A Cruel Tale

by Alex Sapegin

  “Are you saying there are different truths?” Andy interrupted the loquacious priest’s rhetoric.

  “Exactly! I opened the door. You did the rest yourselves. The truth is, we need sources of mana for the crystal accumulators in the image of our goddess, and your death to Hel’s glory will do just the trick. The girls will be of good use too; they’re pretty flowers. We just have to think what to do with the northerner and the girl.”

  “Slimeball, even after death I’ll come find you and tear you limb from limb. Don’t you lay a finger on them!” Andy almost cried from exhaustion. The brute, the brutish beast. He’d find a way to get to his throat and get even.

  “What an expressive young elf. Young and stupid. Don’t you think you’re not in a position to be making threats? What do you care about humans? Think of yourself. Don’t forget, after death, you’ll still be serving Hel. The monastery doesn’t throw away good material. We love quiet, calm zombies. It’ll be fun to set you and your employer on the Viking. Interesting, I wonder how long he’ll last against two living dead?” The helrat finished drawing the runes on his prisoner. “Take him away!” he called to the darkness. “I can get a lot of mana from you. We’ve got ourselves a cow worth milking.”

  From the darkness came two rag-clad human figures. Andy shuddered. Their white empty eyes showed clearly that these two had no connection to the land of the living.

  The zombies easily lifted the construction that contained Andy. It was something like a stretcher and a wheelchair combined. They brought it down a long hallway with many doors on both sides. After two minutes of the “palanquin’s” rocking evenly side to side, the procession, which had now been joined by new members dressed in white robes and new followers of Death carrying long black candles, entered a temple.

  The temple walls were decorated with intricate frescoes illustrating the lives of saints. Thousands of candles illuminated the towering inner cupola with an even light. The scents of incense and melting wax permeated the air. Sometimes, as if an invisible giant were breathing, the candle flames suddenly leaned to one side and began to twitch and quiver. Then the shadows of the priests standing in several circle formations came alive, bending and jerking in an elaborate dance. This temple differed from regular churches to the One God in the giant pentagram on the floor. A structure in the middle of the pentagram was holding Ilnyrgu, naked and covered with runes. Crystal energy accumulators stood on stands at each of the points of the star, from which silver strings rose to a statue of Hel hanging in the center of the cupola. Zombies walked up to the center of the pentagram and installed the stretcher with Andy on a special pedestal. He wanted to call out to the orc, but she did not react. Apparently, the warrior had not yet come to.

  “We’ve arrived.” The priest who had drawn the marks on Andy stopped at the dragon’s stretcher. The helrat had already changed into a white tunic that went down to his knees, tied around the waist with a belt made of multiple grinning skulls. A silver sickle bounced at the priest’s right side. “Now your life’s path will end and the path of your afterlife will start. Shall we begin?” he addressed his victim. “You don’t mind if we take a little mana from you and your life?”

  “And if it’s too much mana?” the sacrificial victim wheezed.

  “No such thing!” the helrat grinned. With his sickle, he made cuts on the forearms and ankles of the prisoners, then left the circle.

  The priests in the white robes started an annoying chant. The servants standing in circles moved to the opposite side. If it were possible to watch from above, the observer would have seen three circles spinning towards one another. The pentagram and the markings on the victims glowed bright neon. Just then the notrium chains holding the bodies unlatched themselves. True, the magical metal not only held the prisoners, it interfered with the ritual. Andy jumped up and threw himself at the priests—in vain. A force field sprung up from the borders of the pentagram and threw him back, and almost threw him into the orc’s altar. A powerful fireball he sent flying at the force field dissolved helplessly against the invisible barrier. Other spells met the same fate. Thousands of invisible needles pricked his body; Ilnyrgu moaned and went into convulsions. The invisible needles sunk in deeper. The runes on his body started to itch terribly. The priests finished their circle dance and fell prostrate; the silver strings and hanging statue of Hel lit up.

