Of The Dark and The Deep_The Cryptid Council Series Book 1

by Rink Wester

  He would do anything to find her and make sure she was OK. Even if he had to wade through a bog of useless tongue popping, hip twerking, lip smacking, foul mouthed and fishy best friends to get to her.

  When you’re grasping, insult and spit both look like straws

  48

  Xiao Yu turned from deep blue green to malty red as he summoned every drop of cryptid göd hellfyre and enchantment he could channel. He battled the two Swiss Pörø Wizards with a ferocity he had not employed against humans in millennia. Human mågÿck was never a match for a göd of the Øgdöåd. Or so he had believed as all five of them materialized, battle armor smoking and grinding as they barreled through warring Pörø wizards. He and his Bödhisåttvå grandchildren had invaded the Pörø sanctuary and attacked them in their seat of power. He had decided in the final hour to join them on this mission to oversee its success. He had come to bring the gunfight to the knife. He had come for the Grand Dutchess.

  Grynn and the snarling almost naked Brüücê Phillip Väntös, the Zulu Pygmy Warlock of Ëgbë, stood their ground, mågÿcks swarming the dragons now violating their sanctum. White loincloth barely covering his secret bit of bobble, Brüücê Phillip conjured a monster of dream metal and ice to battle back the two Bödhisåttvås trying their best to corner him. Adapt building from the surrounding composites of aluminum and steel, he techno-mågÿckally formed an entire murder of whirring clicking metallic ice crows and sicced them like hulking robotic black vultures of mågÿck and metal mayhem. His Playboy bone necklace snapping taut against his neck, he wielded mågÿcks that humiliated most wizards of the Pörø. No one knew why such a deadly sorcerer refused to wear clothes nor why he wore a Playboy bunny attached to a guinea fowl bone at all times dangling from his beard. Rumors seeped of some secret annual Hugh Hefner Playboy Mansion Fæ orgy of occultic sacrifice and shuffled sexual debauchery. No one knew anything for certain but nothing about the enigmatic Pygmy master had ever made much discernible sense. He was Grynn’s second in command, and all Pörø wizards deferred to his 472 year old wisdom in absentiae. He rarely spoke. Words were power and they were his. He owned them and doled them out sparingly and only to the worthy.

  Brüücê Phillip cast himself into the deep end of that lake of ëgbë sorcery and took dragon and Øgdöåd göd to task. He was a Mech-Wizard. A Technopath. He prided himself on being the last true griot in this urban time of witchcraft and technology. Wielding tools from that synthetic nebulae, melding ëgbë mågÿck to machine, he attacked and drove back the interlopers. Seducing the ancient mågÿcks of that ëgbë lake of power, he knew just how to build the pebble and how far to aim its skip; how often to let the rock hit the surface and how many ripples to reclaim. Dragons. Hmph. Yeah right.

  He smashed a fist of shaman witchcraft into the snout of yet another dragon and snatched out its fang. The dragons were being pummeled from all sides but remained crystal clear in their resolve. They had come for Grynn. She was their target and they would not falter. Unfortunately, they hadn’t bargained on Pygmy mågÿck and screeching metal birds blocking their path.

  In that confusion of steel and dragonkynd, Grynn rose to confront Xiao Yu as dragon göd and Grand Dutchess squared off. Their powers stretched full length in an atavistic milky white display of dominance as the elements in the air shook and contracted. She battled the pale trickster göd with her entire being, drawing out mågÿcks siphoned core-deep from the very shard of Sihiosia itself. A thin, transparent film rose quickly from the ground in front of her. It expanded slowly as it floated upwards, its mystical boundaries hissing and jumping in spurts, ignoring the battle raging around it. Grynn, in subliminal response, summoned a cyclone of swirling protection mågÿck to halt its menace but her cast winds clutched and gnawed at nothing as that growing enchantment, impervious slave to its own purpose, continued its advance. Suddenly, that liquid stream of spell power rushed toward her, enveloping her before she even had time to take a step backward or send out a psychic call for help. A vermillion blue green mist filled her lungs, as Grynn coughed, scratching at her throat in choked panic and the dragon lord smiled in award. Xiao Yu laughed. “You will know my power human and we shall have yours.”

