by Andy Remic
During this fast, savage battle, Dek had backed away, face pale, and readied himself for attack. But Kiki was cool, her eyes watching the wolves. Then she turned to Dek. “It’s all right,” she said, voice low, and husky, and filled with an incredible well of emotion. “They are… not our enemies.”
“Bollocks!”
“Sheath your sword, soldier,” she said. Her eyes were fixed on his. “Do it, if you want to live.”
Dek sheathed his weapon at the third attempt.
Kiki, ignoring the wolves with their bloody muzzles and narrowed eyes, turned her attention back to the White Towers – and walked swiftly towards the gleaming white walls. As she walked, she closed her eyes and felt the magick of the land. Felt the polluted magick. This place was poisoned beyond repair; toxic, beyond cleansing; dark, beyond the possibility of light. And yet these two towers stood like beacons. And inside, she knew, was the Elf Heart – a device created by the ancient kings and magickers of Vagandrak in order to twist their enemies, the elves, imprisoning them here; and in the process, polluting and twisting an entire nation.
Kiki searched outwards, and downwards, and felt the incredible power charged in the land; in the rocks and twisted trees, in every blade of grass, in every tiny worm that crawled and struggled through the soil.
Her eyes flickered open, and she stopped a foot away from the wall. She reached out, but did not touch the surface.
“This place has been waiting for me,” she said.
“Yeah, but how do we get in?” said Dek uneasily, one eye still on the bloody, panting wolves which made no attempt to attack. It’s a bloody miracle, he thought. A bloody bastard miracle!
Kiki closed her eyes again, and tentatively felt her way forward with her spirit force – there came some kind of sudden crack and Kiki was picked up and accelerated backwards across the clearing, hitting the snow hard and rolling over maybe twenty times, like a broken rag doll. Dek stood for a moment, mouth open in shock at what he’d just seen, then ran to her, dropping to his knees and cradling her head. Her eyes opened, and blood trickled from her mouth.
“Get away from me!” she hissed. “Bazaroth… he is inside me… usurping my powers… sucking out the Equiem magick…”
“What can I do?” cried Dek, feeling helpless, like a young child again.
“Nothing…” murmured Kiki, and she began to change; like some terrible vision, her hair started to crawl back into her skull, retreating and changing to a jet black, like a clump of thick wires, until only a central clump remained. Her skin paled, bleaching yellow, and became gently ridged as if she had scales. Her nose twisted, and her teeth cracked and narrowed to little points. And then there came more snapping sounds, and Kiki’s skin shrivelled around her hands, her fingers closing, fusing together to form solid spikes. Within her boots, her feet did the same, and the useless items were kicked away as she began to thrash and scream and Dek stared down at this horrible creature below him, his Kiki changed into some incredible monster. There was a hiss as his sword cleared his scabbard and confusion slammed like a meteor through his brain. Was this Kiki? Really Kiki? Where had his love gone? Emotions raged through him, burning him and turning his mind inside out. What can I do? What can I fucking do?
There came a feral growl, and the wolves moved towards Dek and this shivering, horrible creature vulnerable on the floor.
“Kiki!” screamed Dek, looking around frantically as the wolves loped towards him with blood-slick muzzles. He knew he was fucked. There was no way one man could fight three wolves, never mind this pack of monsters. And they had shown how terribly efficient in the art of death they really were. The massacre of the Tree Stalkers had proved that.
“Kiki!” he bellowed again, and then the creature on the floor sat up, and its head rotated, and it looked at Dek with iron-dark eyes. Slowly, it spoke.
“I’m sorry, Dek. Sorry you had to see me this way.”
Dek froze, and the wolves formed a circle around the two. They were panting, lolling pink tongues hanging out and dripping Tree Stalker blood, their eyes fixed not on Dek, but on this creature on the ground before them. Dek felt one of the wolves nudge him in the back of the legs, and he closed his eyes for a moment, breathing deeply, and summoning a strength of will to not attack. To make a single strike was to die. He knew this instinctively.
“Kiki?” he said again, softly this time, disbelief raging through him.
