City of the Gods - Starybogow

by Rospond, Brandon; Kostka, Jan; Werner, CL

  Wera's late attacker growled at her as it lifted itself from the mud. A great gray wolf, larger even than the lupine shape the kudlak had assumed, stood glaring at her from the middle of the street. Surma, loosed by Dobrogost, had followed Czcibor's scent. Now the wolf stood between the vampyr and her prey.

  The kudlak sneered at the wolf's threat. The hypnotic powers Wera possessed were even more effectual against beasts than they were against men. She'd turn the animal against the krsnik and kill him with the teeth of his own defender. Yet as she tried to bring her powers to bear against Surma, she found a hateful glow shining around the wolf, a shimmering aura that burned in her brain and refused to permit the focus needed for her enchantment. She saw the cause at once, the injury against her mouth had been inflicted when her fangs sought the wolf's throat. Now she saw that the animal was guarded by a collar of beaten silver into which was woven several slivers of hawthorn.

  Further down the road, Czcibor limped toward the tavern. As the krsnik's blood continued to seep down his side, his mind lost the focus that allowed him to hold his canine shape. By degrees his human form was restored so that it was his own battered and bloodied body that sagged beside the building's door and rapped against the portal with knotted fist.

  The vampyr suspected there must be some purpose to Czcibor's retreat, some protection he hoped to find within the building. A wrathful glint shone in Wera's eyes as she followed his creeping progress. Whatever the krsnik's plan, it would die unfulfilled when she rent him limb from limb. Returning her glare to Surma, the kudlak began to transform once more, her arms stretching out into great leathery pinions.

  “You will not escape!” The enraged voice howled from the darkness. Wera felt something stab into her side, interrupting her transformation. She turned to confront her attacker, the man who'd slashed at her undead flesh with a scythe. The force of vengeance and hate eclipsed whatever horror pulsed within the peasant. Even as the kudlak brought her talon smashing down into the heft of the scythe and split it in half, there was only the flush of rage in Dobrogost's eyes.

  “Whore of Satan!” Dobrogost railed, flinging himself upon the vampyr. With the iron blade of the scythe still embedded in the creature's side, he instead drove what was left of the shaft into her ghastly visage. Again and again he battered away at her, raining upon her blows that had split the skulls of cow and swine.

  The vampyr, however, was possessed of a supernatural vitality and against her even the fiercest of mortal implements were as nothing. Deftly she plucked the shaft from Dobrogost's hand, tossing it down the lane. Then, with the back of one claw, she dealt the peasant a blow that sent him crashing against the nearest hovel. He landed in a moaning heap, blood bubbling from his split lip and battered chest. The scent of Dobrogost's wounds brought a hideous smile to the vampyr, the gesture rendered all the more abominable for the mist seeping from her own injury.

  Before she could pounce, Wera found herself once again confronted by Surma. The giant wolf sprang at her, its jaws snapping at her throat. The kudlak spun around, lashing at the animal with her arm to ward it away. She shrieked as her unclean flesh brushed across the blessed metal and wood of the wolf's collar. A thin spray of mist dribbled from her cut skin as she retreated from Surma's assault.

  The kudlak turned her focus upon Dobrogost. Unlike Surma and Czcibor, the peasant had no protection from Wera's hypnotic gaze. Almost from the instant the vampyr’s gaze fell upon him, he was enslaved. Ruthlessly she compelled his battered body back onto its feet. While she fended away Surma's snapping jaws, Wera directed her slave to recover the broken heft of the scythe.

  Dobrogost took up the improvised club and stole toward the wolf from behind. Even as he raised the weapon to strike, however, a fierce grip took hold of him and pushed him aside. At once he felt the vampir's influence lift from him. He blinked in bewilderment as he saw Czcibor standing beside him. The krsnik was bereft of raiment and the grisly wounds in his side were yet bleeding, but in his hand the vampyr hunter held a weapon that seemed aglow with a brilliance that eclipsed both moon and star.

