Death, Be Not Proud

by Jonathan Maberry

  I saw a steep descent below me and a gentle slope behind. The window opened into a spiral staircase, which probably circled the whole diameter of the tower. The curving walls soon hid the stairs journey.

  The air was still. Everything was dark and bare and covered in a fine and delicate dust. Dust that had been rudely violated by boot prints. Fresh boot prints.

  I was at once both disappointed and bemused. As I had suspected, the cryptic and cunning Thieves Guild had penetrated and plundered. They probably had been looting this place for years. As I descended cautiously, blade extended, I saw that everything was gone. Repeatedly I passed empty niches, missing lamp fixtures, and bare floors and walls. Even the doorknobs were gone.

  But the boot prints were fresh. Someone was here. Down I went. Then the stairs spilled into an empty chamber. Across the room was a set of large doors, doubly wide and slightly ajar. And in that crack, there was a line of red. A fire in the room beyond? A seeker of warmth?

  I glided up to the crack and peered in. Yes, I smiled, or at least made the hideous mockery of one. Through these doors was an identical room. On the far wall, a man was seated. Knees drawn up, head lolled forward, he made the sounds of slumber. Fool.

  No boots–making me wonder what was in the room beyond. Always beyond. What’s ahead? Life or death? Which sudden meeting? Who was I to decide this man’s death? Who by Ariok was I to creep those feet and loom above the doomed?

  He sprang awoke. He gaped and groped. Too late. My boot lashed out with murderous force. THWACK went his head on the wall. But I held my death-stroke. Incredibly, I knew this man.

  I dragged my “old friend” to the steps. The bristling array of spikes and teeth, which protruded from my boot, had ripped a large hole in his cheek, which dripped blood in copious amounts. He was out for a while. I bound him anyway and left his prostrate form. To the door, to the next door.

  It was smaller, and surprisingly enough had a knob. Praise the sweet lord, it opened silently, and I crept in. A brazier burned in the middle of a spartan room, which these three sleeping men easily dominated. Two were close to me and a larger one slept across the room.

  Now I saw. Thieves. Looking for loot, and not having much luck as this place had been stripped years ago. The one outside had been a guard. He had fallen asleep. I showed up, and now these men were to die.

  I stood between the closer two men. It would be tricky! In a peculiar hopping motion, I lift my mailed boot and bring it down heel first into a snoring mouth. I feel the jaw give and the man heave. Wick went the other way, slashing down and I saw the death stroke as clear as dawn. But Bootmouth rolls away screaming and spitting pulp. He grabs a sword and lurches about and I sally forth, weaving a great web of steel. SMASH! SMASH! In two great blows, I send his sword a spinning, his hand bleeding. In three, his throat is a pumping. He slumps.

  This takes a little more than five seconds. The other one is up and moving. He kicks the blazing coal pot at me. I duck behind my war-board to withstand the deadly hail and we face each other.

  He, the fat one, stares about the wrecked chamber, surprised by his friends’ sudden departure and concerned about the imminent possibility of his own.

  He was armed with a war-axe. He was fat, like a pig, like a sow, to the block.

  I leapt in, slashing across. KLA! He took it on the axe haft and reversed the blow down at me. I lurched back, faked, and came at him from below. A cut opens his forearm. He sobs shortly and his soul is running.

  Fear was in his eyes as we exchanged blows back and forth across the chamber, stamping up great showers of sparks and clouds of dust and debris. With every thrust, a mist grew around me like a crowd of flies. My life was surging, exalting. He was dying, and he knew it.

  He snarled, and wheeled away, panting. I did not pursue him for I knew him to be mine. We regarded each other as lovers would.

  “I would see the hidden face of my foe,” my victim wheezed.

  I nodded, remembering the veil. Yes. I reached for the mask.

  “My face,” I said as the veil fell to the puddled floor. Uncovered. The horror that was me. Once I had been as fresh as you, perhaps, but the bolts of death had struck, but they had not slain, and had left me with this ruined face, this face of the damned.

  It was me, a vengeful angel of love, filled with joy as I spread hate. He saw me and cringed. His soul wept.

