by Steve Thomas
Grellok was beside her, now taking the form of a disordered heap of bodies. The poor victims making up the demon slithered within the heap like a ball of worms, but only two figures stood out. Grellok himself stood tall at the top of the pile. He crossed his arms and stared maliciously at Hale and Dypha.
Lower, near the front, a pair of arms reached out and dragged a head through the mass. A white-haired man with a short-cropped beard emerged. He was wearing the Heart around his neck.
“Claren,” Hale whispered. He hadn’t been killed after all, but had suffered a worse fate. He was part of the Grellok demon now, another body in a mass of tormented souls bound to Caeva’s service.
“Claren!” Dypha roared beside him. She took two quick steps forward and punched the priest in the jaw, then grappled with him, trying to strangle the old man, but whether it was an act of rage or mercy, Hale couldn’t know. The Grellok didn’t react. Instead, the courtiers rushed forward and dragged Dypha back to the center of the ring. When Hale looked again, Claren was gone.
“Enough futile gestures,” said Caeva. Her voice was low and harsh, like a chair pushed across a wooden floor. “Resistance will not prolong your lives. You’ll never win. I’ve gathered my family around me, and they lend me their strength. My ghouls outnumber whatever army you brought with you and of course I have my Grellok by my side. Yet you tried to sneak into Sangrook manor, my home, and kill me in my sleep. How did you think this would end?” She clutched the arms of her chair and leaned forward. “Who sent you? Was it my father? He has been after me for decades.”
“Your father?” asked Hale. “I wouldn’t know him if I met him.”
She growled. “Of course not! He’d never meet with you directly. He’s a coward who sits in his fortress and orders his agents to slay his own children! And yet my spies haven’t mentioned you. Which means, yes, it means my father must have sent you. He’s found a way to hide himself from me, too.” She leaned back into her chair, rested her head on a raised fist, and closed her eyes.
The legends had spoken of the Sangrooks being creatures of cunning and evil, not madness. What had broken Caeva? Had she spent all these years kidnapping and slaughtering innocent people because of some paranoid derangement beyond the Despot’s influence, or was this how he controlled her?
Hale said nothing. There was nothing he could say to help himself. She had every advantage, and his life was forfeit.
She perked up almost as quickly as she had relaxed. “I’ll take my answers from you. I gave you a chance to tell me the truth, but why should I trust an assassin? I’ll find out where my father is hiding if I have to tear your mind in half.”
Hale lowered his eyes. This was his death, then. He’d spent his life fighting demons, and he’d ended it by recklessly pursuing a target far more capable than himself. He’d reached too high, thought he could do too much, but now he knew that all he could do was reach out for Dypha’s hand and one last moment of solace.
Even that was denied him. The Sangrook courtiers grabbed him from behind and immobilized him. They pinned his arms behind his back and pushed him closer to Caeva. Then they gripped his face and lifted it up. He strained, but he was powerless.
Caeva brushed his forehead with her withered hand. “Well,” she said. “Very interesting. You share our blood, yet I wasn’t able to sense it until you came so close. How did you suppress the bond of the Pact?” Hale spat. It was the only act of defiance he could muster. An unseen hand slammed his jaw shut. Caeva laughed. “Ah, the Heart. The Heart of Habrien. That must be it. You’re from Habrien’s line.” With a cruel smile, she dragged a long, yellow, pointed fingernail across his forehead. “It makes this all the more gratifying to know that I’m bringing a wayward cousin back into the fold. Your blood to my heart, son of Habrien. One above all.”
She began chanting in a demonic tongue. Hale, unable to move, could only stare at her mouth while she spoke the words. He felt a pull, like every bit of his being was being dragged into Caeva. He felt her fears, the fear of being executed by her father, the fear that the Convergence would declare war on her, the fear that Grellok wasn’t strong enough to protect her. The world was divided into thralls and threats. He tried to fight it, tried to hold tight to his own mind, but the pull was too strong. Hale succumbed and suddenly his mind was torn out of his own body and set adrift in a sea of blood.
