously Artemis’s whispers carried down the tunnel, for Mulch’s voice drifted back to him.

 

“You need to stop thinking with your head, Mud Boy, and start thinking with your heart.”

 

Artemis sighed. The heart was an organ for pumping oxygen-rich blood to the cells. It could no more think than an apple could tap-dance. He was about to explain this to the dwarf when the tunnel opened to a large chamber, and Artemis’s breath was taken away.

 

The chamber was the size of a small barn, with walls sloping to an apex. There were feeder tunnels dotted at various heights, and blobs of glowing gunk suckered to exposed rock served as a lighting system. Artemis had seen this particular system before.

 

“Dwarf phlegm,” he said, nodding at a low cluster of tennis ball–sized blobs. “Hardens once excreted, and glows with a luminescence unmatched in nature.”

 

“It’s not all phlegm,” said the dwarf mysteriously, and for once Artemis did not feel like getting to the bottom of Mulch’s mystery, as the bottom of Mulch’s mysteries was generally in the vicinity of Mulch’s mysterious bottom. Artemis placed Holly gently on a bed of fake-fur coats and recognized a designer label.

 

“These are my mother’s coats.”

 

Mulch dropped Butler’s leg. “Yep. Well, possession is nine-tenths of the law, so why don’t you take your tenth back up to the surface and talk larceny with the thing that used to be Opal Koboi?”

 

This was a good point. Artemis had no desire to be booted out of this sanctuary.

 

“Are we safe down here? Won’t they follow us?”

 

“They can try,” said Mulch, then he spat a glowing wad of spit on top of a fading spatter. “But it would take a couple of days with industrial drills and sonar. And even then I could bring the whole thing down with a well-placed burst of dwarf gas.”

 

Artemis found this hard to believe. “Seriously. One blast, and this entire structure comes tumbling down?”

 

Mulch adopted a heroic pose, one foot on a rock, hands on hips. “In my line of work, you gotta be ready to move on. Just walk away.”

 

Artemis did not appreciate the heroic pose. “Please, Mulch, I beg you. Put on some pants.”

 

Mulch grudgingly agreed, tugging faded tunneling breeches over his meaty thighs. This was as far as he was prepared to go, and his furry chest and prodigious gut remained glowing and bare.

 

“The pants I will wear for Holly’s sake, but this is my home, Artemis. In the cave, Diggums keeps it casual.”

 

Water dripped from a stalactite into a shimmering pool. Artemis dipped his hand in, then laid his palm on Holly’s forehead. She was still unconscious following her second physical trauma in as many minutes, and a single spark of magic squatted on her head wound, buzzing like an industrious golden bee. The bee seemed to notice Artemis’s hand and skipped onto the brand, calming his skin but leaving a raised scar. Once it had finished its work, the magic returned to Holly and spread itself like a salve across her forehead. Holly’s breathing was deep and regular, and she seemed more like a person asleep than unconscious.

 

“How long have you been here, Mulch?”

 

“Why? Are you looking for back rent?”

 

“No, I am simply collating information at the moment. The more I know, the more comprehensively I can plan.”

 

Mulch nudged the lid from a cooler, which Artemis recognized from an old picnic set of the family’s, and pulled out a bloodred salami.

 

“You keep saying that ’bout comprehensive planning, et cetera, and we keep ending up eyeball-deep in the troll hole without spring boots.”

 

Artemis had long ago stopped asking Mulch to explain his metaphors. He was desperate for any information that might give him an edge, something that would help him wrest control of this desperate situation.

 

Focus, he told himself. There is so much at stake here. More than ever before.

 

Artemis felt ragged. His chest heaved from recent healings and exertions. Uncharacteristically, he did not know what to do, other than wait for his friends to wake up.

 

He shuffled across to Butler, checking his pupils for signs of brain injury. Holly had shot him in the neck, and they had taken quite a tumble. He was relieved to find both pupils to be of equal size.

 

Mulch squatted beside him, glowing like a dumpy demigod, which was a little disturbing if you knew what the dwarf was actually like. Mulch Diggums was about as far from godliness as a hedgehog was from smoothliness.