by Dante King
I slammed Grave Oath into his ear, and his eyes bulged with agony as it sucked his soul out and started to wither and shrivel his head. Before the enchantment did too much damage to his head, I pulled my dagger out. I wanted this powerhouse of a man intact. He would make an excellent zombie.
I commanded the panther to release him from its jaws, then I raised him as a zombie. The blood pouring out of his mouth rapidly congealed and turned black, then his glazed-over eyes began to glow with a yellow-green light. He stood up, now one of my creatures. Fire sprang from his armor and sword again, but now the flames were no longer in tones of orange, yellow, and red. Instead, they were of a deep black, and they sucked in light rather than giving it off. I gripped the blade of his sword and gave it a quick Death enchantment. The steel became the same superhard black substance as the blade end of my kusarigama, sharp and strong enough to take a Frost Giant’s limb off with one slash.
“Go now, Death warrior,” I said to him, “and kill all your traitorous friends.”
He growled and nodded before he charged into the fray. His Death sword with its black flames lopped off the limbs and heads of former comrades in a vicious and unstoppable killing spree.
Among the chaos, the acrobatic Blind Monks jumped, dived, rolled, somersaulted, and launched off each other in spectacular maneuvers. They whipped their Death-enchanted quarterstaffs in furious blurs of speed, deflecting slashes from the flaming swords and thrusts from the fiery spears. Layna blasted spider webs left, right, and center, ensnaring the enemy soldiers. Yumo fired precise shots at the trapped guards with her Cold arrows, executing the men before their flames could melt Layna’s webs.
While the monks, Yumo, Layna, and the panthers battled the elite Yengish warriors, I raced over to Anna-Lucielle, who was frantically ducking and diving under the burning sword blade of a warrior she was fighting by herself.
I raced toward her opponent, Grave Oath poised in my hand for a throw. As soon as Anna-Lucielle moved out of my intended throw’s trajectory, I flung my dagger and plugged the blade into the warrior’s eyeball. He dropped to his knees, screaming in agony and clutching futilely at his withering face and shriveling head. I walked calmly past him, plucked my dagger out of his eye socket, then casually impaled him with the blade of my kusarigama.
I yanked it out of his dead body without breaking my stride and made a beeline for the Emperor, with Anna-Lucielle alongside me.
“I’m gonna smack you out of the Emperor’s body like a washerwoman beating dust out of a dirty rug,” I said.
The Warlock couldn’t call down his lightning bolts here; the roof was far too strong for that. Also, the Emperor’s body was too frail to use as a conduit to channel that kind of magic. To attempt to do this would surely kill him, thus defeating the Warlock’s purpose.
“Assist me, you fools!” he screamed at his warriors, but they were too occupied with the fight against the monks and panthers to come to his aid.
Layna and Yumo both guarded the bottom of the steps so none of the swordsmen or spearmen could intervene.
I turned to Anna-Lucielle. “You need to reach inside this body with your Charm magic and find whatever’s left of the Emperor’s mind and soul. He’s gotta fight hard to take his body and mind back, and you’re gonna have to help him. The Warlock isn’t going to give up easily.”
“I’ll do everything I can to keep the Emperor alive and fighting, Vance,” she said, her hands already glowing pink with the aura of her Charm magic.
The Emperor jumped up when we reached him and drew an ornate dagger from a jeweled sheath on his hip. He tried to stab me in the throat, but it was a feeble and clumsy attack. A novice assassin trainee could have blocked it and broken the attacker’s arm. I didn’t, though; I wanted to keep the Emperor’s body as unharmed as I could.
The Emperor snarled and hissed and tried to bite me with his rotting teeth, but I grabbed his neck in a powerful lock with my left arm. I twisted his wrist with my right hand, forcing him to drop the dagger. Now that I had him in a headlock, Anna-Lucielle was able to place her glowing hands on his temples and get inside his mind.
“You’ll never get me out of here.” The Emperor struggled weakly against my hold. “He’s mine now, and if you try to remove me you’ll kill him. All of Yeng will hate you.”
