King of Chaos

by Dave Gross

  That one was a different kind of mess. Something had smashed a big hole in the west wall. A bunch of people must have been huddled there when it happened, because I saw bones in the crumbled stone and shattered glass. I'd brightened a corner of it with my own blood.

  Speaking of which, I was starting to feel the pain from the shot to the chin. I touched the wet bib forming beneath my neck, and my hand came away not just wet but pooling with blood.

  "Desna weeps!"

  "Here," said Oparal. As her crusaders covered her from the hag and the unicorn stamped on spiders, the paladin sheathed her sword and took me by the throat.

  "It's not too late to take back the Captain Sweetheart thing, is it?"

  She squeezed a little harder than she had to, but I felt the tingle of holy light beginning to close my wounds.

  "No you don't!" shrieked the hag. She cackled out a spell of her own. Her ghost hand leaped out to tear the paladin's healing glow off of me and onto her own mutilated face. She put her ear back in place with a gesture like a lady adjusting her hair, and it stayed. The cut I'd given her sealed up neat as stitches.

  "Oparal," the boss's voice whispered in my head, too, "move your crusaders back that I may incinerate the river dead. Radovan, an invisible hag is creeping up on your left."

  "Got it."

  Oparal shouted a command and her crusaders formed a wedge-shaped shield wall and backed up to the west. They covered us while the drowned men covered their hag, who was busy with another spell. Before she could finish it, four golden bolts of force caught her in the chest. They'd come from one of the crusaders, a pretty southern gal who I noticed was the only one not wearing armor.

  The hag shot her an evil look but kept jabbering her spell. Then five silver-gray bolts shot out from the south, hitting her all over. The hag screamed as she lost her place and her own spell fizzled.

  The magic crusader looked over to the south, but the boss was still invisible. What we all did see was the four Kellids standing guard around Alase, who glowed for a second like she was wearing armor made of blue light before it faded out of sight. I could barely see her behind the big swordsman, but she was shaking one fist over her head while pointing her open hand at the big black wolf.

  So that's what she meant by her "god."

  Behind me and to the left, I heard the squish of a bare foot on the floor. One more step, and she'd be close enough.

  "Could use a hand, Sweet—er, Captain."

  Oparal dropped her shield and raised her sword above her head, taking the hilt in two hands. I'd seen her take that stance before, and things hadn't gone well for the critter under the blade.

  The invisible hag took another step toward me. The hard part was not flinching before she made her move. The hairs on the back of my neck turned to needles. I tried to look like I was focused on the drowned men, but the bleeding from my neck made me anxious. I ducked low and threw an elbow back.

  I caught her low in the belly. An instant later, the hag's claws swept past me, visible again. Oparal's bright sword came down, missing the hag's neck by inches. Still, she cut a deep wedge into her shoulder.

  Shrieking, the hag spun away. Oparal took a step toward her but stopped before chasing her.

  The boss shouted, "Oparal! Alase! Pull back your beasts." I could see him then, standing with Arnisant at his side against the west wall, the Shadowless Sword in one hand, a riffle scroll in the other. With half the pouches on his bandolier hanging open from all the spells he'd already cast, he looked like some kind of swashbuckler. I bet he'd get a kick out of a painting like that. Maybe I'd get him one for his next birthday, if we both lived that long.

  "Bastiel!" shouted Oparal.

  So the big fellow had a name. The unicorn pranced back, stomping spiders as it retreated.

  "Tonbarse!" called Alase. The giant wolf leaped away from the drowned men.

  With the critters clear, the boss let loose another riffle scroll. A little flame flew across the cathedral, growing bigger with every foot. When it reached the main entrance, it exploded into a huge ball of fire. Flames sizzled on the wet bodies of the drowned men, drying them off more than it burned them. Still, a few of them went wobbly and fell to the cathedral floor.

  Across the room I saw the boss raise his chin, proud of himself. He hardly ever got to use his favorite spell in the land of demons, where the fiends shrugged off most of his best stuff.

