Something else was very weird.
David suddenly noticed it.
The walls and ceiling of that entire bedroom were covered with various mismatched mirrors, both framed and unframed.
The perp came roaring up the stairs like a wild man, a fireplace poker in one hand and the small hammer in the other. David still had the advantage of his armor and superior weapons.
“You get out of here!” the crazed lunatic screamed. “This is my house now. You have no right to be in here. This is my business. I’ll fix you!”
David drew one of his tomahawks and rapped the insane bastard across the face with the flat of it and then back again.
He blocked a jab from the poker with an armored forearm. Then he clipped the guy up under the chin again with the flat, and tapped him on the top of the head. The man dropped and rolled back down the stairs, just as Sergeant Blaylock and some of the troops rushed in.
“The girl’s upstairs,” David said. “She’s alive. Get her mother here, quick. Search this place and hog-tie that no good son of a bitch. Watch out–he’s stronger than he looks.” David cut the little girl free of her bonds and tried to dress her minor wounds. But the child was terrified. In a state of panic, she stamped her small feet, screaming and crying for her mother.
“Mama, Mama. I want my mama. Please, don’t let the bad thing in the mirrors get me. Don’t let it get me. Please, keep it away from me!”
David wrapped her up in a blanket and quickly carried her downstairs and out of that freaky house.
Their medic had finished checking the girl over when the mother arrived and quickly wrapped her hysterical daughter up in another blanket and took her home, guarded by several militia troops.
David went back inside and helped finish searching the upstairs. Not much else out of the ordinary except for the strange room with the mirrors all over the walls. Crazy. That room spooked everyone.
Then he heard shouts and cries of dismay and rage from his troops downstairs.
Three veteran troops ran up from the basement. Two of them vomited right there in the hallway.
The reek. The stench of death that wafted up from the basement.
Nothing could match or describe it.
The rotting dead dog smell outside paled in comparison to what rose up from that fearful basement.
Up from those dark, bloodstained steps.
David guessed that the guy had poisoned and killed the dog to decoy everyone else from the smell emanating from his own basement.
“Don’t go down their, sir,” one man warned.
“You don’t want to see it,” another man said, still dry heaving.
David steeled himself.
It had to be pretty bad.
“No one has to go with me if they don’t want to,” David said.
Only two troopers went with him, all of them holding lanterns.
In the basement, they found their missing people from that area.
Including all of the children.
Including the divorced mother and her three kids that the man claimed the monsters had killed and taken away.
All dead, hanging upside down from the wooden rafters. Some of them on hooks, some with their feet nailed right into the wood. Each of the bodies had been savagely mutilated. Now they were just long strips of shredded skin, flesh, or entrails hanging down over bones. Some of the bones had been torn out, split, and splintered.
From the looks on their tortured faces, many of the victims had still been alive while they had been ravaged.
Blood, shit, and death–wall to wall. It was inhuman.
More mirrors downstairs, ringed along the basement walls.
Mirrors splattered with gore. What was up with this crazy, fricking bastard and all of the damn mirrors?
But the corpses and the reek had to be the worst.
Dead faces and staring eyes, frozen in agony and terror. No human being should die like that.
Even the monsters didn’t kill people like that.
The stench alone was horrifying–beyond imagining.
“We’re going back up,” David said, struggling not to breathe.
The two troopers with him did not argue one bit, and came up quickly behind him on the run to get away from that horrible scene.
David went to the killer, who was now sitting on the couch with his hands tied behind him and his legs hobbled with rope.
The serial murderer looked up at David and laughed. He just babbled like a freak.
“Do I get my nice trial now? I wanna be famous. I’ll get my trial and I’ll go on and on in detail about everything I did to each one of them. And it’ll be a matter of public record forever and ever! I’ll be immortal. A celebrity! Too bad there’s no more TV. No more Internet or movies. I’d have my own website! They’d surely make a movie about me. But they can still write a book about me. I’ll tell them everything so that the whole world can read about what I did, forever and ever!”
“Gag him and shut him up,” David said, completely sickened. He felt nothing but disgust and loathing for this wretched creep. This was much worse than finding outside monsters responsible for the deaths of these poor people. If it hadn’t been for this dickhead, all of those innocent people would have survived the attacks–they would still be alive.
My God, David thought, those poor kids. The agony and horror frozen on their little dead faces. He wished he had never seen it.
The internal monsters like this sick putz were even worse than the vicious denizens of Tharanor.
Once they had the perp shut up, David looked the bastard in the eye, remembering a few conversations he had with Dirk.
Short shrift and summary justice for any truly heinous crimes.
Crimes exactly like these.
“No one will ever know your name, you demented loser. You wanted to become famous…for this? Well take this with you straight to hell. No one–nobody–but God and the Devil–will ever know your name or what you did. You will be dismembered and buried face down in a nameless grave. And there you will rot like a forgotten piece of shit and turn to dust, as if you had never existed. Under martial law, I pass summary judgment on you. You will never torment or harm anyone ever again!”
