by Eric Vall
“Thank you, Master.” Annalise breathed softly, and I nodded to her then looked into her eyes with a small smile.
“You’re very welcome,” I answered.
I was calm at this moment, thankful that I was able to do this one thing not only for Annalise but also for the Razorbacks that’d been trapped in the river for such a long time. We stood there together for a while and just watched as the fish poured out of the river and returned to their rightful home. I pulled Annalise to me and pressed a soft kiss into her soft hair. The High Queen leaned into my touch for a moment as we stood together.
I sensed them long before Annalise did but I kept my back to them as I enjoyed the moment with my High Queen. Their presences became impatient after a few minutes, and so I turned to face the four escaped gods. The swordswoman tensed and gasped as she finally noticed their arrival.
Like before, in the battle against the Tintagal soldiers, each god rode their own beast and stared down at us. I looked to Ruituri first, and she sat comfortably crossed leg on the back of her white bear. Ruituri’s long gray hair was pulled up, and I took in more of the rotted flesh of her neck. Since speaking to both Nergal and Haruhi, I assumed that the god’s daughter was the leader of this ragtag group. I stepped forward and pushed Annalise slightly behind me as I looked deeply into Ruituri’s face.
Any time we had witnessed her before, Ruituri was wild and erratic but now she seemed calm as she leveled her eyes at me and waited for me to speak first. The woman beside her, Bellum, sat in the saddle of her tiger and kept her eyes on Annalise as the swordswoman peeked around my shoulders. The two men, Domor and the man whose name I didn’t know, seemed to stare off into space but when I stepped forward and spoke, their eyes swiveled to me.
“What do you want from us?” I asked in a firm voice, and Ruituri blinked at me once, sighed then leaned forward to pet the snow-white fur of her bear.
“It's not really a question of what we want from you two, more of what we want specifically from you, Dark One. We know exactly who you are,” Ruituri stated as she kept her eyes hard on me and from behind me, Annalise shivered at the sound of the goddess’s voice. When Ruituri spoke, it sounded like four or five people were speaking at the same time in a chorus and it certainly unsettled the High Queen. “The escaped god of the Underworld. We’ve been waiting for you, tracking and trailing in your wake.”
“I noticed,” I growled deep in the back of my throat as I reached for the God Slayer in my void pocket. “Now answer my question, what do you want?”
“We want in,” Bellum answered in a bored tone as she rolled her head back against her shoulders, and my eyebrows knit together in confusion.
“You want what?” Annalise asked as she came to stand next to me and Ruituri’s eyes narrowed in on the High Queen with a wicked smile.
“We want to help, we want to rip the earth and its leaders to shreds, then we want to set fire to the heavens.” Ruituri’s voice giggled as she leaned forward and rested her chin against the head of her bear and the animal huffed in response.
“And why would you want to do that? Why would you want to help me?” I questioned as I crossed my arms over my chest and glowered at Ruituri.
“To put it simply... for fun.” the goddess of pestilence shrugged nonchalantly as she ran a festering hand through her gray hair and leveled her eyes to mine.
“For fun?” I repeated back in a harsh voice and Domor nodded once in agreement.
“Is that so unbelievable?” Ruituri hissed through her teeth and Annalise and I stared at her as we stood our ground. “We know you saw and spoke with Euron. He told you about how the heavens are now. They’re boring but they’ve gotten even worse now that the Holy Band of Mages are involved.”
“What do you mean?” I asked as I stepped even closer to the four gods and Ruituri squared her shoulders.
“The Holy Order fell when the Sanctum fell,” the goddess spoke and there was a hint of pride in her voice when she mentioned the Sanctum. “The Holy Band of Mages stepped in and took up some power over the gods and goddesses. How that is possible, I’m unsure. I believe there was a single sniveling god they had helping them. I believe he's of relation to you but I may be wrong.”
“Rat-faced little bastard? Doesn’t tell lies?” I murmured and Ruituri and Domor nodded in unison. “Only one person it could be, my little brother, Otia.”
“The Holy Band of Mages also have something else that might interest you,” Ruituri said as she waved her hands in the air. The air shifted and glimmered for a second as it created something like a mirror into another world. “Something that might tempt you into coming to them.”
For a moment, all I saw through the portal was swaths of moving white fabric, then I realized what it was, the white robes and golden sigils of the Holy Band of Mages. My gaze wandered over to Ruituri but she shook her head and gestured for me to look again. I concentrated harder into the scene that Ruituri showed me for a few moments, then my eyes widened in surprise. Two mages walked past with a struggling woman held between their arms. Her hair looked like golden spun silk as she screamed, and her wide eyes that pleaded to be let go were huge and baby-blue. I recognized her immediately but shook my head in disbelief. This woman should have been dead a long time ago, thousands of years ago when I was locked away in my dungeon. My eyes connected with Ruituri’s as the image shifted then disappeared.
“That’s not real,” I growled through my teeth as I stared Ruituri down. “She’s dead.”
“Isolda may be dead,” Ruituri stated as she sat back into her saddle and leveled her eyes with mine as she smiled wickedly and giggled. “But her descendant isn’t…”
End Notes
Thank you for reading Dungeon Master 5! This series hasn’t been selling very well, so I am considering canceling it. Would you like to see more books in this series? If so, please leave a positive review. Thank you!
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2019 by Eric Vall