The creature stood, painfully, swaying as if learning to balance, and Dek’s eyes travelled down, fixing on the points where human fingers had once been. “Kiki, what did that bastard sorcerer do to you?”
“He took away the powers of the Shamathe,” said Kiki, her voice the same and yet curiously different. As if heard from a long distance away; through decades of twisted years. “He took me back in time. He turned me back to Lorna. Into the shape in which I was born. When I became powerful, I changed my physical shell, Dek. I changed myself to look like the beautiful people around me. Or so I thought. For not all beauty is in the face, is it?” She smiled, and it looked wrong on her twisted, yellow-scaled face.
“You were born like this?” sighed Dek.
“Yes. I’m sorry. I wanted to tell you, so, so many times. I wanted to show you. To test your love.”
“Why did you not?”
“Because I was afraid,” said Kiki, tears running down her mottled cheeks. “Afraid you would leave me if you knew what I really was, under the skin. The real me. The monster hidden inside the beautiful shell.”
Dek clamped shut his teeth, and narrowed his eyes, and asked himself the question: would I have left? And to his very great shame, he did not know the true answer.
Suddenly, the wolf pack growled as one, a low rumbling of threat like thunder, and one stepped forward towards Kiki, a heavy, ponderous approach as its lips drew back into a terrible snarl. The wolf was a touch larger than the others, and had a black slash of fur across its muzzle. Its great fangs opened before Kiki’s face, eyes fixed on her.
“No!” screamed Dek, and, with sword lifting fast, he leapt to the attack.
Mola braced himself, face dropping into a hardened place of combat. The world seemed to slow. He remembered Dalgoran standing over him with a vial of bright green liquid. And the drops leaking down into his mouth. They had tasted… sweet. But that had been the last of it. The last of the pleasure. The rest had been a world of pain. A world of shit.
And now he was here.
His dogs growled.
But he growled deeper…
Eain doam shalsoar. The Art of the Shapeshifter. It reared inside him unbidden. It roared through his veins like the most powerful drug. His skin darkened, hairs like iron bristles easing across his skin as Narnok and Trista and Faltor Gan and the others turned and lurched towards him; towards his Dogs.
“Take them,” he slurred, words hardly human as his own muzzle emerged, pushing slowly outwards from his face with subtle crunches of rearranging bone and muscle. The images were bright in his mind; brighter than a furnace.
“You are special, Mola,” said Dalgoran.
“I am?”
“You are the only one who can do it alone…”
Duchess, Duke, Sarge and Thrasher launched at the gathered enemies in the rough cut stone chamber. A vicious fight ensued. Narnok issued a great, strangled roar and the tentacles thrashed from his opened maw. His axe screamed through the air but Mola’s dogs were too fast. Fangs snapped and tore. Duchess and Thrasher, especially, were in their element: eyes bright, hearts wild.
Mola’s fangs emerged from his engorged muzzle, and it hurt. Hurt like no other pain in the fucking world. But then. But then…
“Go on,” urged Sameska.
And Mola charged through the throng, his great, heavily-muscled body smashing enemies out of the way, his goal single – and simple. Bazaroth saw him coming, and directed more of his followers, more of his puppets, towards the charging… wolf. But Duchess and Thrasher were there, tearing free limbs, chewing ou
t throats, working as a unit to clear a path for Mola as he charged on all fours, a huge and terrifying werewolf, and leapt…
There came a mighty cracking, snapping sound. Mola rode Bazaroth’s corpse to the ground, and spat out the head, which bounced across the stone chamber. Blood poured from the elf rat, thick black blood, which smelled old and sour and rancid. Smoke rose from the foul-smelling ichor. Bazaroth’s ancient claws clenched and unclenched in a rapid death spasm.
Mola lifted his muzzle to a sky above deep stone walls and frozen soil, a sky filled with fire and clouds and evil. And the moon. A full moon.
Mola howled.
“No!” screamed Kiki, as some unseen wolf hit Dek in the back, slamming him to the ground. He lay perfectly still, stunned, waiting for the great fangs to close over his head and rip it free. His face was scrunched up, waiting for the pain, waiting to feel fangs puncture his skull, bringing instant death.
