Swords of Steel Omnibus

by Howie K Bentley et al.

  At the iron mouth of the town, he turned back, and looked to the grey mountains off in the distance where the once mighty Tower had stood. He took to the fields beyond the town. As he walked, the crashing and shouting of the city streets faded into the soft winds that bent tall grass. Soft earth and sounds of birds gave him much needed peace, and his mind began to dream. He passed stony monuments to forgotten gods, buried by moss with inscriptions faded by centuries.

  The hills beyond Ardona began to roll as he drew nearer to the mountains. The Earth Warrior turned back to see the yellow stone walls of the city, cracked by time but strong and thick. There was no Tower which rose above them any longer. New Towers will be built, and will fall in time, as all things will. The warrior had outrun time and reason, but not fate. He turned back to the mountains, and continued his journey until nightfall.

  The warrior made camp beneath the evergreen trees of this world at the base of the stony gloom of the mountains. He struck a fire and sat for an evening’s rest. He lay back and closed his eyes as the howling of distant beasts sang their song of the night.

  In the darkness, the warrior saw a stone castle appearing in crimson hues against a violent orange sky. Cracked towers wound upon a complex structure, buttressed against harsh stony peaks. Great lizards forced their forked tongues between cruel teeth as they dominantly stalked the parapets. Torches and banners lined the walls and glowing fire could be seen through arrow slits in the many towers. A bridge of arched stone led up to an iron gate over a chasm many hundreds of feet deep. About the mountainous base flowed a river of fuming lava, and beyond lay the war camp of monstrous creatures he had seen once before.

  The warrior awoke to find his fire naught but ashes. He gathered his supplies once more and wove a path into the mountains. The wind howled between the jagged peaks and down through the mountain passes, beckoning him to his doom. He began his ascent up the blocks of granite-like stone at the side of a pool of spring water, which flowed down from the heights of the mountain. Step by careful step, he climbed the stony walls, following the spring upward.

  After many hours of climbing, the warrior reached a plateau which overlooked the forest and field, and he viewed Ardona as a tiny glowing dot far off in the distance. Upon this shelf of stone he took rest in an oasis of evergreen trees, which buried their roots at a clear pool fed by a waterfall. A refreshing mist filled the air, and the warrior bent to drink. He gazed upon his reflection, and did not recognize his face. His helm had gathered rust and dents since his adventure began. His features had hardened as well. He looked overhead and saw the bright birds of this world take flight from the canopy, crying strange songs into the sky. He looked down once more at the pool and saw another face, grey and cruel. As he puzzled, the face pushed forward to break the surface of the water, and a jagged sword pierced the waterline into the air of Eyrn. The Earth Warrior jumped back and drew his sword. Here was a creature of his visions.

  “Warrior! We have seen you. We have seen what you have done in our world,” the creature rattled with a hard low voice. “Your blood will spill upon these rocks now, as our dreaming god has died at your hand.”

  The creature lunged forth out of the pool, water spilling from its harshly forged armor of unearthly metal. He swung his blade upward at the warrior’s torso, aiming to cleave him in two, but the warrior drew back and blocked his strike. The Earth Warrior kicked the creature in the chest. It fell back with a gasp. He then raised his sword and came down on the center of the creature’s head, splitting it down the middle into its body. As the two sides fell unto its shoulders, oozing yellow blood gushed to the surface and stained the crystal clear water. Steam arose from the water and the remaining air from the creature’s lungs bubbled to the surface. The body of the creature liquefied and vaporized, leaving behind only the crude armor and blade sinking to the bottom of the shallow pool. The warrior knelt to examine the armor and found a talismanic amulet, bearing a mysterious symbol. He took this and tied it onto his belt, and cleansing his sword of the alien blood, he continued on his trek.

