by Aaron Crash
GULNASH THE BETRAYER is coming to Old Ironbound, and he’s coming for blood!
Ymir just wanted to finish his second year, craft the next Akkiric Ring, and enjoy the summer in the company of his beautiful women. But Old Ironbound has been chosen as the location of the orc blood games, and all the ruling families of the surrounding kingdoms have come to make sure the worst scourge of the Blood Steppes, Gulnash, loses his life on the pit sands. If Ymir can win the day, the three major cities of the Blood Steppes are his by right.
But Ymir’s summer isn’t all just about rogue orcs. A woman, long dead, haunts the halls, filled with a lust that defies imagination. A damaged mermaid princess is causing trouble, but this time, it’s sexy trouble. And the leaders of the Midnight Guild finally reveal themselves...and strike!
Ymir has never faced bigger challenges, and he’ll have to brave new enemies and find new allies in a battle royale that will be both bloodier and more erotic than ever before.
Chapter One
YMIR, SON OF YMOK, of the Black Wolf Clan, walked through the dusty, crumbling corridors far underneath the Librarium Citadel. Jennybelle Josen walked close behind him. They’d taken the circular staircase down from the Scrollery, down into the bedrock of Vempor’s Cape. They’d strolled past the tomb of Sarina Sia, an elven Princept, who had been the magistrate at the Majestrial Collegium Universitas four hundred years ago. They’d gone down until the spiral staircase brought them to a narrow corridor of disintegrating bricks and wet rock. From there, hallways branched out to other tombs. The crypts were older than the castle, which had been built near the beginning of the Vempor Aegel Akkridor’s reign, a thousand years ago.
This place stank of death, magic, and the impossible.
Other staircases led farther down. It was a sobering thought, to think of how old the place was and how deep the catacombs went. By the Axman’s beard, Ymir expected dwarven miners to come marching out singing some kind of drinking song. Or a pit demon from hell, dripping magma and complaining of the noise.
So as not to get lost in the mazes below Old Ironbound, his women had volunteered to stop at key junctures, though it meant leaving Ymir and Jennybelle alone in the ancient halls.
Gatha was near Sarina Sia’s grave, while Toriah Welldeep, the flame-haired dwab with the freckled nose and good nature, stood at the next main intersection. Lastly, Lillee Nehenna, the disgraced elven princess, stood lighting up another junction with her magic.
That left Ymir and Jennybelle Josen alone to craft the fifth Akkiric Ring.
The blue-eyed, raven-haired woman from the Swamp Coast knew all about dark magic and had grown up in a culture with multitudes of legends about the orishas, or, in other words, demons. She hadn’t believed the stories until she herself had been attacked. Yes, blasted spirits from the abyss existed, and Ymir had spoken with them. A few had been used to try to kill him and his friends. Others seemed more useful.
Ymir gripped the strange grimoire, Circulum, with one hand and held the Sunfire torch with his other. Instead of his battle ax, he had a curved Gruul sword sheathed at his side. The blade was a gift from Della Pennez and all of Old Ironbound to thank him.
Weeks ago, he’d stopped Marrib and the other merfolk from stealing the Fractal Clock. That had been after Ymir and his women had crafted two other Akkiric Rings, the Winter Flame Ring and the Yellow Scorch. Now he wore three, including the Black Ice Ring on his left hand. Normally he only wore the one, and he used it as a Focus ring. But here, he didn’t have to worry about anyone seeing him.
“I shouldn’t have fixed my hair,” Jennybelle said nervously.
“Why is that?”
“No one here is gonna appreciate it. No one living, anyways.” Jennybelle gulped, gripping a small bag to her chest with her left arm. She twirled her dark hair around her finger nervously. “Well, dang, I can smell the water now. Not sure if I like that or not ’cause it don’t smell too good.”
Ymir stopped, nostrils flaring. The wet stink was close. The magical fire on his torch threw light but not heat. It was cold and dank, and it smelled like waterlogged corpses.
He frowned. “You don’t have to do this. You can go back and stand with Lillee.”
Jenny laughed. “Tori said we’d make this Gather Breath Ring together. Who am I to argue with our horny little prophetess?” Her words had that Swamp Coast accent, with its certain cadence and its imprecise grammar.
