War of the World Makers

by Reilly Michaels

  "God, oh God, ahhhhh ha hahhhh!" Babette screamed like a child on fire, her voice erupting from the Virgin Mary on her right. But who was trapped in the other? And then Freddie knew. She realized the second Virgin Mary victim was Zolo Bold. His agonized and muffled voice shouted to her: "Go! Do not try to save me!"

  Horror-struck, her eyes wide open and tearing, she could not move or speak. Seconds later, a voice from the dungeon entered her consciousness:

  "To witness the anguish of your enemies as they watch their loved ones suffer and die in pain is indeed one of the greatest joys in life."

  Temujin Gur! Freddie's eyes followed the source and she saw him standing off to the side. The fires of the dungeon flared at his back, shadows flickering over his smiling Buddha face, his silver face-beetle skittering up and down as if restless. But no time to ponder. The terrible sounds of Babette and Zolo tore at her soul.

  "ENOUGH!" she said to Gur, her voice magnified to a wall-quaking volume by her power and fear. "FREE THEM AND I WILL DO YOUR BIDDING!"

  "You will do my bidding, whether I free them or no. But I choose not to."

  Shaking the walls once again, Freddie shouted her raging frustration at the Mongol wizard in a bellow that sounded like a mad bull elephant crossed with a wounded mother tiger:

  "DAMN YOUR BLACK SOUL TO FUCKING HELL!"

  "Heart eating hell would suit me better, Princess von Anhalt," Gur said and laughed.

  "So shall it be, Mongol goat! I will send you there NOW!"

  Overcome by the fury of the moment, and brimming with aria heat, she began to sing, Morte atopar vostede agora (Death find you now ...), but suddenly, a thick needle of pain drove deep into the muscle and sinew of her lower neck. Her scream of pain cut off the aria. "What in Hell!" she shouted, gripping at her neck and straining her eyes to see the source of the stabbing pain. Had Gur launched a yarrow dagger into her? "WHAT IS THIS?" she bellowed at him, the wall masonry shaking as dust to the floor.

  "You ungrateful little Czarina," he said with a quiet voice, and chuckled. "It is a gift from me, a price you pay for having your favorite Mongol goat bring you back from the dead. You do know I saved your life, or has the honorable Senator Zolo failed to inform you?"

  Freddie did not answer, only gritted her teeth with the ongoing pain of the dagger-like stab. She cried out again as the pain intensified then lessened, as though Temujin Gur twisted an invisible blade, though only for a few moments.

  Gur continued. "Did he also not reveal the deaths of your serf friends? ... No? I burned their souls from them, one at a time, and fed you. They died most horribly so that you could be here."

  Before Freddie could respond, Gur winked and her body lurched into the air. She flew forward and spun around, slamming backwards into one of the dungeon torture wheels. Iron clasps snapped hard on her wrists and ankles. She cried out and struggled, but to no avail. Gur's magic sapped her strength, and the wheel began to turn until she was upside down, breathing heavily and beginning to panic. She could hear Zolo struggling in the Virgin Mary, striving to escape to help her, sobbing with his failure, and even through the pain and insanity she felt a razor slice of guilt at the cruelty she'd showed him.

  Babette's screams, meanwhile, had died to painful moans and gasps.

  Freddie knew the woman she loved was on the verge of death.

  "Will you respect my forthcoming request, Princess von Anhalt?" Gur asked.

  "Yes, damn you, YES!"

  "Good! As follows then. You will accompany me south of the Nicholas Line to a place in Mongolia centuries ago. A minor task really. I simply wish to enact a spell that will change my destiny and free me from this disgusting world of Europe. Will that not be a good thing, Czarina?"

  "Yes, yes, ahhhhh, blessed God—"

  "While I conduct my business, your wondrous aria will confound the damnable sky things belonging to the two wretched Italians. Your Virgin Mary friends here will remain behind to suffer and die unless you complete your task, and if by chance I do not return, ten thousand more of your serf friends on castle estates hereabouts will die from a new black plague. It is all arranged. Also know that your own pain will continue, forever, and your aria will not cure it, for the pain will cancel it with your shrieks."

  Over her own breath of panic and the piteous sounds that filled the air, Freddie suddenly heard a whispering voice. It belonged to Master Paganini:

  We of Saravastra are here with you. Courage, young woman.

  And another voice, that of Maria of Pozzuoli:

  I am here also, Princess Friederike!

