by Rex Jameson
“That must be the truth!” Mekadesh said with tinkling laughter. “Oh, you are a dear!”
“So,” Cassandra said. “You think we must go down to the bottom of the lake?”
Mekadesh nodded. “If the artifact is still here, and we want a chance at killing Orcus and Demogorgon, we’ll have to go down there and get it.”
Cassandra held up her metal contraptions. “Could we… I don’t know… plant one of these somewhere and then…” she made a motion with one of the rods vaguely interacting with the other. “Maybe air might fill up a bubble under the water.”
Mekadesh laughed. “Sorry. No, that might even work on some planets. That’s a good idea. Very… innovative…”
Cassandra sighed in defeat.
“It would just make bubbles,” Jayden said comfortingly. “We’d need to put it in a fixed pressure differential. Somewhere off planet, where the surface of the water would—”
“We need a way to defend Surdel,” Cassandra said through clenched teeth. “Don’t just tell me I can’t be of use!”
Mekadesh pointed at Ashton. “I’m giving you a way to defend your kingdom.”
Cassandra fumed at her.
Mekadesh chuckled. “I don’t need the Eye to see what’s in your mind. You don’t trust me, do you? Or him. I’m not your enemy, child. Don’t make me into one.”
Cassandra stared at her. Ashton watched a rush of images pass through the Eye. Cassandra may not know how to kill the Holy One, but that didn’t stop her imagination from trying to figure something out.
“It seems I never learn my lesson,” Mekadesh said.
“What’s that?” Cassandra asked icily.
“A lifetime ago,” Mekadesh replied, “I gave powers to creatures who wished me and everyone around me harm. Will you band together like they did, I wonder?”
Mekadesh looked at Ashton and then back to Cassandra.
“I was created for a purpose,” Mekadesh said, “just as you all were. I could run from my destiny. I did for a long time, but I’m here now. You’ll learn to trust me, maybe even love me, someday. And if you ever turn on me, really turn on me, you’ll wish you hadn’t. You’ll regret it, as I’ve done for a billion years.”
“How could anyone love you?” Jayden asked.
Mekadesh eyed the dark elf for a long moment. Her thoughts were opaque to Ashton, despite the Eye. He didn’t think she was trying to hide something. It seemed like her mind had just gone as blank as an orc’s.
“Through sacrifice,” she said.
The Holy One turned to Cassandra.
“You want the power to protect your kingdom from demons and undead?” Mekadesh asked.
“I do.”
“Wait,” Prince Jayden said.
“Would you do anything in your power to protect your people?” Mekadesh asked. “Would you swear to anything? Make any pact necessary to stop the undead and demons from consuming your world?”
“I’ll do whatever it takes to keep Surdel safe,” Cassandra promised.
Through the Eye, Ashton saw lines of holy energy pour from Mekadesh and snake across the table. The tendrils of power tapped around the princess’ hands, as if searching for her, but never touching her. The hair along Ashton’s arms stood on end.
“Wait, Cassandra!” Jayden said urgently.
Mekadesh reached across the table and slammed an open palm against Cassandra’s forehead. The princess’ back arched, and immense bright light shot from her eyelids as the tendrils of power wrapped themselves around her. The living light extended from Mekadesh and rushed into the floating woman. Holy lightning arced across the table, dancing along the edges of the wooden platters and tickling Ashton’s skin.
“Fight against her!” Jayden begged. “Don’t let her win!”
Cassandra screamed as the lightning leapt from her body and lifted her into the air, high above Ashton and the table. She closed her eyes and then she drifted downward with holy light still passing through and from her body but at a slower rate. The arcs became smaller and smaller until her feet touched the ground. Ashton watched as a swirl of light left the princess. It hovered there for a moment, just outside of her mouth, before drifting toward Mekadesh.
“Is she dying?” Ashton asked in alarm.
“Stop her, Ashton!” Jayden demanded, leaping to his feet and unsheathing Khelekhoon inches from Mekadesh’s face.
