Soul Stealer: Legacy of the Blade

by Joseph J. Bailey

  Alric’s words were exactly what I did not want to hear. “There’s a good lad.”

  “For the record, I hate you.” I could not muster the necessary sarcasm to make my curse have the appropriate venom.

  “I know, son.”

  I could feel Alric’s jovial patronage as he spoke.

  I snarled.

  “It’s in the basement, isn’t it?”

  I could feel evil radiating from beneath the house like heat from a stove.

  Why couldn’t it be in the sitting room or waiting neighborly on the front porch?

  Why did evil choose the most inconvenient places to lie in wait?

  Where was its sense of courtesy?

  Hospitality?

  Chivalry?

  I’m sure the demon sensed my approach. It could at least have had the decency to try to sneak up on me or boldly attack hoping to overwhelm my opposition.

  But no.

  It chose to lurk.

  To lie in wait.

  Really, I was not worth waiting for.

  “Let’s get this over with. I have some tasty dried beans to gum.”

  “Truer words have never been spoken.”

  There it was again. That dry wit.

  I was going to have to get Alric some water.

  I really did not want to step onto the porch.

  The homestead had looked so much more bucolic when it was just a haunted, derelict farmstead viewed across fallow, weed-infested fields.

  The skeletons and artfully arranged human skins spread tautly over profane wooden frames marked with vile sigils in dried blood did not exactly scream Welcome! Or Come on in!

  I came on in.

  I never really was good at knocking.

  “Ready or not, here I come!”

  I could be really obnoxious.

  Especially when my partner wasn’t playing nicely.

  I just wished I had a door to kick in.

  Of course, unless it was like my failed door at home, I would probably end up planted on my behind for the effort, the door unmoved.

  In this case, I needn’t worry.

  I stepped over the threshold, wary of traps but seeing no magical haze indicative of fell enchantments intended to snare the unwary.

  The overwhelming gloom of the place evaporated before Loer’allon’s radiance as I strode forward. I was fortunate the demon did not ambush me as I walked into the house because I was acting much more confident than I felt.

  At least my knees were not shaking.

  And I didn’t soil myself.

  I was sure that would happen soon enough.

  A goal for another day…

  The primary level was one large open room. Sagging stairs with no handrail led upward to a second floor held overhead by crudely finished planks and stout beams. A cooking area next to a stacked stone fireplace took up the side of the room opposite the stairs. What furniture there was lay smashed and broken, strewn across the floor like last fall’s leaves.

  Decoration was late demonic with abstract blood smears and minimalist tokens of supernatural habitation.

  All in all, the place was rather tastefully done for a lesser denizen of the lower Abyss.

  “I sense its presence below. It does not appear to be readying arcana.”

  Like a spider waiting to snare a fly.

  Alric’s words told me nothing I did not know.

  They were there to steady me and help me maintain my resolve.

  Nice chap, Alric.

  I really wished he was not dead.

  Of course, if that were the case, I would not be on this fool mission in the first place.

  And, even if I were, I could send him first.

  Oh, dreams of dreams, how I wish you were true!

  “Focus, Saedeus. Just because the demon is not preparing any spells does not mean it can’t explode up through the floor to entrap you even as we speak.”

  “Don’t worry, Alric. This is my type of demon.

  “Lazy.

  “Willing to wait.

  “Why work yourself up in a lather going after prey when you have an eternity to let it come to you?”

  Yeah…my kind of demon. That was saying something.

  The stairs to the basement were beneath the stairs to the second floor.

  I really did not want to take them.

  Here’s a thought experiment.

  Imagine you have to walk down some stairs. Not just any stairs, mind you, but stairs open to the side entering into darkness. In the darkness lurks something terrible. You don’t know what but, in truth, terrible is an understatement. Your eyes are, sadly, accustomed to the light of day. You have to walk down those stairs feet first, exposing your legs as you go with little opportunity to maneuver or protect yourself as you proceed down.

  What do you do?

  Do you dive down head first, dual crossbows firing as you flip through the air and land agilely on your feet, bolts blazing?

  Do you drop a fireball ahead of you, the magical detonation blowing up the stairs and anything near them, shielding yourself with a coruscating magical tapestry?

  Do you walk down casually like you own the place, your only fear whether you’ll miss a step and spoil your entrance?

  Or do you run away?

  I certainly can tell you what I wanted to do.

  Especially since I could not yet cast a fireball, or any spell that would do more than perhaps offend a demon, I knew that there was no one I would impress with or without tripping, and I did not own any crossbows. And, if I did, the last thing I would be able to do with them was shoot accurately while diving headlong into darkness at a supernatural entity hellbent on eating my soul.

  I’m just saying.

  The stairs creaked as I took them.

  My heart stopped.

  For several beats.

  When my heart finally started back up, the beats were so loud I thought someone was playing a drum solo inside my chest.

