by Dante King
The Crusader Commander, a Resplendent Knight in gleaming, bright-silver full plate armor—the only soldier who wasn’t wearing brown camouflage—trotted out on his horse, stopping around 30 yards away from my fighters. The small contingent of infantry troops marched in a square behind him, and had I not known about the ambush, he and his small force certainly would have been the perfect bait to goad me into a charge. Of course, he was the one now walking into a trap, a trap of his own making.
Isu, dressed in my black armor and mounted on Fang, took a few steps out from my force but said nothing. She didn’t want to give the game away.
“Vance Chauzec, false god, vile heretic, filthy necromancer, and fork-tongued servant of darkness!” the commander bellowed as he pointed his sword at Isu. “You have officially been declared an enemy of the Church of Light and the people of Prand. In the name of the mighty Lord of Light and his most venerated holy servant, Seraphim Elandriel, your soul and the souls of all who follow your false teachings and perverted lies are to be purified by the sword.”
Isu said nothing in response. Instead, she simply gave him a casual shrug. It was a deliciously dismissive gesture that had me chuckling.
“You have nothing to say, fiend?” the commander roared. “So be it. Just as the rising of the sun, the great sphere of Light that feeds all life in the Lord’s blessed land, banishes the shadows of the night, we will purify the world from the stain of your corruption and evil with the force of our arms. Soldiers of Light, prepare for battle!”
A cheer rose up from the ranks of the Crusader infantry, and the commander galloped around to their rear. The square of soldiers locked their shields together in a wall and started to advance slowly. Seen from up above, it was almost like I was looking down at a game of chess, even the fiercest fighters looking like toys.
Isu knew what to do. Without a word, she commanded Fang to charge. My big lizard loved a good fight, so he didn’t need much encouragement to thunder across the dusty ground toward the infantry square. The rest of my party and my undead troops charged in an almost equally furious run.
Once the bulk of my force had entered the valley, the Crusader Commander reached for a golden horn on his hip and blasted out a trumpet signal. In response, his hidden cavalry charged from behind the massive boulders, intending to trap my army.
Now it was time for my newest deity, Anna-Lucielle, to do her part. She had borrowed Rollar’s helm, a magical item forged by the God of Beasts that allowed the wearer to communicate with animals. The animals in question were the Crusader cavalry’s horses.
Instead of pouring out from behind the boulders behind my army, the horses turned around. The surprised yells, kicks, and whips of their riders made no difference. The steeds raced around the rim of the valley and emerged at the rear of the Crusader army. At first, I thought Anna-Lucielle’s magic had failed, but then the magnificent animals started throwing their riders off. The soldiers screamed as their steeds kicked them and trampled them. The mayhem left the whole Crusader force trapped between my army, a wall of rabid horses, and the rocky walls of the valley.
It was time to begin the slaughter.
I lined up the crossbow enchanted by the Tree God’s power and loosed the first bolt. The projectile flew true and pierced an infantryman’s skull like a skewer into a ripe cherry tomato. His body shuddered, and then roots sprang from the wound and smothered his whole body even as he thrashed.
I sent a mental command to all of my zombie archers and crossbowmen on the rocky outcrops of the cliffs above the battlefield. My undead soldiers started pouring arrows and crossbow bolts into the trapped Crusader force, who were like stuck pigs. Grave Oath buzzed madly in its scabbard on my hip, multiple souls won per second as the projectiles did their deadly work.
The Crusaders were falling like flies, and by the time my forces crashed into theirs, half of their troops had already been killed. As I continued to pick off the soldiers with rapid-fire shots from my bow, I resurrected every one of the Church of Light soldiers I killed. The newly created zombies wreaked havoc in the midst of the packed throng of enemy soldiers.
“Keep the Crusader Commander alive!” I hoped my people would hear my words over the screams of dying men and the clang of steel on steel. “Kill the rest of the fuckers, but keep him alive!”
