Corvus Rex

by J K Ishaya

  “I swallowed, the lump in my throat as coarse as coal and the punch it gave my inner chest as it went down was too heavy to bear. I had heard the name, spoken before me carelessly by Nodens, and here now, I knew clearly to what it belonged. ‘Azathoth,’ I whispered back.

  “Nyarlathotep was most pleased. ‘Yessssss,’ he replied. ‘Listen to him. Let go, and he will make you whole again. You were born to be a king, Zyraxes. You were robbed of your birthright in Sarnath. You were robbed of it in Dacia. Through him all will be restored, and you will know the power that you were truly meant to wield.’’

  “I would be lying if I said it did not appeal to me. To look upon the slumbering mass before me, so vast that the whole of if did not fit within my range of vision, and to know that were it to awaken would mean to destroy all of creation, that was certainly power of a strength unimaginable. In hosting that, I would be able to bring back all that I had lost, to create as well as destroy. Rome would fall before me, and Dacia would rise again. The temptation. Ah, I cannot tell you.”

  Even as I tell Howard what I am able to convey, that temptation is still here, alive inside me, and has been ever since.

  “When I blinked, behind my eyes I had a vision of Bendis, so lovely and glowing, smiling and beckoning me. I could have her back along with my whole family, and it would be Bielis’ head on a platter instead of Decebal’s.

  “But then when I opened my eyes again, there was the mass before me and the eye. The heinousness conflicted so vastly with Bendis' beautiful face in my memory, that was all it took to gradually bring me back to my wits, to realize that a brazen deception it all was. It would, in truth, be the death of me, of Zyraxes, even if not the termination of my body. My mind would become nothing but a lens for Azathoth like that poor creature named Lyrr, who had become a host for Nyarlathotep.

  “‘Accept him, Zyraxes!’ he hissed at me.

  “At my sides, my fists clenched as I fought to find my own stability. ‘No,’ I said through gritted teeth. Before I realized it, my foot had come free from Nyarlathotep’s hold and managed a backward step.

  “‘He is already a part of you, all you need do is open the way. It is the only path you have now. We are here, alone in his court, there is nowhere else for you to go.’

  “But there was, I realized. Nodens had already given me a clue when he’d called out to me right before the Phantasm had entered the Cataract: T’would be best to fall into oblivion than submit to the Daemon Sultan. Not only that, but days earlier, he had commented that he’d hoped my fall from the sky would awaken me on the earth plane. The key words were oblivion and fall. Here, I stood surrounded by oblivion, not just that comfort and power which Azathoth offered, but there was also the abyss behind me. The idea of falling, or drifting, forever frightened me—would it eventually drive me completely insane, as I began to starve and could not hunt, and leave me gibbering idiotically?—but it did not frighten me as much as the idea of betraying myself to such an extent, and I had already done enough of that when I’d cooperated with Nyarlathotep all the way through Dylath-Leen to Baharna.

  “I closed my eyes for a long moment, let my thoughts relax out until my mind was clear. Then I opened my eyes and stared with intent upon the abhorrent thing before me, and the Sultan’s great eye, and Nyarlathotep smiled triumphantly, thinking that this meant I was surrendering.

  “I actually was cloaking my intentions carefully. I clenched my jaw, took a symbolic breath, and then turned and bolted at the peak of my speed. The sudden charge startled my captor and broke his mental hold, allowing me to run for the opposite side of the platform.

  “I could hear Nyarlathotep shouting another enraged Nooo! at this development. I could feel his mental clutches trying to reel me back, making each step drag a little more, pulling at an elbow, clawing into my back around my spine, even at my hair, and then I reached the edge and did not merely jump but I dove so as to speed away as fast as possible. In space I flipped over and looked up behind me as the platform shrank in the distance, and there I saw Nyarlathotep no longer in his Borean form but a cloud of darkness seething and swirling and lashing. It blended with the space behind it, making it even more amorphous and difficult to discern any form at all.

