by Sean Rodden
To which the cloud-cloaked crevasse seemed to answer with a mockingly dismissive ‘ppppppffffffssssss’…
The earth settled. The cracks in the world closed. All fell still, all fell silent, but for the malingering memory of chthonic thunder that yet shook both bone and soul.
Kor ben Dor gently patted the neck of his mar render. He then stretched, rolled both his shoulders, chased an annoying tautness from between the blades of his upper back. Feeling the kink flee his spine, the Halflord clamped his lips together, bunched his brows, effecting an expression appropriately grim and grave.
At his back, the Black Shields were likewise stoic, steadfast, statuesque. Ev lin Dar and Gren del Mor stared with shining eyes at the hazy hole of Doomfall. No hint of apprehension darkened those lambent lights. Neither consternation nor concern. And certainly no shadow of fear. Rather, there was something quite appreciative, even approbatory, glowing in the warriors’ white gazes. They were Black Shields of the Bloodspawn, and where lesser creatures might fear and loathe the power of an enemy, they possessed the ability to admire strength for strength’s sake, to esteem courage regardless of cause, to see beauty in any skillfully swung and singing sword – even should said sword sing solely for their own deaths.
Respect. Admire even. But never bow. Never break.
Indeed, of all the Blood King’s units, only the rearguard of Bloodspawn retained any semblance of martial order. Six undaunted lines. Unbowed, unbroken.
In the still that had followed the storm, Gren del Mor leaned conspiratorially toward his fellow Shield with a wink and a whisper –
“And the terrible Battle of the Bongos goes tooooo… the trolls!”
Tattooed tigress whiskers twitched toward but did not quite achieve a smile.
Because Urchin shrieked.
“Mages! Mages! Where are my thaumaturges?” Balled fists struck thin thighs. “Mages, my mages! Mages, mages!”
The Halflord’s shoulders slumped slightly.
“Mages! Mages! Mages!”
Strange and grotesque figures rushed to the fore: Mroch Durvan shadow-walkers, cloaked in black, midnight mist seeping from their sleeves and cowls; dreadfully deformed dreamcrawlers from the Hebbingore wearing naught but dried mud and macabre masks of wood and bone; the ngoma kifo death dancers from innermost Ugharo, white-faced and red-eyed, clad in skins of questionable origin; and the notorious War Witches of Waldard, their death-grey armour adorned with ancestral remains, their helms enameled to simulate ghastly skulls, their wicked weapons fashioned entirely of bone.
Kor ben Dor lowered his eyes, shook his head.
The morning shivered. Shadow-walkers strode into the sky. Dreamcrawlers chanted. Ngoma kifoi danced. War Witches raised their bont blades. Power swelled in the air before them. Ripening, ripping into the morning, rippling in the sunlight before Doomfall like a vast wall of water.
Urchin rubbed his tiny hands together gleefully. His sky-blue eyes gleamed. But then his cherubic features flushed and knotted, and the rubbing of his hands devolved to a desperate wringing.
“Lore-Roks! Where are my lore-Roks? Lore-Roks, lore-Roks!”
From amidst the disordered ranks of rock ogres emerged the lore-Roks of legend and nightmare. Emaciated warlocks of the Horachian clans – Urkroks in name only, these shriveled sorcerers – little more than sagging sheets of skin pinned to brittle skeletons. And their counterparts – and contraries – from the blasted Blackbones, grossly obese females, long greenish tongues rolling and lolling like miniature mimics of their flopping breasts, slobber and slime and snot a glistening sheen on their mottled hides. Shambling to the front, the starved and the glutted – but with them came power.
And they plunged this power into the edifice of energy burgeoning before Doomfall. The wall heaved and undulated, throbbed, its mercurial façade fast fading, darkening to the gruesome grisly greyness of rotting death. Great boils, bleeding pustules, seeping abscesses soiled the sorcerous skin stretched across the mute mouth of Doomfall. Excess eels of energy slithered down the surface and ate at the earth like acid.
Urchin giggled with delight. The dead pony pranced upon its own innards.
“Shamans! Shamans, shamans, shamans!”