David sank his tomahawk deep in the killer’s forehead.
And then ran him through the chest with his longsword.
David twisted and jerked his weapons free, and stepped back from the spurting wounds as the body collapsed. He wiped the blades off on one of the curtains at hand.
The troops flung the killer’s body down into his own blood. Some of them spat on the wretch.
“Bury him just like I said,” David told them. “Stab out his eyes, and cut off his head, hands, and feet. That’s a direct order.”
They left the house of death. David looked around, still wanting to puke.
“No other houses near enough to worry about, Sergeant Blaylock?”
“No, sir.”
“Then burn this hovel to the ground. No one needs to see or find out what happened to those poor people, here. That’s exactly what that sicko wanted–exposure and notoriety. He’s not getting any of that.”
David nearly sobbed just thinking about it all. It was hard to get it out of his head.
“Especially those poor little kids,” he muttered. He gasped and wiped his eyes.
Blaylock nodded. “Don’t worry, we’ll burn it to ashes, sir.”
“The bodies can be collected afterwards from the wreckage and given proper burials. I’ll file a brief report to Dirk.”
“Yes, sir. Will do.”
David shook his head and shuddered, still trying to shake off what he’d witnessed. His thoughts were very dark. Even war on the front lines with people dying everywhere wasn’t like this sort of insanity.
“Sergeant, I’ve had enough duty for one night. I’m going home. Any of the troops who saw any of this can go home, too. If they need help dealing with any of this, get them some. Please carry out the rest of our duty
shift.”
“Will do, sir. Have a good night, if you can. I hope you and the others feel better.”
“Thank you, Eugene. I will not have a good night, but I will try to feel better, after this darkness passes.”
At least they had saved the one little girl, and put a stop to this guy. He obviously would have kept on killing.
The defiled house went up in flames by the time David and a small group of troops marched away–away from that stinking house of death.
They made their way home, to be troubled by their own private nightmares.
40
Mason grabbed what sleep he could and rose up early the next day, which was finally sunny and slightly warmer. Guards informed him that Blondie was already speaking with the two mage prisoners once more in a nearby tent. Major Avery had sent for him.
The prisoners had been brought up in one of the captured enemy slave wagons.
Blondie was definitely getting an early start. Mason suited up and went to collect Thulkara, who usually rose on her own and went to help train the militia fighters.
“Good morning, Mace!”
“Thulkara, can you break it off and join me?” he shouted.
“Sure thing,” Thulkara said, still wrestling with an entire militia platoon by herself. She rolled around laughing, and nearly crushing them all with her weight alone. She abruptly sprang to her feet and ran to catch up with him.
“See you, guys!” The platoon she had been pummeling lifted their hands if they could and groaned.
“The sky is bright, all the robins are merry. This shall be a good day and night to feast…and sing!”
Oh, God, Mason said to himself, as Thulkara broke out into some kind of booming, Thul ballad.
Something about a hero who slew a thousand foes, single-handed, upon a mountaintop of skulls…during a blizzard.
Thul songs and merriment were just chock-full of skull-splitting, gut-ripping, and spine-hacking frivolity such as all that.
So very jolly.
Soon every dog in the county was barking and howling before she broke off.
By the time Mason and the Amazon reached the intel tent, Major Avery and Blondie were already walking away from it.
Mason and Thulkara quickened their pace and jogged up to them.
Major Avery motioned for them to remain silent until they were all further away. Perhaps the prisoners were still somewhere nearby.
Avery led them about a quarter of a mile away and into a tall house that was being used as a spotting station and a command post. There was a table in the dining room where they could speak freely.
“Hey, Blondie,” Mason said. “Anything new?”
“Not too much. Our guests are really pressuring me to help them escape. I’ve put them off, telling them that I still don’t see that as being very possible. They have no concern for whether I get killed or not. But they still remain confident that the war will be over soon.”
“They’ve been asking him a lot about the Pistolero again,” Major Avery said. “Blondie hasn’t told them any more than what the enemy could figure out on their own.”
“I’ve convinced them that I’m feeding the Urthers misinformation in order to get the chance to talk to them. That, at least, makes them see me as some sort of spy or double agent on their side. I’ve asked them to tell me what they knew about me, in an attempt to bring back my memories. But there isn’t much. None of us were ever friends. I was a prince, one of the nobility. Neither of them ever directly worked with me, or knew me personally. I barely knew their names.
“On top of that, they had heard that I was continually going off on some kind of secret missions for the high masters of the Khabal–for years. I was often gone for months at a time. I showed up a few days before the Merge, reported to my master, and then vanished once more.”
“Who is this master that you served?”
Blondie grinned. “That’s where it does get interesting. As it turns out, I was an apprentice to Gorrial Lankorro, the Supreme Leader of the Sylurrian Mage Council and regent of the Sylurrian New World Colonies.”
“We still don’t understand the Sylurrian society and its many, confusing hierarchies,” Major Avery said.
“That’s for sure,” Mason said.
