Hard Reign

by John Hook

  I started to dash towards the creature. It did notice me, and spun. Then something very odd happened. A purple form dropped out of the trees and landed on its shoulder directly behind the blade-like antler. The one thing the creature’s body had not been designed to do was to let it throw its head back so, in fact, it had no easy way to dislodge whatever had landed on its back. I realized, as talons from the fingers dug in, anchoring it to the creature’s skin, that it was a purple demon.

  The creature bellowed and bucked, slamming its head into the earth in an attempt to dislodge the attacker. It drew out its head, showering dirt and rock in all directions. It shook its head side to side, almost looking like it could snap its own neck from the sheer force with which it threw its head with the massive antler from side to side. None of it seemed to affect its passenger. The demon raised its own head and opened its mouth, revealing the single row of fanged teeth I had observed before, including the fangs that turned inward slightly. He thrust his head forward and then down, drawing his head back at the same time. I knew that must be how the demon used the inward-facing fangs.

  The moose-like creature bellowed and started to run and then its feet just seemed to stop working. They collapsed and the creature crashed to the ground and ceased moving. We walked over carefully as the purple demon dismounted. His golden eyes shone and he grimaced, which was never a good look for demons.

  “I told you. I bite.” Amusement played in his intelligent eyes.

  It was Azar.

  “Azar,” he said in our heads.

  He made a mocking bowing gesture. We had stopped in front of him. Judging from before, I was pretty sure he could dart away if he needed to. Nonetheless, Izzy kept an arrow trained on him.

  “What did you do to that thing?”

  Azar pointed to the inward-turned fangs.

  “We carry a toxin in our teeth. It does nothing to us, but acts to paralyze any other creature that we have encountered. Part of why the other demons don’t like us.” Azar grinned.

  “I assume that would work on any of us as well.”

  “Your glamours are biological, so yes.”

  “A nerve agent.” Izzy commented like he was thinking out loud.

  Azar turned to him.

  “I can show you how to milk some so you can use it on your arrows.”

  Izzy looked at me, probably trying to see if I heard it.

  “Why would you do that? I don’t want to seem ungrateful, but why did you save us?”

  “Seemed like a good idea at the time. I didn’t think you were going to save yourselves.”

  “You’ve been spying on us?”

  “Good thing too, I think.”

  “Why are you watching us?”

  Azar studied me a while and didn’t say anything. I waited.

  “I am interested because you are not like many of the others. I want to see what you can do.”

  “What is your interest in all this?”

  “Let us just say, I’m interested in helping you, but I’m not yet sure I can trust you.”

  I turned to Saripha.

  “Is not answering questions a zoning requirement in this place?”

  “Most people here haven’t until you came along.”

  “Haven’t what?”

  “Asked questions.”

  “You’re saying they are so bad at it because they are out of practice?”

  Izzy giggled.

  I turned back to Azar. I looked over at the still unmoving moosenator.

  “Okay, you helped us. Thank you.”

  “I would suggest you not stay here long. He will recover. Perhaps I can help here too.”

  “How is that?”

  “You are seeking to go to Antanaria.”

  “How did you… never mind.”

  “Dangerous place, but I know the way.”

  “You’ll guide us?”

  “Part way. Close enough. You will know how to go by then.”

  “But you won’t take us all the way?”

  “Dangerous city.”

  “Aren’t they all?”

  “Come!” Azar headed down off the mountain in a different direction than we had come.

  I took one last look at the beast on the ground and saw its nostrils flaring from its breathing and followed Azar. The others followed me.

  Following Azar was a bit of a trick as he was definitely keeping his distance. When moving through the terrain seemed obvious, he would disappear up in the trees. Kyo tried a couple of times to keep up with him and failed. Later, when there was more ambiguity in our track he would show up at a distance, seemingly from nowhere, and beckon us to follow him.

  We wound our way through the mountains and lake regions in a general southwesterly direction, if the sun in the sky meant the same thing as it does on Earth. We made many circuitous changes in direction, but I had the feeling that we kept passing through points that ultimately formed a straight line.

  I noticed that when we saw Azar, he did the same thing I did. He watched the sky, checking every so often. Sometimes he would stop and scan 360 degrees with his eyes and snarl. At first I thought he was scanning the trees for predators, but I became convinced his eyes were aiming higher and he tended to actually favor tree cover. I was doing it because that’s how Shades on their flying platforms liked to sneak up on you.

  The journey took more than one cycle of light and dark. When it got dark we would find shelter in the rocks or under some trees that seemed to be away from paths any large critters might take. Even though our bodies were glamours, a twisted ankle from stumbling around in the dark was no fun.

  Azar never stayed close enough that I felt like I could engage in conversation, and he largely used hand signals to urge us on rather than projecting his “voice” into our heads. The rest of us didn’t talk a lot either. We weren’t sure what to say. We were headed into the unknown. We didn’t know what we were up against.

  At one point as we headed through a wide valley that looked like it would finally open up on the desert, Azar disappeared. I thought nothing of it. He had vanished so many times on the trip, it was routine. Then it struck me as odd. If we were headed for the desert that was where we would really need him.

