by Andy Remic
He stopped, and knelt by Duchess. She was breathing deeply.
Mola’s head came up. “Who are you?” he slurred, feeling drugged, sleepy.
“I am Sameska,” said the elf rat, dark eyes gleaming. “Your Iron Wolf friends, Kiki and Dek and Zastarte, are on a mission into elf rat lands to find the Elf Heart and destroy it, freeing my people; purifying my people from an ancient curse. And yet, they walk into a terrible trap – for here, Bazaroth aea Quazaquiel holds a spell over the Elf Heart; ancient Equiem magick. When they get close, they will be torn apart by primal elemental forces. If the Tree Stalkers don’t kill them first.”
“My friends, they have gone in there,” Mola gestured to the Keep, “seeking this sorcerer, Bazaroth. They will kill him.”
“They have already failed,” said Sameska, stepping forward from under the iron archway. He knelt by Duchess, and stroked her fur. “They are imprisoned in Zanne Dungeons, even as we speak.”
“Then I will go to their rescue,” said Mola, despite feeling only a need for his bed.
“I will help you,” said Sameska, his voice hypnotic. He fixed his dark eyes on Mola. He grinned, and his teeth were like splinters of thorn. “We will find Bazaroth together, both you and your dogs, and I will help you kill him.” Sameska stroked Duchess. “Or else the Iron Wolves will surely die.”
Narnok groaned. Fuck me, that was one hefty session on the whiskey! I hope I didn’t do anything I shouldn’t. I hope my bastard axe didn’t get me into any more trouble. Actually. I fucking wish I hadn’t even been born.
Narnok’s head pounded. His mouth tasted like a sewer. His knuckles throbbed, and he groaned again inside; that was never a good sign. What local strutting farmer had he taken apart this time?
Then he opened his eyes, and the world spun around and into focus and reality came crashing in, along with his memories, and his fear. He was in a black stone dungeon. The walls were damp and festering with thick mounds of mould. His arms were chained above his head, and he sagged against his chains, his wrists burning and cramped. He spat on the floor before him, and a cool breeze drifted across his hot, fevered features. He looked to his left, where Trista was watching him from her own chains, a sardonic smile caressing her face.
“I think we fucked up,” she said.
“What were those tentacle things coming out of Randaman’s face?” blurted Narnok, and shuddered. Then he manoeuvred his chained hands and started poking at his own mouth. “They’ve not done it to me, have they, Trist? You can’t see anything sprouted out of my face, can you?”
“Only your unkempt nostril hair,” said Trista, wearily.
They hung there for a while, in silence, contemplating their fate.
“We’ve been in worse shit than this,” said Narnok, eventually.
“Yes. Possibly.”
“We’ll sort something out.”
“Again, possibly.”
Narnok moaned and wriggled. “Your stitches are holding up well,” he said, maybe a little too brightly.
Trista gave him a stern look. “Well, it’s always good to know one’s handiwork is appreciated; especially when one is about to die.”
“Don’t be like that, Trista.”
“What? Pragmatic?”
Narnok suddenly realised others were chained up with them; hard to see in the gloom, further down the stone wall filled with chains and manacles at a variety of handy heights. There was Veila, unconscious, head hung low, arms above and behind her in an inverted “V”. And squinting, Narnok could just make out Dag Da. Beyond that he could see Cunt and Meatboy, and other figures whom he assumed to be the prison boys.
“I wonder how many of us survived?” he muttered.
“That’s academic,” said Trista.
“How do you reckon that?”
“Because we’ll all soon be dead.”
There came a distant scraping of iron. The sound of heavy tumblers in a lock. Boots on stone.
Three figures could be seen, shadows at first bearing lanterns before them which illuminated faces in pale circles of glowing orange; demons drifting through the dark.
Narnok grunted when he saw Randaman and Faltor Gan. They stopped, one lantern swinging gently, and surveyed Narnok with narrow smiles.
“What do you cunts want?” he growled.
“Brave words from a man who’s chained up,” said Randaman.
