“I don’t think there’s anything ‘natural’ about what you just described,” Vaste said.
A smile lit the features of the necromancer as he steepled his fingers. “Those of us who study the nearly lost art of necromancy are very misunderstood.”
“I could stand for your ‘art’ to get a bit more lost.” Vaste bristled. “Manipulating the bodies and souls of the dead and deriving power from them is a far beyond morbid practice.”
Malpravus remained calm in the face of Vaste’s criticism. “Someday you will understand that however you must acquire it, power is the most important thing in this world.” The necromancer held a bony hand up to stay Vaste’s reply.
Malpravus fixed his gaze on Cyrus, giving the warrior sudden cause to squirm internally. “I see great potential in your leadership, lad. I expect to see great things from you after the battle yesterday.” Without another word, the necromancer glided away, his cloak sweeping against the ground.
Vaste and Cyrus exchanged a look. “That was… disconcerting,” the troll said, perfectly capturing Cyrus’s sentiments.
“I get the feeling that he’s even creepier among his own guild.”
Whatever reply Vaste might have made was cut off by an inhuman wailing. Seeking out the source of the cacophony, Cyrus’s eyes were drawn to figures moving in their direction across the frozen lake. The first of them was barely visible; a thin figure, emaciated, with skin of the grayest pallor and sunken eyes. Bloody, cracked lips uncovered sharp teeth and a nasty, nausea-inducing smell of decay preceded the shadowy beasts. The first of the rotting creatures leapt into their midst, reminding Cyrus of the first time he had met Vara.
He jumped into action, pushing through the crowd to engage the creature. “Wendigo!” he heard someone cry out. Cyrus brought his sword to bear as the wendigo’s claws swiped into the crowd and sent three spell casters flying, dead.
Horrified, Cyrus struck with his sword into the grey flesh, leaving the wendigo with an enormous gash from shoulder to waist. Seeming not to notice, it lunged at him, teeth exposed, missing him by mere inches as the warrior dodged. He aimed a counter blow at the wendigo as it passed, but missed. The wendigo sliced him three times in rapid succession. Two glanced off his armor but the third landed perfectly between the joints on his left arm, digging into the muscle of his forearm.
Cyrus grimaced and dropped his left hand from his sword, holding it in his right to fend off the wendigo’s advances. The point faced directly into the heart of the creature, which was keeping its distance, circling to his left to evade the tip of his blade. Cyrus pulled his injured arm against himself until he felt a spell mend the wound; he looked down to see the gash healed, but blood still trickled from beneath his armor and the painful sensation did not immediately cease.
Cyrus feinted at the wendigo, not returning his left hand to the hilt. The beast overreacted to the warrior’s bluff and dodged to the side, running into three rangers who stabbed the exposed back of the creature. Cyrus smiled as the wendigo turned to face the new threat and he drove his sword with both hands into the back of its head. A piercing scream filled the air and the wendigo went limp.
“No time for a victory dance!” Andren said from behind him. Cyrus scowled and turned to face the healer. Numerous wendigos were making their way through the ranks of the army. Cyrus saw J’anda’s arms sweeping about, casting spell after spell. The wendigos were halting, sunken eyes rolling back in their heads, mesmerized.
An attack from behind caught him off guard and knocked Cyrus to his knees. He felt claws grasping at him, digging into his sides just below his armpits in the vulnerable seam of his breastplate and back plate, penetrating the chain mail beneath his plate armor. The stabbing sensation increased as the wendigo that had grabbed him dug its claws in further. He reversed the grip on his sword and stabbed backward at the creature, gagging at the sickening stench of decay that filled his nose. A howl of pain told him he had not missed, and Cyrus stumbled forward, feeling the claws withdraw from his flesh.
He turned back to engage the wendigo, fighting past the agony in his side, and lunged forward, catching it on the arm with a sword thrust. A yelp filled his ears and forced a grin to the warrior’s lips, even as he ignored the pain. Other fighters — rangers, paladins, dark knights — were attacking the wendigo that was focused on him.
