Defenders of the Valley

by K. J. Coble

  Sarcha advanced to the sarcophagus, hesitating only when she reached the edge of the molten pool. She berated herself, terrified that she had just insulted the divine, and forced herself onward, over slag that miraculously did not char her to the bone. The outstretched hand waited. She looked up into the gently billowing features of flame, into the pinprick fires of Satayebeb’s eyes.

  Again, Sarcha hesitated. Her heart pounded against the insides of her ribcage like a beast frenzied to work itself free. Primal fears howled from the base of her skull, terrors of the night, the shadows, the strange, unseen things that skittering within them, glaring forth with beady eyes of hungry malice.

  “Forget fear,” Satayebeb whispered. “Accept me, your destiny.”

  This is what I came for, Sarcha told herself. This is the culmination of my life’s work.

  She reached out her hand.

  Satayebeb seized it and dragged her into its fiery embrace. The flames did not burn and, for a moment, Sarcha reveled in the warmth of a parent’s enveloping love.

  But something was wrong. Something was changing. The entity’s blazing features hardened into a searing mask of hunger and opened fangs of white-hot flame. Sarcha had a moment to suck in a breath of panic before the face launched forward to sink those fangs into her neck.

  Sarcha tried to thrash, wanted to groan; in pain or ecstasy—in her terror, she could not say. Currents of fire shafted into her throat, an unbearable blade piercing deeper than blood or quivering tissues. She reached out her arms to grab Satayebeb to her but found them gripping about her instead, squeezing to hold on to her life.

  But Satayebeb was life. Satayebeb was everything, mother, lover, parasite feasting upon her, needing her as she needed it. They had to hold on to one another. To let go was...was...

  Satayebeb wrenched its head back in a fan of gore, tags of meat from the horrendous gash in Sarcha’s neck slobbering into the air. Air rushed into the flames, stoking them to a furious glare. Blood splashed across the entity’s face, crisping in the heat into a mask that suddenly became another’s features. Now Sarcha did scream.

  The face was her own.

  “Forget fear, girl,” Satayebeb snarled. “Fear is for the living!”

  The entity tore into Sarcha, rending meat from bone and consuming all while Sarcha’s dying eyes watched. Sarcha wanted to scream again, but her vocal chords were gone, torn asunder, as was her chest, the organs spilling forth to feed the demon consuming her.

  Becoming her.

  In her last agonized moment, Sarcha remembered the little girl, scared of the dark.

  She remembered why children fear the dark.

  GROON REACHED THE DWARVES’ rock palisade at the head of the Blood-Drinkers, bashing aside a goblin locked toe-to-toe with a dwarf to get into the melee. The dwarf stumbled back, relief at his apparent salvation rapidly dissolving in fear as he saw what had freed him of his death struggle.

  Groon’s two-handed chop blasted steel through the dwarf’s helm to part his skull. The hobgoblin warlord yanked his sword free and glared in disgust at the blade, bent by the force of his swing. He cast it aside and drew the curved tulwar he kept handy in a shoulder sheath, glancing about for another opponent.

  Goblinoids flowed over the palisade in a tittering mass, swords, clubs, and spears rising and falling. The dwarves collapsed into hard knots, holding out like boulders in a creek whose water had overflowed. More goblins swept past, into the cave mouth, their jeers of triumph echoing from its darkness.

  An ogre clamored over the rocks behind Groon, bellowing and filling the air with the rotten-gummed foulness of its breath. The rest of the Blood-Drinkers boiled past the behemouth’s legs and fanned out, shouldering through goblins to get in on the kill.

  Groon raised his tulwar high and barked for his warriors to rally to him. But words caught in his throat. The rocks thrummed beneath his ironshod heels. The power that had spurred him on like a pauper to the glimmer of undreamt-of wealth changed, took on a shivering, swelling immediacy. He staggered, felt shocks of pain throb through his head. The power was cresting, was too much.

  Screams resounded within the cave and were drowned out by a building roar. Wind howled forth from the entrance, carrying dust, heat, and a shimmering glare. Goblin, hobgoblin, troll and ogre, alike, stilled and turned dumbstruck. Another gust belched from the cave, carried puffs of fire. Goblins spilled before it, ablaze and writhing, shrieking with terror that overrides pain.

  It was too much...

