by Brad C Baker
Menshirre had spent the time in the clearing taking sap from a freshly wounded tree he was suspiciously close to, and using it to stick ferns to the front of his breastplate. This rendered it all but invisible. Along with his naturally brown and green mottled skin, he easily had the best camouflage of them all. Except for maybe the cat. His crossbow had been replaced with Bargress’s pistols. He was finishing the loading of his second one. The first was already tied into his sash. His cutlass was darkened with sap and soil.
And that brought him around to Erik. He was glittering slightly in the dark with his chain mail armor. His pistols had already been loaded. His cutlass remained sheathed. He was standing just to the right side of where Crallick entered the little clearing. He relayed in a hushed tone to the others what Crallick’s expectations were of himself.
Crallick helped himself to some of the tree sap and the loam and began painting his face. “Look, I’m open to suggestions. I have a pretty good idea how this is going to go down. I just don’t like it.” He then took a swig from his rum flask. The last drop fell to his tongue. Just great.
Erik started the suggestions rolling. “Two of us provide a distraction. Draw them out. We fight them off as best we can. The rest of you grab the girls; get them to safety, then save our asses. Good, huh?”
“So who commits suicide as bait with this one?” Crallick growled.
“Why, you and me of course,” Erik grinned. “We may actually last long enough to be saved.”
“Of course,” Crallick sighed. “Next?”
“We rush them as hard and fast as we can. Kill ‘em as fast as we can. Then try to save the girls after,” Izzy offered.
“The girls would be sure to die swiftly. Also, we don’t know how deeply staggered they are up there. Not knowing their disposition is a bad thing,” Crallick grumbled.
“Dispo…what?” asked Izzy, screwing up his features.
“Location,” Crallick clarified.
Glip-Glip offered a string of words and chirps and gestures.
“Thanks, I may use some of them,” Crallick said.
“I think I can hear the chanting rising in volume,” warned Kittalae.
“Thanks, all,” Crallick quickly rushed out. “Okay, it’s time to get this started. Here’s what I want to see happen. Erik, from your idea, you’ll head up the front. I’ll come with, but I’ll be out of sight…”
“Great,” Erik interrupted.
“We’re approaching the east side. Menshirre, you take the north side. Izzy, you’ll take the south side. Kittalae will go with him…” Crallick continued, undaunted.
“Why, Crallick?” Kittalae interrupted this time, with a hint of a pout.
“Because he’ll make a scene, and that should let you get to the girls quicker. Your job is to save the girls. As many as you can.” Crallick was beginning to get frustrated with the lack of rum and the availability of interruptions. There would never have been this kind of discourse in the order. Shaking his head, he finished, “And Glip-Glip, you’re the fastest in this terrain, so you can take the far west approach. If all goes well, we’ll meet at the top, kill the bad guys, avenge those who have suffered at their hands, and save my daughter. I mean the girls. Now let’s move!”
Under the cover of the night and the chanting rhythms, the group melted into the darkness. Moving swiftly, the much smaller parties all reached their points of ascent.
Crallick, meanwhile, had noticed two things he had overlooked. Firstly, he had no idea how to tell when they arrived at their locations. Secondly, he hadn’t told them when to go. Shite, he was getting too old for this kind of shite when he forgot simple shite like that. Crallick then realized a third oversight. A low rumble betrayed the presence of the cat behind him. Jyslin preserve him. He couldn’t train a hunting or war cat right now, and as sure as death’s throne room, he couldn’t cat sit right now. “Stay,” was the one command he gave the beast.
“Where?” asked a confused Erik, who thought the order had been for him.
“Not you,” a frustrated Crallick tersely replied. “The cat.”
“Ah. By the way, how will they know when to go?” Erik mused out loud.
Scoffing to himself, Crallick thought that Erik was a good man. A smart one too. “We lead the attack.”
“How do we know when to go?” Erik pushed, only partially satisfied with the answer.
Crallick was about to say “We guess,” when a young woman’s blood-curdling scream cut through the night. “NOW!” Crallick declared instead.
