Queen Killer

by M. H. Johnson

  Knowing he had no time to waste, he gazed upon the branching trunk his first choice had opened up before making his decision. Perhaps he was a fool for not immediately doubling down on potent Bloodlink, but like any decent gamer, he knew the importance of crowd control. And for that, the path of Herbam would serve him best.

  That said, he would love it if the option before him had been a bit stronger, but he could sense its long-term potential, especially if he could one day synergize the two paths he now walked; the verdant richness of endless woodlands alongside the crimson path of the bloodmage. It was a strangely fitting combination. For despite its often surreal beauty, the forests were a killing ground like no other. Animals feasted on plants before being devoured by larger predators in turn, plants eventually claiming their due from even the most fearsome hunters, consuming the remains of all those who fell in those primeval battles for survival. The cycle of life at its most ruthless and glorious.

  Of course, the woodlands held gentler secrets as well. Fruits and nuts eager to be plucked, seeds growing rich and strong in the midnight soil that grazers left behind, gentle blossoms begging for the kiss of bird or bee, cold streams sheltering so many healing herbs.

  Serenity and savagery, twin sides of the arboreal coin.

  He grimaced, pulling his mind free of distraction after making his choice and rolling his still somewhat sore shoulder, almost imagining he could feel his bones knitting, his regeneration sadly not sparing him any pain. Another handful of seconds and he could hobble around the battlefield, desperate eyes and heightened senses at last tracking down his two swords, missing boot, and priceless helm.

  Fortunately, save for a few nicks marring his still sharp Carolingian blade and sticky strands on his dwarven helm, his equipment was mostly unharmed. He took a relieved breath, sensing no danger nearby, and promised himself he would keep his Hunter’s Sense active for the rest of the night, even if it did slow down his Mana recovery. He then made his way towards the keep just ahead, his two-handed blade held at the ready once more.

  16

  The night rang with the screams of the dying and John’s heightened senses were overwhelmed by the stench of ruptured corpses and Plague Queens both, the back of his throat thick with the coppery tang of blood. It was a torment that both enraged and sickened him.

  He trod softly upon cobblestones slick with blood as he made his way towards the keep proper, carefully eyeing the entranceway for traps or ambush points. John hissed when he caught sight of a man resting upon a spear, though a single blink revealed instead the remains of a guardsman that had been so brutally savaged that only his face, locked forever in an expression of horror, and a portion of his chest remained. The dead flesh had been propped up on a spike like a gruesome sentinel, warning away any who would dare intrude.

  He forced himself to go on, sickened by what he saw in the courtyard before the central keep.

  It was a charnel house.

  His eyes widened at the sight of a dozen decapitated heads put on casual display before the entrance. Some had been mutilated, others were in pristine condition save for the ragged stumps of their necks, and each and every face was a study in agony. The pain they had undergone… inconceivable, if the remains scattered about the courtyard were any indication. Limbs had been wrenched free of their sockets. Still steaming piles of entrails dotted the area as well.

  But of torsos, John saw not a trace. Perhaps Lilith had devoured them all.

  John shook with rage, charging for the keep entrance.

  The gate was raised, almost as if his enemies were expecting him.

  He could hear the final shrieks and wails of villagers dying inside.

  Clenching his blade in a hot grip, he forced himself to hold, to resist charging into madness just long enough to pluck free a handful of spike-laden burrs from one of the many thorny vines dotting the courtyard before proceeding inside, as stealthily as his mounting fury would allow.

  The entrance hall was a horrific display of futile struggle and darkest retaliation. He saw no trace of fallen revenant, only what were perhaps the remains of a desperate house guard, their bodies slammed against shattered furniture, finery, and tapestries so brutally that John saw numerous cracked bricks and tiles from where the guards’ bodies had struck. All that was left were savaged heaps of suppurating flesh atop piles of shattered kindling.

  Multiple fires had been set ablaze, though they did not spread far. The air reeked of burnt hair and the pork-like scent of sizzling human flesh.