  A shadow passed over me and my entire body tensed. Something grabbed me and I was suspended in midair pasted to a large spider web woven of glistening white metal. Fiery pricks of pain attacked my back.

  “Knightshade!”

  He loomed above me astride his two platforms. I had no idea what his expression was since he had the head of a spider.

  “I’m not really suspended on a massive spider web hung over the valley, am I?”

  “No.” The white metallic web disappeared but I still hung in the air. “However, it increases the effectiveness of the illusion if I haul you up with a tiny, almost invisible wire that is stitched through the skin on your back.”

  I looked. I couldn’t see the wire that held me until it caught the glint of the sun for a moment and I could see it had been wrapped around the branch above me.

  “Is your head an illusion too?”

  A spider head can’t talk either so, as always, his speech was in my head.

  “Oh no, my head is a work of art. A supreme glamour created by me.”

  Suddenly I dropped. I looked up and Kyo saluted me from the branch I was suspended from, her short sword drawn. I stood up. My back was still on fire with a very fine metal thread stitched through it. Saripha came over and carefully pulled it out.

  “Where is Rox?”

  “I have no idea, but I see Gerod has recruited you to make his appeal to the Magister.”

  “You here to stop me?”

  “And deprive you of the pleasures of Antanaria? Oh no. I merely came to let you know I am watching. That you all will fail. And when you have failed I will be waiting for you. I will make sure you see all your friends die in terror before you pass on. No one will return as a proto. There is a place beyond this place that is black and more ter
rible than you can imagine. This place here... this will all be mine.”

  He then floated into the air and disappeared. Apparently beings with spider heads can’t go muhahahahahaa because it was the only thing missing from the act.

  “Where do they get these guys?”

  “You think he’s bluffing?” Izzy asked.

  “I don’t think any Shade has the ability to do anything that someone else hasn’t given them permission for. They are like the bullying middle management supervisor who thinks he has his boss’s ear. I’m tired of talking to the hired help.”

  “Antanaria?”

  “The Magister.”

  “Then he’ll listen to you.”

  “He’s a giant. Probably doesn’t have to.”

  “But you have a plan.” Izzy smiled.

  “Yeah. Piss him off.”

  10.

  I stood at the edge of the great expanse of white sand, like an ocean spreading away from a rocky shore. I remembered when I first landed in this world I was in such a desert. I had had no idea where to go or how to find my way out. However, I had found the hazy shape of mountains in the distance and that gave me something to head for. Here there was nothing except more sand, rising and falling in great swells and dips. Hot air blew through, picking up sand and spiraling it around. I had no idea how to figure out where we needed to go.

  “You’re a smart boy. You’ll figure it out.” A voice spoke in my head. It was Azar. “You were all full of bravado moments ago. Hang on to that. You’ll need it in Antanaria, the city of pleasure. Be careful of the price.”

  I looked around, scanning the rocks and the trees that rose up on higher ground behind them. I didn’t see Azar anywhere. Nor had I expected to. I looked at Saripha and Izzy.

  “We heard it too,” Izzy said, anticipating my question.

  “How did you find Rockvale when you first arrived?” Saripha asked with a half-smile.

  It took me a moment to catch on, but when I did, I said “Ahhh!” “Ah ha!” or “Eureka!” seemed over the top.

  We walked in a straight line from where we had emerged at the base of the mountains as far as we could go and still reasonably see the mountains in the distance. A couple of the peaks had distinctive shapes and so I particularly made sure I could always see them to assure myself we were walking in a straight line and not going in circles. Finally, when I thought that we had gone as far as we could without danger of the haze of distance losing our landmarks, we sat down to wait.

  “It’s like a day at the beach.” Izzy looked around.

  “Except there’s no water.”

  “I noticed that.”

  “Much better that way. No wet sand sticking to you.”

  “So, this is the plan?”

  “We wait.”

  “What are we waiting for?”

  “Illumination, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “Is he crazy?” Anika had leaned close to Izzy’s ear to whisper, but I heard it anyway. Izzy looked over at me, smiling, knowing I had heard. He laughed.

  “Probably. But you’ll see.”

  Shortly after dark our waiting was over. I had realized in a moment what Saripha’s question had meant. I found my way out of the desert by sighting on the mountains. I found Rockvale at night because, in a place as empty as Hell was over vast expanses, any place where there was a town of any size that lit their streets with lava, light bloomed in the sky. Antanaria was rumored to be a very large city somewhere in the desert. The desert was vast, but assuming that Azar had brought us near the right area, with darkness we should be able to find it. And if not, in the morning we would have the distant mountains to tell us how to get back. However the bloom of light in the desert darkness was bright, if still somewhat distant.

  I’m terrible at estimating time in this world without clocks. I don’t even know if we have twenty-four-hour days. However, I would guess it took us close to four hours walking at a pretty steady pace to reach a rocky rim that overlooked the city, set down in the bottom of a basin. It was an oasis, apparently, as there was a river of dark water running through the middle of it. At least, I assumed it was water. From up on the high rim, it appeared black and glossy, almost smooth, a mirror reflecting the lights of the shiny city. Then the wind would swoop down and the mirrored images would break up into wavy ripples.

