by Dante King
Weirdly enough, it was just him speaking now; his voice didn’t sound like a hundred warriors chanting together. Also, his eyes were no longer solid red; they had returned to their usual color. Had my zombie oblates managed to blast his connection to the Blood God out of his body? Was he now just a man, severed from his merger with the evil deity? If so, that would make this fight a cinch for me.
“I knew you would be trouble down the line,” he continued, “but even so, you’re not strong enough to stop me, not now.”
I started approaching Rodrick, who was still on the opposite side of the pool of blood. I took my time; I felt confident that I could beat my uncle anyway, and beating a frustrated uncle would be even easier—and more fun. I, slowly swung my kusarigama chain around as I connected it to the power of the zombies outside. They were still packed tight in the door of the temple, fighting off Rodrick’s army, who were struggling to force their way inside. I began to walk toward Rodrick, who was on the opposite side of the pool of blood.
“It’s strange that you should talk about me not being strong enough. Yeah, you lying, cowardly sack of shit—I noticed that you’re no longer referring to yourself as a ‘we’. Where’s your buddy the Blood God now? It seems to me that you’re nothing but a man again, Rodrick—a weak, broken old man who doesn’t stand a fucking chance against a god. I’m gonna rip you limb from limb, you sack of rancid jizz, and I’m gonna tear your—”
Instead of cowering, however, my uncle threw his head back and laughed. Again, it was the weak, reedy laughter of a mere man; gone was the thunderous roar of the Blood God’s voice.
“What are you laughing about, you little bitch?” I roared, quickening my strides as I neared him, eager to unleash my vengeance. “I’ve won, you’ve lost. You’re about to die very, very painfully and very, very slowly. I’m about to wipe that fucking grin off your face—”
“Your undead creatures almost killed me, Vance—almost. You’ve forgotten one very important detail. Time waits for neither men nor gods…and you’ve just run out of it.”
I followed his gaze, which was focused on a window high up near the domed ceiling, and through it, I saw the first sliver of the rising sun cresting the jagged peaks of the mountains. The sun was red…blood red.
“Oh, shit,” I gasped, willing the Bone Bow into my hands.
As quickly as I moved, however, my uncle moved faster. I was still too far off. He dived through the air in a desperate leap, his curved dagger in his hand, and buried it hilt-deep between Lucielle’s ribs. The goddess’s eyes bulged with shock and pain as the long blade sliced through her innards, and she staggered and swayed on rapidly weakening legs, before she flopped forward onto the ground. The gag burst out of her mouth, and with it a gush of blood…blood that started trickling toward the pool. I knew that if the blood made it into that red lake, all hell would break loose.
I fired two quick shots with the Bone Bow at Rodrick, to immobilize him before he could do anything else. One blew off his left shin, the other took off all his right forearm. He screamed and collapsed, the stumps of his severed limbs spurting blood, but even as he howled in agony, he managed to laugh, his crazed eyes locked on the sight of the goddess’s blood running toward the pool.
“No!” I roared, sprinting as fast as I could around the rim of the pool as the trail of blood from Lucielle crept inexorably closer to the edge.
I saw the blood running closer and closer as I ran, and I finally launched myself into a flying dive at full speed, hitting the ground and then sliding on my belly, my hand outstretched.
But I was too late. My hand slid through the trail of blood, blocking it…but not fast enough to stop one drop from rolling over the edge and dropping into the pool. The moment that single drop hit the rest of the pool, the entire Temple of Blood started to shake with furious violence, as if a gigantic earthquake had suddenly started. The force of it lifted me up off the ground and hurled me against a wall.
Half-stunned, I struggled to my feet, and saw the entire pool of blood boiling and bubbling madly. Rodrick was staring at the frothing blood with a look of gleeful insanity in his eyes, despite how badly he was wounded, and how much pain he was no doubt in. And then, from the boiling blood, two enormous red hands, covered in scales and spikes, started to emerge. Each hand made a Frost Giant look small; the Demogorgon was an absolute titan. It wouldn’t even have to do anything to demolish this entire temple and kill everyone in it; all it would have to do to achieve that was materialize fully. The eyes of the gagged slaves in cages, which had already been wide with terror, were now bulging with even greater fear.