  Despite my fears, at least the supernatural interloper did not attack me on the stairway. I would have seen it coming but I probably would not have had much time to do anything about it.

  Aside from making more racket than a pack of wolves howling at a new moon, I made it down uneventfully.

  The basement was larger than I had expected.

  Although our supernatural friend had yet to make an appearance, I could certainly see its handiwork.

  The room looked like an abattoir for the insane.

  Body parts in various states of decay lay scattered everywhere.

  Motley pieces were joined together in haphazard arrangements that resembled nothing human…or worth further study.

  The smell was not spring fresh.

  I suppressed the urge to vomit.

  There was a round stone well tucked in the room’s far corner located beneath the cooking area upstairs. A low stone wall encircled its hidden depths. A wooden bucket suspended from a rusty hinge by a gnarled, fraying rope hung welcomingly over the waiting darkness.

  The scene was so inviting I really wanted a drink.

  I could sense the demon’s presence down the shaft, coiled expectantly within.

  To my mind’s eye, a putrescent, greenish brown miasma of revolting energies frothed about the well’s rim.

  Delicious.

  I felt deep remorse that my waterskin was already full.

  Loer’allon’s divine halo pushed the vile demonic exudation back down into the well.

  I felt better already.

  At least until the demon exploded upward out of the well in a frothing spume of putrid water that did little to clean anything it touched.

  I could see why the thing had been experimenting with rearranging and connecting all the random body parts.

  That’s what it was.

  The demon charged across the room toward me, a vaguely humanoid corpulent patchwork of indiscriminate body parts scavenged together from all its many victims…keepsakes for its fond remembrances of deaths pas
t.

  Impossibly large, the thing moved faster than I would have thought possible.

  That’s what I got for thinking generally.

  Being wrong.

  Consistently.

  And often.

  Thankfully Loer’allon was already out and, in my moment of indecision, took matters in her own pommel.

  Before I could register what was happening, the holy sword lashed out diagonally, cutting the demon in twain from left shoulder to right hip.

  That quickly, the flesh demon fell.

  Unfortunately, presaged by a cloud of blood and offal, the thing fell on me.

  I fell with it.

  Sadly, the destiny I had hoped to avoid, the sordid legacy of the Djen’toth, consumed me.

  In all honesty, it could have been much worse.

  At least the demon’s vile soul was counterbalanced by the hundreds it had consumed that made up its patchwork essence.

  Which, come to think of it, was not exactly positive either.

  I just had to incorporate a small hamlet into myself.

  Alric saved me.

  “Embrace Loer’allon!

  “Hold to her essence!”

  Hundreds of lives rushed in on me, an avalanche of hopes and dreams, fears and failures, triumphs and tragedies, and knowledge and experience. Looming over them all, binding them in an unholy web, a vacuous cloud of evil raged insanely, filled with insatiable hunger—the nightmare that held all these poor souls in thrall.

  I held on as best I could.

  Loer’allon’s light buoyed me in the ravages of the claustrophobic storm, her light orienting my world within.

  When it finally ended, I opened my eyes, exhaled a ragged breath, and was my self.

  Mostly.

  New lives with their associated memories bounced around inside my skull, stray boulders ricocheting off the avalanche’s main mass.

  But I had not lost who I was.

  So far.

  Better yet, the demon had not gained purchase on my soul.

  I hoped.

  The basement’s dirt floor was cool underneath my back where I had collapsed to the ground. I did not want to get up.

  In fact, I couldn’t.

  Several hundred pounds of putrid dead flesh held me pinned to floor.

  I was some hero.

  Whenever I got lucky enough to slay the vile nasty threatening the populace, all I ever consistently succeeded in doing was falling down.

  Ignominiously.

  Lying prone and defenseless was not exactly the best way to comport one’s self in combat.

  Or most anywhere else, for that matter.

  “Burn the demon’s essence, Saedeus!

  “Cleanse its presence from your soul!

  “Use its might as your own and break free!”

  More words of advice?

  Wasn’t saving me once good enough for this guy?

  Wasn’t I done?

  Visualizing cleansing fires, bonfires licking to the heavens, I burned.

  Power flooded through me, surging outward like an eruption, and I exploded upward, throwing the demon’s body off me with authority.

  And ease.

  I felt energy flowing within me in ways I had never thought possible.

  I felt ready to climb mountains.

  By the Abyss, I felt ready to knock down mountains and walk through the rubble without climbing.

  So this was what it felt like to be a Djen’toth!

  I could get used to this!

  I sprinted over to the stairs in two mighty bounds and leapt to the top without touching any steps. From the middle of the room, I jumped up to the ceiling, grabbed a beam, and pulled the whole post downward with a monumental crash! Broken planks and pieces of wood fell all around me like the rain that was now falling outside, barely worth noting.

  With a surety I had never known, I reached inside, drew upon the wellspring of power that yet surged within, and called upon fire.

  In retrospect, that probably was not my best idea.

  Almost bringing the whole house down on my head would be a close second.