  I walked towards him, blade extended. He gasped as it gouged into his chest, dropping his weapon with one hand and grabbing mine with the other. He slumped against the wall as the blade continued to slowly dig in him. His eyes bulged through the darkness towards me.

  “You are the beast…” I said.

  -4-

  I walked from the room of hate. It filled me, cooled me, and filled my breast. They were my lovers, the dead men. I loved them. And now, with their deaths, they loved me too and all that was of chaos. But if they were lovers of law then they did their penance in hell, and their souls stretched tightly. I, of Chaos, had slain them, so they would not feed the maw of justice, nor the balance, they would feed Ariok, and she would feed me.

  Yes, I was filled. I walked back to my captive and regarded him. His name was Ravoc, I had known him years ago when I had been young Eelbound of the Variag tribe. Together we had learned the tales of our elders and delighted in the mastering of various tools of death. His face had changed little. I couldn’t say the same for myself.

  I squatted before him, dully slapping him until his eyelids fluttered, then opened. As soon as he saw me, his face contorted in horror and he began to writhe against his bonds. I grabbed his neck and fought back the deathlust, the lust for killing, and purging yourself through the lifeblood of others.

  “Now listen or I will twist your stinking head off. Your name is Ravoc. We grew up together in the Land of Sticks. I went south with a raiding party you were too young to join. I never came back.”

  His eyes narrowed and I thought I felt a shudder of recognition pass through his bound form.

  “I’ll take the gag out now, right? Any noises out of that…” I pointed my dirk at his mouth, “I’ll see this go in.”

  Ravoc had been my younger by one breeding in the Variag tribe, and I knew him to be bound by our sacred code. He knew not I, only the one that I had been, and that face was forever lost.

  “Now listen. I know you. You are my younger, bound to me for all eternity. Bound to me by the law of our tribe. El-kenta. I speak it now, as it has been spoken.”

  He nodded. He knew. It was the name of he who lived to die, but lived still. A popular hero with our people. I had become him, for all intents and purposes. It is the best way I can tell it to an outsider.

  “You will worship me,” I hissed as I slit his bonds. “All you are is me. Your life, your thought, your blade–they are mine. We played little games before, scampering about the ashen hills. But I am new and I am. You are no longer.”

  Ravoc was young and strong. His eyes brimmed with color. It came up and flowed out. It lapped at my boots.

  “All of our friends are dead, for I have slain them…”I said as I replaced the scabby black veil over my face. “Do you know what that means Ravoc, do you?”

  He drooled and simpered.

  “It means I have slain my lovers,” he sputtered out.

  -5-

  Soon my dominance over Ravoc was near completion. The blood fires of the Variag ran deep, and once the ritual was completed, Ravoc would become my tool. I wondered if I would later regret the chance of fate that had brought Ravoc and me together, and him undoubtedly on the way to his doom. We are raised from pups to be dominated by our elders. It is one of the only ways to keep order in our savage society. And even though Ravoc would soon eat his own penis at my command (if I so ordered him, I hadn’t decided to make him do that…) I could similarly be ordered about if I had the misfortune of meeting one of my elders. It was a big reason why most Variag left home early.

  We gathered the coals and stoked the flames high
. Whenever I could, I slashed free the genitals of my beautiful lost lovers, and tossed the hissing organs into the flames. As the stench of burning dick filled the room, I knelt at the edge of the flames and began chanting the name of she, the bride of hysteria, all we were, all we are, sweet Ariok, my sweet mother. Soon I was lost in a sea of oozing purples and cosmic blackness. It washed about and in. It flowed into my nostrils and clogged my head. I tried to expel the mucous-like substance but could not determine out from in. A fire began to grow in my loins…my prick…aaah! I felt like I was about to burst apart with great greasy gobs of clotted cum-cough. I was lost, deeply lost within myself but I cared not. I thought about my new being and decided it was good. No longer were the concerns of the horrible earth mine. I had broken my chains. Here I could float in a world of peace and love, undisturbed by the hate of my time. I reached out with no fingers.

