by Dylan Doose
It was something solid, like a marble lodged behind his voice box.
For a moment, he choked on it, and then the hot thing squirmed higher, wormed up the back of his throat, then the back of his nasal cavity, and, with a sharp stab of pain, broke through the base of his left eye socket.
His eye opened, the one gouged empty by the Greater Upir’s dagger at Dentin, infected in the Emerald Witch’s layer, drained and burned in that small, nameless village he’d stumbled upon by nothing more than luck. The eye opened, and somehow it provided him with sight.
Theron looked back at Kendrick, who lifted both brows and said, “Give me the fucking bowl, wizard.”
“Alexander!” thundered Dammar. “Alexander Ward!”
Theron turned at the sound of his father’s name, leaving Ken to drink as ordered.
“Such a serendipitous series of events, certainly serendipitous. To see you here like this, Alexander,” Dammar said.
The Patriarch’s surviving force pressed up against the podium where Dammar stood in hopes of slaying the demon before they were overwhelmed by the pagans that poured in through the chapel’s doors. Instead, they were slain as the demon swung the swords he had gathered and stabbed with the spears that he held in his many limbs.
After a moment, he shook his antlered head. “Not Alexander…” Dammar said. “No…forgive me. It can be so easy for a god to lose track of…time.”
“You’re no god, Dammar,” Theron roared.
The demon laughed as he paced back and forth, then lunged again at the soldiers. He held two pilfered golden shields close, protecting his torso, and another two by his head. In his six remaining hands, he held spears and swords that slashed and stabbed with masterful speed and strength, and impossible endurance. Adding the advantage of the high ground, Dammar smashed open their line in moments as he descended the podium’s white stone steps.
Theron moved steadily forward, cutting down blood phantoms as he went.
“You are Alexander’s son, then? Diana’s son?” Dammar called out when the unit of spearmen broke entirely and disengaged. The captains cried in Romarian to fall back to the sun tower, to defend the Patriarch until death.
“You are Diana’s son!” Dammar exclaimed, and willed a large black orb into existence above his antlers. “You must be.” The focus of Dammar’s countless, glowing pink eyes shifted to Aldous. “And you…Father. I am surprised to see you are yet alive.”
“Father?” Theron yelled back at Aldous.
Aldous said nothing. Instead he sent his ravens of summoned flame that had been temporarily circling the ceiling diving at Dammar. The black orb above the demon spread and engulfed him before shrinking into thin air. The ravens impacted the floor where Dammar had just been, and the explosion smoldered the corpses of infantry that were at that moment forming into the demon’s grotesque minions.
Theron whirled around to face the wizard, and although he wanted to press him on the subject of why a creature such as Dammar would have just referred to him as father, there was no time for that conversation. It would have to wait. But it would take place.
Aldous began murmuring in a tongue Theron had only ever heard spoken once before. There was no mistaking it. An ancient tongue, a tongue spoken by druids and wizards in the north, in Ygdrasst and Blodjord. Therick’s druid, Stiggis, would chant in that language before summoning one of his mighty spells.
Theron had never heard her speak it, but his mother had claimed to know the twisted tongue as well.
Theron stepped forward, ready to charge the goat beasts and with his flaming claymore send them to the hell where they belonged. Aldous stopped him with an outstretched hand; he was sweating so profusely the ash, soot, and blood were nearly washed from him. A mouthful of magma spilled from the wizard’s face and burned through the stone floor. Then, just before the fiends were upon them, from Aldous’s mouth spewed a stronger stream of magma, a torrent of it, as if from a dragon and not the scrawny, frightened boy Theron had saved from torture and death in Norburg.
The charging herd was halted; they died twitching on the floor in the blood pool, frantically rolling to put the flames out. They had been human; just days ago they were slaves, or maybe farmers from pagan settlements, and now they were beasts, being cooked alive in the same church that burned so many of their kin on this very night, First Night before First Morning.
