Gods of Shadow and Flame

by M. H. Johnson

  Morlekai spared a single sharp glance for the healer. "Go, boy. Go home to a wife that loves you. You have done your part. I would not have you crushed by the Abyss itself."

  Nodding with desperate relief, Latif scurried away. And Malek didn’t blame him, not the tiniest bit. He felt his own scrotum try to shrivel up back inside him even as an odd wave of gibbering terror left him suddenly nauseous and lightheaded. He had to fight not to let the winds of panic carry him past Latif with the terrible mad urge to retreat.

  He whimpered. It took all his resolve to hold fast.

  Morlekai alone appeared unafraid. His eyes blazed with an inner fire revealing terrible, inhuman resolve. His gaze seemed to peer straight into all their souls, freezing them in place, dispelling the terrible miasma of dread they all sensed coming from the inky black crimson-flecked darkness in the center of what once had been the most sacred of all temples.

  "Listen and listen well, my beloved brethren! It is for this moment, for this night, when all hangs on the balance that I have found you, forged you, fought by your side, and ever you have proven yourselves worthy! Before us lies the most terrible Delve conceivable. A path through sorrows black and foul that even angels fear to tread. But tread it we must."

  Malek felt his heart race at a panicked clip. With sickening dread, he knew at once what his beloved leader was going to say.

  “We came here for the horn.” Quiet words that nonetheless cut through the faint echoes of mocking laughter they heard resonate through the chamber, the beautiful sweet sounds of lute and harp forever stilled, devoured by the dark miasma slowly filling the vast chamber entire. From what sounded like an eternal distance, Malek thought he heard Latif scream.

  “The horn is more than just an artifact. More than just a treasure. It opens a bridge to divinity itself! If embraced by a ruler that is worthy, it would awaken an era of peace and prosperity not seen since the forging of the very empire whose halcyon dreams of eternal summer we stride within even now!”

  His gaze then became terrible, hinting at pain and sorrow beyond human imagining. Malek trembled, horrified by what he saw in the man's eyes. No. Not a man at all. Something alien. Something other. Terrible and divine all at once. Yet it didn't matter. Not in the least. Not for what they must do.

  "Yet our prize has been stolen. Where once the horn stood proud and majestic, there is but this hideous rift." Golden eyes seemed to sear into Malek's very soul, burning away the trembling horror that would consume him. "If the horn is blown by one who has Fallen, Dawn itself will be put in desperate peril."

  Lucienda sobbed, stumbling back, as shaken as Malek had ever seen her. It was Alacabar who gently lifted her back to her feet, the pair exchanging a solemn nod, turning to Morlekai as one.

  “You play a deeper game than any Delver seeking to make his mark, or any king seeking to expand his lands, brother.”

  Morlekai smiled grimly at Alacabar's words. “You are right, brother. The prize I have always played for is the fate of Dawn itself. And never have I felt so close to losing the game entirely.”

  Trembling, Lucienda stepped towards Morlekai, at the lip of that terrible rift, stroking his stubbled cheek. “You are no common adventurer, are you, my love?”

  Gently he clasped her hand, gazing imploringly into her eyes, perhaps into her very soul. “I had hoped to grab the prize while it rested safely within realms of ream. But our greatest enemy has beaten us to it.”

  Malek swallowed, throat utterly parched, even as the air turned bone dry, icy hoarfrost creeping upon all visible surfaces, for all that his body had long been inured to any chill. Strangely, when he unstoppered his flask, the water seemed to boil away even as he drank it, that which hadn't frozen in his flask. “Bloody Hells.” He hadn't even been that thirsty, he realized. He ate and drank for taste and habit far more than need, of late. He was just parched with horror.

  Terrible golden eyes met his own. “Already this dream folds upon itself. Already space and time begin to collapse. Were you anything less than the creatures of spirit, Shadow, and unbreakable will that you have all become, you would have perished already.”

  "Saints above, Morlekai, just spill it out!" Alacabar roared, eyes alight with a look as close to panic as Malek had ever seen upon the northman's features.