  “Get back!”

  Groon turned and dove over the palisade. He was over the rocks and beginning to tumble when a shaft of hellfire ravaged forth from the cave and blasted out across the sky. He spun in midair and hit the ground on his back, kept rolling, bowling down through Blood-Drinkers and goblins that scattered before him. The air trembled with the eruption, going hot and agonizingly yellow-white. Groon’s inertia gone, he tumbled to a stop and cowered with his face buried in his arms.

  The conflagration ceased. The gorge stilled.

  Groon raised his head after what seemed an eternity. Above, a cloud of red-black smoke bled from the wound of the cave mouth. The blast had shattered the palisade, showered pieces of weapons, armor, dwarf, and goblinoid across the gorge. The ogre that had been at Groon’s back sprawled amongst splintered boulders, its upper body gone and its lower torso and legs aglow with tiny fires.

  Crimson light glimmered in the smoldering dark of the entrance.

  Groon struggled to his feet, quite deafened and his head throbbing. He wiped away blood streaming from nose and ears and staggered uphill in a sleep-walker’s shuffle, drawn as if in a dream to the thing that had wrought so much sudden, breath-taking destruction. He reached the cave mouth as the first of the other cowering Blood-Drinkers screwed up their courage to look up from their shivering. The crimson glow intensified and Groon put up a hand to shield his eyes. The light subsided and he lowered his arm to blink through tears.

  A human woman emerged from the haze, naked, yet untouched by the carnage around her, honey-blonde locks of hair loose and dancing in a hell-tinged breeze. She looked across the horde in the gorge below her, cowering as one on hands and knees. A smile curved her lips and she nodded in apparent satisfaction. Her eyes turned on Groon and pinpricks of yellowy light glimmered in the irises.

  Groon sagged to his knees before the goddess, his words of greeting disintegrated into a babble of thankful worship.

  WITH ALL THE STRENGTH left to him, Vohl cheered as the Skinners fled, spilling back across Graystone Glade in disorder that had gone beyond rout; had reached sheer panic. He plopped down on his buttocks, no longer caring that he hurt everwhere or that the grass was slick with blood and littered with the dead and dying. At his back he felt the reassuring presence of Muddle, still standing tall, battleaxe angled over one shoulder as he surveyed the carnage with the contentment of a satisfied artisan. Around them, gnome and Legionnaire, Koen fisherman and Eredynn militiaman, roared in triumph, hammering shields, raising swords and spears and shaking them at the sky and the gods.

  Vohl looked to the north, to the column of fire and smoke still mushrooming, impossibly, into the darkening heavens where it blotted out newborn stars. The blast from the treeline had been the deciding moment, somehow, the Skinners freezing as one at the crash and turning, dumbfounded to watch, even as their opponents took advantage of the distraction to hack them down. With the instant passed they collapsed, all heart for the fight gone, leaving wounded friends and kin and stampeding for the rear while the Valley folk jeered them on.

  Dodso shuffled to Vohl’s side and sat. They exchanged a glance then looked again to the smoke. Dodso opened and closed his mouth several times, as if afraid to speak. Finally, he hazarded, “That was Jayce, wasn’t it?”

  I know it was you, wizard, Vohl thought, wiping away a tear as the loss he’d suppressed until now swelled through him. Damn you, Jayce...you should be here beside me now, seeing this. He began to think of Illah too, but s
omehow that was too much. He managed a mute nod for the gnome.

  Danelle crumpled to her hands and knees nearby, frantically pawing the ground. Vohl blew out a sigh and got back to his feet, Dodso following. They approached the girl from either side and Vohl set his hands on her shoulders.

  “It’s all right, honey...he did us all proud—”

  “You don’t understand!” Danelle said, batting away his hands. “He’s all right!”

  Vohl glanced at Dodso, whose face twisted in anguish. “No, Danelle. Come on...”

  “Don’t stop me!” She fumbled about in the grass. “I dropped it here during the fight...somewhere...”

  Vohl frowned. “What are you looking—”

  “You fools, don’t you see?” Danelle paused in her search to point out across the battlefield. “He’s still out there!”

  Dodso scratched his head and looked north. “He’s not dead?”