If this thing materialized fully, there was no way I’d be able to stop it. So how was I going to stop it? I remembered how I’d done that before, back in Brakith, by blowing up the cauldron, but this pool was too big for such a tactic.
I only had one hope; if Fate was on my side, I would have garnered enough new souls from this evening’s intensive fighting to give me a new skill—one with which I could halt the nightmare that was unfolding in front of me.
“This better fucking work,” I growled as I closed my eyes and transported myself to the black plane.
I sprinted across the smooth black ground, my eyes fixed on the tree. Everything was silent and peaceful here, but I was all too aware that back in the physical realm, shit was getting real very rapidly.
“Come on, fucking be there!” I yelled, my eyes scanning the fog that surrounded the top of the tree.
And there it was, shining out a promise of survival, at least for a few minutes more: a new skill, glowing brightly, hanging from one of the branches high up. I had never scaled this tree as quickly as I did now, jumping up from branch to branch, pulling myself up at a crazed speed. I shuffled closer to the skill and grinned, despite everything, when I saw what it was: multiple corpse explosions. Just what I needed. When I made it there, I snatched it off the branch and dived straight off, hurtling toward the ground. I was back in my body on the physical plane long before I hit the glassy black surface.
By now, the upper half of the Demogorgon’s body had materialized, and I could behold the creature in all of its horrifying glory. Its body was like that of an immensely muscular man in structure, but atop its bull-neck sat a head that was something like a cross between a toad’s and a viper’s, but with long fangs in its mouth, and huge, curved ram’s horns, as well as multiple other horns on the side of its head. All the protrusions were as blood red as the rest of the foul creature.
And as for its size—this thing made even the biggest Frost Giant look like a rat. Even now, when it had half-materialized, its head was almost touching the many corpses hanging from the ceiling.
Hundreds of corpses…hundreds of corpses that would make for a gargantuan explosion when detonated all at once.
“Come into being, my beautiful creature!” my uncle screamed, his face deathly pale from blood loss, but his eyes bright and crazed.
The Demogorgon’s eyes, however, were still closed—for now. I didn’t want this thing to see me—not yet, at least—so I scooped up Lucielle, who was still breathing, albeit weakly, and rushed over to a large pillar and ducked behind it before the creature could see me. That was when it opened its eyes. As if it had just bathed in blood—right, it had—it seemed to have to blink its eyes shut a few times before it could properly open them. And then I saw them: the solid red eyes that immediately found my buttlicker of an uncle.
“Finally!” he cried, “I have brought you into existence! My beauty, my wonderful, amazing beauty! Together, we will conquer the entirety of the world for our master, and—”
The Demogorgon could not leave the pool of blood, seen as its legs had not yet materialized, but it could reach my uncle. It swiveled its waist and picked him up with the thumb and forefinger of its left hand. It held him up in front of its face, studying him like a curious boy might study a grasshopper he had just caught…and then it ripped one of his arms off, as casually as that boy would pull off th
e grasshopper’s leg. The look of crazed excitement on my uncle’s face quickly became a grimace of agony, and he howled in pain. This was all before his arm was ripped off, and then his whole body was torn in half, laterally. The Demogorgon had started the rip by his collar bone, and torn down through his chest and torso, turning the screams into grotesque songs of ecstatic pain. When it tore through my still-alive, rat-like uncle’s midsection, his intestines and stomach spilled out.
“Oh no you don’t, you ugly red fuck!” I roared, jumping out from behind the pillar. “That asshole’s soul is mine!”
Already, though, the light of life was fading from my uncle’s eyes. I had to take his soul, no matter what. Not even the fucking Demogorgon was going to take that away from me. I whipped Grave Oath out and flung it with unfaltering precision. It spun through the air at speed, and the blade slammed into Rodrick’s eyeball, capturing his soul just before it could have left his body of its own accord.
