Scourge of Souls: The Realms Book Four: (An Epic LitRPG Series)

by C. M. Carney

  The sergeant’s lustful gaze fell to Seraphine who returned his attention with intense ardor. She stared at him, her chest heaving up and down, with each ragged in and out of breath. To the sergeant she looked aroused. A crimson flush flowed across the lawman’s face and he looked down, cursing himself for his inability to hold the woman’s intense stare. He turned to Gaarm.

  Gaarm grinned widely, like a man unused to his own teeth, which was odd, because the porcine Eldarian had few teeth to speak of. “Hello,” Gaarm said. “I, Gaarm have several criminals to place into our jail.”

  The sergeant stared at Gaarm for a moment before sighing. “What’s the charge?”

  “Ummm,” Gaarm ummed and a mild look of panic surged through him. “What charge you say?”

  Seraphine looked at the short, badly shaven dwarf and lightly caressed his face. “You are bleeding. Do you need special attention?”

  “Cut it out dude,” the dwarf snapped, pulling away. The dwarf’s voice sounded familiar, but the sergeant was so bewildered by the look of disgust on his face, that the recognition fluttered away behind a surge of jealousy. The sergeant licked his lips as a growing tightness built in his trousers.

  He swallowed and snapped at Gaarm. “What’s the charge you dimwit? I don’t have all day to stand here and…” His rant was cut short by the lightest of caresses across his forearm. His eyes snapped down to see Seraphine, a woman who’d received a good percentage of the sergeant's gold as tips these last few weeks, smiling up at him. The sergeant’s face turned into a grin of pure joy. I knew she’d come around, eventually. Oh, the things I’m gonna do to…

  “The charge is sexual deviancy,” Gaarm yelled, startling the sergeant out of his fantasy.

  “Really, Gaarm?” the sergeant said, turning his gaze to the slovenly deputy. “You bucking for a promotion, or just tired of romancing the food stock?” Gaarm snarled, glared at the beardless dwarf and then turned back to the sergeant and shrugged.

  An uncomfortable silence hung in the air for a few moments, then the sergeant waved his arm towards the cell block. “Take them to a cell, but make sure the lady gets her own, preferably a quiet one at the back. We can’t have her hassled by the ruffians we have back there.”

  “Yes sir, sergeant sir,” Gaarm said, giving an odd salute and then leading his prisoners towards a heavy, iron shod door. The sergeant shook his head and tapped the control rune on his desk. The door opened and Gaarm pushed the dwarf through, dragging Seraphine behind him. She turned and grinned at the sergeant. It was an odd smile, like one delivered by someone who’d forgotten how smiling worked. He wondered if Gaarm had hit her on the head and hoped that was not the origin of her suddenly amorous attentions.

  *****

  Ovrym closed the door behind them and then helped Errat and Lex out of their manacles. He used one pair to secure the door and then nodded to Lex to move on. The NPC cast a worried look at him as he adjusted his crotch. “Wha?” Ovrym asked, a distant part of him appalled at his sudden lack of good diction.

  “You okay guy?” Without looking, Lex slapped Errat’s questing fingers from his chest.

  “Sure. Real good,” Ovrym muttered and then his eyes went wide, and he shook his head. “We need to hurry. I’m feeling dumber by the minute.”

  “Yeah,” Lex agreed. “And handsy here is proving the adage that looks aren’t everything.” He looked at the warborn warily. “I had no idea Seraphine was so randy.”

  “I am sorry friend Lex,” Errat said. “These feelings of …”

  “Lust,” Lex said helpfully.

  “… lust are confusing, and I am having difficulty controlling them. Warborn do not experience sexual desires and this Seraphine has many, many such feelings. I think she may have a problem.”

  “Ya think?” He looked at Ovrym. “You, cling to the part of you that understands grammar and proper hygiene.” He turned to Errat. “And you, chickadee, remember that you are Errat, warborn warrior. Control your feelings, try to channel them into something useful.” The nods he got back did not reassure him. “Let’s hurry before you two completely devolve into dumb dumb and skankalicious.”

  Lex led the way down the hallway, past several cells. Catcalls and hoots flowed down the hallway and Lex had to steer a grinning Errat away from the bars. They rounded a corner and came to another heavy door, this one guarded by an intense looking man overflowing with muscle.