That command had been issued to the back of Erik’s head. Upon hearing the despondent scream of anguish, he had begun his reckless charge up the slope of the ziggurat. One pistol drawn and his sword out, Erik Drake pumped his legs furiously up the stairs of the massive temple. He knew Crallick wouldn’t be far behind him.
Menshirre had been waiting for what he felt was too long when the pitched voice pierced the night and his patience. He charged up his side. Both pistols were in his hands, and bale light was reflected in his eyes.
Izzy and Kittalae had been arguing when to go. The scream had Izzy paint a clear picture to Kittalae that, “For every scream you hear tonight, that is another way you have failed your duty to your master.” Though truly a cruel thing to say to the young woman, it had the magic effect of sending her flying into action. Izzy had to sprint to catch up. As it was, he only drew even with her by the time they crested the top of the temple.
Glip-Glip had already gone halfway up the west side of the ziggurat when he had heard the scream. He doubled the efforts of his already stair-devouring hops.
The crown of the temple was an expanse of stone that held grooved troughs leading away from twelve sacrificial plinths, three to a side. They surrounded a central raised dais with an altar upon it. This too, had grooves for a nefarious run-off.
Each of the plinths had a fresh set of cast iron manacles that had been run through much older metal rings. These manacles arrested the wrists of eleven struggling, nude girls. Several of the girls at the northern side were sobbing or crying.
The twelfth plinth also held a nude girl. However, she no longer held the strength to struggle. She stared in shock at the slippery purplish mass of her intestines that had slipped free from her abdomen to lie in a pile at her feet. She had once been an Amarallan, of no small beauty. She had been athletic, blonde, and now her blue eyes watched in astonished horror as any hopes of knowing womanhood lay at her feet.
The altar held the thirteenth virginal victim. Also nude, she laid spread-eagled upon the stone, arms and legs all bound in a lewd display. Looming over the spayed sacrifice was Eli.
Eli had doffed his furs and cloak. He stood resplendent in diabolically intricate tattoos that painted his corded torso and arms. His metal cod and greaves glimmered a molten gold in the torchlight. A black tome floated on dark motes of energy scantly feet away from him. The tome itself was unremarkable. Only a foot and a half by a foot in its dimensions. Perhaps an inch thick if you didn’t include the thickness of the covers.
Eli’s gaze was unfocused and sweat glistened upon him. His tumorous voice resonated an ongoing chant, while almost mindlessly, he drew a black metal dagger across the back of his left forearm. Blood, as pure as the virgins, welled up and wept down his arm. He then turned and pointed to the west.
A Komodoman lunged his jawbone blade into the delicate belly of a calico nekomin maiden. Her discordant yowl was cut short as she vomited blood and bile through her nose and mouth. Her head sagged almost immediately as her body convulsed and then hung limp from the column.
This latest violent display shocked the rescuers from their grisly reverie at this macabre scene. Yelling, howling, chirping, screaming their rages, they descended upon the perpetuators of this taboo sacrament.
Erik discharged his pistol at the closest foe: a human man, in his forties, who held a wicked looking double blade. His shot took the man in his right knee. The man cried out in surprise and almost lost his footin
g outright.
“Take that, you buggering freak!” Mr. Drake advertised his presence over the shot and the chanting.
A far stealthier Crallick was taking aim at Eli. He was most certainly not going to miss like with the dragon. Not this time.
Izzy barreled headlong into one of Eli’s Komodomen, his white teeth and silver blades flashing viciously in the torchlight as he delivered savage blow after savage blow towards the eight-foot-tall lizardman. The flurry of blows managed to open up gashes on the reptile’s right side. He sundered the scales on his arm and hip on that side.
While Izzy drew the attention of the massive guard, Kittalae quietly drifted over to one of the plinths, then fished out a small sliver of wood from a pouch on her belt. Placing the splinter in a crack close to the metal ring that held the chains, she whispered a few words. Thus calling to the wood spirit within the splinter, she woke it. It grew. First doubling in size, then by a factor of ten. A resounding crack had the metal ring fall free, and the olive-skinned human girl collapsed into her arms.