  John struggled not to heave, and failed, the stained tiles soon flooded with a fresh stream of bile as he retched, a physical torment made all the worse by the psychological terror that he would be attacked in his one moment of unforgivable weakness.

  But no foes approached.

  Only desperate screams, echoing through the massive keep.

  Endless seconds later, John lurched to his feet, washing out his mouth with the water flask at his hip before forcing himself onward.

  His guts roiled in terror at the thought of encountering whatever horror nested in the heart of this keep.

  Yet his mind felt nothing but pristine fury, both hands on the hilt of his massive killing blade. The stinging bite of burrs nestled at the lip of his gloves served as odd comfort as he proceeded onward.

  Onward past ruined halls, decapitated corpses, heads hanging from chandeliers, and other signs of Lilith’s extreme displeasure.

  Insight Gained! Comparing Lilith to her sisters is like comparing the flu to death itself! Now you understand the real horrors you were designed to face. Looks like that mantis Doomclaw form might not have been such a bad way to go, after all! Too bad you failed your common sense check, or you would have fled this deathtrap long before approaching the spiraling stairs that you just know leads to the dungeon and whatever horrific wonders are waiting for you beyond!

  He stood before the winding staircase that would lead him into the bowels of the keep, his senses awash in desperate screams and infernal lights flickering from below, as if he was preparing to take his first steps into hell.

  For a single perilous moment, dread froze him where he stood. Worse than a child’s fear of slipping out of bed in the dead of night, bladder throbbing, just knowing some shadowy horror lurking under the bed would snap his feet if he dared to move a muscle.

  He was suddenly consumed by terror like nothing he had ever felt before.

  It would be so easy to leave this nightmarish tale of tragedy and death. To reject forevermore the bitter burden placed upon his soul by cold men who saw him only as a tool to be used and exploited, nothing more than a puppet whose strings they could pull at will.

  Flashes of Mason’s hard gaze, filled with such bitterness and determination, flickered past his mind's eye. Sophia, a tragic beauty who had somehow, miraculously found a path to redemption, only to have all hope torn from her in a horrific act of brutality. And Agneta, smiling in his mind's eye even now. A beautiful soldier; so strong, so fierce, yet her brilliant golden gaze had been filled with such tender warmth when she had finally acknowledged his regard, filled with a hope she had all but forgotten when her soft, warm lips had caressed his own.

  Before hope had been shredded by horror, in too much agony even to use the powers she had worked so hard to teach him, screaming her final moments away in Lilith’s deadly embrace.

  All of them dead, thanks to the monster below.

  John squeezed his trembling fists, feeling the memory of that thorny seed Mary’s grandfather had given him. Squeezed as his bitter fury burned all terror away. Squeezed until the throbbing pain encompassed not just his hands but his entire body. Until he was that pain, that hot, furious intensity of singular purpose and resolve.

  Time enough to roar at twisted fate and bitter loss later.

  Now he had a horror to kill. A creature whose hideous smile and eldritch powers he dreaded no longer, for fury had burned away all fear.

  He spun around, peering into the shadows an
d gloom before dropping several burrs back the way he had come, eldritch words sizzling past his lips. Each thorny seed instantly grew into thick foliage ten feet in diameter, covered with cruel thorns he knew would be eager to bite into the flesh of anyone who dared to follow. He frowned, whispering the words once more, giving a satisfied nod when the entire passageway was blocked.

  You have cast Bloodlink! 10 mana spent. 10 Health and 1 Light Wound suffered. Your Zweihander-sized Kreigsmesser looks glorious, covered in your own blood!

  You have cast Greenbinding twice. 20 mana spent. - The powers of the ancient forest begin to heed your call. All foliage within a ten-foot diameter will instantly entangle and bind your foes! Alternatively, you may select a specific plant or throw a seed, thorn, or cutting to encompass the area to be affected. Duration: Permanent. The plants will wrap around foes or grow to fill an area within moments, and will from then on act as a normal plant in all respects, potentially wilting and dying if no water or sunlight is available, though by this time, any captives would have long since broken free or be serving as nutrients for your plants! You may instantly recast this spell to shrivel your own creations to nothing, as you choose.

