Shattered Lands 3 Demon Wars

by Darren Pillsbury

  “Okay, maybe I picked the right race after all,” he grinned to himself.

  The kids looked like dirty little rugrats, with grubby faces and crazy hair, but he didn’t care about the kids. Not as long as there were some single chicks amongst the fur-clad supermodels.

  The griffin touched down in the grass a hundred feet away –

  And suddenly every woman in the place produced hatchets out of nowhere and ran screaming at him.

  The kids, too – they started screaming and throwing mud clods at him, pelting him with hard chunks of dirt.

  “VHAT THE HELL?!” Drogar yelled.

  The griffin screeched and beat the air with its wings as rocks pelted its body.

  He was just about to take off when the six riders rode up and the grey-haired leader yelled, “HALT!”

  Immediately all the women stopped in their tracks, and the kids quit throwing stones.

  They still looked like they wanted to kill Drogar, though.

  The grey-haired barbarian pointed. “Trial by Vark.”

  Immediately the entire tribe went wild and started grunting – women, children, and men alike. “UNH, UNH, UNH, UNH, UNH!”

  Drogar just watched uneasily. If he’d known this was what Hurokians did, he would have chosen to play a human. Or an elf. Dark elf maybe. Hell, Mira was pretty damn cute…

  What he would not have chosen was to hang out with a bunch of grunting idiots, no matter how hot the women were.

  The grey-haired leader got down off his horse and put his hand in the air.

  The entire tribe went quiet.

  “Trial by Vark,” the leader yelled, and motioned for Drogar to get down off the griffin.

  He did so – warily – and walked out into the grass field.

  “Soooo… vhat’s Vark? Is this some sort of strength thing?” Drogar flashed a smile at the ladies. “Cuz, y’know, I’m pretty strong.”

  All the women pantomimed pulling out invisible penises from their loin cloths – and then they pantomimed chopping them off with their hatchets and biting down savagely on them.

  Drogar took several hurried steps back.

  If that’s what ‘Vark’ was, screw this, he was getting the hell out of here. Eric could take over the whole damn Shattered Lands if he wanted – not even Hell had been THIS bad –

  “VARK!” the leader yelled.

  “VARK, VARK, VARK, VARK!” the women and children screamed.

  Drogar was wondering how many skulls he was going to have to crack to safeguard his junk when suddenly an animal hide ‘door’ on one of the yurts flipped open –

  And the biggest bastard Drogar had ever seen walked out.

  He was a Hurokian. His lower incisors gave away that much. But he was almost twelve feet tall – five feet taller than Drogar. He also looked like he weighed twice as much as him, all of it muscle. His body looked like it had been carved out of oak, he was so ripped. His shoulders could have carried the griffin on them – after he’d killed it with his bare hands, which were the size of Christmas turkeys. A leather strap a foot wide crossed his torso; on his back was holstered a battle ax twice as big as Drogar’s. His teeth were broken and jagged from a hundred blows in battle. His black hair was like a lion’s mane, his face was crisscrossed with jagged scars, and his eyes shone with hatred.

  “I… AM… VARK!” the giant roared.

  “Oh crahp,” Drogar whined.

  16

  The grey-haired leader pointed at Drogar. “He says he wants our tribe to fight, bleed, and die alongside him against an evil sorcerer doot!”

  “Not the dying part,” Drogar said, flapping one hand dismissively like he was trying to downplay that part.

  Vark’s face crinkled in confusion. “What is a ‘doot’?”

  “A huuuu-man,” Iron-Grey answered.

  “He asks this as the blood-right of a son of Hurok?”

  “Aye.”

  Vark stared at Drogar for a long moment… and then he roared and pulled the axe off his back.

  As the giant strode across the field, the earth shook from his footsteps.

  Or maybe that was just Drogar’s buckling knees.

  The entire tribe was grunting now: “UNH, UNH, UNH, UNH – ”

  “Vhat, I got to fight this guy?!” Drogar yelled in a panic at the grey-haired leader.

  No one answered, they just grunted louder.