  The world detonated in a wave of yellow-orange light and heat as I rocketed out into the night.

  There was my fireball.

  Luckily, I did not burn with it.

  The house, however, was another story.

  I skidded to a halt in the dirt, the trajectory and impact of my flight leaving a long furrow through the mud of the yard.

  When the magnitude of what I had just done sank in, I began to shake.

  Gathering myself as best I could, I checked that all was well.

  I seemed whole.

  The demon’s power was fading, used up in my exertions.

  Somewhat reassured, I fainted.

  The house burned on in my absence.

  The True Measure of a Knight

  There you have it.

  The true measure of a knight lies not in his ability to wield arms, remain stalwart in the face of danger, hold true to her convictions, better himself, or further the cause of her master or order.

  No, the true measure of a knight lies in his ability to faint.

  Consistently and often.

  I was a knight through and through.

  Or at least I could sleep through the night.

  Fully and deeply.

  Pretending to be one as I lost consciousness bravely in the face of danger.

  I shook my head groggily.

  I was not making sense.

  I was rambling.

  To myself.

  While lying in the muck with rain pouring down on me as the house sputtered, steamed, and smoked.

  I tried to sit up and failed.

  I felt like a dragon had just stepped on me and planted me about an arm’s length down into the earth.

  I envisaged an imprint of my body on the ground where the great beast’s scaled foot had smashed me into the dirt.

  Perhaps my outline would become fossilized and one day in the distant, demon-free future, people would come to gape in awe at the wonder of my mighty physique.

  Now I really was dreaming…or incoherent.

  Extracting myself slowly from the suction of the wet ground that held me locked in place, I finally managed to sit.

  The farmhouse was an unrecognizable collapsed black husk.

  My work here was done.

  Now I just needed some rest.

  I plopped back down into my hole with a squelch, closed my eyes, and went to sleep.

  And dreamed the dreams of knights.

  I blinked.

  My eyes refused to listen.

  They were caked shut with dried mud.

  So much for my noble dreams of knightly worthiness. I was more like a toad burrowing into the earth to hibernate until the proper season to emerge.

  I guessed my season had come.

  Demon season.

  I had just made my first harvest. I hoped this reaping was enough to tide me through winter. I did not want to make any more.

  “Well done, Saedeus!

  “The time has come, however, to move.

  “The death of a demon, your decisive expression of magic, and the attendant fire are sure to gather unwanted attention.”

  Groaning, I sat up again.

  I did not feel any better than last night. In fact, I felt worse. I felt like I was a piece of shattered porcelain that had not been put back together.

  All jagged edges and irregular angles.

  And I did not have any glue or magic available.

  Straining against the bonds of the earth, I managed to get out of my divot and orient myself on wobbly legs.

  Spinning slowly around, shading my eyes against the sun, I located south and east. Splitting the difference, I began my trudge through fields that were sown with woe.

  South and East

  As a lad, I had imagined venturing out into the wide world as a magnificent adventure, a noble pursuit that would lead to the realization of
my dreams and the justification of my self-worth.

  Leaving a wake of glory in my footsteps, I would change the world for the better as I redeemed myself and the world with me.

  Sadly, this dream was far from the reality I faced.

  With the demon-infested farm just days behind me, I gradually began to see what the world had become—barren and impoverished with humanity fearfully huddled together in enclaves struggling to survive.

  There were no caravans or travelers on the road. I could not even make out the last time there had been tracks. Granted, I was still on the far outskirts of the realm, but Alric assured me that in days past many traders, trackers, and adventurers had plied these roads on journeys northward for fame and fortune.

  A murder of crows was my first sign that I was nearing civilization.

  Or what had at least once been a modicum of civility.

  On either side of the road, barren fields that had been lovingly tended were left to go wild. Copses of woodland blanketed rolling hills adjacent to those areas that had, until recently, been farmed.

  The occasional abandoned farmhouse marked each forlorn homestead.

  Thankfully, there were no demons to kill.

  At least not yet.

  Perhaps because the pickings were too slim.

  There were, however, signs of demonic incursion.

  Which only made the stark reality of my journey all the more apparent.

  I think most of the region’s inhabitants must have fled, fearing for their lives, when roving demons began traveling northward. Although fraught with peril, the residents’ journeys were probably intended to reach the relative safety and security of larger fortified districts.

  If any had attempted to find a safe haven in Balde, none had made it.

  The many motes of remembrance now bouncing around in my skull told me that more than a few had tried.

  For those denizens of this region who had chosen to remain with their land and homes, fate had been no less cruel. The bodies hanging from gallows, gorged, disfigured, and desecrated by demonic hands, scattered along the roadway or left by their shattered homes, told me that clearer than any remembrance or inference.

  I walked through lands of the dead.

  Whether the inhabitants knew it yet or not.

  Although I had considered myself unlucky my whole life, walking toward Kerraboer, I realized just how lucky I had been.