The Eye of the Chained God
( The Abyssal Plague - 3 )
Don Bassingthwaite
Don Bassingthwaite
The Eye of the Chained God
PROLOGUE
The first time Vestapalk, as a young dragon, had flown high, he’d felt like the world belonged to him. Not in the sense of boundless opportunity, the way lesser races seemed to mean it, but in a way that woke something in his dragon heart. The world belonged to him. From horizon to horizon, everything below was his to possess, nurture, or destroy as he saw fit. And the higher he flew, the more the distant horizons expanded and the more his territory presented itself.
Oh, he had been a naive wyrmling. His quest for power in the years since had nearly killed him more than once. But he was still flying and his territory was still growing. Soon the world would truly belong to him.
In distant Nera, a human woman fled from him down a dark alley. She did not realize he only drove her into a trap. Vestapalk shifted his focus so that the woman ran toward him, lurking near the alley’s end.
Outside the gates of a shadowed dwarf town, he gripped a struggling guard with four wiry legs and chewed on his shoulder with sharp teeth. The dwarf screamed. Other guards appeared. Vestapalk leaped from his original prey straight into the midst of the would-be rescuers. He bit a second and raked claws of red crystal across the face of a third. None of them would die, not as such. They had his saliva and fragments of his claws in their wounds, though. They were infected.
In a hut in a lush, wet forest, he stared in horror at the spindly, gnarled horror his arm had become. Four fingers had fused into two thick digits. The pus had drained from his red sores to reveal lumps of crystal that couldn’t be scratched away-when he tried, his skin just tore to show more crystal and something hard and black like living stone beneath. He could feel more sores all over his body bursting whenever he moved. There was something in his mind, too. Some presence, watching him. Watching through him.
“More than watching,” Vestapalk said through those distant lips, and the man in the hut screamed at the words that were not his own. No one responded to his cry. The village was empty, its other inhabitants fled.
Find them, Vestapalk said directly into the mind of his new minion. But do not kill them-not all of them at least. Bite them. Cut them. Open wounds. Make them as you are.
“Yes,” said the creature in the hut. It rose on thick legs, the last rags of its humanity sloughing off with every step.
On a ship three days from the nearest port, Vestapalk listened as sailors who had nowhere to flee to whispered of murder and mutiny. The captain was sick with the plague. Maybe not just any plague-there had been rumors in the last port of a sickness that transformed sufferers into monsters. Demons. They were calling it the Abyssal Plague. If they wanted to reach their next port, the mutineers said, they had to act now. Throw the captain overboard. Aye, and anyone who showed signs of sickness. Vestapalk smiled to himself. It was too late for that. Shadows clung to him as he drifted into the circle of mutineers, touching each sailor with light, darting taps. Eyes went wide and color drained from faces. Vestapalk didn’t know what visions of fear filled their minds, but it didn’t matter. The demon that had been their captain flexed its taloned fingers and lashed out at the would-be mutineers.
When the vessel arrived at its destination, it would be a plague ship. Vestapalk’s horde would continue to grow.
From a marsh where lizardfolk fled from a horde of crystal spiders with humanoid eyes, to a forest village where elves battled creatures formed of living flame around crystalline crimson hearts, to an ancient city whose inhabitants hid while juggernauts big as houses stalked the streets-Vestapalk roamed the world that would soon be his in both name and substance. Just a thought was enough to extend his awareness to any of the multitude of demons his plague had birthed. His horde shared the touch of the alien Voidharrow that had transformed him from a mere dragon to something far, far greater. They were of the Voidharrow. He was the Voidharrow. Where they were, he was. And he was everywhere.
Except the one place from which he had so far been thrown back.
The scope of his perception collapsed with that thought. Vestapalk tumbled back into his own body.
The noise of the Plaguedeep returned to him first. The chittering, shrieking, and roaring of hundreds of plague demons gathered at the heart of his power, all traces of the beings they had been gone. The soft, seething hiss of the Voidharrow as it ate into the bones of the world-less of a sound and more of a sensation at the edge of his awareness. The irregular boom and crackle of the unbound elements upon which the Voidharrow had already done its work. Vestapalk let the sounds wash over him for a moment, then he opened his eyes.