The princess started to fall backward, but the Holy One reached across the table and pulled her by the shirt. She locked lips with Cassandra, and the lightning grew more frenzied. Ashton watched as the lightning that had come from Mekadesh drained completely into the red-haired woman. The Holy One released the princess’ clothing, and a smile spread across both of their lips. The mist returned to the princess and disappeared down her throat.
“Almost lost you there for a second,” Mekadesh said.
“What did you do?” Ashton asked.
Mekadesh leaned heavily against the table. She smirked as she closed her eyes. “You’re no longer the only one carrying a piece of me.”
“Are you OK?” Jayden asked, lowering his shard.
“I was a light in the darkness,” Cassandra said groggily. “They reached out to me…
“Praise Jarl Sven!” Danwen exclaimed in alarm from the door to the kitchen shanty before going back inside. He had apparently seen enough arc lightning and floating princesses for the day.
“Can you see it?” Mekadesh asked Ashton. “Through the Eye? Can you see the binding she has to you? To me?”
Ashton looked hard at the curly-haired princess. She glowed so bright that it mesmerized him.
“All hail, Cassandra Eldenwald!” Mekadesh said weakly. “The Sorceress of Kingarth! The Scourge of the Damned! The Bride of the Chosen One!”
“The Chosen One?!” Ashton and Jayden asked together.
Mekadesh smiled at Cassandra. “Yours will be the true royal bloodline of Surdel. The final merging of the two great houses!”
“The two great houses?” Jayden asked.
“I know what that means!” the scholar Christian Somerset exclaimed. “I know what that means!”
“The House of Eldenwald and The House of Rasalased?” Jayden asked.
“No,” Christian said. “The House of Eldenwald and the House of Sven.”
“The House of Sven?” Cassandra asked groggily. “Tell me this is a joke.”
“What’s supposed to be funny?” Mekadesh asked seriously.
“You killed my father,” Cassandra said, “the man who would have wed me off to consolidate his power. Now, you give me this power, and you want to marry me off to a god to consolidate your own?”
“You mean to Sven?” Mekadesh asked, laughing. “Any power that Sven has, he got through me.”
“They say Jarl Sven is fifteen-feet-tall,” Jayden said, glaring at the demon lord. “What kind of monster would pair a five-foot something girl with a fifteen-foot man? Are you trying to kill her?”
“A fifteen-foot man doesn’t scare me,” Cassandra said drowsily. Arc lightning jumped between her fingertips and the table. She swayed like someone drugged.
“Cronos, be merciful!” Jayden said.
“Speaking of which,” Mekadesh said. “I must go. I’ve pushed myself too far, and this food is not going to be enough to replenish me. I need to recuperate. Ashton, you know what you must do to retrieve the Hand.”
The Eye perked up at the prompt. Ashton saw an image of the lake and a cave below. The waters parted before a woman with bright red curls. Cassandra.
“Do I really have to marry Sven?” the princess asked.
Mekadesh chuckled as she stood up. “You’ll marry whoever you desire.”
“The whole world’s gone mad!” Jayden said, pointing Khelekhoon at her one more time. “No one’s marrying the House of Sven to the House of Eldenwald.”
“And you are going to stop this?” Mekadesh asked.
“You may be a demon lord,” he retorted, “but if there’s one th
ing I’ve taught you these many years, it’s that we all have a choice! Wherever Sven is, he’s going to resist you.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Mekadesh asked.
“Listen, devil woman!” Jayden threatened her again with the shard.
But she disappeared. The Eye showed Ashton the same patch of strangely colored ground that it had revealed to him when she first disappeared along the road from Kingarth. A path led downward, deep within the earth, back to the god chained to a bed. He saw images of a large man and woman coupling and shook the disturbing visuals away.
Jayden sat down and shattered the ice shard against the stones below the table. Cassandra devoured one fish and then another, obviously famished from the strange transfusion that had just happened. After a few minutes, the orcs and elves returned to the table for a helping. Alfred looked at the princess timidly as he took a battered fish. The other guards followed closely behind him. No one spoke again, not even to thank Danwen as he praised Jarl Sven for each serving. Everyone had a lot on their minds, and the Eye happily fed Ashton more visuals from their thoughts.
