Oblivion's Queen

by M. H. Johnson

  Quickly Malek altered his fighting style, his brilliant sword-work morphing into a staggered unpredictable Alexias of feints, strikes and dodges. Erratic movements, never striking as his enemies expected, buying him a few more precious seconds of life before his final doom. “By the gods, at least you can fight, Twilight!” Malek coughed then, surprised to note the blood spraying from his lips, only then noting the spear hole in his side.

  Malek blinked, speechless, dizziness momentarily overwhelming him.

  “Fight, you damn fool!” Twilight hissed as he darted around like a black streak of lightning, tearing through the entrails of the roaring beast that had just scored a lucky hit on Malek even as Malek stumbled back, blade held to his side as he hissed in sudden pain before arcing forward once more in another blistering Alexias of attacks, determined to stay upright as long as he could. “Unleash the blood, Malek. Unleash it!”

  “What are you talking about, you damn cat?” Malek coughed, gasping, even as he frantically dodged a decapitating blow, obsidian flaked axe whistling over his head.

  “It can be used as defense as well as offense! I know you’ve read the book, Malek. Quit holding back! There is no time for fear, no time for hesitation! Your humanity is lost. Only death awaits! Embrace the Pact! Become one with the blood, Malek; unleash it with your rage. Embrace your inner fire!”

  And Malek blinked as twin revelations tore through him. The first was that he understood implicitly, utterly, what Twilight was speaking of. The second was that he had just been impaled by a massive spear, his entrails dangling behind him. As he stumbled back he laughed, looking at the gloating pig-faced demon with a bloody grin of his own. "Poor fool. You don't even know what it is you just did.”

  With that Malek let loose a terrible scream, that of a man embracing his own living death. Wheezing, gasping, drowning in a sea of fiery unbearable agony, he felt his own lifeblood pour out of his throat in a terrible choking torrent, coating him entirely. And he laughed, even as a howling fury consumed him. Even as he fell into the all-consuming darkness where he could all but feel the icy caress of oblivion envelop him. It was then that the ebony blackness suddenly opened burning eyes like the furnace of a searing sun, blinding him.

  Consuming him.

  Becoming one with him.

  For he was the fire and the darkness.

  The Hound of Oblivion, risen once more.

  Seething with inhuman hatred for his foes, even as everything he ever was or dreamed he would be slowly faded to the ashes of death, Malek was reborn anew. A creature of blood and fire, a being of pure Rage and caustic fury. The dread Hound opened eyes of living flame and beheld the cackling frenzy of the swine-faced demons that had dared to strike him.

  33

  The chambers echoed with a bestial howl, as a creature of darkest nightmare was born anew. And Jess found herself grinning madly, oddly comforted by that terrible sound as she sped up the metal latticework, ignoring the purple energies scoring her skin.

  "Stop her, Kazikil! She must not touch the wand!" roared a now furious queen of Hell, Morlin de Plaga's groans of ecstasy turning to agonized cries as the succubus gnashed her teeth, eyes blazing, peering down still at the scene playing out before her in the vast cavern of dream and nightmare, her mocking laughter ceased at last. Jess grinned fiercely as she heard the wretched queen's discontent, imagining her terrible visage filling the entirety of the shimmering mirage separating their worlds.

  Well she could imagine it, and fiercely she delighted in it, but she was not so foolish as to look up with danger in all directions, simply to catch sight of a face so hauntingly familiar that it froze her soul just to glimpse it.

  And then Kazikil laughed, gazing at Jess with prideful disdain. "Fear not, my great and wondrous queen, vision of dark beauty so terrible in her splendor that all the lords of Hell must shudder and bow before your immortal glory! This wench shall not touch our prizes, for steel itself shall come to our aid!"

  With that he intoned curses dark and terrible, and Jess felt a frisson of dread and wonder as the massive structure of steel and stone began to warp and twist. The vast monument seemed to tear itself asunder as the foul voidal magics poured through it, dozens of metal rods breaking off and spinning about the hideous tower of shattered stone, living bone, and rusted steel.