  “This rift leads not to Shadow, but to Hell itself. And to Hell we must go! For if the Fallen Queen blows that horn, the blood of angels will be upon her alter, and your world will fall! If ever you have loved a mortal man or woman, if ever you savored the touch of sunlight upon your skin, a cool spring breeze, gentle grass beneath your feet, then together, by my side, we must enter this rift, and take that horn back!”

  Lucienda shook. “You are asking us to fight by your side in Hell, Morlekai. Even if it damns our souls.”

  Morlekai solemnly nodded. "Your souls are already damned, Lucienda. Each and every one of you. Dawn is the only salvation you will ever know." Eyes filled with a majestic pleading turned to Malek, piercing his heart so deeply he howled. "Even as I Fell for the sake of a risen queen, the fiery stars above, even the blackest reaches of space joined in common cause, all for the sake of this one fragile world."

  And when Morlekai's tear-filled gaze turned to the horrid cloud of crackling darkness his words transcended sound, now tinny and faint, touching instead Malek's very soul. "My friends, this is our final hour. Even if no bard bears witness to our tale, it is one that must be told! It is your choice whether you will fight by my side. But if ever you would walk the path of virtue, this Delve we all fear to our very marrow is the one we must make, for the sake of all we have ever known or loved."

  His bittersweet smile lanced Malek's heart. “If ever you would be a hero, please. Join me. No greater honor could you do me than to fight by my side, this one last time.”

  Morlekai bowed solemnly and low before his shaken friends. Yet when he abruptly turned about, roaring his defiance as he charged into the pustule of hideous darkness, he did not go alone. Malek, howling challenge, was at his side, Alacabar's mad laugh and Lucienda's defiant shout causing the very rift to twist and shudder, and they jumped into the horrific blackness together, as one.

  45

  And all was shrieking blackness, unspeakable terror. Malek smelled a thick sulfurous stench as hot, searing winds buffeted them through their endless fall. He heard the screams of souls, the sobbing wails that echoed and resonated with the hideous nightmares that had long plagued him. There was naught but a massive red orb glowing sullenly in the ashy skies that gave any illumination at all, winged shadows darkening the sky as they flew in vast cackling prides. He could feel the air or what passed for air roar and shriek around them as they fell, endlessly, toward the dark pitted lands below, molten rock glowing with terrible heat seeping out from cracks within the desolate land.

  And to his horror, for indeed never had he been more horrified in all his life, he began to laugh. Lips splitting into a manic grin, he chortled and roared at the sheer madness of it all. And for the hideous power he felt coursing through him with a violent frenzy so terrible and satiating he felt as if he were being subject to the basest of violations and the heights of dark ecstasy all at once, as every fiber of his being screamed with unholy pleasure.

  It was a bleak sort of comfort to hear the same mad cacophony of howling laughter from his friends as they all fell down into the bowels of Hell together. And in that terrible moment he was struck with an awful understanding. All his worse fears about what it meant to be a Delver were nothing less than whispers of a far more terrible truth. Far more often than not, ventures into the Shadowlands, realms of dreams and wonder, were as like as not trips into darkest Shadow and nightmare. And always, always they emerged stronger, if they survived at all.

  Somehow, they fed upon Shadow. They fed on the dreams and memories of the twisted creatures that inhabited those realms. Yet such was not an isolated set of circumstances, Malek realized at that moment, but simply one shade upon a continuum. What w
ere the ultimate expressions of Delvers, save as beings that could absorb the power and life-force of their opponents effortlessly? First in the lands of dream, then of darkest nightmare, and perhaps, as they screamed their lungs out, hurtling to the fiery lands below, the ultimate expression of their dark power was to be able to feast and prosper even in the blasted lands of Hell itself.

  It was a terrible realization, and one Malek could no longer deny as his body fed with impossible furor upon the choking thick sea of miasmic power, the ether thick with the potent stench of agony and despair from an infinite number of souls and their tormentors. This, the eternal nightmare for the Fallen, their never-ending dream. And how rich and sweet the terrible essence of their lost soulforce was.

