The Corvin Chance Chronicles Complete Box Set

by N. P. Martin

  Going alone to meet the devil himself in his lair probably wasn’t the most sensible course of action. Some might say it was suicidal. But Kyle did say that Erebus believed in the prophesy, and in his apparent destiny to defeat me in the Final Battle. If that was really the case, then I should be safe in meeting him. And even if I couldn’t find a way to kill him now, at the very least I could maybe talk some sense into him. If Erebus was anything like me, he was just a person who’d had his destiny arranged for him by others. He knew nothing else. Perhaps if I could point that out to him, I might somehow be able to get him to stand down. It was a long shot at best, but the only one I had at the minute.

  Taking out my phone, I put the co-ordinates Kyle had given me into Google, which brought up the location in the Tunisian desert, marked by an X on the digital map. It was right in the middle of the desert, as desolate a place as you could find. Why would anyone want to dwell in such a lifeless place, under such extreme conditions? I wondered.

  But crazy or not, that’s where Erebus was, and so I would have to go there. I’d never portaled that far before, but I didn’t see why it wouldn’t be possible. By portaling, I was entering a plane where the normal rules of space and time didn’t exist. It shouldn’t really matter how many miles I had to travel. One mile was the same as a thousand. That was the theory anyway, and there was only one way to test it.

  I portaled back to Dublin first, into the flat above the bookshop. If I was going to be venturing out into a desert, I would need some supplies with me. Even though it was winter, temps in the Tunisian desert could still reach 20 degrees celsius according to Google, so water would still be a must. I had no idea how long it would take to find this nameless city that was mostly hidden beneath the sands. I guess it depended how accurate Kyle’s co-ordinates turned out to be, and how accurate my long-distance portaling turned out to be as well. Finding a medium-sized back pack, I filled it with a few bottles of water, some protein bars and a pack of cigarettes. If nothing else I could at least get a smoke if I had to blindly wander around the faceless desert sands. If it came to it, I could just portal back out again, though I didn’t intend to do that. I was staying until I’d found Erebus.

  For a while, I considered bringing along the sword I had used to kill the beast in the Wicklow mountains. But after handling the unwieldily weapon, I decided to leave it behind, thinking it would be too much a pain in the ass to be carrying around a desert. I also thought if Erebus saw the sword, he would react aggressively, which is what I didn’t want, not until I had had a chance to talk things over with him.

  Before I left, I scraped together a meal from the meager supplies in the kitchen, and ate it quickly, as I needed to refuel before I left. Then just as I was getting ready to go, my phone rang, and I took it out of my pocket to see that Dalia was calling. I stared at the phone for a few seconds, before hitting reject and turning the device off altogether, replacing it in my pocket.

  Once I opened up a portal in the living room, I stood for a moment staring into it, before glancing up at a photo of my mother on the wall. "Wish me luck," I said to the photo.

  A second later, I stepped into the portal to go in search of the nameless city.

  Chapter 11

  It was just past daybreak when I emerged from the portal and onto the desert sands. The sky was a dull gray with hints of pink and gold starting to show through, and the desert winds were cold as they blew around me, stirring up the bone dry sand as they did so. Looking around, I saw nothing but sky and endless desert, with not a single feature between me and the horizon in any direction, and certainly no sign of any ruined city. Puffing my cheeks out as I stared into the middle distance, I shook my head as I wondered what my next move would be. There was every chance that Kyle had lied about the location of the nameless city, or even about there being any nameless city at all. There was certainly no mention of it anywhere online, or in any books I had read in the past, which of course didn’t mean it didn’t exist. I was in the remotest part of the desert after all, so it was entirely possible that the ruined city had remained undiscovered, or just not talked about by anyone who did happen across it. Perhaps Erebus made sure unwary travelers didn’t talk, if he was even here at all. I suspected he was, though. Despite seeing no sign of any ruins, I still got the distinct impression that a dark presence lurked within the sands somewhere. The atmosphere around me was eery and unsettling, which could have been normal for a desert setting as remote and as desolate as this one, but I doubted it was normally this unsettling. There was a coldness to the place, and not just of temperature, but of spirit as well, as if some malevolent presence was infused with the very air itself.

