Omnibus Volume 1

by C. M. Carney

  My eyes widened, and I knew I’d given it away. Chief Constable Nahrman grinned at me. “Dammit,” I said under my breath.

  “So either you have a port stone, or you have an accomplice who can port you out of here.”

  “Yes,” I said and hung my head low. I’m sorry Gryph, I’ve failed you. I’d come this far, lived through a thousand deaths, and killed innumerable people, just to fail. Unbidden tears came to my eyes, and I felt like every perp at the end of a Law & Order episode, broken, beaten and ready to spill my guts in a dramatic confession scene.

  The Chief Constable stared at me, but I’d used up all my smartass quips or witty comebacks.

  “You have earned the wrath of some powerful people, and I do not mean the rabble that runs Harlan’s Watch. You have earned the ire of the Pantheon, of the High God Aluran himself.”

  I stopped and looked down at the ground at my feet. “So it’s back to the cell then?”

  For several long moments, the Chief Constable just looked at me. The sound of the burbling river that had so often been the harbinger of my imminent death now calmed me. I could feel the mood of the crowd grow from excitement to confusion. Finally, the Chief constable leaned in close.

  “Many people around these parts do not hold faith with the Pantheon,” he said, and my eyes snapped up to his. “Many of us have seen the misdeeds done in the name of false gods.

  Some of us have even been on the butt-end of their spears. Some of us have fared even worse.” He looked at me and smiled. “I will get you to the hill. I just hope you really do have a way out of the hangman’s noose.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  He shoved me rather hard, but I checked my anger, realizing that he had to keep up appearances. The last several hundred yards felt like an instant eternity as time sped up and dragged. Maybe I have gone crazy. But, eventually I stood on the gallows. The Mayor stepped forward and read the charges against me, but I didn't listen. Then the noose slipped over my head and around my neck. The crowd grew silent, and I felt the cloth of the hangman’s hood brush against my ear.

  “Hey Pal,” the hooded hangman said low and for my ears only.

  “Vonn?” I said in shock.

  “Indeed. I knocked the hangman out and stole his hood. It was kind of a hoot.”

  “Oh man, you became Enrico Pallazzo for me,” I said, with utter joy. “You're the best.”

  “I have no idea who that is.”

  “Yeah, few people do, but those who get it are giggling right now.”

  “I’m here to free you.”

  “No need, my friend. I got it covered. But stay close.”

  I could almost feel Vonn’s grin. “You have the Agent’s port stone,” he said.

  He was right, and at that very moment the magic pebble that was my salvation was in a death grip in my right hand. It had been there ever since the execution squad had come for me. Up to that point I'd hidden it in my beard. Yup, just like the poison and the bit of sausage roll from oh so long ago. How strange that my very life relied on a quirk of fate and an unruly beard.

  Had I not sunk so low and eaten that crumb of forgotten yumminess, I might never have discovered what every bearded man took for granted; beards were treasure troves of hidden delights.

  After killing the Agent, I’d scrambled for the port stone. Sure I wanted to burn the Warrant and steal all her swag. Until that disappointing moment, I had no idea that she was a Player. That had pissed me off. I had worked my ass off and felt I deserved her gear. But, under the circumstances I was happy with the port stone and the continued living it would buy me. Besides, her slinky armor would not have done my figure justice.

  So, just before the constables came, I stashed the marble sized miracle in my beard, and every few minutes thereafter, I’d obsessively checked to see if it was still there. Everyone, including Chief Constable Nahrman just assumed I was a pretentious bearded hipster, over-proud that the genes I had no influence upon had given me decent facial hair.

  Then it was a waiting game. The Chief Constable and I got to know each other and became better buds than I ever dreamed was possible. All the while I kept using Player Tracker. It kept giving me an ERROR message, which was the real reason behind my deepening depression.

  But then, happy day, just around the time the Chief Constable realized I was an NPC, I felt Gryph. I knew where he was. All I needed to do was get beyond the negation field and port back to my good buddy. Then I’d punch him in the mouth for putting me through all this shit. We have a complicated relationship.

  The Mayor was finishing his speech and turned to me. “Does the condemned have any last words?”

  “I do.” I cleared my throat in an overly dramatic and obnoxious fashion. This went on for several seconds before the Mayor’s irritation boiled over and he snapped at me to get on with it. “There are no perfect men nor many perfect women. I am not a perfect man, nor a... Umm… perfect woman, but I have tried to live my life by the ideals I believe in. Sure sometimes those ideals have led me to unfortunate incidents of mass murder, and maybe, just maybe, occasionally, I liked the killing, but I ask, does that make one a bad person?”

