by Mark Adam
The beast rose above him in an endless flow of pitch-black hide and bulging, corded muscle, so that the transformation from equine to demi-human beginning at the horse’s shoulders was seamless.
The human torso rose above the sleek black coat of the horse into skin of ebony so deep it seemed glossy. Each muscle was etched as if in warm, living marble, twice as large as its largest human counterpart. The twin rows of the abdominal wall were stacked one atop the other like blocks in a prison tower. The incredible, broad looping muscles of the back protruded like wings on either side of the gigantic torso. A wide, muscled chest supported massive, jutting breasts with nipples and aureoles of deepest purple. They sat high and the line of the creature’s feminine cleavage was as clean and vivid as the lines etched like polished steel in the huge, warrior arms and powerful shoulders that framed them.
The shock of seeing the monster was female somehow felt even more incongruous to Khat than all the rest of it. He fell mute and looked up into the harsh, wild beauty of the beast’s face. Her hair was long and wild, flowing in thick tresses down her back where it became more mane than hair. Piceous eyes were set between prominent cheekbones, framing full, sensuous lips and a broad nose.
The look in her eyes and the cast of her features were haughty and utterly alien to anything Khat had even seen. The vision of her struck him dumb like a slap in the face. Her nostrils flared as she took in huge draughts of air, her lungs working like industrial bellows as her chest rose and fell. At her flanks a long tail flicked idly.
From behind Khat came the sound of a chain running through metal pulleys and he turned toward this new stimulus. He saw the porticos rise, and a short, misshapen figure emerged from the elevator. Backlit by the cavern, the figure’s features were impossible to discern, but seemed male. The outline was short, reaching to only a little past Khat’s waist.
“Impressive, isn’t she?” The figure asked.
It stepped forward as it spoke, and the voice was rough with a thick, guttural brogue. The fear that had emanated from the open elevator now rolled before the approaching dwarf like fog.
“I’d be careful, though,” the homunculus figure warned. “She’s in heat at the moment and the slightest thing can set her off. Nasty.”
The squat manikin stepped in close enough for Khat to make its features out. Dressed head to toe in leather of a dark emerald green, the dwarf’s swollen belly was cinched tight with a wide belt of animal skin. The end of its long, crazed beard was tucked behind a buckle embossed with a strange bronze device.
He grinned at Khat, and his breath was fetid behind yellow teeth as crooked as a shark’s. His nose was a potato lump set under bloodshot eyes the color of mud but clever, quick with demonic cunning. A greasy tangle of hair flowed out from an over-sized beret the same color of green as his leathers.
His hands were thick, and each fat finger bore multiple rings of gaudy, improbable size. The stones flashed and glittered faintly even though any ambient light in this place was hidden by the wide silhouette of the manikin itself.
The splay-bodied thing stood there, hands folded patiently before him, seemingly content to let Khat make the next move or overture. Behind Khat the female shifted its massive bulk impatiently and heaved a sigh very much like a horse snorting. Khat felt like a man trying to climb to his feet on a sheet of ice.
He could not find his purchase. Too much had happened too quickly for him to even begin to comprehend. He was locked firmly in their terror glamour. Still, even though he remained confused and disoriented in this strange and terrible place, the place itself did not go away. The monsters did not dissolve. The nightmare did not end. Finally, because there was nothing else to do, he spoke.
“Who are you? What is this place? Where am I?” Khat swallowed a thick lump in his throat. “Am I dead?”
“So you do have a tongue!” The manikin mocked. He cocked his shaggy head with low, protruding brow and grotesque slash of a mouth to one side, pensive. “Those are good questions, corsair. Very good ones, indeed. Let me see. . .”
The thick-bodied dwarf trailed off, eyes cast into black space. He placed his hands behind him after the fashion of an indulgent professor. He looked back down at the cowering, naked Khat and laughed at him.
“In order, then,” the thing began. “I am Delacroix, and this beauty behind you is Sheára. We are of the cohort of Ptah, the Opener of Ways.”
Khat nodded, somewhat dully. The idea of names seemed rather pedestrian to him in the midst of such outrageous trappings. Smirking at his befuddled silence, the manikin continued.