“You know what, asshole? That’s a risk I’m willing to take,” I said, and then I punched him in the stomach, nice and hard.
He gasped and shuddered with pain, and his body slackened. Too much physical punishment would certainly kill the Emperor in his frail state, but I wanted to at least make the Warlock feel a little pain before I booted him out of this body.
“You’re like a little tapeworm in there, aren’t you?” I squeezed his neck tighter. “Well I’ve got some bad news for you, you parasite: you’re about to be removed. Anna-Lucielle, have you got the Emperor’s heart and soul?”
With her brow furrowed and her jaw set with intense concentration, Anna-Lucielle nodded.
“Whatever you do, don’t let go,” I said. “Keep him fighting, keep him alive. I’m going in.”
I wasn’t sure if what I was about to do was going to work, but I had to try. I held Grave Oath in my free hand, closed my eyes, and plunged my spirit into the Emperor’s body, in the way I did to resurrect both humans and beasts as my undead creatures. I’d never done this to a living being, and I hoped that it wouldn’t kill him. But I assumed since the Emperor was so close to death, it would likely work.
In a heartbeat, I was in his veins, in his flowing blood. Back in my body—which I was occupying and cognizant of while simultaneously traveling like a virus through the Emperor’s blood and body—I felt the Emperor’s frail body thrashing violently, as if seized by a vicious paroxysm of madness. He howled and screeched in ear-piercing agony, but I kept him gripped tightly in my headlock.
It was beyond strange doing this to a living body. Unlike in a corpse, where everything was still and peaceful, in here everything was moving and active. While a dead body was an empty vessel, devoid of any presence, this was completely different. There were two distinct presences: one immensely powerful and brutally malevolent, the other weak and confused. Both, however, wanted me out. I felt as if I was being crushed and burned and stabbed all at once, so I had to expend souls to bolster my strength and help me fight through the terrible agony and the bone-crushing sensation of pressure closing tightly around me.
The inside of the Emperor’s body looked as awful as the outside. It was as if some sort of invasive throttling vine was taking over his body, crushing him from the inside out. Purple tendrils wound around his organs and veins and arteries, the Warlock’s parasitic cords of magic.
There was only one way to get them out of this body.
A spirit image of Grave Oath appeared in my hand, glowing black. I began to move through the Emperor’s body, hacking and slashing at the purple tendrils. The parasitic cords screamed and roared with the Warlock’s voice every time I severed one of them. The crushing pressure exerted on me became even more extreme, but I fortified my muscles and bones with more Death energy and resisted the Warlock’s attempts to crush me like a bug.
“He’s fading away, Vance!” Anna-Lucielle said. “I’m using all of my power, but I’m losing my grip on the Emperor’s mind and soul!”
“Just a little longer,” I said. “Just hold on to him a little longer, I’m almost there!”
The Warlock was pouring all of his strength into trying to crush me, but I was moving at speed through the Emperor’s body, severing every parasitic purple tendril I could find.
“Quickly, Vance, he’s slipping away!” Anna-Lucielle cried.
“Almost there, hold tight!” I gritted my teeth against the immense pain.
I reached the Emperor’s heart, but when I first laid eyes on it, it was barely recognizable as such. So many purple tendrils were wrapped around it that it looked more tendril than heart.
I went to work on the ball of tendrils, slas
hing and hacking with a maniacal fury. The Warlock’s screams of rage and agony rang with piercing clarity in my ears. The pressure he exerted on me made me feel as if my bones would splinter in my limbs. My muscles and flesh felt like they would burst. The agony only drove me to cut and hack with an even more determined madness.
The tendrils fell away, and as they did the heart beneath them was revealed. It was weak and atrophied and shrunken. The pulse was so weak that the beating was barely perceptible. I could feel Anna-Lucielle’s Charm magic working on the heart, but even though she was using all of her power, it wasn’t enough. The Emperor was dying.
I slashed the last few purple tendrils off, and with a final shrieking wail the Warlock was gone, expelled from the Emperor’s mind, heart, and body. The feeble heart in front of me was about to stop beating, though. I couldn’t let that happen.