  The void split, raw, red, vital. My bliss condensed to stark terror in one mere moment. The gap in space yawned obscenely, glistening wet, and I felt myself drawn towards it. I struggled against the cosmic tide, but despite my best efforts, I could do naught against it. It was sucking me in!

  Ahhhh…the horrid nausea. My skull throbbed and screamed for more room as I beheld the hideous hand…

  All slid. There was a great hissing. The hand…the black-nailed hand which groped towards me grew larger and larger still…it’s pale, elongated fingers were clotted with dirt, it’s nails cracked and split, as if they had been used to scrape their way free of a rotten coffin too soon covered by clods of maggot-infested earth.

  “MY SWEET QUEEN…” I screamed, “Be that you?”

  The hand continued to grow before my eyes until I was certain I was about to be engulfed in its horrid grasp. But suddenly it jerked away, and every muscle of my body convulsed into giant spasms. The hand withdrew quickly, dripping a slash of crimson before it retreated into the void. There it stopped, wavered, and then made a clutching gesture.

  My heart was stricken from my breast—my soul was flayed. But at the same time I felt the fire in my loins, and, horrified, I realized I had an erection of titanic proportions. It was a tumescent reaction of the most intense sort. My whole being leapt, danced, and experienced a seed-letting that spurted like a spewing acid dragon. I fell, broken.

  Slowly I began to feel cold stone beneath me. I pulled myself upright and noticed my mail shirt and breeches were in a state of disarray, my mangled hand wrapped around my limp manhood. The air was filled with the smell of bleach as I noticed my armor was spattered with great gobs of wasted man-seed. All I could do was weep.

  Ravoc eyed me from across the chamber. He had been butchering a carcass, but now had an expression of wonderment upon his young face. I climbed to my feet, returning his gaze. He soon grew unnerved and returned to his scrotum peeling.

  As I reflected on the significance of my dream, Ravoc spoke. “There is little of value here, but much of interest.”

  “Speak,” I commanded. “You will tell me everything.”

  “We came here, led by fat Oleg,” he studied my face for a moment, still in awe of my ruined countenance. I replaced my veil as he continued. “The bully…the pig. I exult in his death. We have explored this tower, the central dome, and the rooms beyond. The other tower has collapsed into itself and is impassable. We found all of the rooms stripped…and evidence that creatures other than ourselves…meaning other than human…had been there recently.”

  I studied his face. He told the truth.

  “We were running out of wine and patience. We were arguing about when to leave.”

  “Chaos is change. Take me to this central dome. Now.”

  -6-

  We journeyed through hushed halls, which, even though stripped of their trappings, still conveyed the sense of opulence the place was famous for. We quickly came to the dome-chamber, and I could see in my mind the place at its finest, at the height of its revels, before the Ripper came. It was packed with alternately laughing, crying and screaming people and animals. The smoke and steam they emitted curled languidly to the distant and vaulted roof, which had gazed down upon a thousand such scenes as the one I imagined, and ones infinitely more perverse.

  The great circular walls thrust out of the abyss of columns and scaffolding that littered the main floor, some real, some not. Balconies and parapets ringed the walls and soared above us. I wondered how many people over the centuries had wanted to piss off them, and how many really had.

  The floor tilings were designed so that great arrows of Chaos radiated from the center of the chamber. In this center spot, a small puddle of light, seemingly coming from nowhere, illuminated a standing bronze sculpture of heroic proportion representing a young woman. I strode down one of the arrows until I stood before her, and supplicated myself before my patron god, sweet Ariok. She was beautiful, young, almost child-like…but still she stirred lust in men’s hearts like no other. Many of her followers considered themselves wed to the goddess, and I was one of them. I stayed true to her, loving only those I slew. I had no problem with raping people though.

  She smiled down upon me, her body relaxed, feline, and completely naked, as she stood, leaning slightly backwards, holding forth a balance that was stretched across her pointing finger. The other hand was tucked in the crotch, as the goddess was always said to be fingering herself.

  The balance was tilted slightly to the left. This symbol was easy to read. The scale represented the eternal struggle between Law and Chaos. The balance may shift in one sides favor from time to time but no side ever achieves dominance for long. Each side lived to struggle endlessly against each other. The shift to the left meant that Chaos had the upper hand at the moment, either in the manor, this entire plane of existence, or even all reality. Or perhaps the scale had rusted like that.