He looked out across the lake at the tranquil waters near the center, but the Eye didn’t offer him any helpful information about what he’d have to do next. Either it had already shown him everything it knew, or he’d have to just figure it out himself. He guessed he’d find out when he got there.
27
A New Direction
The demon lord Orcus stared at a ball of white light at the end of the orc shaman’s staff. Unlike the paladin swords that produced an impenetrable bubble, the staff created only streaks of unpredictable lightning in random locations around its wielder. However, what made it more effective was the lack of effort required to keep its deadly lightning operational.
The muscular orc with the primitive necklace and feathers in his hair sat next to it, staring directly at Orcus, in a meditative state. He had not spoken. He did not issue challenges like the line of hundreds of orcs that growled and grunted beside him, blocking the path to the northeast. He patiently sat.
“You can’t stay there forever,” the Blood Lord Julian Mallory yelled. “You’ll have to sleep some time!”
“If I need sleep,” the orc said for the first time, “I’ll wake a paladin, and he’ll take over. You’re wasting your time here.”
“You speak well for an orc,” Orcus complimented, “my general there probably thinks that your staff is the biggest gift she’s given you, but I know better. She’s given you a fully developed mind—made you susceptible to him. You must be quite important to her. She must talk to you quite often; use you to tell your chief her plan.”
“I am no one,” the shaman said. “I am simply the one who waits.”
“What are you waiting for?” Julian asked.
“The warchief and his son to return with their axes,” the shaman said. “The Great Light to return with her holy magic and weapons. The paladins to wake from their rest. Cronos to return with his earth magic. The elves to return here with fire arrows and flaming swords. Do you wait for the same things?”
“No,” Orcus said. “I’m waiting to hear your name.”
“Then please sit,” the shaman said, smiling cordially, “what I wait for will happen much sooner.”
Behind Orcus were over 8,000 undead. No demons. Those had all been trapped below and annihilated or were still hiding from Demogorgon’s deathknights. Another 4,000 undead pillaged the local towns from Shirun to Foxbro and Thedon. In his attempts to take over other worlds, he had gathered armies of hundreds of thousands, and Demogorgon had stopped him every time. Of course, each of those had been in the open fields of some distant world—where Demogorgon’s mastery of demons really took over. If the Prince of Demons could martial his world-eaters and hundred-foot-tall thumpers, he was nearly impossible to defeat or contain.
But here on Nirendia, Demogorgon had been bottled up in the underworld for over 10,000 years—just like Orcus. The small passages reinforced with ice magics had restricted movement, allowing him to stave off Demogorgon’s movements for hundreds of years at a time, even as he lost men. The chief demon lord didn’t have room to field his massive machines or his heavy shock troops.
Orcus had learned much from this planet and its inhabitants. The dark elves were weak, but even weak creatures could clog up a cave system. And these clearly stupid orcs, with just a little bit of holy magic, could check an army of undead. Perhaps there was some reason Mekadesh had made them. There was much to learn from these pitiful creatures. If time had not been so short, he could watch them for eons.
Orcus had tried so many tactics over millions of years. In his previous fight with Demogorgon, he had taken out two world devourers with a swarm of undead bats strapped with ice magics extracted by enslaved races. He had killed dozens of deathknights—which was no small task—with similar numbers. But Demogorgon commanded at least 70 planes of existence. His numbers were endless. He could replace anything, even whole legions, in weeks. All wars with the Prince of Demons had been hopeless.
Orcus had one real realm—a fiery world of caves and seared surface. Hades was his original plane—the one that Demogorgon allowed him to retain—and it had been drained of its undead long ago. His demons returned through the Abyss, unless Demogorgon turned them before they died. To gain followers, Orcus had to connect his plane to other worlds where life resided—places like Nirendia.
He had almost no hope of truly winning this world. Mekadesh had proven quite formidable when she wanted something—a state the universe hadn’t known since General Maddox, when she wanted the universe to die. And Demogorgon was as strong as ever. But Mekadesh had done something curious here. She had convinced the inhabitants to seed the ground and underworld with ice magics, containing the demons in an expansive but highly restrictive cave complex. A prison, really. And like rats, they had been herded through the igneous limestone toward the escape points—the dark elven cities.
