The angel soared above, well out of the danger zone, as a deafening crash thundered behind him. Its mighty roar sucked out all other sounds and pulled the night air towards the epicenter of the void. A split second later, the entire village crushed into the ground as if flattened by some giant, invisible fist, pulled downward by the evil powers of the realm. Nothing escaped its annihilation. Only a heated crater remained where the village of Sprazik once stood.
Nothing remained. The bodies of goblins, Nindans, Gleendans, and Christians alike were smashed to atoms.
Jorge landed and collapsed in a nearby grassy meadow, leaking blood from his wounds across blades of grass. Dri’Bu still drew breath. He lay injured and unconscious, appeared as if he would live provided he wasn’t bleeding internally. Unsure if any of the others survived, the angel groaned with frustration and pain. His heart-wrenching cry ripped through the witchy air and echoed across the night-chilled moors.
The angel had failed in his most important task: to keep Kevin safe and he felt his defeat in the fiber of his being.
No stars were visible in the inky sky. The night was as black as possible.
Chapter Eight
Rashnir jumped out of bed with a gasp. A sheet of cold sweat sheathed his skin. His skin rippled with goose-flesh as the blast of cool air hit him and the hair at the back of his neck prickled. His heart ached… something was very wrong.
He stepped through his loose tent flap. Zeh-Ahbe’s gentle snores behind him proved that it was still early morning.
Staring long and hard into the distance, a cold seed of dread had taken root in Rashnir’s gut. The sun had barely crested at the horizon, but its rays came with no sense of hope. This day the morning light brought Rashnir a feeling of evil. This was not a morning; it was merely a well-lit phase of night.
The warrior retrieved his musical instrument from his tent and walked to a nearby fire pit. He sat down on an old stump and stirred the waning coals, stoking them to life. Rashnir got the fire going again.
Rashnir gently strummed the strings as he prayed. With eyes closed his fingers intuitively pressed the frets making a worshipful song as he pressed forward in prayer. His guts ached with the feeling of spiritual tension; he could not shake that feeling that something evil hung around—and he had no control in the matter. Something somewhere was very, very wrong.
He arpeggiated two more chords and then one by one all of his strings snapped.
***
Walls of the craggy passage he explored were bathed in shadows and barely lit by the hole that yawned open above him. It didn’t matter. ekerithia didn’t need light to see, anyhow. The more distance he kept from the ancient Deep Well far below and from the western gate, the more powerful his created body was.
Peering through the dark, he reached through the shadows and retrieved a tattered, damaged tome. It was the thing that he required in the absence of any hope for redemption—his ticket to Plan B.
Detecting voices, he clutched the book to his chest and slipped into the greater darkness. Now, more than ever, secrecy was paramount. He couldn’t be discovered so early and let his plans unravel.
ekerithia kicked over a pile of corpses, both human and goblin, and slid through the crack that their bodies had obstructed. Writhing through the fissure as if his body was made of smoke, he squirmed his way further into the depths, below the goblins network of tunnels, below the labyrinth that the overreaching ekthro presumed they could use it to further their own ends.
The fallen angel needed to travel quickly and without observation. To do that, he would have to delve deeper still and walk through the heart of Tartarus with this book that was such a critical key to his plan. All that he needed now was for Lilth to uphold her end of a hypothetical bargain struck eons ago.
ekerithia went deeper. He slid further into darkness.
***
Dannrick fluffed the plush blanket that hung draped across his impotent legs. He could smell the pungent, soured aroma of the kaboshalged stewing in the nearby kitchen. For almost longer than Dannrick could remember he had been confined to his chair. It had been specially fitted with rolling feet shaped like upside-down goblets. Perfectly spherical bearings had been inset into their bottoms so that the chair could be easily pushed about from behind.
Despite the fact that his legs had not worked in years, he could still enjoy many pleasures of life, things such as the delicacies that his wife cooked for him. The kaboshalged was a traditional Luciferian feast of lamb or kid boiled in the milk of its birth mother; that which meant to give it life became the medium of its death.