  At that moment Malek screamed with revulsion, yet his keenly forged Delver's body drank deep, as it had been trained to do. Trained for endless lifetimes, he realized in a hideous epiphany as he plummeted toward the nightmares below, struck of a sudden by brilliant crimson scenes playing in his mind's eye, flashes of memories lost to time, of terrible battles waged and fought, empires forged and regimes shattered, of wearing the helmet and gold leafs of a general, the silver star of a master commander, the bloodstained skull helmet of an ancient berserker. Scenes of horrors and battles from endless eras flashing with the speed of lightning through his mind’s eye. Images of combat, warfare, and Delving deep within the realms of nightmare, facing and slaying endless horrors, surviving countless battles, transforming broken bands of wanderers into the seeds of kingdoms that would know glory for centuries, or destroy any force who dared oppose himself and his queen, through all the centuries he had walked the face of Dawn.

  And always, always through the terror, the horror, the glorious bloodthirsty madness of it all, one woman stood by his side. The maelstrom of emotions coursing through him at that moment was a storm the equal of the mad shrieking Abyssal gales buffeting the four of them as they fell. Malek felt his heart pound with shock of yet another revelation. He understood. He understood in gazing at those eyes in each flash of memory, whether sky-blue in their innocence or crimson with the flames of terrible power, they were, nonetheless, always the same.

  The connection he felt to that woman was so utterly different with each flash of memory, so utterly different in each life he had lived. Yet always, whether the woman fighting by his side was his commander, his shieldsister, his chance met friend, or his beloved wife, their trust in each other was absolute. Stronger than steel. A fierce, terrible loyalty that would transcend life itself and had never been sundered, no matter the treachery of the world they found themselves in, no matter how their enemies tried to play them against each other. Jess was his and he was hers, and they would always stand by each other’s side, always have each other’s back, whatever the mad games played by the Heavens above or the Hells below.

  It was Jess. Always Jess. His mad queen, always by his side. Whatever acts monstrous or glorious they committed, they did so together. Acts which only in that terrible moment Malek realized they had both been somehow doomed to repeat through countless lifetimes. Experiencing more horrors, madness and tragedy than he could possibly fathom. Perhaps all in preparation for this terrible moment, he and his companions plummeting through toxic fumes that would kill any mortal in seconds, endless moments from crashing into the howling hordes of hellions below. Perhaps for no reason at all.

  Malek shrieked and cackled as the awful realizations tore through him, quite certain he was going insane even as he fell, and perhaps insanity was exactly the state of mind he needed for the madness to come.

  Though Malek had no concept of how fast he was falling, he had seen the results of men plummeting to their death before, from far less steep a drop than this. Yet he found to his horror and wonder that he did not fear it. Every fiber of his being shrieked with the mad crackling energies coursing through the ether, his dark twisted soul drinking deep of the terrible residue of so many fallen souls that had wailed their last. Drinking down their final bitter memories like the sweetest mead.

  And he knew then that he could not be destroyed by the forces ruling his plummet. That in some inconceivably horrible way, he was connected to this dead nightmare land. But the howling hordes of darkest nightmare below would be alerted the instant they crashed, and Malek was quite certain those demons could tear him to shreds.

  Unless, of course, he bested them first.

  Pure madness to even contemplate. Yet what choice did he have, save reveling in the utter insanity of it all? The fierce surge of glorious revelry in honest struggle for his very existence, the fight for survival itself the only truth these fallen hellions would ever know.

  “Ware, my brothers, brace yourselves with all the power of Shadow!” Morlekai bellowed, and Malek felt a fierce sense of pride then, facing certain doom with friends as worthy as these, even as he stretched his soul impossibly wide, as if gathering together every last essence of shrieking power emanating from the ether before instantly compressing himself together, somehow squeezing his own potency to a resiliency the equal of finest bronze, before smashing into the rock-hard surface of the hellish lands at last.

  For a moment all he felt was an inconceivable burst of pain, his whole body shuddering with impact. He heard the roar of shattered rock, pulverized stone, the jets of crushed sand and dust shooting out from all directions underneath their feet. He could almost feel bones crack, ligaments pop, limbs wrenched viciously from sockets. Yet near instantly, despite the pain screaming through every joint and ligament, the mad energies coursing through him snapped everything back into place, leaving him breathless and stunned, but only for a moment.