  VII

  The warrior ascended the waterfall at the base of the pool, and came upon a hedge which bordered a grassy clearing, bound at the sides by stony heights. He heard murmuring and chanting in a language unknown to him. Remaining hidden behind a boulder, he peered between the leaves of the hedge. From here he could see an ancient stone altar alight with sickly green fire. It was ringed by standing stones; upon each was perched a human skull. At the far edge of the clearing was a canvas tent of golden yellow. Two guards in crimson hooded robes stood at its entrance. It was dusk now, and as the light faded, figures emerged from the forest to stand among the nine stones. Eight figures came forward, leaving one stone unattended. Each devotee was bound to their stone with black cords by the crimson guards. As the moon rose above the altar, the opening of the tent parted and a figure came forward with golden scepter in one hand. The eight figures began a haunting chant as this high priest entered the ring of standing stones and approached the altar.

  “My children,” he said, “you have come to this site of your forbears, to stand among the relics of the old wizards. We spit on this world as we welcome the doom of this planet. The Tower Keep has fallen at last, and you come here now to travel to Oxuul, and to spill your blood on the soil of Faellnoch. Let us greet oblivion at last!”

  The chanting continued to a rising crescendo, and the warrior looked down at the talisman upon his belt. He tore it free and walked with it in hand toward the hedge. He parted the branches and entered the clearing as the cultists looked on in amazement and ceased their chant.

  The high priest said, “You, who walk among us, you dare to enter our ritual space bearing this amulet from beyond? Guards! Kill this infidel!”

  The guards drew black daggers of volcanic glass, similar to the one once held by Vael, and moved toward the warrior around the ring of standing stones. The warrior raised the talisman he had plucked from the fallen creature high above his head.

  “Come forward and kill me if you wish, but my blood is better spilled on Faellnoch,” the Earth Warrior proclaimed. I come here as a pilgrim to my doom. Let me sacrifice myself that the world of Eyrn be forever dust in the void of space.”

  “It is as prophecy foretold, that a stranger would come to us to bear sacrifice among our final ritual,” said the high priest. Guards! Tie this man to the ninth stone, that he might take the place of the ancient wizard of Ardona.”

  The guards took hold of the warrior’s arms and pulled him to the standing stone. They bound his wrists with black cord and wrapped it around the mossy stone. The high priest raised his hands and the chanting began once more, rising wildly into the night sky. The warrior fell into a daze as the chant grew and swelled in rhythmic complexity. He looked about him at the faces of the cult. They were humans of all races of Eyrn, their brains tainted by evil and misanthropic zeal.

  The high priest stood at the altar, upon which lay a large tome of black writs; he spoke words from the page with fury and hate. The ancient tongues of dark wizards came alive; magick smoke poured from the high priest’s mouth as he uttered the incantation. It lingered in the air above them in a haze. Within the cloud of smoke, jolts of electricity flickered and cracked, flashing gloomy blue light onto the stones. With a clap of thunder, a golden shimmer began to grow in the center of the cloud, widening into a circle. The chanting continued at a feverish pace, and the high priest began to intone the final lines of the evil spell. The portal above their heads grew wider and extended out to the edges of the standing stones. The Earth Warrior looked up into the void and saw the skies of Faellnoch and smelled its sulfurous air. As he stared up into the magick void, the portal began to move down toward their heads slowly. The other victims of sacrifice looked around in a panic, yet did not cease their dark chanting. The golden vortex came lower now, encompassing their heads and necks. The weight of another atmosphere bore down onto them. They looked around at the new world they found themselv
es partly in. Bizarre structures appeared on unfamiliar horizons, yet their feet remained on Eyrn. The warrior of Earth recognized these pyramids from his travels, and they reminded him of those on his home world, yet there remained a desperately wrong aspect to them which shook his very being. The portal reached the ground and fire leaped up from the stony soil of Faellnoch, spiraling around the ancient standing stones and vanishing off into the sky as the chanting ceased.

  One by one, the guards loosed their bonds, and the victims approached the altar. They stretched their necks across the stone, baring flesh unto the cold moonlight. The high priest drew again his dagger of volcanic glass, and cut their throats with no hesitation or pageantry. The blood spilled forth, pouring down the stone and wetting the soil beneath. A great pool of blood grew around the stone altar, and the high priest grinned, baring white teeth in madness. With each sacrifice, the bloody pool around the stone grew, and soaked the robes of each victim as they approached. The guards who had tied the warrior freed him from his bonds and drew again their swords, only to fall on them: their blood was not fit for sacrifice, and yet, they were not permitted to live. The high priest laughed and pointed toward the Earth Warrior. Now was his time.