He grinned when he saw his son walking up the driveway. It had been several years since his last visit. Dannrick took much pride in his son’s position with the Order. He and his wife had always been devout, raised their only son according to the doctrines and traditions of their faith.
Without knocking, Krimko walked through the front door of the spacious home. His father beamed with joy at his appearance. Krimko had not been by to visit since his mother’s funeral.
Sniffing the air, Krimko commented, “Good. You have something to eat.”
Dannrick called to his son, “Come! Sit! It has been a long time since you have visited. Tell me, how has the Order kept you busy? I heard that you were single-handedly responsible for putting down a rebellion at a temple prison.”
The Luciferian professor glared at his father with beady little eyes. He did not hide his disdain for the corpulent cripple. He and his father had so rarely seen eye to eye, even before the injury, which Krimko secretly knew he’d been responsible for. Ever since that day he’d expected everyone to dote upon each of his requests.
Krimko glanced at his mother in the kitchen. She'd waited on him hand and foot right up until her death—and then afterward when her body had been animated.
“I cannot stay long,” Krimko replied. Dishes clattered as he shuffled through the cupboards searching for the family’s finest dishware. He poured himself a bowl full of clumpy, white-hued kaboshalged. “I am really only passing through.”
Krimko grabbed the sides of the large stockpot, intending to take it off of the high flame. The heated handles burned his fingers, and he let fly with a string of expletives.
“Here, don’t trouble yourself with that busy work. Let your mother do that. Marith!” yelled Dannrick. “Come, Krimko. Tell me what’s been happening.”
Marith bustled out of a nearby room and went straight to the kitchen, sensing Dannrick’s desire. She grabbed the hot pot with her bare hands and took it off the flaming stove. Marith set the container on a countertop and addressed her son.
Krimko stared at her for a moment. She looked bored, even for a corpse. “Mother,” he said with a nod.
“Come, come!” Dannrick called again. “Your mother is such tiresome company. Come in here and tell me what has been happening abroad. It gets so lonesome here, sometimes.”
“It’s about to get worse, Father,” he said with disinterest. Krimko jammed his hands into his mother’s abdomen. Her pale, sallow body gave no resistance as Krimko grabbed ahold and ripped out the magical device nestled within her ribcage. He wondered if she felt relief at the loss of necrotic animation that forced her into continued service to such an oaf.
Marith’s body crumpled into a heap without the artifact empowering her body. The device resembled a metal crustacean inset with a teardrop-pearl that seemed to pulse with mystic energy.
From his chair, Dannrick screamed, “No! No! Put it back! What will I do without her? Who will care for me?”
Krimko regarded him for a second. “I was worried about that once before when Mother died the first time. I put the Khay-hee in her so that she could continue minding after you; there was no way I wanted to be bothered with the task. But I no longer care, and I require the device for something else.”
“Well what about me?” shrieked Dannrick. “What am I supposed to do? I have no one else to feed me, to
empty my bedpan, to move me.” He shook his chair with anger and it skittered a little ways across the floor in a random direction.
“Like I said, I don’t care.”
He dropped the Khay-hee into the haversack that he’d slung around his shoulders. He topped off his bowl with simmered kaboshalged and took it with him. Stepping over his mother’s cadaver, he gave his father a mock salute and let the door slam shut loudly behind him.
The fat man screamed in anger, easily audible through the open windows. Dannrick sounded more like a child throwing a tantrum than the venerable figure of wisdom he’d always claimed to be.
Krimko knew that Dannrick would eventually wither away, likely taunted by the odor of the rotting kaboshalged. He grinned as the sounds of Dannrick’s cursing faded with the distance and he left his father’s house behind for the final time.
He licked his fingers, enjoying the last stew his mother would ever make. Krimko scraped his bowl clean and tossed it into a nearby bush at the end of the driveway. He had always loved her kaboshalged.