***
Hale awoke on a pulsating floor of muscle, beating like a heart. An ivory forest cut through the bleeding ground like the ribs of a half-eaten deer. Bloody rain fell from the black sky, only to be absorbed into the ground at his feet.
His head pounded. His arms and legs ached. His fight was over. Caeva had won and cast him here to some hellish beyond. A faint thread, the link that bound him here, emerged from his chest and hung in the darkness.
Hale fell to the ground and buried his face in his hands. The Sangrooks were too powerful. He’d spent his life fighting them, all for naught. In the end, he’d sacrificed his own life and his own body to their service. He’d been a fool. He knew this mission was doomed, and yet he had allowed himself to hope that he’d live out a long, peaceful life with Dypha.
He stifled a sob, then mustered the self-control for three deep breaths. No. He hadn’t failed. He still had his mind, even if his body was lost. He was within whatever prison trapped the minds of Sangrook thralls, which meant he was inside the Despot’s Pact. He still had power here. He could try to defeat Caeva from within.
He ran, bounding off the soft, fleshy ground, ducking under bony outcroppings, following his thread until he found a hill seething with thralls milling about, weeping, laughing, fighting. They all had those classic Sangrook features, and their threads were dark and thick, forming a web atop the hill. When Hale crested that hill, they all turned to face him, pointing angry fingers and screeching.
Hale braced himself for a fight. He would kill them all if he had to, then move on to the next group until there were no more Sangrooks left, over and over. This was how he would win. This was how he would end their reign.
Even in this realm, he still had his sword. He could spend his eternity slaying thralls. One final hunt awaited him. As he drew his blade, a Sangrook soul approached. Hale saw a glimmer of blue reflected in the enemy’s black eye, and an odd feeling swept over him, like the chill of an oncoming thunderstorm. The Sangrook screamed a battle-cry and bounded at him.
Hale drew his blade and took a step forward.
“Haberson! Wait!” called a voice. Hale spun his head and saw a blue pinprick in the air by his side. It grew, stretching outward like a crack in a block of ice until it shattered into a portal. The Sangrook spirits turned away from Hale and toward this new portal.
A man emerged dressed in the gleaming white armor of a Convergence Templar, bearing a kite shield and a spiked mace. Then another, and another. Dozens poured out like soldiers disembarking a ship. As soon as they landed, they attacked. The Templars took the Sangrooks by surprise and smashed through them. Each fallen Sangrook faded into the ether, and before the portal had even emptied, the Templars had taken the hill.
Hale waved at one of the Templars to catch his attention and asked the obvious question. “How did you get here?”
“You must be Haberson,” said the Templar. “Claren said you’d be here.” He closed his eyes and when he spoke again, it was with Claren’s voice.
“Hale, we can still finish this,” said Claren.
“How?”
“When Grellok captured me, I managed to steal back the Heart from it and it protected me from from, well…” he gesticulated toward Hale and this plane full of soulbound Sangrooks. “I held on to myself. My plan was to use Grellok to get close to Caeva and kill her, but I wasn’t strong enough, so I handed off the Heart to Dypha. When Caeva tried to soulbind her, I felt it deflect, like I did back when I tested you in our temple. I was able to redirect the soulbinding to myself without letting it overpower my connection to the Convergence. I’m in both webs now
, like the Sangrooks have done to us.”
“So you’re a bridge. The True Faith Templars are invading the Pact through you.”
“Exactly. Dypha gave me the idea back in the tunnels. Now go with them. End the Sangrooks once and for all.” The solider shook off Claren’s possession of his body and joined the rest of his group. Together, they advanced.
Hale followed and progressed through the barren field of bloody earth. He watched as the Templars clashed with each group of Sangrooks they came across. They fought together in a shield-wall and numbered in the dozens, giving them the advantage of numbers against each cluster of Sangrooks they encountered. The resistance grew stronger the deeper they marched through this world of flesh and bone, but their casualties were few. The Sangrooks were spread out, disorganized, and unprepared for this invasion of their spiritual sanctuary.
