The Imperium Chronicles Collection, 2nd Edition - Stories

by W. H. Mitchell

“I felt Sisa crying out,” Silandra replied. “Her thoughts were of something horrible, grotesque...”

  Sir Golan stopped, both he and Squire looking back.

  “Ladies?” the knight inquired.

  “I think we should hurry,” Mel said.

  “Without question,” Sir Golan replied, “but we’ve lost the trail in this swamp...”

  The forest, and the solid ground from which it grew, had turned to doughy mosses and muddy ponds filled with intractable reeds. The webbed footprints ended at the water’s edge.

  Silandra focused her mind, her brows furrowed as she stared into the deepening twilight. She pointed.

  “That way,” she said.

  The knight started off again with Mel and Silandra following, but Squire remained where he stood.

  “What is it?” Sir Golan asked, stopping.

  “Terribly sorry,” the robot replied. “I appear to be stuck.”

  Mel took a look. The robot was in the process of sinking, the mud coming up to his shins and rising.

  “This is quite embarrassing,” Squire said.

  Mel shook her head at him. “The ground’s too soft.”

  “We need to hurry,” Silandra said.

  “Well, we can’t just leave him like this!” Mel replied.

  “Go on without me,” Squire pleaded. “I’m sure I’ll be perfectly fine here... alone in the dark.”

  Sheathing his sword, the knight picked up a fallen branch and wedged it into the muck around the robot’s leg.

  “While I press down,” he said, addressing Mel and Silandra, “you two push until we break the suction of the mud.”

  The two women glanced at each other and then, together, began pushing on Squire as the knight laid his weight on the log. After a few attempts, the wet ground made an unappetizing sound and the robot came free.

  On his back, Squire was emphatically appreciative.

  “Thank you so much!” he said. “I was sure this would be my grave, neck deep in a bog.”

  “Forget it,” Sir Golan said.

  “As you wish. Deleting data file...”

  In the mind of the Katak chief, Sisa saw a face, although it was more skull than alive. The skin hung loosely off the bone and the eyes, suspended in the otherwise empty sockets, blazed fiery orange. With no lips, his teeth were bare, grinning a horrific smile. What skin remained was wrapped tightly like paper dried over centuries.

  She heard her screams before realizing she was the one screaming. The chief poked her with his staff and she stopped.

  The chief spoke to his tribe and the Kataks squawked in apparent approval. Sisa wasn’t sure what he said, but she thought it was something like tribute or maybe gift. Or was it sacrifice? She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

  The frogling leader who had dragged Sisa halfway from her home to the Katak village became agitated. He grunted and pointed his spear at the girl and then back the way they had come. Sisa got the feeling he wasn’t happy with whatever arrangement had been made. Perhaps the cost of the warriors that died was too high a price to pay, but the chief was having nothing of it. With his staff, he gestured at Sisa and pointed in the other direction, deeper into the swamp. Eventually, the warrior relented, pulling on her bindings again. Along with two other Katak, he led Sisa away.

  They walked down another trail away from the village. The natural light gone, one of the froglings lit a torch. Hemmed in by darkness and vegetation, Sisa couldn’t see much beyond the bobbing light. She became aware of shapes looming on either side of the trail. Most were about three feet tall but with smooth curves, making them unnatural in a jungle of jagged edges. They also leaned at odd angles as if a disturbance had pushed them up out of the ground. It was only until the frogling with the torch came closer to one that Sisa saw them for what they were. Like stone ghosts, they were gravestones that had sunk into the marshy ground. They were everywhere. An immense cemetery, countless ages old, that time had flooded and forgotten.

  Behind her, coming from the village, an explosion pierced the darkness.

  Silandra said the Katak were normally peaceful, but Squire was finding that hard to believe as spears came flying out of the darkness. Up ahead, the bonfires of a village were visible.

  “Should I use the displacement field?” Squire asked Mel.

  “No!” she said. “It’s too weak. Use your energy shield...”

  “My what now?”

  “The thing in your arm!”

