by T J Marquis
Shanko pressed the blade lightly to Malok’s breastplate and cackled as it eased into the iron like warm butter. The commander stepped back, a tang of ozone in his nostrils. He frowned outwardly but was impressed.
“Oh don’t pout, fat boy,” Shanko said, short, pointy ears perking up. “We got you something too.”
Shanko’s men brought their cargo deep into the camp, scowling at the leering eyes of other ogres and beastmen, laughing and pinching their wet, black noses shut as they passed the restless undead.
Most of the goods were in the gunmetal cases they’d been stored in when stolen, and the rest had been packed in ironbound wooden crates. It was all opened up for Malok’s inspection, and most of the loot was beyond what he could have ever imagined. The supposedly ancient rifles looked like nothing he’d seen before, nothing like what his command was now armed with. Besides the many guns, there were more bluish swords, and sets of soft-looking, coal-stained armor. It was a treasure trove of promised violence.
Set apart from the rest was a small collection of greatswords in their own large case. Shanko indicated these were Malok’s special gift. The ogre hefted one and unsheathed it. Its steel was mottled and banded like Damascus steel, each random twist and turn limned with a dull red fire that shifted about, slow as magma. The beast commander laughed when the ogre’s eyebrows rose, pushing creases of green skin up his forehead, but his laughter ceased abruptly as Malok swung the sword in a blinding-fast arc, shaving off the edge of Shanko’s left pauldron. The beastman scowled as Malok laughed in revenge.
“Thank you, my comrade,” Malok said. “It is the sword of a king.” He gave a tiny bow.
Shanko blew off the courtesy and touched his damaged armor, singeing his fingers and cursing.
Malok waved to his clerk to tally up the new armaments, and the pale, lanky human scrambled to obey. Here were enough arms for the commander’s personal guard, and a few companies beside. The Reds said there was more loaded on the incoming barges, and Malok couldn’t wait to see those flying in, for he could hardly imagine such vehicles.
He fingered the cut Shanko had made in his breastplate as he marched back to his tent. Once the new weapons had been distributed, all their preparations would be complete, and the march to glory would begin.
The ogre-giant led his battalions a respectable distance northward in the days it took for the barges to catch up to them. He could have let them wait to be picked up, but discipline was key to attaining honor and was lacking enough among this unruly bunch. He marched them hard instead. He could not deny, however, the massive advantage they gained once they’d boarded the huge, hovering barges and begun to cruise north, low to the ground and close to the mountains’ foothills.
It took most of a day to get the troops situated on the barges. It didn’t help that the slave dragon was being unruly. The beastmen, in particular, didn’t seem to like leaving the ground behind as they boarded the perpetually hovering slabs of metal. Malok didn’t much like it either, but he knew the barges were in capable hands.
His barge’s helm was situated at the very fore of the craft, and Malok stood by to watch as it was prepared for launch. He wrinkled his nose at the cheesy scent of the lead barge’s gremlin pilot. An unpleasant race, rude and almost entirely without honor, but they were unmatched in discovering the workings of such ancient relics as these.
In less than two day’s time, they swept down on the town of Ota like a hawk on a rat. Malok’s soldiers groaned at his orders to save the new rifles for future battles, but they rushed into the slaughter with relish, painting their weapons red with the blood of the several hundred Anekans living in the little mining town.
Naturally, the men of the town attempted to mount a defense, but it was fruitless, and all of them were cut to pieces. The battle was all too short for Malok’s tastes, and bitterly he gave the order to raze the town to the ground. The dragon was let off its chains and its keepers ordered it to incinerate everything. Malok could see that the beast wanted to flee, but its enchanted collar kept it bound.
What an inglorious sacking this had been. As the electricity of battle faded from his veins, Malok nursed disappointment in his heart and watched the beastmen sniff out the rest of Ota’s hiding citizens. They were to leave no one alive.