Narnok shrugged. “I’m impressed you can speak, Red Thumb dregshit, last time I saw you, you had all this tentacle shit spewing from your mouth like you was something dredged out of the sea, dead – and better off there, if I don’t say so myself.”
Randaman’s face shifted into a scowl. “You don’t know of what you speak!” he snarled.
Narnok stared back, his single eye bright and focused, his scarred face hard and brutal. “I know I’d rather be dead that have octopus legs for a face. And as for him,” he gestured to Faltor Gan, with a nudge of his head, “what’s the matter, sea creature maggots got your tongue?”
“We are operating at a higher level than you could ever imagine,” said Faltor Gan, and gave a brittle smile. He lifted the lantern a little higher, as if better to regard Narnok. “The elf rats are now All Powerful across Vagandrak, Narnok of the Axe. You are dumber than a dead donkey if you can’t see the power shift in this land; we volunteered ourselves to the Great Sorcerer, Bazaroth – and as a reward, he gave us the gift that you witnessed in the Hall of Zanne Keep. We are truly honoured to be taken in by the elf rats; to be trusted, to be treated as equals; to be given the power of the quests.”
“You’ve got fucking tentacles in your mouth, boy!” roared Narnok, with booming laughter. “That’s not evolution, it’s a child’s evil fucking nightmare!”
Randaman drew a short, curved blade, and moved close, his eyes narrowing. “You are about to witness the greatest power shift Vagandrak has ever seen, you ugly old fuck; and we will be there at the forefront, serving the king, working with the armies, bringing the elf rats to total domination over human scum like Yoon, whose ancestors betrayed them all those centuries ago! But then, you’ll be able to see fuck all if I cut out your remaining eye, eh lad?”
He was close now, closer, and Narnok had reined back on his chains when they first entered the dungeon with their lanterns. Now, he surged forward and delivered a massive smashing headbutt that crushed Randaman’s nose into a broken flat pancake and sent him spinning around, arms outstretched, screeching, his dagger clattering to the stone floor as he finally sat down and pressed his hands to his nose. They met blood and sharp shards of bone and cartilage and he screamed at the touch, then looked up, eyes bright with hate, and he searched the ground for his dagger and crawled to his feet.
“I’m going to gut you now,” he said in a terribly calm voice.
“Enough!” snapped Faltor Gan, stepping in front of Randaman and gesturing for him to get rid of the knife. “Stop being a horse dick. You know why we’re here. You know what we have to do.”
Narnok, splattered with Randaman’s blood, grinned. “What you going to do, use those facial tentacles to arse-fuck us to death?”
“On the contrary.” Faltor Gan smiled, and gestured down the line. Now, by the light of the lantern Narnok could see the others awakening, groggy, faces filled with confusion and fear. Veila was muttering, her eyes wild. Dag Da was silent and stony-faced. He could see Bones, Meatboy, Darkdog and Cunt, who was scowling enough for all of them, his great thunderous brows touching in the middle.
“What are you going to do?” whispered Trista.
“We are going to make you one of us,” said Faltor Gan, and a fist-thick core of tentacles erupted from his mouth like organic vomit, like a tube of snakes. And behind him, grinning, Randaman did the same.
Narnok held his courage in place, strong and hard and true; managed to hold on well; right up to the point where the thrashing, oiled tentacles touched his face, like a caress from a warped snake lover, and then ran down his scarred jawline, touched delicately
to his lips, forced them apart like a powerful, forked lover’s tongue. And he could taste them, taste their wriggling, bitter tang, like rotting bark, like ancient mushrooms, like rotting meat long dead in the forest.
It was only as they pushed inside his mouth, that Narnok began to scream.
The mugginess of sleep was leaving Mola, and Sameska led him to the massive gate of Zanne Keep. Duchess and the other dogs were awake now. They’d whined a little, then crossed to Sameska and – to Mola’s utter, total amazement – licked his bony fingers as if he were their master.
“Charming,” he muttered, just a little put out.
They stood there, the tall spindly elf rat, the short, narrow-faced ex-Iron Wolf, and four dogs of renowned fighting heritage. The snow was falling more heavily, now, and Sameska turned his face to the heavens, eyes closed. He seemed to be tasting the air. Suddenly, quests emerged from his right hand and sank into the soil, moving deep, pushing aside soil and leaves and snow. Sameska sank to one knee and lowered his head. He seemed to stay like that for a long time.
