by John Shirley
“A colossus!” Rorik shouted over the rumbling, crawling to look out the eye-window beside Gnarl. “We’re in its skull! It was buried under the plains! You’ve activated the biggest colossus ever made!”
“I activated it? You’re the one who—”
He broke off, thrown onto his back by the acceleration as the colossus leaped into the sky. It flew straight up, rocketing with magical force, piercing the gray overcast. Lifting his head to look through its eyes, Gnarl saw that the metal giant, as it flew, was emanating rays of dark purple from its outstretched arms—the rays seemed to pierce space itself, so that a whirlpool formed, a circular gate, big enough for the giant.
“It’s opening a portal!” Rorik exclaimed.
They felt themselves compressed, transmuted, transformed—as, carried inside the giant, they passed through the portal. They traveled through the churning uncertainties of the Elemental Chaos, and through another portal—leaving the Abyss, coming out into the natural world, flying through the sky. Clouds flashed past. A glimpse of a river appeared below.
A great thundering, bone-jarring, double thump—and they were left dazed. After a moment Gnarl forced himself achily to his feet beside Rorik and Miriam, the three of them staring with astonishment out the window-eyes. The colossus stood upon the soil of their own world, awaiting a command.
Five hundred feet below them was Fallcrest.
“Ah, you’ve done it!” It was the voice of the warlock Sernos—whom Gnarl now understood was also known as Revenge. It emanated from the magical device behind them. “You’ve animated Glorysade, the greatest colossus, built by the Demon Chark himself—all have failed till you! You will be rewarded with the orderly world you find … locked forever inside the head of the colossus!” He chuckled dryly. “That is your Glorysade!”
Miriam shook her head. “Sernos must have made up the legend—he must’ve been trying to get at this colossus for years! It’s no surprise he lied to you, Gnarl!”
“I’m a fool!” Gnarl muttered sourly. “But what is Sernos’s intention here?” He turned to the device within the metal skull. “Sernos—can you hear me? Will you grant an answer or two?”
“I hear! Speak quickly—I am about to exact revenge on my enemy and cement my name as one of the greatest warlocks the world has known! Glorysade is nearly drained from its journey—it gathers full power from the dark energies. When that is done, I strike!”
“Then if we’re doomed to be trapped here, tell me at least—why destroy Fallcrest? Why not destroy your enemy alone? Couldn’t you let the town go?”
“Fallcrest protected him! My enemy knew what I would do if I succeeded in animating Glorysade. And I was close! So he set demonic guardians around it—and then he struck me down with Ermlock’s Grip. The pain of the Grip makes a man mad! Now I will send that pain upon the world! Listen, as I speak to the land—and learn.”
And in a voice boomed from Glorysade, psychically transmitted by the warlock Sernos, he addressed the township below. “People of Fallcrest! You have sheltered amongst you my enemy, Kraik the Necromancer.” The voice echoed over the houses and old keeps; over the roar of the falls and the screams of people gaping up at the giant, holding a great pitted sword in its jointed metal hand. “Kraik hides in Fallcrest even now, enjoying your wine, your women—and my slow destruction. But behold, I now have control of the colossus towering over you! In order to destroy Kraik—I will destroy Fallcrest. And all the world will know whose power is greatest. I have been Sernos … I am now—Revenge!”
As he listened, Gnarl circled the magical device in the center of the giant’s skull, examining it closely.
“No one will stand before me when they hear what happened to Fallcrest,” thundered the warlock. “Take comfort in knowing your sacrifice will be the start of a grand empire. The power of Glorysade is almost complete! The moment comes! Try to enjoy it!”
Rorik groaned. “Thousands of innocents will die because of us!”
The magical steel colossus raised its pitted, gigantic sword—poised to set about destroying the city. It paused. Screams of terror floated up from below.
“That last arrow of yours, Miriam!” Gnarl said, turning to her. “Your only magic arrow! Bring it here!”