Jenny wasn’t joking about Tori. The dwab had become a horny little thing now that she could control her Inconvenience with the Amora Xoca. She had dived into sex with enthusiasm and was now testing how the love magic affected her sex drive.
Tori was carrying the Veil Tear Ring now, in a little pouch on her belt. She also had the alchemical treat for Fluffy. That was what she called the hellish, tentacled dog that came running when she dared to put on the ring, which wasn’t often. It was too dangerous, and becoming more and more risky with every use. Ymir didn’t want to risk wearing it now, or there was a good chance that Fluffy would immediately devour his soul. However, the more time he let go by, the more the hellhound forgot about him. He’d only use the ring again when he really needed the magic.
Ymir stepped close and kissed Jenny’s soft lips. He drew back. “You look nervous. I thought you were a Swamp Coast witch.”
“Bitch.” Jenny stopped twirling her hair and dropped her hand. “Swamp Coast bitch. I avoided this black magic stuff...until I met you. You don’t find this frightening?”
“What? Being in a forbidden crypt at midnight? The weekend before our Fourth Exam?” Ymir laughed. “I’m as corrupt as anything we might find down here.”
Jenny shook her head. “You’re not. You’re brave, kind, and you’re good. I’ve trusted you with my life.”
The clansman heard the emotion in her voice. And yet, he couldn’t help but feel evil, given that he’d been exiled from his people because of his magic. All sorcery had seemed diabolical to him before he came to Old Ironbound, and now, after two years of casually using magic, he rarely stopped to think about it anymore. What was one more curse on his already cursed soul? He didn’t speak those thoughts. He merely smiled. “Let’s see if we can trust the author of this book.”
Jenny rolled her eyes. She wore her boots, pantaloons, and a tight vest covering a short-sleeved shirt. She had the Sapphire Fang on her belt. Her Focus ring glimmered. “The author didn’t sign that book for us to trust him. And from what you said, he was driven mad by what he saw. Was that before or after he created the Gather Breath Ring?”
“After,” Ymir said. “But he didn’t think it was this ring that drove him insane but another. The author might have been one of the first mages to ever create the rings, at the very beginning of the Age of Union, if not before.”
“Ymir? Jenny?” Lillee’s voice echoed through the crumbling corridors. “Could you hurry? I’m afraid!”
“We’ll hurry,” Jennybelle called back.
Then there was a moan that might’ve been the wind, finding some crack in the silence down deep, or maybe the voice echoed through a subterranean cavern. It was hard to hear, hard to tell, and Ymir felt how far they were away from the air above.
“Let’s not tarry,” he said, pressing on toward the crypts at the end of the corridor.
Here, there were shelves of corpses, desiccated so they were barely even identifiable as human. The bones were little more than dust. This was far older than the staircase tombs. This place—this place spoke of a world not tens of thousands of years old, but ageless, timeless, and long forgotten.
To make matters worse, the crypt had flooded. Black water lay perfectly silent and smooth, without a ripple. The tomb had become the most awful of cisterns.
Ymir grinned even as his flesh crawled. “This is perfect. Water untouched by sun and moon. A place of silence away from the storms. Tori was right to bring us down here. Do you have what we need?”
Jennybelle, eyes wide, licked her lips nervously. “You know, I figured
I’d felt enough fear in me these past two years that I’d be immune. Guess that’s not the case because I’m scared out of my head right about now.”
The clansman didn’t share her fear. He felt a growing excitement. Because of its age, the Circulum text had been mystifyingly difficult to translate, and there were still whole passages that baffled them. When they’d made the Black Ice Ring, they’d been stuck on one word. That seemed simple compared to the masses of paragraphs that used such ancient language that Ymir had to skip them.
The only reason they were willing to work on the ring was because of the very exact stellar events that needed to take place in order to fashion the Gather Breath Ring. A partial lunar eclipse, two weeks before the summer solstice, or, as the anonymous writer described it, “when spring had but a fortnight to live and the stink of summer rot blisters under an unforgiving sun.”
More of that fucking poetry that wasted everyone’s time. The other factor? Once the Black Ice Ring had been crafted, there was a time element involved to make the Gather Breath. Not that Ymir knew what the Black Ice Ring did. It was his Focus ring, yes, but he hadn’t unlocked its secret power yet. He hoped once he crafted this next object, it might shed some light on the first magic item they’d made together at the beginning of their adventures.
