by Cory Herndon
“They’ll be uncoordinated,” Jarad said. “Take advantage of their—”
“I have done this before, you know,” Fonn snapped. She followed that with a yell as she met the first charging cultist with a nonlethal boot to the kneecaps. Nonlethal but intended to cause at least a few compound fractures with the force Fonn put behind it. The tattooed human blocked the boot with the flat side of a blunt bone axe and grinned, showing all four of his filed, pointed teeth. Fonn turned her foot, pinning the axe head to the floor, then followed with a second kick that knocked out the four teeth.
The deathmonger moved more quickly than Fonn expected and grabbed her ankle with both hands, shoved upward, and flipped Fonn onto her back. She rolled over into a crouch and neatly hamstrung the Rakdos, who collapsed with a shriek. Without finesse she drove the point of her blade through the top of his head, killing him instantly.
Jarad took out two more cultists in the time she’d taken to kill her first. A pair of trolls carrying stone clubs and wearing little more than the chains of human skulls around their necks charged the Devkarin from either side. When Fonn looked back, the kindjal was in one troll’s eye and the second troll’s nose had been crushed with own club. Shards of thick troll brow turned the creature’s forebrain to jelly, and it collapsed over the corpse of the first. Jarad retrieved the kindjal with a wet sound that left no doubt as to the fate of that first troll.
A trio of babbling goblins, horribly scarred little beasts wielding blood-encrusted pieces of slag pounded into savage approximations of swords, closed on Fonn from her blind side, the rear quarter neither she nor Jarad could cover completely. She risked a long, wide sweep with her blade, which put her off balance for a moment but forced all three back at once. All except the third, who tripped in midcharge and caught the tip of Fonn’s sword across the throat. The other two found this hilarious and, in their glee, hopped about, swinging their hunks of slag, until with uncanny timing the goblins cut each other down with simultaneous blows to the forehead.
Fonn heard another roar and risked a look up at the giant demon that had taken her son. Myc looked alive, even alert, perched in the demon’s chain collar like a kid on a swing. The demon-god Rakdos was growing taller still. Now his horns came close to the ceiling overhead.
Howling, a pair of viashino fire jugglers attempted to batter Fonn with burning projectiles. She sliced them neatly out of the air. The jugglers proved to be acrobats besides, and when she attempted to follow through with the killing blow, the target somersaulted out of the way in one direction while his viashino mate did the same in the opposite direction. They moved so fast she wasn’t sure which one lashed out with a curved dagger and bisected the leather uniform pauldron on her right shoulder, taking a bit of the shoulder underneath as well. First blood drawn by the cultists drew enthusiastic hoots from the gathering crowd.
The shouts and grisly cheers did not keep her sharp ears from tracking the hopping jugglers behind her. She waited for them to predictably cross in front of her again and got around one’s guard and took one arm off. The viashino shrieked, and her mate stopped capering and joined in. His mouth foamed red as he sunk his own teeth into his thin reptilian lips in a blood frenzy. The lack of control made him easier to dispatch than the other, who had already gone pale and silent, the ground slick with cold blood. The male juggler lunged at exactly the wrong moment, falling for the ledev’s feint, and she spun around as he whipped past her to skewer him neatly through the heart. She missed, but the viashino’s capers ended on the tip of Jarad’s kindjal.
And so it went, all the while Fonn’s son sitting overhead, ever closer, like the trophy at the end of some grotesque, cruel tournament. Which, the half-elf supposed, wasn’t far from the truth.
The fighting went in fits and starts, but steadily they began to attract more attention. No matter how much progress toward the scouts or their son Jarad and Fonn made, they stood back-to-back at the center of a moving mob. Against all sense and strategic reason the Rakdos cultists continued to attack alone, in pairs, or at best small groups. It was a competition to them, she realized, and while they could have just swarmed Fonn and Jarad, they were taking their time, confident that the desperate parents would be worn down before too long, but not without providing some excellent entertainment.