She hurried to him, handing over the arrow, and he used its demonbane tip to pry at an opening, scarcely visible, in the floor beside the humming, glowing device. Magical seals tried to resist—but the demonbane overcame them, crackling with dark blue sparks, and the trap door popped open with a groan. Gnarl climbed through, still holding the arrow, and dropped down to a landing from which spiral stairs descended in a steely vertebral column, like a twisting staircase in a lighthouse. The vertebrae shivered with dark energies as the giant soaked power from the atmosphere itself. Glorysade shifted on its gigantic legs—he could feel its eagerness, an extension of the warlock’s hunger to strike at the town. Hiding the arrow in his cloak, Gnarl hurried down the staircase and reached a heart-shaped chamber.
He stepped through a door into the chamber—a small room throbbing with heat where a humanoid being made of blue flame pulsed with life. Its arms were extended into gauntlets, its feet into metal boots; it gazed into a glass panel which allowed it to see what the colossus saw—through these extensions it directed Glorysade.
Its face was that of Sernos—superimposed by his psychic control.
Seeking to distract and delay Sernos, Gnarl stepped around on the circular catwalk to face the creature. He knew instinctively he had to be in just the right position. “Sernos—you control this being and it controls the colossus. But not so fast!” He edged closer, wincing at the heat. “Soon Ermlock’s Grip will squeeze you dry!”
“No!” The voice of Sernos roared from the air about the blue-flame humanoid. “When I destroy Kraik, in a handful of moments, I destroy Ermlock’s Grip. There are minutes yet before it completes compression. But what do you want here? I swore you would return and live—but if you do not go back to the chamber above, you will die in this one.” The proxy Sernos drew its left hand from the gauntlet—a thing of flame that mocked flesh—and the blue flame hand began to fulminate warningly with red energies. “Go or die!”
Gnarl bowed, as if in acquiescence. He turned away, drawing the arrow from his cloak as he turned—then he spun around and drove it like a dagger between the creature’s blue-fire eyes. The arrow shaft burst into flame and charred away, but the magical arrowhead remained, spinning in place.
Sernos screamed, the scream reverberating in the metal carapace like a ringing in a great bell. The mystically charged arrowhead of demonbane turned the fiery magic back upon itself, and the resulting explosion threw Gnarl back against the metal wall. He fell, stunned—but he made himself crawl to the door, out and up the stairway as the colossus rollicked about. He clambered up and up, sometimes on hands and knees as cracks appeared in Glorysade, daylight glimmering through. He clambered up to the landing, struggling to continue as the colossus wrenched about, struggling with a chaotic unleashing of its own magical energies.
The trap door was open—and an arm, lean but strong, stretched down. Miriam took his hand, helped Gnarl climb up.
But there was no standing, not up there. Rorik, Miriam, and Gnarl were thrown to the floor of the silvery skull as the colossus staggered and as it leaped wailing into the sky. The device within its skull was beginning to melt, coming apart in the heat of a blue flame. The creature that guided the colossus seemed in torment, and Glorysade flew up through layers of atmosphere as it tried to escape the destructive force Gnarl had loosed within it. It dropped its sword, which fell, end over end, to vanish into Lake Nen. On and on Glorysade flew—until, trying to escape its agony, it created a portal, blindly flying through it. But it learned what men, too, learn: no one can run from the pain within.
As the colossus passed through the Elemental Chaos, it exploded, its head and chest and arms flying asunder. Gnarl and Rorik and Miriam, within the skull, were spinning through white light. Miriam
fell into Gnarl’s arms.
The gigantic skull, carrying them with it, spun through space—and crashed into darkness.
7.
They did not expect to awaken. But they did. It must have been several hours later. Their noses were bloodied; they were battered and worn. But they were intact.
They got to their feet—and found that the back of the metal skull had cracked open, and they tottered through it, Gnarl leading the way.
They emerged onto a dawn-lit beach in an unknown land. The body of the colossus was gone. Glorysade’s head was there, skewed, stuck in the sand—a devilish face, glaring lifelessly up at the gray-blue sky, the fading stars.
Gnarl and Miriam and Rorik walked up to the edge of the sea. It hissed its mysterious mantra. “What sea is this?” Rorik asked, tugging his beard.
Miriam shook her head. “I don’t know. I am not sure if we are in our own world—or another.”
Rorik turned angrily to Gnarl. “I should take you apart for what you’ve put us through!”
“We are alive,” Gnarl pointed out. “And we averted the worst. Also—by now, Sernos is dead, crushed by Ermlock’s Grip! When we saved Fallcrest we saved Kraik—and saving Kraik destroys Sernos.”