Had they chosen this, or had Dammar bespelled them against their will?
Kendrick cursed, groaned, and then cursed again, and Theron knew he was feeling the effects of the draught.
He’s survived. We may be getting out of this after all. Theron turned back to see how drinking the fluid had affected a man such as Kendrick the Cold.
But he saw not his friend.
Kendrick. Aldous. The ravens and blood phantoms and soldiers. Gone. In their place was a growing black hole, the radius of it emitting a purple glow, the center of it dissipating, for Theron could see through it to the other side.
No.
He was not gazing on the interior of the Basilica’s blood-soaked chapel, but instead at a something more horrendous still. It too was a built like a holy place, a cathedral, with windows of black glass, the walls lit with torches of purple fire, the pews formed of bone.
The floor shifted and moved. Only after an instant did he realize it was made of mouths.
Moaning human mouths.
Upon the walls and the pillars were tens of thousands of screaming faces.
So lost in the sudden occurrence was Theron that he did not react quickly enough when Dammar stretched out long-clawed, spindly hands from the edge of the portal, grabbed him by his blood-heavy cloak, and yanked him through to the other side.
* * *
“I have found him, master,” Nephite told the old man who was no longer a king, no longer anything but a cave dweller in a desert. His palace, his temples, destroyed by the pale swine, philistines, and fanatics who called his old gods, his wise gods, savage.
After they left, after the plague of black sorcery forced the crusaders and the Seekers back home to Brynth, a new monster rose to rape and pillage the flesh and souls of the people of Kehldesh. This great serpent rose from the sand, the deserts of their home, the dust of the temples and culture smashed by Brynth.
The new god, the silent god, Behet was his name, Ifret his prophet, came forth with scripture that decreed salvation could only be achieved through cleansing. To Ifret and his god, cleansing meant eradicating any remnants of the old ways, the ways that he claimed earned the people of Kehldesh their punishment from the Brynthians.
After they left, there was no victory, only a new enemy, harder to see and from closer to home. Yet now, when the old man heard Nephite say those words, words he had been waiting to hear for many years now—anxiously in these last few, for he was getting old and wanted to see things made right before he parted from this world—he felt hope. The man had been found, the one who could restore the balance, and so there was hope.
“Prepare the others. The Dahka will not come without a fight,” said the old man, and he shuddered as he thought of that demon from his past, the one named Kendrick the Cold.
* * *
Chapter Nineteen
From the Past
Ken opened his eyes . His heart beat like a war drum, his skin pulsed, and all he saw was red, white, and gold. Blood was in his mouth, dripping down the back of his throat. He ran his tongue along his teeth, his lips. All intact. The blood wasn’t his own.
Heat. Noise. The smell of death.
Where am I? Kehldesh?
The regiment must have broken through. We must be in Kahlibar.
Red. White. Gold. The palace.
I must get the prince. I must take his head.
“Forward!” Ken roared at the light infantry fleeing the temple down the eastern corridor, while the heavy infantry were forced back by the heathen horde. “Forward, you rats! To them and their blades, or to me and mine, you fucking cowards. Vermin!�
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A throng of civilians all around him. Royal scum, entitled filth, the same ilk that spat on me as a boy in the streets of Brynth. The same scum who told me that a lowborn bastard orphan would never be an officer, never be able to marry a whore, never mind a baker’s daughter.
Yet here I am.
Kendrick the Cold swung his axe. The man before him was dead before he hit the ground, and the blood haze in Ken’s eyes grew thicker. Somewhere in the distance, a voice cried out what sounded like Ken’s name.
He did not turn. Instead, he found his way to another form and swung his axe. And he kept doing just that. Half blinded, entranced by death, riding its flow, living its balance. He kept screaming, “Forward. To the prince. Bring me his head!”
He turned to see one of the Brynthian soldiers hiding behind a pillar and a mound of the dead. Ken grabbed the craven maggot by the arm, squeezing his biceps into mush, and tore him to his feet. “Rise and fight, coward. Face the heathen or face me!” he shouted as he shook the thin soldier.