  “I plunged into the void that surrounded Azathoth’s court and past the cylinder of one of the massive tendrils that reached out and seemed to be an anchor. As has been explained, physics in the Dream realm are different, and I slipped back out into the cosmos amid stars and dust. Colorful patches of nebulae in blues and violets closed around me and the translucent larval creatures that filled the black matter swarmed close in a storm of teeth and long, undulating bodies and I screamed as they brushed around me and I plummeted deeper, and below me one of them opened its dripping maw wide. Unable to stop, I laid the crook of an elbow over my eyes and continued my descent.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “Because my eyes were covered, I cannot say if I ever made it into that gaping mouth. Thoughts flashed through my mind that I really was not going to fall for eternity, and that the thing in the aether could not really devour me. I had been beheaded, stabbed from crown to torso, dropped from hundreds of feet and still I remained. Nyarlathotep might somehow try to retrieve me. If, in his amorphous form, he still had not the reach to snatch me back to the platform, he might still board the ship and cast off after me, but out in the abyss, his search would soon be like looking for a specific grain of sand on a vast shore.

  “Or, as the next thought went, I would actually awaken on the earth plane and he would be forced to cast me to sleep once more and start all over again with forcing me down those damned steps. His cruelty would be ten-fold, but that did not matter so much now. Either way, my tactic had stalled his plans.

  “The sensation of falling lapsed and felt more like floating. I lowered my arm but kept my eyes closed as floating transitioned into a sense of rising, gently, with all fear banishing when I began to feel my body differently and I shifted into a static position. Then more sensation came of lying at my full weight upon a hard surface, and when my eyes cracked open, once more I looked upon the phosphorescent glow of that occult circle that contained me. It was painted upon a stone floor, not a ship’s deck, and I knew instantly that I had returned to the earth plane. I was on my side, head tilted steeply, still in the same position in which I had originally settled and though my visit to the Dreamlands had been longer than a week, awake I had a sense that only a matter of hours had passed.

  “With a jolt I got to my knees, blinking in awe and staring around me at the glowing circle, the corpse that had been my meal, and then up to my left, finding my prison mate now crouched in his own nook with his chained ankle, watching out of general curiosity. Then my gaze swept to the right and found the witch, Amarisa, standing there outside my circle.

  “There was such beauty in that slender form, in her porcelain face framed by brilliant red locks and the wide, blue opals that were her eyes. Her expression was frozen for a matter of seconds in a look of shock to see me awake, and then the eyes narrowed, and her mouth curled back into an angry, unbecoming snarl.”

  “Oh, I beg to differ,” Kvasir interrupts. “I thought the look on that bitch’s face was most becoming.”

  Howard squirms a little, this time overlooking the vulgarity and hinging on excitement to know what happened next. I cannot help a small smile at Kvasir, who waves me on and shakes his head at the same time, recalling that moment along with me and what unfolded next.

  “Perhaps it was,” I say, humoring him. “Most becoming indeed. Even more becoming was the upset screech that she let out next. So sure was she of her power, that to see it suddenly broken threw her into a near tantrum. ‘You are awake?’ she shouted through gritted teeth. ‘How are you awake! This cannot be!’

  “My attention was fixed on her for the least moment, though, as beyond her figure I saw my true tormentor sitting upon the throne-like chair. Nyarlathotep had also returned from the Dreamlands and opened
his eyes. He was staring at me, and this time there was no glimpse of green, cat-like Borean eyes. They were fully engulfed in black, glossy as ink, with veins branching out from them while his skin had assumed an ashen gray, and the scarab amulet in his circlet glowed more prominently with a putrid green, like a third eye behind which powers yet unrevealed were brewing.

  “He stood and took several storming steps toward the edge of the circle, pointing at me. ‘Put him back under, now!’ he shouted at the witch. ‘Send him back to the steps!’