  Lilith had ambushed him once before. At least now, no foe would get the drop on him from behind. Pausing only long enough to collect a handful of fresh burrs from the thorny plants he had summoned and recover his mana, his self-inflicted injury regenerated within seconds. John hesitated no longer, quietly making his way down those awful stairs, covered in blood and gore.

  He and Lilith had an appointment with death, and he had every intention of keeping it.

  17

  “Please! Don’t do this! Marcus, Marcus, it’s me! Your wife! You have to stop, please! You have to stop!”

  Cold, twisted laughter filled the corridor John quickly traversed, gazing into a massive central chamber filled with steel cages and an odd conglomeration of vats and ancient laboratory equipment, the entire basement now looking like a horror show that would do any Frankensteinian mad scientist proud.

  How the horrific arachnid abomination with the head of a beautiful girl and a body out of Cthulian nightmare had managed to cobble together that awful laboratory, John neither knew nor cared. All he cared about were the dozen or so panicked survivors all gazing with horror from their cages as Marcus, who John had last seen being disemboweled, emerged from a vat of putrid liquid, his hairless body now covered in rubbery flesh, orbs of fire where his eyes had once been.

  His nose was little more than a slit, pale lips revealing teeth black and jagged when he smiled. Yet, somehow, despite the horrific transformation, John could tell it was Marcus Everwood all the same. And the look he sent his now terrified wife, freed of her cage and too frightened to move, was filled with all the malice of hell.

  "Ah yes," Lilith mocked, "poor Marcus who dared to interfere with matters that were none of his concern, dared to ward these very lands from my spores, my children, dared to hunt down my brood, now pays the ultimate price for his transgressions! How I delighted in the screams of his soul as I infused his being with the absolute blackness that is our core, tormenting his spirit until at last he was forced to submit! To yield to my mastery, to embrace damnation as I drank in his pain. And what sweeter punishment, what sweeter reward can I offer my slave, than to allow him to devour your own flesh, that of his pathetic wife who had dared to goad him along the path of his own destruction. I’m afraid, dear Elowin Everwood, that your former husband serves a new mistress, and serve me he will until the end of time!”

  Lilith wasn’t looking his way.

  Save versus horror – success! Maybe sheer stubbornness isn’t such a bad trait after all!

  John squeezed the hilt of his crimson blade, snarling against the horror he felt, treading forward on soft footsteps, approaching his nemesis.

  Lilith’s head snapped around, neck crackling oddly, the rest of her arachnoid body staying in place. Perfect lips widened into a smile, though her eyes blazed with madness. “Did you really think I wouldn’t sense you coming?” Her mocking grin turned to a glare of pristine fury. “Did you really not think I would sense the death of my sisters? But that’s all right, Johnny-boy, because you inspired me. Inspired me to make the perfect gift for you.”

  Hideous eldritch words echoed through the chamber.

  The pool of bubbling green slime began to seethe and froth, and somehow John knew his worst nightmare was about to come true.

  The terror he felt was beyond anything he could put into words as a head covered in golden curls and slime burst free of the vat of horrific liquid, Agneta’s milky-white eyes meeting his own.

  John’s ears rang with the discordant sound of his own screams.

  Step by trembling step, Agneta lurched free of her liquid prison. Her flesh, unlike Marcus Everwood’s, was utterly pristine, save for the crudely stitched abdomen and the deathly pallor to her skin.

  Lilith cackled as John stood there, transfixed by horror, not even moving as his worst nightmare came to life.

  Insight gained!

  Even through his terror, John understood he was acting the utter fool. Too frozen to move, too shocked to act, too horrified even to blink. So it was with desperate resolve that he focused upon building a fortress of obsidian in his mind's eye. A massive citadel no Psionic attack or scene of horror could hope to penetrate. A fortress the once living Agneta would have been proud of.

  It was sheer desperate delusion, yet the exercise of visualizing his mental barrier proved to be the distraction he needed, the intense focus had helping him to break through the horror that had utterly paralyzed him.

