“I have many names,” the voice answered. “Destroyer. Violator. Monster. Hater. Elgar. You called out to me, and I am come.”
“No,” he whispered, both a denial and a plea. “I didn’t mean it. Please—”
“Liar!” The sensory assault was changed now. It was the sight of a trusted lover caught in bed with a best friend, the sound their sighs together, the burning of flame in the heart and mind. But it was the taste that made it bearable, the sweetness of standing with a boot on that former friend’s neck as he grovels and begs for mercy that he knows can never come.
Aiul staggered and collapsed, overwhelmed, face down in the dirt, raising his arms above his head like a shield, desperate to block out the cacophony. He waited, cringing against more words, but the next sound he heard was the crunch of metal on gravel, right beside his head.
Slowly, trembling, he opened his eyes to see a steel boot standing inches from his face.
From Aiul’s vantage point, the newcomer seemed ten feet tall. Tiny death’s heads, some graven into the armor’s plates, others embossed and adorned with black gems for eye sockets, leered downward at him, mocking him with their mindless grins and empty stares. The mail he wore was blackened and scored, as if he had just walked from a battlefield. Fresh blood and gore streaked the surface of his armor, splattered from slain enemies. Dark, viscous liquid oozed from breaches in the mail, running into the eye sockets and between the grinning teeth of the skulls. He wore no helm, however, and that, in particular, tore at Aiul’s mind.
The face looming above him was his own.
Aiul blinked rapidly, in shock, his mind reaching for denials, and finding purchase on minor details, at least. The eyes were not his own green, but instead pools of pure black, windows into a cold abyss, full of hate and malice that made his muscles tremble with weakness. The hair, too, was changed, not his dirty blonde, but a sickly, gray-white, the color of sun bleached bone. The wind whipped it about the doppelganger’s head, strands of it striking toward the sunken, unblinking eyes and caressing high, ashen cheekbones like the hands of a lover.
“I am come,” the figure said, this time in Aiul’s own voice, rather than the voice. It, too, was subtly different, more sinister, cold, but again, close enough that it could not be construed as mere happenstance.
“What do you want of me?” Aiul whispered.
The figure cocked its head quizzically. “A meaningless question. What could one such as I seek from the likes of a wretch like you?”
“Then leave me,” Aiul replied. Even the fear was gone now. His entire being had gone numb, overloaded, his mind unable to find a handhold to brace itself against the onslaught of madness. He rose to his feet and looked Elgar squarely in the eye. “Begone, Dead God.”
Elgar laughed. “You would dismiss the Destroyer with a wave your hand? Truly, your arrogance is a marvel to behold! I have not seen its like in…eons.”
“It’s not arrogance. It’s not even bravery.”
“Yes,” Elgar said. “The calm that comes when one understands that he is truly defeated.” He spoke now in his own voice again, and Aiul was powerless to stop the sensations. He heard Lara’s screams with a clarity that his own ears could never have matched. He tasted her blood on his own lips, felt the blade rend her flesh. And could he hear a small, high pitched cry, deep inside?
“In such a moment, one might find true freedom, had he the will,” Elgar continued. The images of Lara burned from Aiul’s mind, washed away by new screams, cries that no longer tore at his soul but thrilled him like a powerful symphony. Nihlos was in flames, its people rushing about in random panic. He was drunk with the euphoria of unfettered, untiring, merciless hatred. His arms, swinging a huge, misshapen club, rose and fell, again and again, caving in the skulls of everyone about him, men, women, even children. A thousand faces shattered under his assault. Blood and gore flew at each strike, and it tasted sweet on his lips. The visions shot through him in brief flashes, an orgy of rage, a climax of vengeance, spiraling higher and higher until it seemed he would explode with joy.
He came to his senses to find himself on his knees, sobbing. Elgar’s hand caressed his shoulders, like a parent might soothe an anguished child.
“Do you offer this to me?” Aiul choked.
“I do.”
“And what is the price?” Aiul asked, certain that he knew the answer. “My soul?”