  The city was like no other place I had seen here. Along both shores of the rivers was a crowded, brightly lit main thoroughfare with tiny matchbox buildings crushed in together. I guessed they were shops as there was a large crowd of people of all shapes and sizes milling along, almost like a river themselves, sometimes pushing and shoving, going in and out of the small buildings. We were too far away to see anything very clearly, but I didn’t see anything other than humans.

  Spreading out in both directions from the river were tightly packed buildings like you would see surrounding an industrialized city in a third-world country, where hastily assembled dwellings were thrown together to accommodate a large influx of migrants coming for work. It was hard to make out details in the dark from our distance, especially since the streets away from the riverfront were dark. Nothing in this chaotic sprawl of the closest part of the city was very tall, maybe two to three stories, if that’s what two or three little boxes crushed one on top the other indicated. Two was predominant with a more occasional three.

  In the distance was a wall and behind that were several towers that dominated the sky, maybe as tall as five stories. It was hard to see what they were made of, but they reminded me of some of the rounded towers in Ohnipoor, so I assumed they were of the same polished stone. Most of them rose up to form minaret-like closed flower shapes at the top. In the middle, however, rose one slightly taller, squared-off tower. At the top was what appeared to be a large statue of a man with a ram’s head seated in a great, wide throne. Horns formed great spirals on either side of its head as it stared, unmoving, out over the city below.

  “Anyone?” I asked.

  “Looks like we found Antanaria.” Izzy spoke first.

  “I’m picking up a mixture of pleasure and anxiety. Somewhere, though, I sense pain and almost bottomless fear. It is very faint.” Saripha kept her eyes closed even as she spoke, still trying to sense things.

  “Like the tower we found before?”

  “What about that statue? That the Magister?” Anika pointed to the figure on the throne.

  “My guess would be yes,” Kyo noted. “And if he’s a giant that could be life size.”

  “Looks like a ram’s head from here. This Satan?” I asked.

  “Possibly a prototype of what we think of as Satan,” Saripha said. “In my religion, it would be the horned god.”

  “So I have to convince Goat Face to give me an audience.”

  Izzy nodded. “And I’m guessing from the fact that those towers are behind a wall that getting an invite is not easy.”

  “Nothing in this place is.”

  We got up and walked the circumference of the rim until we found a break that yielded to a sandy path that wound its way down to the desert floor. As we headed towards the entrance to the city, I saw Anika shift from female with flowing red hair to her—his?—male form with short, uneven red hair. It wasn’t so much a morph as suddenly everything became blurry, the shape changed and then he sharpened back into focus. He saw me watching him and he smiled.

  “I usually prefer the male form for walking into unknown places. This place is pretty sexist.”

  “Do you remember which you were before you died?”

  His eyes darkened at bit. “I think I have always been both, but I don’t remember much about my life before here. Except that I think this world is better for me than my actual life was. More options.”

  “I guess you get tired of rubes like me asking which one is real.”

  He smiled. “It’s okay. If you haven’t been multigender, it is hard to wrap your head around it. At least you aren’t afraid of what you don’t understan
d.”

  “Good thing, given how much I don’t understand.” I grinned.

  “If it helps you, I sometimes call myself Niko when I’m in this form.”

  “Actually, that’s more confusing. I think I’ll keep calling you Anika unless you object.”

  “Cool. It’s what I prefer.”

  As we approached the gate, Saripha drew the hood of her cloak over. The entrance to the city was a large archway, carved out of the same sort of stone as the rim we had come out on. There was nothing intricate in the carving. Mostly, it just gave the stones rounded edges and some simple geometric shapes on the faces.

  Three Shirks lounged under the archway. Shirks were humans, all male so far as I had ever seen, who willingly served, well, whoever was in power. I had seen them in the service of both demons and Shades. They dressed entirely in black and maintained a street gang, thuggish appearance. They were typical of humans who were allowed to lord over other humans but had no real power themselves. They were slaves despite their apparent station. It made them cruel and stupid.

  They were sitting in uncomfortable wooden chairs with a crudely woven basket that two of them used to rest their boots on. When they saw us approaching, they rose. The black shirts they wore were sleeveless and they let their muscles flex a bit, being used to intimidating people.

  “You must be the welcome wagon.” I grinned.

  They didn’t react but eyed us carefully. “You wish to enter Antanaria?”

  “I was actually hoping for an audience with your boss.”

  “Boss?”

  I pointed to the statue on the roof, which must have been visible from everywhere. “The Magister.”

  One of the Shirks snorted.

  The Shirk who was in the lead shrugged. “I don’t know about that. Are you entering the city or not?”

  “What is this city? Why the welcoming committee?”

  “This is a city of pleasure.”

  “Sorry, you already tried that scam with Haven.” Izzy rolled his eyes.

  “Hey, there’s a sucker born every minute.” I looked at the Shirk.

  “Gambling, prostitution, secret fantasies. We have it all here.”