“This place is a sort of way station. It is at once neither here nor there, but it is for now. No, you are not dead, at least not yet.” The dwarf’s grin was wide and sharp. “What say you, Khat? Would you like to escape the fires of hell?”
Khat forced himself to look up. His terror gripped him like manacles. Slowly he compelled himself against his fear. His hand traced the rune sigil in the hot, desiccated air, and his lips formed the command of release. In that instant the manikin no longer grinned and the female shifted backwards, shaking her head in confusion.
The fear glamour was broken, and Khat rose up. He towered over the dwarfish beast, and his gaze almost reached the level of the female’s eyes. He stood before them a warrior, huge and powerful, unabashed in his nudity. He made a fist, and his knuckles popped like thunder in the echoing silence.
“Oh, there ain’t none of us escaping hell.” Khat grinned.
Chapter Ten
Ritual Night
Alyssa felt blood splatter her naked body like monsoon rain. The screams of the dying reached her delicate, shell-like ears with all the joyous harmony of a symphony. She witnessed Abraxsis wielding his glaive with devastating effect.
The long, curved edge of the heavy blade bit through cuirass and helm to chop into flesh and bone. Guts strung across the silks of her bed, and brains splashed against the flagstone of her chamber. Still the guardsmen charged forward, driven to frenzy by the enchantments of the Caliph behind them. As mindless automatons they faced the Herald of Anubis.
Abraxsis towered above their heads. He swept his pole arm out and slashed throats or lopped limbs. Heads rolled, and the blood flowed thick as an abattoir so that the stench of it was like incense. The death angel roared with laughter, and his fangs were white against the onyx of his skin.
One guard dove over the broken corpse of his compatriot with blade held high. Abraxsis snatched him by his throat with one huge hand. He jerked his arm and snapped the soldier’s neck. The Herald snorted with the effort and threw the limp corpse bodily across the room.
It struck the Caliph even as his lips twisted with the intricacies of his incantations beside the dual image of the Infantana as she did the same. The spell caster was driven hard against the stone wall, and his head bounced off stone with a sickening smack.
The Caliph slid slowly down, leaving a smear of crimson syrup and strands of hair behind him. Without his power the Infantana was incapable of maintaining control of the terrified guardsmen.
They broke like water through a dam. As one the survivors scrambled over the corpses of their brothers to flee the scene of their slaughter. The Infantana turned to flee, but was caught and pushed aside to the bloody floor. Sandals left marks on her soft flesh as she was trampled beneath the feet of her mercenaries.
Panicked, the Infantana heard a wild, lilting laughter. She turned her head to see her step-daughter giggling madly. The naked girl wore a dress of blood, and her fists worked between her legs with insane intensity. Alyssa’s eyes fairly glowed red with the power of her possession, and the Infantana knew the girl was gone from the mortal coil of this reality.
“Cahlii! Cahlii!” The Infantana screamed.
The Herald of Anubis shrugged his massive shoulders, and his wings spread and flapped like those of some great eagle. He lifted up into the air and leapt forward the fifteen feet to where the Infantana cowered next
to the corpse of her Caliph.
“Cahlii! Cahlii!” Abraxsis mocked. “Your slut-goddess won’t save you. The laws of the mortal coil are fixed.”
The Herald of Anubis threw his gore-smeared glaive to one side and scooped up the lithe blonde. He ripped her clothes from her and laughed at her shame. He swept her up above his head and dashed her to the floor.
The woman burst open like a ripe melon under the force of the death angel’s strength. Her flesh simply split apart like burlap as her bones were snapped and broken. Abraxsis knelt down and thrust a black, talon-tipped hand into the cavity of her chest. He snatched her still beating heart from its seat and bit into it like an apple.
Behind him the mindless body of the girl Alyssa shuddered with the strength of her orgasm.
Chapter Eleven
Ritual Night
Khat came up out of the hold of the corvette in a rush. He rode Ptah’s cohort with one fist wrapped firmly in her hair like reins. He saw the tip of the citadel rise as the slave girl navigated his ship down to the balcony.