Elgar took Aiul’s hands in his own and pulled him to his feet, but gave no answer. Instead, the Destroyer raised his hands to his own neck and removed his gorget. Elgar’s throat had been ripped open, his head half severed from his body. Black, oily blood oozed and bubbled at the wound, as it might from a man who had bled out and was breathing his last.
“Such a victory, such a liberation as I would give you, is its own price,” said the Destroyer.
“I don’t understand,” Aiul whispered.
Elgar raised a gauntleted hand to Aiul’s throat. Spikes erupted along the fingers with a sharp, metallic sound. Elgar held them lightly against Aiul's throat, waiting, his black eyes gazing deeply into Aiul’s own, the points of the spikes pricking Aiul's flesh. “Your mind is too small,” Elgar whispered. “But your soul understands.”
“Yes,” Aiul answered.
Elgar tore out Aiul’s throat.
House Noril had several prisons, some more secure than others. Given his choice of duty, Salastin would definitely have preferred the minimum security, in that it was just easier work, but for The Traitor, he was willing to suffer a little.
Aiul's rebellion had been a bitch of a night for both Noril and Luvox. They had all bled and choked and fought. When it was done, Salastin had been surprised and more than a little nervous to be summoned by Master Davron himself. He had done nothing heroic to merit a commendation, but he couldn't think of anything that would get him punished, either. Unless I killed someone I ought not have in the chaos. All sorts of mistakes happened in actual combat, often enough fatal. Quelling a riot was hardly precision work. Someone important could have managed to get mixed in with the rock-throwing commoners and gotten his head cracked in the confusion. That thought had eaten at Salastin's guts as he made his way to meet with his Patriarch.
In the end, it was nothing like he had feared. It was an altogether different sort of disaster. Davron had no reward or punishment for him, only grim news. Salastin's cousin was dead, cut down at the palace gates. Two friends he'd known since childhood had also perished in the fires and chaos of the undercity. They had all been good men doing their duty. The Traitor had killed them, as surely as if he had stuck a dagger in their chests.
When Davron approached him later with the chance of evening the score, Salastin leapt at the opportunity. That the Patriarch would invite a slave to do battle at his side, especially on a secure, black operation, was a tremendous honor. That alone would have swayed him, but the thought of avenging his cousin and friends was even stronger motivation.
Salastin had been volunteering for this gig since he and Davron had dragged The Traitor's stinking carcass into this cell, and he intended to be here for the duration.
That being said, guard duty was usually a crashing bore, and left a lot of time to fill. Salastin and five others, armed and armored, sat at a small, wooden table, cards in hand, tossing coins into the pot and daring one another to meet their challenges.
“Bastard,” one growled at Salastin. “You’re bluffing.”
Salastin said nothing, inscrutable, giving no sign of his unbeatable hand. After a moment of tension, he raised an eyebrow, taunting his opponent. It was sweet, gulling him like this. There was more than a week’s pay to take from his victim, and Salastin savored the kill. They stared at one another, tension mounting, when their stare down was broken by a mad cackle from one of the cells.
It was a small thing, but enough to end the brief duel. Salastin’s mark broke eye contact and turned his cards face down.
Salastin could barely contain his fury as he raked in his winnin
gs. The fool would have played on, but for the laughter.
He rose and strode down the stairs to Aiul’s cell. On his way, he grabbed a truncheon from its place on the wall. He would make the Traitor pay for costing him coin. That's the excuse, anyway. He's paying for everything else, too.
Salastin inserted his key and turned it, then cursed. The lock wouldn’t budge! He slammed the eye slit open and peered into the cell. Aiul stood gazing at floor, body shaking in silent laughter, his hands clutching at his ragged garment.
“I don’t know what you’ve done to the lock,” Salastin growled. “But it will be the worse for you when I get it open!” He slammed a boot into the steel door.
Aiul’s laughter grew, deep and malevolent as he raised eyes of pure ebon toward his tormentor. “Your name is Salastin,” he said, and stepped toward the door.
“Whatever game you’re playing, you’re going to suffer for it,” Salastin spat.
“Suffer and die,” Aiul agreed, bringing his own eyes to the slit.