  "I know you’re here somewhere, Erebus," I said aloud. "I’ll find you."

  I stood for another moment as if expecting a reply, and although no words sounded anywhere, a chill wind blew around me, which felt like an icy finger running down my spine. It wasn’t pleasant at all, and I started walking, if only to escape the windy presence. After a moment of trudging through the deep sand, I stopped, realizing I would need a direction go in that wasn’t just random. So I looked around me again, hoping to see something that would give me at least some inkling of where I needed to go. It took me a good five minutes to see it, but I finally spotted something in the shimmering distance. It was a black shape that stood up out of the sand just enough to be seen and no more. It could have been anything, but I fancied it might a remnant of the so far illusory nameless city, perhaps a pillar or the remains of a roof. There was only one way to find out, and seeing no other options, I started to move in the direction of the dark shape that was miles away at this point.

  Trekking through desert is hard going, as your feet obviously sink into the sand on every step, meaning you really have to lift those knees as you go. Which also means you tend to use a lot more energy than you would if you were walking along a flat, stable surface. So it wasn’t long before I was sweating, especially with the morning sun now beating down upon me, which felt a lot hotter than the projected 20 degrees celsius I had read online before coming here. As I squinted from the glare of the sun on the almost white sand, I cursed myself for not having the foresight to bring a decent pair of sunglasses with me, or a bloody hat for that matter. Jesus, I thought as I trudged on, I’d never be a damn Prepper, that’s for sure.

  Having to climb the massive dunes was the worst. Some of them you could walk around, but most of them were that big it would’ve taken more time to walk around than to go over them. It was exhausting making the initial climb, and more than once I lost my footing and rolled back down the slope a fair distance, cursing my luck when I realized I would have to expend more effort on climbing back up again. Once I reached the peak of the dune, I would make my way down the other side, which you’d think would be easier. It wasn’t, though. Sure, I had gravity on my side, but it was exhausting trying to keep my balance so I didn’t topple over, and because of the angle of the downward slope, my boots sunk even deeper into the arid sand, which made walking harder.

  The whole time, the winds continued to blow around me. A couple of times, sand storms rose up in the distance, completely obscuring where I had to go, blocking out the shape I was heading toward. During one of these sand storms, I continued to walk, only to find, once the sand storm had cleared, that I had walked for miles in the wrong direction. At this point I thought screw it, and went to open up a portal to try and get closer to my destination the magical way. But when I cast the spell, nothing happened. I tried several times to manifest a portal, but each time I failed. As a test, I tried a few other spells, but those didn’t work either. For some reason, my magic was being interfered with, prevented from working as it should. As I pondered this, another unearthly wind gathered around me, chilling my skin, sending shivers down me. Again, I felt a dark presence contained within the wind itself, and I knew right then that Erebus had done something to block my magic, if not directly, then indirectly by his very presence in the desert itself. This p
issed me off at first, not to say dismayed me as well, for I had no way of escaping this desert if I couldn’t portal out of it. I could spend months walking around and never find an exit. Not that I would remain alive for that long. With my meager supplies, I figured I could last a week at most, and that’s if I managed to survive the no doubt bitterly cold nights without any kind of shelter.

  These thoughts were panic inducing at first, as it felt like I was being crushed by the vastness of the desert around me, the gusting winds seeming to laugh at my predicament. But I soon got a hold of myself after lighting up a cigarette and taking a few drags off it. The fact that I couldn’t use my magic here told me that I was in the right place, and that Erebus must be somewhere nearby. He was fucking with me, probably hoping to see me squirm under the weight of my current predicament, but I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. Magic or no magic, I intended to carry on until I found him, whether he wanted me to or not.