  Surprised, like finding he had an extra elbow, Squire noticed a button on his left arm. He pushed it and a field of translucent energy, three feet tall and two feet wide, materialized. He lifted the shield, deflecting a spear harmlessly into the underbrush.

  “Get behind me,” he said and both Mel and Silandra took cover at his back. Meanwhile, Sir Golan remained at the front, diverting incoming spears with his sword.

  Mel reached into her satchel and removed a spherical object, slightly larger than her tiny hand.

  “What’s that?” Silandra asked.

  “A stun grenade,” she replied. “It creates a blast, but shouldn’t hurt anyone.”

  Mel chucked the grenade toward the village. A moment later, one of the bonfires exploded in a shower of burning logs. Several froglings fled in a panic, their bodies covered in flames.

  “Oops...” Mel said, her eyes widening.

  “Let’s go!” Sir Golan shouted, rushing forward.

  By the time Squire and the others had reached the knight, Sir Golan had dispatched the defenders and had their chief on the ground, the tip of Rippana at his throat.

  “Don’t kill him!” Silandra cried, gripping the knight’s shoulder.

  Sisa’s mother knelt beside the elder Katak. The chief murmured a low croak, his eyes glazed by age. Silandra remained still, focusing on the frogling.

  “What’s she doing?” Squire asked Mel.

  “Talking with him,” she replied.

  “Telepathy?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Can you upgrade me with that?” Squire wondered.

  “I don’t think robots can use psionics,” Mel said.

  “It would be nice to know what people were thinking.”

  “Maybe...”

  Silandra stood, but the old chief was no longer breathing, his eyes still open but lifeless.

  “What did he say?” Sir Golan asked.

  “There’s an ancient cemetery farther to the West,” Silandra replied. “They’ve taken Sisa there.”

  “Did he say why they kidnapped her in the first place?” Mel asked.

  “I’m not sure,” the Sylvan went on. “Some kind of offering...”

  “To whom?” Mel asked.

  “He said a strange, decaying man came to the village one day promising everlasting life if the chief gave him a sacrifice. The chief was old and dying, so he agreed.”

  “A lot of good that did him,” Mel said, giving the dead chief a light kick.

  “Please, let’s hurry,” Silandra urged. “I sense her fear.”

  “Onward!” Sir Golan shouted.

  With the warrior in front, Sisa in the middle, and the two other froglings in the back, the group followed a meandering path through the cemetery. Sisa, pulled along by the Katak warrior, kept a telepathic link with him so she could understand what he was thinking.

  “Keep moving,” he said in her thoughts.

  “What is this place?” she asked.

  “The garden of the dead,” he replied.

  After a few minutes, they reached a crypt of white marble, tilted slightly, with a pair of torches burning on either side of the entrance. From the interior, multiple creatures appeared through the doorway. Each was humanoid, hunched over, and at times using their hands to steady themselves as they moved. Their skin, where not covered by filthy rags, looked diseased and partially rotted.

  “Ghuls,” the warrior said.

  “What do they want?” Sisa replied.

  “You.”

  Sisa shrank away
but the warrior yanked her back.

  “No!” she said aloud.

  In the distance, in the direction of the village, her mother’s voice cut through the night.

  “Sisa!”

  The girl struggled against the Katak warrior, but the other two froglings pushed her from behind.

  “No!” Sisa screamed.

  The ghuls, three in all, met them just outside the crypt. The warrior chirped something from deep in his throat, handing the girl to the nearest of the creatures.

  Sisa screamed again and, in the distance, her mother’s voice began shouting her name. The girl could see a light approaching, but still far off. She kicked at the ghul, but he was surprisingly strong. He dragged her toward the crypt entrance.

  “Sisa!” shouted Silandra’s voice.

  “Help! Help me!”

  Past the threshold, the stench inside the tomb filled Sisa’s nostrils. She made another lunge toward the entrance, but the ghul gripped her arm tightly as the other two tugged at the heavy metal door.

  Seeing the warrior still outside, Sisa thrust her thoughts into his.

  “Don’t do this!” she yelled.

  “It’s already done,” he replied.

  She heard her mother still calling her name as the door shut. Then there was only silence and the entombing dark.

