by Dante King
His face fell and his hands started to shake. The trauma of being possessed by the Warlock was still too raw and fresh to simply look past.
“Have some more wine, Glorious Emperor.” I gestured to his goblet.
Getting drunk would steady his nerves for a while, and help him at least to forget, even if only temporarily. He gulped down another big swig of wine, and his hands stopped trembling.
“I should have stopped that demon when I could have,” he muttered, “when he was weak and vulnerable. But I thought he was just another conman, just another charlatan who would make some quick gold off gullible fools and then disappear. How wrong I was, how stupid I was. And when he first started getting his claws into me, I tried to brush it off as a regular illness, even though I knew, deep down, that it was anything but …”
“Don’t beat yourself up over it,” I said. “You couldn’t have known what he was planning, and what he was going to do.”
He nodded, but defeat and guilt remained on his face and in his eyes. I could see that it would take a long time for him to get over what he’d done to his kingdom. After dinner, the Emperor sent a sparrow with a message signed with his personal seal to his most important official in Gongxiong, instructing him to allow my army onto Yengish soil with immediate effect.
We ourselves set off late in the afternoon, carrying an official document from the Emperor that we could show to any officials who gave us trouble. No longer did we have to travel in disguises and pretend we were itinerant entertainers or merchants; now we were able to openly carry our weapons. As for the Emperor’s elite warriors who I’d killed and raised as zombies, the palace armorers painted their equipment black and gray to mark them as my own troops.
The last embers of daylight burned faintly on the western horizon when an exhausted sparrow came flying over to Yumo and landed on her shoulder. The bird, one of her own flock of messengers, had a tiny scroll on its leg. Yumo was uncharacteristically gentle and sweet as she handled the little creature, removed the scroll, and read through it. When she looked up, I could see something was seriously wrong.
“It’s from my sister,” she said. “She, Elyse, Isu, and my parents have barricaded themselves in a cave in the mountains near my parents’ village. They’ve been besieged by the Warlock’s reptilian beasts, and it’s only a matter of time before the monsters break through the barricades …”
“How fast can we get there?” I asked.
“If we ride the panthers and cut through the woods to the west, we could be there by dawn tomorrow.”
“Then we leave right now; there’s no time to waste. My new undead warriors can sprint behind us, but if they get left behind, so be it. They can always catch up with us later.” I turned to address the rest of the party. “Everyone, there’s been a slight change in plans. We’re going to be getting to the Warlock’s territory a lot sooner than expected. Mount your panthers; we’re sprinting at full speed through the night, no rest! And tomorrow at dawn, we’re killing some monsters.”
We left the palace with little fanfare, and the Emperor asked for a final divine blessing before we traipsed through the City of Jewels. Before we could cross into the forest, Ji-Ko called out to me, and I called the panthers to a halt.
Ji-Ko pointed behind me. “A storm is coming, God of Death.”
He was right. On the horizon, a vast mass of black storm clouds was gathering. Violet flickers of lightning flashed at rapid intervals. It was no natural storm, I knew that much. The Warlock wanted revenge, and he was marshaling all his powers to get it.
We’d have more cover from lightning strikes in the woods. Then again, I recalled my father telling me as a boy that in a lightning storm, you didn’t want to be around trees. Even so, it was probably a better bet than being out on the open plains, where the Warlock had a clear view of us and could fire at will with his lightning bolts.
As the storm clouds billowed and blackened the darkening sky, we all mounted our panthers and kicked them into full-speed sprints. The beasts veered off the road and plunged into the long grass of a field, the darkness of the open woods looming at the far end. I sent a command to my new undead Yengish warriors to follow us at a sprint. They would get left behind, of course, but hopefully they would reach us sometime the next day.
We raced into the blackness of the close-packed trees, and in the shadows I felt safer. A hundred of pairs of unfriendly eyes watched us, but none of the forest beasts dared to attack, not with us mounted on a pack of the region’s apex predators. My night vision was much improved after becoming a god, but when I viewed the world through my mount’s eyes, the inky darkness became clear as day. Even at the beasts’ furious speed, this allowed us to easily navigate the forest.