I looped my crossbow over the harness at my side and had Talon pick me up. She snatched me in her talons carefully and flew high above the battlefield before she swooped down and dropped me in the thick of the fighting. I whirled my kusarigama around me, smashing troops with the chain end while I channeled the combined strength of my zombies and skeletons. Enemy soldiers flew up and over the heads of their peers only to be smashed against the valley walls like insects. Sometimes, I would switch over to the blade end, the black steel sharper than any other weapon in Prand. It sliced through bodies as if bone, steel, and flesh were nothing more than straw. More and more souls flowed through Grave Oath, and I could feel my power growing. When all this was done, I’d need to visit the gray sentinel on the black plane to acquire a new skill or two.
I caught sight of the Crusader Commander, surrounded by a groaning, pressing mass of zombie troops I’d resurrected from Rodrick’s army. To the blustery buffoon’s credit, he was fighting well, whirling his golden longsword around him in a storm of fury, lopping zombie heads off left, right, and center.
“Corrupt servants of Death!” he yelled as he swung his golden sword in vicious arcs and hacked zombies in half with every precise but powerful stroke. “I fear neither evil nor darkness. The Lord of Light’s holy hand guides my every stroke!”
“Then your skull is obviously emptier than a eunuch’s underpants!” I yelled back as I commanded the zombies around him to open up a space so that he and I could fight one-on-one.
“Aha,” he said, pushing up his visor to get a better look at me. “So the slimy toad of the shadows comes to fight me himself. Who then was in your armor? One of your foul fiends raised from the earth?”
“Actually, she was. . . “ I paused to think. What was Isu to me? My girlfriend? My wife? My slave? “One of many goddesses I’ve bent to my will,” I finally said.
Hell, she might not be a goddess anymore, but this bastard didn’t need to know that.
The Resplendent Knight snarled. “You speak heresy. You will be purged.”
It was tempting to kill this guy, but I had to capture him alive so that I could squeeze out some information about this crusade. I had enough on my plate with the mysterious Hooded Man and the continued threat of the Blood God’s growing power, so the sooner this problem was dealt with, the better.
The Resplendent Knight and I circled each other for a few moments, him with his golden longsword and me with my kusarigama. He darted in with a lunge, swift and precise, but I turned the attack with my kusarigama’s blade and followed up with a slash at his face. It was intended to miss, of course—getting information out of him would be a tad difficult if the top of his cranium and most of his brains ended up on the ground.
He bobbed his head to dodge the strike and countered with a swift cut aimed at my arm. I jerked my arm back and whipped the kusarigama’s chain end across his ankle. The power of three skeletons was channeled through the blow, and the bones of the knight’s lower leg and ankle shattered with a sickening crack. He screamed and collapsed in the dirt.
I darted forward and kicked his sword out of his hand before I pinned him down with my heel on his throat. As he gasped for air, I pressed my boot down with enough force to choke him, but not quite enough to crush his windpipe.
“I want to know everything.” I pushed down a little harder with my heel.
He gasped and writhed as his face turned purple.
“You’re going to tell me everything you know about this farce of a crusade,” I said. “And why Elandriel wants me dead.”
The gasping knight looked around and saw the ugly truth: my counter-ambush had worked. He was the last of his men left alive.
“Tha
t’s it.” I looked down at him and stared into his bulging eyes. “It’s over. You’re fucked, and your dead men will soon be undead.”
“Never,” he hissed, and spittle flew from his mouth. “I won’t tell you a thing, you hell-devil.”
“That’s what they all say,” I said calmly. “But they all talk, eventually.”
Suddenly, his eyes bulged with raw terror, and he gasped as he stared at the sky behind me. I turned around and eased off the pressure of my heel on his throat for just a second. But a second was enough. He whipped out the dagger on his hip and plunged it up under his chin, using all of his strength to drive the blade through his mouth and nasal cavity and into his brain.
“Ah, shit,” I muttered as I turned back and saw his eyes roll back in their sockets.
Isu walked up to me and flipped up the visor of her helm. “They’re all dead now, so please can I relieve myself of this armor? My bosom feels like it will soon protrude out of my back.”
“Go ahead,” I said glumly as I stared with disappointment at the dead Commander at my feet.
