“Do you see the arcane shields now?”
“No, I am no wizard.”
“You don’t need to be one. You have an arcane sense, otherwise you would not be able to use those powerful magical items the way you do. Look again.”
I summoned my Fenrir form, as this was by far more in touch with the arcane and magical than my human form. Furthermore, I felt that at any moment I could need my Beast’s more physical gifts. My wolf eyes peered up. As I narrowed my vision upon the white Tear, I felt a kind of pressure resisting me, as when one tries to pull two magnets that dislike one another together. “I… feel them.”
“Yes, now focus your sight on that sensation.”
“Aye, you’re right… it is like a crystal clear sphere that encloses the entire island.”
We hovered there in the clouds some moments. Then this nearly invisible clear sphere vanished. “Come! Now! Use the skyrocks as cover.”
Vixerai’s wings kicked and plumes of cloud swelled around them. She shot straight up into the sky. I felt Gaumoon’s giant muscles flex under my hips, and we also burst up from the cloud cover. We made great haste as we darted up then swooped around until we went for a skyrock that was about the size of a small farm. Vixerai clawed onto its bottom, so that she was hidden from sight of any that might be observing from the White Tear. Gaumoon pressed his humongous belly and the underside of his wings against the bottom of the sky rock. Somehow he latched onto it, as I had seen starfish and squid latch onto rocks before.
“We made it through the shields,” Vixerai whispered. “Now we must make it to the White Tear itself.” She held a clawed hand out to me for silence.
I slowed my breathing and let my hearing expand out all around me. The wind caressed my furred, triangular ears. I heard flapping wings, the rattle of breath in a reptilian creature’s throat. There were several of them, slicing air in a near whistle as they flew. Wyverns. It must be. The three of us were stone still. Small fiery orbs began dancing around us. They were Vixerai’s. I turned to her and almost spoke, but she gestured to stop me. The small orbs nearly grazed our skin with how close they hovered over us. She only stared at me, eyes to eyes, her hair kicking around her cheeks, a slight frightened smile on her lips.
I listened again for the wyverns. The faint sound of their wings flapping was much farther than before. Vixerai locked eyes with me. “I burned our scent out of the air with the orbs.” She swept out from under the skyrock and shot up into the air. I pulled Gaumoon’s chain claw reins and followed after my bird maiden. We came to another skyrock that we grasped onto as well. This time Vixerai held onto its side, and she gazed up at the underside of The White Tear, which was now much nearer and its various structures and crevices apparent. She dove up into the air once more, and so did Gaumoon with me on his back.
We darted straight for the massive sky island of The White Tear. Vixerai was like a woodpecker finding its home crevice within a tree. She flew right into a massive tunnel that looked like the entrance to a cave. We entered into its darkness, Gaumoon’s massive wings soaring into the tunnel’s darkness. As we rose, I saw in the faint light that there were several large crevices splitting off at its sides. Vixerai lead us into one of these, large enough that Gaumoon could fly into it as well. Vixerai’s wings rustled her to a landing. “We have to leave your mount here. The entrance to go into the insides of The White Tear itself is too narrow.”
“If we must.” I hopped off Gaumoon and my chain came whipping back to my gauntlet. “Stay here, Gaumoon.” I pet his muzzle, wider than a horse is long. “Listen, if you sense any danger… you fly away from here. Don’t worry about me.” He exhaled a wet breath and dust kicked up. Somehow, I knew he understood. He let himself rest, nestled there in that crevice. I walked to the edge with Vixerai. We both stared up into the tunnel that kept rising until it ended in several smaller tunnels that continued rising upward.
“Those are the bottoms of the sewers. All waste from The White Tear flows down and out from this main tunnel.”
“So right now, we’re in the island’s asshole, you might say.” The stench all around us only confirmed this.
“Yes.” Vixerai raised her hand to her grinning mouth. “This is not time to make me laugh.”
I nodded, feeling a beastly grin on my long snout, my wet tongue peeking out from it. I studied the contours of the tunnel. “I can climb up there. Can you open one of those grates?”
