by Nick Harrow
“We have work to do.” Nephket grinned at Zillah and me. “Don’t let us disturb you.”
Delsinia grinned and raised a heavy burlap sack stained black with blood as she passed the throne, and I used my dungeon lord skills to clean up the gore she’d left on the floor behind her.
Kez returned for dinner, and we all sat around the table together. I watched as my guardians ate, but there wasn’t much in the way of conversation. We all knew there were dark days ahead and talking about them didn’t seem to help. It was easier to just be with each other.
The meal ended, the wahket came to clear away the plates, and my guardians rose from their chairs to gather around me. Nephket laid one hand on my shoulder and stared deeply into my eyes, and I saw deep hunger and powerful fear war for dominance in her gaze.
“Come,” she said to me quietly. “I have much to do before morning comes, but I need time with you to recover my strength. All of you.”
Nephket led us to our bedroom, and the five of us became one for a far too brief stretch of time.
The moon was still high in the sky when my familiar disentangled herself from Kez’s embrace and the curl of Zillah’s tail. She slipped from the edge of the bed and landed on the floor with no more sound than a house cat stealing into the night.
“Delsinia knows where to bring you in the morning.” Nephket stood in the doorway, highlighted by the moonglow that poured through the window like molten silver. Her thoughts were quiet and solemn in mine, and her worry loomed large over all of us. “I have to prepare my spells. We’ll know who did this before breakfast. I promise.”
“Don’t wear yourself out,” I cautioned. “If you fall from exhaustion, I’ll never forgive myself.”
“I’m all right,” she said, blew me a kiss, and vanished from the bedroom.
When you don’t have to sleep, the night is very long. I watched the moon crawl across the sky, inching in front of one star after another, while my mind raced and my heart ached. Every time I thought we were safe, some new threat slouched out of the shadows to bang on our door. Maybe Zillah was right and this was just the way things were when you were a dungeon lord. Monsters and enemies were everywhere, all of them hungry for your position, all of them ready to destroy anything in their path to claim your core.
Maybe, but I didn’t believe any of that shit.
There had to be a way for my people and me to live in peace. I’d find it, even if I had to kick the shit out of every asshole who got in my way.
Delsinia woke as the first blushing rays of the rising sun drifted across her face. She stretched her arms over her head, tilted her chin up, and gave me a warm smile from my left side.
“I’d forgotten what it was like,” she said. “Every time I wake up, I can’t believe how good it was.”
“The sex?” Zillah blinked sleep from her eyes. She was on my right side, Kez still coiled in her tail.
“The sleep,” Delsinia said. “It had been centuries...”
A flicker of pain crossed her face, but the former dungeon lord shoved it away. She’d been trapped by the old Lord Rathokhetra’s geas for more than three hundred years and had been driven half-mad by the torments of Kozerek before I freed her from her life as a prisoner and a dungeon lord. Now she was one of my guardians, and the change seemed to agree with her.
“It hasn’t been anywhere near that long for me, and I already miss it,” I said. “Nephket said you knew what came next?”
Delsinia stifled a yawn with the back of one hand, then slid off the end of the bed.
“I left something downstairs,” she said. She gathered the thin bone chain that served as her clothes and had it wrapped around her form in the blink of an eye. “Nephket will be waiting for us down there.”
“Zillah,” I said, “get Kezakazek up and moving. Don’t let her kill you.”
“Oh, she can try,” the scorpion queen said with a grin. “We’ll be down right behind you.”
I joined Delsinia, and she took my hand to lead me downstairs. She glanced at me from the corner of her eye, then turned her gaze back to the steps ahead of us.
“What you will see down here,” she started, but gave up and took another stab at expressing herself. “I am not sure if you’re prepared for what Nephket will do.”
“I almost never am,” I confessed. “I’m constantly surprised by the shenanigans around here.”
And, while that was true, Delsinia was right. I had no idea what I was getting myself into.