The town of Ota was nestled between a sheer mountainside and the legendary Road. The old highway seemed to be made entirely of steel, and it was said that its magic could transport people and things between Anek and Enkann in a few instants. It was also said that only humans could use it, and other races would be disintegrated upon contact. Malok was tempted to set foot on the Road and see if its magic were real, but old superstitions ran deep, and he didn’t think the experience was worth risking his life. He considered having one of his soldiers test the myth but decided that would be dishonorable. Instead, he sent a team to plant explosives over the mouth of the tunnel, and they’d collapsed it in short order, sealing it shut.
Then he ordered the small portions of the vanguard who’d pillaged the town to board their barge, and had the drum signal sounded to embark to their next destination.
They cruised through the morning to where the Road terminated, a few hundred miles west of the mountain pass that Ota had been built in. All along the way, it sat on its thousands of support pillars, a few hundred feet above the earth. At its end, it sloped and curved down to ground level in a long ramp, just past an incomplete junction that would have bent the highway northward toward Anescama. This would be an excellent test of Malok’s new cannons, so the commander ordered the barges to land.
Another small town was in the midst of its construction here, likely a place for traders from the neighboring countries to convene. The site was unguarded, and the workers and their families fled before the Nulian host, without even trying to take anything with them. It was hard to keep his soldiers in check, but Malok let the humans run. He wanted them to tell the tale of what was coming next.
Malok had his kinsmen unload one of the cannons the Doom had sent them to retrieve. It was about ten feet in diameter, with a twenty-foot barrel. Most of its dome-shaped base was of overlapping armor plates, painted white, and the barrel thrust out from a five-foot gap in the hull. It seemed part of the large mechanism was missing, as the cannon did not swivel, and had to be moved and aimed manually. They would have to build wagons for these things.
Malok was the largest of the ogres, a rare giant at nearly ten feet, but the cannon team was anything but diminutive, and he was surprised to see them struggle with the weight of the machine. They carefully aimed it at the sloping surface of the Road’s entrance ramp. Malok stood in attendance as gremlin engineers scrambled over the thing greedily, long ears twitching, sharp jawed mouths slavering at the touch of this new toy. Their chief spoke with the ogre team’s leader and they all went about priming the cannon to fire. The Doom had advertised the weapon’s effectiveness to Nul’s army before sending orders down the line, but Malok guessed its power was something that had to be seen to be appreciated.
The gremlin chief called out and waved a clawed hand up and down impatiently. The ogre chief looked to his commander, and Malok signaled to fire at will.
With the throw of a switch, the cannon powered up. A static hum arose, emanating from within the dome of armor. This was followed by a purple glow at the barrel’s maw, faint at first, but slowly brightening. A distorted tunnel of air stretched between the cannon’s barrel and the Road, and with the sound of a thousand curtains ripping, a blinding purple mass of light bore into the Road for several moments before dissipating.
After a moment of shock, a joyous roar went up among the troops of the vanguard, briefly attracting the wandering gazes of the penned up undead, still on the barges.
The Road had been melted to slag where the purple mass had struck. It would now be impossible for the Anekans to transport anything via the Road without the construction of a new ramp. Malok was startled when the cannon fired itself a second time, without an o
rder or the action of the cannoneers. The purple fire bore into the Road’s support structure, there was a series of piercing cracks and pops, and with a deafening boom the structure under the onramp blew outward, ogres and gremlins cowering under a brief rain of shrapnel and molten metal. Another coarse cheer went up among the troops as the end of the highway sagged and twisted on its damaged support columns. Ruins impacted the ground.
Malok thought the surface of the Road lost a bit of its luster, but that may have been a trick of the light or a cloud passing across the sun. He surmised that whatever powered the magic of the Road, at least at this terminus, had just been destroyed. It was an easy victory, but a significant one. Now, if Anek and Enkann desired to aid each other against the storm to come, they would have to dig their way through the mountain pass and travel for weeks.
Malok considered again testing the Road with one of his minions. It would be regrettable, but the Doom would be displeased if Malok couldn’t say for certain whether the Road was out of commission. Shanko beat him to it.