***
The distance stretched long as the watcher descended even further and stepped nimbly through the dark of Tartarus. The cold clink of chains and stone echoed through the supernatural darkness. The air was void.
He’d flown through the cavernous dungeon at top speed, barely a glimmer in the air. No doubt, ekerithia appeared like a mere mirage to the denizens of such advanced depths. Even he could not see here unassisted.
Just a few steps ahead, the ascending stairway rose, barely visible in the dim illumination provided by the light orb he’d brought. ekerithia's toes nudged and rattled a chain in his path, eliciting a groan from a nearby captive.
The orbs he carried had been a parting concession at a long-ago meeting with Lilth when she’d approached his outpost for palaver. They would undoubtedly come in handy, especially considering exactly what was trapped within the one. Holding the glassine sphere to his face, ekerithia peered into the source of the light. A human soul swirled within the vortex of turmoil and spiritual aether. This was no ordinary sphere, trapping the disembodied soul of some random child of Lilth. This entity had not volunteered and needed to be broken to be useful; despite that, it was infinitely valuable.
Long had the vampire queen watched over the soul inside his orb. Lilth’s seers had tipped her off to this particular destiny and so she had spent considerable resources and bent every rule of magic in order to seize the spirit before it escaped to the judgment halls beyond the western gate.
“I know your origins, little one,” ekerithia whispered. His quiet voice boomed across the subterranean emptiness as he addressed the captive. “You are my bargaining chip and my prisoner, for now. But, if you not be required, you will be my princess. Perhaps you will be the key. And then…” ekerithia held his face and the glowing orb near the face of a nearby captive—an angelic creature chained to the perfectly hewn wall; the prisoner squinted against the light and shielded his grimy face with shackled hands. “And then, brothers, then hope will come again!”
The demon slipped the source of illumination within his cloak and silenced it as he paced up the steps. He placed it in a leather sack of dust and ashes. It clinked against another, similar orb before the two baubles settled into the fine silt that kept them silent. Behind him, a moaning cry of hope arose in the dark, starting small, and spreading to all those chained below the depths of creation.
***
“No, all of them,” Werthen insisted to Jaylen who he’d put in charge. “You need to take the caravan west as soon as the sun rises. Any of the people from Low-Town are welcome to go with you, believer or not.”
The night had fallen uneventfully, but a fell, starless sky unscrolled across the heavens. Certainly, tomorrow would bring pain and blood.
“But wouldn’t that be dangerous, to allow nonbelievers so close to us?”
“Don’t forget, Jaylen, it wasn’t so long ago that you were a nonbeliever, too.”
The young man nodded. That was what Werthen loved about Jaylen, he was thoroughly analytical. Jaylen could be more than a leader; he was a good manager, too.
Vil-yay piped in, “Have faith. It won’t take long for them to see your faith lived out before they want to join you in it.”
Werthen nodded. “Besides, it is our duty to protect them. We released Shimza and Fixxer. That already implicates us as far as High Town will be concerned. We’re going to look like reinforcements to an enemy faction. And High Town is probably watching us even now.” Werthen glanced at Shimza who stood near the door. Every muscle of the warrior’s body remained tense.
Shimza nodded from his post where he monitored the walls of High Town through a collapsible scope. Darkness closed around the walls and an aura of evil wafted out from the vampires’ city like a mist—palpable enough to choke a person. “Given the size of your group, there’s no way that you can have come here unnoticed.”
“We’re responsible for these people, Jaylen. Even though we didn’t know what we were doing when we released the vampire hunters, anybody left in Low Town is going to pay a price for letting us do it.” Werthen paused, “Despite it all, I would have probably released them again, anyway, if I had to choose all over again.”
Jaylen nodded, “Okay. I will lead them. But what about you?”
“Only a few of us will stay,” Werthen replied, grasping for words. They still hadn’t formed a concrete plan. “A small group has a better chance of avoiding detection. We will get in and do our best to free whatever people seek it, or hinder the vampires’ plans as best as possible.”