Mola hopped from one foot to the other, glancing occasionally at his dogs. They seemed… odd. They were behaving in a very strange fashion. They kept glancing towards him as if they only half knew him; and that made him very nervous.
“Duchess. Here, girl. Good girl.”
She stared at him hard, then reluctantly, padded to his side.
This is turning into a long and evil fucking night, he thought sourly.
Finally, Sameska roused and stood. The quests retracted into his hands like slippery sliding worms into a vat of jelly. Mola stared, and felt his stomach turn over with a mighty churning, as a shudder wracked through his body.
“We don’t have much time,” said the elf rat, voice husky.
“You know where Kiki and Dek are?”
“Yes. They are in Zalazar. We must find Bazaroth, or they will face certain destruction.”
Mola stared hard at Sameska. “You do realise I don’t exactly have much love for these people,” he said, after a few moments. “You do realise I only love my dogs. Right?”
“Of course,” said Sameska. “However. If you do not wish you – and your dogs – and your entire people to be enslaved by the twisted, poisoned elf rats under Daranganoth and his pet sorcerer, Bazaroth, then we must act. Do you have no loyalty for your country?”
Mola considered this. “Not much, I reckon,” he said. “But I hear what you’re saying. Let’s do it. Er. What exactly are we going to do? This door is looking pretty fucking thick and impenetrable to me, my new spindly, bark-faced elf rat friend.”
Sameska gave him a smile, and extended his hand. Quests surged out and entered the oak portal – all twenty feet of it. They extended through the wood, making cracking sounds, spreading out like a pale spider’s web just beneath the surface, racing through the grain and then, suddenly, there came an almighty titanic crack like thunder, like mountains breaking up, like the end of the world. The giant gates guarding Zanne Portal broke into thousands of pieces, jagged chunks of timber like so many axe-hacked logs. Wood dust billowed out, and for a moment Mola felt as if he stood in the midst of a sawmill during a violent storm. And then it blasted past him, filling his eyes with grit and making him sneeze with its warm, invasive passage.
“Follow me,” said Sameska, and strode forward.
Still clutching his sword, Mola followed and, in silence, his dogs came after him.
It was like a dream, a blurring of reality, a honey-leaf drugsmoke vision. Mola followed the elf rat, loping through endless corridors of opulence, through carpeted halls, through great vast libraries lined floor to ceiling with ancient tomes and wood panelling; they moved through chapels of religious calm, through great rooms with intricate tapestries of ancient battles and rich oil paintings of long forgotten monarchs. And all the while, Mola’s dogs panted after him, and he panted after Sameska, and he wondered what the fuck he was doing and maybe, just maybe, he should turn around and do the right thing – run away from this place, head alone for the mountains and seek out a simple life of solitude in a crude log cabin.
But it never works out like that, Mola.
If you run away, the past always comes to haunt you. To hunt you down.
If you flee, the fucking elf rats will find you in the end.
They always do.
It always comes back to get you.
They stopped. Sameska turned and looked at Mola. They were in an ancient series of passages, hewn from some kind of rock chamber. The walls were rough. Mola suddenly realised they were underground; probably underneath Zanne Keep itself.
“Yes?” he found himself saying, and kicked himself mentally. He sounded like a dog panting and begging to its bloody master.
“Through this door is Bazaroth aea Quazaquiel. The elf rat sorcerer. Servant of the elf rat king, Daranganoth. Are you ready to face your nemesis, Mola of the Dogs?”
“Well, actually, I’ve just been thinking about that…”
“We must act now!”
“Er. I meant to say, Sameska, I’m not your average hero-type material, you know? I mean, I have my fighting dogs and everything, but to be brutally honest with you, all that war and hero stuff was a long time ago.” He waved his sword. “I haven’t used this thing properly in years. You could say I’m a bit rusty.”
Sameska stared at him. “You are one of the Iron Wolves of legend,” he whispered. “You will overcome.”