But it did not come.
After a few moments, the weight lifted from him. He lay still, and he could just see his sword a couple of feet away. Instead, he rolled over and sat up. He looked across at Kiki and she forced a smile.
“Bazaroth’s spell has been broken,” she said, simply. And gestured with a splintered arm towards the White Towers. They were shimmering, and a single portal had appeared at the base. “I must go inside. I will find the Elf Heart. I will destroy it. I will free these creatures from a thousand year spell.”
“No,” said Dek, a terrible fear invading his heart. For he knew; he knew she would not return. She wasn’t explaining her actions. She was saying goodbye.
Climbing to his feet, he moved towards Kiki, and took her in his arms. “No,” he repeated. “Stay with me. You owe the elf rats nothing.”
“I will destroy it,” she said, gently, and her eyes met his. And in there he saw the old Kiki, or at least, the woman he knew and loved. He hugged her tightly to him. “You know I will not return.”
“No,” he wept.
“I must. We owe these elves their freedom. It is the right thing to do.”
Gently, she disengaged from Dek, and reaching up, struggling with the points of her arms, she removed a key on a chain from around her neck. She looped it over his. “In a chest beneath Drakerath Fortress, Dalgoran stored the means for lifting the curse of the Iron Wolves. This key will open it. You can all be free, Dek. All of you.”
“But not you?”
“My path was chosen from the day I was born,” said Kiki, words like smoke. Her eyes shone. “I was bestowed with the power of the Shamathe for a reason – with the power of the Equiem. I was born to right a terrible wrong. And that is what I must do.”
Leaning heavily on the wolf with the striped muzzle, she started towards the White Towers. The other wolves loped after them, forming a protective circle. Kiki reached the doorway leading inside; leading to the Elf Heart.
She turned, and looked back at Dek. He raised his hand, and held it there, as white light blossomed around Kiki, his woman, his lover, his love. She stepped inside. The glow brightened, then died. And she was gone.
Dek slowly lowered his hand, and the wolves turned as one and stared at him. He blinked, and realised the portal had vanished, also. Again, the White Towers were impenetrable.
“What are you lot fucking staring at?” he snarled, reaching down and picking up his sword, and gripping it tightly. “You want some of this?” He waved the blade.
The wolves turned, and loped off through the snow. Dek watched them leave, waiting until they’d vanished into the trees. Then he walked to the walls of the White Towers and reaching out, touched the smooth, cool surface. It felt like glass. He banged his fist against it. It felt depressingly solid.
“Shit.”
What now?
What to do?
Where to go?
Dek turned, and realised the horses had bolted; either at the appearance of the Tree Stalkers, or maybe the pack of wolves; or maybe both.
“Sons of bitches,” he growled, and started back towards the trees. When he reached the edge of the black, twisted forest, he stopped and looked back at the White Towers. The place where his love had sacrificed herself for a race of creatures they found it hard to comprehend. He had a strange feeling he would one day return.
Dek straightened his back, sheathed his sword, and snapped a smart salute. “Farewell, Captain Kikellya Mandasayard of the Iron Wolves. You were an honourable woman and a brilliant soldier. Wait for me in the Hall of Heroes, won’t you? I’ll see you there… one day.”
He smiled. Wiped away a tear.
Then Dek turned, stepped down the path, and was swallowed by the black, twisted forest.
EPILOGUE
There was no flash of lightning, no great storm, no fireball, no violent wash of bright holy light. There were no singing angels, nor cheering crowds. No great mob uprising. No massive slaughter of invading elf rats. No battle of massive armies. No great conquest by a handsome king in shining armour. There was simply a pulse. It began in the White Towers, and spread slowly through Zalazar, across the mountains, and on to Vagandrak – and beyond. It travelled through the mountains and the forests, through the plants and the insects and the earth. It radiated outwards, and it purified the land of the man-made toxins which had poisoned the world. It broke the ancient spell of the magickers of old. It removed the curse which had plagued the elf rats.
And it brought with it some kind of peace.