He was young.
Why the fuck are they always so young?
The boy’s face was familiar, but he couldn’t place it, and he didn’t have time to ponder. This siege had been going on for months, the most expensive effort in the entire campaign. They had finally broken through, and Ken and his men were the first through the breach. They had to see their work done right. All depended on them. After this conflict was settled, Brynth would have the entire east—Kehldesh, the dynasties, the steppe—or nothing at all.
“If you fear death, then kill your way free of its clutches. Raise your sword and fight the heathen, fight the devil!”
“Kendrick!” Again someone called his name, closer now.
The boy in his grasp began to squirm like a rat being pulled apart by two ravenous hounds; his face was twisted with agony as he screamed.
Blood ran in between the fingers of Ken’s left hand. He had crushed the boy’s arm entirely.
He had done so with the grip of his iron fist.
He released the boy’s arm and stared at his hand.
Not a gauntlet. An iron hand. And it was moving as though it were formed of flesh, blood, and bone.
Ken turned his gaze back to the deserter, and with great horror he recognized the face, for it was his own. Fourteen years old, when he first set out on the crusade. A meat pole auxiliary destined to be thrown at walls and hurried up ladders into sharp spears, sharp swords, and the sharpest hatred until he was dead.
But he wasn’t dead. He was still here, wherever here was.
He had a feeling he wasn’t in Kehldesh.
“Kendrick, you mad fucking dog. Don’t leave me now too!”
Aldous.
He blinked. The younger, innocent version of himself that he had clutched revealed itself to be the headless body of a nobleman, and not one of Kehldesh.
Ken took in his surroundings once again. Everything flooded back: Dammar, the Patriarch, their holy war that the hunters were set to settle once and for all.
Ken stepped back from the corpse.
Theron. Aldous.
Only Aldous stood before him now, staring with wide-eyed wariness at Ken.
“What did I just drink?” Kendrick asked.
He raised his left hand before his eyes once again. Aldous’s gaze followed his.
He flexed and bent the living iron fingers. Impossible, but then to say anything is impossible now, after everything, would make me a bloody dolt.
“Where’s Ward?” he asked.
“The demon, Dammar—he took Theron and went through a portal—”
Ken cursed.
“—just before you recovered from drinking…the blood,” Aldous said after hesitating a moment.
Aldous was a shitty liar at his best and calmest. He was neither now. Ken didn’t think he was lying about the portal, which meant he was lying about the contents of the bowl. At this point, Ken didn’t really care.
“He was alive when you last saw him?” Ken asked, and an image of the hunter as Ken had last seen him flashed in his head. His scarred socket had held a glowing dark purple eye. Whatever they had drunk, it had made them whole again. Better than whole. Ken closed his iron fist tight.
“Yes,” Aldous confirmed.
“Then we must have faith in him that he will achieve his task, as we will achieve ours.” Ken looked around for weapons; he was holding a crude logging axe that he must have taken from a pagan corpse during his hallucination. It would not do.
Chayse’s sword, the one Theron had thrust into the pile of corpses, remained smoldering with Aldous’s enchanted fire. Ken walked to the blade, and he envisioned Chayse then, the way she fought at the windmill against the Upir and the ghouls, the way she cut down scores of Rata Plaga and took off the heads of those two Seekers at Dentin.
Be quick, Kendrick, she whispered as Ken wrapped his hand around the smooth hilt, cool to the touch. The magic embers danced away from Ken’s hand. He looked at Aldous, who from his belt drew Chayse’s second sword. The wizard held the staff and the sword together, his lips moving, then he slid the sword with a delicate touch from point to hilt across the catalyst. The blade ignited.
“Onward, then. We have a tyrant to find,” Aldous said, and together they turned to face the doors at the base of the corridor that led to the sun tower. The remainder of the Patriarch’s force congregated there, battered by the herd of goat people and other bestial mutants.