Every time the creature started to turn, changing its attention to the others behind it, Cyrus would bellow a warcry and leap forward, hacking and stabbing, turning its attention back to him. The first three times he scored gashing blows, leaving jagged cuts in the flesh of the undead-looking beast. The fourth, as soon as he yelled at it, the wendigo immediately refocused on him, not allowing him to get a strike in.
Elisabeth brought her daggers to bear in a powerful backstabbing blow that brought the wendigo to its knees. Cyrus swept forward with all his speed and decapitated it. When it dropped, Cyrus appraised the area around him for the next fight.
J’anda stood only a few feet away, the enchanter’s face a mask of concentration. “If you’re looking for something to do,” the dark elf said, eyes closed and illusionless for only the second time since Cyrus had met him, “you could try killing that one before my spell breaks.” His finger rose to point at one of the gray fiends that was standing close to the ice.
“How many of these do you have mesmerized right now?” Cyrus asked him, incredulous. There were at least forty wendigos standing completely still throughout the army, as if the cold had frozen them.
“Well,” J’anda said, voice straining, “we have eight enchanters and each of the other seven has one wendigo mesmerized. So if you subtract seven from however many there are, that would be the number that I have under control.” A tight smile made its way across J’anda’s blue lips. “It takes quite a bit of concentration and magical energy to create the illusion that mesmerizes these fiends, so forgive me if I stop speaking now.”
Cyrus shook his head and trotted with the rest of his element to the wendigo that J’anda had indicated. Positioning his group around it he struck with an impaling attack at the same time that his other fighters did, making short work of the wendigo, which died with a feral scream.
A quick look at J’anda showed the enchanter pointing in the direction of another of the frozen beasts. He and his group moved through the wendigos one at a time, along with the other elements of the army, until all the gray-skinned fiends had been killed. Kilgar drove his sword through the last as a sigh of relief ran through the cavern. From behind them came the sound of very slow clapping.
Cyrus turned to see J’anda Aimant, eyes half-lidded, bringing his hands together in applause. “Well done. Perhaps someday soon we can find an enchanter with enough talent to take at least two foes at any give time?” J’anda ignored the glares of the enchanters surrounding him and snapped his fingers to become a gnome.
They stood by the edge of the frozen lake while Elisabeth again consulted with Malpravus, Tolada and a few of the other Alliance officers. Cyrus stood with Andren and Vaste, looking across the ice into the darkness. “Andren,” he asked the elf, “Malpravus told us that the dead are all around us, and being tormented. Do you suppose that’s true?”
Andren did not respond at first. “Yep. There are tormented souls all around us right now.”
“Why can’t we see them?” Cyrus asked, puzzled.
Andren looked at the ice at his feet and pointed down. “Do you see anything at all? A shape, a specter, anything?”
The warrior peered at the ice. “It looks a little darker, like smoke or something.”
Andren nodded. “That is one of the dead. A necromancer can see them as easily as I can tell the difference between an ale and mulled mead. Which is no great difficulty for me, but most can’t. The training one goes through for his branch of magic makes him more sensitive to the spirit emanations that you can barely perceive. What looks like a faded specter to you appears to me as an old elf, buried to his face in the ice, screamin
g in agony and unable to see anyone around him.”
Cyrus looked at Andren, eyes wide. “That’s what you see? And it looks as clear as if he were alive?”
“I can see a bit better than you can but that has more to do with my age and magical training. I would imagine it would be clear to a powerful necromancer. What I see is a bit of a distorted image — as though smoke is obscuring the lines of their faces, and their words were being spoken through a waterfall.”
Any further questions were drowned out by Elisabeth’s order to move the invasion force back into the center of the Eusian Tower. As they walked back up the tunnel the temperature returned to a bearable level. The chill, however, failed to leave them.
21
As they mulled around the center of the tower, Cyrus passed Erith, still riding on her horse, as he strode to the front of the army. Catching his eye, she spoke. “I miss healing you today. Any other day, I wouldn’t, but today I’m healing a dark knight, and he takes two hits and crumples like a ranger in a windstorm.”
“Hey!” the dark knight and ranger in Erith’s group chorused in unison, outraged.