  Grynn’s eyes grew heavy as she fought to keep her attention zeroed on the dragon lord, now in human form, walking toward her. Dimly, she heard Brüücê Phillip calling her name. She put her hands forward, touching the now solid bubble of mågÿck ambushing her. Her eyes darted around that damaged sanctum, searching for anything she might use against Xiao Yu. Her power pulsed as she focused on the floor boards before him. The boards burst, showering bits of wood in all directions. The hard-packed ground beneath the floor crumbled quickly, rock and sand forming chains binding and choking the dragon lord as he thrashed and flailed. Xiao Yu’s concentration now broken, his spell fell apart and Grynn collapsed as that prison of blue smoke and poison mågÿck cracked and burst.

  Through that cleft, Grynn fell and lay on the ground gasping for breath. From somewhere behind her she heard the voice of her oldest friend and second in command of the Pörø armies walking up and murmuring, threatening Xiao Yu, his face contorted in rich unmistakeable fury. She turned her head, catching sight of a metallic behemoth of cool ëgbë sorcery and slowly turning gears. The hulking form of a charging, bellowing white rabbit, its steel red bow tie melded to its forehead, bounded past her, crashing head and tooth first into a wide eyed shocked Xiao Yu. pinning him to the floor.

  Brüücê Phillip cast another pebble of ëgbë elemental power, raising a wall of fire and petrified wood separating them from the dragon lord as he grabbed Grynn’s hand pulling her to her feet. Xiao Yu, smashing Brüücê Phillip’s bunny to fading bits of metal and hex, transformed as he and Kuan Yin lunged at them, wall crumbling to soil and nought, claws extended in delirious need.

  Nice try assholes. Brüücê Phillip laughed as he waved his hand and he and Grynn disappeared leaving the dragons to howl and wretch.

  *****************************************************

  The Łöå watched both Pörø and dragon secretly from the shadows and waited.

  The Invisible Eye saw all.

  49

  Chÿnåriön, son of Målèkith, grandson of the great elf mage Åênäriön, walked the high ashen halls of The Łöå and smirked. He was now High Viscount of the Bôkör realm of Ëvèr, its dark elven lord, and ruled the legions of The Łöå in fear and brutality. He loved chasing the chaos of the göds and twisting the mind mågÿck of human witch and wizard.

  The Dark Elves, their cryptid race cursed and warped in life by the venomous Beast göd Ôlörûn, punishment for stealing a göd-leaf from the great tree of Ife-Ile, in death became the voodoo Bôkör of The Łöå. It was the fate of all Dark Elves to die and serve the vodou horde.

  The Dark Elves, called in life The Drüchii or Dark Ones, had neither mercy nor honor. As Bôkörs of The Łöå they had exceedingly less. Chÿnåriön peered back through the barrier that glued their world to all others and saw in clear portent the fretful desire of the göds. Like chess pieces of pawn and rook majesty he saw their game play across the universe and dined on their carnage. He swallowed whole the frantic lust of the Bödhisåttvå göddess-whore and the hateful adventure of slaughter dreamt by that whining, menial antlered göd. He saw it all.

  When word of the Dark Mother’s prophecy had pierced the Gâtes of Ëvèr by the preening mågÿcks of that silly dragon witch and her brother, Chÿnåriön knew the time had come for The Łöå to return a sea of favors. It was a broad stoke of deliciously dark luck and Chÿnåriön never left bad luck untasted.

  The Drüchii had lived thousands of years revered and worshipped in Germanic myth and folklore. They devoured every culture in the pink of health and conquered whole cryptid tribes and pantheons. Great raiding fleets, their sails black against the night sky, brought woe and destruction to all the shores of the world, bearing terror and death to distant realms and across all cryptid lands, often for no better reason than be
cause there was no-one, save the Øgdöåd göds themselves, who could stand against them. With every year that passed, the power of Mênègröth, their Germanic kingdom of a thousand caves of sorcery and grey haven, ascended to greater heights, built upon the backs of Demi-göd slaves and fueled by a constant stream of mågÿckal plunder from far-off lands. As the other elder cryptid races faded, the Dark Elves thrived, knowing that their hour had at last come. Stormclouds gathered across the High Elf realms, and the malevolent laughter of the Elf Witch King, Chÿnåriön, echoed upon the wind, as he led the assault on Ife-Ile. The Black Ark Oracle had whispered in dreams that if they consumed one leaf from the elder tree at the heart of Ife-Ile they would grow into a power to rival the Øgdöåd. But they were betrayed. He was betrayed. And the wrath of the Sky Father was swift and all-consuming.