  Numerous nods and several confused mumbles of “yes” filled the crowd, even from some of those who had, until then, been real supportive. This isn’t going quite the way I’d hoped. “Anyway, my point is, that we all try to do the best that we can in this life. That, I guess, is my message to all of you fine folks gathered here today.” I paused, and aside from the occasional cough, the crowd looked at me with confused silence.

  “Okay, anyway, that’s about all I have to say today, apart from this. Kids, say no to drugs, just do it and, uh, stay in school.“ I looked right at the Mayor and grinned. He scowled through his thin lips and his weasel eyes glared judgment.

  “Catch ya on the flip side,” I said, and I sent a mental command to the port stone. I felt Vonn grab me a bit too tightly, like a girlfriend really turned on by a ride on her hunky boyfriend’s new motorcycle. I only had a moment to feel uncomfortable however before the world turned inside out. Light expanded and contracted in concert. Up became down, left became right and then we shifted and we were somewhere else. I fell to my knees and the thin gruel and rock-hard bread they’d fed me in the pokey came back up.

  “You okay,” I heard Vonn say. I waved my hand back at him in annoyance. Why does everyone else seem immune to that shit? At least this time I was on some soft grass. After a minute I regained my composure and stood. Vonn handed me a water skin. I drank heartily and then passed it back to him. “Thanks,” I said. “For everything.”

  He nodded and then pointed at my face. “You got a little something in your beard there.”

  I reached up to find my beard had not survived my retching unscathed. Bits of partially digested muck crusted my thick facial hair. “Uggh, I need to shave this thing off.”

  Vonn handed me a satchel that looked remarkably like my own. I opened it to find all my gear. My eyes snapped up and he answered me before the question even formed on my lips.

  “I told you I was more rogue than knight. While everyone was all distracted with the mass arrests and your interrogation, I took some liberties with the town evidence locker. Got me some good stuff too.”

  I jumped at the man and gave him a huge hug. “You’re my second best friend in all the Realms,” I said, struggling to hold back a sniffle. “Of course that may have something to do with the fact that I’ve killed almost everyone I know a few times too many.”

  “Yeah, you should probably leave that habit in the past.”

  I grinned, suited up and had a look around. We were in a valley, between a few tall peaks. Up ahead was an ancient looking tower. It was circular and made of more metal than stone. Around its base was a mound of dirt and grass that resembled the opened peels of a banana as if the tower had recently pushed up from under the earth.

  “That’s Thalmiir architecture,” I said in a stunned tone.

  “Is that impor
tant?” Vonn said.

  “The Thalmiir have been extinct for centuries, and their cities were all lost.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, which genuinely concerned me. “Gryph, what have you got yourself into?”

  With nothing else to do, Vonn and I walked towards the doorway into the tower. I knew that my Player was somewhere in this ancient lost city, and he needed me.

  THE END.

  I Hope You Loved Killing Time.

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  The Lost City

  Book Two of the Realms

  by

  C.M. Carney

  The Lost City - Book Two of The Realms by C.M. Carney

  www.cmcarneywrites.com

  © 2018 C.M. Carney

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permissions contact: chris@cmcarneywrites.com

  Cover by Lou Harper.

  https://coveraffairs.com/

  Dedication

  To Erica

  You are my rock and my heart.

  I could not have written this book without you.

  1

  The shrouded man crept through the crumbling archways and cobweb filled passages in the ancient catacombs deep underneath the city of Sylvan Aenor. The air was heavy with the smell of age and rot, and cobwebs clung to every surface. A false sense of ease crept into the man’s mind, like the most deceptive of lovers, almost convincing him that fear was foolish. After all, the thick layer of dust suggested that nothing had disturbed these hidden byways in untold centuries. No dangers could possibly lurk in these dead hallways.

  But, the man knew different.

  He doubted that any of the thousands of people going about their business above him knew these forgotten tunnels even existed. They are unaware of the rot that grows right under their feet, the man thought. Part of him wished that he did not possess the knowledge that had sent him into these infernal catacombs, but he knew that was foolish, a wish brought on by fear.

  He eased his way through a partially collapsed tunnel, and despite his careful movements, motes of dust drifted down upon him. His night vision extended well ahead of him and his pointed ears detected only silence. He moved with silent grace, his hooded cloak melding into the surroundings with almost organic sentience. Several times he was forced to hold in a sneeze. Down here the noise would carry, announcing his presence to those who crept in the dark, those with ears as skilled as his own.