  Wera cringed before sight of Czcibor's steel, hissing in repulsion at the fiery blade. Every detail smashed against the vampyr’s senses as the krsnik raised his sword. The metal was an alchemical fusion of steel and silver that hearkened back to the mythical science of long-drowned Atlantis and upon this impossible alloy had been etched symbols of arcane potency. The crossguard and pommel were fashioned of gold and studded with gemstones of equally magical significance. Locked within the rounded pommel itself was a tiny reliquary within which the tiniest splinter of cedar was ensconced.

  “Doom is upon you, tomb-leech,” Czcibor pronounced as he advanced upon Wera. The kudlak spun around, tried to flee from the krsnik. At that moment, Surma leapt upon her, smashing the undead fiend to the ground. She clawed at the beast, heedless now of the injuries wrought upon her by its collar.

  Dobrogost snapped from his confusion when he saw vampyr and wolf struggling. The thirst for vengeance came flooding back and he hastened toward the melee. “For Zoja!” he shouted as he brought the broken heft of the scythe stabbing down into the kudlak's breast. The vampyr threw aside Surma and reached for the peasant with her clawed fingers.

  “Deeper,” Czcibor warned the peasant. “It is not enough to pierce a kudlak's heart! The fiend must be pinned to the earth!”

  Obeying the krsnik, Dobrogost forced the stake deeper into the vampyr’s breast, punching through moldy bones and rotten organs to at last sink into the mud of the street. Impaled upon the spike, Wera was rendered immobile, her fiendish strength ebbing away into the ground beneath her.

  Czcibor warned Surma away with a snapped command, then motioned Dobrogost to do likewise. He stared down at the paralyzed vampyr. Wera glared back at him, hissing and spitting with the craven viciousness of a cornered rat. “A kudlak can be rendered powerless by a stake which pins it to the ground, but to do destroy them needs stronger measures.” He stepped around the vampir until he stood above her snarling head. Raising his sword, he brought the glowing weapon slashing down. The stroke cleaved through the monster's neck, severing the head from the body. For an instant, Wera's eyes still blazed with an infernal energy, but soon their malignant glare cooled into the long-defied chill of death.

  The moment of Wera's destruction saw the eldritch glow of Czcibor's sword wink out, the blade becoming only a few feet of sharpened steel with a silvery sheen. The krsnik sheathed the weapon, then knelt in the road with the sword before him and bowed his head in a prayer of gratitude for his triumph. When his devotions were complete, Czcibor slumped into the street. Instantly, Surma loped over to his side, a concerned whine rasping from its jaws. The wolf sat down beside him, laying its muzzle across his foot.

  Dobrogost walked over to the vampyr’s severed head, spitting on it and hurling curses upon the vanquished fiend. Now that his vengeance was sated, he found it small recompense for the loss of his daughter. Tears streamed down the peasant's face.

  “Nothing can replace what you've lost,” Czcibor said, “but I think if you asked Lukasz, you would find the people of Krynka only too eager to pay wergild to their neighbors for their losses. It is a small penance for their part in all of this but it is a start.” The krsnik looked around at the huts lining the road. During the fray not so much as a light had betrayed the presence of their occupants. Now there was a babble of excited murmurs and the occasional face peeping out from behind a shutter.

  “Get the villagers to help you,” Czcibor told Dobrogost. “The kudlak's head and body must be burned separately and the ashes scattered in a river.” He raised his right hand, the hand that was devoted solely to his gruesome business. “First you must cut out the vampyr’s heart. It is to be boiled down into a broth.” A weary smile crossed his bruised face. “Something to keep up my strength. The best hunters always have something of their prey inside them.”

  Dobrogost shuddered at the grisly suggestion. Supping on meat killed by a
wolf was outré enough but this flirted with the profane. Then again, from what Czcibor had said, there was much about Krynka that bordered on the profane. Had these people truly been a party to the vampyr’s depredations? And if they had, why should they help to dispose of the monster or make recompense to its victims? He voiced his concerns to the krsnik.

  Czcibor laughed. “You don't give yourself enough credit, friend Dobrogost! You are braver than you imagine. It wasn't enough for you to set Surma free when I failed to return. No, you had to follow him, dogging the tracks of a wolf through a benighted forest.”

  “I was safe enough,” Dobrogost said. “Surma is your wolf.”