From a distant corner of his mind, Aiul watched the horror unfold, not with his own eyes, but from a perspective outside himself entirely, as if he were a disembodied spirit. Perhaps that is just what I am. I should be afraid, but I am not.
He saw his right hand rise and slam against the cell door, the impact like a meteor falling from the heavens. The sounds of tortured metal, rending stone, and Salastin’s cry of shock rang out through the cell block as the door exploded from its jamb, propelling the guard across the room and dashing him against the far wall in an explosion of blood and gore.
The other guards charged down the stairs, weapons in hand and ready for anything except what they actually found. The cell door slowly peeled itself from the wall with a wet, sickening squelch and crashed to the floor, revealing all that remained of Salastin: a shattered, bloody wreck, barely recognizable as human, slowly oozing down the wall. He's just another bug crushed underfoot, now. As the rest of you are about to be, I think.
They turned from the gruesome mess to gape at Aiul, or rather, Elgar wearing Aiul’s flesh, as he emerged from the cell. He was gaunt and haggard from deprivation, his skin flushed a bright pink, his hair bone white. Steam rose from him as if he had just stepped from a hot bath. His grin seemed to nearly split his head, so wide was his expression of pure joy, a baring of fangs in abject hatred. Blood ran freely from his ears, eyes, and nose, staining his teeth.
Elgar spoke to them in The Dead God’s voice, “I am Monster,” he said, the sound and emotion ripping through the building in a shock wave.
“Ravager…”
The guards trembled in their armor as he approached them, but they were frozen in place.
“Destroyer!” His voice thundered from the bowels of the prison, shook loose mortar from the stones, and rattled the streets of Nihlos above. Elgar reached out, seized two guards by their necks, and dashed their heads together, smashing their skulls in a shower of blood and gray matter. He punched a fist into the chest of a third, tore out his still-beating heart, and crushed it in his grip, spraying the walls and ceiling with even more blood.
The remaining two guards, still unable to even raise a hand in their own defense, stood trembling and silent as Elgar laughed, his voice tearing at their souls like a scourge.
Even in his disembodied state, Aiul found he had no stomach to watch further. He had hated Salastin and reveled in his just end, but Aiul did not even know these men. He had no eyes to close, but he could at least shift his focus away from what was to come.
He heard the sounds well enough, though, the snapping of bones and rending of flesh, a soft, wet sound like cloth being torn. The true horror is their silence. They know what is happening to them. They can feel it, I'm certain. But they can't move, can't even scream. Mei, what have I done?
More blood splattered against the wall, seemingly at random, but somehow accreting into an obscene pattern, a sigil of destruction and death. The gore bubbled and smoked like acid as it ate its way into the surface, burning into the stone an indelible mark of Elgar’s passing — a crow picking at the eye socket of a grinning skull.
The Destroyer raised his hands above his head and closed his eyes, breathing in the scent of terror and death, then spoke a single word: “Rise.”
The broken flesh of the guards answered his call, reassembling itself as best it could. Elgar’s warriors rose to their feet, steady and fearless, dead hands taking up weapons once again, to follow him from the prison.
Aiul felt himself falling into blackness. Perhaps this is the end.
Then he knew nothing.
Kariana moaned with pleasure, her body writhing on silk sheets as her lover ground against her, her mind clouded by the drugs she had taken to heighten the experience. What was his name again? Oh, it hardly mattered, some lesser noble from House Veril. The drugs made it seem lovely, though it was still clearly artificial. A lover with skill was much preferable, but they were few and far between. Mr. Right-Now worked fine with certain enhancements.
Thoughts licked at the edges of her consciousness like annoying insects, gnats of reality intruding on her reverie. With effort, she managed to focus her attention and open her eyes slightly.
The door to her quarters was open, and a man stood at the foot of her bed, gesticulating, shouting…what? She eyed him momentarily, considered inviting him to join them, if only to shut him up, but something seemed odd about that notion.
Her lover rose and rolled off the side of the bed with surprising speed. Her senses returned suddenly, like the lifting of a veil, and with them, outrage at being interrupted. “Caelwen!”