“You read my mind.” She swooped up. I leapt up some thirty feet, then slammed my clawed gauntlets into the tunnel’s stony surface. My steel boots found the indents of the stone. Move by move, I let my Fenrir instinct take over, as I knew where to dig my claws in, where to perch my feet. I was a giant squirrel, lunging up limb by limb, my ax sliding around on its sling on my back. I glanced up and saw Vixerai latched onto one of the grates, avoiding as best she could a trickle of greenish slime. Something was sparking on her fingers—magic no doubt. She seemed to really be working furiously.
I was near enough that my chain claw would reach. I flung my arm out and the chain went whipping out from me, its clawed end wrapping and clawing onto one of the grate’s bars. I pulled so that the chain retracted and sucked me right up next to Vixerai. My legs perched up against the stone surface while I held myself to the grate with one arm.
“This is arcane metal.” Vixerai let up on the crackling energy she was summoning from her fingers. “It is not easily pierced, though I have dented it some.” I looked to the spot where she had been working. It was partially molten. I clasped the bar she had been slowly eroding and wrenched it with all my strength. I felt veins bulge in my neck from the effort.
A rumbling growl built in my throat. My eyes narrowed to daggers, until finally the bar snapped. The grate came free on one end so that it dangled open like a wooden window.
“I should bring you along with me more often,” Vixerai remarked then gracefully pulled herself up through the grate. Her wings pressed close to her body to fit through, then expanded with the sound of sheets rustling to take her up once more.
This tunnel reeked of feces, the walls all glistening with horrid, unspeakable things. It was the width of a small sailboat, the bricks that made up its long cylindrical shape had long turned a sickly green from filth running down them. I grit my teeth and dug into the brick walls with my clawed gauntlets.
“It is a great feat of strength to bear the stench of this place,” I muttered to Vixerai. She did not stay near me long as she swooped up into the near darkness of the tunnel. Flowing waste kept dropping all around me, and while I tried to avoid it, remaining untouched was impossible. I began leaping from side to side of the tunnel, each time rising up about two stories worth. Suddenly, faint yellow light came from above. It was Vixerai. She had summoned her small fire orbs to swirl around her. She motioned for me to come to her. “I’m already climbing up!” I muttered under my breath, then realized what she meant. The tunnel ended in a stone ceiling and it was near enough that my claw would reach it. My chain claw hissed as it shot up then clanked as its claw buried itself in the stone above. It slinked me up until I was at the top of the tunnel. Here, I could see that though the tunnel ceased rising and came to a stop, it split horizontally into two tunnels, one that headed left, one that headed right.
“This way,” Vixerai whispered and flew into the left. I swung on my chain, gathered momentum as I hurled myself into that same tunnel. I landed with a small splash, as sewage was running along this round tunnel up to my ankles.
I scuttled onward as quickly as I could. “Gah! The stench!” I whispered. It was only made worse that my sense of smell was heightened by my Beast.
“Be thankful that the tunnel is not running its full capacity,” Vixerai whispered back. I ran as she flew ahead of me, and finally by all the gods’ mercy we came to the end of this sewer tunnel. While we came to another dead end, there was a grate above us, circular, this time smaller so that my broad shoulders would barely fit through.
�
��Gods,” I muttered. Vixerai began summoning her small currents of arcane power from her fingers and smelting the metal latch on the grate. Once her power had bitten into it enough so that I smelled the acrid odor of melting metal, I pulled on the grate until the latch came snapping off. We began crawling up. This time, Vixerai could not fly, as there was not enough room for her to spread her wings, and so both of us had to go on, pushing on both sides of the tunnel to keep ourselves moving up, bit by bit.
As Vixerai climbed up ahead of me, I thought it some horrid blasphemy that I had to see her beautifully round, firm ass, its flesh flexing with each climbing stride she took, the garment along her sex so tight and thin that I could make out the rise and indent of her mound—and yet I had to see this luscious sight while the stench of unspeakable filth hung in the air. Surely, Malfeon was the hell of hells.