  “He is if I don’t get him back before the Skinners come across him—there it is!” Danelle scooped a glittering object from the blood-matted ground and held it up. It was the crimson-jeweled broach Jayce wore at his throat. Danelle clenched it in both hands, paused a moment to steady herself and whispered a flurry of strange words.

  The jewel flared cyan. Danelle yelped and dropped it as the light spread forth from the object across the ground, swelling into a shape that finally flashed white. Vohl hissed and clenched his eyes shut.

  When he opened them, Jayce lay before him, on his back with his head cradled in Illah’s lap. Illah blinked and glanced around in shock and disorientation. The look passed as Jayce began to chuckle then cut off with a wince. He looked terrible. They both did.

  Danelle scurried to Jayce’s side and took his hand from Illah’s grasp, casting the half-elf a jealous look. “Master, you’re hurt.”

  “Nothing that won’t heal,” he replied hoarsely. “Well done, my dear.”

  “What...what happened?” Illah asked.

  “I brought him back,” Danelle snapped without looking at her.

  “A little contingency plan Danelle and I concocted, in case I lacked the strength to bring us back myself—” Jayce chanced a glance down at himself, at charred, torn clothes “—which I most definitely did.”

  Vohl knelt beside the pair and put his hand on Jayce’s chest. The wizard looked up and his eyes brightened as he saw him for the first time. “Ah, my friend...if I’m looking at you then I suppose we won.”

  “We won, all right,” Dodso said over Vohl’s shoulder.

  “Thanks to you, if I’m not mistaken,” Vohl added.

  Jayce smiled through a wince of pain. “Thanks to all of us.”

  Vohl grinned and patted his chest. Illah slid her hand over his and gave it a little squeeze, meeting his gaze with teary eyes. Dodso laughed and put his hand on Vohl’s shoulder from behind.

  Muddle strode up to join the party with a look of curiosity. He leaned over Vohl, saw Jayce and Illah and shook his head.

  “Wizards,” the half-breed snorted. “I’ll never get used to ‘em.”

  Epilogue

  Villains Rise

  Lonadiel surfaced from drowning darkness. Eyes fluttered open, saw star-speckled sky above, shot through with afterimages of horrid, hellish things he could not possibly have seen. Frigid breeze tickled his face. He gave himself a shake and sat up, his back cramped and aching from sprawling across ice-crusted rocks.

  Rocks...

  Lonadiel looked about, blinking in disbelief. The woods, the wizards, Illah, all were gone. He sat upon a shelf of rock surrounding by the crags of wind-worn mountains. Am I dead? He struggled to his feet and the grating of joints, the pinching of strained muscles, and the frost of his breath told him he lived yet.

  But what has happened?

  A gorge lay below him, glittering with campfires that cast shivering red light against its sheer walls. The stink of wood smoke, body waste, and unwashed flesh wafted up to his nostrils in a gagging tide. He grimaced, recognizing not only the reek of a vast host, but the vague rot-fungal-feces stench of goblinoids and creatures even fouler.

  Maybe I am dead, he thought, and this is one of the Hells...

  A metallic glint caught his eye amongst the rocks to his right. He stepped over the object and stooped to pick it up; his saber, the jewels gone from scorched cavities in the hilt, the leather grip burnt to crisp tags that fluttered away as he touched them. He lifted the weapon and the curve of Yntuil steel, blackened by some process he could not guess at, cracked. The rune-etched length shivered once and split in three places, broken blade dropping to the rocks to shatter like glass.

  “You’ll not need that,” a voice growled in badly-butchered Thyrrian Standard.

  Lonadiel spun, already crouched to a ready stance, the useless weapon angled in his hands.

  A blocky, yellow-eyed figure stepped from the dark below the rock shelf into the weak star light. It was a hobgoblin, a mountain of scarred muscle and battered armor, holding a tulwar casually, as if not expecting a fight. Other shapes materialized from the shadows around Lonadiel; two dozen of its kin, grinning murderously.

  “I will be death to any who touch me,” Lonadiel rasped, circling slowly, calculating his best chance at escape.

  The first hobgoblin chortled. “We seek no fight with you, elf. We were told to come get you, bring you back to Her.”

  Lonadiel glared at the creature. “Who sent you?”

  Goblinoid chuckles mocked him. The leader grinned. “Come with us and see for yourself.” When Lonadiel didn’t relent, the brute added, “You are alone, poorly armed and tired. You will come with us, whether you want—” the tulwar came up “—or not.”