The Demogorgon tossed my uncle’s torn-up, shriveling corpse aside, and turned to study me. For a few moments we stared at each other, and then I felt it—a sensation similar to what I’d felt before the blood lightning had blasted down from the storm Rodrick had called up. Whatever was coming next, though, I knew would be far stronger than any lightning strike. I remembered mining the memories of the people who had died in Kroth when the Demogorgon had attacked there; they had shown me one bright flash that had somehow killed everyone there.
There would be no point in hiding; whatever the Demogorgon was going to do would fill this space with unimaginably destructive energy, energy that no stone or wall could protect you from. I had to use a magical shield and hope that the power of Death was strong enough to resist it.
The only hope I had of surviving was to draw on the Death power of the many thousands of corpses buried under this temple; hopefully their lingering rage at having been murdered in the name of the Blood God would provide me with enough strength to survive what was coming.
I launched my spirit down into the soil, gathering every ounce of Death energy that was packed into the many layers of earth, going deep, all the way down to crumbling skeletons that were tens of thousands of years old, and others that were even older, ones whose bones had turned to stone. I gathered it all around me, spinning it around my spirit and whirling it up into a gigantic tornado, which I sucked up into my physical body. There was so much power in me that I thought I was going to explode, quite literally: blood was oozing out of my pores, and my veins were bulging like satiated earthworms through my skin. I was barely able to stay conscious, but I knew that I had to maintain my grip on the Death magic; using it was the only way I could survive. I needed a physical shield to channel it through, though, and I quickly realized exactly what I needed to do.
With a wordless shout I called up Bone Prisons, and immediately the huge ribs blasted out of the soil and closed like teeth around the slaves who were still alive. It wasn’t to trap them, though; it was to protect them. I called up one last Bone Prison around myself and Lucielle—who was still breathing, somehow—and then I channeled the immensity of the Death magic I had been holding in through the Bone Prisons, fortifying the ribs with this massive power.
At that moment, the Demogorgon was ready too, and without delay it unleashed its magic. Through the gaps between the ribs of my Bone Prison I saw a blinding bright light, tinged with red, and felt a tremendous force press against the Bone Prison from all sides, as if the weight of an entire planet had been dumped on top of it. The bones started to crack and splinter, but the Death magic that was fortifying them held fast against the brutal force. I could feel the Death magic being depleted, second by second, as the brightness of the red glow outside the Bone Prison increased in intensity. I was reeling on my feet now, weakening steadily, and knew that if the Demogorgon kept up its assault for just a few more seconds it would all be over.
But then, just when I thought I might actually pass out, and all my Bone Prisons would explode, the Demogorgon’s assault stopped. I didn’t know how or why—maybe the asshole had run out of power, maybe he thought I was dead—but it stopped, thank whomever, it stopped. Less of the Death magic was left in the earth below than I had used; one more of these assaults and we’d all be history. I had to take this motherfucker out right now.
I retracted the Bone Prison, but as soon as I saw what was outside I had to stop and stare. Everything behind me and around me was just gone. Thick pillars of stone had melted into lumps, as if they’d been wax candles. Walls had been liquefied, blown away like paper. The better part of the temple had been blown away, and there was a trail of rubble extending outward into the mountains going back a mile. Shit, I didn’t need the Lord of Light’s tear to destroy this place completely; the Demogorgon would do that on its own. It hardly needed a Temple of Blood anymore if it was about to take over the world…
Of course, in achieving my objective of destroying the temple, it would kill all of us too, and pretty much everything else in Prand, eventually. It was now three-quarters materialized, with its huge red legs formed down to its knees. Just its calves, ankles, and feet remained—and then it would be in this world for ever.