  “Priest! Now will be the ninth sacrifice, but it will not be my blood upon the soil of this forsaken planet!” the warrior shouted as he drew his blade and lunged at the high priest. His first strike was blocked by the obsidian blade, which shattered on impact, and sent black glittering shards flying into the heavy air. The priest gasped and jumped away from the altar, sliding in the blood of his coven and falling to the ground.

  “I have come as prophesized, not to end my life in honor of the dreaming gods, but to seal this world off and be forgotten in the seas of time. You have come here only to bring about the doom of the gods you wish to serve. Contemplate this in your final seconds of life!” With a shout, the warrior raised his sword above the high priest. The priest knelt and bowed his head low as the warrior freed it from his neck. Blood spilled again on the soils of Faellnoch.

  VIII

  Familiar restless inky hues swirled in the skies of this forsaken land, and the warrior’s footfalls met the ground with strange heavy thuds. The physical laws of this realm were not as in Eyrn, or as in his home world. His travels had taken him here once, and he had hoped to never return. The rocky landscape spat forth harsh vegetation. What appeared as fleshy trees with pod-like fruits, large as a man, sprouted in a vast oily forest. Their deep blue hues contrasted with the red umber soil. He stood in a clearing, as a mirror of the ritual grounds on Eyrn, and looked about him to see the crooked mountains on a horizon which defied the logic of his familiarity. He knew not which direction the lair of the King in Yellow lay. He looked to the key which he had tied about his belt and felt it twitch with arcane magick. He lifted the heavy chain and held the key with arms outstretched. Closing his eyes, he turned in the clearing. He felt a pull, as if a ghostly hand had grasped for the key in the darkness of his mind, and walked on to meet it.

  The Earth Warrior came to the edge of the clearing and turned back to see that the rocky soil of the ritual ground had drank the blood of sacrifice: it had pulled the life-force of the cultists in to feed the heart of the dreaming planet. The bodies lay strewn, withered, and contorted. Turning back to the rim of the forest, the warrior trudged carefully, edging carefully through the darkness of the leathery trees. They seemed to be aware of his presence, and appeared to move slightly as he passed. On the forest floor, he observed small pale white mushroom-like growths sprouted close together. When he trod on them, they let out tiny gasps of pain. Ever on his way he felt watching eyes upon him.

  Hiking through these strange woods, the warrior all the while felt the pull on the key which he had carried from Eyrn, following it like a compass on Earth. After walking over lumbering hills and shallow valleys, he heard a muffled cry from beyond a rocky pass at the edge of the wood. He approached the pass and quickly entered between the sheer cliff sides. When he reached the far end, he saw another fleshy blue tree, much larger than those of the forest. It moved with a slow slither, its branches coiling like snakes. Near the ground, one of its leathery pod-like appendages closed with the legs of a man extending out of the far end. The warrior heard muffled screams from within, and unsheathed his sword as he ran forward. Several branches cracked like whips and struck him, flinging him to the ground as the pod began to rise up from the ground. The warrior got back to his feet and lunged forth, cutting the slithering arms of the creature. Oily black liquid spewed from the fresh wounds. He leaped as the pod lifted into the air, and slashed at the stem which held it onto the leathery blue trunk of the tree creature. As the pod slopped to the ground, many more appendages desperately reached for him and were cut in a series of flashing sword strikes. The warrior took to hacking away at the trunk, giving the tree creature little time to recover. As he cut away at the base of the carnivorous plant, black ooze gushed and foamed, and as his strikes reached the core, the snake-like limbs went slack and wilted in the dank air.

  The warrior approached the fallen pod as the creature withered and let out an alien moan in the heavy night. He pried open the petals, and pulled at the pair of legs which moved only slightly now. Covered in the sap, or blood, of the entity was a man, haggard and wearing tattered clothes. He raised a hand to wipe the oily material from his face. He regained his senses and stood slowly.