  He basically got his answer, though, when Vark swung the battle-ax through the air, straight at Drogar’s head.

  Drogar dove to the ground, rolled, and ran about ten feet away.

  “You are no Hurokian!” Vark roared. “You are a cowardly Slisock!”

  “No I’m not – ”

  Vark swung again.

  Drogar dodged and ran. “DOOT, there’s an evil sorcerer – ”

  Another whoosh of the battle ax.

  “He’s going to come here – ”

  Dodge, duck –

  “We’ve got to fight together, doot!”

  “FIGHT LIKE A HUROKIAN, YOU SLISOCK!” Vark roared.

  All the children of the tribe threw mud clods and smacked Drogar in the face.

  Everyone roared with laughter.

  Drogar sighed. This was not going to end well.

  He twirled his hand in the air, accessed the menu, and quickly dialed his pain levels down.

  If he was going to die, at least it wouldn’t hurt.

  Much.

  17

  The first blow wasn’t bad.

  Vark swung and Drogar blocked his ax mid-air with a CLANG!

  But then the giant lifted his leg and slammed his foot into Drogar’s chest, sending him sprawling backwards.

  You CHEATER! Drogar was about to roar, but then he remembered he was fighting a barbarian. If you weren’t cheating, you weren’t trying.

  He jumped to his feet as the giant’s ax whistled past his ear –

  But there was a meaty CRUNCH as Drogar pulled away, and a dull throb in his left hand.

  He looked down –

  Blood was spurting from the stumps of three missing fingers.

  Thank God he’d turned those pain levels down.

  The entire tribe stepped up their grunting. “UNH! UNH! UNH! UNH!”

  “BASTAHRD!” Drogar roared, and flung himself back into battle.

  Vark bellowed and met him halfway.

  CLANG!

  CRASH!

  SLAM!

  The giant’s ax flashed through the air –

  Drogar was too slow.

  There was a sting across his throat, and blood spurted bright red across the grass.

  The asshole cut my throat…

  The sound of the tribe grunting UNH! UNH! UNH! seemed to grow further away.

  The sunlight was dimming, and shadows closed in on his vision from all sides.

  He put his hand to his neck, trying to stop the flow of blood –

  Vark roared as he swung the ax directly overhead, right into Drogar’s skull.

  There was a dull impact, like someone had rapped him hard with a ruler –

  Then his knees buckled, he fell to the ground, and everything went dark.

  18

  Just ten seconds later, Drogar woke up.

  He was lying on the grass staring up at the blue sky.

  He squinted and felt the top of his head gingerly…

  No gaping wounds.

  He felt his throat –

  Solid flesh.

  He looked at his left hand.

  All five fingers and no blood.

  Niiiiiiice.

  The barbarian tribe was grunting loudly just fifty feet away. “UNH! UNH! UNH! UNH!”

  Drogar raised his head to see what was going on. Vark was taking a victory lap, his bloody ax raised high overhead as he gave all the women his vicious, broken-toothed smile.

  A kid was the first to notice that the slain adversary wasn’t quite dead.

  “AAAAAAAH!” he screamed as he pointed at Drogar. Not in a panicked way,
more like an Everybody shut up and look at what I see! kind of way.

  The entire tribe followed the kid’s finger and suddenly went quiet. They looked more bewildered than anything else.

  Vark turned, and his brow furrowed in confused outrage.

  Then he bellowed and ran at Drogar full-tilt. “AAAAARRRHHHH!”

  “Aw crahp,” Drogar muttered as he rolled out of the way at the last second.

  19

  The second phase of the battle didn’t go much better than the first.

  Drogar got in a couple of kicks as they clashed battleaxes, but Vark was just too big and strong. Within 60 seconds he kicked sideways at Drogar’s knee, snapping it in a direction Nature never intended.

  It hurt, but felt more like a punch than a crippling injury.

  Of course, once he was hopping on his right leg and the left calf was flopping around like a tube sock, it was pretty obvious it was a crippling injury.