“Jarad!” Fonn called as she decapitated a skeletal zombie dressed in most of a wojek uniform that looked at least three hundred years old. “We have to get out of this! That demon is going to take Myc!”
“I lost the grapple!” Jarad called back. “It’s in the chains. I can’t fly and I can’t even get to the Krokt-forsaken demon’s feet! How can we get to him?”
We can’t, Fonn thought, but couldn’t bring herself to say it.
Rakdos drew himself up to his full height, his black horns drawing sparks as they scraped against the inner roof of the Rakdos temple. He roared again, and Fonn screamed with rage. She charged like a thrill-killer into the mob, sword flashing, blood and cultist body parts flying.
The gigantic demon, if he noticed her at all, paid no heed. Myc appeared to watch her, but when Fonn called his name, there was no reply. Not even a nod.
She was perhaps fifty feet from the edge of the pit, in real danger of being trampled by the demon, but then so was everyone else—including the scouts she could see in the cages along the caldera’s rim and could now hear calling her name.
What Fonn had taken for a wall, the wall facing the way she and Jarad had come in, began to rise. She spotted half a dozen ogres on either side of the huge, wooden door, and the burly creatures heaved on mammoth chains hidden in a long shadowed alcove. The demon-god Rakdos turned to face the rising portcullis, and Myc left her line of sight.
Then Jarad was at her side again, and together they furiously drove through the Rakdos mob. The cultists finally seemed to be giving up on the competitive, mano-a-mano approach and did eventually try to attack en masse, but by then the ledev and the Devkarin were working with brutal efficiency and coordination, and the cultists never had a chance. The mob was just, well, a mob, and only so many of them could get close to the life churcher or the guildmaster as long as the two stuck together.
Twenty feet. They were on a path to the cages, but to get to the demon they would have to go around the lava pit or across it somehow.
By the time they broke through to the first cage, Rakdos was through the archway and disappearing into the shadows.
“Centuriad Fonn!” Orval called, and the others took up the same call. “Help us! Centuriad Fonn!”
A gigantic demon—the gigantic demon—was getting away with her boy, but she could help these scouts. And they were her responsibility. They were someone’s kids too.
A roar pierced the darkness, and a glow as something erupted into flame, but she couldn’t see what.
“I can still catch up to him,” Jarad said. “I brought beetles.”
“Beetles?”
“They will help me track him,” the Devkarin said. “Fonn, even if we can get to him, we have to get him down.” He paused to impale a goblin and kick its body into the lava.
“Jarad, I am not going to abandon my son!” Fonn was more furious than ever. To consider it on her own was one thing. To hear Jarad suggest it enraged her—illogically, but it enraged her all the same.
“He will be safe,” Jarad said, “for now.”
“Safe?” Fonn shouted. “How will he—”
“He’s rigged himself some kind of harness,” Jarad said, as reassuring as he could be in the middle of the still furious, though less enthusiastic, melee. “Look. The demon’s jaw protects its own neck quite well. Myc will be protected as well. At least long enough to free your charges and for us all to follow him.”
Fonn considered Jarad carefully before she replied. He surprised her. It had been a long time since the Devkarin had reminded her of why she’d married him in the first place.
“You’re right,” she said, and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Send your
spies. I’ll get to work on the first cage.” Jarad nodded inscrutably and turned to his task.
The first Fonn managed to free was Orval. The centaur appeared healthy and immediately took up a pike dropped by a dead troll. He then used it to transfix the guard nearest his cage with a ferocious centaur battle yell. Jarad freed young Aklechin and handed the young scout a cutlass.
“Sir,” Aklechin stammered, “the witch. She took Lily away. And—and Myc.”
“I know, Aklechin,” Fonn said. “We’re going to find them all. I promise. But now we have to fight. Stay close, and remember what your instructors have taught you.”
The young man set his jaw and summoned all of his remaining courage to raise his cutlass and answer Orval’s battle cry with one of his own.