  The crusader wizard cocked her head at the boss and threw a fireball of her own. Hers exploded a few feet closer to the undead mob. Since they were already half baked by the boss, hers seared most of the survivors to crisps.

  "Go!" said the boss. Arnisant dashed out first, tripping the first walking dead man and sinking his fangs into the second.

  Sometimes I think that dog will eat anything.

  The Kellids leaped in, howling their clan names and chopping the undead with their giant swords.

  At a word from Oparal, the crusaders moved in from the other side. One shouted, "Iomedae!" Otherwise, they fought without talking, paying as much mind to their shields as their swords.

  I heard the sound of tumbling rocks. It grew louder as I looked up. Nothing was falling on us. Instead, the rubble of the broken west wall was rising up all around me.

  Skeletons stood up from the wreckage. Shards of glass in their bones threw beams of green, blue, and gold through the clouds of dust rising from the rubble.

  The hags were nowhere in sight, but a dozen voices cackled through the cathedral. I was beginning not to like our chances so much. I kissed my thumb and drew the wings of Desna over my heart.

  "Radiance!" shouted Oparal.

  She stepped back, leaving me to fight off the skeletons. I gave the first one a swift kick to the breastbone. It fell back into a couple more, which helped it stand back up. They came on, bony fingers reaching for my eyes.

  Behind me, golden light flared from three different spots. The skeletons' bones burned and cracked. Here and there an arm fell away. Ribs crumbled to ash. Blackened skulls fell to the floor and shattered.

  I turned around, squinting into the light. Oparal and two of her men—including the bearded guy who'd lost his hat to a hag—held their swords with the crosspieces before their faces. Their eyes half closed, their lips moving, they called down the wrath of their goddess.

  It was pretty good wrath. Seconds later, the skeletons settled down with the dust. The hags' cackling laughter turned into crazy screeching.

  One of the Kellids screamed, too—Zoresk. Everybody looked at him at the same time. A hag rode on his back, one claw in his mouth, the other with a claw stuck deep in his eye. The big man thrashed, dropped his sword, and tried to grab her neck in his big hands, but her nail reached his brain first.

  Gannak and Roga leaped for her at the same time, each one trying to be the hero. They got in each other's way. The hag vanished, and Zoresk died before they reached him.

  The crusaders moved in at the same time, the bearded paladin ordering them forward with shields up, all cautious. When one bumped against the invisible hag, she shouted a warning. All the swords near her slashed down at the space in front of her shield. A hag screamed and reappeared for a second before throwing the woman who found her up against the wall. The crusaders on either side moved in to fill the gap she'd left.

  "The door!" shouted Alase.

  Tonbarse was already bounding toward the cathedral door, where another mob of drowned men was pouring inside. This bunch was still wet from the river, half with limbs or faces nibbled away. One of them was some kind of ogre or half-fiend with a spiral horn curling across its cheek just under a red eye.

  Arni ran so close behind Tonbarse that for a second I thought he was going to try to drag the big wolf down. Instead, a hag's voice cried out. Right before my eyes, Arni shrank, his floppy ears growing long, his curly gray coat turning brown and soft.

  In the middle of the ash pile that the boss and the crusader wizard had made of the first undead mob, the hag who'd be
en the saint laughed and patted her bulging belly while she pointed at what she'd done to Arni.

  That witch turned my dog into a bunny!

  "Boss!"

  I didn't wait to see what he did. I ran at the hag.

  She waved at me, a creepy gesture all by itself, but with the added nasty of green slime glistening on her palm.

  I didn't want any of that on me, so I veered off to grab Arni. Confused, the poor little guy—and now he really was a little guy—hopped between the legs of the soggy dead.

  I stuck the big knife back in its sheath and dove after him, hands open to scoop him into my arms. Just before I could touch him, stinking black whips shot across the room and snatched him away.

  Rolling back to my feet, I kicked one of the drowned men away. I must have lost more blood than I realized, because even that much effort nearly put me on the floor.

  Turning, I looked back at the witch. It was her hair that had snatched up Arni. She cradled him in her arms, holding him tight while stroking the spot between his ears with a knuckle. All she had to do to rub that slime on him was turn her hand.