I could feel the Warlock’s wrath in the air, and hear his screams of rage carried on the howling gale. He couldn’t see us but he knew we were in here. He wouldn’t let us leave alive.
The first lightning strike hit about a mile ahead of us, accompanied by a thunderclap loud enough to make my skull feel as if it had exploded. The second lightning strike was even further away, perhaps a mile and a half, but the thunderclap was just as loud. Another lightning strike hit behind us, but this time a lot closer, maybe only three hundred yards away.
Another lightning strike hit the woods, but this time it was at least two miles away, and the accompanying thunderclap wasn’t quite so loud. I knew now that the Warlock couldn’t see us at all, and was just taking stabs in the dark.
We raced onward, zigzagging between trees, leaping over streams and gullies, scrambling up steep slopes and skidding down rock banks. All the while lightning bolts crashed down every few seconds, some miles away, others smashing into the forest a mere fifty yards from us.
After an hour, the lightning strikes died down in frequency. The Warlock was not all-powerful. The slight reprieve was soon replaced with a new danger, though. The forest was already thick with the smell of smoke, and all around us we saw the distant orange glows of fires. The various fires started by the lightning strikes were spreading rapidly through the dry forest. The blazes were joining together to create a hellish inferno. Soon, we would be trapped between the advancing walls of fire.
I could hear the Warlock’s triumphant laughter on the smoky, ember-carrying wind. He had me trapped, and he knew it.
“Our safest bet is to travel upstream in a river!” I yelled over my shoulder to Yumo. “Do you know which one flows from the mountains we came from?”
“In this darkness, I don’t even know where we are right now,” she yelled back, the rushing wind of our speed muffling her voice. “I’m sorry, Vance, but I’m as much use as a lost sheep right now.”
“That doesn’t matter, just tell me if there is a river.”
“There is, yes, but I have no idea where it is in relation to our current position.”
“Okay, I think I know how to find it. Everyone hang on, keep your speed up!”
They didn’t need to be told twice; two huge walls of flame, each fifty feet high, were rushing through the forest to devour us, driven on by the Warlock’s howling wind. I veered away from them, silently commanding the other undead panthers to follow. While alive, the panthers’ senses were among the sharpest of any animal. Using their fine-tuned sense of smell, I was able to note the presence of a small river a mile to the east.
I made for the river, racing at full tilt, but when I reached the running water, I skidded to a halt and commanded everyone else to stop as well.
“Why are we stopping?!” Layna screamed, almost hysterical. The Arachne were afraid of few things, but fire was one of them.
“Hold on a second,” I said as I jumped off the panther’s back.
I knelt down next to the water, stuck my hand in, and closed my eyes. The villages where the Warlock’s monstrous reptiles had been on the rampage would have had hundreds of people killed, and surely some of their bodies would have ended up in whatever rivers flowed through those areas. And if there were any human
corpses floating in this stream, however far upstream they might be, even if it was hundreds of miles away, I’d be able to sense them.
My Death senses raced upstream. Sure enough I began to pick up traces of human dead in the water, and lots of them. They had only recently been killed.
“Up this river, this is our way out!” I said as I concluded that these corpses had been killed by the Warlock’s lizards.
My party members didn’t have to be told twice. The towering wall of flame was racing toward us, and the odd lightning strike was still crashing down from the storm clouds above. The panthers plunged into the icy water. The current was strong, but not powerful enough that any would be swept away. The water was deep, coming right up to the beasts’ shoulders, but they weren’t alive, so they didn’t need to breathe and couldn’t drown.
We raced up the river, and while our progress was slowed by the flowing current, it was by no means halted. Living mounts might have been exhausted by fighting against both the cold and the current, but my undead panthers lacked these weaknesses and pushed on tirelessly. The forest was burning all around us and the air was thick with smoke, but we were relatively safe in the river, even though we could feel waves of intense heat rushing through the air.