“That’s something, anyway,” Miriam said, combing her hair in place with her fingers.
Gnarl nodded. “I would suggest that if we are to find out where we are—and how to get home—we’d better set off up the beach. I see a crystalline tower in the distance. We might go that way. And I would further like to point out, if I might, before you rashly dismember me with your bare hands, Rorik, that our chances of surviving and returning home are better …” he turned to look at Miriam, catching her gaze, “if we put aside our quarrel. If we …”
She smiled wryly and nodded. “If we stay together.”
Rorik groaned and shook his shaggy head in exasperation. “Oh, come on. Let’s get started.”
And they headed for the crystalline tower, far away along the unknown shore.
John Shirley is the author of numerous books and many, many short stories. His novels include Bleak History, Crawlers, Demons, and the seminal cyberpunk works City ComeA-Walkin’. His collections include the Bram Stoker and International Horror Guild award-winning Black Butterflies and Living Shadows: Stories: New & Pre-owned. He also writes for screen (The Crow) and television. As a musician Shirley has fronted his own bands and written lyrics for Blue Öyster Cult and others. “Under the Plains of Rust” is his first venture into the world of the DUNGEONS & DRAGONS® game.
THE STEEL PRINCESS
ALAN DEAN FOSTER
The well-dressed, powerfully built stranger was tired, hungry, and angry. It was not necessary for him to hold up a sign attesting to these facts. They were plain enough to see in his hunched-over posture as he sat at the heavy wooden table, and in his face as he glared in the direction of the back bar.
The bartender and temporary innkeeper, a heavy-set dwarf like much of the population of Hammerfast, dutifully continued to polish a gilded wide-mouthed goblet he held in his thick fingers. The fact that it gleamed like a gold mirror from having undergone this process nonstop for the previous ten minutes in no way induced him to put it down. It was a useful way for his hands to keep busy when they were not engaged in stroking his beard. Besides, if trouble was brewing, it would double as an excellent missile.
And trouble, like the fine local Crackkeg Ale, was brewing aplenty.
It took the form of Kot, Grerg, and Mulk, the three ogres who were making their way toward the stranger’s table. They had been drinking too much—never a good situation. Norgen, the bartender, had continued to serve them because they had continued to overpay, and in gold. Each time he had suggested to them that they’d had enough, they doubled his tip. The fact that they might tear up the place if they became sufficiently inebriated didn’t bother him. His second cousin’s elder sister was getting married in Fallcrest next week, and Norgen was perfectly prepared to quit his job anyway.
But there was the matter of a severance bonus, and the possibility that he might want to return to work at Fiveleague House some day. Plus he considered the not incidental fact that if he simply stood back and watched while destruction ensued, his boss might kill him, which would complicate his attendance at the wedding. But what could one dwarf do against three ogres, except stand and watch and goblet-polish? For that matter, what could the stranger do?
As the ogres confronted the newcomer, an increasingly edgy Norgen became increasingly convinced that, willing or not, he was about to find out.
“Hoy, traveler!” Kot grunted. “What are you doing here, anyway? This be the Nentir Vale. We don’t see your kind here.” He grinned, showing ragged, sharp teeth. One massive hand suggestively fingered the mace slung at his belt.
The stranger looked up. Norgen gazed into pale, watery blue slitted eyes that peered out from the wholly feline face, but it was difficult for the dwarf to tell if the stranger was more angry or bored. Dark spots marked his white fur where it was visible on his face. He had backward facing clawed hands and broad feet, not to mention an unusually long and large blackspotted white tail. He wore a single-button black singlet shot through with gold thread over loose-fitting black pants. From his shoulders hung a cape that seemed fashioned of woven silver.
“Really?” His voice was a muted growl. “What kind that you don’t see would I be?”
“You’re a rakshasa,” Grerg replied. As the ogre pronounced it, it emerged sounding like an obscenity. “We’re honest folk here. No mind-twisters.” He was holding a huge club in front of him. “When we fight, ’tis honest and straightforward, and no shifty magic.”
“Get gone, demon-spawn.” The third ogre, Mulk, clutched a spiked ball and chain. “This be a clean establishment.”
The stranger looked past them, toward the bar. “How about that, innkeeper? Should I leave?”