He used his free hand to punch Sheára in the back of her head and snarled the geas command again. Compelled beyond her power to resist, the powerful creature suffered her indignity. Her hooves thundered across the sunship’s deck, and she held her long spear ready in her hands.
At Khat’s urging Sheára leapt into the air over the railing and onto the stone balcony below. The blood of the manikin Delacroix filled Khat’s mouth and scalded his tongue, driving him toward his consummate fury.
As a boy in Primus, the prison of Gomorrah, the Tiered City, Khat had fled the rape-gangs and the thrill cannibals. In his desperate scramble for survival Khat had seen one small group of prisoners feared above all the others. The tiny death cult of Chronus, the eater of children and one of the dishonored tabernacle.
He carved his own eye out with a heated spoon to join the ranks of the Twisted Path and learn the secrets of their powers. He spent ten years learning the craft of thug, assassin, devotee, and acolyte. His skills were prodigious when the Primus Commander offered him a deal: escape into the military ranks of the slave-Legions and a shot at purchasing his freedom. In exchange he had only to deliver unto the Commander the heart of the Chronus sachem, a man who had grown to such capabilities even the centurions and yard bulls feared him.
By that morning Khat had escaped Primus.
Now Khat once again gambled everything on murder.
Sheára burst into the tower chamber, snorting wildly, firmly under the command of Khat’s geas. Through a fog of adrenaline and rage, Khat saw the Herald of Anubis kneeling beside the mutilated corpse of his former lover, the Infantana. Khat’s search had led him to a grimoire of eldritch power and the discovery of its location in the possession of the Caliph of Gomorrah’s tallest spire. He had bedded the vicious blonde sorceress and figured his gambit using the woman’s own manipulations to bring about her downfall.
The spell of summoning had been but one among many in the arcane tome, singular only in the fact that the summoning of Abraxsis for vengeance had to be performed by a virgin girl. Khat needed Abraxsis. The Herald was unique in his structure and the nature of his curse. Now that the death angel had been drawn to the mortal coil, there was nothing left but for Khat to take what he needed.
He drove Sheára forward, forcing the creature to charge down upon the winged daemon. Abraxsis rose, sweeping up his glaive. Mystic steel rang on mystic steel as Sheára’s lance crossed with the daemon’s glaive. Sparks showered as the metals screeched in protest.
Khat slid off Sheára’s back. He drew his sword from the sheath on his harness and its blade showed the marks of the rune-inscriptions burned there. Beneath the glistening sweat of his body, Khat’s tattoos at began to glow and flash like sheet lightning with eldritch energies. His veins popped out amongst the knots of his muscles like flooding rivers, and his body radiated heat like a furnace.
Sheára tried to rear and bring her flailing hooves to bear. The Herald of Anubis blocked a spear thrust and whipped the glaive around in a blur. Ptah’s equine-daemon screamed in anguish as first her spear haft and then her front leg were snapped and severed and Sheára crashed in a heap before the triumphant Abraxsis.
Khat lunged forward to bring his own weapon into play. Alyssa hit him in a scratching, screaming tornado. Her nails raked his face, drawing blood, and her teeth found the muscles of his shoulder. Her eyes burned bloody with the energy of her possession, and she attacked in a blind frenzy as vicious as Khat’s own.
Khat shrugged once and shook her loose.
The screaming Sheára caught the winged daemon’s glaive on a downward swing and snatched it free.
Khat spun and struck the possessed girl in her face with the pommel of his sword, shattering her teeth and driving her to the flagstone floor.
Sheára dropped the pole arm, awkward in such close quarters, and latched onto the Herald’s throat.
Abraxsis responded in kind, and each creature struggled in the grip of the other. Khat lunged forward and shoved his blade deep into the daemon’s stomach. Abraxsis screamed at the pain and twisted Sheára’s head around like a toy.
Khat heard the demi-human’s neck snap like a branch as he bent and scooped up the Herald’s glaive. Fangs bared, the daemon whirled to face Khat, reaching for him, wings beating as he lifted into the air. Khat swung without grace or style but with simple direct force.