The young woman asked something in Jherrim-ga. Kittalae shook her head without comprehension, and simply pointed down the side of the temple. The naked girl quickly found her feet and began to scuttle down the side of the terraced structure. She would have collected more than her fair share of cuts and bruises by the time she reached the bottom in the dark, but she would also have her life.
Glip-Glip’s foe never stood a chance. One moment the Komodoman was licking the face of an untouchable sacrifice whilst murmuring what he planned to do to her corpse as she wept uncontrollably; the next, a stinging insect took a chunk out of his right side, just under the armor straps. Seconds later, his sphincters lost all tone and evacuated everything not held in place by tendons and ligaments. His eyes were glazed over before his seizure finished. Also, he died before he hit the ground.
Giggling hysterically, the girl he had been tormenting thrust her hips forward to urinate upon him.
This confused poor Glip-Glip, and for a moment he though maybe he had nicked her with his poison. However, he relaxed when he saw no further signs of loss of control.
Menshirre shot both of his pistols at the slender Nekomin mage. Unbelievably, she dodged one outright, and melted the other slug out of the air so that only little bits ineffectively singed her robes.
“Oooooh, bad luck to cross a black cat, my friend,” she sarcastically hissed at him.
Tamilla, having devoted all her life to the worship of Chessintra and the study of her arcane arts, put that training to good use. From all of the floating stuff in the air, she rearranged their order by Chessintra’s will, to form a globbet of acid hanging, suspended, waiting to launch itself towards her foe. The transparent shimmering sphere of liquid elongated slightly as her will propelled it towards Menshirre’s head.
The orb struck with a liquid splash. That’s when the chemical burning began. Everywhere that Menshirre had been dampened by the cool bath erupted in a fast-acting potent acid. His arms, which he had thrown up to protect his face, dissolved to the bones and clattered to the ground. Bands across his face melted to the skull. His eyes were left vacant sockets. His neck eroded through his wind pipe. With only his spine to keep his head aloft, it flopped forward. There was surprisingly little blood for such a gory demise. The acid saw to that. It cauterized vessels it burnt through. In the end, the only thing to pass through Menshirre’s mind was, “What, water? Is she going to bathe me to death?”
Cholo had spent many of his years as a mercenary. As of late, he had begun to tire and was becoming concerned about his mortality. So when Eli had come to him with promises of ageless vitality, he decided to take on one more contract. Up until now it had been a milk run for him. Easy money, with a vault-load of perks at the end. Now, shot by some upstart Amarallan merc, he resolved to make him pay for crossing paths with him. Maneuvering so that the dragon-lover was between him and a girl, Cholo feinted at the man’s head.
As Drake lifted his sword to block, the man reversed his swing, allowing the back blade of his double sword to sweep towards his quarry in an obvious move. Drake fell for this as well. He swung his own sword down to counter.
Halting his swing, Cholo tugged his blade back, so the sweep of Drake’s block met with no resistance and carried through wider than he intended. This gave Cholo the opening he needed. He thrust forwards, into the other man’s chest, spitting him into the girl behind him. “I now pronounce you dead and meat. You may kiss the bride… after the sacrifice,” he chuckled grimly.
Erik felt himself being forced back against something soft and yielding with the force of the blow. This buggerer was talented. He could barely keep up. He heard the girl stifle a sob from close to his ear. Vaguely, he remembered she had been a pretty mortani lass; all dark skin, eyes and hair. He could now barely keep away. His breathing was now a serious effort.
As Eli’s chanting reached another feverish crescendo, he pointed south. The Komodoman kicked Izzy away, then savagely eviscerated the guts from a hobgoblin maid.
A third line of blood began to weep from Eli’s arm.
Ignoring the grunt from Erik, and the shortened cry and sizzle from Menshirre, Crallick reminded himself to focus on what he could control. Nothing more. He inhaled steadily and let fly with his arrow. With uncanny despair, Crallick watched as his aimed shot was shot out of the air by a fire bolt from a torch. The Nekomin witch had set up defenses against missile attacks. Jyslin, why could nothing ever be easy? So be it. He drew another arrow and incanted it with the seeds of flames. ‘Let’s see how the furry bitch likes this,’ Crallick grimly thought.