The soultaker guided me away from the audience chamber and led me down another set of stairs to the storerooms. I scarcely remembered creating this area, but that didn’t surprise me. When I’d pulled the settlement together, I’d used a lot of mental shorthand and let the details sort themselves out. This building had been one of the focuses of my concentration, but even here I’d only given a rough idea of what I wanted and let my magic do the rest.
And apparently my magic wanted us to have a nice, big cellar, complete with shelves for food in sealed clay jars, and a big table that had been intended for prepping meat to cure but was now being used as a display stand for a pair of severed heads.
Nephket sat cross-legged at the end of the table, her face painted in blood that had dried to a mask of sticky brown scales. Her eyes were closed, her breath slow and even, and pale blue flames glowed in the palm of each upturned hand.
“Okay,” I said. “What in the fuck?”
My priestess opened her eyes at the sound of my voice and for a moment I saw something else looking back at me. Ancient eyes, their pupils swirled with streaks of vivid red, widened like a wolf’s that had just seen its prey.
And then Nephket blinked and smiled at me in a way that told me everything would be all right.
I wasn’t quite sure I believed that.
“It’s time,” Nephket said. “Are you ready to know who did this?”
“Yes,” I said. I had some misgivings, mostly based around the fact that Nephket appeared to be deep into some black magic necromancy voodoo, but I didn’t see any point in expressing them. If she had new powers from advancing, they were hers to use as she saw fit.
Rathokhetra didn’t agree on that point, but his opinion didn’t hold a lot of weight with me. Nephket was the smartest person I’d met on Soketra, and if she thought this was the best way for us to get answers, then I’d back her play.
Nephket smiled at me, then extended both of her hands until they were above the severed heads. She slowly rotated her wrists until her palms, and the flames they held, were inches above the hollows that once contained the brains of the dead villagers.
The lifeless eyes opened to reveal roiling orbs of blue fire. Their jaws opened and shut in unison, and low groans escaped their lips.
“Where are we?” the man asked in a voice that sounded as if it came from the depths of a well. “Who are you?”
“He is your lord, Rathokhetra,” Nephket said in a stiff and formal tone. “Will you answer his questions?”
“What if I won’t?” the woman asked.
“No reason to be like that, Celia,” the man shot back. “We’ll answer if you make it quick.”
Great, a couple of smartass decapitated heads. That’s just how I wanted to start my day.
“Who killed you?” I asked.
“We’re dead?” the woman asked. “How did it happen?”
“You didn’t know?” I started, and both heads interrupted me with sepulchral laughs.
“We’re dead, not stupid,” the man responded. “Celia likes to tell jokes. Looks like you fell for that one.”
“Oh, you should’ve seen your face,” Celia’s ghoulish laughter faded away, and a look of real concern passed over her face. “Our baby girl, she’s all right?”
“Izel’s fine,” Delsinia interjected. “She’s upstairs. We’re taking good care of her.”
“That’s good,” Celia said. It’s hard to explain how I could see the relief wash over the two heads, but there was a subtle
relaxation around the corners of their mouths, and their eyes seemed a little brighter at my news. “She wasn’t with us after it happened, so I knew she wasn’t dead. Thank you for putting my mind at ease that nothing worse had happened to her.
“Now, as far as who killed us, they were ugly little bastards. Their heads barely poked up over the edge of the bed, and they’d painted their faces with black stripes. They carried knives, nasty flint things, and they didn’t speak. They just stabbed and chewed.”
For someone who’d been hacked apart by people-eaters, Celia seemed pretty chill about the whole experience.
“Ah, shit,” Zillah said from behind me. She’d just come down the stairs with Kezakazek in tow, the drow wrapped up in her tail and hoisted over her shoulder. “Little short dudes with flint knives? It’s too early in the morning for this crap.”
I turned away from the disembodied heads to stare at her.
“You know what she’s talking about?” I asked.