  His enhanced vision spotted a dim glow ahead, and he dropped into stealth. He pulled a dagger from the sheath at his belt. Like all the metal the man carried, the blade was blackened so no light would reflect from its surface. He'd wrapped all the metal fittings on his dark green armor in black muslin. No errant glint of light or clink of metal would betray his presence.

  Nervous energy rushed through him. The bow that usually crested his shoulder had long provided comfort, but down here, in the cramp and the dark, the bow would have been more burden than boon. While his mind accepted the sound logic of leaving the weapon behind, he felt naked without it. Had he been the superstitious sort, he might have taken that unease as an omen.

  But he was not a man subject to either illogic or sentiment. Tools were tools, and whichever one was best for the job, was the one he would use. Still, deep in the recesses of his mind, he wished for the reassurance of the smooth grip of yew in his hands. He pushed the foolish thought aside as he moved towards the light.

  As he approached the end of the tunnel, his ears picked up a low hum, a chanting that seeped into the deeper range of the man’s hearing. His heart pumped in his chest, nearly drowning out the sound. He paused, steeling himself for what was to come as he reached the end of the tunnel.

  He looked down into a rough-hewn cavern about thirty feet to a side where a thin staircase twisted down from the tunnel to the cavern floor below. Sconces of black metal and stone clung to the walls glowing with flickering gray flames that both illuminated and stole illumination from their surroundings. The unnatural light made the man’s skin crawl, but what it revealed was far more horrible.

  Six robed and masked figures knelt before a statue carved from the naked rock of the cavern wall. A chill of fear flowed through him as he looked down upon the swaying figures and the visage of ancient terror they prostrated themselves before. Tentacles flowed from the beast carved into the wall, two large and four smaller, surrounding a large, singular eye. The eye glinted with a malevolent glare of silver and sapphire, and the stone beast seemed to move in the flickering light.

  Arboleth, the man realized in revulsion and horror and took an involuntary step backward. He knew what he was seeing, but as he stared down upon the ancient enemy of his people, his mind screamed that it could not be real. How could any sentient being work towards their own enslavement? How could any of his own people wish for the return of the Dark Ascendency? The Dwellers in the Dark are here, the man thought.

  Another man emerged from the shadows behind the stone abomination and walked past the undulating tentacles of immobile stone. The figure wore dark robes, and a hood drawn over a mask of silver whose visage was nearly as grotesque as the arboleth’s itself. The eyes shone a cold blue, and a pair of gill-like slits split the cheeks, but it was the mouth that was most terrifying. A mouth full of razor-thin teeth was carved into the mask, and around that mouth protruded four barbed tentacles. Illurryth, the shrouded man thought, stunned. Like its master behind it, the limbs of the illurryth mask seemed to move and flow in the spectral light cast by the braziers.

  Icy fear sunk into the shrouded man’s chest as the masked figure raised its arms over its head. The cultists stopped swaying and ceased chanting. The air hung heavy in the oddly humid room and the man forced calm into his thundering heart, fearing that it would betray his presence in the unnatural silence.

  “Brothers and sisters,” the man said in a clear voice altered by the mask, concealing the identity of the speaker. “We, the faithful, the Dwellers in the Dark, have long awaited the day we would emerge from the shadows into the world above. That day is near. Sillendriel, the Diviner grows more erratic as the visions of the true way tear at the lies she was taught, the lies we were all taught. The others may resist the future, but she senses our time of triumph lies just over the horizon, and when that last dusk falls, we will return the Realms to darkness. The last sunrise is nigh, and we will bring an end to the light.”

  “Darkness is upon us,” the other robed figures responded.

  “Rise,” the Dweller said and bid his flock to stand. “We are few, but our tendrils have sunk deep into the stagnant society that slumbers in ignorance, in arrogance, above us. We must show them the way. Our people were not meant to live under the burning light of the sun, but to relish the twilight and bring about the eternal night.”

  The Dweller motioned, and a feminine figure strode forward, carrying a tray laden with goblets of silver and sapphire. She passed a cup to each of them, and they held them reverently. The Dweller took his cup, and the woman rejoined her brothers and sisters.

  The Dweller raised his goblet, and six others followed suit. “Tonight we reaffirm our dedication to the darkness and to be ever ready for the return of our masters.” He raised the goblet high, and the others followed suit. After a moment the Dweller brought the cup to his mouth, and the silver tentacles parted like liquid to reveal his lips. He took a deep swallow, and his fellows did the same. He turned towards the tentacled statue and poured the rest of the liquid into its cavernous stone mouth. The same woman that had distributed the goblets collected them, placing
them aside. Then she rejoined her compatriots, standing rigid as stone.