Linus Toria

Chapter 17

Mathieu was exhausted. He and his team had been carrying Etienne on that stupid stretcher for five hours before entering the crawling passages. His left shoulder that had been supporting the stretcher must have been black and blue by now.

The act of carrying Etienne as steady as possible had been a huge challenge. Mostly because of their height differences. Mathieu and Manon had been designed to reach a tall height of 190 cm while Elodie and Etienne had been set for 185 cm. Unfortunately, the one carried was Etienne and not Gaspard who only measured up to 170 cm.

Therefore, Mathieu and Manon were holding up the front of the stretcher while Elodie and Gaspard were responsible for the back resulting in an anything but even position for their patient.

Mathieu knew that he wasn't the only one to welcome the change once they had to crawl. Manon was again at the front and clearing the path ahead. He followed her while dragging Etienne on his stretcher behind him. From the back, Elodie was pushing her partner forward and Gaspard was on vanguard duty.

„How much further?", he asked ahead.

„Just a few minutes left, I guess", was the muffled response.

Relaying the information to the others behind him he longed for the exit. He would never want to cross corridors like these again. Actually, calling their current whereabouts a corridor was highly unfitting. It was a very narrow tunnel; nothing more and nothing less.

He was glad that Etienne had yet to regain his consciousness. That way his teammate didn't have to experience the pain he would undoubtedly be feeling by being dragged around by them. But then again, it would have been even better if he could have moved on his own. Or if he weren't injured in the first place.

While Mathieu usually tried to avoid jumping to conclusions he had really outdone himself this time. He had subconciously blamed Lina without any evidence and caused her to leave the group. Gaspard still wasn't over her leaving and had been very uncommunicative with him for the last few hours.

Maybe it was truly his fault. Ok, not maybe, he had overreacted. But it had been the first time since the end of the war that one of his teammates had come close to dying. Even back then injuries to that degree hadn't been the norm for them. When on a mission he had always made sure that the risk of injury was minimal for everybody involved. Only on his teammates' solo missions were they hurt more often.

„L-Leader?", Manon tried to get his attention with a shaky voice.

„What is it?", he asked alarmed.

„There's so much blood", Mathieu wasn't sure wether she was in awe of whatever she had found or was disturbed by it, „We've reached the end of the tunnel. But this isn't something I expected to see here"

„Please clarify"

„Just come see for yourself. It's kinda hard to explain and I don't detect any kind of danger in the area. At least not anymore", Manon told him.

Mathieu did as told. And Manon was right, no words could have prepared him for this sight. Instead of an exit they had entered a round room with a diameter of about 100 meters. It was a dead end with no further corridors. In the middle a pile had been built by stacking the lifeless bodies of countless dwarves.

Some of the dead dwarves were littered around the room and some others were dangling in the air suspended on hooks like they were used in slaughter houses to let them bleed out. They all had their throats slit and more wounds on other major artery areas like the groin.

The dwarves seemed to have put up no resistance at all leading to a complete slaughter. The blood covering the floor was ankle high. It had yet to dry.

„What the-", Gaspard exclaimed, „I'm not wading through that!"

„Where're Elodie and Etienne?", inquired Mathieu.

„I left them in the tunnel", Gaspard explained, „That way she can watch over her patient and there's absolutely no need for her to see this slaughter"

„You remember that Elodie's been on the battlefield along us?", Mathieu was amused, „She has already seen worse"

„The real question here", Manon interjected, „Is where our exit is"

Mathieu grimly pointed upwards. Instead of a ceiling a round opening showing a dark blue starry sky was 30 meters above them. Manon started cursing. „Do we have to go all the way back?", she asked in horror, „Isn't there any other path we can use?"

„Lina suggested a different route if you remember", Gaspard reminded them.

„You still believe she was telling the truth?", Manon implored incredulously, „Not one of us could perceive anything regarding the route she wanted us to take. There was nothing but walls"

„She left hours before us, so she probably already reached the outside"

„Or she's among the bodies here and we just haven't discovered her corpse yet"

Gaspard gasped. „No way! Do you always have to be so pessimistic?"

„Gaspard's right", Mathieu stated.

„What?!", Manon was offended.

„I mean I agree with him: I'm not going all the way back", Mathieu clarified.

Manon let out a sigh of relief that her leader wasn't refering to her always being negative.

„Then how are we going to get out of here?", Gaspard wondered.

„We could rearrange the dwarves", paraphrased Mathieu, „I don't know if there are enough but I suspect that all dwarves that confronted us earlier are here. Meaning we can use these several hundred bodies to build a 'staircase'"

„Yummy", Gaspard scrunched up his nose in disgust.

„Oof, that's going to take forever", Manon complained.

„We've wasted enough time. Let's get to work", Mathieu declared.

„What about Elodie? She should help as well", Gaspard quipped.

Manon raised an eyebrow at him. „Weren't you the one who insisted just seconds ago that she shouldn't have to see this here? You're just trying to get her to do your work, right?"

„Nah, I was just trying to recrut more man power to finish this as fast as possible", Gaspard defended

„Elodie should stay at Etienne's side to keep an eye on him", Mathieu finished their discussion for them.

Staking the already cool bodies against the wall was a gruesome task but after the first twenty they had all numbed to their task. The bodies used for the original pile lasted them about halfway up. They then switched to the ones lying sporadically around and finally to the suspended dwarves. They were a real hassle to get down and Mathieu had to give Gaspard a leg-up to reach them.

After all bodies were used they still had eight meters to go. The solution was for Manon to lean aginst the wall while Mathieu climbed on her shoulders. He then catapulted Gaspard up and he managed to reach the ground on their first try.

Gaspard then used a long rope to pull Mathieu up and Manon went to fetch Elodie and Etienne. The two women carried Etienne on his stretcher up the 'stairs' and attached the now two ropes from above. Sitting down on either side of their construction, all three were pulled up