“So do you,” she said. “I told you about them when we were on our way to raid Delsinia’s dungeon.”
I thought back to the battle in the necropolis and Zillah’s scouting mission.
“Blood gnomes?” I asked.
“I’d bet my fucking ass on it,” Zillah said. “And you know how much I like that ass.”
Delsinia’s face had paled as she listened to Zillah. Her hands tightened on the knives she wore at her belt and her lower lip trembled.
“We are in deep, deep shit,” she whispered.
Chapter 5 – Going Down
NEPHKET STARED AT ME for a moment and then asked the obvious question.
"How do we get rid of the cannibals?"
“They aren’t cannibals,” Kez corrected the priestess. “They eat sentient humanoids, but they don’t eat each other. I guess you could call them man-eaters.”
“Except they also eat women,” Zillah pointed out.
“Can we all agree that people that eat people will be called cannibals from here on out?” I didn’t have time to argue with my guardians about the finer points of enemy classification. I eyeballed each of them until they’d all nodded in agreement. “Great. How do we kill the little fuckers?”
Delsinia and Zillah exchanged glances, and then the scorpion queen cleared her throat. Both women looked nervous, which was a terrible sign.
"I found traces of a tribe of those little assholes out by Delsinia’s dungeon,” Zillah said. “We can get a closer look, see how many of them we need to kill.”
"How did they find their way up to the settlement so quickly?" Delsinia asked. "Their normal hunting grounds are much deeper into the Great Below."
I felt as if I was trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle with only half the pieces. On the one hand, the settlement had only existed for a few days. On the other hand, the villagers acted like they’d always lived around the Kahtsinka Oasis. Maybe some timey-wimey shenanigans were afoot and the blood gnomes had had more time to find us than we’d thought.
If that was the case, the tax collector’s claim to have traveled far to reach us seemed more reasonable. In theory, he might have started his journey before I’d created the settlement because the very act of creation had spawned a part of reality where the oasis had been here for years, maybe even generations.
Time-travel bullshit gave me a headache, so I decided to ignore it for the moment.
"Zillah, I need you to take Delsinia into the Great Below and find these blood gnomes." I said. "If we’re lucky, this was a one-off. Some stupid little gnome hunting party got separated from their tribe and wandered up here looking for food."
The two women glanced at one another and then back at me, dubious smiles stretched taut across their features.
"Sure, boss," Zillah said. "What do we do if we find them?"
"When you find them," I said with a gentle correction, "reach out to me. We’ll decide what happens next after that."
The truth was, there were only two reasonable options available. If Del and Zillah found a small, isolated group of blood gnomes, I’d have them kill the cannibals. But if a whole tribe of the little fuckers had moved within striking distance, we’d have to find a way to seal them off from the oasis. I wasn’t sure how I’d pull off that trick, yet. I’d probably just kill them all.
“I have no idea how long we will be down there,” Del warned me. “The blood gnomes are stealthy by nature. We will stay in touch.”
"Send the wahket with them," Kezakazek implored me. "Zillah always gets herself in trouble down there."
"No," I rejected the request. "We can't do that. I need the wahket here to stand watch over the oasis.”
"Fine," Kezakazek said in a tone that told me my decision was anything but fine in her opinion. She didn't fight me on it, though, which I was grateful for. Instead, she slithered out of Zillah's tail hug and stomped back up the stairs.
"She's going to be impossible to live with until we get back," Zillah informed me. "We'll try to be quick. I'd feel bad if she tried to kill you while we were gone."
"Me, too." I pulled Zillah and Del into a tight hug. "Stay safe. I'll see you soon."
The scorpion queen and the soultaker each planted a firm kiss on my cheeks.
"If we run into any trouble, we will let you know," Delsinia said. "But I doubt there's much down there that we would consider trouble."
I chuckled at that, and they departed.
"How bad is this?" Nephket asked me when they were gone.
"It's bad enough that you turned to necromancy," I said with a gesture toward the heads on the table.