Orcus had gotten lucky. Someone had opened a release valve—disabling the ice bomb that was set off in Xhonia—for just long enough for him to flee. Demogorgon wouldn’t get the same opportunity, not if Orcus had anything to say about it. There was only one goal now—gather as many undead as he could and find a way back to the portal. If Orcus could reconfigure the portal that Demogorgon now held, he could bring his army back to Hades and attack his next plane en masse. If he could overwhelm a world before Demogorgon caught on, he could gain a second realm and maybe a third—worlds with life on them that could be turned into his undead. Demons would be born naturally from the darkness, death, and strife. Gain enough of these demon factories, and he might just compete for the title of Prince of Demons one day.
“Master?” Julian asked. “Are we attacking?”
“Maybe if we had a dragon!” Orcus retorted gruffly. He cursed loud enough for his general to hear but not loud enough for it to carry to the enemy. Best for them to not know his frustration.
Julian did not argue. He took his failures like a man. Best to keep his general in the dark on his plans. If Julian realized Orcus had already given up on this world, he might not fight as hard. He might catch on that Jayna was likely gone. It would take a miracle to find her in the Abyss now. She had been falling for weeks, and there were so many other demons closer. If he had the chance to grab a demon, Orcus wouldn’t waste his time on such a promise—there was too much at stake.
“Our army is small,” Orcus said.
“We can take them,” Julian said. “I’ve been watching the patterns of that staff. The lightning rotates in a mostly predictable way. It arcs randomly, but I’m fast enough. I could get to the shaman before the staff gets to me. Besides, I—”
“I’m not worried about these creatures,” Orcus said. “Our army is too small for Demogorgon. The crypts and towns we’ve visited have hardly been worth the effort. We lose almost as many as we gain. The Dragon Prince’s force was an unexpected gift, but we need bigger presents if we are to get Ja
yna back.”
Julian nodded in understanding. “The biggest graves are in the north.”
“I don’t necessarily need graves,” Orcus said. “Poorly defended cities and towns are just as useful.”
“The north has those too. Estwick, Trexole, and Celtus each have over 100,000 citizens. Nydale has 25,000, but the garrison there at Crayton Keep is the largest foot and cavalry force outside of Kingarth.”
“How many are at Kingarth?”
“It’s been a while since they had a census,” Julian said, “but there’s easily over 200,000 there. Deacon to the northwest is a small outpost town, really. 10,000 tops, but Wellby is 75,000 plus, and I bet it’s overflowing with refugees from Foxbro right now. It’s a resort town—swells to 125,000 in the summer. Keep going west, and you reach the largest city in Surdel. King’s Harbor. 350,000 to 400,000. It’s also the most heavily fortified to sea and land attack. Over the millennia, it’s been the jewel of the Kingdom. Every other Eldenwald king has added some new fortification to it. Moats. Barracks. Catapults and strange contraptions in steppes along the coast. They say it’s impregnable, and it could field 100,000 soldiers in days.”
“Sounds like a lot of work,” Orcus said. “What about Kingarth?”
“It overlooks the passes to the north. You would likely want to take it out before heading to Trexole. There’s a massive wall that connects Mount Godun to the northern passes that flow into Estwick. Roughly 20,000 archers. They’ll have heard about the effectiveness of fire and tar by now. Take down Kingarth, and the north is yours. Probably 800,000 to 1,000,000 souls between Kingarth and Edinsbro—and as many graves with something you could bring back.”
“Are you telling me that if we go north, we might acquire over 2,000,000 undead?” Orcus asked.
His heart beat quickly, and he felt hope for the first time in centuries.
“You’ve made me quite happy,” Orcus said.
“Not-bringing-up-the-dragon-again happy?” Julian asked.
“Perhaps,” Orcus said with a wide grin. “I want you to move quickly to the south. Stop the assaults there at Shirun. Make sure none of my lieutenants are wasting our troops at Perketh. There are no undead there worth having. Then, keep moving north. I’ll lead the 8,000 men we have here west and meet you at Foxbro.”