  Choosing not to dwell on the fact that I could end up stranded in one of the remotest deserts in the world, I trudged on, drawing ever closer to whatever was sticking up out of the sand still some miles ahead of me. The sun was heating up as morning turned into afternoon, and it felt like there was no way to escape its merciless rays. I almost wished for night time, just so I wouldn’t have to endure the sun’s blinding glare any longer. And indeed, it appeared the universe was listening when I thought that, for the closer I got to my destination, the cloudier and darker the sky became, until the sun’s rays had trouble penetrating the thick clouds. The change in the atmosphere was a little ominous, but nonetheless welcome. Under cooler conditions, I was able to pick up the pace, and soon after, I finally reached the structure protruding out of the sand.

  It was a flat structure, made out of stone and tilted over at a forty-five degree angle. Two pillars were visible underneath on one side, the other two being mostly covered by sand. It appeared to be the roof of some stone structure that was oddly incongruous with the surrounding landscape, as if it had been dropped from the sky at some point. The stone itself had been worn smooth by the wind and sand, and contained no markings or discernible features that might point to who had built it. It could have been part of a city at one time, or it could’ve been something else.

  Frustrated now, knowing that I was losing daylight rapidly, I climbed atop the stone structure and proceeded to survey my surroundings. Almost immediately, I caught sight of something else in the distance. Another stone structure that seemed to be almost set into the bottom of a large dune. Jumping down off the roof I was on, I proceeded to make my way toward this new structure, hoping it might prove to be some sort of entrance to the nameless city that I was sure lay buried beneath the sand somewhere.

  When I reached the structure, I saw that it appeared to be a kind of temple, with a peaked, stone roof and two thick pillars underneath. Between the pillars was a stone floor, and at the very back, a dark entrance, through which I could just make out the beginning of a set of steps leading down somewhere. When I examined the pillars, my first thought was of how old they must be. Running my hand over the stone, I got the sense the structure had existed since long before the rise of the pharaohs, and perhaps even well before that. In the fading light, I could just make out strange symbols that were carved into the stone, symbols that I had never seen before anywhere, and which filled me with an unexpected dread. What kind of beings had built these stone constructions? I wondered. Whoever they were, I got the sense that they were far from human. Kyle had said as much when he spoke of the nameless city, and while I hadn’t exactly believed him at the time, I was inclined to believe him now. The sharp curves of the symbols seemed sinister, hinting at the past presence race of beings that dabbled in dark, dark things; things that were probably beyond the scope of human imagination. Perhaps it was just as well this mysterious race was no longer around.

  Or where they?

  For as I continued to be almost transfixed by the weirdly shaped symbols carved deep into the weathered stone, I suddenly got the sense that I was being watched. As I looked around and saw nothing in the dusky light, I thought I was just being paranoid and a little spooked. But as I went to move inside the structure to check out the entrance at the back, I stopped dead, initially chilled by an eery, passing wind, and then frightened by an unmistakable presence somewhere behind me. Slowly, I turned around, only to see something hovering obscenely above the shifting sands, bathed in the half-light. It was some sort of creature, the likes of which I knew didn’t belong in this world. The thing that I was looking at belonged only to some dark dimension that no human mind could even begin to fathom, that much I was certain of. Even Hell couldn’t have spawned the nearly indescribable eldritch thing that shimmered balefully in the ever fading light. It had the torso of a man, with two arms held slightly out from its side, but its skin was greenish-black and oily looking, and a strange luminescence seemed to pulse within it. The head almost resembled a squid, but with many more eyes, and numerous tentacles that writhed around it. It had no legs, but thick black tentacles that brushed restlessly over the sand. Such a description hardly does the thing justice, however. The truth is, the creature was so huge it was difficult to look upon it and take it all in without first succumbing to fear, a fear that ultimately skewed my perception of things.