Her bodyguard pointed a mailed finger at her lover, the expression on his face lethal. “You’re done. Get out.”
The lover glared back at him with as much dignity as a naked man with a raging erection could muster. “You don’t order me, Caelwen Luvox!” Kariana couldn’t help but titter at how he looked. When all of the passion was stripped away, men looked a bit silly, aroused and bouncing around like that.
Caelwen was not feeling merciful, it seemed. He swung his fist and sent the man crashing to the marble floor. Kariana had a moment of genuine empathy for him. She could certainly appreciate why he would be upset. Men always were when they didn’t get to finish their business. And it was too bad, really it was, that he hadn’t fallen on a pillow. There were so many scattered about. But when Caelwen followed up his blow by drawing his sword, things grew decidedly more serious in her mind. “Caelwen, what are you doing? Stop it!”
Caelwen ignored her and glared at the other man. He gestured toward the door with his blade. “Get your things and get out. Now! You can dress in the hallway if you like, but I'd advise you to just keep running!”
Nobility often came with a certain pride, a false, pretentious air. Kariana couldn’t help but approve of Caelwen’s graceful demonstration of true nobility and power. Her lover (what was his name?) hesitated a moment, as if testing his scrotum and finding it withdrawn into his body. He suddenly bent and began gathering his clothes quickly, like a chicken pecking at seeds. Well, at least that solved the problem of his not having finished, she supposed. Cold steel, cold shower, they were probably quite interchangeable.
As her lover scurried out, clothes clutched to his crotch, Kariana raised an eyebrow at her bodyguard. “Why, Caelwen, are you jealous? Did you come bursting in here to have me for yourself, perhaps?”
Caelwen was not amused. “Don’t be ridiculous. Get dressed at once. We must flee!”
Kariana fetched her robe from the bed and shrugged into it. “Flee? Oh, no, the blood of Tasinal does not flee. You flee if you like. What will you be fleeing from, I wonder?”
Caelwen was losing his cool self-control, she could see. It happened so rarely. How lovely that she could be a part of it, even the cause of it! Everyone needed to feel human once in a while. He would ultimately thank her. She couldn’t quite suppress a giggle, even though she knew there was something very wrong. Caelwen's expression, his e
yes, both fairly sang of something terrible, but it was difficult to react as she ought. The drugs made everything seem less important.
“Aiul has escaped Davron's prison,” Caelwen explained. “He’s rounded up a small army and he’s headed this way now.”
In the space of a second, Kariana went from feeling fairly in control back to drowning in syrup. “What?” she stammered. It made no sense. Aiul was in the hospital.
“He's headed here!” Caelwen shouted. “We have to get you clear now!”
Kariana shook her head in a desperate attempt to clear the effects of the drugs. It helped a bit, but it still felt as if her brain were made of cotton. “Why doesn’t someone stop him?” she mumbled. “Where are the guards?”
Caelwen’s face grew dark with anger, his mask of self-control slipping and falling all the way to the ground. Kariana was fairly certain she could hear it clattering against the marble. He slammed a fist against the wall in frustration. “You mean after we account for several hundred dead on your account? We have fewer with every passing moment! Swords break on his skin! He kills men with a single blow, and the corpses rise up and follow him!” He seized her by the arm and jerked her toward the door. “Now, Empress, we’ll be going, whether it’s under your own power or under mine. I’ll let you decide, if you do it quickly.”
Kariana was, for once, speechless. She allowed herself to be pulled toward the door, confusion and fright vying for supremacy in her. What was Caelwen even saying? Aiul was invulnerable, and had an army of dead guards? It was madness. If it were anyone but Caelwen, she would think it was a joke. “I don’t understand!”
“Survive now, understand later!”
Even as Caelwen spoke, a chill wind rushed in through the open doors. The dozens of candles guttered, and most failed, plunging the room into near darkness. An agonized scream of anguish and horror echoed from the corridor outside Kariana's quarters, followed by sudden and grim silence. Well, I suppose he won't be telling me his name anytime soon, now.
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