Across Vagandrak, people slowly came out of hiding. Gates were opened, doors and windows thrown wide. Thousands awoke from deep dark sleeps, and put their hands to their mouths, for they’d suffered a million nightmares of growing squirming roots from their very own throats and tongues and lips. For many, these nightmares would last until the day they died. The dead were taken beyond the many city walls, and burned in huge funeral pyres, along with any remaining elf rats who were captured. People chopped down twisted black trees, which had grown through the streets. Black smoke filled the skies over Vagandrak for many months.
Sameska left Zanne, and crossed the mountains, and took up his rightful rule after it was discovered that his brother, Daranganoth, King of Zalazar, was murdered by the evil sorcerer, Bazaroth aea Quazaquiel. He led two armies, both numbering ten thousand, who came across the White Lion Mountains and met the remains of Bazaroth’s dark and treacherous elf rats, the ones tainted with evil deeds of murder and control and human puppetry. The battle was decided on one wintry morning, on the Kantarok Plains north of the Rokroth Marshes. Sameska’s elf rat forces, bedecked in black steel helms and armour, carrying black swords and black shields, and even in this short time showing a reduced toxicity: a straightening of backs, a clearing of eyes, a fluidity of movement. In eerie silence, except for the thudding of charging boots, the two armies clashed. The battle lasted three hours, and ended with the surrender of two thousand of Bazaroth’s elf rats.
Sameska had them executed the following morning, and buried in a massive pit. He returned with his armies to the lands of Zalazar as, on the horizon, Yoon sat with his own battalions and watched, a snarl on his face.
A month after Bazaroth aea Quazaquiel’s killing, the first leaves of green sprouted on a tree deep in a forest in the centre of Zalazar. Within a week, and despite the winter chill, green could be seen on every branch and tree throughout the once poisoned land. Within another month, and with the coming of spring, Zalazar was unrecognisable. Plants and bushes and hedgerows dotted the lands, and the tens of thousands of trees, many of which were Heart Trees to the population of surviving elves, blossomed. Life and colour flooded the once toxic land between the Mountains of the Moon and the White Lion Mountains.
The elves of Vagandrak were free.
The elves of Vagandrak were noble once more.
Narnok of the Axe sat in The Fighting Cocks in Drakerath, across from Dek, Trista and Mola. Narnok drank a half flagon of beer, then reached up and touched his mouth tentatively, as if exploring swollen lips with his stubby, powe
rful fingers.
“Will you stop fucking doing that,” snapped Dek, draining his own tankard.
“Ha! You weren’t the one who had fucking tentacles growing out of his fucking face, were you? Have some respect for a man’s private nightmares, will you?”
“Guys, can you two be quiet?” snapped Trista, patting her freshly washed and oiled blonde curls into place, and smoothing down the creases in her rather fetching red dress. “Some of us are busy searching for a handsome young man for the night.”
“No, it’s him,” said Dek, scowling and pointing directly in Narnok’s face. “Tell him to stop, Trista. He keeps fucking with his face!”
“I’ll fuck with your face in a minute,” growled the large warrior.
“Oh, here we go,” growled Dek, slamming down his tankard. “I suppose you’ll start moaning about the fact I shagged your wife now, won’t you?”
“Well you did!” roared Narnok.
“Yeah, and we’ve been through this a hundred times, man. I apologised. You broke my nose. That’s the end of it.”
“I don’t like your tone, laddie!” snarled Narnok.
“Oh yeah? You want to take this out on the cobbles again do you, Big Man?”
“Any fucking time!” roared Narnok.
“I’m taking bets!” yelled Weasel, pulling out a well-worn stub of a pencil and a small, tatty notebook.
Trista whipped out two slender daggers, and held one under each man’s chin against bobbing Adam’s apples. Dek and Narnok were still as statues, locked in place by razor-sharp steel. And, amazingly, they fell into sudden silence like heavy stones dropped down a well.
“Gentlemen.” Trista smiled, and removed the daggers, sheathing them neatly in hidden places within the folds of the red dress. “Calm your anger. For it is finally time for us all to get properly drunk.”