  Spinning blades of jagged metal arced through the air at blinding speeds, but feet away from Jess, and she froze in mute examination for but a moment, even as a shudder of terrible knowing coursed through her.

  She understood it. In all its complexity.

  She knew the pattern behind the mad dance of twisted steel.

  She let loose a single discordant chuckle of her own, shudderingly familiar in its off-key pitch, and proceeded to pivot and weave past the spinning rods as they spun past her, her body moving in effortless synchronicity with the mad dance of death and dismemberment they wove. She was one with the ancient steps as she arced her body back, rusted steel rod passing by her chin with the speed of an archer's shaft, tumbling back as two shards of ancient bronze tore through the air where her legs had been.

  For Jezabelle, she who had once been a Peer and a Power within a court far more ancient and diabolical than any upon the face of Dawn, she who had once sipped from the very Chalice of Oblivion, had mastered Death's duet long ago.

  She laughed with mad delight at the game they played, dipping and twisting and spinning about, moving her body in an ancient dance once embraced by the Order of Reavers, a coven of death feared for their ferocity, even in the Courts below. And in the time it took the demonlord hovering above to howl in furious disbelief, she was past the triple rings of spinning bronze and steel, eyes alight with triumph and darkest memory both.

  “No, you damn fool. How dare you!” Roared the outraged lord of Hell floating above, and with a howl of fear he flew toward Jess, even as she crested the massive structure of twisted metal and tormented stone, sending jagged bolts of ebony lightning searing into Jezabelle's flesh, cursing her in tongues ancient and foul, seeking to send her hurtling into the Abyss itself, separated from the fragile dreaming world they danced and fought upon by but the slimmest of margins.

  Laughing with madness, embracing the darkest of raptures, Jezabelle dodged and cavorted with inhuman speed, fearing no longer the terrible magics roaring into her flesh, filling her with as much pleasure as pain, both scorching her flesh and revitalizing it, awakening ever darker hungers for more.

  No longer bothering to hide from herself what she was capable of in this realm of twisted dream, Jezabelle raced with inhuman speed for the brilliant, flashing blade of shimmering midnight spinning lazily in what passed for air in this realm of darkest Shadow, levitating of its own accord over the structure of twisted metal that Jess raced upon, locked as it was by unspeakable powers, nestled in the impossible sheath that was the fulcrum of two opposing dimensions.

  Seeing how she was going for the sword and not the wand, spinning free of constraint, the creature’s fury turned to laughter. “Yes! Touch the hilt of the Voidal Blade! Let it claim your soul and send you hurtling into the lowest pits of Hell! A fitting end to one such as you!”

  Sailing through the air with a fierce leap that sent her catapulting for the shimmering blade of mithril, Jezabelle's face twisted into the fiercest of grins as her desperately yearning hand grasped the hilt spinning through the air, and she howled with triumph even as her body sailed over the blackest pits of Hades, as if the terrible blade had ruptured the realm of dream entire, revealing with its gaping slash all the horrors of Hell below.

  And in the instant that her hands grasped the hilt of that terrible longsword, her triumphant cry turned to an agonized scream.

  She was beside herself, outside herself, a thousand places at once. She saw the scene before her as if from an unfathomable distance, from infinite angles, gazing with terrible eyes through endless dimensions even as she floated high above the twisted demonlord laughing at her desperate gamble.


  She gazed in awe and delight at the terrible blood covered hound below, tearing through the host of demons with hideous ease, great fangs snapping through infernal flesh as if it were the tenderest of meats, devouring alive the panicked, howling mass of demons desperately trying to flee the terrible hound, even as he crashed into the milling horde again and again. Twilight, she was pleased to see, was by Malek's side, her familiar dashing in to hamstring and disembowel, even as the roaring hound leaped for throats and limbs, the pair butchering together in perfect synchronicity, as if it were a dance they had reveled in together many times before.

  It was then that Jezabelle opened herself up at last to the dark whispers of power and potential shivering through her, become instantly aware of the echoes of a million million screaming souls.