  No time. No time at all.

  “Ready yourselves!” Morlekai roared, and much to Malek’s awed relief he found all his companions upright once more, though Lucienda was wincing slightly. Without thought Malek reached out to her, feeding her some of his own inhuman vitality. She grimaced in thanks, standing upright and whole once more, Alacabar nodding once in approval.

  No time. Instantly they stood as one, facing the uncountable hordes that gazed at them across a massive chasm, bridges of ancient stone arching over what Malek instantly sensed was a massive river of molten metal, boiling with the screams of all the trillions of souls lost within the depths of Hell.

  Malek felt his blood run cold gazing upon the twisted countenances of the hideous army before them. Some of those creatures appeared almost human, save their alien smiles, glowing skin and sickly green eyes looking back him with hideous malevolence, juxtaposed by the awful roars of towering beasts, giant scaled lizards with maws that could effortlessly snap a steel covered knight in two. And scurrying among them were the horrid chitinous sounds of millions of insectoid creatures with massive, pincer-like forelegs and mandibles ready to tear and cleave through all their foes. And floating beyond those assembled forces were writhing masses of ichor covered tentacles glowing with the sickly pallor of plague victims, great cyclopean eyes blinking away eternally festering maggots and puss that exploded into fresh cockroachian soldiers in sprays of blood and bile as they dripped among the hordes. Farther back still floated figures cloaked in darkest shadow, and even from his position Malek sensed that were he to gaze upon their hooded faces he would see nothing save the blackness of the void itself, their every whisper the agonized screams of lost souls burned alive.

  "Madness. Utter Madness!" Malek could sense the slightest tremble of terror only barely suppressed from his fiery-haired battlebrother. Daring only a moment to reach out and grasp his companion's shoulder with the same warmth and friendship Alacabar had so often gifted him with during his worst moments.

  "Hold strong, my brother." Malek projected the words more than he said them, but his thoughts were enough. He felt his friend's shoulder strengthen with renewed fervor and courage, his anxious voice turning into the boastful laugh of the true berserker, ready to transmute all his terror, all his dread and horror into an unstoppable fount of pristine rage.

 
"Embrace it, my friends!" Malek roared. "For we have fallen into the very depths of Hell. Farther than any Delver has dared before! And we shall fight. We shall lay low these hellions festering within the very pits of the Abyss. Hellspawn that would dare to threaten our home! We shall take down so many of these bastards that Hades itself will tremble at the legend we forge this day!"

  Morlekai’s dark chuckle reverberated oddly upon the hellish plain. The legions they faced hissed and howled at the sound of his voice. “Well said, my brother. Come. Let us retrieve that which we came for, even if we must bleed the very legions of Hell to do it!”

  The four companions roared as one, ready to charge the massive bridge of stone before them, crashing headlong into the army of horrors that awaited. Stopped cold in their tracks by the sudden peels of hideous laughter echoing through every lifeless rock upon the broken land, causing the stars mirroring no earthly constellation to madly oscillate in the crimson skies above, countless blinking lights flickering in sudden death-spirals as the terrible laughter reverberated through the realm, washing over them all in waves of horror and madness.

  It was then that the sea of monstrosities they faced, every hideous head, every shadowy lord above, all bowed deep as their twisted bodies would allow, even as a terrible glowing mist began to spin into being above them, coalescing into a figure hideous in her glory.

  Malek shuddered, barely able resist the maddening compulsion to fall to his knees and quake with awe, so potent was the majesty and power emanating from the exquisitely beautiful woman gazing upon the horde below with the air of one born to royalty.

  Clad in scaled armor of shimmering ebony hue, she wielded a longsword seething with the blackness of the Void, etched in fiery damnation. Her hair was the color of living flame, her eyes an intense crimson violet that sparkled with unquenchable lust. Rosebud lips smiled with dark secrets of unspeakable sensuality. Forbidden heights of bliss, unknowable depths of agony. Her sultry gaze made it clear no arts, no darkness, no knowledge was beyond her grasp. Nor was any crime too great, savoring endless revels of passion, vice, and darkest blasphemy.