11-Rumble in the Deep

11

Rumble In The Deep

“He’s leading us in circles.”  Mel’s statement only attested to what Zachariah already knew.

“We have been down this hallway six times.  I think I figured that part out already,” Zachariah whispered back sarcastically.

“Well, hate to state the obvious here, but if you want to continue your suicidal quest to see a wyvern, we are going to have to ditch this guy.”  Mel informed Zachariah.

Suddenly, everyone was stopped dead in their tracks as the sound of an unearthly roar shook the structure.  It sounded like something out of a Godzilla movie but so much worse.

So much closer.

Zachariah felt a drag in the pit of his stomach.  It was as if every inch of him was being drawn toward the roar… as if he was being called.

Without warning, Zach took off down the tunnel in the direction of the roar.

“Zach! Where are you going?” Mel yelled after him.

“Teishi!”  Their ninja guide yelled after him and then sprinted after him.

****

Kahn cursed herself as the druid vanished.

How had she gone down so easily?  And to a damned druid.

It had to be this new Rognaithe.  There was something about him that distracted her.

It wasn’t romantic.  Lord knows she found him physically and socially repulsive.  It was his sprit.  He refused to back down.  In the face of impossible circumstances, he continued to spit at fate.  There was something about the behavior that captured her imagination.

She had to see how this played out.

She smiled to herself after she was sure the druid was gone.  The grandmasters of her clan had one secret they had managed to keep from all outsiders and that was the fact that they could make one handed gestures to invoke the ninja magic.

Kahn’s right hand did three quick ninja movements and the rope disintegrated.

Kahn stood and stretched her weary muscles and bones.

The druid would be ahead of her, so she would have to move fast.

****

The tunnel opened and Zachariah came to a halt, in awe of the structure in front of him.

He stood in a very slowly descending spiral staircase.  Each stair was seven or eight feet long but only dropped maybe four inches.  On the one side was sheet rock, the other was a banister carved out of the stone that opened into a megalithic cylinder of empty space that the stairs seemed to descend around.

Along the giant staircase were skeletons, each one wearing different clothes and or armor.  Rusty weapons from every era clutched in their boney grip or laying on the ground around them.

Looking over the banister, Zachariah looked down for what seemed to be forever.  It was a skyscraper of distance downward to the floor.

 Zachariah suddenly realized that sunlight illuminated the strange shrine.  He turned his head to look up and saw that stories and stories up, the shrine opened to the surface.

Zachariah smiled at the sight of such majesty.  He had never left the states, never seen the pyramids or any wonder of the world, but after this, he felt confident he didn’t have to.

The roar from the deep sounded again, this time it was closer.  The sound sucked the life out of him.  Somewhere down there was a beast that could not be perceived. Zachariah was filled with fear and anticipation.

This all stopped as his right arm was grabbed and dragged upwards behind him in a painful, twisting motion that made him yelp.

It suddenly dawned on Zachariah that he had completely forgotten about the ninja who had been escorting him through the tunnels and who had chased down the hall to stop him.

The pain and twisting motion forced Zach to drop the disguise charm that Mel had given to him.  As the small trinket hit the floor, Zach’s ninja appearance dissipated and he was returned to his dirty jeans and beaten up Hawaiian shirt.

Zach tried to struggle but any direction he moved made the pain ten times worse.  The ninja held fast and in broken English said, “Relax…”

For no apparent reason, the ninja doubled over in pain as if he had been punched in the stomach.  His grip loosened on Zachariah’s arm and Zachariah took the opportunity and turned on his heels with a right hook to the ninja’s face.

The ninja staggered, confused, and Zachariah screamed in pain as his hand, broken from previously punching a rock troll, throbbed with pain.

The ninja shook off the blow looking around in confusion, trying to figure out what happened.

Zachariah danced around, cursing and cradling his hand like a football.

The ninja came back to his feet and rushed Zachariah.

Zachariah turned and saw him coming.  He closed his eyes and tensed up for the incoming blow, when the ninja tripped over nothing ad staggered forward, his arms reeling.  Zachariah again was smart enough to take the opening, and stepped in driving his knee into the ninja’s face.

The ninja staggered backward and Zachariah stepped, in throwing a quick left handed jab into his face.  The ninja took the blow and Zachariah stepped in to hit him again, but the ninja weaved around the blow and placed a knife handed chop to Zachariah’s nose.

Zach took two steps backward and grabbed his nose.  The Ninja stepped in for a roundhouse kick to Zach’s face to end the struggle.

He never connected.