  She shuddered in horror and wonder, sensing that those tormented beings were far from the sanctuary of Dawn. Rather, she could feel them all crying out from the many dimensions of Hell stacked together below her eternal garden, like the thinnest of parchments, for all that they were infinitely vast, spiraling down in directions inconceivable to her but moments ago, to the great roiling darkness that comprised the deepest, blackest layer of the Abyss entire.

  The Void itself.

  The end of all things.

  That black roiling mass of pure Oblivion that had the power to consume even the starry heavens above, she sensed. A terrible cauldron of utter destruction upon which the Hells themselves rested. Yet within the depths of the soul-crushing horror that was the Void lay the most awful path to true power. For she knew without knowing how that were she to somehow grasp the Chords of darkness that were the Provence of the Void, she would be harnessing magics of Oblivion so potent as to burn any mortal wizard to ash, even as he howled with the ecstasy of tasting ultimate power the instant before his soul shrieked with its final demise.

  And by some terrible means Jess could feel a connection to it. To all if it. To the infinite layers of the dark Abyss all spiraling endlessly down to the depths of the darkest realm imaginable, that black hole in space and time around which all the starry heavens within the many planes of reality spun.

  The pristine sword of glittering darkness was the key, somehow, to unlocking all of that terrible potential. She could sense it. Just as she could sense how the blade was sheathed at right angles to all known directions, nestled tightly within the parchment thin vastness of endless dimensions of Hell, piercing the very heart of that incomprehensible storm, the event horizon of Oblivion itself. Sheathed in the Void. Of the Void. The blade she would pull free.

  Jezabelle laughed in awe and wonder. For she could feel with every fiber of her being how the blade served as a conduit to all the powers of Oblivion, sufficient to wipe clean all the endlessly blazing stars of the sky from the palette of existence.

  With a terrible yearning that would have shocked and horrified her but an hour ago, she felt the blade calling out to her even as her hands locked upon the hilt, a seductive hunger to claim that terrible weapon, to tap into the terror and madness promised by the end of all things. The yearning to plunge all the levels of her psyche deep into the searing crucible of the Void, to give in utterly to its terrible embrace.

  “Yes, my sweet treasure,” crooned the seductive voice of that hellish queen even now gazing down upon Jezabelle with a look of tender pride, even as Kazikil looked upwards in horror, as if realizing that he was but a pawn in a game far more terrible than he could fathom. “It is time to claim your birthright. It is time for you to embrace your destiny.”

  And Jezabelle smiled. A brilliant, terrible smile that would have sent any villager witnessing it screaming in terror.

  The shimmering blade hummed wondrous melodies of agony even as existence itself howled and wept, the horrific discord filling Jezabelle with a burning sweetness that bordered on euphoria, an orgasmic symphony of destruction causing every fiber of her body to throb in shuddering climax as she pulled the mithril blade from of its sheath of distorted dimensions, freeing it at last from the terrible cauldron of Oblivion that it had nestled so comfortably within.

  Unfathomably distant from all known points, yet for her, the Void itself was ever and always just a sword's thrust away.

  And Jezabelle laughed. A terrible laugh filled with delicious madness, and she looked about as if waking from a long sleep. The mithril sword felt good in her hand. She sensed the gentle strums of ebony power coursing through her, begging to be released.

  She closed her eyes and chuckled throatily, felt the infinitely distant origin of those potent strands, plunging into the very depths of the terrible Void that served as the black heart of the spinning constellation of stars containing all their worlds.

  A throb of power. Screaming destruction sufficient to boil entire seas to scalding steam, the slightest pulse of her will all that was needed to awaken the fiery furnaces dormant within every mountain that had once spewed the hot magmas of Hell upon the face of Dawn.

  She could feel the Void itself caress her with its greeting.

  The final hour was at hand.

  Jezabelle grinned at the cloaked and helmeted figure flying toward her even as, with the gentlest of whispers, she formed an abyssal matrix of power fit to absorb and deflect the fiercest of arcane energies.