Finally, we reached another grate, but this time Vixerai motioned for me to be completely still. I knew why. I could hear the sounds of guttural speech coming from above, metal tools clinking, screams of creatures—like pigs being slaughtered—mixed with the strong iron scent of fresh warm blood being spilled. Vixerai was silent a long moment, then she drew her clawed hand to the latch of the grate as she had before. She summoned the sparking energy to her fingers and began burning metal. She motioned for me to come to her, and somehow we managed to squeeze past one another in the confined space as we switched places. This time I pushed on the grate slowly so that the metal would not make noise as it came off. I lifted the grate off and set it on the ground above me. I readied myself for anything, peeking my head up just enough to see into the room above. It was large, and there were clearly other beings here, though they were further back in the chamber. There were skinned carcasses of some kind, hanging in rows upon rows within the chamber. This was an aid to us, as all these rows of flayed meat blocked us from view. This was important, as there were clearly others in the room, though I also could not get a good look at them. I could only glance some thick boots, and could hear guttural speech, mostly grunting and complaining.
I crept up out of the round sewer and onto the bloody stone floor. Without taking my eyes off the rest of the chamber, I reached down for Vixerai. When I took hold of her hand, I pulled her up. She slinked up, her wings folded tight to her back.
Motioning for her to stay behind me, I crouched and began creeping forward to take a better look at the room. Where we emerged from was slightly lower than the rest of the room, having an inclined groove along the floor leaning toward us. The room was long and narrow, with nearly every inch of its tiled floors covered in blood. There were long rows of carcasses hanging on meat hooks. To my left, against the left side wall, there were long metal tables where giant, man-like creatures were butchering some kind of birds, the size of turkeys these were, and yet they were not birds as those on Hourne, for their faces were on their bodies, two long eyes at their sides, a mouth where a turkey’s chest would be. And most terrifying of all, they had some kind of intelligence, for as the humanoid creatures drove giant knives into them, the birds squealed and squawked, and cries of “No! No!” mixed in with their screams.
We were in a slaughterhouse.
19
On a long blood-soaked table, another giant manlike creature slaughtered what seemed a bull, twice as large as one on Hourne, black as coal, and wings with that color just the same. It was these butchers that we had to be concerned with. They had to be nine or ten feet tall, all rippling with pale undead muscle, wearing filthy grey butcher’s aprons, one of them with a giant gut to match his gigantic form. They wielded butcher tools, cleavers, meat hooks, knives—yet all these were much more large and cruel than those on Hourne, just as they were compared to a human. One of their cleaver blades alone was as tall as a man’s torso. “Knife goes in, guts come out. Knife goes in, guts come out,” one of them was speaking to himself as he stabbed into a screaming bird creature. He spoke in the stupidest drawl I had ever heard which betrayed his sheer stupidity, yet the muscles on his forearm rippling as he worked showed how well he knew his craft of killing. His face was stitched together, three bolts seeming to hold his skull in place.
If they were that stupid, then the noise and smell of the room, the carcasses as well, would all give us enough cover that we could slip by them unnoticed. I signaled for Vixerai to follow. I began creeping through the rows of hanging carcasses, crouched, ever keeping my eyes on the metal tables. Now I mostly saw the brute’s wide goliath backs, flexing at their work. The horrid screams of the dying bull and all the other creatures were more than enough to drown out the barely audible sound of my boots slowly creeping along the ground.
As I watched the brutes, I noticed that they had some kind of helper creatures fluttering about them. Their skin was like the brown leather used to make belts and other clothing. They were about the size of goblins, and shared in their hairlessness, yet these possessed bright red demon wings, though rather small, which they had to flutter intensely to keep themselves hovering about the butchers. “Guts, bones—the scraps for us small ones!” one of these flyers cackled as it carried buckets of entrails and who-knew-what-else through the air.
“Tha’ one’s guud meat!” one of the giant butchers scolded.
“Is not! Is not!” the small flying servant chittered back.
Vixerai and I wove between the hanging carcasses, walking in their dangling shadows, keeping ourselves as close to the wall on our right side as we could. As we neared the last row of carcasses, I spotted the way out of the room: a double iron door. We reached the last row of dangling meat. Vixerai was just behind me.