A cadre of gargantuan Graniants waded toward the diverse vanguard of invokers and conjurors. The witchdoctor Umbar’hal, shaman of shamans, led them, his head high, his back straight, his stride long and strong – his vitality, the Halflord knew, enhanced by crafts eldritch and herbal. Cranial fetishes rattled, ancient chants rumbled, tribal talismans pulsed over pounding hearts. Waves of arcane puissance poured from outstretched arms into the rearing pale. Impossibly, the edifice expanded, enlarged, soared skyward, challenging the hegemony of the Westwall, scorning the supremacy of the Dragon itself.
The little boy danced atop the back of his pony.
“Blood Mages! Red Wizards! Mages and wizards! Wizards and mages!”
But this time, none and nothing answered.
“Blood Mages! Where are my Blood Mages? Where are they? Where, where, where, where?”
“They are not here, blutsauger,” the Prince of the Bloodspawn said softly. His velvet voice carried effortlessly despite the thundering cacophony of the mounting conflagration.
Urchin whirled upon Kor ben Dor with such violence he nearly toppled from his pony.
“I can see that, you gigantic grey fool! I didn’t ask where they aren’t – I asked where they are!”
The Halflord sighed his initial response away into silence. Cracked his neck. Willed his heart to remain slow and steady of beat. In the clarity of his calm, he had not failed to note the tell-tale cessation of the demon’s proclivity for redundant verbal repetition – always a portent of peril, he knew.
“You ask the right question,” the Prince intoned evenly, “but of the wrong party.”
“Right question? Wrong party? What the…? Speak plainly, half-brain!”
The Halflord closed his eyes. Ah-ahhh. Crick. Thmm-thmmp, thmm-thmmp. Opened them once more. Spoke.
“Waif.”
“Waif? Waif what? What about Waif?”
“Ask her.”
“Ask her what?”
“Not what. Where.”
“Where what? I know you’re a…a ’Spawn of few words, but you’re making about as much sense as titties on a turtle!” Abruptly, the demon snickered at the mental image, then absently licked along the length of one forefinger, hissing happily, “Titties, yes! Titties! Tits, tits, tits!”
At the base of the tor, Ev lin Dar and Gren del Mor exchanged incredulous expressions.
Kor ben Dor’s face remained and as flat and as cool as a pane of slate.
“Should you wish to know where the Blood King’s mages are, blutsauger,” – the Halflord’s voice remained gentle, almost genteel – “I suggest you ask the question of the creature you call your sister.”
Urchin instantly ceased his impromptu celebration of breasts.
“Now why would I – ”
Kor ben Dor watched as realization, comprehension contorted the demon-child’s countenance. Big blue eyes widened. Jaw dropped. Skin flushed, red as blood. Strange how very visceral were the reactions of this ancient entity…how very human.
“Oh, that little bitch!”
How very human indeed.
And with that the Leech whirled ferociously toward the towering wall of malignant might, one hand curling into claws behind him, the other thrust forward, palm down, rigid fingers splayed wide. Unholy power exploded from the outstretched arm. A black storm of light-less fire and dark lightning ripped, raced, roared through the morning. Pure rage mpacted the sore-pocked skin of the edifice with such force that it buckled toward breaking. The combined magics of nearly three hundred tribal wizards and witches were scarcely sufficient to withstand the puissance of the demon. To withstand and absorb. To make the merely abominable overwhelmingly apocalyptic.
And in the wake of Urchin’s release, a vacuum, a void. The Prince of the Bloodspawn
felt the air violently sucked from his lungs, pulled from him like a wailing newborn from a dead woman. He strove to breathe, but there was nothing to inhale, nothing to exhale. All had been burned away, the tor and his core both scorched bare and left barren.
The wall pulsated with black, blasphemous energy. Abysmal arcs of lightning slashed and crashed. Thunderheads of absolute nihility pealed.
Beneath Kor ben Dor, his mar render ripped at the rock, frothing maw agape, nostrils flared, gasping, grasping for breath, but the lack of air prohibited the beast from achieving so much as a rasping snort. And although the Halflord did not turn, the sounds of talons scraping stone behind him and the swollen silence of the Shields strongly suggested that the two warriors and their steeds were similarly stricken.
No. Not my friends. Not…her. You go too far, demon.