  "What a plump treasure you are," she crooned to Arni before looking up at me. "How fat and succulent for the roasting spit!"

  "You let go of my dog, hag!"

  She fixed her eye on me and shot a quick glance at Oparal. The paladin had grabbed one of the other hags by the hair, while the hag held onto her sword arm to keep the holy sword out of her guts.

  I saw a nasty gleam in the eye of the hag holding Arni, and I knew without the boss telling me there was magic in it. She was trying to tell me something without everybody else hearing what she had to say. She made a V with her fingers and waggled 'em.

  I got it all right. Elf ears for bunny ears. Arni for Oparal. The hag grinned when she saw I understood the message.

  "I got a better idea," I said, taking the big knife in hand and throwing her the big smile.

  That got her attention. When I ran for her, she dropped Bunny Arni and reached for me with a slimy hand.

  The nasty stuff was enough to make me flinch. At the last second I went low instead of high, but she still saw it coming. As I brought up the big knife to gut her, she beat away my hand and grabbed me by the face.

  Even with the boss's magic in me, she was stronger. I hollered as the slime burned into my pretty mug. She lifted me up as if I were the one light as a bunny. I dropped the knife, screaming and scratching at her hand, trying to tear through it to scrape away the slime.

  She spun me around and threw me across the room. I clawed at my eyes, but it was too late. They'd already turned to slime. Where my fingers sank into them, they started dissolving, too.

  I could barely hear the boss shouting my name over the sound of my own screaming. Then I fell into something cold and wet and rancid. My stomach turned inside out, filling my throat with vomit.

  There was something else moving inside whatever I'd fallen into. A thousand little legs crawling down my collar and up my sleeves.

  Then they began eating me alive.

  Chapter Six

  The Cathedral

  Varian

  For an appalling instant, I feared Radovan was dead before he plunged into the rotting hulk. When his screams grew louder than the din of battle, I felt a fierce mixture of relief that he lived and pity for his agony. Dozens of red-and-black centipedes, each the length of my forearm, poured out of the amphibian's corpse.

  For an insane instant, I imagined they fled from Radovan's screams. No natural insects, they had been tainted by the foul energies of the Worldwound. Their myriad hooked legs left trails of sizzling venom across the carcass.

  For a hopeful instant, I prayed my earlier hypothesis proved correct and that Desna had guided the hag's aim when she flung Radovan into the ugsome pile.

  "Your friend!" Alase shouted beside me. Pity replaced the usually tough tenor of her voice. Her fingers traced arcane gestures I recognized as a spell to enhance our alacrity. "Tonbarse, defend us!"

  The great wolf loped forward, but some invisible force turned him aside. He yelped at the impact, then growled and snapped blindly at his attacker.

  Alase's call to Tonbarse reminded me of Arnisant's plight. The hare he had become hopped miserably across the cathedral floor, balking each time it encountered the trampling feet of the drowned men, their hags, the crusaders, or my remaining Kellid guards. Arnisant wanted to go to Radovan, but he could barely control the unfamiliar legs of his transformed body. He could do no good in his present form. "Arnisant, come!"

  Alase exclaimed again as something dark flew out of the amphibian's flank. The ragged object fell wetly to the floor. Fiendish vermin scattered from it, fleeing the howling prisoner that thrashed within the gigantic carcass.

  The discarded thing first appeared to be a great hank of flayed flesh, and I shared Alase's horror. But then I recognized it as the latest of Radovan's perpetually doomed jackets.

  A stream of Chelish curses followed the garment out of the putrid heap, transforming midstream into even fouler words in the tongue of Hell. The amphibian's carcass swelled and shuddered.

  Before I could shout a warning, the remains exploded, showering friend and foe alike with malodorous gore. The stench had been disgusting before, but now it became truly noxious. Throughout the room, all the living creatures—even the hags—gagged and choked. The combatants staggered away, retching uncontrollably.