Not so long ago, the Plaguedeep had been the crater of an active volcano, where tubes of magma stretched like arteries deep into the world. But the Voidharrow transformed more than just living flesh, and Vestapalk had spewed vast quantities of it into the roiling molten rock. Until the crater had become a great shaft, where boulders and columns of stone floated like air, lightning oozed like mud, and wind howled in gales so furious they were thick as waves of water.
At the very bottom of the Plaguedeep, the Voidharrow collected in a pool of liquid crimson crystal shot through with ribbons of silver and flecks of gold. Vestapalk rode the surface of the pool, embraced and supported by it. Sluggish ripples spread across the surface, deceptive in their motion-they didn’t radiate out from Vestapalk, but instead stirred slowly toward him. The Voidharrow knew its master.
So did the plague demons. As if they could sense the anger and frustration within him, they grew quiet. Where they lurked in niches and tunnels, along ledges, and clinging to the softened rock of the shaft walls, they went still. The incessant fighting, the constant struggling to establish position in an ever-shifting hierarchy stopped. Eyes of a hundred varieties set in heads of all shapes and sizes turned to Vestapalk. For a moment, he saw himself as they saw him: still draconic in form but lean, all hide and muscle, his flesh contracted around his bones. Scales that had once been brilliant green carried a tinge of red. Red showed too in the spurs of crystal that had erupted around his joints and in the translucent spikes that rose along his spine.
When he flexed, Voidharrow flashed between his scales like embers in a fire. It was within him, dripping like venom from his jaws and filling his eyes. It consumed him. It sustained him. When dry scales sloughed from his hide, it welled up to form glittering new scales in their place, as the old scales squirmed with brief pseudo-life on the shifting surface of the pool.
The plague demons looked at him with hunger and desire. And fear. When he snarled at them, they flinched as one and dropped their gazes in submission. Or rather, most of them dropped their gazes. On the far side of the pool, a bulky figure stood tall. It met Vestapalk’s gaze, then stepped out from among the plague demons clustered around it.
Most of the demons were bone thin, as if their flesh had been fuel for the transformation wrought by the Abyssal Plague. A few were muscular and solid. Churr Ashin was bigger even than them. Plates of crystal armor spanned his shoulders, running down his arms and along his spine. His movements were ponderous. Each slow jump as he made his way along the rough, crystal-studded rocks that formed a kind of stepping stone pathway out into the pool threatened to dump him into the Voidharrow. A few demons watched him, hope for a spill naked and malicious on their faces.
Churr disappointed them. The massive creature was one of Vestapalk’s exarchs, anointed with the Voidharrow by Vestapalk’s own tongue. He had the strength and power to crush any lesser demon’s skull in one meaty fist. He’d done it more than once.
Vestapalk regarded him through narrowed eyes. “Yes,” he said after a long moment. His own voice had changed along with his body. He could hear two voices in every word he spoke. One belonged to the dragon he had been. The other, sharp and crystalline, belonged to the Voidharrow. “Fallcrest.”
It was not so much that he had been denied by the town, that his plague demons had been killed, that the town had resisted the plague. Other towns had resisted-for a time. Demons had been killed. Fallcrest was different. It was personal. The folk of the town had done very little. It had been the same small band that had countered him time and time again. He knew their names. Albanon. Uldane. Shara. Tempest. Roghar. Quarhaun. Kri. And he knew they were in Fallcrest, lending their swords and spells-and their improbable luck-to the town.
They’d tried to kill him, although they’d succeeded only in uniting him with the Voidharrow. They’d killed Raid, the first of his exarchs, and two of them had even resisted his attempts to make them into exarchs as well. But most recently, they’d killed Nu Alin, the ancient bodystealer who had been herald to Vestapalk and Voidharrow alike, as he led an attack on Fallcrest. Vestapalk had sensed his destruction as a human might have experienced the sudden loss of a finger.
Had Churr sensed it as well?