  The krsnik reached down and scratched at the wolf's ears. “There you are wrong. Surma isn't some tame and broken beast. He is my companion, but not my pet. Without my influence to restrain him, he is as wild as any of his kind.” Czcibor shook his head. “It is well that Surma had more important things to occupy him while you chased him alone through the woods. You are fortunate indeed that Surma doesn't like to go into a fight with a full stomach.”

  The Tale of the Mad Brothers Three

  Michael McCann

  Leshy

  by N.N. Broot, 1906

  “Cyr, catch!” A deep voice cried out as a dagger was tossed through the air and into the hands of another, younger, man. Cyril's tanned leather overcoat swayed through the air as he spun on his heel. Catching the weapon without any strain, and bringing it down with force intended to do damage, the young swordsman jabbed the blade between the eyes of the creature that hissed and convulsed as it went limp. Its claws loosened from Cyril's overcoat and dropped to his feet.

  Some feet away an identical creature with hair that resembled more leaves than that which belonged to a human was quickly ran through by a stout man wielding a spear in both hands; its blood splashed to the ground upon the loosely armored man's jerk backward, the head of his polearm slick with the viscous liquid. Nikola the weapons-master breathed heavily and quickly looked toward his 'brother' Radomir, who was busy with his own target.

  The cloaked scholar strafed his own creature, whose needle like teeth dripped with purplish venom. Radomir was the largest of the three of them and despite his ability to overpower most men, including his companions, he was perhaps the most calculating and weighed every decision, every step, and monitored his opponents with an unrivaled intensity. It was because of this that when the creature sprung, its claws extending outward, that the man briefly turned into a blur of blue cloth and upon the monster's rebound, it found a small yet deadly sharp axe buried in-between its pitch-like eyes.

  Cyril checked his chest for blood, but luckily the mail beneath his coat absorbed most of the creature’s slash. Nikola smirked, planted his spear into the ground, and rotated his arms in some post-battle stretch. The patchwork set of armor he adorned shifted and clanged as he began to unbuckle the round shield attached to his wrist. Wise Rad, as the other two called him, wretched his double bearded axe from the creature's skull and let out a smooth and even breath between pursed lips.

  “Ha, those creatures were fierce. Fun fight though.” Nikola said as he turned over his kill with a steel plated boot.

  “You think anything that is trying to kill you is a fun fight, Nik.” The shaggy auburn haired Cyril said handing back the dagger. Searching the clearing in which the Mad Brothers were jumped, Cyril became elated when he located his favored sword. At least I won't have to clean it, the youngest of the three thought as he sheathed the curved blade.

  “Mmm.” Wise Rad murmured aloud. With his left elbow planted in his hand and his fingers stroking the thick, red beard that ran from his jaw and cheeks, he was studying the dead creature whose wood-like skin seemed to turn brown and decay, as if it were an ancient tree.

  The other two went to his side, Nik chugging from his waterskin and Cyril biting his lip. “What is it, Rad?” the latter asked.

  “You fallin' in love? These things are dead. No meat on him. Maybe we could burn them for kindling, though.” Nikola exclaimed with a stifled laugh.

  “Don't be so crass, Nik. These are leshiye,” the scholar noted, bending down and lightly touching the hardened hide of the creature.

  “Leshiye? I think I had a hound named that once. Damn thing nearly bit my father’s hand off.”

  “Leshiye are forest spirits, guardians of the wood.” Cyril answered. “It might mean we're getting close.” In the Mad Brothers' research, Rad's idea, Cyril discovered that Starybogow was not a place to be taken lightly and it was rumored that spirits, and even some ancient deities that the Slavic worshipped, seemed attracted to the place.

  “Which also means we should be wary of our movement. Keep our noise to a minimum, our bonfires low. Our clumsiness may have given us away to these leshiye,” Rad stated. Years of reading, rereading, and studying any book or tome he could get his hands on proved invaluable on their journey. More times than they could count, Rad understood and explained some of the things they had come across; many vile and malevolent, while there were some rare peaceful ones.

  “Clumsiness!?” the weapons-master belted incredulously.

  “Here we go...” Cyril whispered.

  “Yes, we were speaking too loudly and your... incident at the creek probably put every spirit or animal on alert.” Rad scolded.

  Nikola's finger was pointed accusingly and his mouth open to defend himself. At the mentioning of the creek however, his eyes went wide and his mouth promptly shut.

