by David Adams
I couldn’t help but laugh. I had driven a dagger deep into Contremulus’s gut. Not only had the wound healed almost instantly, it had not even visibly pained him. “I doubt that will kill my father.”
“Everything dies,” said Derodohr. “If his throat cannot be slit, then hack his head off. If his head will not be separated, then find a bigger sword. If blades cannot harm him, crush him under a mountain. Finesse is for the weak. The crippled. Brute force is the ultimate weapon if you use enough.”
How much force could we bring to bear against such a creature? Incinerator could turn a kobold to ash, what would it do against my father?
Contremulus can control all of them, whispered Magmellion. Dark deeds indeed. Who do you face, Ren of Atikala, who can both set a city to flame, and then drag its inhabitants back to serve him?
Acknowledging my father’s power was not something I wanted to do.
“I don’t know how to do that,” I said.
“The answer,” said Derodohr, “is simple. Use what you have, and don’t let your enemies know it, until you’re ready. Like so.” He raised his head to the ceiling, and as though he were taking something off a shelf, reached up, and grabbed hold of something I could not see.
It squeaked and kicked, and Derodohr squeezed it until black-purple blood dripped down from the ceiling, and the broken body of a creature appeared, four legged, the size of a man with the centre of its body a massive maw. It was a horrible spider-man abomination.
“One of Sirora’s assistants,” said Derodohr, tossing the body into the corner. “It has been watching you for some time.”
“Since when?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.
“Since the attack on the spire.”
That would make sense. Sirora didn’t want me to be killed. She needed me.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said, taking a deep breath and trying not to look at the dead creature bleeding onto the floor of the canvas structure. “But…if you have something specific for me to do against my father, I’d like to hear that, too.”
“Take your forces out to meet Contremulus. Challenge him in the open field. Throw your forces at his; he is not interested in watching minions slaughter each other. He will seek you out, and when he does, lure him down under Drathari and to his death.” Derodohr tilted his head until it cracked. “How quickly can you mobilise your armies?”
“Quickly,” I said. “We have received…reinforcements.”
Right on cue, from the southern tunnels, Sirora came, and behind her, a column of reanimated kobolds. Hundreds of them, the majority of the bodies, stood up and walked. Behind them were the humans we had killed, those who had assaulted the central spire and those whom we had fought in the tunnels. A hundred of them, too, marching in step with the shorter undead kobolds.
Silent, save for the shuffle of their feet.
“You are not wrong,” said Derodohr as he stared appreciatively at the seemingly endless column of bodies that marched from the eastern tunnels. “I had wondered when you were going to employ the services of that necromancer you keep around, apart from the joy of discovering her ethereal filchers had been spying on you.”
“I had hoped not ever,” I said, taking a breath to keep my tone even. “But circumstances forced my hand.”
“As they do to all of us,” said Derodohr. “Such is the refrain of those of us with power and principles, very rarely do both of these things survive when placed in contest.”
I smiled whimsically. “Is it wrong that power seems to be winning?”
“It is natural,” said Derodohr. “In the wild the weak are prey to the strong. Civilisation circumvents this mechanism, but civilisation is really just a shared delusion. It is the lie we tell ourselves when we fear that we are weak.” He locked eyes with me. “Are you weak, Ren of Atikala?”
I watched Sirora lead the undead through city of Ssarsdale. Kobolds parted to let them through, bewildered.
“Let’s go find out.”
“We’ll need more warriors than that,” said Derodohr, his teeth showing. “We’ll need everyone.”
I put my hands on my hips, considering the crowd of watchers.
“Then let’s get everyone.”
I emptied the city.
Every bug farmer, every stonemason, every blacksmith and tailor and miner and leather worker and scout. Every hand had a spear put in it. Every scrap of food, water, supplies stacked onto sleds, dragged by teams of living dead. They did not tire. They did not complain or want for anything, nor require any organisation save being ordered to their task. The perfect servants. I now understood why Contremulus admired them so.