The beating of the ground slowed as they advanced. After hours of fighting, they reached a dome where the ground was gray and wrinkled. A group of Sangrooks gathered there: a smiling man wrapped in a blanket, a Grand Inquisitor of the Convergence, a woman wearing a child’s face as a mask, a hulking brute with a scythe over his shoulder, a woman in a tattered dress with red streaks in her black hair, and Caeva, all surrounded by still more lost souls.
This was the largest force to resist them, and no ethereal threads led away from here. This was where the House of Sangrook would fall. The Templars clanked forward and the Sangrook forces met them. The Templar’s line held against sword and scythe and flame.
Behind them all was a humble soldier with mummified skin. He sat cross legged in green tarnished bronze armor with a sword across his lap. He was bound to the ground by thick white sinews wrapped around his arms and neck. The red threads that bound the Sangrooks together all converged on his chest, leading into his heart like roots at the trunk of a tree. This could only be Maldaeron Sangrook, the first bearer of the Pact. This was Hale’s true target, the only target that mattered.
A plan formed in Hale’s mind. He dropped to the ground and crawled on his elbows beneath the Templars’ shield wall. The Templars flowed to create a corridor for him, and the Sangrook horde was too focused on its assault to target him. He crawled behind the melee and rose again. He warily drew his sword, but no one paid him any heed. He shared their blood. He had been drawn into their Pact. He was their kin, and they let him pass.
He crossed the soft gray ground, now crackling with electricity, until he reached Maldaeron. The man didn’t even open his eyes when he spoke, “You’re here to kill me.”
“Yes,” said Hale. He heard the screams, shouts, and scraping steel of battle.
“Well?” said Maldaeron. “Don’t just stand there. You only have so much time.”
Hale wavered. “You aren’t going to fight me?”
“Look around, son. I’m the patriarch of a family of monsters. If I had known what I’d sired, I would have drowned my daughter in a river the day she was born.”
“I don’t understand. You started this. You made a Pact with the Despot. Surely you knew.”
“I sold my soul in a moment of weakness,” said Maldaeron. “I was a cowardly deserter looking for shelter. One night, I peered into my campfire and wished for safety and the power to keep it. The next day, I found a mansion that already called me master. All I had to do was claim it. Now I’m trapped here. All that death and torture, and none of my children ever understood that it was the demon working through them. They all thought they were in control. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t kill Crisaelva. I wasn’t in control, either, yet I’ve been trapped here watching their atrocities for centuries. But Sangrook’s every endeavor ends in death. It ends in my death. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” said Hale. He had expected a monster worse than Caeva, not an old man full of regrets. But he understood. What father meant to doom his children to a life of slavery to a demon’s will? What father wanted his name reviled as a symbol for savage tyranny? This would be a mercy to Maldaeron, the Sangrook clan, and the world at large.
Hale pressed the tip of his sword into the man’s neck and pushed.
Maldaeron didn’t resist. Instead, he grinned as the blade pierced his throat. After a life of war and barbarism, after centuries of watching his descendants defile a world, Maldaeron exuded joy at becoming the final sacrifice that would lift the curse.
The ground shook. One by one, the sinews connecting Maldaeron to this world snapped. The old Sangrook patriarch smiled as he faded away into nothing, leaving the threads that bound him to his descendants dangling like spider’s silk in the breeze.
The fighting stopped and the Sangrooks unleashed a scream of rage. Caeva spun and stared down Hale. She rushed at him, snarling and raking her nails down her face to gather power from the flowing blood. But as she approached, she faltered and stumbled. She dropped to a knee as the gashes in her face burst into flames. Her skin twisted and melted and charred as she wailed and cursed. But she was severed from the Pact, and the Despot had abandoned her. Soon she was ash.
The paladins cheered and the Sangrooks panicked. The corrupted Inquisitor fell and convulsed until his whole body shook apart. The smiling man wrapped in a blanket became a crumpled blanket on the ground. The woman with a child’s mask tore away the rancid skin of a little girl to reveal that nothing was underneath.
One by one they faded away. One by one a damned soul tasted freedom before it vanished.
Hale Haberson was soon alone among the victorious Templars. The last Sangrook.