  Andy felt his magical reserves draining, as if being sucked out by a vacuum cleaner. Perhaps his life really was about to end. Struggling to cut off the foreign channels, he dove into settage and began to vehemently destroy the energy-sucking tentacles that were stuck to him. The struggle ended in defeat on all fronts. Just like in the myths about Hercules and the Hydra, every time he cut off one channel, two more would appear in its place. Despair made him dive in even deeper and go into a trance; the ocean of astral energy opened up before his internal eye.

  “And if it’s too much mana?”

  “No such thing!” he recalled the fairy tale of the golden antelope he recently told his goddaughter. The antelope asked the greedy Raja: “And if it’s too much gold?” and got laughed at in return. The Raja was punished; he got buried under the golden coins flying from the antelope’s hooves and begged, “Enough!” The gold immediately turned into shards of clay. Funny, or sad, but his quibble with the priest was quite conformable to the fairy tale ending. You say there’s no such thing as too much mana? Andy let the ocean flow….

  ***

  This wasn’t Irei Ter Ars’ first ceremony, and certainly not his second. Those being offered to Hel always displayed the same behavior: they struggled, let fireballs fly, cast other combat spells, tried to break the barrier. Dummies. They all, in the end, quietly laid down on the floor, drained dry, after which the necromancers had their way with them, and they continued to serve the Mistress. They could serve her in various ways. This arrogant Rauu was no different than all the rest. It was so nice to watch his reaction when I told him of what awaited him in the near future. So much hatred and contempt, what rage and what an unconquerable will! And how long did I get to play with him? A few blows to the force field, an attempt to destroy the straps, and the elf quietly laid down on the floor. Irei had expected more from the pointy-eared elf. But things were going the same as always.

  Irei prepared to deliver the “kiss of death” to the woman, but something held him back. The lines of the pentagram and the silver strings going connecting to the statue of the Mistress suddenly glowed unbearably brightly, playfully changing colors and flashing. The protective barrier went into a low vibration. The Rauu got up and spread his arms wide. The Snow Elf’s eyes shot forth blue flames. The accumulators whistled slightly, overwhelmed by the flow of energy rushing from the pentagram. The Rauu turned to Irei and smiled from ear to ear. The priest, intuitively sensing danger, put up a multi-layered shield around himself and glanced at the prisoner. Something incomprehensible was happening to the elf. He was glowing like a magical lantern. He fell on his knees and….

  ***

  Andy felt he could no longer handle the fountain of astral energy rushing through him. He changed hypostasis. He signaled the warrior orc, who had come to, to take shelter underneath him and covered her with a protective dome. Energy flowed through him in an unending stream. So as not to burn his internal channels, he “poured” an enormous amount of mana through his tattoo and through the astral dragon. He could sense bits and pieces of other people’s emotions: joy and surprise, pain and suffering. The barrier could no longer withstand the force. The white-clad figures of the priests clamored to their feet and stumbled backward towards the temple walls. The sacrifice was clearly not going as planned. Andy covered himself and the orc with a shield and curtain of darkness. The helrats didn’t have time to react. The statue of Hel glowed brighter than a thousand suns and, burning the priests’ eyes, exploded. The protective barrier burst. The freed energy shattered the temple cupola into tiny shards and shot upwards into the sky in a bright pillar. Dozens of servant
s of the accursed cult were vaporized. In the mayhem that now reigned, the dragon beat a hole in the wall with a powerful punch and ran rampant around the monastery, killing the priests who had predicted the need to flee the ceremony. The zombie servants quietly sank to the ground, free from their masters. This time, the unfortunate individuals passed away for good. Once he’d killed all the priests who came his way and burnt the guards in the barracks to a crisp, he went back to the former temple.

  The main scumbag had survived. That’s why he was the main guy. Commanding an animal instinct, the priest put several shields up around himself, and unlike his brothers, survived the destruction of the temple, to his own delight. Stepping away from the blast which had almost deafened and blinded him, he looked at the dark dome where the pentagram used to be, and the melted walls of the building. The temperature was so high, the bricks bubbled and melted just like wax.

  “No such thing as too much mana, you say?” the gigantic dragon said, after breaking down the wall.