Thulkara had already grown bored and sat down in a corner, leaning against the wall and snoring, with a line of drool running out of her open mouth. Politics and intrigue put her to sleep like a lullaby.
As long as she stopped singing.
“Where does the Dark Khabal fit in with all of this?” Avery asked.
“My master Gorrial also happens to be the High Magus and the head necromancer of the secret Dark Khabal. He is its ranking mortal leader, and is in contact with the Dark Ghods, receiving directives from them.”
Mason gaped. “Mortal leader? Dark Ghods? Come on, Blondie. This is starting to sound like a fairy tale.”
“Tharanor is a world of magic and the supernatural,” Blondie told them. “Joke about it at your peril. The Dark Ghods do in fact exist…or, at least, powerful, dangerous beings from yet another dimension, who call themselves and consider themselves as such. As it turns out, I have recently recalled that my alter-ego Shaeddor was a staunch atheist, strangely enough.”
Mason blinked. “An atheist? Then how can you believe in these Dark Ghods?”
“You really must improve your listening skills, Mace. Just because I stated the fact that they do indeed exist, does not mean that I accept or worship them as such. I do not believe them to be actual ghods.”
“Huh? But you just–”
Blondie held up a hand and rolled his eyes. “These creatures, these beings exist, the same as do you or I. There is no denying that. Our universe is filled with many entities and beings and things that we can scarcely imagine, Mace. So they are powerful, indeed, and extremely dangerous, verily. In the best of worlds, we should probably avoid any interaction with them at all costs, but does that mean that we should bow and scrape before any such beings of darkness or light and become their slaves? I say no. We should not. And I will not.”
Major Avery still had all the color sucked out of his face. “Let me get this straight. First we have to deal with monsters, and mercenaries, and wizards. And now we have to fight beings with godlike powers? When does this begin?”
“No, no,” Blondie told him. “Thankfully, the Old Dark Ones are far removed from us, tucked away in their own dimension. They wouldn’t bother coming here to our little squalid, insignificant mudballs.”
Avery let out a breath. Mason felt about ready to do the same. It was all a lot to take in.
Then Blondie went on. “Not when they can get their cults like the Dark Khabal to do all of their dirty work for them.”
Major Avery gaped. “And this Shaeddor, this guy you were before, you were part of this cult?”
Blondie sighed and sat down. “I can see this is going to take a while, so let me explain. The Dark Khabal is a secret society–forbidden, actually. Back in the Old World on Tharanor, the practice of necromancy and membership in the Khabal are illegal, punishable by death. Most of Sylurrian society would be appalled and frightened by them, and demand that they be killed, once they were exposed. The Dark Ghods and their fanatical followers are consummate destroyers of everything they touch.”
Mason and Avery simply stared back at him.
“Look at it this way. Mace has told me stuff about your world’s various religions, in passing. They sound just as whacko and as crazy as ours, quite frankly. Why do you think I’m an atheist? Think of the Dark Khabal and the necromancers as the equivalent of your satanic and devil worshippers, but with real magic and actual supernatural powers to back up their madness.”
Major Avery snorted. “Hell, is that all? Now that you put it like that, I feel so much better.”
Mason asked his friend, “When you were this Shaeddor guy…you were a part of all of this?”
“Some of my knowledge and memories have actually returned,
” Blondie said. “I don’t think I was actually a full-fledged initiate into the cult itself. At the highest levels of the Dark Khabal, to enter the inner circle, a dark mage must perform a certain ritual involving the human sacrifice of a family member or a close friend. He or she must kill someone he or she loves, drink the blood from their heart while they still live, and offer the victim’s blood and soul to the Dark Ghods. Then he or she must swear eternal loyalty to the Dark Ones. This is called the Dark Oath or the Great Oath by some. I think, somehow, that I would have remembered all that…if I had done such a thing.”
Mason let out a deep breath. “I feel a little bit better, knowing that.”
“Back then, I didn’t even know for certain that my master, Gorrial, was a member of the cult, let alone their leader. But I had my suspicions, and I guess it does all make sense now.
“However, my past self was quite the opportunistic scoundrel on his own, who sought out power only for himself. My master was also a powerful man in accepted society–the supreme leader of all the Sylurrian mages. A perfect example of duplicity and deception. And even as his apprentice, even without being a member of the Dark Khabal, I would have been sworn to obey him and do his bidding. What’s more, I think that I did so willingly, in order to enrich myself and gain strength and power on my own.”
Major Avery struck the table with his fist. “Did the Khabal and these Dark Mages cause the Merge? Are they they ones behind all of this insanity and death?”
Blondie nodded slowly. “They are indeed, and their masters, the Dark Ghods, gave them the knowledge and power to bring about the Cataclysm of the Merge.”
“But why?” Mason asked. “Why do such a terrible thing?”
Blondie shrugged. “Because they can. That is what they are and what they do. They see a chance to cripple and enslave not one, but two worlds. And they still fully intend to do so. This is all just the beginning. They have plans far beyond this region–plans to conquer everything and everyone on both Urth and Tharanor. And they mean to crush and subjugate all who oppose them.”
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