And the Prince of the Bloodspawn reached for a force of his own.
But even as he sought within himself, down, deep down, in the hallowed hold where he hoarded the secrets of his appalling power, the vast lung-sucking vacuum vanished. Disappeared. Was gone.
And in the absence of absence, cold crisp air again.
The Halflord relaxed, withdrew his inner beckons. Breathed. In and out. Deeply. Slowly. And upon the marmoreal masque of his magnificent mien, not the slightest crease of consternation.
Behind him –
“Well, that definitely sucked,” Gren del Mor muttered irritably.
Ev lin Dar groaned. Shook her head.
“Are you unwell, Ev?”
“Oh, I’m fine. But I worry for you, Gren.”
“Your concern and compassion move me, woman. Truly. We share such blissful comity. And here I thought you just didn’t care.”
“I don’t.”
“But you just said – ”
“Silence, lizard-face.”
A saurian and silent grin slit Gren del Mor’s thin countenance.
Then abruptly fell away.
Urchin had spread his spindly arms wide. The wall rippled with dark energy. Waves of invisible flame radiated from its surface. The morning burned. Slowly, deliberately, the demon-child drew his hands toward one another, deftly balling the air between them. And the titanic wall followed in kind, its ends coming together, bunching and tangling, entwining, clustering to form a single tremendous sphere of throbbing power. A blazing black sun hovering above the earth, a lethal looming doom. The sorcerous progeny of three hundred mages, drawn from the latent energies of tribal spirits and ancestors beyond count – and amplified a thousandfold by the primeval power of a demon-god. Dark death suspended in the sky.
“Impressive,” said Gren del Mor, his visage angled toward the seething star.
“Agreed. But are the Daradur not immune to magic?”
“Indeed they are, Ev. Obnoxious little trolls.”
“So this extraordinary display of power is – ”
“ – an equally extraordinary waste of time and effort, yes.”
“But still impressive.”
“Quite.”
And then, like any other little boy simply throwing a stone, Urchin reached one small hand back, fingers curled about nothing and everything, summoned every last sliver of his supernatural strength, and hurled his tiny ball of air as hard as he possibly could at the haze-wreathed hollow of Doomfall.
As though tethered tightly to the boy’s imaginary ball, the blazing black sun tore through the smitten morning like a comet ripped from the very skies of Hell, a torrid tail of enfuried flame and lightning raging in its wake. Closing the distance to Doomfall in mere heartbeats.
Shadow-walkers and War Witches scattered. Lumbering lore-Roks lurched frantically away. Graniantish shamans clutched their skull totems and wheezed hurried prayers.
And Urchin pranced upon his pony, shrieking in triumph.
Impact.
The careening ball of hellfire collided with the churning miasma of mist and smoke and ash in a world-shattering instant of obliteration, of absolute annihilation, of pure and unadulterated –
Nothing.
Nothing at all.
Because nothing at all…happened.
The infernal meteor simply vanished. Disappeared. Was gone.
Urchin froze mid-step in his victory dance, struck momentarily motionless, immobile, balanced precariously on a single foot aback his strange steed. Disbelief, astonishment, sheer shock were writ upon his cherubic features as conspicuously as the lie on the lips of a thieving scamp. Mouth agape, eyes agog, blond locks a mess. Slowly, the little boy lowered his other foot, small shoulders sagging, skinny arms sinking slack at his sides, his pink mouth pressing into a profound pout.
Below him, the dead pony flicked at buzzing bh’ritsi with its tail.
“Will you be calling for archers now, blutsauger?”
The Leech glared at Kor ben Dor.
The Halflord rolled a nagging ache from his right shoulder. Disregarded the perceptible heat searing his profile as he calmly observed the disastrous disorder that had claimed the Blood King’s forces. Chaos reigned. Dreamcrawlers and death dancers in full flight, shadow-walkers plummeting unceremoniously from the sky, captains and lieutenants bawling brainlessly, royal retinues in full retreat, and not even the semblance of a square in sight.
“I suppose skirmishers are out of the question.”
Urchin glowered, his lower lip quivering. “You invite my wrath, Halflord.”
“I invite nothing, blutsauger,” Kor ben Dor replied quietly. “I only observe.”