  With a burst of energy that shook the mountains and cracked the ground, the Vœrtëx of Ëvèr sprang into life. A whirling, screaming tempest of mågÿck engulfed Chÿnåriön, slaying thousands and tearing down tow'ers and castles. Trapped within the eye of the Vœrtëx stood Chÿnåriön and his Elf captains, now transformed for all time in violent penalty, realm-frozen forever in a battle against the one force they sought to contain. They were now the Bôkör, or Dark Shades, of The Łöå. The Invisible Eye. Ethereal wraiths neither in the here or the there but cursed to roam the dream worlds and smoky conjurings of the living. But their time had once again come.

  Thoughts returning to the present, Chÿnåriön looked down at what defeat at the hands of the Sky Father had wrought. At one time, his beauty unrivaled among elves and men, his body was now covered head to toe in branch and twisted ash tree quills of the great tree of Ife-Ile. In fitting punishment and spite, Ôlörûn had forced him to live in the skin of his sin. Ôlörûn had created the realm of Ëvèr, trapped him and The Łöå there, and closed the Vœrtëx. The straight and silica sands of Ëvér’s shores stretched wide and away and kept the bothering horror of The Łöå boundlessly contained.

  If faith was feminine then surely in balanced match, hatred and vengeance were masculine and Chÿnåriön was as masculine as they came. With the help of the gröötslâng Queen and the rebirth of the first Mother and Father The Łöå would shatter the blood rings of Mênègröth holding in place The Vœrtëx. They would help vanquish the Sky Father, break the curse of Ife-Ile and bring about Dark Elven rule on Earth once again. A curse for a curse.

  Until that day finally dawns when the Isles of all Øgdöåd mågÿck were finally theirs to corrupt and command, the Bôkör of The Łöå would continue their shadow quest as they always had.

  Chÿnåriön smirked as one more ring tumbled and the world of the living beckoned.

  Death is as fitting a way as any for new punishments and old lives to begin.

  50

  Khæ’dîm Çåril, one of the last living Nisse of the dwindling tribes of Mênègröth elves kissed the göd Åpsät Õsòòsi deeply and with an urgency bordering mania. That kiss was a geography of who they were and held every calorie his sweet tooth craved. Thousands of years after the Vœrtëx had nearly decimated all of Elfdom, he was member to the last tribe of pixies and elves on the planet. They were the cautionary tale. The cryptid joke.

  Walking around naked, wings extended and drying in the arid afternoon sun, Åpsät had motioned with a finger for Khæ’dîm to join him in bed. He had licked his lips with barely concealed lust devouring every step he took as Khæ’dîm rose and obeyed. The muscle memory of the love they shared through a thousand lifetimes recalled for Khæ’dîm every inch of Åpsät’s beauty and still looking at his feathered consort stretched out in stunning display stiffened his lower gödhood and quickened his pace. His fingers parted corn rows of Åpsät’s woolly hair and that kiss released a primal urge to possess and proclaim this was his man and no other. Every grid on the map of Khæ’dîm’s body, its symbols long ago set in the legend, was his to naviGâte and what sweet explorations Åpsät had planned. Making love to his elven beloved was an act of total immersion. A compilation of extended moments taking the finest bits of sweaty male warmth, the dick rich hedonism of X meeting Y and the familiar pleasure of physical sexual clemency combining it all at the end. More than an erection finding a home, it was a collision of leg, thigh, seed and penetration. Explorative. Nourishing. Ridiculous in its wholeness. His brothers never understood how he could bemean himself to love the lowest of cryptid filth. The craven ilk of elves was beneath disgust to them. He was Øgdöåd. Born of Hiklorim’s honor. And yet they berated him for matters his heart would never apologize to. Never.

  Their circus. Their monkeys. Fuck them.