He shifted in the Voidharrow, reversing the course of the slow ripples across the pool. “Why?” he asked.
A look of concentration crossed Churr’s small-eyed face, as if he was trying to remember what he had planned to say next. Few of Vestapalk’s demons had much intelligence. The transformation seemed to burn it away, leaving most with only a feral cunning. Churr had the size and strength of a juggernaut, but the muscles might have filled his head for all the wit he showed. “Send me,” he said at last. He thumped his chest hard. “Crush!”
“You think you could crush Fallcrest?” said Vestapalk. The Plaguedeep remained silent as the other plague demons watched the exarch confront his master.
“Nu Alin failed,” the big demon said.
“You wouldn’t?”
Churr straightened, squeezing a massive fist tight. “Kill who killed him.” He pumped his fist in the air. “Kill who killed Nu Alin!”
His voice rose in an echo through the Plaguedeep. The watching demons responded, a few at first, then more, hooting and howling their enthusiasm. But not all of them were caught up in the madness. Vestapalk looked around at those who remained silent. Once again, they turned away from his gaze. Vestapalk drew back his neck so that he glared down at Churr.
“No,” he growled.
“No?” Churr demanded. He pounded his chest with both fists. “Small things kill Nu Alin. Churr Ashin crush small things.”
So that was how it was, Vestapalk realized. In the never-ending struggle for primacy among the plague demons, slow-witted Churr had come to believe that only by killing those who had killed Nu Alin could he assert his own power. For a moment, he was tempted to loose the huge demon on Fallcrest just to see what Albanon and his band would do.
But it was possible Churr Ashin might actually kill them. The continued existence of those who dared think of themselves as his enemies nipped at him like a mite burrowing under his scales. Against the great wave of the Abyssal Plague sweeping over the world, their resistance meant nothing. Vestapalk was still dragon enough, however, that hate gathered, rolling and stinging, in his belly. When the time came to destroy his enemies, he would do it himself.
He lowered his head until he glared into Churr’s eyes. “No.”
Churr stumbled back, hopping from one stepping stone back to the next-then he stopped himself and met his master’s gaze for a second time. “Vestapalk says no,” he said, loud enough to make his words echo, “because Vestapalk is afraid.”
A hiss and a stir swept around the watching plague demons. Vestapalk sensed their unease and their eagerness through the Voidharrow. In a hierarchy of raw power, no one was immune to being challenged. Denied the chance to advance himself by killing Nu Alin’s killers, Churr Ashin was prepared to take on the only other demon that outranked him.
And in the instant it took Vestapalk to recognize that, he realized something else: Churr was more cunning than he’d believed. One of Churr’s thick hands had reached behind his back and jerked out something wedged under the crystal plates there.
In the ruddy light of the Plaguedeep, a golden skull gleamed between his fingers.
Vestapalk didn’t bother to glance to the corner of the shaft where the gold skulls that had once been the treasure of the Temple of Yellow Skulls sat heaped like so much trash. There was no doubt that Churr had stolen one of them, probably while Vestapalk’s mind had roamed across the world. Nor was there any doubt what he intended. Each gold skull contained the essence of a powerful demon of the Abyss, and was a source of great energy. Vestapalk had drawn on them to empower the transformation of his exarchs and again to create the Plaguedeep itself.
Churr Ashin raised the skull swiftly to his mouth and drew a deep breath, sucking at the power within.
Except nothing happened. Vestapalk gave Churr a moment to realize his ploy had failed.
Then he lunged.
Even without the power of the golden skull, Churr’s size, strength, and crystal armor made him dangerous. Vestapalk struck in a rush. His snapping jaws closed on Churr’s free arm and bit it off at the elbow. His shoulder slammed into Churr’s chest, knocking him back. Vast wings, glittering red with crystal and droplets of the Voidharrow, swept out and beat down, giving Vestapalk enough momentum to bowl his rebellious exarch onto his back.
The golden skull flew from Churr’s hand, bounced off one of the stepping stones with a clang, arched over the Voidharrow pool, and landed spinning on solid ground. Plague demons nearby scattered as if the thing were poison.