Armed and furious, the small band hacked their way around the pit and toward the mammoth archway. The door was already falling back into place, the gears lining its slots, grinding and shrieking above the din.
Charging, they cleared the bottom of the door with room to spare. The cultists just behind them weren’t so lucky. More than one thrill-killer’s skull or torso burst messily as the door clanged shut.
“All right,” Aklechin said nervously, “what now?”
“Scared of the dark?” Orval asked.
“No more than you,” the young man snapped back.
“Quiet, both of you,” Fonn said. “I’m listening for Myc.”
“Holy mother, heart of life, you are our charge and we are yours. Holy mother, heart of life, you are our charge and we are yours,” Aklechin whispered.
“Scout,” Fonn said.
“Yes sir,” Aklechin said.
“I admire your devotion, but I need you here right now.”
“I think I see a faint glow perhaps a half mile distant,” Jarad said. “He is making good time. The beetles are having a tough time keeping up. I’m calling in some greenbites.”
“After you, huntmaster,” Fonn said.
“Guildmaster,” Jarad corrected absently. He pulled a brass cylinder from his waist and twisted it with a snap of his wrist. The brass shimmered and took on a bright green glow that extended just far enough for them to keep track of each other but little else.
They had reached the bend in the tunnel when the shriek of the door mechanism started to reverberate off the walls, joined by the shrieks of the cultists forcing it open.
Myc knew he shouldn’t be enjoying himself, but it was hard not to.
He didn’t remember rigging his belt into a harness, but he must have. It only made sense. His immediate past wasn’t sticking around.
Myc found he didn’t care all that much.
The scout closed his eyes and found himself once again looking through the demon’s instead. He, they, strode down a small—to Rakdos—tunnel, and he could see perfectly well although Myc’s own eyes found little illumination.
Another, isolated part of his mind, an original Myc, remained hidden, watching and waiting for the time to try and rectify this turn of events. This original mind nudged the conscious one as best he could.
“Rakdos,” Myc said with his eyes closed—that, and speaking aloud, seemed to help him communicate with the demon-god without being overwhelmed by its vast, ancient mind—“where are we going?”
The demon spoke, a slow barrage of snorts and guttural syllables Myc’s own mouth would not have been able to imitate but which he understood perfectly.
“My children have grown restless,” Rakdos said, “and it is the season of dissension. We go to lead them.”
“What are we going to do when we get there?” Myc wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
“We will go to Old Rav,” the demon said. “From there, I believe I will carve out a way to the surface. It has been too long since I last enjoyed the pleasures the City has to offer. I think I will start by laying low the towers of insipid justice. Then I will move on to burn that damned life churcher tree. Perhaps afterward, I will crush the Boros lawkeepers and their toy titans.”
“That’s a good idea,” Myc said, and for a second he meant it. Then he reconsidered. He had a lot of friends in some of the places the demon-god had just mentioned. He was pretty sure someone—his mother?—fell into at least two of those categories.
For some reason, he didn’t want to destroy his friends, or his mother, or father. Rakdos assured him he did. The original mind nudged back with the opposite assurance.
The demon-god continued another few long steps, then extended a clawed hand. Myc closed his eyes and saw the demon’s talons grasp a lever as tall as his father.
Father. He could clearly remember his father in his mind’s eye, though the shape of Ja—Ja-something soon melted away and took on the look of a demon with glowing, orange eyes.
The rational part of his mind worked feverishly. The rest of his mind was oblivious.
Myc and Rakdos slammed the lever down. Another door, this one solid, rough-hewn rock, slid to one side. Myc looked down through the demon-god’s eyes and saw dozens of stunned citizens gape at the sudden appearance of the winged monster. Myc bellowed, sending already quite harried and exhausted crowds stumbling over each other in flight.
“Why did you shout?” the demon demanded. “I am not a plaything. I do not understand why we share a mind, but until I learn how to extract you and destroy you without permanent harm to myself, I will decide when I shout.”