  When the stranger first arrived at the Katak village, one of the younger froglings went to the chief’s hut and told him the news. Lying in a cot covered with moss and sedges to comfort his tired bones, the chief struggled out of bed, standing with the help of his wooden staff.

  “There’s some people here,” the young Katak croaked.

  “Alright,” the old frogling said. “I’ll be there in a moment.”

  When the chief emerged, most of the villagers had assembled around the main bonfire still smoldering from the night before. On the far side, the stranger waited. He was taller than the Katak or even the Sylvan. He wore brown vestments and carried a tall staff of curved wood, topped with a skull. His skin was gray and chalky like bleached bones, and his eyes blazed like fires from otherwise empty sockets.

  The stranger was not alone. Accompanying him were creatures the chief learned later were called ghuls. Like their master, they were somewhere between alive and dead, with rotting skin hanging off their bodies in various stages of decay.

  As the chief approached, the stranger reached into his mind.

  “Greetings,” the stranger said telepathically.

  “Who are you?” the chief thought.

  “I am Ghazul of the Necronea.”

  “Necronea?”

  “My people live below the ancient cemetery west of here,” Ghazul said.

  “What do you want?”

  The chief could feel the stranger’s eyes staring through him, examining every fiber of his being.

  “You’ve served your village a long time,” Ghazul said, “but now you see the end is coming and you’re afraid.”

  “All things die,” the chief replied.

  “But do they have to?”

  “Of course! What are you suggesting?”

  “Life everlasting,” the stranger said. “I’m offering you and your people life without end, and in return, I ask only that you provide us with what we need.”

  “Which is what?”

  His mouth, without lips, turned up at the corners, baring his teeth in a gruesome smile.

  “Sacrifice.”

  When Sir Golan and the rest of the group arrived at the crypt, the three froglings outside were heading back toward the village. Unlike the rest of the Katak, these warriors showed no interest in fighting.

  “Tell them their chief is dead,” the knight said, turning to Silandra.

  Silandra focused on the Katak, singling out the apparent leader.

  “He says ‘good’,” she replied after a pause. “He says their chief made a deal with the man who lives below the graves. He says they were promised endless life but given only death.”

  “What about Sisa?” Mel asked.

  “She’s inside the crypt,” Silandra replied.

  Sir Golan approached the marble building, giving the door a firm shove.

  “It appears to be locked from the inside,” he said, tapping the metal with the tip of his sword. “The door is thick, too. I doubt even Rippana could do more than scratch it.”

  Mel reached into her satchel, removing a tool shaped like a small wand.

  “What’s that?” the knight asked.

  “A plasma torch,” Mel said.

  “How novel...”

  Mel stared at him, her eyebrow raised.

  “It’s... really not.”

  “Fair enough,” Sir Golan replied, sheathing his sword and crossing his arms.

  Sizing up the door, Mel set the torch against it, a brilliant blue light erupting from the tip, and began cutting a long, narrow swath across the metal surface. In less than a minute, a slab fell inward with a loud, echoing crash.

  Sir Golan stepped inside first, calling in the rest soon after. The crypt was a single room with a limestone sarcophagus filling most of it. Figures were carved along the sides of the coffin and lid, but the knight did not recognize the creatures depicted.

  “What are they?” he asked.

  “I have no idea,” Silandra replied.

  “They’re running from that fellow there,” Squire remarked, pointed at a biped figure with tentacles coming from its face.

  “It’s the same person portrayed on top,” Sir Golan said, motioning to the lid.

  Sculpted in relief, the humanoid lay facing the ceiling, his arms crossed. A pair of angry eyes glared from beneath heavy, curled brows at the center of a domed head. Instead of a mouth, four tentacles protruded from his lower jaw. Each feeler coiled around itself, reaching out as if to touch Sir Golan and the others.

  “This species is not recorded in my database,” Squire said.

  “Who cares?” Mel shouted, throwing her arms in the air. “Hasn’t anyone noticed there’s no other exits in this room? Where did Sisa go?”

  Sir Golan, realizing she was right, took another look at the coffin lid.