  Andy leaned over the trembling helrat, enacted the “battering ram” spell, broke through his defense and picked up the two-legged beast by the throat with his paw. Ilnyrgu came out from under the protective dome.

  “Where are my friends? Talk, slime sucker!” The priest swung freely in the angry dragon’s paw like a rag doll.

  “They’ll die in the prison cells if I don’t undo the strict staying spell,” he wheezed. “I’m not afraid to die. The Mistress will accept her faithful servant.”

  Andy thought for a minute. The priest really could have cast a binding “harness” spell on the guys and Tyigu, in which case they would die as soon as the slippery cowardly filth did. In the powerful magic storm that occurred in the wake of his solo performance, it was impossible to tune in to the helrat’s psychophone in order to determine whether he was lying or not. It was problematic to try to determine the location of the orc girls and the northerner using “spider webs” because of this same storm. There was a fifty-fifty chance either way. He’d told Berg that he would take care of the boy like an overshadowing tree, no matter what happened, so he had to find a way out of this situation. Soon he would experience the recoil, and that would not be pleasant. The consequences of letting the limitless energy flow through him were already showing up; he could feel the onset of pain and a nervous tick. No matter how you spin it, he needed this dog alive.

  “I promise to let you go alive if you show me where my friends are and free them from the ‘harness,’” he said to the scumbag. “Remember, if you decide to trick me, I’ll kill you slowly, ve-e-ery slowly. The orcish she-wolves can make people suffer. You’ll curse the day you were born.”

  “What she-wolves?” the priest choked.

  “Il, show him.” The orc took on her usual form and smiled maliciously. “Master Ilnyrgu is skilled in more than just swordplay. She can use needles and forceps like you’ve never imagined in your wildest dreams.”

  “No need to scare me, I’ll do as you ask,” the helrat wheezed, who had heard a lot about the elite warriors of the “white” orcs from the Steppes. People who knew what they were talking about had told him such cruel and gory stories, he was cut to the quick. “Put me down,” he wheezed.

  “As you wish,” Andy responded, and loosened his grip.

  ***

  “Commander, how are you?” Olaf asked Andy right away, as soon as they freed him from his shackles.

  The commander did not look his best. He was trembling. His blue eyes were surrounded by dark circles and were shining as if he were feeling feverish. He was biting his lips from the intense pain of the recoil, and the were-dragon’s forehead was covered in perspiration. It turned out there wasn’t any staying spell on the Norseman. The helrat cringed and tucked his head into his shoulders. The elf, who had turned out to be an ancient dragon, could very well have torn his head off for the lie, and still could break his promise, if he should happen to poke his nose into the lower levels of the dungeons…. The orc standing behind the servant of Hel poked him with the tip of a silver sickle. The white tunic she’d torn from a servant in the temple flung open, revealing her tempting breasts. Unlike Andy, after the episode in the temple, Ilnyrgu looked her absolute best. She had been completely “recharged” by the free energy. You could even say she’d taken a dip in mana. The warrior’s eyes sparkled; her cheeks were rosy. It seemed she was flying over rather than walking on the ground.

  “Don’t even think of using magic! Where is the boy and our things?”

  “Yes, yes, one moment….” the priest began to nod. “They’re in a different wing.”

  “Lead the way!” Andy turned to him. When he laid eyes on the pointy triangular teeth in the elf’s mouth and his two-inch claws, the fake monk became even smaller. The dragon’s yellow vertical pupils were literally nailing him to the spot. “What are you just standing there for, brute? I said lead!”

  “Commander, …” Olaf pointed to the claws.

  “A result of the overload. What do you want? I’m a dragon, remember? Now it’s really making me writhe. If you could imagine how hard it is for me to be in human form right now….” Andy said, who was feeling worse. He wasn’t only in pain, he was now hungry too. He watched the priest out of the corner of his eye. The helrat’s gaze shifted nervously from side to side; his hands were trembling. Strange, what’s he so upset about? Apparently, he has something to hide in the next wing over. Something that wouldn’t make a dragon pat him on the head.

  “Yes, yes, right away….” the priest took small steps. “The second left.”