  A small comfort in the midst of a world become a nightmare of suffering death. "Let us get on with it then!" she yelled to Gur as she hung upside down.

  "Very well!" he exclaimed, very happy with his success. He spit forth his extra mouths and they fluttered out like fire-yellow butterflies to free Freddie from the wheel. They released the shackles then bit into her arms and turned her upright to face him. She winced at the bites and he licked his lips, tasting her blood with his phantom mouths. "Hmmm, the unique tang of Czarina," he said and laughed again. "If only I could devour you right now!"

  She knew what the beast meant, though showed no sign of understanding. She would play along, she must. She watched as Gur lifted his arms and four black yarrow sticks drifted out and up into the air above their heads. Gur muttered a few words in that Chinese-like language, all gravely and alien, and the yarrow sticks spun and began to hum. The tune sounded almost like a slow Caprice by Master Paganini, melancholy yet beautiful. Other sounds too, whispering voices, as if the yarrow sticks spoke to each other.

  "Feel your aria! Protect us!" Gur shouted at her, his smiling face replaced by a stern expression. All fun was over. Worlds hung in the balance. "Sing your aria, Czarina! NOW!"

  Freddie showed no emotion, just stared at him and felt her brilliant aria once more, this time without punishment, and she sang strong and pure:

  Nada nos ver,

  Nada nos escoitarrrr.

  Ningunha máxica saaabe

  Vivimos ou respirarrr.

  (Nothing see us, / Nothing hear us. / No magic know / We live or breathe.)

  * Оверман*

  AS THE TORTURE DUNGEON FADED FROM VIEW, the dying sounds of Zolo and Babette did also. In a few moments, Freddie found herself in pitch blackness, though a floor remained beneath her feet. The air felt cold, much colder than the dungeon in Bärenthoren. A silvery light glowed into being, somewhere high above her. At first, she thought it a moon. Then she noticed, it sprouted legs. Upon closer look, she realized it to be the silver face beetle of Temujin Gur. It filled the air with a moon-silver light and revealed her to be standing in a cavernous room, one at least three times larger than the Great Hall of Bärenthoren Castle.

  She glanced around for Gur but he had vanished. To either side of her she saw what appeared to be soldiers on horses. Lines of them facing her, hundreds in rank after rank: Mongol warriors of polished stone wearing moon-gleaming iron helmets with pointed tops, white tufts of horsehair flowing from the peaks, and their bodies fitted with thick, brown-lacquered armor. All carried round wicker shields and gripped tall lances that pointed to the ceiling. Each shadowy face though was different, as if each possessed the soul of a dead warrior, a real man who lived and died in that savage age; and in that eerie light, the hard and violent faces of those long dead Mongols, hundreds of them, all seemed to stare at her.

  Would they charge and impale her if she made the wrong move?

  Next, she heard a sound, like a small stone striking iron in the distance. She looked across the lines of Mongol cavalry statues, and raising her eyes, saw a figure seated atop what appeared to be a throne. It towered above the statues, set upon a tall marble dais. The figure was sheathed in golden plate armor, head to foot, and rising high in the moon-silvery darkness beyond, a terraced hill, like a black staircase for giants, and on each terrace, the glitter of countless objects.

  Then she understood.


  The objects were treasures, thousands upon thousands of them made of gold and silver, jewels and rare woods. She peered closer. On an upper terrace, she saw a gleaming, silver tree seven feet high. It grew lion paw roots and sprouted dozens of feather-leaf branches, all of finest silver, balls of golden lemon dangling from its stems. Another treasure was a ship twice as big as the Anhalt World Stormer possessing two masts of solid gold and six sails of thinnest white-gold, its hull of pure ebony inlaid with thousands of rubies. More statues too, of Mongol and Chinese royalty and their court followers, as well as the giant marble heads of conquered kings, mounds of trinkets, coins, bowls, plates, and more.

  You stand within the Necropolis of The Khan.

  Paganini's voice.

  No chance to reply though. Erupting from the air of beetle moon, the words of Temujin Gur echoed down to her and rippled through the Necropolis. "YOU ARE DOING WELL TO HIDE US, OR ELSE WE WOULD SURELY BE DEAD BY NOW."