He’d make a great zombie, of course, so I had my second prize.
The members of my party gathered around me as the first rays of the sun started to paint the tops of the mountains with red fire.
“We made short work of these fucksticks,’ I said. “But now, life has become a little more difficult. It seems that we’re officially enemies of the Church of Light, so we can expect more ambushes and battles like this.”
“Even more reason to leave Prand as soon as we can,” Rami-Xayon said.
“I agree,” Friya added. “Vance, you must travel to Yeng to find the missing Dragon Gauntlet. Now that we know that the Blood God is by no means defeated, there is an even greater need to acquire the means to destroy him.”
“Hmm, yes, the Church of Light has little power in Yeng,” Rami-Xayon said. “If we can cross the ocean, you will at least be free of that threat. I must travel there as well, to reestablish my temples and gain worshipers. Their prayers and faith will give me the power I need to help you in your fight against the Blood God.”
Anna-Lucielle stepped forward. Now that Anna’s body and spirit had been merged with that of the Charm Goddess, Anna’s memories had also been melded with Lucielle’s.
“Before your uncle came and besieged my fortress,” she said, speaking as Lucielle, “a traveler came to me from Yeng. She was one of the few Yengish who still worshiped me, and she made the perilous journey across the ocean to seek me out.”
“Is that true?” I asked Rami-Xayon. “Do people in Yeng worship the Charm Goddess?”
“They used to, centuries ago, but now, as Lucielle says, there are very few who still do.”
“All right,” I said, “go on, Anna-Lucielle.”
“This traveler who came to my fortress,” she continued, “brought some strange news from Yeng, news that I thought insignificant at the time. But now that we’ve found out about the Dragon Gauntlets, and the missing one being in Yeng, it seems to be a rather important bit of information.”
“What news did this traveler bring of Yeng?” Rollar asked, intrigued. His fascination with the old religions and old gods was as strong as ever.
“She told me that a shadow cult had risen in Yeng. And that strange things had been happening there. Talk of terrifying creatures that came in the night and devoured human beings whole, sometimes destroying entire villages.”
“What sort of creatures?” I asked. “And what does this shadow cult have to do with these monsters?”
“She said that the monsters rarely left any survivors when they attacked. The few who had survived reported armored scales on their huge bodies, unearthly fire, huge talons, reptilian faces. And this is where things get interesting: the shadow cult secretly worships the Goddess of Dragons.”
“The Draco Cult?” Rami-Xayon scoffed. “It’s nonsense, and the worshipers are a bunch of delusional fools. They’ve been around in Yeng for decades. Still, dragons have been as extinct as they ever were. If there ever was a Dragon Goddess, she’s as dead and powerless now as these corpses on the battlefield.”
“I kind of specialize in dead goddesses,” I said with a smile.
“Perhaps,” Rami-Xayon said, “but finding this corpse might be a more difficult task than even you can handle, Vance. It doesn’t exist.”
She had sounded less certain only a moment ago. Strange.
“I find it peculiar that you’re so dismissive of this cult,” Isu said to Rami-Xayon, one perfectly arched eyebrow raised. “You of all people should understand that the faith and belief of mortals is what sustains a goddess and gives her her powers. If that belief is strong, dedicated, and sustained over time, it can be enough to create a goddess.”
Now Layna stepped forward, the spider limbs on her back rattling.
“I mean no disrespect to you, Rami-Xayon,” she said, “but the Dragon Goddess is no myth. In the ancient library of Aith, we have many old scrolls and tomes dedicated to the subject of both dragons and the Dragon Goddess. Yes, it is true that she was believed to have been destroyed in the Purge, but then again, it was thought that you, Xayon, were also lost forever. Since you are standing here in front of me, though, I can see quite clearly that this is not the case.”
“If you want to hold on to your blind superstition, then go ahead,” Rami-Xayon said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “But mark my words: if you seek out the Draco Cult and expect them to help you in your quest for the lost Dragon Gauntlet, you’re wasting your time. They know nothing, and the supposed deity they worship is a fairy tale.”