  The crowd started grunting again. “UNH, UNH, UNH, UNH – ”

  Twenty seconds later it was over, with Drogar on his back looking at the ax buried ten inches in his chest.

  Dim vision… faraway sounds… darkness.

  He woke up ten seconds later.

  Chest was fine.

  Knee was back in place and feeling a-okay.

  Vark was doing his victory lap again, all the ladies were trying to feel his muscles, the entire tribe was grunting –

  And then the same kid pointed at Drogar again. “AAAAAAAAH!”

  The entire tribe fell silent again.

  This time, though, they looked completely freaked out.

  Vark turned around like You have got to be KIDDING me and ran screaming at Drogar.

  This time, the killing blow wasn’t good enough.

  The damn giant lopped off his head.

  Drogar was on his back one second, and then he was floating in the air, looking around.

  He caught sight of his headless corpse on the ground.

  Vark lifted him like a lantern into the air.

  He could see all the women below him, howling and laughing as they pointed –

  Then everything dimmed and grew quiet… and finally dark.

  He woke up on the ground ten seconds later, staring up at the sky.

  He sat up, and the entire tribe screamed and pointed.

  Vark looked around like NOOOO!

  He looked at his hand carrying his vanquished foe’s head, as though to appeal to it as proof that what was happening was impossible –

  Except the head was gone.

  Vark screamed like a little girl and staggered backwards.

  Every single person in the tribe fell to their knees and bowed with their faces in the grass.

  Vark looked around in terror at everybody else, then dove to the ground and prostrated himself, too.

  “Forgive us, Undying One!” the grey-haired leader yelled from where his face was kissing dirt. “We did not recognize you, but we know you now!”

  “Undying One, Undying One, UNH, UNH, UNH!” the entire tribe grunted.

  Drogar made a face like Not bad and looked around at his newly converted subjects.

  If he’d known that all he had to do to conquer them was die a bunch of times, he would’ve gotten it with over a lot quicker.

  20

  Vlisil

  Vlisil set his chickaril down on an inlet of marshy ground in the swamp. He could have sworn he’d seen a small pack of goblins from the air. Plus the map said he was in Quras, the region where the largest concentration of goblins lived.

  Something moved in the bushes.

  Three goblins appeared from behind a mass of tangled branches. They looked very much like Vlisil in most respects – green, bald, warty, with pointy ears – but they were dressed differently. Whereas Vlisil wore leather armor, these three were all dressed in dark woven clothing buttoned up to their necks. There was a larger male about Vlisil’s size, and a younger male and female who were considerably smaller. The female was only identifiable as such because she wore a dress instead of pants, vest, and shirt. They all carried wicker baskets with some sort of berries inside.

  The three goblins stared at him. Not in alarm, but more along the lines of, Who the hell is this?

  Since nobody else was saying anything, Vlisil decided to speak first. “Have a care, goblin, I am Vlisil the dagger-toothed – ”

  “Why are you talking like that?” the older male asked.

  Vlisil stopped in surprise. The older goblin sounded like… well… not like a goblin.

  He sounded like he would have fit in back home in Connecticut.

  “Like what?” Vlisil demanded.

  “Like a poorly written villain in a traveling play.”

  “I don’t – that’s not – this is how goblins talk!” Vlisil said angrily, stumbling all over his words.

  “That’s not how I talk,” the goblin said matter-of-factly. “Nor anyone else I know.”

  Vlisil struck his chest in a manly… er, goblinly sort of way. “Well, I am a great goblin warrior – ”

  “What’s that?” the female goblin asked.

  “What’s what?” Vlisil said, confused.

  She pointed behind him. “That.”

  Vlisil looked behind him. “Oh – that’s a chickaril.”

  “What’s a chickaril?” the boy goblin asked.

  “That,” Vlisil said, pointing at his ride.

  “We can see the thing you’re pointing at is what you refer to as a ‘chickaril,’” the elder goblin said. “What they’re asking is, what manner of creature is this… ‘chickaril’?”

  “It’s a… it’s a flying… it’s a chickaril!” Vlisil spluttered, mostly because he had no idea what to say other than ‘a giant flying baby chicken.’ And he didn’t really want to admit to flying around on a giant baby chicken.