If pulling a piece of my life force from my own heart was enough to raise the dead and resurrect dead goddesses, surely it would be enough to save a barely living person? I had to try it.
I reached into my own heart, pulled out a glowing chunk of my own life force, and shoved it into the Emperor’s heart, before I exited his body and jumped fully back into mine.
His eyes bulged and he gasped and screamed, then he sucked his lungs slowly full of air. I released him from my headlock, and he sat up straight. Color immediately began to return to his face, and the yellow jaundice faded from his eyes.
“I’m … back,” he said slowly, holding his hands up in front of his face and staring at them as if it was the first time he was seeing them.
Then he jumped up from his throne, stared in horror at the ongoing fight between his troops and mine, and held one of his hands aloft.
“Stop fighting, all of you!” he commanded.
The few warriors who were still alive immediately ceased fighting and bowed before him, and I called off my fighters too. The Emperor stared at me and Anna-Lucielle with a look of wonder and gratitude on his haggard face.
“You two, the God of Death and the Goddess of Charm, you did what nobody else could. You saved me from that foul demon who possessed me. I owe you not just my life and soul, I owe you my kingdom. Never did I imagine that the day would come where an Emperor of Yeng would have to rely on two foreign gods for salvation, but here we are. Ask anything of me, and I will do everything in my power to grant it.”
“I will ask two things of you, Glorious Emperor,” I said to him, sweating and breathing hard from the effort it had taken to exorcise the Warlock from his body and mind. “The first is that you give me the lost Dragon Gauntlet. The second is that you allow me to bring my army into Yeng. We will fight and crush the Warlock and his army, then we will leave your lands.”
“You do not want gold, jewels, a lordship in Yeng? You ask only for these two things?” the Emperor asked.
“Only these two things.”
“Then you truly are worthy to be a god. You shall have these two things you ask of me, and I will grant you one additional thing too, even though you did not ask for it.”
“What might that be?”
His eyes hardened as he stared at the kneeling warriors before him. “These sniveling cowards who have the audacity to kneel before me as if they are my loyal servants,” he hissed, “are traitors who gladly served the demon who possessed me in return for promises of lands, titles, and wealth.”
“No, Glorious Emperor!” one of the warriors protested. “We were just—”
“Silence, you lying snake!” the Emperor roared before he turned to face me. “These traitors I give to you as slaves. Do with them what you will.”
“Oh, I know exactly what I’m going to do with them, Glorious Emperor,” I said with a grin.
I walked over to the kneeling warriors with Grave Oath in my hand. A minute or two later I’d taken all their souls and resurrected them as my own undead warriors.
“I will gather the officers and lords who remained loyal to me, who these traitors expelled, and rebuild my army to assist you in your fight against the Warlock,” the Emperor then said to me. “Because the battle against that evil usurper is mine as much as it is yours.”
“With all due respect, Glorious Emperor, I don’t need the help of your army to crush him,” I said. “Mine will be sufficient to do the job. Besides, I don’t think you’ll be able to get your army ready in time. We have to strike now, before the Warlock can become even more powerful. There are, however, a few other things I would ask of you.”
“Name them, God of Death, and I will do my best to honor them.”
“I need you to right a wrong one of your ancestors did.” I shot a glance at Yumo before returning my focus to the Emperor. “They confiscated property and lands from the ancestor of one of my friends; this woman here, Yumo. I want you to admit to your ancestors’ wrongdoing and restore to her family what was wrongfully taken.”
The Emperor looked at Yumo, who was glaring at him with icy wrath.
“My venerated ancestors were good rulers, but they were by no means perfect,” he said to Yumo. “I humbly ask forgiveness on behalf of them, and I swear to you that I will restore what was wrongfully taken from your family.”
“You lying—” Yumo hissed, balling her hands into tight fists.
“Yumo,” I said sternly, “the Glorious Emperor of Yeng is apologizing to you, and he’s going to restore everything that was taken from your family. Swallow your pride and bury the hatchet, for the sake of this mission. That’s an order.”