Something unseen slammed into the ninja’s support leg and sent him to all fours. Zachariah took two quick steps, winding up and kicking the ninja hard to the gut like he was kicking a field goal.

The ninja wheezed and rolled away.

Zachariah smiled and started to dance around like Bruce Lee.  “Oh yeah, you like that ninja?  I told you, baby.  This is what I do!”

Zachariah then finished the impersonation of Bruce Lee by settling into his fighting stance with a wooing of his voice and a quick thumb to his nose.

The ninja stood, gritting his teeth angrily.

How was he doing this?

Is he doing this?

The ninja grinned under his mask and readied some ninja powder in his right hand.  The powder was a chalk-like substance, used to blind an opponent.  Although the use he had in mind was very different.

“Whatcha waiting for, shino-bitch?  Make your move!” Zachariah taunted.

The ninja waited and listened.  He heard the small footsteps.

The Ninja turned to his right and hurled the powder.  Like a cloud, the white substance filled the air, and then dropped.

Standing there coughing was a small, chalk covered silhouette of a very invisible Mel.

“Shit.” Mel said before the ninja stepped in and booted the extremely small man, sending him flying across the stairwell and crashing into the wall.  His invisibility spell was wearing off and he hit the wall and dropped to the ground.

Zachariah flinched in pain for Mel, his Bruce Lee stance fading.  He then slowly turned back toward the ninja.  “Shit.”

The ninja double stepped in and kicked Zachariah in the chest, sending him off his feet and backward into a pile of dead skeletons.  The brittle bones cracked and disintegrated under his weight.

Zachariah coughed and rolled, his eyes falling on a rusty sword that used to belong to one of the dead warriors.  He grinned and snatched up the weapon and scrambled to his feet before then extending the blade in front of himself at the approaching ninja.

“Ha!” Zachariah yelled as he brandished the ancient weapon.

The ninja quickly roundhouse kicked the sword out of Zachariah’s hands sending it clanking down the staircase.

“Mother fucker!” Zach yelled as the blade bounced away.

The ninja stepped in with a series of punches to Zachariah’s chest and then a chop to the face, sending Zachariah sprawling and rolling through the skeletal remains a second time.

Zachariah turned, seeing an old battle axe.  He grabbed it and stood, spinning to attack the ninja.

The ninja spin-kicked the battle axe and sent it spiraling over the banister and into the open void.

“You have got to be kidding me!” Zachariah yelled as the blade flew away from him.

The ninja stepped in and forearmed Zachariah to the face before straight-kicking him to the abdomen.  The air escaped Zach and he folded backward, rolling away from the ninja.  His vision blurry, he saw stars as he crawled away from the ninja.

The ninja confidently stalked Zachariah as he squirmed away.

Zach searched his head.  What the hell was he going to do?  He had no protection now, no real way to fight a ninja.  Zach couldn’t talk him out of kicking the crap out of him, so what now?

Zachariah’s hand touched another weapon.  Looking up, he saw it was a hefty wooden handle attached to a long piece of two foot chain which was connected to a large skull-sized, steel ball.  In medieval times it was called a flail.

He wrapped his hand around the handle and smiled.

He stood and turned again, brandishing the weapon at his ninja attacker.

The ninja stepped in and roundhouse kicked the morning star, his foot striking the steel ball head, but instead of sending the weapon flying away from Zachariah, the chain diverted the force and sent the ball spinning around the axis.  Zachariah ducked the ball as it spun 360 degrees and connected with the ninja’s left temple.

The steel ball to the temple was more than enough to send the ninja into unconsciousness.  He dropped like a rag doll to the stone floor.

Zachariah stood there.  His right eye was already swelling and a bit of blood leaked out of his now fat lip where the ninja had repeatedly chopped him.

“That’s right…” Zachariah said as he gasped for breath.  “I’m still the God damn champion.”

Zachariah dropped the weapon to the ground with a clang and began to limp over to Mel who was starting to come to.  “Get the name of that truck?”

Zachariah nodded.  “I got the name, alright, and I got it’s fucking number.”

 Mel looked at him surprised, then looked at the ninja lying on the ground then back at Zachariah.  “Now I’m starting to believe that you’re indestructible.”

“He’s not,” They turned to see Kyo standing a couple of stairs up, he snapped his fingers and a small army of ninjas appeared out of thin air around Zachariah and Mel. “And I am about to prove it.”

Next week:  So close and yet so far away!  Surrounded by ninjas, Zachariah and Mel’s accomplishment seems all for not!  Will Cathleen beat Kahn to the shrine?  And what is Zach planning to do about the monster below?

Next week find out on…

Stranger Things.

TO BE CONTINUED….