When the last foot stepped out of Ssarsdale, not even a single watchman was left in the city. It was a ghost town, quiet as a tomb.
The underworld shook with the pounding of twenty thousand kobold feet, hundreds of dwarves, and as many undead. My army, climbed up towards the fresh air of the surface and poured out onto like water from an overflowing river. For almost all of my people, this was the first time they had lived without a ceiling overhead. Their heads craned skywards, shielding their eyes from the harsh glare of the moon and the stars.
From atop the mountain, in the distance I could see the hole where the fallen star had landed and destroyed Atikala. What capriciousness of the dead Gods it was…destroying my home for no reason.
Beyond that, though, I could see Contremulus’s army. The dark stain spreading out from Northaven towards my mountain. Towards Ssarsdale. They would get closer. They would march near and around the hole that was Atikala. They would approach the base of the mountain that led down into Drathari, and there they would be defeated.
It was that, or every kobold in Ssarsdale would die and be turned into zombies.
The potential risk would inspire my soldiers.
The Darkguard met us on the surface, their grim work complete. It had been for some time. Not that I needed their report; I could see from the mountaintop the faint columns of smoke still drifting into the sky, joining up with those from Northaven. The small fires of farms and villages paled in comparison to the black smoke that hung over the blackened scar that was Northaven.
The one face I did not expect to see, however, was Yelora. Her leg was bandaged, swathed in thick cloths that were even now stained through with blood, but she could walk, albeit with a limp.
“You’re recovering nicely,” I said, eyeing the spear in her hand. “I hope you’re not planning to use that.”
“Whatever else I am,” she said, her voice lacking strength but making up for her injury with determination I found admirable, “I am a warrior. My life is yours, but it has not yet been given fully.”
I appreciated the sentiment. “If there’s anything I can do for you, to aid you, let me know.”
“Yes,” said Yelora, grip on her spear tightening. “There is one thing. Let me set camp. It is the least I can do to earn my meal tonight.”
That was agreeable to me. Yelora set up camp in the shadow of the mountain, then dispatched scouts to look for food and evaluate the terrain. I was nervous about sending the Darkguard so far away from me, but that was how they best operated, in the shadows, striking at the vulnerable. They were adequate fighters, but to throw them into the field was a waste.
I kept only one with me, with orders to slay anyone who laid a finger on me.
Valen.
He stared at the ground as I made preparations around camp, occasionally adjusting the straps on his new prosthetic, a thin blade on a leather cap, attached to the stump of his arm. Such things were rare in Ssarsdale; cripples were usually executed, but a fully trained Darkguard—even one who was barely out of adulthood—was a resource too valuable to squander.
You do not need him, whispered Magmellion, seeming to my mind’s ear to be…almost jealous. He is a nuisance. And he surely harbours hate in his heart for how you maimed him.
“Just as you harbour hate in yours for imprisoning you?” I whispered to myself, hoping nobody
would hear.
An excellent point.
Derodohr appeared at the edge of my vision. I shut Magmellion out, focusing my thoughts outward. I couldn’t be chattering away to my imprisoned fire elemental during the battle.
“We should discuss our strategy,” Derodohr said, his voice seeming weirdly distorted in the outside air. “We should send our undead out first, let the dead fight the dead. Their losses will not be mourned.”
True. “How many?”
“All of them. They are easier to move as a unit; give them a command, and they will follow it mindlessly. The living dead do not think like us. They cannot be given complex instructions and expect success.”
I nibbled on my lower lip. “That’s…a risk. I went to a lot of effort to acquire these, and I’m not sure what the effect might be on Sirora if they are all destroyed. She invests part of herself in the creation of those things; to lose them all at once might affect her abilities.”
Derodohr craned his head, the edges of his demonic mouth turning upward. “What are you, a kobold or a kochicken?”
I had no idea what a chicken was, but I could understand what he was getting at. “It’s not a matter of cowardice.”