"Necromancy?" Nephket asked, genuinely surprised at my suggestion. "This isn't necromancy."
"We just talked to a pair of dead heads," I said.
"You know we can hear you still," Celia said. "I mean, Joss and I are dead, we’re not deaf."
"I'm a priestess, and my power comes from my god," Nephket informed me. "A god with dominion over death."
"What god?" But I knew that was a stupid question before it had left my mouth. "Wait, me? I'm the god of death?"
"Get a load of this guy,” Celia’s husband said. "One priestess, and he fancies himself the god of death."
"That’s enough out of you two," Nephket addressed the head. "Mind your tongue or I'll send you away before you have a chance to speak with your daughter."
"Geez, touchy," Joss said. "Fine, I’ll be quiet."
"You’re not the god of death, you're a god with dominion over death," Nephket continued. "The spells you grant to me therefore also have influence with the dead. A necromancer animates corpses and enslaves them. I simply call the spirits of the dead back to their bodies for a brief period."
The distinction seemed subtle, but it was apparently important to Nephket. I nodded as if I understood what she was talking about, but my head spun with the possibilities. Sure, people called me a lord and all that good stuff, and I understood that having a priestess and worshippers meant I was a little more than just a guy with a fancy sword and a crown. But being an actual god? I didn’t know about that.
I could have chased that theological conundrum around in my thoughts for a few days, but instead I decided to change the subject.
"You think it's a good idea for that kid to see them like this?" I asked.
"I think it's important for her to get closure," Nephket said. "She can say goodbye to them, and they can impart some bits of wisdom to her before they pass on. I think it will help her."
"All right, have the wahket bring her down," I said. "I need to catch Kez before she buries her head in Kozerek’s books."
"Good luck,” Nephket called after me. "I'm afraid you're going to need it."
"Me, too," I said.
Kezakazek had retreated to our bedroom, but she hadn’t packed up her shit for an extended stay in Kozerek’s fortress just yet. She stood on the open balcony and stared out over the oasis, shielding her eyes against the morning sun with a hand raised to her forehead.
"If she di
es, I'll never forgive you," Kezakazek said. "I won't hate you, but your life will be a lot more interesting."
"It's a recon mission," I said. "She's not going to die. I doubt she'll even get a scratch."
"She's obsessed with you," Kezakazek said. "She would do anything for you. Dying is part of anything. If she sees a chance to strike a blow against your enemies, she may not think about the consequences to herself."
Zillah had admitted as much to me before, but I was surprised that Kez felt so strongly about it. Maybe the connection between the drow and the scorpion queen was even more important to them than I knew. Rather than waste time on a vain attempt to change Kezakazek’s mind, I accepted her feelings and changed the subject.
"I need your help," I said. "Let's go for a walk."
She let out a long sigh, then folded her hands in front of her, turned, and walked across the room toward me.
"Fine. We’ll walk," she said as she passed me on her way out of the bedroom.
I hustled a bit to get ahead of her and led the drow down the stairs. Kez was still pissed at me for sending Zillah on a scouting mission and for stalling her trip to Kozerek’s office, but at least she wasn't in open rebellion or spoiling for a fight. I could work with that.
"We started some improvements on the oasis," I said. "But I'm not sure exactly how they're going to work, and I could use someone with real experience with magic to fill me in."
"I suppose I can do that," the drow said.
I made a few other attempts at conversation, but the dark elf wasn't having any of it. I had no doubt that she cared for all of us, but there was a special place in Kezakazek's heart reserved for the scorpion queen. They shared a certain malicious glee when it came to all things evil, and they understood one another in a way that was difficult for the rest of us to comprehend. I'd have to address that at some point, but not when Kez’s feelings were so raw.
Later. Everything important had to wait until later, it seemed.
“Um, what the fuck is this?” Kez’s eyes bugged from their sockets, and the finger she pointed to the north shook like a wind chime in an earthquake.