  “This being one of my two suspicions as to what he might try, I braced myself. Amarisa reached out her hand and, making those slow hypnotic motions while speaking the chant, began to weave a new spell. I felt it swathe around me as it had before, but I gritted my teeth. The greatest fear seized me that if Nyarlathotep were to bring me back to that platform before the Daemon Sultan, I would not resist the call this time. The temptation of Azathoth’s power was too great, and I had sworn I would not betray myself, and on that oath, I would do anything to prevent it. I took a deep breath and let it out with a roar, determined to keep myself awake. My fangs budded and pierced my gums with a sting that was strangely enlightening as that least twinge of pain jarred me from the threat of slumber.

  “She persisted with her chant and drawing symbols in the air, and I forced my eyes open to stare her down. Groaning, fighting the urge to sink to the ground and fall back into blackness, I extracted my claws and reached up, dug them into my own face, tearing great, oozing gashes from my forehead all the way down, taking out an eye. The pain ripped deep into my head, stinging like a fiery brand as eyelids and cheeks were laid open, and I heard my prison mate gasp. It went beyond any pain I had ever experienced before encompassing my once-twisted spine or the injuries inflicted by Rome. I tore my skin open all the way down from face to chest, and then, right when it began to mend, I started over again, once more from my brow down, blinding myself for seconds at a time before I would begin to see again. The wounds sent rivulets of ichor down my body to pool on the floor around me.

  “The witch’s chant grew louder, and as I screamed and clawed myself over and over again, I glimpsed through my rapidly healing eyes that Nyarlathotep was observing with a scowl on his face. I think I might have even shocked the Crawling Chaos with my tactic, and I cannot remember how long this went on. I tore at my face over and over, at my arms, at anything that had a surface to lay open. To injure myself thus churned up the hunger in angry waves, as my energies were spent healing, but these hunger pangs, too, served the purpose of keeping me from giving in and staying awake.”

  “I do not have words,” Howard says, and looks at Kvasir. “And you witnessed this?”

  “Yes,” Kvasir says, eyes cast toward the floor. “I was both repulsed and impressed. There were two possibilities. Either he had tipped completely into insanity, or it was a confirmation to me that, during the short hours that he had been on the other side of the steps, Nyarlathotep had not had the influence on him that I had feared he would, and I hoped it was the latter. I had not seen anything like this before, and I had seen a lot of things. It was the first time I’d ever encountered such savagery with a true purpose behind it. The claws seemed to be growing longer, digging deeper, until there was nothing but a partial skull showing through tears of black sinew, sticky strands of hair caught in the lacerations, fangs bared through missing lips. By the time those claws reached his chest, the openings on his face had already begun to seal up, his eyes would reform in the sockets and roll back into place and glare with utter determination at Nyarlathotep, and I… gods, I could not look away. I admired his fortitude and hated him at the same time for embedding such visions in my memory. The whole tactic, however, also turned out to be a helpful, if unintended, diversion.”

  I nod to that. “Unintended, but yes. I was only trying to fight the spell in the most desperate way possible, but just when my next strategy would have me throw myself at the circle’s invisible barrier and its hellish current, the enchantment ceased. The surge of anesthetizing power dropped away, leaving me to my self-inflicted pain, which began to vanish quickly. I pitched forward on my hands, head hanging, as my skin seamed back up, leaving streaks and patches of the ichor across my face and chest, and my vision cleared again for the final time. A din suddenly rose around me, an eerie cacophony of chitters and hisses and I looked up to see that the n’gai were dispatching in long rows like army ants over the cavern ceiling, winding down the columns and along the walls into the corridors beyond. The black-robed figures who had carried Nyarlathotep's chair in stepped from their places and hurried forward to await command.

  “Nyarlathotep and his witch watched the n’gai click, scratch and scramble. He turned his body to follow their course and paused, eyes narrowing suspiciously—I suspect he was telepathically assessing the situation—and then announced something in that language he had spoken upon the platform before Azathoth. I cringed to realize I understood the word easily, even if I had not heard it in my own language: Intruders.