Suddenly, wings beat in front of me, carrying a screaming winged servant past me. In his terror, he did not even notice us. But then I saw the carcasses behind us go flying like parting curtains as one of the giant butchers came barreling into the rows of meat, searching for his rebelling assistant. “You littol runt,” he grunted, but then went dead silent as he spotted me and Vixerai among the rows of meat. Though his face was wrapped entirely in some kind of bandage, and his eyes were only two circles, like burning coals peering through gaps in the bandage folds, I could see his face was all confusion.
I did not give his slow brain any more time to consider. The chill of my ghost claw ran up my arm as I slashed. Spectral claws instantly breached the space between us and raked across his eyes. “Urrgh!!!” He grunted as he reeled back. I did not give him time to breathe but sent my chain claw hurling straight for his throat. I willed each claw blade to stay tight against the other so that it was more of a piercing dagger than a spread, grappling claw. The chain slinked as the claw pierced right through his neck. I willed the claw to spread and then yanked it back toward me with so much force that the claw tore back through the butcher’s neck, decapitating him. Thick blood burst. The butcher’s enormous body went toppling back through the rows of hanging carcasses, until it smacked to the ground. The chain claw came snapping back to my forearm, now covered in blood and gore.
“Stink Wing killed one o’ the big ‘uns!” one of the flying servant’s voices screeched excitedly.
“Vixerai, hold the door,” I muttered. “Don’t let anyone out of this chamber! Those flyers will try to run.”
“What? We should run!”
“Do as I say!”
“I…I did?” asked Stink Wing. The winged goblin that had been chased chewed on some kind of raw chicken wing as he dumbfoundedly observed the dead butcher’s body. “Wait, no I didn’t!” He looked up and spotted us. “Monster! A monster killed him!”
All hell broke loose. The winged servants went screeching all about the room. The ground vibrated as all the butchers turned to see what the commotion was, cleavers held in their massive grips. I burst out of the rows of meat. The one closest spotted me. He was a big brute, as the rest, the one with the metal bolts on his head I had seen earlier. His humongous legs stomped as he came barreling toward me, a cleaver in one hand and a giant meat hook in the other. This one came running at me as
if I were a lamb, expecting me to freeze with fear. They would not be used to anything charging toward them. I took a step then launched myself into the air, leaping toward him. As I arched over his head, I raked down at him with both clawed gauntlets, carving a cross of blood into his face.
I flipped over in midair, landing once again in a crouch. His shadow was falling toward me, his dead body toppling to the floor. Yet, as I gazed back, I realized he was still intent on slaying me. Though his face was bloodied all over, one eye gouged out, his other was a perfect circle of berserk intensity. His giant cleaver came hammering down toward me. I slashed backhanded and there was a great spark of metal on metal as our blows struck. The sheer force of parrying his blow sent me sliding back many paces on the blood-slick floor.
Before I could regain my balance completely, another shadow loomed behind me and the flash of a giant cleaver blade shone at the corner of my eye. I ducked as low as I could, but the blade still grazed me. Even this bare graze was enough to slice my cheek open and send me sliding along the ground. I rolled to absorb the momentum and put some distance between me and the two butchers. I leapt to my feet just as a butcher blade slashed the ground open where I had been a split moment earlier. The bloody-faced butcher on one side of me, the one with the fat gut on the other. The taste of my own blood was leaking into my mouth.
“You stubborn bastards!” I growled. My grip squeezed around the ax haft on my back, and I unslung it. “Die again then!” Bolt Head was already cocking his arm, ready to slash down at me again. But I shot into the air, and while he had both arms raised over his head ready to stab down I twisted my body into a great slash which arched my ax blade in a giant arch across me. Both his arms came off in a burst of blood at his elbows. He toppled back and crashed to the ground with a bloody grunt. I turned to the other, the one with the humongous gut behind his apron, who was already upon me with a two-handed cleaver that dwarfed even my own giant ax.
Wolf Blade: Chains of the Vampire Page 18