  I covered my mouth and pinched shut my nose. Once I felt I would not regurgitate at the slightest motion, I tugged the scented handkerchief from my sleeve and wiped the tears from my eyes.

  An infernal figure uncoiled from the shredded remains of the amphibian's carcass, dripping like a child from the womb of an unwholesome mother.

  In their nook against the eastern wall, the horses screamed and threw themselves against the walls in a futile effort to escape. Even the dead men balked in their attacks, and everyone present looked toward the new arrival.

  The devil was far larger than I had remembered, standing nearly twice my stature as it rose to its full height, and with even more mass than the mighty Tonbarse. I wondered whether the enclosed space emphasized its true size or it had grown since I first saw it in Kyonin.

  It resembled an emaciated devil with a humanoid frame and a scorpion's tail arching from the base of its spine to hang over its head. Unlike the drawings of its kind I had studied, this fiend had the triangular build of a wrestler and a dark, iridescent carapace over rufescent limbs. Its visage was a dreadful conjunction of arachnid and flayed human skull.

  I knew it by the name it had told Radovan: Fell Viridio.

  Viridio first entered Golarion when Radovan selected him to step through the gate—or rather, to step through Radovan himself. Through a centuries-old scheme, Radovan had been born a gate to other worlds.

  Terrible worlds.

  From the last prince of Ustalav down to Radovan, a coterie of devils had sired or borne all the remaining descendants of the Virholt line. Their goal: to breed their personal passage from Hell to Golarion. But all did not go according to their plan. At some point demons had insinuated themselves into the bloodline, causing Radovan to be born a flawed portal not only to Hell but also to the Abyss.

  This imperfection proved fortunate for Radovan in one respect. While both Viridio and a devil named Norge had previously transposed their bodies onto his, neither could dominate his personality. Once Radovan had endured the devil's sigil—in Viridio's case, apparently venom—the fiend could project its body into the world, but its psyche remained an observer.

  Encouraged by his survival of the hag's grievous attack, I called out to him. "Radovan!"

  The devil turned to me, its mandibles twitching on either side of a toothy maw. "Radovan's not here, you conceited little cripple. You know my name. Speak it!"

  The room went silent but for the moaning of the drowned men and the restless clatter of horses' hooves. Oparal's crusaders, uncertain where the greater danger stood, shifted
away from Viridio while continuing to hack down the undead. My men retreated to stand by me, I suspected more to receive the protection of my magic than to grant me the safety of their swords.

  Full well did I know, contrary to popular belief, that speaking a devil's true name does not always grant one power over the fiend. Under certain circumstances it can seal one's doom by granting it power over the speaker. I recalled that Viridio had required Radovan to utter his name to bring him through the gate, while Norge had never done so.

  "Go on, say it," insisted the devil.

  I dared not.

  The standoff continued as Oparal regrouped with her crusaders. They stood back to back, defending each other with shield and blade against foes both seen and unseen. The drowned men staggered back into the cathedral entrance and stood wavering, halted by some unheard command from their mistress. Tonbarse returned to Alase, and the rather large brown hare that Arnisant had become leaned heavily upon my shin, trembling.

  A shrieking laugh broke the silence. With the Shadowless Sword in hand, I saw through all illusions, including invisibility. One of the hags stood not far from the devil. Hers was the only head thrown back, but I heard the laughter of at least four voices. While my sword revealed only visual illusions, it required no great feat of deduction to realize the hags had multiplied their voices to give the impression of greater numbers.

  Viridio was no more fooled than I. His monstrous hand lashed out, grabbing the nearby hag around the waist and hoisting her up before his face. She shrieked and raised her hands to weave a spell, but the devil shook her hard, spoiling the effort.

  Viridio scanned the room. He glowered at the crusaders, with a brief, sinister smile at Oparal's unicorn. He barely seemed to notice me or Alase, but his eyes lingered on Arnisant and Tonbarse before he turned to the hag who had presented herself as Saint Lymirin.

  "You there, fake saint. I see you just fine." The leader of the hags had begun tracing a spell in the air, but the sound of the devil's voice halted her gestures. "What's your name, witch?"