  “Sirs, may I suggest we move along? I don't want to be in this clearing-…” Cyril took one more look around at the large, sun bathed opening in the forest's canopy and was reminded of a similar spot his Sun and he would spend afternoons talking and drinking what felt like a whole cask of wine. We're coming, love, I promise you that.

  “Clearing...?” Nikola said, bringing the younger Brother back into reality.

  “I don't want to be in this clearing if any more leshiye are to show up. Besides, it'll be dusk soon and gods know what crawls out from the caves at night.”

  “Point made, Brother. I'd be more worried 'bout what crawls out of the grave than what beast hunts at sundown though. We only got the one dagger made of silver. And sometimes that don't even work. Have I ever told you the story of when I-”

  “Was nearly killed by a drekavac? Yes, you have. At least a dozen times, Nikola.” Cyril answered.

  A hearty laugh from Rad, followed by a nod in the direction they had been headed, was all it took for them to be on their way. Cyril adjusting his riding gloves - though their horses long abandoned, Nikola cursing a split in the shaft of his spear, and a playful low hum from the Wise was an image that perfectly embodied the Mad Brothers.

  The young, emotional Cyril quietly and casually made sure his gear was in place, his overcoat sitting perfectly so it didn't chafe the back of his neck, constantly pushing back the auburn hair that came beneath his ears. His weapon was a curved blade that would cut flesh quickly and deeply; his father once gave it a name but the son viewed that as pretentious and meant for seasoned warriors like those of the Teutonic Knights or the weapons once wielded by the legendary Templar. Coupled together with a bow primarily used for hunting, Cyril was not the epitome of a warrior; but those who knew him understood just how quick the young man could move and slash his way to a victory.

  Nikola the weapons-master was a brash yet agile man. Quick to action with a tongue that would always make haste in conversation, the warrior was a former sellsword whose 'career' brought him all over the land. Though their friendship caused him to keep putting one foot in front of the other, the chance to see Starybogow was perhaps one of his largest driving forces of their quest. Anxious to slay creatures that many only saw in their nightmares, the two short swords, a shield, a half dozen daggers and knives strategically placed on the armor he wore would be the only tools he needed to make himself famous.

  Wise Radomir was an intense individual and some would even be off-put by his demeanor, confus
ing intelligence for arrogance. Though he was not armored like Cyril, nor armed like Nikola, Radomir needed nothing more than his mind and the ever growing journal he kept in his robe's inside satchel. While Nikola convinced him to take up an axe in case it was needed, Rad was quick to believe in peace before violence.

  Cyril narrowed his eyes as he tried to stare through the tops of the trees. If what Rad had said was correct, it would not be long before they saw the peaks of Starybogow’s battlements; and behind those walls were fabled to be some of the vilest monstrosities ever conceived by the Old Gods, rivaled only by even darker forces living in the murky waterways.

  But one creature in particular was on the prowl tonight, stalking the unaware young warrior and his allies. While its yellowed eyes glowed in the moonlight, tracking their movements, it lapped at the blood and viscera that soaked its claws.

  *****

  The three walked the dirt pathway through the forest, mildly jumpy at any strange sound or chirp that echoed through the dense woodlands. It felt like forever since they had set out on the path in search of Cyril’s fiancé, the woman he affectionately named Sun.

  The woman vanished and nary a clue was to be found. Some say a spirit or demon claimed her for their own otherworldly bride, others spoke of a creature roaming down from the mountains and snatching her for its meal. But Cyril was not to be so easily defeated and accepting of such a fate. Grabbing a sword, bundles of arrows, and a bow, the young man set out to find his lover.

  He had been readily joined by the two men that walked now beside him; Nikola the self-proclaimed weapons-master, and the studious Radomir the Wise. Together the three walked all ends of the earth, searching for some trace of Cyril's fiancé. Many weeks went by and they found nothing but implausible stories and fabrications. That was, until one night, having a drink in a local tavern, they heard a shadowed figure speak of a woman matching her description heading to a northern city. They finally had hope. Hope that was quickly dashed once they heard the name of the northern town; a name that caused the Wise Radomir's face to go pale underneath his red beard.