  “Help me with this, Squire,” he said.

  The Cruxian and the robot pushed against the top of the sarcophagus. At first, the lid remained stubbornly motionless, but after a few more attempts, the limestone gave way, sliding a few feet to the side.

  Sir Golan peered over the side.

  “It’s empty,” he said.

  “How can that be?” Mel asked.

  “Except for a staircase,” the knight went on.

  Mel clenched both fists and shook them.

  “Gah!”

  “You’re very excitable,” the knight observed.

  When Silandra reached the bottom of the staircase, the others had fanned out into a circular chamber lined with blazing torches. Thick roots twisted along the walls and hung from the ceiling. The air smelled dank and rotten.

  “There’s tunnels going in every direction,” Mel said, shining a flashlight from her bag down one of the passages.

  “The floor is covered in tracks,” Sir Golan noted. “Difficult to tell which ones are fresh.”

  “Can you sense your daughter?” Squire asked.

  In her mind, Silandra focused her thoughts on Sisa like squinting at a fuzzy object in the distance.

  “I think...” she began, “I think she’s in that direction.”

  Silandra nodded toward a tunnel no different than the rest.

  His sword drawn, Sir Golan cautiously plodded inside with Mel behind him providing light. Silandra followed and Squire, with his energy shield active, protected the rear. The path was serpentine and narrow, everyone except Mel having to crouch at times to avoid hitting their heads.

  Scraping the top of his helmet against the tunnel roof, Sir Golan sent a scattering of loose dirt into Mel’s face.

  “Watch what you’re doing!” she protested.

  “Please forgive me,” the knight replied
ceremoniously.

  “Why do you talk like that anyway?” she asked.

  “Like what?”

  “Never mind...”

  Sir Golan stopped.

  “What is it?” Mel asked.

  “If you wouldn’t mind,” he said, “shine your light over there.”

  The beam of the flashlight landed on an object protruding from the ceiling at an angle. The knight tapped his sword against the it, producing a wooden sound.

  “I believe it’s a coffin,” Sir Golan said.

  Silandra came closer and noticed the end of the coffin was torn open, the edges splintered.

  “It’s empty,” she said.

  As they continued, they came across more caskets poking from the dirt, each one broken and empty. A few were scratched along the sides as if by a pair of claws. Silandra became aware of another pattern.

  “The tunnel keeps changing direction every time it hits a coffin,” she said.

  “Oh, lord,” Mel said. “They’re using the tunnel to access the bodies. I bet all the tunnels are used for that. There must be hundreds of graves in that cemetery.”

  “To what end?” Squire asked.

  “Hell if I know!” Mel replied.

  Squire emerged from the narrow tunnel into a spacious chamber, the others having come out before him. The walls of the domed room were red clay with rocks jutting from between tree roots. Entrances to several more tunnels were visible in the dim light and the roar of flowing water was coming from the far side.

  “Sisa’s footprints are going that way,” Sir Golan said, motioning toward the thundering noise.

  Mel trained her flashlight in that direction, the beam catching watery mist floating through the air.

  “She’s close,” Silandra said anxiously.

  “Come on!” Sir Golan shouted, starting to run.

  Following his master, Squire and the others quickly caught up with the knight at a wooden bridge on the edge of a cliff. An underground river cascaded below, disappearing into the dark. The other end of the bridge was lost in the gloom.

  “Looks kinda rickety,” Mel remarked, scanning the planks with her light.

  From somewhere up ahead, a girl’s voice cried out, echoing off the rocks.

  “Let me go!”

  “Sisa!” Silandra shouted.

  “Mom?”

  Silandra sprinted down the bridge with Sir Golan close behind. Mel looked at Squire for a moment before running after them. The robot, having no one else to look around at, shrugged and followed, his heavy feet clomping against the soft, soggy wood. When he caught up, his master was slashing the arm off a humanoid creature with sickly skin and glazed eyes. Silandra and Sisa, illuminated by Mel’s flashlight, were sharing an embrace. With a stroke of Rippana, Sir Golan sent the creature’s head flying into the water rushing below. The rest of its corpse collapsed against the railing.