The mystic blade of the glaive drove deep into the daemon’s forehead. Abraxsis spun, knocked to the floor. The great body spasmed, and the wings beat in reflexive fury. Khat held the pole arm like a captain clinging to the tiller of a ship in stormy seas.
Abraxsis beat himself to death against the unmoving stone, and Khat wrenched hard on the glaive, leveraging the daemon’s skull apart. He grasped the weapon handle and yanked, but his feet slipped out from underneath him in the spilled blood. Khat landed hard on his back, and the breath was driven from his body.
The corsair looked over and saw the glaive fall from the Herald’s skull. Still hurt, Khat struggled to sit up as the daemon corpse fell still. With eager, greedy hands Khat grasped the edges of the daemon’s split head. He held fast and pulled hard. His blood frenzy changed to naked avarice as he looked into the opening he’d rent.
The artifact sat encased in the blue-veined matter of the daemon’s brains. Khat reached in and tugged it free. The feeling was like pulling a shoe from thick mud, and the sound was the same wet protest. Khat flicked his arm, cracking it like a whip, and knocked the fleshy matter from the black iron device.
A barbaric grin twisted Khat’s features into a gruesome mask. He studied the shape and weight of his prize. A flat, fist-sized disk made up the hub and from the hub black iron arrows thrust out in all directions like points on a compass. The arcane power radiating from the Chaos Sphere made Khat slightly nauseas.
Chaos Sphere, Khat thought. He felt smug, and he had to force himself to play down the giddy feeling that danced and surged through his body. He had done it. He rose and turned to the balcony where the girl steered his ship. He gripped the device tightly as he stooped and picked up the Herald’s glaive as well.
Be warned, he told the world. Vengeance is mine.
The clap of thunder detonated outside the room, and the concussive force rippled through the chamber like a tsunami. Khat was picked up and flung across the room like a rag doll. He struck the wall hard and the breath was driven from him. He fell heavily to the ground, still clutching the Chaos Sphere.
Through the open balcony Khat heard the slave girl scream and the sound of the hovering sunship bouncing against the tower wall. He thrust one hand against the ground and pushed himself up. His hand slipped in the gore, and he struck the floor again.
He snarled his frustration and forced himself up to his knees, painted scarlet with the splashed blood. From out on the horizon, Khat heard Cahlii scream. It simmered up like a gale and then flashed across the turbulent ocean like sh
eet lightning. It hammered into the tower and spilled in through the open window until he was deafened by the din. Khat dropped his tools and clamped his hands over his ears against the agony.
Abraxsis sat up. Part of his skull fell away and struck the floor. Like a marionette, the Herald lumbered to its feet. Khat pushed himself away from the rising creature until his back was against the wall.
Cahlii is displeased, the Herald said.
With a start Khat realized the daemon had not spoken but that the words were echoing inside his head. Desperate, he scrambled to scoop up his prizes from where he had dropped them. Behind the disfigured Herald, Sheára forced her own mutilated corpse upward. On either side of the two fantastic creatures, murdered guardsmen rose in shambling horrors.
Khat felt sharp nails rake his flesh. He snapped his head back and forth. The Caliph and the Infantana clawed at him, eyes rolled back in their heads, mouths slack and hungry. Khat clutched the Sphere tightly in his fist so that the black metal spikes protruded through his fingers.
Fear and terror surged through his body in wild pulses, and he frantically began to flail his way free. He screamed in surprise and pain when he felt Alyssa’s broken teeth sink into his leg. He looked down and saw her ashen face latched onto his thigh. He buried the spikes of the Chaos Sphere into her skull and pried her from him.
The Caliph looped arms around his waist and tried to bury his gnashing teeth in Khat’s crotch. Khat threw his hip around to block the corpse’s lunge. Undead guardsmen launched themselves at him like gamesmen on a field of play, trying to drag him to the floor.
As fists and limbs rained in, driving him down, Khat looked up through the tangled knot and saw the twin shapes of Sheára and Abraxsis rushing forward. His mind spun like a wheel through panicked options, each more desperate than the last, but he knew what he had to do even as blunt teeth ripped at the veins in his neck. He must give himself into the Sphere.