The beast commander plucked an excitable gremlin from the ranks by the scruff of his neck and tossed him up onto the smoldering slope of ruined metal. The gremlin scrambled for purchase, its skin burning in the heat, but eventually, it made its way to the upper portion of the ramp, where the damage ended. It stood there expectantly, sweating as it waited for death, but nothing happened. The gremlin sighed visibly and took a several steps to the east. Any questions as to the state of the Road were answered when the gremlin’s movement remained at a normal speed. The gremlin was not whisked away by ancient magic, nor had it been incinerated by some cruel enchantment.
For ages this highway had connected the two lands, and in a single display of the cannon’s glorious might, it had been reduced to the state of a normal road. Malok wasn’t one to relish in pointless destruction, but the gravity of the moment put a smile on his face.
He let the troops stretch their legs and enjoy their rations before giving the order to embark again. It was hardly believable that they could hit three distant targets in a single day, but here they were, cruising over the plains toward the Anekan fort at Otu. This wouldn’t be quite as soft a target as Ota, but all intelligence pointed to the human leaders’ continued ignorance of invasion, so again his forces would have the element of surprise. Malok felt bold, or maybe bored, and did not land the barges out of sight or under cover, but instead had them touch down upon the road to Bayport, giving the fort’s defenders a good amount of time to scramble a defense.
He wanted this to be a fun fight.
The sharp-eyed beastman scouts estimated a battalion of defenders were holed up in the wooden fortifications, besides workers and their families. The vanguard forces formed rank and marched just out of rifle range. Both armies would have some rifles, but no one would be willing to break cover so soon. Malok imagined the humans were shaking in their boots already. They had yet to see all that the ogre could bring to bear.
First Malok opened up the pens of stinking undead and let them shamble forth. Nasty things, those, a random mix of fallen enemies and allies, reanimated by the dark powers of the Doom. Both ogre and gremlin shamans had charge of the things, but the gremlins had a greater tolerance for the stench. Though distasteful to be near, the undead were extremely useful - they took more effort to dispatch than a mortal frontliner, and were far easier to replace. Their only drawbacks were being entirely disorganized and distractible. They would serve merely as meat shields while Malok maneuvered his living forces into position.
Rifle fire erupted from the fort’s ramparts and blew a few dozen undead to bits, but then the rain of bullets ceased abruptly as the Anekans thought better of wasting their ammunition. Malok applauded them for the wise decision. He preferred a careful opponent. In the meantime, the undead continued their slow march toward the fort’s walls. There they would smell the humans, and press against the gate until it fell, or at least occupy the Anekans while Malok prepared a second wave of attack.
Then something streaked down from the ramparts and onto the road, the form of a person with a blazing aura of white fire. It rushed with unnatural speed into the crush of undead, sprouting blades of light from its arms. The members of the horde were much too slow to defend or retaliate, and they swiftly fell in piles of dismembered limbs and severed heads. Malok’s first thought was of an angel of destruction. Then the anger arose in him, a bruised indignance at the ease with which this mysterious foe had cut through his undead.
He called to the drummers and they beat out the signal for the main company to close the distance. Looking about, Malok saw hesitation in the postures of much of his force. Only the beastmen were slavering and eager to fight. He cursed the weak, spindly gremlins and his lazy ogre brethren. Yet none of them refused to march or attempted to flee, for they knew well that the penalty for insubordination was death, and not a swift one.
The white-wreathed form paused in its rampage for a moment, seeming to hear the drums and notice the rest of Malok’s forces on the move. The ogre was pretty sure it was a man. The person spun into a renewed whirlwind of death, clearly meaning to eradicate every last one of the undead.
Malok studied his techniques as well as he could, peering past the brightness of the man’s aura. He seemed to have some rudimentary hand-to-hand experience, in a form the ogre did not recognize. He wasn’t using his blades of fire like swords, but as extensions of his hands, and the punches and kicks that he threw were practiced, but rusty. The man’s balance was off slightly, and only his superior speed kept the hands of the dead from weighing him down. Within a few short minutes, the last of the undead fell to the blades of light, and Malok had his rifle companies open fire on the white-shrouded man.