  Ovrym came to a clumsy halt and gave the guard an idiot grin. The guard tensed. “Turn around Gaarm. Nobody is allowed in the …” The guard’s eyes went wide in confusion as the small barmaid’s fist came at him lightning quick. The punch crushed his nose, and he crumpled to the ground.

  “Woah,” Lex said. “Nice job dude.”

  Errat grinned. “Errat did as friend Lex suggested and channeled his desires.”

  “Well done.”

  Lex reached down and grabbed the guard’s keys, unlocked the door and they were through. Ovrym used the second pair of manacles to secure this door. Lex snuck to the corner and peered down a short hallway, illuminated by moonlight pouring through the smallest of barred windows. Four cells, two to a side, lined the short corridor. Shadowy forms slumbered in three of the cells..

  “Sean,” Lex hissed, and three heads rose from slumber.

  “Lex? Is that you?” Sean called from the furthest cell on the left.

  Lex rushed up, jingled and dropped the keys, before retrieving them and unlocking the door. Sean pulled Lex into an embrace. Lex struggled for a moment, but then hugged the thin man back, feeling oddly comforted.

  “Thank God, I knew you’d come.” Behind him, Errat and Ovrym came into the light. Sean freaked “What are you doing with them?”

  “They’re cool man,” Lex said. “Don’t worry, they’re not who they look like. They’re friends of mine.”

  “Oh Kay,” Sean said.

  “Look it’s been real cool meeting you, but we really gotta go.”

  “And just how do you expect to escape?” a deep rumbling voice said from the shadows behind him. Lex spun to see Nahrman, the Constable of Harlan’s Watch, ease up to the bars. He bore a black eye and was missing a tooth.

  “Woah, what happened to you Constable?” Lex rushed to the bars and eased a comforting hand through. The large man coughed, and Lex could see he’d taken quite the beating.

  “It's just Nahrman these days. There’s been a passing of the baton in town.”

  “How?”

  “Cuz you couldn’t keep your damn nose out of other people’s business,” came another voice, one that made even Gryph’s intense baritone seem unimpressive. On instinct, Lex turned and raised his arms above his head. The man in the shadows chuckled. “You can put your arms down lad. Unfortunately, they didn’t let me keep my crossbow.” The man came full into the dim light.

  “Grimslee? What the hell is going on?”

  “The Vex,” Ovrym said.

  Grimslee eyeballed the disguised xydai and then turned to Lex. “Your well disguised colleague is right. You exposed my whole operation, got my men killed, and me locked up. Then you disappear and leave Harlan’s Watch wide open to those crazy bastards the Vex.” Grimslee breathed his rage down. “Now, I may be a crook, but I love this town, and you’ve ruined it.”

  Lex opened his mouth to make a snarky response, but then honest feelings of guilt filled him, and he hung his head. “I’m sorry. That isn’t what I wanted.”

  “Maybe I’ll let you make amends by freeing me.”

  “You want me to let you go.” Lex looked over his shoulder at Nahrman. “What do you think?”

  “He is a murderer and a thief,” Nahrman said, earning a white-toothed grin from Grimslee. “But, he speaks the truth, and I have allied myself with worse.”

  “Better the devil you know and all that,” Lex said and tossed the keys to Errat. “Let them both out and keep your hands to yourself.” The warborn giggled, tossed his nonexistent hair coyly and unlocked Nahrman’s door. The lawman eyeballed
the disguised warborn warily as he exited.

  Errat unlocked Grimslee’s cell and the gang leader scowled down at him, seeing only the assassin sent to kill him. An evil glint filled Errat’s eyes and Grimslee backed away. “I think I’ll keep a few bodies between me and whoever it is mimicking my old barmaid.”

  “How did you know?” Lex asked.

  “Do you think you’re the only one that's used Mimic Stones? They come in real handy in my line of work, but they can have unpleasant … side effects.”

  “You ain’t lying’ there pal,” Lex agreed, eyeballing Errat. “I’d say it's about time we get the hell outta Dodge.”

  “And how do you plan to do that?” Nahrman asked. “Half the Vex in town are between us and the only exit.”