We pushed on through the night, pursued by pillars of fire and lightning strikes. As the hours passed, the Warlock’s power waned, and his storm weakened. Soon the gale-force winds that had been driving the conflagration with such speed through the woods died down. The pace of the flaming walls slowed, and the smoke started to clear from the air. The trees began to thin out as well, and the gradient of the terrain grew steeper. We were leaving the forest and entering the foothills of the mountains. Every member of my party was cold and soaked to the bone from our river journey, but as the distant sky started to turn from black to gray with the coming dawn, I saw the jagged outlines of mountain peaks on the horizon.
“We’re almost there!” I said.
The sight of the mountains silhouetted against the sky gave the members of my party hope and fresh strength. In the gray light of dawn, I saw a path leading up out of the trees and noticed the signs of a human settlement nearby. I also sensed the presence of a great number of human corpses, many of them fresh.
“I know where we are now,” Yumo said. “My parents’ village is only five or six miles away, that way!”
“Where’s this cave in the mountains they’re hiding in?” I asked. “How far away is that?”
“I’m sure it’s the cave Rami and I used to go exploring in when we were kids,” she said. “She and I always used to hide in there when we got into trouble. It’s about two miles beyond the village.”
“Let’s go straight there; we’ve got monsters to kill, and no time to waste.”
We were out in the open now, but no more lightning strikes came. It seemed that the Warlock had spent his strength trying to destroy us in the woods. Already the sky had cleared of storm clouds, and I didn’t think it would be likely that he would recuperate his strength too quickly. All we had to worry about now were his reptilian beasts. Likely a serious concern since they had to be strong if they’d forced Isu, Rami-Xayon, and Elyse to barricade themselves into a cave.
The human corpses I’d sensed littering the stream here. The bodies were all half-eaten, and the remaining sections bore horrific scars. As I passed the chewed-up corpses, I found myself wondering why so many of them were in the river. Then, as daylight slowly illuminated the scene, I saw why.
Many of the bodies were covered with fresh, horrendous burn wounds. I also noticed that large sections of the village had been burned to the ground. It hadn’t just been large reptilian monsters attacking the villages, it had been fire too. Or, reptilian monsters capable of shooting fire?
“Yumo, all the dragons in Yeng are extinct, aren’t they?” I asked.
“As far as I know, yes,” she answered. “Nobody has seen a dragon for hundreds of years.”
“Ji-Ko, what do you think?” I asked. “Do you also believe that all the dragons in Yeng are extinct?”
Ji-Ko knew what I was getting at. He had dismounted and was now sniffing at the charred, half-eaten bodies and running his fingertips across the walls of the burned buildings.
“I want to believe that they’re not extinct,” he answered, “but evidence for the existence of dragons has been lacking for a very long time. But this, what’s happened here, it is strange indeed. The only thing I can say for sure, though, is that had dragons done this, the destruction would have been on a far more epic scale. This is like the work of, perhaps, weak or undeveloped dragons.”
“Baby dragons, maybe?” I asked. “The Warlock has to have some interest in dragons for him to have constructed his tower on top of the ruins of the last Dragon Goddess temple in Yeng. Do you think he could be trying to breed dragons back into existence?”
“I don’t personally know how anyone could achieve that,” Ji-Ko said. “But some elements of the Dragon Goddess’s former powers surely still linger in the ruins of that temple. Who knows what is possible if the Warlock has harnessed that power and bent it to his own will.”
Friya had once told me a living dragon could only come into being by being resurrected by me, the God of Death. I was sure that the Warlock didn’t have any Death powers, so how the hell was he creating these dragon-like creatures?
“I don’t think these monsters are dragons,” Ji-Ko continued, “because for one thing, no one has ever said that they’ve seen these things flying. They come at night, on foot, and attack. That alone discounts them from being full-blooded, genuine dragons, but it certainly seems that they possess powers similar to those of dragons.”
“Whatever the hell they are, I’m going to kill them,” I said. “So tell me, is there anything I should know when it comes to fighting something like a dragon?”
“I’m sure you’ve heard about the legendary toughness of dragonhide. Dragon scales are made of some of the hardest, densest materials on this planet. Dragonhide is impervious to even the sharpest steel weapons, and extremes of temperature too. Neither fire nor ice can do much damage to dragonhide.”