Bullets from the modern rifles and bolts of cobalt light from the ancient ones pummeled him to no effect, though he did fall back several steps as his aura absorbed the attack. When the rifle companies stopped to reload, the man rushed forward to press his own attack. A gremlin fell to his blades, cut in three pieces, and the man fell to a knee for a moment afterward. An orb of bloody light appeared above and behind him, crackling with white lightning and dripping deep red fire. The man took no notice, and regaining his feet he bore into the lines of riflemen, who were forced now to engage him in melee combat.
It was then that Malok thought he could see the tide of the battle rising, and that tide was red.
The moment Jon laid eyes on the undead shambling toward the Anekan fort, he became a different man. Some of the undead were human, others the corpses of creatures Jon had never seen or heard of before. All of their eyes shone with a dull red light, like portals to Sheol itself. He felt the white fire from the tips of his fingers to the blades of his shoulders, and a primal urgency pumped irrational blood into his mind, speed into his legs. He vaulted from the hard-packed ground to the top of the outer wall and heard his friends and the soldiers gasp in reaction.
Jon shot down from the ramparts and sprinted to close the distance to the undead. These things were unnatural, evil, and they must be destroyed. The scent of putrid swamps filled his nostrils, enlivening his rage. His body hummed with the destructive potential of the Light, screaming for release and judgment. He knew no more conscious thought, only instinct, until the last of the undead had fallen.
Then something hit him in the chest, one tiny punch, followed by a barrage. Instinctively he raised his hands to block and saw the blades he’d sprouted from his forearms. He didn’t remember doing that. Time seemed to slow and he saw bullets disintegrating in the aura of white that armored him. He could feel their kinetic force, but they did not penetrate his skin. Blobs of cobalt light splashed against the white, but also did not hurt him. These imparted no force, but he could feel a little of their heat. He scanned the battlefield in front of him and found his attackers.
In a moment he was among them, smelling their sweat and oils, the leather and iron of their armor, the burnt ozone of the energy rifles and the spice of gunpowder. He dre
w his blades like scissors across a small green creature with pointy ears, and it shrieked before it crumpled to the ground. Sharp pain in his chest caused him to hesitate, and his vision flashed red. He caught a fleeting memory of the creature’s last thought, of fear and uncertainty.
His rage subsided briefly as he thought, These things are people.
Dozens of them pressed in on him, more of the little green ones, much larger green humanoids with bulbous features and huge ears, and shaggy, stinking animal-men of various breeds. If he did not defend himself, they would kill him, and his quest would be over.
He slew a beastman, then another, and another small green one, gradually increasing tempo. For the first few, the red flashes disturbed his vision again, then became a red veil across his sight that was ever-present. Each creature’s final thoughts blew through his head like a bullet. He lost himself in the carnage, blood boiling away whenever it splashed his aura, blades of fire remaining pure as sunlight.
The cry of many men arose from behind him, and he glanced back toward the fort during a lull in his fight. He had come a few hundred yards, but closing the gap swiftly were several companies of Anekan soldiers in their slate blue fatigues. About half of them were atop horses and armed with rifles and sabers. They roared as they charged, and the cavalry caught up to Jon first, slicing down into enemy bodies from above. Joyous cheers greeted Jon as the men rode into the fray.
It was then that Jon noticed the bloodlights behind him. They were too many to count, dark red orbs of light oozing as if they were wounds in reality itself. Connecting each orb to the next were arcs of red and white lightning, forming a writhing, ethereal net many meters wide. Any time a threat drew too near, the bloodlights would strike out and claim the attacker’s life, piercing or slicing, and add a new orb to the network. Jon knew this power belonged to him, but he did not understand it, and a dull terror blossomed in his gut.