  Something...something familiar about this; like I saw it in a nightmare. Lonadiel straightened, casting aside the worthless husk of his Yntuil blade. Morug was apparently obliterated. Illah lost to him. What did he have to lose? “Very well,” he replied. “I’ll come willingly. But do not touch me.”

  The hobgoblin leader shrugged and turned to go, obviously expecting Lonadiel to follow. His comrades fell in around Lonadiel as he strode to catch up.

  The strange band made its way down into the gorge. Hobgoblins, ogres, goblins, and trolls clustered about bonfires, jeering as they looked up to see Lonadiel passing. A throng began to gather in his wake, the fell creatures scuttling along behind with catcalls and insults. Thrown garbage hurtled from the crowds, speckled Lonadiel in gnawed bones, putrid meat, and globs of feces. The hobgoblin leader bore his fangs in a knowing smile at Lonadiel’s side, occasionally ducking a tossed chunk.

  The center of the camp was a shocking contrast to the sea of disorder sprawled around it. Orderly yurts bearing banners emblazoned with the symbol of a spurting, decapitated head radiated out in circles from a central pavilion of stretched animal hides. Dented helms adorned tent staves, as did the scorched skulls that had once worn them; dwarven, if Lonadiel’s eyes did not mistake. Something scaled and enormous shifted in the darkness beside the central tent, glimmering, reddish eyes opening as a viperous head raised at Lonadiel’s approach.

  Wyvern, he thought, dumbfounded as he recognized the bat-winged creature, smaller kin the dragons that occasionally fluttered about the mountain peaks of the Valley. What power holds sway here?

  A troop of hobgoblins stood sentinel ouside the door flaps to the pavilion. Fire light spilled forth as another hobgoblin parted the flaps to emerge into the night. The craggy-shouldered creature paused at the sight of Lonadiel and snorted.

  “He was as described, Vraka?” the hobgoblin asked.

  “She was right again,” the leader of Lonadiel’s escort replied.

  “Who?” Lonadiel barked, weary beyond fear. “Who is this that summons me?”

  The hobgoblin from the tent laughed and stepped aside, holding the flaps open for Lonadiel. “She is expecting you. You’d do well not to keep Her waiting.”

  Lonadiel cursed and stepped past the brute, ducked into the tent. Welcome warmth and light gree
ted him beyond. Curtains of animal pelts and pilfered human rugs partitioned the structure into smaller rooms. Lonadiel heard moans of pain or pleasure rising from side chambers shrouded in darkness so thick as to seem alive. Lacking the courage to look too closely, he pressed on down the short hallway to the firelit center, ignoring malicious voices that tittered in amusement at his back.

  He emerged into the central chamber, lit brilliantly by a roaring fire that sent tendrils of strangely sinuous smoke up through a vent in the tent’s peaked roof. Legions of blood-red candles glimmered in every corner, speckling curtains of jewels and piles of gold in flecks of brilliance. Shapes writhed about in the hoarde, things of pure shadow that Lonadiel’s mind told him could not be real, intertwining, interknotting with groans of arousal, pairs of fiery eye-sparks occasionally glancing his way with hot, barely-restrained hunger.

  Lonadiel swayed on his feet, knew somehow that what he saw was not real, was not of this world. His eyes came to rest on a massive pile of crimson and gold-chased cushions on the chamber’s far side.

  The woman reclined across them was real, naked, and grinning as his eyes locked with lust beyond his control upon her form. She let him drink her in, his worst, most depraved fantasies, the ones he’d hidden from the Yntuil Masters—even from Illah—racing unrestrained through his mind. She cackled, somehow in his skull, playing amongst the perversions, while the fingers of one hand played absently in the strands of her blonde hair.

  “You had sought a sign of My favor,” the woman said with an inviting droop of dreamy eyelids. “You have it.”

  Shards of half-remembered dreams and sleepless nights slashed through Lonadiel. He started to speak but found the breath stolen from his lungs. Power older than mortals coursed into him and he dropped to his knees, knowing now what it was that had brought him here, knowing too that he had never really believed.

  He did now, the gods forgive him.

  “I am damned,” he said, his voice barely more controlled than a sob.