  Effortlessly she strode through the air, supported by nothing but the force of her own will. She gave her foe a mock salute, her hands protected once more in shimmering gauntlets of starry blackness.

  “Now embrace the purpose you were truly forged for, Kazikil!” shrieked the mad queen gazing at them still. “Dance with my Jezabelle in the most sacred of all duets! Show me how far you have come, my dear, sweet, Kazikil, before you fall at last to the sound of my daughter's dirge as she drinks the power of your doomed soul and remembers the delight of her enemy's final screams!”

  “Shall we dance?” Words Jezabelle uttered in Primal. Uncorrupted by the guttural weaknesses and inflections of mortal slaves and lesser Fallen, it was a language of power and intentions spoken only by the most dread agencies; kings and queens who had claimed dominion over vast realms of nightmare, the rulers of Hell itself.

  She grinned as Kazikil skittered back abruptly, her mocking laughter echoing through the great cavern even as the walls of the vast chamber began to shake and crack.

  Black cloak billowing, the powerfully built demon glided before Jess, tilting his head with a mocking bow even as his eyes blazed with a fierce hot yellow fire. "So be it, demoness! My blade Fallen Star wishes to taste the might of your mithril sword. And I, the power of its wielder. Begin!"

  Raising his great Zweihander blade, Kazikil saluted her with five feet of undulating metal before raising his sword high overhead. With a roar he charged her, his massive weapon lashing out, crackling with green eldritch energies even as he feinted high before morphing his Zornhau strike into a vicious thrust, straight for her heart.

  For all his speed and skill, Jezabelle only laughed, parrying his blow with effortless ease. Her body trembled under the fierce onslaught of unholy power roaring through her like a howling gale.

  Relentless in its potency, blowing every last shred of her humanity away.

  Her mind blazed with hyperacuity as battle-senses took hold to a degree heretofore unfathomed, bringing the world sliding to a crawl, even as her blade contemptuously displaced Kazikil's blistering Alexias of thrusts and slashes, knocking his massive weapon out of alignment just before thrusting her own sword deep into Kazikil's armored torso.

  Her foe gasped and shuddered, impaled by the perfectly executed Absetzen strike tearing through eldritch wards and abyssal armor like a torch burning away cobwebs, biting fiercely into her enemy's suddenly writhing flesh.

  Her mithril blade had pierced even the dark gift of voidal power that flowed through Kazikil, giving him such fearsome strength even as it slowly consumed him from within. With her shimmering weapon serving as the perfect conduit, Jezabelle savored the sweet corruption of his immortal essence, drinking
deep from the fount of his power.

  With an agonized scream the demonlord tore himself free, eyes wide with unaccustomed horror, dark wards and soul-forged armor having been cleaved through effortlessly by her terrible blade.

  Jezabelle savored the sudden stench of fear as her opponent's arrogance trickled away, his hate-filled gaze now wide with horrified disbelief. She laughed with darkest glee, even as the vast cavern itself began to buck and tremble.

  "What are you, creature?" The demon shook as he strove desperately to collect himself, Jezabelle grinning with savage delight as she sensed the end draw near for her foe. "No common demoness are you!" he said before hissing with triumph, his off-hand jutting forward to blast his laughing opponent with forked ebony lightning summoned from the very cauldron of Oblivion itself, enchantments so powerful they pierced her arcane wards with ease.

  Darkest magics that tore into her, the demonlord raising his fist and shouting in triumph, before hissing in disbelief.

  His spell had not pierced her wards.

  She had opened herself to his darkest, most hideous arts.

  So she could feed upon them.

  Jezabelle flashed a savage grin. "So terrible are your tainted magics, dear Kazikil. Linked to the black whispers of the Void itself. The cities you could devastate with but a single discordant word, and here you honor me with a screaming sonnet of your hate." Her laughter was throaty and deep, as the storm of hideous power that would have devastated Krona itself roared through her.

  As sweet as summer wine upon her soul.

  She shuddered with darkest pleasure, even as her enemy stumbled back.