  “I tried not to smile, suspecting that Malorix had gotten into the lair as planned, but then I feared he may have triggered some trap similar to that which had snagged me the first time in Trajan’s camp. Nyarlathotep issued one last angry glare at me and then shouted a command at the robed servants to follow him, while one of the bands of n’gai circled the prison and came back around to poise above myself and my neighbor as if ready to launch at anyone or thing that came through the rocky corridor. All orders specified, he and the witch departed in a fury that would almost be comical if I weren’t still trapped in that damnable circle.

  “In the alcove next to mine, I noticed my prison mate perking up with an even greater interest of his own. He stood from his crouch, narrowed his eyes and tilted an ear forward, then after a moment turned his head to angle the other one more forward. Recovered from my ordeal with the spell and self-mutilation, I did the same, focusing my hearing. All skittering and hurried footfalls faded into slight echos in the corridors beyond, and then the familiar hissing and tittering of several n’gai carried back and seemed to be answered by their brethren that were keeping guard above us. After a moment, a loud explosion of a sound issued, shaking the foundations, causing pieces of debris to fall from the rocky vaults above, and the distant hissing began to sound more like desperation. After a second tremble, pieces of the carefully cut and fitted stone in the vaults above broke free and crashed down.

  “I could not imagine how Malorix might have been the cause of such clamor, but I did fear that Nyarlathotep was at the heart of it, having seen his greater, amorphous manifestation rumble through the forest near the ruins of Sarnath. Another, deeper reverberation followed, not as violent as the first but still as disturbing, as if the mountain were buckling over us.

  “‘What is it?’ I whispered, half to myself, half to my prison mate, who paid me no mind. It was clear now that he was waiting for something else to happen. It started with the n’gai who were guarding us. They began to chitter and hiss and some of their claws tapped on the stone as if they were either communicating in yet another language or they were coiling to spring. I heard the slightest of footfalls coming, several bipedal forms, and then they bled into view, pale and slender and quick.

  “To my greatest surprise, they were the kin to my prison mate: two young women and three men. Had I not already learned what I had of the Boreans via my prior discussions with my neighbor and with Nodens, or had I not seen the giant carved face of a god on that dormant volcano, I might have been even more shocked. They were as beautiful and ethereal as their captive brother. Though clad in drab, muted clothing with light leather armor, they made their Nyarlathite cousins seem bland by comparison. They had streaked their faces with smudges of black kohl, and even run some of it through their hair, but no disguise could quite hide such illumination, and when their green, feral eyes caught the light, I almost shivered with elation though I did not know what to expect from them. Logic dictated that they we
re not here for me. They had come for him.” I gesture across the parlor at Kvasir, who nods along.

  “And I,” he says, “allowed myself only the slightest relief for I still had utmost concern for them. I did not know how many more might be with them or if these five were alone, or if Nyarlathotep would return for that matter. How they had eluded him and gotten this far, I could not be sure, but I had my guesses. I breathed out their names, ‘Freytha,’ who is my twin sister. Then, ‘Calder… Brenna… Kory… Sten…’ I wanted to smile but dared not. Not yet when I was still chained and could do nothing to help them.” He gestures back to me. “Please, continue, Mr. Corvinus.”

  “I heard him whisper these names though I could not necessarily identify which name went with which individual. They were armed with bows and arrows as well as swords and daggers among other things. Armed to the teeth, I have to say, and that was no excess of caution for the n’gai immediately descended upon them like flies drawn to a corpse. All five of them went into action with grace and speed. They took out the first line of n’gai with arrow shots that were perfectly placed, hitting the fiends in the foreheads so that they dropped from the walls.

  “On the n’gai that made it to the ground and closed the distance, the intruders used their blades, which I realized were products of the Dreamlands, perhaps even purchased from that very blacksmith in Ilarnek. They fought in styles such as I had never seen before, dodging each attack with grace and agility, bounding off of columns and walls. But the n’gai were much greater in numbers and several did not merely climb down the walls but dropped purposefully from the ceiling or upper columns and began to overpower some of the Boreans.

  “My prison mate was by now clenching his fists, shouting warnings to his kin, and I, still kneeling in a pool of my own black blood, could only clench my jaw in determination and silently support these incidental allies.