  “I never thought that I would see a human face again. I do not know how long I have been here, but it feels like an eternity,” the man said. “All I can remember now is looking into a mirror in my home on Eyrn, and a grotesque grey face replaced my own as brutish arms grabbed and pulled me through. That evening, I had been preparing for my journey to the city of Ardona on behalf of the Kingdom of Westfold. I’d received dire word from our castle sage that a time of strife had arrived, as had a warrior from distant lands. I then found myself here in this forsaken place, tortured and deserted by my captor, left to wander the wastes, until I found myself in this living forest. I thank thee for saving my life, even though I was better to have died. I was once called Ruhgar… that was my name.” The bedraggled man scratched his head, and looked down at the forest floor, lost in thought. The warrior wiped the black blood from his blade and sheathed it at his back.

  “You may yet see the skies of your home world, and you may know more of this world than you think. I have trodden the lost roads between worlds, and I know your kingdom of Westfold and of a roguish Wrathcloak who arrived in your stead, but these things are little importance to us here in this wasteland,” said the warrior from distant lands.

  “I seek the King in Yellow, and I have traveled here to unseat him from his throne,” continued the Earth Warrior. As he spoke, he looked about him. The slain tree creature stood in an enclosure of rock, with craggy walls stretching upward high into the spinning skies of Faellnoch. The key pulled to the far end of the stony canyon. “We must scale these walls with all the haste you can muster.” Ruhgar nodded silently, as he wondered whether he had the strength left. The two lost adventurers searched for some time at the base of the rock face for a suitable path upward, and began their ascent.

  IX

  Attended by a gray humanoid creature with two pairs of human arms and wings resembling those of a bat, the King in Yellow sat upon his throne in a crimson hall. The King waved his hands in the air, and an image appeared of armies amassing in the stony landscape of Faellnoch. They marched through fallen cities, dotted with crumbling columns and misshapen pyramids. Their heavy boots fell as the beating of deep drums. As the King in Yellow viewed this vision, a warlord of his troops entered the hall, and approached the bat-winged champion, uttering an ancient, ugly language in a hushed tone. The bat-winged creature drew a large battle axe and chopped at the neck of the war leader where he stood, and the head bounded down the stairs away from the throne as the lifeless body fell at his clawed feet. The King in Yellow swiped at the vision before him, and it melted into the air
. He turned to the bat-winged creature, who relayed the message of the now dead warlord. The King in Yellow drew his hand into a fist and pounded the arm of his throne, which cracked upon this blow.

  X

  Ruhgar and the Earth Warrior neared the top of the rock wall, and could see a vast ruinous land before them. Upon the sandy plain was an ancient city. A series of stout pyramids was arranged around the remains of a colonnade about a stone foundation. The pyramids on the far side glowed with flickering red-orange light, the source of which was a river of lava. Beyond the lava, a jagged stony peak rose from the earth, and upon this mountain, the King in Yellow lay in wait.

  “When I arrived in this land, I found myself within those castle walls,” Ruhgar huffed as he pointed toward the castle beyond the ruins. “My captors tortured me until they realized I had no information to tell them. They led me out into the wild wastes in a chariot driven by strange bird-like creatures. I was lowered into the pit of the tree creature and left as sacrifice to it. I long for vengeance, and will guide the way back.”

  After crossing a desolate rocky plateau, the warrior with no name and Ruhgar descended into the ruinous valley of ancient stone structures. The warrior recognized this as the place where he had once battled the metal monster and retrieved the claw talisman. To the far side of the valley lay the cracked pyramid where he had placed the completed Talisman of Kings upon its high altar; it was there where the dreaming god fell into the widening volcanic pit, and where a portal drove him back to the Tower Keep. The pit was now a river, barring the way to the plains beyond.

  They walked on, crossing the center of the crumbling colonnade. In the recesses and shadows, slinking silhouettes could be seen scratching along the fallen stones. The warrior reached for his sword, but did not draw it, as the creatures scurried off into the darkness.