And with a quick movement, he blasted the oak door from its hinges. Duchess and the others began snarling in vicious hate and surged forward, then stopped just within the interior. It was an incredibly ancient chapel, rough hewn walls carved from the rock itself beneath Zanne Keep. There was a throne, but this was not like the pompous, glossy, glitzy Yoon throne that squatted up in the main hall of Zanne Keep like some actor’s prop on a stage. No. This was a basic chair hewn from the living rock of the chamber itself. It was inlaid with strange bones, their shapes unrecognisable to Mola’s eyes in his swift appraisal of the scene before him.
But what he did see was the sorcerer, Bazaroth, seated on the rock chair with his face displaying… ecstasy?
Mola stepped forward, sword out, his dogs growling at his knees and midriff. Saliva drooled from fangs ready to kill. Muscles were bunched. Mola’s dogs were poised, ready to attack. Ready to kill.
“Welcome,” said Bazaroth.
There were others in the chamber, which was lit by soft candles in alcoves which circled the room. In fact, it seemed more than just a chapel. It felt like some deep religious altar. It felt, to Mola in those fleeting seconds, like some portal to a different time, a different world, a different religion.
The Equiem, whispered something in his mind, in a cracked voice of breaking tomb lids.
The Old Gods.
The Bad Gods.
The Seeds of Chaos.
The Takers in the Dark.
“I think we need a talk, mate,” snapped Mola, puffing out his chest and reverting to his brisk military stance. It was all he knew. All he could do. He felt Sameska come in behind him, drifting like a ghost. He eyed the figures in heavy brown robes and frowned. There were some shapes there he recognised. Some… faces that in the candlelight looked a little bit like…
“No,” mouthed Mola, eyes widening.
Narnok smiled, throwing back the hood of his brown robe. A fist of tentacles thrust from his mouth, and it appeared he was screaming in silence as they wriggled and squirmed before his face, hissing like a writhing pit of snakes.
And they were all there. Trista. Veila. Randaman. Faltor Gan. Meatboy. Darkdog. Even Cunt turned, his shaved and tattooed head glowing under the soft light of the candles and, as his mouth opened, so tentacles squirmed free and wriggled in front of his face like so many oiled eels in a tube…
Bazaroth lowered his head. His eyes were old. More ancient than the mountains.
Narnok drew out his double-headed axe, and his eyes were dark and evil as the parasitic snak
es in his mouth and throat and chest squirmed and fought and stretched out towards new fresh meat…
“Kill them,” said Bazaroth, and his servants charged.
CHILDHOOD’S END
Kiki and Dek travelled in silence for the rest of the day, each lost in philosophical contemplation of their friend, now gone and dead, their mission to save Vagandrak yet further compromised. Even as a trio it had been going to be a tough assignment; but with Prince Zastarte dead down some dark mountain crevasse, and just the two of them to now carry the torch, their increased vulnerability weighed heavy on sombre minds.
The storm had continued for a while, thunder rumbling through the mountains, ancient gods battling with sword and shield. The path wound on to higher and higher peaks, the wind biting like a fighting dog, snow flurries further making progress and comfort more difficult.
They halted at one point, huddling in a shallow cave whilst Dek made a hot thin soup with their meagre rations. They ate in silence and warmed hands over the fire. Kiki found herself lost, deep in thought; she remembered the early days with Zastarte, his well-groomed beauty, his witty lines, the fights, the wine, the drugs, the sex…
“I’ll miss the dandy bastard,” said Dek, eventually. “Although I hated his perfume. He stank like a rancid prostitute.”
“I can’t believe he’s gone.”
“But to be fair, you hadn’t seen him for a couple of decades.”
“Yes.”
“And he had taken to torturing young women. Don’t forget that.”
“Yes. I know.”
“So, to all intents and purposes, he was a stranger to you.”
Kiki stared hard at Dek. “Are you intentionally trying to fuck me off?”
“No! No, not at all. I just…”
“You just what? Wanted to desecrate the memory of a man who fought with us, died for us, and his corpse isn’t even fucking cold yet?”