  “Step aside, mongrel!” Olaf pushed him and, taking a step forward, picked a sword up from the floor that had been dropped by one of the zombie guards. The zombie’s body was lying right there and already starting to stink.

  The Servant of Death darted to the side, but Andy slid forward. A sword extracted from his “pocket” appeared in his hand. The tip of the blade dug into the dip at the base of the unfortunate would-be fugitive’s neck.

  “One more stunt like that and I’ll gut you along the tendons in your legs. Where’s the boy?”

  “Here,” the helrat went pale, pointing to a door with metal stripes and hinges. “Remember your promise!” he said, looking pleadingly at Andy and bowing low.

  Andy squinted and tried to calm down. Breathe in, breathe out. Once more. The accursed worm—shaking in his sandals. He so wanted to do away with him. Andy’s knees actually trembled in his thirst for blood. He had to be more easygoing, tolerant, liberal, like on Earth. He had committed an atrocity, and he was about to be served a sentence of zero years… that’s the most just court in the world!

  Olaf pushed the door, reinforced with iron and froze. The Viking’s jaw hit his chest again and forgot to get back into place. What’s he so shocked at? The Norseman stepped aside, and the rescuers laid eyes on a stunning sight. What the fudge, holy shamokin dam, and other such phrases…. I wonder what that’s called in their local language, what the she-wolves, shackled in thin chains, were wearing, and the silver-haired Snow Elf crouching in their company. Andy, in a rage, charged into the room. The girls, dressed in something extremely scanty resembling scraps of silk that barely covered their chests and the area below the waist, fell prostrate.

  “What do you wish, master?” the three prisoners said in unison.

  “Uhhh… what’s with them?” Andy, copying the northerner, turned helplessly to Ilnyrgu with an open mouth.

  “Obedience amulets and behavior modulations,” the orc answered, tearing the heart-shaped necklace from Slaisa’s neck. The girl gasped and fell to the floor. A thin diadem with a tiny pattern of runes written on it flew off the young she-wolf’s head and, jingling a little, went flying across the chipped boards. “Remove the other necklaces and diadems.”

  “What? Where am I?” the elf moaned, rubbing her temples with her palms and blinking. Coming back to reality was painful.

  The sounds of thudding blows and a stifled wheeze came from the hallway. Olaf, in
a fit of anger, was beating the gasping and groaning priest in the face. Then, when he had fallen to the floor, he began kicking him. Andy felt somehow relieved and less stressed just from what he was seeing.

  “You promised!” the priest cried, and immediately got a punch to the nose. His lips were round like an “O” and tears were streaming from his swollen eyes like a river.

  “Olaf, enough!”

  The Viking stepped away from the fake monk, stood for a few seconds, growled and spat a few times.

  “They didn’t have time to do anything with the girls,” Ilnyrgu said, placing her hands on the other she-wolves’ stomachs.

  “But, judging by the outfits, they were planning to!” Andy blurted out in contempt, examining the representative of the pointy-eared tribe. The elf, who was now realizing she was covered in the most minimal amount of fabric imaginable, practically shoelaces, one on top, one on bottom, quickly covered herself with her hands. Andy wasn’t dressed to impress either. He was flaunting a dirty shred of cassock wrapped around an improvised belt. Olaf squatted down near Slaisa and threw his undershirt around her. The orc, forgetting her membership as a she-wolf, went ahead and cried, dropping her gorgeous head on the Viking’s chest.

  “It’s over, it’s all over now. Don’t cry, my dear one,” Olaf whispered, rubbing her hair with his wide palm.

  The priest, forgotten by all, moaned in the hallway. Ilnyrgu took the Viking’s sword and left the room. New strokes of the sword could be heard from the hall.

  “Where is Tyigu?” After she had finished her exercise of putting various colored bruises on the man’s body, the Wolf pressed her blade up against the throat of the servant of the forbidden cult.

  “And the rest of the prisoners? I remember well what you said about other victims!” Andy leaned over him and, drawing air in through his nostrils, again caught the musky floral scent of a dragon. “And why, brute, do you smell like a dragon?” he roared.