“Sorry,” Erik muttered to the sobbing girl behind him. She was uncomprehending. He continued, more for himself than for anyone. “I’m inappropriately close to you and I’m trying to rescue you and just got you hurt. I’m sorry. It’s my first time trying to rescue anyone”
“How touching,” snarled Cholo, who, while amused at Erik’s rambling, didn’t notice him fishing out his back-up pistol from where it was mashed between him and the mortani maiden. “Now shut up, I’m waiting for my cue. Carry on your romance in Chessintra’s court.”
“After you,” came Erik’s dry comment. He then jammed the barrel of his pistol into the man’s jowly throat and squeezed the trigger. The upward slant of the barrel caused Cholo’s head to blossom and mushroom into a brilliant pattern before spraying his skull’s contents everywhere in a five-foot radius.
At the violent death of the girl, Izzy roared at the Komodoman. The Komodoman laughed in return, and easily began parrying every strike that Izzy could throw at him. Izzy kept up, however. His feverish rage would not allow him to relent.
Dodging away from the gushing stream of feces and gore, Kittalae swiftly repeated her splinter trick on the next plinth. This held a young pygmy woman suspended so that her feet dropped a couple of feet before landing on the stone. Once down, her alert and fear-heightened eyes took in the scenario. She needed no explanation and was running furtively towards safety as soon as Kittalae pointed out a direction.
Kittalae then started to the three columns on the west side of the ziggurat. She hoped she’d be able to save all three of them.
Glip-Glip hopped to the top of a plinth that held a female tree froggle. He kree’ed and chirped merrily to her while he launched a dart towards Eli, planning on ending him like he did the dragon. He uttered a “Kirrup!!” of anger and dismay when a bolt of flame from a torch incinerated his wee dart. That wasn’t good at all.
Looking to the west, Tamilia knew from the chant that one would have to sacrifice soon. There was a tree froggle atop the plinth with the virgin froggle. Smiling in predatory glee, she limited the scope of her fireball, but concentrated the heat. She let it fly. It blazed across the night to impact squarely on the plinth. Glip-Glip had seen it coming and had leapt for his life. The female froggle turned to ash, her two webbed and padded feet that fell to the ground were all that remained of her.
Izzy’s rage
met with brutal undoing as the toothed jawbone that was wielded by the Komodoman tore savagely through his left thigh. Three flaps of his quadriceps hung petal-like and crimson as though a jungle flower blossomed in his leg after the strike. He felt his resolve falter slightly. Was this the beginning of the end for him? Was his pain going to subside? So be it. He’d try to make it glorious.
Crallick launched his flaming arrow into the back of the Nekomin. Its flaming wake traced a line back to his position. That was no matter. The arrow had been true to the mark, piercing her heart. The flames had ignited her fur and robes. As her caterwauling began, Crallick couldn’t help but feel like his old self again. Damn, he was good.
Erik kept chewing on his tongue to try to stay conscious. His ragged breaths seemed ineffective. He kept tasting iron in his mouth. He mumbled something in delirium about how he had always wanted to get attached to a pretty girl, but he was sure he hadn’t meant it in this way. And the goddesses of fate and luck shouldn’t be so damned literal.
Desperation rooted in pain caused Izzy to feebly swing his cutlass up, only to have it caught by the clawed fist of the Komodoman. Izzy spat in its eye.
Upon reaching the western columns, Kittalae repeated her trick on a struggling dwarven maid. She was sobbing that she had to get to her friend Amalae, or she’d never survive her rescue. Amalae’s father was a crazy drunkard and very scary.
Placing a comforting hand on her shoulder, Kittalae soothed, “I know he is. Who do you think is rescuing you? Now don’t let me get into trouble and run down and hide in the south side of the temple. Okay?”
Sniffling, the dwarf agreed and stumbled off.