  Willpower vs Paralytic Fear… Success! Congratulations! You are now free of horror’s grip!

  Lilith twisted around, smiling at Elowin’s screams as Marcus approached her, though Lilith’s eyes were only for John. “Your heart races. I can taste it in the ether! Your mind is numb with unspeakable horror, the woman you would have claimed as your queen is now reforged as my creation, whose only purpose is to destroy you!”

  Low, guttural laughter washed over everyone in that charnel house of death and horror. “The terror you now feel is nothing compared to what torments await, Johnny-boy. It is fitting, I think, that the whore you would have claimed will be the one to lay you low!”

  Insight check made!

  Heart pounding in terror and regret, blade held limply to his side, John did nothing as Agneta approached. Her once beautiful hands now pulsated with shimmering darkness, and John’s gut shrieked desperate warning.

  Quick as thought, her vicious claws ripped through the air…

  Hunter’s Sense in full effect!

  And that was when John struck.

  A single seedpod thrown in the direction of a woman whose lips had caressed his own only hours ago, and his Zweihander jerked upward from rest as he stepped back, completely missing Agneta as he pivoted on his back foot, bringing his blade around in a fearsome sweeping arc, blasting through the former healer's skull in an explosion of brain and gore. A healer whose hands had glowed with that same liquid blackness as Agneta's hands before fading away as the horror that had once been Elowin's husband collapsed and shriveled with final death.

  You have struck Lesser Horror with Bloodlinked blade! Lesser Horror has expired! You have instantly recovered 30 Health! Two Medium Wounds are now Light Wounds! Experience earned!

  Lilith’s obsidian eyes widened. “How did you—”

  He wasted no time explaining how his Hunter’s Sense was synergizing with his growing Psi-Sense to the point where he could feel the locations of all the players on the board. His foe’s rotting scent had been almost a pressure upon his backside, every step Marcus made telegraphing exactly where he stood. Sneaking in for a backstab while another kept the enemy distracted was a strategy close to any gamer’s heart, and for all that horror had frozen him for long, terrible moments, John wouldn’t have survived this long if he had been a complete and utter fool.

  A howling John r
aced towards the now entangled revenant that had once been his Agneta before spinning around to charge Lilith herself, lashing out with a fearsome barrage of cleaving blows. His enhanced Strength and Quickness allowed him to strike at a blistering pace, blasting through one of Lilith’s scythe-tipped limbs in a spray of blood and gore.

  And John felt a fierce sense of elation at the look of horror in his enemy's eyes before they narrowed with a focused fury of her own.

  “You will pay for that, freak! I will kill you like I did all the others! You are so predictable John, always!”

  And when she met his gaze, he felt a fierce sense of exultation, sensing in a flash her tells, the way her arachnid legs pivoted a heartbeat before she feinted with a pincer to lash out with her foreleg before striking with strands of deadly webbing shot from her mouth. Her alien gaze widened when John dodged and weaved as fast as she could strike, somehow darting past her caustic, sticky strands before his blade cracked against her chitinous armor before being slammed off his feet by yet another strike.

  You have pierced your foe’s mind! Good thing her Indomitable Will is only Rank 1. Psi-Tactics in effect! Sense your foe’s strikes before they have a hope of touching you. Too bad she still has you so badly outclassed!

  And time seemed to stretch oddly as he frantically fought for his life, arcing around slashing limbs and cleaving pincers, dodging past trapping strands of webbing, sinking into the moment like he never had before. As if he and Lilith embraced the deadliest of dances, and the slightest misstep would spell his end.

  You have been hit for 60 damage and 1 Serious Wound! 20 Damage and 1 Light Wound blasts through Dwarven Armor & Durability! Finesse check failed! You have lost your balance!

  Yet for all that he did his utmost to embrace the moment, his focus utterly and completely upon his foe, seven intact limbs able to strike him at any time proved a terrible advantage John was hard pressed to counter. He desperately rolled as chitinous legs smashed the ground with tile-cracking force once he had fallen, his frenzied maneuvering and 17 quickness all that kept him going as his furious barrage turned to a frantic struggle just to survive.