“Heh,” Fixxer chortled, “That’s assuming that we last until dawn. Things’ll only be able to feed in the dark. Feeding in daylight turns their stomachs.”
Shimza shook his head. “I still don’t think that they’ll attack tonight. We won't see anything more than a scout if anything. Lilth's children are calculating. Cold. They won’t come down just yet, not until they’ve assessed our new allies’ strengths.”
“We’ll be well away tomorrow morning,” Jaylen promised. “We will pray for your success,” he said heavy-heartedly.
“For now,” Werthen stated, “We pray for time… and an early dawn.”
***
Dyule paced around the garrison headquarters as if his appointment was beneath him. Every furnishing appeared to upset Jand’s newly ordained king.
Pinchôt grimaced at the foppish air that he’d suddenly adopted. The former ranger rolled his eyes knowing that Dyule was doomed to follow in Harmarty’s self-indulgent ways.
Krimko shot Pinchôt a sly glance as Dyule prattled about, trying to find a seat that didn’t offend his royal buttocks. Pinchôt had never disguised his disdain for the bureaucrat turned king. He couldn’t quite understand why the last son of the great Rogis had fawned so greatly over Pinchôt.
“Do you suddenly find Grinden so disagreeable?” Pinchôt scowled at the royal popinjay.
Dyule finally found a chair and sat, feigning contentedness at the seat. “Quite contrary, my dear friend. The only thing that I find disagreeable about my humble beginnings is the fact that this madman, Rashnir, still draws breath.”
“I’ve no love lost for him, either,” Pinchôt started.
“Was it your father who was murdered by this brigand? I thought not! Why is this man not delivered to my dungeon for torture?”
“We’ve captured several of these anti-Luciferians,” Krimko interjected with a giggle, reminding himself of their doomed fate. “Many of Rashnir’s loved ones burned alive in the prison fire before the krist-chins fled.”
“And that justifies it? My entire family burned at Rashnir’s first betrayal! I can never be sated until that scum becomes my personal object of torture! I want him, and I want him alive!” Flecks of white spittle flew from Dyule’s lips as he ranted.
“And how will you hold this one in your prison?” Pinchôt stated the obvious. “He’s escaped the royal du
ngeon before, and that was before he had these mystic powers. He’ll just cut his way out with that magic blade of his.”
“I said alive, not intact,” Dyule spat. He wiped the drool leakage from his lip. “Cut his arms off if need be!”
“Is this obsession really the wisest use of Jand’s resources?” Pinchôt crossed his arms in disgust.
“Are you suddenly a sympathizer? This man is single-handedly responsible for the deaths of my entire family and the last two monarchs… and you think it wise to leave him on the loose? Rashnir is the Scourge of Grinden! More than just the murders he has gutted the Grinden district’s population and economy! Now you, my most trusted bodyguard and friend come to his aid?”
Krimko stepped between Dyule and Pinchôt. The fighter’s wild eyes betrayed the fact that he was about to assassinate the new king himself.
“That’s not what Pinchôt is saying, my King. I think he’s getting at a new idea that I’ve been mulling over, myself. Perhaps the best way to expunge this threat from memory is to offer a bounty on all known krist-chins. On top of that, perhaps you should form a special group whose sole mission is to extract your revenge upon this dangerous sect.”
Dyule gave him an intrigued look, suddenly calmed by the idea. Pinchôt also glanced at the Luciferian, curiosity written upon his face as well.
“Let me explain. We know that these cultists regard each other as family, like brothers and sisters—adopted by their god, as if such a thing were possible,” he scoffed. “Rashnir has claimed a new family, a large family with many members you can use as pawns for your revenge. Keep avenging your cause. Let us form an elite unit, a group of specialists who will systematically destroy whatever pockets krist-chin cultists arise.”
“And you will bring me Rashnir, alive!” Dyule demanded.
The Kakos Realm Collection Page 75