“You were going to step on them,” Myc said.
“Yes.”
“First, you make them scared,” Myc said, maneuvering frantically as the original mind took over his mouth, “then you have them cornered. It just seemed like more fun.”
“I disagree,” the demon said. “But these insects are little sport. My pets await above. They herald my return.”
“The rats?”
“The rats,” Rakdos agreed. “They wait at the elves’ tree. I think we shall begin there and move out when I have consumed my fill.”
Myc suppressed a chill at the thought of what Rakdos envisioned. Vitu Ghazi, the heart of the Selesnya Conclave. More than that abstract danger, he felt immediate concern for a family friend who was part of the Conclave itself, an old wolf by the name of Biracazir. He had spent many a day communing with Bir, who taught him in simple thoughts and images methods that helped the youth pick out strands of life in the song.
At least he had diverted the demon from striking directly at Old Rav, his second home. But if he couldn’t figure out a way to halt the demon before he reached the surface, what then? He didn’t dare try to get away. That would leave Rakdos completely unchecked. And their minds were still linked. He wasn’t sure simply leaving would change that.
It wasn’t easy being smart, eleven, tied to a demon bent on killing, and, worst of all, saddled with an overgrown sense of responsibility.
“The way out!” Orval called. “Look!”
The light hardly brightened the cavernous tunnel, but Fonn gazed in the direction the centaur pointed and saw that there was indeed an indisputable sliver of orange, fading daylight painted on the wall atop a long, iron ladder.
“We can get to the surface and warn them,” Aklechin said. “Centuriad, respectfully—”
“Don’t bother, Scout,” Fonn sighed bitterly. “You’re right. I’ve got to get you kids out of here.”
“Fonn,” Jarad said, “I will follow him. I will get him back, and—” he pointed to the green stone around his neck, “I will call you and tell you as soon as he is safe.”
“There’s another scout, too,” Fonn said. “A girl, Lily. If you find her—”
“I will try,” the Devkarin said.
Before she realized what she was doing, Fonn kissed him lightly on the mouth then pushed back with a start. She hadn’t planned to do that, and any reaction was impossible to read on Jarad’s face in the dim, greenish light.
“Good luck,” Fonn said. Jarad smirked, the Devkarin equivalent of a wide, open smile.
“Fonn, when I return,” Jarad said, “I
—”
“We need to talk,” Fonn said.
“Right,” Jarad said. “I will—I will see you both soon.”
The Devkarin turned and dashed ahead without another word. She lost sight of him a few seconds later as the green glow of the lightstick faded into the blackness.
“Ew,” Orval said. “You kissed him.”
Fonn ignored the comment, glad the darkness hid the redness she felt in her face. “Orval, can you get up the ladder?”
“Why wouldn’t I be able to get up the ladder?” the centaur asked.
“Because you—Never mind,” Fonn said. “Just get going. Then you, Al.”
“My name is Aklechin,” the young scout said, adding a hasty “sir.”
“I like ‘Al,’ ” Fonn said. “I’ll bring up the rear.”
“I really have to follow him?” Aklechin asked incredulously.
“Why wouldn’t you want to follow me?” the centaur asked, one hoof already on the bottom rung and two strong arms several rungs up.
“Get moving, Scout,” Fonn said. “That’s an order.”
She closed her eyes and focused on the song as the scouts hustled up the creaking ladder. The din of the pursuing mob was growing. They couldn’t be more than a minute or two behind them. The only reason they were that far back was that, from the sound of it, the Rakdos cultists were fighting each other to be in front.
There was Myc, still in the grip of that angry sound, a sound that had to be the demon-god. The Devkarin would have no trouble catching the demon if he kept up his speed, and Jarad could run at a steady pace for miles at a time without breaking much of a sweat.
She hunted for Jarad’s note and found it humming away into the darkness, but Aklechin’s whisper broke in on her remaining concentration.
“Sir? I think I see torches. They’re coming after us!”