  Lex grinned and motioned for everyone to back as far away from the barred window. We’re ready, Lex sent through the Telepathic Bond. “All right, here we go. Hold your ears folks.” Lex placed his hands over his ears and the others rushed to do the same.

  A moment later the far wall started to rumble. The sound of stone splintering rose, and cracks appeared, spidering up and away from a centralized disturbance. A few seconds later the wall shattered.

  The dust fell and a pair of shadows coalesced into Gryph and Vonn.

  “Well that was easy,” Lex said with a grin, and rushed through the opening.

  47

  At the edge of town, just out of the range of the Vex sentries, a tall, lean man stepped from the shadows. He was impeccably dressed in a suit of silver-black and a wide-brimmed circular hat hid his eyes. At his neck a gemstone roiling with silver energy thrummed and then calmed. He leaned casually on a cane of wood so black it seemed to absorb the ambient moonlight. The man stood silently, head cocked sideways as he listened to his surroundings. After a moment the brim of his hat rose just enough to expose a pair of deep black eyes flecked with star-like points of silver.

  He is close, the man thought, and a distant chorus of chittering voices hummed deep within him. Close. cLose. cloSE. CLOSE! ClosE. C-L-O-S-E.

  A small smile turned his thin lips up and he walked towards the bridge, his cane thumping on the hard-packed earth with each step. His movements were fluid, sinuous, almost reptilian. The sharp clack of his cane accompanied his first step onto the bridge as it hit stone in perfect timing with his cadence.

  The sound flowed through the still night and drew his prey to him. Tap, tap step. Tap, tap, step. Tap, tap, step. He was halfway across the short stone span when a dozen forms emerged from the shadows and flanked him. He stopped and let the gurgle of the river move though him, a calming draught for the innumerable souls contained within him.

  The calm would not last. It never did.

  “Halt!” came a powerful, cocksure voice from the shadows ahead of him.

  The bank of clouds obscuring the full moon chose that moment to part and bathed the men and women surrounding him in cool blue light. Without turning his head, he expanded his mind over and through them, assessing and quantifying their essence. They were all unimpressive; common footpads, grunts and thugs. None had the faith to warrant joining their quintessence, but the Scourge knew his wants were secondary concerns to the success of the mission. One would join them tonight because it must be. The Scourge would deal with the consequences when they rose.

  “Who are you?”

  “We are the Scourge,” the man said, his voice calm, elegant, enchanting.

  “Well Scourge, you are out after curfew, which…”

  “We apologize for the misunderstanding, but our name is not Scourge. We are THE Scourge.” His accentuation of the word the had the tone of a kindly teacher, eager for his student to learn, but hiding underneath was malevolence.

  “Well, Mr. THE Scourge,” the speaker said, taking a step closer. “You are out past curfew. Which means we have to take YOU into custody.” It was clear from his focus on the word you that the leader had noticed the Scourge’s use of the plural when referring to himself. Noticed and chosen to mock.

  “We have no quarrel with you Tarl of the Vex, or the Princes you serve. At least not today.”

  Low murmurs passed among the Vex, and Tarl took an involuntary step back, frightened by the man’s knowledge of who he was and who he served. It was possible, if unlikely, that word of the last several days events in Harlan’s Watch had reached the outside world. What was impossible was that anyone, including most of the Vex foot soldiers, knew why they had come. But somewhere deep inside Tarl, in the part that longed for meaning, the part he had given over to the Princes of Chaos, he knew this man did know.

  The gemstone hanging at the Scourge’s neck flared silver.

  “Take him,” Tarl ordered and his men rushed the lone man.

  Before a single foot fell onto stone, the Scourge was moving. He drew a thin bone-white short sword from his cane and in a blink of an eye shifted a dozen feet forward impaling a brutish man with a scar from ear to nose through the chest.

  The dead man hadn’t even realized he was dead before the Scourge moved to his next victim, a thick set woman bearing dual cudgels. She brought both heavy clubs down, but the Scourge drifted aside as swift as a whiff of smoke moves in a stiff breeze. The woman fell to her knees before she felt the deep slice across her neck. She toppled forward into an expanding pool of her own blood.