  For the longest time, all I could do was stare at the creature as it continued to hover maybe fifty feet away, just staring at me with its countless eyes. What the hell was this thing? Erebus maybe, in some monstrous form? It was certainly a possibility, given his alien lineage and powers, but somehow I knew it wasn’t him. This was something else entirely, very possibly a creature from Apep’s own dimension, put here to guard the great god’s ill begotten offspring. But if that was the case, why wasn’t it attacking me? All it was doing was hovering there, as if it was just there to watch and nothing more.

  Slowly, I began to walk backward inside the stone structure, turning my head only to make sure I didn’t fall into the entrance behind me. The whole time, the writhing, luminescent thing outside held its position, as if making sure I was going where I was supposed to go. When I reached the entrance, I turned around and stared into it. After a few steps, there was nothing but blackness. Forgetting myself for a moment, I tried to use my magic to create a light in my hand, but of course, nothing happened. Cursing, I reached into my pocket instead, and took out the zippo lighter from in there, which I was glad I had filled with fluid before I left to come to this place. As torches went, it wasn’t great, but it would have to do.

  After glancing one more time at the creature still hovering out in the desert, it seemed to glow brighter, as though it were anticipating me going down into the blackness underneath the sands. Then, holding the lighter out before me, I began to climb down the steps as I entered what could only be the nameless city and Erebus’ lair.

  Chapter 12

  The steps seemed to go on forever before they finally ended in a narrow passageway that I could just about stand up straight in. The air in the passage was thick and fetid, as though death and decay had permeated every molecule. But it was more than that. The air was charged with something, a dark energy that was not of this earth, and which probably leaked in from whatever dimension that tentacled creature outside was from. The passageway only led one way, so I started to walk down it, realizing that I was getting close to Erebus now. His presence was even stronger down here in this place, and I knew he was lurking within it somewhere. I just had to find him. Though judging by the maze of passageways that I soon came upon, finding him was going to be no easy task. All I could do was chose a passage and head down it to see where it would lead me. The first two passages I went down turned out to lead nowhere, ending in a pile of impenetrable rubble. The third passage led to a large room, the walls of which contained the same symbols as outside on the pillars, but no doors or passages leading anywhere else. It wasn’t until I ventured down a fourth passageway that I began to make progress, eventually happeni
ng upon another set of steps that led me down deeper into what must have been another level to whatever structure I was inside of.

  As I pushed on through the labyrinthine passageways, some of which were extremely narrow and required me to hunker down just to get through them, I was aware of certain sounds echoing off the walls. A clacking sound, for instance, which could have been anything, but which to my fear-tinged mind sounded like claws scraping off stone. There were other sounds as well. Hisses and low moans that gave the impression that I wasn’t alone down here. If eldritch horrors existed outside, then they must surely exist down here as well, I thought. If they did, they were keeping their distance, for aside from the occasional moving shadow, I saw nothing untoward in my small circle of illumination, which was hardly adequate enough to light the way two feet in front of me. If I was going to see anything at all, it wouldn’t be until it was right in front of me, by which point it would probably be too late to do anything about it.

  Pushing such thoughts from my mind, I carried on making my way through the innumerable passageways, aware that I was going deeper and deeper underground with every step, until I dared not think about how much ground there was above me now. The further I descended, the harder it became to breathe, which was made worse by a sulfurous heat that had begun to make itself known, as if I was nearing some supernaturally heated core buried within the structure somewhere. I was glad when I unexpectedly emerged in what seemed to be a wide corridor that afforded plenty of headroom for a change. As I came into the corridor, I moved the lighter toward the left wall, only to find that the wall contained a fresco, though the paint seemed long faded, to the point where it was difficult to make out any of the images. But as I moved along with the lighter, I soon realized that a dark figure was present in each of the depicted scenes, who appeared to be worshipped by similar creatures to that which was outside. The figure, I knew, was Erebus. This was a visual depiction of the so-called prophesy, which had Erebus fated to destroy all life on earth.