  The symbols intrigued me by their existence more than their meanings. Such symbols were forbidden. They had long ago been banned from public view as society sought to control Chaos. Bloody clashes usually followed such crackdowns but ultimately the Emperor had his way. All that it meant was that the killing became a silent, yet equally deadly game. It was the game I loved, the only game, my life. It was my life to sew Chaos and the seeds of hate. If I could sow aplenty, then perhaps upon my bloody death Ariok would award me with a talisman. Then I could become a creature of the night and flickering flame, the power that enables us to live in Hell, leaving Death itself behind. Here I could assemble an army made up of screaming souls stolen throughout all eternity. Such a destiny would be truly glorious.

  I had been aware of Ravoc’s approaching tread. I spun and glared at him. “What?”I bark.

  “Over here, Elder…something of interest.”

  Moments later I am gazing at the moldering harness of a sundered warrior from a dawn long past. A glance here would have only revealed a heap of trash, but there was no mistaking that green breastplate. It was what was left of one of the City-State “Shockers,” the troops that had come in here to hack the life out of whatever it was that had been hacking the life out of the guests the night before. But they had met their dooms instead…or at least this one had. And that made me wonder what had happened to the rest of them. And this one’s head…it wasn’t there, though the rest of the body curiously appeared to be un-mauled by the local critters which I knew from their copious droppings were frequent residents of the Manor. The fact that I had seen a turd as big as a goat intrigued me.

  “Elder, what do you perceive—UGH!” said Ravoc as I graced him with open-handed gauntleted smack. He spun backwards against the wall.

  Why? His face asked his mouth too stunned to speak.

  “Silence!” I screamed. “Silence now, you whelp!” Wick leapt clear of the scabbard and traced a figure-eight of gleaming slash dream.

  “Prepare for battle!”

  And so again the death love-lust flowed, firmed, and became brown at the edges. It had been lurking behind an archway, but I had picked up its scent. I was aware, and I knew how to sl
ay, duck down to dance, beneath the club claws, I saw the sacred slit soon to be. The great barrel chest loomed above me and I yelped with joy as Wick left a great red rent in the side of the matted, furry beast.

  Backlash, sudden, crushing. The beast slapped me back and I fell into a sprawling heap. Its fell ichors smoked and steamed off of my blade as the thing reared above me. I saw then it was a great sewer bear. These loathsome beings are drawn to the filth of the sewers in much the same way that maggots are drawn to open wounds. The writhe in the open slime, making feasts of hatred out of the grim denizens of that foul recess. Occasionally, as in now, they rise from the depths to find sweeter meat.

  The creature now threatened Ravoc, who retreated before its claws with a last frenzied shake of his blade. I watched without concern as the bear batted the weapon aside, seized him by a leg and an arm, and hurled him through space. He careened end over end, and I smiled grimly as his progress was stopped by a stonewall. He slumped like a broken marionette.

  I remained motionless as the great black beast snorted and stamped its triumph. The slimy bear seemed to be doing some sort of dance and I watched in fascination, totally absorbed for a moment. It spun, skittered, and shuffled, then stamped its feet, creating great clouds of dust. It seemed so ludicrous that this dance of death would be a happy dance. I almost laughed.

  Then I remembered that I had to hack the life out of the thing. I leapt to my feet and yelled. Immediately the beast saw me and emitted a bellicose roar. But I was already running for the wall, going up, grabbing at cold stone breasts. I cursed my bad hand. I felt, sensed, even smelt the slavering thing behind me, but its proximity merely quickened my ascent. Twenty feet up, I came to a balcony, which protruded, from the wall like a great tongue. I didn’t stop—up, over and then quickly down. I twisted my frame around and extended my faithful Wick. I fell.

  With dull disinterest, I saw the creature below becoming suddenly bigger. I followed the point of my sword down for twenty feet. Fast. Frothing, foaming jaws, slashing and slobbering constantly. I was the instrument as well as the object of death. I was at one with myself.