“Victory requires sacrifices. You cannot expect to win without loss, Lady Ren.”
Again, true. “Very well,” I said. “I shall dispatch our undead as the first wave.”
Derodohr nodded approvingly, casting his eyes out to the encroaching army of blackened corpses as they slowly, inexorably, drew closer and closer to the base of the mountain.
Twin seas of the dead met just before dawn.
There was no strategy in this battle. No tactics. No finesse that could improve our odds. The bodies Sirora had reanimated, kobolds and humans alike, ran down the hill, silent except the fall of their feet. They rushed headlong into the massive wave of scorched corpses Contremulus had raised. Semi-skeletal armies of the unliving met in a smash of dead flesh, both sides weaponless and unarmoured, bashing and biting and flailing at each other, unthinking bodies brawling in the open snow.
Within moments I lost track of which undead were ours and which were his. Who was winning or losing? I could no longer tell. The fighting was chaos, the armies indistinguishable.
But the macabre scene was secondary to my primary concern. Where was Contremulus? I could not see him. My eyes searched, trying to find either a disguised human amongst the dead, or a dragon lurking somewhere, watching the battle and waiting to intervene.
“He is here,” said Derodohr, seeming to sense what I was thinking. “I promise you.”
“I know,” I said, watching as the undead hordes churned together. “I wish he would come. I want to face him. I want this to be over with.”
“Patience,” said Derodohr, “he will come when he feels the time is right. He is happy to spend his minions in the meantime. Speaking of the same, when our line breaks, send in the dwarves.”
Straight into the remains of Contremulus’s undead? “Are you mad? Treat the dwarves as a vanguard? They will be slaughtered.”
“They will deploy their pikes and shields, and they will hold back the tide. While they are occupied, send your spellcasters—including you—to attack their flank. Use your flame. Press them between iron and the flame.”
“Many dwarves will die,” I said, cautiously.
“Many dwarves will die,” echoed Derodohr.
As I watched, the tide of the dead began to shift. It was less a melee and more a movement, a tide creeping up the mountain base. There was no more fighting. Sirora’s living dead were spent. The reanimated citizens of Northaven were coming for us.
With a thought, I activated my wings, and I leapt into the air. The cold wind buffeted me but I flew higher, beating my flaming wings.
At Derodohr’s command, the dwarven warriors formed a phalanx, a line of swords and shields ready to face the onslaught.
“For Irondarrow!” roared the dwarves as one, while the undead horde charged towards them, scorched and burned fingers extended, saying not a word.
With a gesture I raised a wall of fire between the living and the dead. The obvious peril did nothing to dissuade the mindless zombies; they charged through, the intense heat seeming to catch to the dead, dry flesh easily. Each creature became a flaming body, fully engulfed in it as they crashed into the dwarves shields, impaled themselves on their spears, and mindlessly crumbled to ash. The dwarves held their ground as the burning tide broke upon their shields and steel.
Summoning my inner fire, I conjured a tiny golden orb into my hand and hurled it into the mass of undead. It exploded in a flash, turning a score of walking corpses to dust. I threw another one. And another. And another. Their numbers seemed endless, but with every blast they thinned.
Send in the rest of your army, said Magmellion, spitting like bubbling water. Maintain pressure.
Not a bad idea; now was the time. I sent up a cone of flame into the air, the signal the Darkguard were waiting for. They crawled out of concealed cracks in the stone, flanking from one side, as the main body of my army—almost the entire population of Ssarsdale—charged the zombie army from the other.
Pinned between three armies, and with fire pouring down on them from above, the tide was far from stemmed, still stretching out for nearly a mile, but the dwarves held their ground as I fired. Sirora shot green rays and bolts of lightning into the mass of bone and flesh, taking her fair share as well. I dared to hope, for just a moment, that we could actually win.
“Above you!” roared Derodohr, his demonic voice somehow reaching my ears despite the height, and the clash of metal and flesh below. “Ren!”