Then he, too, was gone.
THE END
Of the Sangrook Saga
Epilogue: Whispers of the Flame
The last thing Dypha remembered was Caeva Sangrook trying to siphon her soul out through her eyes. Hale had been enthralled. Claren had been consumed by the Grellok. Her only hope lay in Hale’s silly good luck charm, which she had wrested away from whatever was left of Claren. She reached to her neck. The Heart was gone.
There were hints of events clawing at her memory like phantoms at the edge of her vision. Hale convulsing with bloody tears. A calming blue aura from within the Grellok. Caeva’s screams and her cultists dropping to their knees. Fire and sweat. Demons wailing. Bodies falling. Silence.
Her head pounded and her chest tightened.
Dypha breathed, slowed down her racing heart, and opened her eyes.
Now she lay in the supple grass outside a farmhouse, the sort Hale used to fantasize about. She had always thought it a foolish dream. People like Hale and Dypha didn’t retire. They fought until they died. Hale had never wanted to admit that, and it had driven them apart. Dypha often wondered if she had been wrong to push him away, and now that one last chance was gone. The dream didn’t seem so naive now that a split-rail fence encircled the land, chickens and goats milled about, and wind chimes jingled in the cool breeze. It felt safe and peaceful, a welcome respite from the struggles against Caeva and her servants.
She didn’t know how she had gotten here. She didn’t know what had happened in Sangrook Manor. Somehow, she had survived the ordeal and she was too exhausted to question how.
The smell of cooking meat wafted out an open window, drawing her inside. The door swung open at the slightest tap, as if it had been waiting to let her in. Inside, she found a rustic home, an inviting home, the kind of home that dwelled in her deepest memories. Painted plates that reminded Dypha of her mother hung on the wall. Her father’s tools were carefully arranged on a work bench.
A rough-hewn chair overlooked the fireplace, where a cast-iron pot full of mutton stew hung over burning logs. Her stomach rumbled, and she stepped closer to see if it was ready.
The fire called to her. “You are safe here, Dypha. Sit. Eat. Be at peace.”
Dypha gazed into the flame and considered its offer.
Afterward
Well, that was morbid. I’d like to thank everyone who helped me on this endeavor, particularly the supportive friends, family, and beta readers who were willing to dive i
nto the darkness and help snuff out a few more candles.
If you’re in the mood for something lighter, check out my comic fantasy series starting with “Klondaeg the Monster Hunter.” Klondaeg is an over-zealous monster hunting Dwarf who rampages around the world chopping up ridiculous monsters with a double-bladed, double-minded bickering battle-axe. Reviewers have called his adventures a lot of fun and a good palate cleanser.
More By Steve Thomas
Smite Me, Oh Dark One
Acerbus hates his job. While he is content to watch and study the mortal races, the other gods constantly look for reasons to destroy their newly-created world. When they finally find an excuse, they command Acerbus to become the Smiter, destroyer of all creation.
Armed with nothing but spite and goblins, Acerbus decides that there is only one way to ensure his own failure and save the world: by becoming an Evil Overlord.
Klondaeg the Monster Hunter
Klondaeg is the self-declared world’s greatest monster hunter. Armed with a bickering battle-axe with a split personality, he rampages through the countryside in a tireless quest to avenge his parents and slay every monster that crosses his path, is visible from his path, or even leers in the general direction of his path. Join Klondaeg on five madcap adventures, full of werewolf garden gnomes, geriatric heroes, steam-powered spaceships, conveniently timed flashbacks, and battles with cave rats and demons alike. If you have a monster problem, Klondaeg’s your Dwarf.
Klondaeg and the Klondaeg Hunters
Klondaeg’s adventures continue with five new episodes. Klondaeg the Monster Hunter has hunted down monsters all over the world, but he should have searched closer to home. When Klondaeg discovers that one of his closest allies is secretly a monster, he must choose between friendship and duty. Meanwhile, a secret society slinks in the shadows with sinister intent. Can Klondaeg defeat the Klondaeg Hunters, or will monsters take over the world?