Ymir turned and lit a real torch in a sconce in the wall. The brittle wood sparked into a smokey fire. After lighting the torch on the other side, he gave his own magical brand to Jenny. She handed him the bag.
“Not scared?” Jenny asked. “Not even a little?”
“Of what?”
“The dead?”
Ymir laughed. “We’ll all be dead soon enough. If the skeletons rise, their bones are nearly dust and their joints brittle. Hacking them into bits wouldn’t take much effort. And if some specter comes to drive me mad? I’ll deal with it. So far, nothing has happened. Fear is useless.”
“Until it’s not,” Jenny said. “Fear keeps us from leaping off ledges.”
“Depends on the ledge,” Ymir laughed.
He walked down the steps into the still, frigid water. His senses were alive, and he caught every detail of the room. Cobwebs hung down from the crypt shelves. Minerals gleamed in the ceiling, and farther in, a few stalactites reached into the water. Someone had carved this tomb into the walls of a natural cave. He wondered if they were below the ocean floor. It seemed so, but the water didn’t smell of salt.
It was murky, and he felt silt covering the floor. He waded to the center. He then focused on creating the ice anvil where he would forge the Gather Breath. He eyed the distance to the walls. It was about five feet, and that was important because the Circulum’s text insisted they have ten feet of underground water, untouched by light, in the dark place of the Earth.
“Jelu jelarum.” As he used his Flow magic, he felt the power drain from his dusza. Ice cracked and snapped as the water froze to create a frozen anvil atop a pedestal rising from the black water. Ymir would’ve liked to create a platform for himself, but he needed to be in water for this work. Water, ice, darkness, those were the requisites for the spell, but there would also be fire involved. Luckily, he had the Yellow Scorch Ring.
He emptied the bag out onto the ice. He also propped up the book below it, the tome opened to a specific page. It had been a gift from Professor Linnylynn Albatross and the White Rose Society. He didn’t trust them. However, their help interested him, and this would be the first test of their loyalty.
Ymir went through the ingredients list—crushed pearl, seaweed soaked in wine, three small hoops of gold, silver, and platinum, each thin, fine, and about an inch in diameter. Finally, he’d had to create a mixture of sand, blood, and holy ashes. He’d had to keep the mixture out in the sun until it started to stink. He’d also brought a jeweler’s hammer, which Tori had provided. The Morbuskor maid had a wide variety of tools squirreled away in her room at the Zoo.
The gold hoop had to be covered in the crushed pearl and the silver in the blood mixture, while the platinum was laid on top. All three rings were tied together with the wine-soaked seaweed. It was delicate work.
Jenny walked into the water and eased up next to him. “Let me tie the rings. Mr. Fucking Anonymous didn’t have a problem with a little help, did he?”
Ymir shrugged. “I think we just need the rings tied. And if he doesn’t like it, he can go fuck himself.”
Jenny swallowed. “I keep thinking something is gonna grab me under the water. A skeleton. Something with teeth and tentacles, not of this world.”
“Until something does, you don’t have to be afraid.” Ymir turned a page. He was getting his dusza ready for the next part.
“So you don’t fear nothin’?” she asked.
He’d known his fair share of fear in his life. Then the Lonely Man had cursed him with magic. He gave Jenny a small smile. “When the worst has happened to you, then fear loses some of its bite. Now the only thing I fear is losing you, Lillee, Tori, and Gatha. But I won’t let that happen.”
“I’m with you there, handsome,” Jenny said with a strained smile. She held the torch up higher to give him more light. “Now, enough talking, and more ring-forging. How about it?”
Ymir glanced at the pages. With a finger, he spread the pearl dust and the mixture of rotting blood, dirt, and ash around on the ice anvil, creating the symbol needed to forge the Gather Breath. There were two definite steps to making this ring. The first was to create the ring. The second? He would literally gather the breath of certain people.
Those paragraphs he was still working on.
Ymir spoke the words in ancient Theranus, and they came out in a jumble of foreign consonants and unlikely vowels. The powder, dirt, and dust rose above the three metal hoops as the seaweed froze, tying the three hoops together.
The next step required fire, and Ymir had more than enough. He felt at the cold of the ring, the amwabs clustered together, and he was going to split them apart. He hissed out the Sunfire magic words, “Ignis ignarum!”