“What?” she snapped back over her shoulder. “It’s not my fault that the two of you can’t get hit without dying.” She turned back to Cyrus. “I’d have better luck keeping an ant alive while a child stomped on its anthill.” Rolling her eyes at the dissenting opinions behind her, she tossed another insult over her shoulder. “The ant would probably be more grateful, too,” she grumbled. “Your fighter dies one or three times…”
Elisabeth rallied their army into the tunnel opposite the one they had just left. As they descended, there was another dramatic temperature change — this one turning the air brutally hot.
“It’s like an oven-heated punch to the face,” Andren said.
“Feels kinda like home,” Vaste said. The tunnel opened to another large cavern, this one again having a deep gash in the middle of it — but instead of containing ice, there was a lake of bubbling, boiling oil stretching into the distance.
“You think there are more lost souls in there?” Cyrus asked.
Vaste nodded. “Mortus is not a benevolent god. Those worthy of torment in the afterlife are subject to him, and remain with him for eternity.”
Andren took a swig of liquor from his flask. “Any guesses as to what it takes to land yourself here for eternity?”
Vaste’s eyes narrowed. “It’s all speculative, but there is the traditional range of sins — murder, thievery, intemperance…” The troll looked at Andren.
“Intemperance?” Andren asked, eyes wide. “You mean drinking?” An almost imperceptible nod from Vaste sent a visible shudder through Andren. “I reckon I’ll be quitting drinking, then.” Cyrus raised an eyebrow at the healer, who looked offended. “I can quit any time, you know.” Cyrus held his hands up in a gesture of surrender, at which point Andren began to nervously eye the boiling oil again.
A few of the adventurers wandered closer to the edge of the bubbling lake; Cyrus remained leery and kept his distance. In an instant the surface of the oil erupted in several places around the bank of the pool as something shot out of it. Whatever it is, Cy reflected, looks a hell of a lot like snakes held by their tails out of the oil.
With a reptilian head atop a long, twisting segment of scaled neck, seven of the creatures burst forth and attacked those that had wandered too close to the shore. Cyrus watched as several adventurers were grasped between the jaws of the snake heads — or in the case of one of Goliath’s rangers, grasped by the ankle and flung into the oil. Cyrus caught a glimpse of Malpravus, among those standing close to the shore, calm in the midst of the storm of action.
Cyrus rushed toward the shore, but before he could get there, he heard an elven voice behind him proclaim, “I can handle this.” Something in the way it was said caused him to turn around. Nyad was already casting a spell, flames forming around her hands.
“No!” he shouted, but to no avail — the fire spell burst from her fingertips and blasted past the snake heads to hit the oil behind it. Flames began to spread across the surface of the lake.
“Oops!” Nyad said. “I’ll fix it!” Once more, she began to cast a spell, this time with a whiff of what looked like smoke as a warning, something flew from her hand to the edge of the pool of now flaming oil, expanding into a cloud and raining on it.
Cyrus did not even have time to react. An explosion rocked the cavern, sending a burst of fire surging in all directions. The warrior dropped to his knees and covered his face as a wall of flame washed over the Alliance army. It dissipated quickly, but not before catching a few people on fire, including Nyad herself. He tackled the wizard, rolling on the ground to suffocate the flames.
Turning his attention back to the lake, the seven heads remained above the thick, flaming liquid, unaffected by the fires around them. Smaller pools had also caught on fire, making the cavern look like the den of Ashan’agar.
“Ah,” Vaste said from the ground next to Cyrus, “there’s the fire and brimstone I was looking for and… damnation.”
“I think,” Cyrus said, running his fingertips over the scorch marks on his already blackened armor, “I’m going to have to cut the heads off some snakes now.”
“Do run along then,” Vaste said from a prone position. “I’ll be here, watching in case you get hurt.”
“Much appreciated,” Cyrus grunted as he lifted himself to his feet.
“Thank you,” Nyad said in a muffled voice, face in the dirt as the warrior ran past her to the edge of the pool.
He looked to the lake of fire, seven snake heads still dancing back and forth within it, trying to grasp at any poor soul close to the edge. Malpravus stood by the shores, ignored by the waving heads. Cy dived to avoid two of them as they swept toward him. They missed him narrowly and with such force that one of them drove into the ground and did not move after the impact.