The little boy stared. The lip fell ominously still.
The Prince of the Bloodspawn met the demon’s gaze evenly, the great grey giant’s tattooed features as flat and as implacable as painted stone.
Big blue eyes narrowed, then blinked, looked away, and Urchin settled himself astride his unliving mount.
“Well, stop it,” the Leech complained churlishly. “Just stop it. Stop, stop, stop!”
The Halflord said nothing.
Urchin surveyed the escalating anarchy about him with something akin to genuine sorrow, dejection darkening his demeanour even as grief might mar the mien of a mourner. There were, after all, only so many masks for the face of loss.
“We can do nothing with this…this…whatever this is, Halflord. Nothing today, at least. Nothing, nothing at all, at all, at all.”
“Agreed.”
“We can only retreat and regroup. Yes, retreat and regroup. So we will withdraw. Pull back, yes, we will pull back, pull back, back, back.”
Kor ben Dor watched with no evident emotion as the greater part of the Blood King’s splintered host fled pell-mell from the field, prevented from outright headlong flight only by the impassable barrier of six unbroken, unwavering lines of black-armoured Bloodspawn.
“Apparently.”
Urchin squeezed his eyes shut, brought his hands to his face, shook his head. A tinny whinge slipped between his fingers, soon followed by an ambiguous sound somewhere between a groan and a wail.
“Put an end to this mayhem, Halflord.” The little boy slowly lowered his hands. His flushed cheeks bore the bone-white imprint of his fingers, his reddened eyes were wet and shining. “Save…salvage…make something of this farce. I want the army in flawless formation and fully prepared to do battle at dawn tomorrow. Do you hear me, Halflord? Do you hear me, hear me, hear me?”
“Yes.”
A pause pregnant with a demon’s seed of doubt.
Then –
“You know this is all her fault, right?” Urchin demanded petulantly, peevishly, tiny fists pounding thin thighs. “All her fault, her fault, hers, hers, hers!”
Kor ben Dor did not respond, save the silent shrug of a single shoulder.
“Tomorrow will be mine,” the Leech decreed, his voice as soft and as lethal as the seep of blood from a mortal wound. “Yes, tomorrow will be mine, sweet sister. Do you hear me? Tomorrow is mine! Mine, mine, mine, all mine!”
Oh, I hear you, dear brother, came Waif’s sniggering littl
e voice into the chaos at the core of his essence. Tomorrow is yours. Of course it is.
Go away, sister! Go away! Go, go, go!
Heheheehee!
And the little boy on the dead pony spun from the lashes of Waif’s laughter, turned his back to the disaster at Doomfall, descended the stony tor. Trotted away from the miasma of mist and misery. Away from the infuriating unflappability of the Prince of the Bloodspawn. From the sound and thorough thrashing suffered by a god-sized ego. Leaving in the space vacated a sense of simmering rage as real and as tangible as the train of tangled entrails trailing along the ground behind him.
“Well, that was anti-fucking-climactic. Fuck.”
Drogul the kirun-tar did not respond to the Wild One’s words. His massive arms folded across his even more massive chest, the mighty Lord of Doomfall peered through the slits in his war-helm’s horrific mask, through the writhing fog and ash, intently yet impassively watching the chaotic fragmentation of the foe’s formation. No, not watching, not in the optical sense, but seeing nevertheless. And as comical as the scene may have seemed to some of his battle-hardened brethren, no hint of a smile moved in the Chieftain’s rust-coloured beard. His heart did not thunder with triumph. No sense of satisfaction soared within him. Indeed, there was no cause for celebration. Little had been achieved that day. Less had been accomplished.
“Fuckin’ disappointing,” growled Dulgar, his solitary eye shining with a madness not far removed from outright insanity. Unlike his fully armoured Chieftain, the Wild One was bare-chested, his blood-bright beard spilling over his mountainous form in an avalanche of flame. His crimson axe shook in his huge gnarled hands. “I need to fuckin’ kill something.”
Again, Drogul did not reply. Perhaps because of his taciturn nature. Perhaps because he was otherwise occupied. Perhaps because the Wild One always needed to fuckin’ kill something. Some redundancies simply do not require recognition.