Fire roared around them, making the ice glimmer as the top melted. The fire ate through the materials for the ring, the seaweed glowed brighter, turning from plant into metal and sealing the three hoops together into one ring.
Jenny let out a hiss of fear.
Around them, the mummified ancients sat up, trying to raise their arms. Ymir wasn’t wrong about the joints. Some snapped off. Other corpses were able to raise their clawed hands while their bones cracked and squealed.
A shadow swept through the room. One torch went out, the other dimmed. Jenny’s Sunfire torch turned black, and so it was only one uncertain flame that lit the chamber.
A shiver went up Ymir’s spine. He rose out of the water, which was odd since he hadn’t levitated in a long time. Back when he’d first been given magic, it happened more than he’d been comfortable with...that and he’d been given visions. He’d hated both until he’d learn how to dispel the levitation with just two words. “Jelu inanis.”
He settled back down into the water. He picked up the jeweler’s hammer.
“I should be studying for my Fourth Exam!” Jennybelle wailed.
Then the voice came to him as before...as when he’d made the two rings prior. YOU ARE FORGING ANOTHER RING AND SO CLOSE TO WHERE I LAY? CLANSMAN, YOU ARE HUNGRY FOR POWER. I FIND THAT AMUSING.
It was Sarina Sia, a former Princept of Old Ironbound and long dead. “Good evening, Honored Princept.”
GOOD EVENING, CLANSMAN WITH MAGIC. THE AKKIR AKKOR ARE LOOKING AT YOU CLOSELY TONIGHT. AND I WAS CALLED FORTH AGAIN. MY ETERNAL REST HAS BEEN DISTRUBED. PERHAPS THAT’S NOT A BAD THING.
“Depends on which side you are on,” Ymir growled.
“Who in the hell are you talking to?” Jennybelle asked in wonder as she held the torch, burning with black flame.
The skeletons around them creaked, and their burial gowns turned into sighs. Their heads turned on squeaking neck joints. A few of the skulls popped off in the process.
They
were turning, slipping off the shelves, and disappearing into the black water.
Jenny hissed, “Fuck this. Jelu jelarum.” Casting Flow magic, she froze the water to her left and created steps to her own ice platform. She climbed out of the water. A skeleton crawled up her steps. Its bony hand reached for her, and she bashed the thing’s skull off with the black-flame torch.
Ymir couldn’t leave the water. He stood in front of his ice anvil. Grisly hard fingers grabbed his ankle, but he didn’t kick them away. He was too focused. He was going to make this next damn ring, and he wasn’t going to fret about living bones. The skeletons were swarming him, clinging to him with their arms, their skulls pressing against him. He could easily use the Yellow Scorch Ring to blast them away and cover them in fire. Or he could freeze the room. A few swings of his sword would also clear himself.
He chose to do nothing of the kind. He let those specters climb him and cover him. He wore them as a grisly mantle. This fucking magic was all demonic, and he might as well wear demons as a coat.
He freed his right arm enough to strike the ring with the jeweler’s hammer, and the sound was like an enormous bell ringing. His head swam, and he squinted against the noise and the light. He felt Jennybelle’s terror as she fought the skeletons coming near. They wanted to be closer to the warmth of the living. There is no chill as painful as the cold of death.
Ymir felt Lillee, standing at the crossroads, and farther down, Tori, and lastly, Gatha, worried that they’d be found out by the head librarian, Maezelith Bealheam. He felt the duszas of the women calling out to him, and each had their own sweetness to it. Their own special scent, only it wasn’t smell, but something deeper, the very essence of who they were.
Gatha was strong and unyielding—that made her fragile. Tori was sweet and sensible but also secretive, and that made her untrustworthy. Worse yet, the dwab didn’t think too much of herself. Then there was Lillee, who longed for power, who longed to throw off her chains and to stand tall. In her was an unexpected iron. Lastly? Jennybelle Josen, who was full of fire and life and hate and schemes to get every little thing she wanted. There was a deep selfishness to her, yet she fought those inclinations with an unexpected heroism. And once she gave you her loyalty, it was forever, unless you fucked her over. And that was what had happened to her birth family, and so she’d severed ties with them. She’d chosen a new family—Ymir and his harem of outcast princesses.