Rolling to his feet, Cyrus grasped the hilt of his sword in both hands, and swung it from over his shoulder into the unmoving neck. The beast screamed and flailed, but could not muster enough strength to break free. The warrior stomped on the hilt of his sword with a plated boot, driving the blade the rest of the way through the neck. The head screamed and the neck retracted into the pool of fire. As it entered the flames, the severed head screamed and stopped moving.
Two more heads swept in with a violent attack on the warrior, who dodged one of them but was caught flat-footed by the second, knocking him into the dirt. A healing wind ran through him, repairing the arm he knew had been broken. Rolling from his back to his hands and knees, he stood and charged past Vaste (“You’re welcome!” the troll shouted, still laying on the ground) to be greeted by the same two snake heads, writhing at the end of their reach, snapping their teeth at him.
“It’s a hydra,” came the calm voice of Malpravus, who was gently stroking the neck of one of the snakes. “The heads are all part of the same beast.”
Cyrus stayed out of the reach of the hydra heads, thrusting forward with his sword to strike a stinging blow to one of the heads, which hissed and withdrew. “Two questions come to mind — one, why isn’t it attacking you, and two — could you help me out?”
A wide, almost malevolent grin split the necromancer’s face. “Yes, I can help you, I suppose.” Reaching into his robes, the dark elf pulled a long dagger from a scabbard on his belt. Whispering something too low to be heard over the fire and screaming in the cave, Malpravus drew the dagger back and thrust it into the neck of the hydra that he had been stroking only moments before. The neck stiffened and dropped to the ground, great tongue lolling out of its scaly mouth. Malpravus cackled and brought the dagger to his lips.
“That is not normal,” Cyrus said before he lunged to strike at the remaining head. Malpravus made another bow to the warrior, arms extended out from his body, wide smile still fixed on his face. Then the dark elf turned on his heel, and swept away from the lake of fire, gliding back to where most of the Allied army w
as recovering from the explosion and avoiding the heads of the hydra.
Cyrus lunged once more, committing all his weight to the attack, and caught the hydra head off guard; he rammed his sword into the mouth of the creature. It screamed and tried to flee, but to no avail — close enough now to engage the beast physically, Cyrus threw his legs around the hydra’s neck and jammed the sword further into the mouth, pushing it until it burst through the top of the hydra’s head. The neck went limp, and the snake head dropped, pinning Cyrus to the ground.
“Yes!” exulted Tolada, who rushed up with a hammer and began to pound on the head that lay across Cyrus.
“Hey!” the warrior shouted, unpleasant impacts to the head reverberating through him. “It’s dead already! Why don’t you either pick a live one to attack or help get it off me?”
“It’s all the same beast!” Tolada said, face alight with glee. “It can still feel this!”
“Tell you what,” Cyrus said, eyes narrowed in irritation. “I’m gonna stab you through the hand until you can’t move it anymore. Then I’m going to pound what’s left of it with a hammer, and you let me know if you can feel it!”
Muttering something about a lack of allied cooperation, the dwarf put aside his hammer to help roll the hydra head off of Cyrus. By the time the warrior got to his feet, the Alliance force had engaged the other heads. Spells were flying through the air, bringing the waving heads to the ground one at a time, where they were greeted by vicious attacks from the melee combatants. Within a few minutes, the hydra was defeated.
“All right,” Elisabeth said, “let’s drag it on shore.”
“Drag it out?” Cyrus sputtered. “I vote we toss it back into the flaming oil.”
She smiled at him in understanding. “Do you know how valuable the bodies of the creatures we kill are? That’s some of the real wealth of these Realms — the same as it is with dragons. Sure, there’s a hoard of treasures around here somewhere, but there’s gold in selling the skins, the scales, things that yield high prices. That’s the reason why guilds like Amarath’s Raiders, Endeavor and Burnt Offerings are wealthy. They have access to materials no one else does and trade agreements with shops and companies that make them more money.”
Magic, Myth & Majesty: 7 Fantasy Novels Page 15