  If only Drogar could see me now, Vlisil thought. He’d be laughing his ass off.

  “You keep repeating ‘chickaril’ like it’s some sort of answer,” the adult goblin chided him. “Is it a baby? Or is it an adult?”

  “It looks like an overgrown duckling with bad eyes,” the girl goblin remarked, entirely serious and without humor.

  “What do you do with it?” the boy goblin asked.

  “I ride it!” Vlisil snapped.

  “Aren’t you a great goblin warrior?” the girl asked.

  “Yes,” Vlisil said pompously.

  “Wouldn’t a great goblin warrior ride something else, like a wyvern or a griffin?”

  “Wha– NO – ”

  “Or at least something a little more impressive than that,” the boy goblin said.

  “IT’S IMPRESSIVE!” Vlisil shouted.

  “Yes, obviously,” the elder goblin said sarcastically. “Whatever it is, you probably shouldn’t leave it that close to the bog.”

  “Why not?”

  Suddenly there was a SPLOOSH of water, a reptilian grunt, and the panicked Peep peep peep! of the chickaril.

  Vlisil turned around just in time to see a long, scaly body disappearing under the water with the fuzzy bird.

  “Because that might happen,” the elder goblin said.

  “AAAAAAAHH!” Vlisil screamed. “NOOOOO!”

  He ran to the edge of the water, then backed away hurriedly, afraid something might try to snatch him.

  “That was my ride out of here!” Vlisil screeched, clutching at his leather cap in despair.

  “I guess you’ll have to walk, then,” the elder goblin said as he and his two children turned to leave.

  “Wait – I need to come with you!” Vlisil wailed as he stumbled towards them.

  The elder goblin looked at Vlisil like he was something unpleasant stuck to the bottom of his shoe. “Why? Because your chicken got eaten?”

  “Chickaril. Yes, that’s part of it, but I’m also gathering up goblins to fight in an army against an evil sorcerer – ”

  “Not interested,” the goblin said as he turned away.

 
; “Wait!” Vlisil cried out, and maneuvered around in front of the trio. “The sorcerer destroyed Blackstone!”

  “Good for him,” the elder goblin said as he and his children brushed past.

  Vlisil ran along behind them. “But he might come here!”

  “Why would he come here, of all places?” the goblin asked in a bored voice.

  “He wants to rule the Shattered Lands!”

  The goblin looked at Vlisil with a sardonic expression. “He wants to rule a swamp.”

  “I – well – maybe! He’s power-mad – he wants to rule everything!”

  “Then he’s welcome to it,” the goblin said as he waddled along the marshy ground.

  “We have to join together and fight!” Vlisil insisted.

  “How many other goblin tribes have you convinced to join you so far?”

  Vlisil stopped walking quite so fast. “Uh… well, actually, you’re the first people I’ve talked to.”

  “Come see us when you’ve gotten the goblins of the Holmstrod on your side,” the goblin said.

  It must have been some sort of joke, because both the boy and the girl snickered.

  “Well, they’re definitely on the list,” Vlisil said defensively, even though he had no idea where ‘the Holmstrod’ was – especially since his map was in some swamp monster’s belly.

  “Better get going,” the goblin said. “It’s going to be a long walk without your chicken.”

  “Chickaril,” Vlisil snapped, then asked pathetically, “Can I, uh… can I follow you?”

  “I would prefer you didn’t.”

  “But I don’t know my way out of this swamp!”

  “Not my concern.”

  “Please?” Vlisil begged.

  They never said ‘yes,’ but they didn’t exactly shoo him away, either, as they tromped through the marshes.

  21

  The goblin family lived in a small village on a gloomy moor, with narrow dirt roads that wound between buildings. The homes were primarily earthen huts with stone chimneys puffing out wisps of smoke. Wooden corrals enclosed herds of creatures that looked like long-haired Shetland ponies with deer antlers. The ‘ponies’ were so small that goblins could have ridden them exactly like humans rode horses.