I looked up, squinting at the bright light of the moon. Nothing but sky, dark and dotted with millions of tiny lights. There was no sign of anything but starlight.
Then I remembered, as the wind shifted, and the smell of the dead came not from below, but from above.
Derodohr could see invisible creatures.
I pointed my finger in roughly the direction the rush of air was coming from, and I fired rays of heat wildly. Two flew off into the sky, bright lines of fire that flickered out in the distance, but one struck home. It hit something, something close, something huge.
Then massive claws grasped my body, clenched around my armour and squeezed.
Magmellion shouted in my mind, crying out in pain. The steel warped and clenched, and although it felt tight around my midsection, it held. I drew Incinerator and stabbed wildly, driving into unseen flesh.
The claw appeared, fading into reality, and attached to it was a golden dragon. Huger than I remembered, scales shimmering in the predawn starlight, wings creating a powerful downward thrust of air with every beat. The flesh between its scales was withered and dead, and its eyes glowed with an inner blue light.
It was an undead gold dragon, flame and shadow and death.
But it wasn’t Contremulus. This dragon was female.
“Ophiliana?” I asked, helpless in her massive claws.
“Help me, Ren of Atikala,” she said, her voice wavering and full of pain. “Please.”
CHAPTER XXIV
OF ALL THE THINGS THAT could possibly have attacked me, this was the last thing I was expecting.
I stared up at Ophiliana’s eyes. She looked back at me, holding me hundreds of feet above the ground.
“What do you want me to do?” I asked, the wind whipping the flames of my wings. “How can I help you?”
“You are my tether to this world,” she said, her voice echoing faintly. The shadows around her eyes were deep; she looked more of a corpse than a dragon, in contrast to Contremulus who seemed so alive and only let his nature be known if he wished it. “Contremulus is only fighting you to strengthen you. You must sever the link. I can show you how.”
Burn her now, said Magmellion in my mind. Do not fall for her tricks. Her lies. She is the mate of Contremulus!
Both sounded sincere, but Tzala’s words echoed back to me. Magmellion only wanted me to
die. That way…he could be free.
“How?” I asked. “How can I break the link between us?”
She traced a claw over my steel breastplate. “Come with me, back to where it started. Where all this began…where you began. Come.”
Where I began? That made no sense. “What in the Hells are you talking about?”
“I will take you. Do not resist.”
What choice did I have? Struggle in a dragon’s grasp? “As you wish.”
Fool, spat Magmellion in my mind. You are at her mercy!
She carried me high into the air, to the northwest, to the hole in the ground that marked where Atikala once stood. Time had started to erode the edges of the vertical tunnel; it was more akin to a funnel than a hole now, the edge dangerously steep.
Ophiliana was not bothered by such things. She put a wing over, turning and plunging into the ground. She flew straight down, me in her grip, my wings leaving long trails of flame to mark our presence. We plunged through the darkness, glowbugs scurrying out of our way as we descended.
We passed by a giant web. I wondered if she was taking me there to see Six-Legs, the fiendish spider who lived in the hole, but she flashed by it in a second, and I saw no sign of him. Down and down and down. Soon a faint, warm glow at the bottom of the hole became visible, yellow and red, a tiny dot, but glowing.
Ophiliana carried me down to the bottom, flaring her wings and breaking her descent, hovering twenty feet from the rubble below. It was wet and mould grew everywhere, but below the thick layer of black slime, I could see a golden object, about ten feet long and five wide, oval shaped, pulsing with a heat even I could feel.
“Behold the fallen star,” she said, alighting near the ground in a hiss of steam. “Approach it, Ren of Atikala, and see for yourself.”
A gold dragon could not be burned by fire, neither could I with my golden scales, but the heat here…it burned in a way that was both terrible and incredible. It made me grimace, my eyes water.
Do not touch it! She is baiting you!
“Is it safe?” I asked, stepping closer.