“Eh, what’s that?” Reaching up with one hand, Norgen stuck a sausagelike finger deep into his oversized left ear. “Bit hard of hearing, I am.” He returned to his increasingly frantic polishing, though by then the goblet shone so as to take a place of pride in a dragon’s hoard. As he continued to mine unpleasant detritus from one ear, the barkeep surreptitiously took small steps in the direction of the exit.
He didn’t quite make it before all the hells broke loose.
“We’ll help you on your way!” Kot bellowed as he swung his mace out, up, and down.
Intended to split the seated rakshasa, the forceful blow splintered only the innocent table. Other patrons scrambled for cover, diving under tables, bolting for the door, and in the case of one especially prescient elf, springing out the nearest open window.
“Fast—but not fast enough!” roared the third ogre as he swung the heavy spiked iron ball on the end of its chain. It struck the stranger square in the midsection—only to pass completely through him. Reeling from the absence of any resistance, Mulk took a wary step backward.
“Phantom image! ’Ware your selves, brothers!”
“ ’Ware indeed,” a warning voice growled.
All three ogres whirled. Having drawn a longsword, their opponent stood behind them. Each time the weapon moved through the air, it seemed to emit a soft but audible snarl, and when the diffuse light of the inn caught the blade, the metal seemed to change color—from silver to gold to bronze, and back again. Its hilt twisted slightly in its owner’s grasp. It was as if the stranger was gripping the tail of a live thing instead of a shaft of mere metal. Engraved in the metal hilt guard, two cats’ faces glared at one another around the shaft of the sword. The more the owner moved it around, the more animated the hilt’s faces became.
“I am Ruhan Bijendra, a rakshasa Dhanesh. I have come to the Nentir Vale from my homeland in search of a legend. There are many such here, but the tale of the one I seek was spun to me from an early age by a voluble mage, and I have vowed not to return home until I have ascertained the truth or the lie of it and made it do my biddi
ng.”
“Of your speaking, one thing’s certain,” snorted Kot, the leader of the ogre trio. “You’re not going to be returning home.” Tightening his grip on his mace, he let out a howl that shook mugs from the rafters, then charged.
Bijendra did not run. He did not try to dodge. He did not even employ the innate magic for which his kind was known. Instead, he simply raised his longsword high above his head and held it parallel to the floor.
Brought down by the full weight and strength of the ogre, the heavy iron mace slammed into the sword. The blade did not shatter. Nor did the arm of the one who wielded it. Instead, the rakshasa twisted his sword just enough at the moment of impact so that the much heavier mace slid sideways along the guiding blade. Sparks flew as the parried head of the bulky weapon smashed into the floor. From where he presently crouched behind the bar, Norgen looked on in amazement. What kind of rakshasa noble was this, who fought with blade as well as with magic? An explanation was forthcoming.
“I am Ruhan Bijendra, and in addition to being of noble blood, I am also by choice—a ranger.”
Clearly confused, Grerg paused as he was about to swing his club. “Your lies multiply. There is no such thing as a rakshasa ranger.”
Sliding his right foot back to firm his fighting stance, Bijendra’s frown was fraught with mock seriousness. “Then how can I possibly be standing here before you? Or perhaps I am not here at all. Perhaps I am only a figment of imaginations as dim as your wits.”
Growling, Mulk readied his ball and chain for a second swing. “For a small traveler with backward hands, you have a big mouth. We will close it for you.”
Gesturing with his reversed left palm, Bijendra beckoned. “Then come and seek. Oblivion awaits. As a rakshasa noble I would rather not fight—but as a ranger, a melee is as good exercise as counting coin. I will defeat all three of you with only my one sword.”
They came at him from two sides this time, intending to catch the haughty cat face between them. As one swung his club and the other his mace, the rakshasa spun. His sword was a blur. At the last possible instant, so was he. Descending mace connected with onrushing skull at the same time as swinging club met out-thrust face. Blood and jumbo dentition went flying as the weapons of the charging ogres connected not with the head of the stranger but with each other. Kot and Grerg went down in separate but equally bloody heaps. As the only one of the belligerent trio to retain consciousness, the last member standing clutched his ball and chain nervously. His small, glaring eyes sought danger in every shadow and corner.