The ceiling, with all the hanging corpses, was still intact. However hopeless things seemed, I still had fuel. Using what strength still remained in me, I resurrected half of the hanging corpses as zombies. Yeah, this was desecrating innocent dead, but there was a greater need here, and I couldn’t afford to give much of a fuck about dignity right now. As I felt the Demogorgon summoning up power for another strike, I directed each zombie to grab a corpse with one hand, and then to rip both themselves and the corpses out of the meathooks from which they were suspended. They all did this, dropping from the ceiling in pairs. Those who could land on the Demogorgon did so, grabbing the creature’s scales with their free hand, and holding on with their zombie strength, while other pairs of zombies and corpses splashed into the boiling blood. These I directed to swim over to the materializing Demogorgon and climb up its legs.
The titanic creature roared and writhed as my corpse-trailing zombies covered it like swarming termites, but it did not try to swat them off; its mind was focused on delivering another smite of immense power, which I could feel was about to be unleashed. I couldn’t wait a second longer—I had to strike now, before the Demogorgon did.
I called up protective Bone Prisons again, and filled them with the last of the Death magic from the earth. Only, this time they would not be protecting me and the slaves from the Demogorgon’s magic; they would be protecting the living from what I was about to unleash.
I called up my new spell, multiple corpse explosion, and instantly felt hundreds of threads all be connected to my fingertips—triggers for explosions that would all be detonated simultaneously. Then, with the last of my energy, I sent out the charge that would set it all off.
A shock wave ripped through the ground below me and blasted an incredible force against the Bone Prison inside which I and Lucielle were sheltering. Hundreds of corpses, all of which were stuck like ticks to the Demogorgon, detonated at once. Absorbing the force of the blast depleted all of the remaining Death magic, and after the explosion had torn through the temple, the Bone Prisons crumbled away.
Everything was a mess outside; more of the temple had been blown away, but so had the Demogorgon. The blood pool was no longer boiling, and the ancient demon was gone. It had been obliterated, splattered into chunks that were sprayed all over what pillars and walls had been left standing. The roof of the temple had been blown clean off, and daylight was now streaming into this foul place. The Blood Demons and the Bone Prisons in which they had been imprisoned had also been blown to smithereens.
I stared grimly at the pool of blood where the Demogorgon had just been standing.
“Fuck you, you piece of shit demon,” I growled, my fists clenched. “That’s what happens when you fuck with the God of Death.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
I looked down at my body
, and it took me a while to register that I was actually still alive, as were the slaves and Lucielle. Lucielle, though, was only barely clinging to life. Her face was deathly pale, and her white dress was clinging to her body, saturated with blood. Now that the walls and roof had been blown off the Temple of Blood, I could hear the sounds of battle raging outside. But it wasn’t just my zombies fighting Rodrick’s troops now: I could hear my party fighting. They had finally arrived, and, from the sound of it, they were winning. Since I had nothing to worry about from the soldiers, I focused on Lucielle.
“You…did it,” she gasped weakly. “You stopped…Rodrick.”
“And I killed that fucking Demogorgon—or blew its ugly ass back to whatever pit it crawled out of.”
“Unfortunately for me, Vance…it’s too late,” she murmured, her voice barely audible. “Rodrick’s knife—the wound is mortal.”
“I’m sorry, Lucielle,” I said, cradling the goddess in my arms as she bled out. “I tried to get here as fast as I could. But I guess…I was too late.”
“You did everything…you could have done…but now…I must…”
She closed her eyes and breathed her last, and her body slumped in my arms.
Before I could do or say anything else, Rollar and Elyse came rushing in. Rollar’s Thunder Hammer was dripping with the blood of Rodrick’s troops, as was Elyse’s mace.
“Lord Vance!” Rollar shouted, racing through the rubble to get to me, followed closely by Elyse, who had a look of deep concern etched on her beautiful face. “Are you injured?”
“Tell me you’re safe Vance!” Elyse cried. “Please tell me you’re safe!”
I stood up, holding the dead goddess in my arms. “I’m fine,” I called out grimly, “but Lucielle…she didn’t make it.”
“What of your uncle, Lord Vance?” Rollar asked. “Did you kill him? And the Demogorgon? If the sacrifice went ahead at dawn…”