  It terrified Åpsät and Khæ’dîm how deeply they loved one another. How deeply that love bordered base need and addiction. In an unending, mail ordered sea of resentments, Khæ’dîm was the one solitary thing the DNA of Åpsät’s hates refused to sketch. Åpsät had been his husband göd for over 12 thousand years. Wedded on the frigid shores of Mênègröth on the Isle of Nårgöthrônd, his body and heart were the only to ever warm his hearth and his bed. Khæ’dîm knew where every pore met every follicle of Åpsät’s life and would fight to protect him with his dying breath. His elven mågÿcks would gladly dim and break and he would freely diminish and shrink down to shade and Łöå to bring breath to one more day of Åpsät’s long life. Against all save the Øgdöåd.

  Khæ’dîm had over the constant march of time come to hate the fickle temper of the Øgdöåd. He despised them. He hated how they abused Åpsät. Åpsät was the love of his life and it chafed his heart raw the complicity of debasement he suffered at their hands. His brothers treated him as invisible fodder and his sister was one drunken nightmare that had broken him over the years. In art imitating rolling gore, she was a miracle of scorn and vile capricious amusements.

  LaMonica Misako, Kitsune fox göddess and Åpsät’s centuries long assassin and errand girl rattled the bedroom door knob moments before bursting in unrepentant and unannounced. Momo-kun, her pet and fox familiar sauntered in behind her, skulking in that intelligent deadliness all foxes possessed. Her crimson Kitsune fox ether flowed from her in an alarm of hex circles and protective runes as Momo-kun’s eyes blazed in a red haze of readying war at his mistress’ side.

  Come quick Apsie. Your bedroom is so heavily warded and frankly swimming in so much damn man on man sexual energy you all couldn’t hear the commotion outside. We have a...visitor. You can finish doing whatever you were using those fruit bundles and that baseball mit to do later. Dark versions of tame things, no doubt. I don’t judge. That’s why göds invented Canada.

  Åpsät and Khæ’dîm mågÿckally dressed as they flew to see just who or what had so riled his normally docile fox göddess.

  There floating in the middle of the room, Ëvèrien doom mågÿcks unable to pierce the sorcery of Øgdöåd göd and living nisse glåmöûr protecting Åpsät and Khæ’dîm‘s, bedchamber, was the murky, wood pricked frame of the Bôkör Lord himself, Chÿnåriön.

  He floated barely visible in this realm, a darker, greyed out far more insubstantial and subtle version of himself. He pointed and bowed in Åpsät’s direction as his elonGâted ashen finger rested on Khæ’dîm.

  Find the Ëhiån göddess and the halves that are whole. Raise up the Peryton to break the hammer of his Øgdöåd brothers and bring him to the Vœrtëx of Ëvèr. Take up the mantle for all Drüchii, young one! For all of Mênègröth to come! Do this for the göd you love. Do this for me. Smite the Sky Father and let The Hodmyoi, the göds of the Ûñdër that never slumber, claim him.

  With his message delivered, Chÿnåriön vanished and Åpsät turned and walked back to their bedchamber, zapping himself into nakedness and picking up that baseball mit with a mischievous smile.

  Khæ’dîm stared into space as Chÿnåriön’s words burrowed deep and gravied the meaty portion of göd husband and Elven revenge in his mind. For him and for you, he frowned and bowed, choking back the pain and longing of the last word as he rose and turned the c
oil on his watch.

  For him and for you.

  Father.

  51

  The air was wet and smelled in alternating layers of reek and the rotting end of organic things. Dragon dung occifying in steamy mounds of brown mucus stripped the gloom of all pretense and dressed that cavern in the perfect bookends of macabre and stunning worry.

  Vickie focused all her mågÿcks on the chains biting into her wrists and ankles and on the augmented witch’s bridle fastened around her head, it’s two inch curb plate projected into her mouth depressing her tongue to silemce all verbal spells or hex mågÿck. Nothing happened as she yanked and attacked her restraints in frustration. That muzzle and it’s framework were inscribed with letters and runic claptrap that moved across the skin of its enchanted surface and kept Vickie’s thoughts scattered and incoherent.

  P'u-hsein watched her and devoted himself to his own brand of jungle law. The weak were prey and the strong lived strong. He called forth his dragon form and instead of merging into one allowed it to stand and stalk this new quarry with him. Human and divine reptile both roasting and tasting her flesh in their minds.

  Vickie stirred as Victor’s voice skittered across her unconscious mind sweeping back the mist, confusing that dyslexic subjugation of their shared gödhood.