  Freddie said nothing. She seethed inside to make him pay, and the presence of his voice refocused her rage. She felt grateful to possess it. Such rage became a weapon, prepared to ruthlessly strike, and she would prepare her foe for this strike soon enough. She heard Skanda begin to play, deep in her mind, the music muffled as if on the other side of a thick wall, but a rapid and strong Caprice nonetheless.

  Paganini said to her:

  I will deny him the pain of the yarrow scar. But you must allow the Khan to rise.

  Again, Gur spoke, his tone more stern. He wished Freddie to be impressed. "Do you see, sad princess? This man of gold on a golden throne, this man is the Lord of The Bow, Leader of All Beneath The Eternal Blue Sky, GENGHIS KHAN, WORLD SLAYER!"

  Freddie replied to Gur by yelling, "He looks more like the ass of a horse smeared with yellow paint!" She knew this comment was bad timing, but her mouth was dumber than her head. The yarrow knife dug in and twisted. "Ahhhhhh, damn!" she cried out. Again, another twist, enough to make her sob. Paganini's Skanda grew louder in her mind, more fervent. The pain of the yarrow knife dimmed at once, and she calmed, believing she now heard the distant chanting of those orange-robed Saravastra spell captains.

  Or was it the Mongol statue cavalry whispering a war song?

  "Careful, you might have to answer to the Khan!" Gur shouted. "NOW BE SILENT!"

  She felt a twinge of pain in her neck again, but far less than before. The magic of Paganini had dampened Gur's power. But she must pretend, for Gur's sake. She cried out to prove her pain, and shouted, "I will be silent, Temujin Gur, I swear it!"

  "Thank you," Gur said calmly, the voice behind her.

  Freddie pivoted in surprise to see him a few feet away, staring and serious as a death toll. "I completed the spell while you stood here like a fool, knowing nothing. I have been gathering souls for a century at least, from European mothers and their children, and I fed them to the Lord of The Bow, like a mother nursing a child."

  Freddie glanced up to search for the golden warrior atop the throne, but he had vanished. As she dropped her eyes to refocus on Gur, a figure moved into the light from behind him. Wearing golden armor plate and Mongol warrior helmet, the figure stepped forward to face Freddie. His eyes appeared emerald green in the moon-like light, and the skin of his hands and face, a silvery white. His cheeks were Asian broad, jaw squared and prominent, and his facial expression, cold and savage as a winter of fangs drawing blood. After all, was he not the greatest killer or "World Slayer" the world has ever known? Whatever he was, Freddie remained defiant, returning his cold stare with her own.

  The Khan examined her and spoke not a word, his expression unchanged. A second or two later though, it shifted, almost imperceptibly. She detected a growing lust. The thing began to imagine a rape. She knew it! She could see it and she glared at him with a look of pure defiance. The lips of the World Slayer lifted in a slight grin. Her defiance only aroused him further, only caused him to imagine yet more rape.

  The Khan is born. You must now begin. Courage, Czarina!

  In the World Slayer's face, she laughed, and pointing a finger at him, laughed even louder. Gur yelled, "That is enough, Prussian garbage!" and she felt a slight pinch in her neck. She shouted, "Owwww ahhhh!" as though in incredible agony, her face twisting. The lip of Genghis raised in contempt. He growled something at Gur, and to reward his lip and growl, Freddie swung the back of her hand so fast Gur could not react. The force of her blow not only knocked the Khan's helmet off, but spun him around three times and dropped him to the stone floor with a loud clang of armor.

  Freddie turned to Gur, smiled wickedly and winked. “There's your golden little prick of a dream!”

  The Mongol began with a soundless scream.

  Phantom mouths flew with little snaps from his lips, dozens of them, all howling his rage like a chorus of hysterical demons, while Fracas Machines small as hornets, poked their big-eye heads from pockets suddenly opening on Gur's face. They unsheathed themselves, sprouted legs and leapt into the air, angrily speeding towards Freddie with a shrill screech as Gur shouted, "GOD WHORE OF EUROPE, NOW YOU—"

  He never finished that sentence.

  A loud, flesh-cracking slap knocked him backwards for several feet—her strength and speed many times more than when last they clashed. His furious face bugs and howling lips zipped at her from all sides, stinging and biting and stabbing. She imagined them flaming cinders, and with warm aria, sang Servos de Gur, queimar en cinzaaasss! (Servants of Gur, burn to ash!). The swarming little pests flashed and fell to the floor, writhing in flame.

  This pause to burn lips and bugs, however, allowed Gur to react.