Still fuming, she gritted her teeth and nodded. It was killing her to have to do this and give up her dream of vengeance, but to her credit, she obeyed me. She even got down on her hands and knees and pressed her forehead to the ground in the Yengish way.
“Glorious Emperor,” she said, “I thank you for your esteemed kindness in this matter, and on behalf of my family, I forgive and absolve you of all wrongs done to us by your ancestors.”
The Emperor nodded, satisfied.
“Another thing, Glorious Emperor,” I continued. “I need you to end your feud with the Order of Blind Monks. The Dragon Goddess will be resurrected, whether you like it or not, but I promise you, she’ll be no threat to your rule. There’s no reason for any enmity between you and the Blind Monks.”
“Very well,” the Emperor said, although I could tell that this request was granted with far more reluctance than the previous ones. “I will no longer publicly criticize the Order of Blind Monks. They are free to follow their beliefs in Yeng.”
Ji-Ko now bowed and pressed his forehead to the floor.
“Thank you, Glorious Emperor,” he too said. “I assure you, we are your loyal subjects and we work only for the good of Yeng and mankind.”
“Now that that’s taken care of,” I said, “I need that Dragon Gauntlet.”
“And you shall have it. Come, let us go to my reliquary.”
The Emperor took me through a door behind the throne that led to a spiral staircase. We headed down a few levels, until eventually we came to a large stone chamber that ended with two heavy steel doors. The doors were covered in Yengish pictographic symbols, etched into the steel, and I sensed that there was a potent magic here keeping the doors locked.
The Emperor touched a few of the symbols in a specific sequence, and they lit up, burning with an orange glow. The magic holding the doors shut was released, but there was still a physical lock in place. The Emperor reached into his robes and pulled out a golden key. After he slipped it into the lock and turned it, the doors creaked open.
The sight within was astounding; I’d never seen a chamber filled with such an immense hoard of treasure. Gold coins were piled in mounds bigger than houses, and all sorts of stunning ancient artefacts were stacked up on shelves. The chamber itself was enormous, and scarcely a cubic inch was unoccupied with some sort of treasure.
On a plinth in the center of the chamber, though, was the object I’d come all this way for: the lost Dragon Gauntlet.
Ignoring every
other item, I headed straight for it.
“Take it, God of Death,” the Emperor said from behind me. “It is yours now.”
I slipped the Dragon Gauntlet onto my left hand and felt its power surge through me. It was identical to the one I already had, except this one fit on the other hand. It was fashioned in a rich blue metal, ornate symbols worked into its surfaces.
I had found the missing gauntlet, but I still had a Warlock to contend with.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
After giving me the Dragon Gantlet, the Emperor insisted on throwing us a celebratory feast. We didn’t exactly have a lot of time to spare, but it would have been disrespectful to refuse, and my party members could use some good food in them, so we accepted the invitation.
The dining hall of the Forbidden Palace was just as impressive architecturally as the rest of the place. In more prosperous times, the palace and its halls would have been bustling with servants, now there were only a scattered handful of tired and overworked servants. Consequently, when dinner was served at the hundred-yard-long dining table, it was hardly a feast. In fact, most minor knights of Prand could have done better. It was understandable, though; after the chaos in the Forbidden Palace over the past year only one cook remained in the kitchen. Thus, we ate the sparse, simple fare and pretended it was a delicious smorgasbord of tastes and flavors to help the Emperor rebuild his dignity. Besides, the wine was actually quite good.
“You have such beautiful women in your harem,” the Emperor said to me after a few goblets, his eyes glossy. “Surely you could sell me just one of them, God of Death? You said you have more than just these two beauties. Perhaps I could purchase one of the others? I would pay most handsomely, of course.”
I chuckled and shook my head. “Sorry, Glorious Emperor, but they’re not my concubines and they’re not for sale. Every one of them is with me of her own free will.”
“Ah, you are a lucky god!” he said, quaffing deeply on his wine. “Such beauties would be the envy of any ruler in this world. I used to have a very impressive harem myself, you know. Before…”