  Three more bodies littered the ground before any of the Vex realized the first was dead. Another three fell as three more heartbeats passed. A pair of cowardly men showed a hint of wisdom and jumped off the bridge, letting the current pull them where it would. Another man tried to run towards town, but the idea had barely gone from brain to legs before his heart was skewered.

  Tarl was the only one standing. He quivered as every nerve in his body begged him to run from this demon hiding in the flesh of a man, but fear held his heart and his mind. The Scourge walked up, slow and graceful, as if he had no care in the world, as if he had not just killed eleven people in fewer seconds.

  “Please … please don’t kill me,” Tarl begged, warm urine turning the front of his breaches dark. But still the Scourge came. The man sheathed his sword and walked closer, tapping his cane in time with his footsteps. Tap, tap step. Tap, tap, step. Tap, tap, step. Tarl tried to close his eyes but could not. Was it fear, or some nefarious power of the Scourge? Tarl did not know.

  “Why do all of you beg for your lives as if we had any interest in such paltry gains? Your life is finite and therefore meaningless. Do we look like we covet the worthless?”

  Tarl shook as a primal fear tore away his sanity. “Puh…puh..leeze.”

  “What is your life worth, Tarl?” the Scourge said, easing closer. “What will you give us if we spare it?”

  A tear skittered down Tarl’s shaking face and he wanted nothing more than to turn away from the Scourge’s utterly alien eyes. But the motes of silver light flickering in the pools of inky blackness held Tarl rigid, and then he saw.

  “Yes,” the Scourge said in a voice seething with revelation. “You have wasted this life, corrupted it with banal servitude to vile masters. The Princes of Chaos care not for you. They are false gods devoted to nothing but destruction.”

  Tarl sputtered a slew of nonsensical syllables as if his mind was losing its connection to his mouth.

  “This life is over Tarl. You understand that, don’t you? Sadly, if left to your own devices, we hold little faith that your next life will be any better. You lack direction, purpose. But we have good news. We can offer you that purpose. Join us and find meaning. Join us and the fear will end. Together we will bring the High God’s enlightenment to all the Realms. Through him lies the road to salvation. All other paths end in cold darkness.”

  The Scourge stared at Tarl without sympathy, for sympathy was a concept long ago burned from the Scourge.

  “Do you wish to end the fear Tarl? Do you wish to join us?”

  Tarl’s sanity sputtered and bubbled, like egg whites on a hot skillet, sending one final choice seething down h
is neural pathways and into the nerves of his neck. With the smallest of motions Tarl nodded his head.

  “We’ll take that as a yes.” The Scourge stopped and lowered his head. Tendrils of silver laced darkness seeped through his skin, coalescing and expanding into a quartet of snake-like apparitions. They stretched upwards from the man and solidified around him. As one they opened their jaws and hissed.

  The sound shattered what little remained of Tarl’s sanity and as his eyes rolled back into his head, all four serpentine phantasms struck down as one. Their fanged mouths latched onto his neck and chest, his arm and his shoulder.

  The Scourge fed.

  Tarl spasmed and sputtered and a low moan pushed past his lips. Inside the semi-translucent bodies of the spectral serpents globes of silver energy drained back into the Scourge, quickly at first, then slower and slower, until they ceased altogether.

  The serpents detached, faded once more into silver-black smoke and leached back through the Scourge’s skin. The Scourge opened his eyes, eyes now swimming with a bright silver light. They focused on something unseen and a small smile crossed the man’s lips. The silver twined its way deeper and deeper into the Scourge’s eyes until it became just another speck in the cascade of stars.

  “Welcome Tarl.”

  Somewhere beyond the edge of mortal senses a scream faded away to nothingness. The Scourge stood tall, adjusted an errant lapel on his jacket, walked across the bridge and into Harlan’s Watch leaving the sack of flesh, blood and bone wide eyed and vacant.

  “Ngghhh,” the shell that had been Tarl said and a trickle of drool flowed from the corner of its mouth.

  48

  Gryph looked up and down the alley as Lex and the others jumped through the hole he’d made with his Shatter spell. He eyed the two burly strangers with them but knew there was no time for a round of introductions. He’d have to trust Lex’s judgement, a feeling that did not fill him with the warm and fuzzies.