“So they’re really tough. They have to have some vulnerabilities, though. Everything does. Even the strongest suit of armor has a chink in it somewhere, and the most impregnable castle has weak points wherea a wily attacker can get past its defenses.”
I was eager to rescue my women, but I really needed to know what to expect. A few moments to form a plan wouldn’t be wasted, especially if Ji-Ko could reveal some weakness I could exploit.
“Well, dragons have very few weaknesses or vulnerabilities. Their eyes, obviously, are vulnerable, but they’re small and difficult targets to hit. They have spiky armor around their necks and throats, which, if they crane their necks, lifts up a little to expose a tiny sliver of the flesh beneath. A very accurate stab or bowshot could get some damage in like that. But we don’t even know if we’re dealing with dragons here.”
“Even if we’re not, it’s best to assume that we might be,” I said. “And in any case—”
“Monster!” Anna-Lucielle yelled. “Vance, look out, there’s a monster coming into the village from the western road!”
“All right, Ji-Ko, time to put your tips to the test.” I drew my kusarigama and turned the panther beneath me around to face the western road leading into the village.
From the road a trail of dust was rising as the monster sprinted at a tremendous speed—but it wasn’t a dragon or anything reptilian at all. It was tall, furry, and had long limbs with sharp claws. A long, lupine snout grinned, its gaping jaws full of jagged fangs. Shining with a preternatural glow in the half-light of dawn were a pair of golden eyes.
“A werewolf!” Yumo nocked a blue arrow to her Ice Bow.
The sprinting werewolf was armed, carrying what looked like a gigantic sword. What was more, it was no ordinary weapon; I could feel the hum of its magical power even from a few hundred yards away as it charged.
&nbs
p; Chapter Twenty-Nine
Yumo drew the string of her bow and calmly took aim at the charging werewolf.
“Just like wolf hunting in winter,” she said. “No sweat, easy target, right in the chest.”
“Lower your bow, Yumo,” I said.
“Why, do you want this kill for yourself? C’mon, Vance, give me this one. It’s been a long time since I last shot a werewolf.”
“You’re not shooting that werewolf, Yumo, because that werewolf happens to be a friend of mine.”
Yumo looked surprised for a second and seemed determined to convince me otherwise. When she saw my determination, she sighed and lowered her bow. As the werewolf came into clearer view, I saw that it was indeed Friya.
“Relax, everyone, I know this werewolf,” I said to my party, who were tense and ready to fight.
The werewolf, panting with exhaustion and covered with blood, skidded to a halt in front of me. When she’d transformed back into her human form, Friya was utterly exhausted, and the blood remained spattered all over her even after her transformation.
“Shit, Friya, are you okay?” I asked.
“I’m fine,” she gasped, her chest heaving and her clothes soaked with sweat. “It’s not my blood. I’m not injured.”
She thrust the huge two-handed sword into my hands. The instant I touched it, a rush of intense magical power blasted through my body and soul.
“What is this, and where did you get it?” I asked.
“I got it from a Yengish lord who is known to have a hoard of ancient religious artefacts,” she said. “As I told you, my dreams guided me, and informed me that you would be needing this. The Yengishman was … not very cooperative when it came to handing this sword over. Hence the blood. As for what it is—”
“By the blood of the Dragon Goddess,” Ji-Ko interrupted her. Even though he could not see the sword and had not touched it himself, he must have felt its power from a few feet away. “The lost greatsword of the Dragon Goddess—this is one of the most powerful weapons ever forged. God of Death, you were asking of the vulnerability of dragons, and I said almost nothing. Well, this sword is the ‘almost’ part of that statement. This blade can cut through anything, including the strongest dragonhide. Unlike any weapons forged by the hands of men, it can slice through dragon scales like they were human flesh. It can also cut through almost any magical armor, even those with the strongest enchantments. But more than that, it has a very special ability that few other weapons possess: it can channel any kind of magic, or turn the kind of magic you’re channeling an altogether different kind. All you need in order to do this is any small item enchanted with the latter kind of magic.”