“I think we should still look into it,” I said. “We’re headed to Yeng anyway.”
“If you need someone who is an expert on dragon lore,” Webmaiven Layna said to me, “I would happily accompany you to Yeng. I have read every word written on the subject of dragons available in our great library; it is a subject that has fascinated me for years.”
“What of the curse?” Friya asked.
“I was about to mention it,” Layna replied. “As the Webmaven of Aith, I have more magical power than most Arachne, but it has taken all of that power to get me this far from the city. If I stay away any longer, I will begin to rapidly age. Death will follow shortly afterward. Something must be done to remove it.”
“Is there anything we can do?” Anna-Lucille asked. It seemed that she shared a strong bond with the Arachne since they had worshipped her as goddess for some time.
Layna frowned. “I don’t know. If any of us had some kind of potion that could diminish the curse’s power…”
“Or if we lifted it,” I said.
“Impossible,” she simply said.
“She’s right, you know,” Isu said. “I doubt even you could lift it, Vance.”
“He’s a far better divinity than you ever were,” Rami-Xayon said with a sly smile. “No offense to you, of course, but it’s true.”
Isu shrugged. “I don’t disagree. But a curse of that power, made with such great rage, is no easy thing to remove.”
“We have to go back through Aith on our way out of here,” I said, “and I’ll find a way to lift the curse. It was made with Death magic, so I’m sure I can use Death magic to undo it. I don’t know much about dragons or the Dragon Goddess, so any help I can get on those topics would be invaluable.”
“I too will accompany you to Yeng,” Elyse said. “But we must not forget about the final Tear of Light, kept in the vaults of Luminescent Spires. It is the only item that will destroy the last Temple of Blood, and as soon as you find the Dragon Gauntlet, you must turn your attention to the destruction of the Blood God and his last temple. I want to be there with you on this quest, Vance, every step of the way.”
Ah, Elyse: beautiful, intelligent Elyse. The first woman to officially join my party, back when I was nothing but a fledgling necromancer, and she would be faithful and loyal to the end. I knew this; I could feel it in my bones. She really did have a heart of gold, eve
n if she still served the Lord of Light.
“There is something else the traveler from Yeng told me, something that might be connected to all of this,” Anna-Lucielle interjected. “Along with the stories of the mysterious beasts that attack in the night, there were also tales of a rising power in Yeng. Some sort of warlock, it was said, who could command storms and lightning. Something that even the Emperor of Yeng, with all his vast armies, somehow feared.”
“With everything else that’s happened so far, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if that motherfucker was connected to all of this,” I said.
I glanced down at the dead Resplendent Knight at my feet and snapped my fingers. With a slow moan, a jerky twitching and tightening, and then a slackening of his muscles, the dead man’s glazed eyes began to glow yellow-green, then he reached up and pulled the dagger out of his chin. He groaned wordlessly and stood up. His golden longsword was gripped loosely in his right hand, ready for combat. The dawn sun shone red like blood on his burnished armor.
“Welcome to the Army of Death, my new friend.” I patted the zombie’s gleaming, ornate pauldron. “We’re going across the sea to Yeng to find a Dragon Goddess and kick some warlock ass.”
Chapter Three
Aith was just as eerie and fascinating as last time I was here. It seemed less threatening, likely because I’d previously killed the corrupt Council of Aith and restored justice to this place.
Friya, being the only member of my party who knew anything about dragons and the Dragon Gauntlet, went with Layna to the Great Library of Aith to examine relevant tomes and scrolls on the subjects. Friya was convinced that the mysterious beasts who attacked Yengish villages in the night and devoured people were dragons of some sort. Rami-Xayon stubbornly refused to believe it. I couldn’t help but be curious.
As for the rest of my party, they all went to rest. I wandered the streets of Aith well into the early morning while my party slept—all of them except Isu.
“It’s a strange thing to get used to, isn’t it?” she remarked as we walked through the strange, silent streets, while giant spiders perched on high towers watched us with their compound eyes. “Not sleeping, not needing to sleep. Wandering the world like a lost phantom while everyone dreams...”