  As the little Fracas things fizzled, Temujin Gur's mouth opened to ten times its normal size. It gaped to a hellish black hole and exploded with a sonic howl of rage, loud as the English shellfire at the Somme. The howl boomed so loud it battered her insides and head as if she were being struck by a dozen iron maces at once, and if not for her strength, this howl of Gur would have pulped her to a boneless fish. She groaned and stumbled backwards as he poured it on her, wave after wave, the volume curling metal and bursting the hundreds of stone Mongol warriors to dust.

  Then at last, the blast of loathing subsided.

  Freddie thought she heard the sounds of things collapsing, broken treasures echoing in the dark, and unable to stand on her feet a moment longer, she slumped to her knees. Her head was down, her body throbbing into one giant bruise. She glanced up just in time to see Temujin Gur towering over her, tall as three men, his head of black hornet-skin glistening in the beetle moonlight and looking like a cross between a praying mantis and a birthing lycanthrope. Before she could gather her senses, his snout snapped down, biting deep. Dagger-long teeth pierced her body from face to groin, the mouth grinding in an attempt to chew and swallow.

  Freddie’s legs kicked and she screamed in fury within his black mouth, her mind struggling for aria. She yanked one of his teeth out with a loud pop and drove it deep into his fleshy black tongue. A dark ichor gushed from the wound, soaking her and reeking of foul sewer. In retaliation, he boomed forth with a dragon roar of iron-melting flame that singed her flesh and crumbled her clothes to dust, the black stains of tongue burning off to steam. Following that, he jerked his head and released her with a force that hurled her body through the air to smash into the Khan's throne dais. She impacted with such velocity that she cracked the ton-heavy marble. Days earlier, the Princess von Anhalt would have been seriously hurt or crippled, only now, it did not even slow her.

  Her body smoking and bruised, Freddie stood to face the oncoming monstrosity of Temujin Gur, or what was once Temujin Gur. She dodged and leapt aside as the thing lunged and snapped at her with newly grown fangs, she imagined the golden treasure of Genghis Khan filling its mouth, ramming down its throat, and her aria sang, O tesouro de ouro de Khan,cubrir esa boca! (Golden treasure of the Khan, fill that mouth!), whereupon hundreds of pounds of gold coins, plates, goblets, statues, and all else shot at the speed of sound from all over the
Necropolis and straight into that thunder-roaring maw. The sheer force behind the mass of plummeting metal knocked the Gur thing backwards and down to the floor on its back. Hands of black talon desperately dug at the golden horde stuffing its snout, and it tore out chunks as fast as possible, legs kicking as it did so—giving it the overall appearance of a child having a tantrum.

  While it choked and growled and struggled, she taunted it. "I will never be killed by a weak Mongol dog like you!" The Gur thing squirmed and squealed with even more anger as it clawed wildly at the golden mass boring down its throat like a driven spike. "And your precious monster, Genghis Khan, will PERISH BY MY HAND NOW!"

  Freddie flew to where The Lord of The Bow slowly stood to his feet. She snatched him up and whipped him around to face her, hoisting his body high as she had Baron Eichmann. She wanted to stare into his emerald eyes before she killed him, boring in her own hatred, for she knew Gur's soul resided in this Khan creature, and too, she knew him as the greatest murderer of all time. Meanwhile, behind the World Slayer, she heard the golden horde vomiting free of Gur's maw, finally dislodged by his powerful magic. And as she turned, a dozen black yarrow sticks launched from his dog-bug head and arced down to the floor, expanding into human-like shapes upon contact.

  The dancing banquet demons!

  No time to waste. Three feet of yarrow sword formed in Freddie's hand, and to her surprise it whispered, Drive me deep. In a tenth of a second, she drove it up beneath the Khan’s ribcage and into his spine until it jutted from his back for a full two feet. The body of the Lord of The Bow jerked a few times and his mouth gurgled out, “Fuck you, whore," and he tried to spit in her face, but died with a final spasm, blood coursing from his mouth; and with Gur and his raging imps only a half moment from contact, Freddie did the unexpected. Like a shell from a British siege howitzer, she flew straight into the oncoming Gur with the Khan's impaled corpse held before her. Her blood-splattered yarrow sword pierced Gur in the chest, and her impact, strong as a herd of charging bull elephants compressed into one solid strike, drove him backwards across the room, the Lord of The Bow pinned to his body like a macabre brooch.