The massive doors they guarded rattled against their backs, pushed from within the base of the tower. Then the doors flew open into the chapel with such force that the group of soldiers pressed to them were hurled to the floor. Through the doors, into the fight, entered the Patriarch and the surviving Golden Sons of the Golden Sun.
At his arrival, the Patriarch’s retreating force turned back around, and, rallying with cries of fanatical rage, they faced the pagan horde.
“Aldous, there’s our tyrant,” Ken said with a cold smile.
Theron slashed at Dammar’s hands. Too late. His defensive strike had little force behind it, and the demon released Theron’s cloak and, like a giant stag-headed insect on his ten long arms and two cloven-hoofed feet, scurried away into the dark.
Theron did not follow, not yet, for that was likely exactly what the demon wanted him to do. Instead, he studied his surroundings. It was too dark to see much, save the row upon row of living dead pillars built of screaming human faces that faded into the darkest reaches of the demonic lair.
How had he come to be in yet another foul magical lair? What type of madman was he to have allowed himself to be drawn yet again to a place as horrible as the Emerald Witch’s cave?
He did not know if he was even still in Romaria.
The monster’s black tail whipped around the edge of a cursed pillar before he disappeared from sight entirely.
“Why did you bring me here?” Theron called. “Do you not wish to kill the Patriarch? Was that not your ambition this night?”
“My ambition was to be reborn,” Dammar asked from the darkness. “Between your progeny and mine, those shaped by us, by our thoughts and will, the Patriarch will die.”
Theron guessed his progeny was Aldous. He was hesitant to ponder what creature Dammar had spawned, for he sensed the demon spoke of one in particular and not the mass of pagans his magic had transformed.
“Why have you come to this country, son of Diana?” Dammar’s voice echoed through the vast emptiness of the cathedral. The moaning mouths on the floor and screaming faces on the walls and pillars went silent.
Aha! Still in Romaria, then. That’s something, at least.
Theron held his claymore at the ready. Aldous’s magic was yet to wear off, and so the sword served as both his killing tool and his light as he followed the purple-flamed torches in the direction the demon had fled. No, not fled. The direction the demon was leading him.
“I came to this country because the Emerald Witch, the sorceress who turned half my country into
rats…she was from here, from Romaria. In her cave, after I smashed her brains out, I found a book. The Book of Dammar, it was called—”
Laughter came at him from all directions. The ground below Theron’s feet rumbled, and he looked down to see the mouths forming the floor laughing.
“You killed your enemy, had your revenge for your country.” The mouths laughed harder. “Was Elyra also the one who took your eye?” asked the disembodied voice of Dammar from the countless faces on the walls and pillars. “No matter. I gave it back to you. You drank as I said you would. I am not your enemy, Theron Ward. We are together now, you and I. Do you not see?”
Theron could ask the demon a hundred questions, for Dammar seemed in a conversational mood. How do you know my mother? My father? Why did the Emerald Witch have your tome of dark spells and philosophies?
His mother was not here. His father was not here. The Emerald Witch was dead.
And Theron asked the question about the one who mattered. “What sick jest did you make by calling Aldous father? Do you refer to the fact that he was once a monk’s acolyte?” Theron dreaded the answer, but it was an answer he needed.
“No jest, son of Diana, no jest. Would you prefer the long or short of it? The story of my conception?” Dammar asked, the last three words distorted by the echo of his thundering laugh. “It was quite the trick, quite the spell! Years in the making, a blink for me, but…well, it was…something. My spell would have worked with a mere human, but to add a wizard to the cauldron… I had not expected your friend…I had not expected you. Strange… this will be two times now that your family has aided me in a moment of need…”
The answer curdled in Theron’s gut for he had little doubt as to what role Aldous had played, but he did not let that show. Instead, he said in a bored tone, “I don’t have time for the long of it. I must be done with you and return to my comrades.”