Churr tried to fight back. He punched with his remaining hand, a blow that might have put a hole in a stone wall. Vestapalk twisted and the punch slid past him. A foreleg raked down and severed the muscles of Churr’s shoulder and chest. His powerful arm flopped back uselessly. He tried to kick, but Vestapalk bent his lean body double-as if his bones had become as fluid as the Voidharrow-and gripped Churr’s legs with his hind feet. The weight of Vestapalk’s entire body resting on top of him brought a gasp even from the massive demon.
Vestapalk turned his head to spit out Churr’s arm. “You are cunning,” he said, looking back to his struggling captive, “but not cunning enough. It takes strength greater than yours to draw on the skulls. Their power responds only to greater power. Vestapalk’s power.”
Churr glared at him, rage blinding him to pain. “You are afraid.”
Vestapalk roared into Churr’s face, his talons clenching the demon’s flesh. “This one fears nothing! Those who killed Nu Alin are of no concern. They will be overrun. They will be a part of the Voidharrow as everything will be a part of the Voidharrow!”
Shrieking howls filled the Plaguedeep, the plague demons mimicking his fury as it spread through the connection between them. Even the pool of the Voidharrow grew agitated. He snapped his teeth in Churr’s face. “This world belongs to Vestapalk now,” he snarled, “and Vestapalk is the Voidharrow.”
His tongue emerged from his mouth, wet and glossy. It darted across Churr’s face, leaving behind a smear of Voidharrow. Vestapalk smiled. “As are you.”
He opened his mouth and, just as Churr had over the golden skull, drew breath.
The demon convulsed as a glittering red mist emerged from between his lips and streamed up to Vestapalk’s muzzle. A thin scream went with it. The convulsions lasted only moments, then Churr fell back, his eyes dull and glazed. The scream faded away to nothing.
Vestapalk didn’t stop inhaling, however. If he were a mortal creature, his lungs would have burst. But he was far from mortality. The wisp of mist became thicker as the substance of Churr’s flesh-transformed and empowered by the Voidharrow-began to sift away. Vestapalk stepped ba
ck from his former exarch’s body and opened his jaws wider. His drawn breath became a gale, shredding Churr’s remains until they flowed into his maw like liquid. Like the Voidharrow itself.
When the last traces of Churr Ashin’s existence were a few shards of red crystal, Vestapalk closed his mouth and let out a slow exhalation. He lifted his gaze to the demons around him.
They fell silent instantly, their eyes dropping. Vestapalk snorted and slid back into the pool. Noise slowly returned to the Plaguedeep as the demons returned to their chitterings and brawlings, their primitive battles for meaningless supremacy.
A wave of the Voidharrow washed from the pool over the floor of the shaft to pick up the fallen gold skull and carry it to Vestapalk like a piece of wood on the tide. He ignored it, his thoughts turning in another direction. Churr Ashin had shown him something valuable: Albanon, Shara, Kri, and the others who defied him were a distraction.
He’d spoken nothing less than the truth when he told Churr his enemies were doomed. Their end would come whether he took a role in it or not. The idea of letting the Abyssal Plague take them in time didn’t sit well with him, though. It was too easy for those who declared themselves his enemies. He might task another of his exarchs with dealing with them, but they were scattered-and what was to say that they might not try to turn against him as Churr had?
He might take control of another demon, seeing through its eyes, inhabiting its body, and using it to destroy his enemies. But no, Churr had been able to steal the golden skull while his mind flitted between demons. Something worse might happen if his focus was beyond the Plaguedeep for longer. Vestapalk needed something else. Some proxy he could trust that wouldn’t require his constant attention, but that would fill his need to have a hand in the destruction of those who had so thoroughly defied him.
A wild squealing distracted him. Across the pool, a demon had claimed a red and knobby club almost bigger than it was: Churr’s severed arm had survived the destruction of his body. The creature waved the arm around like a trophy, occasionally beating it against the ground for the amusement of the larger demons. Churr’s fingers still grasped and clawed against the indignity as if life yet remained in the limb, much as Vestapalk’s own shed scales writhed when they fell.
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