by Dante King
So, in the dead of night, Rami-Xayon and I met in the same empty hut as before.
“Are you ready to summon the most powerful tornado that’s ever existed?” I asked.
Rami-Xayon’s beautiful face was set in an expression of grim determination. “I’m ready.”
She took my hand and we started the process. It took all night and required so much effort that I did something afterward that I hadn’t done for weeks: I slept. I woke up, feeling replenished and ready to fight. Rami-Xayon took a little longer to recover, but she too felt good enough to do battle when she awoke. When everyone was up and ready, we set off, with the aim of reaching the Warlock’s field by dusk. We would fight with the setting sun behind us.
It would be the last sunset the Warlock would ever see.
I led the army mounted on Fang (whose saddle I had scrubbed), as I always had. The first undead beast I’d ever raised, Fang remained my favorite, and was as loyal and faithful as his namesake, the hound who’d been my companion as a boy. Behind me were Rollar and Drok, with Drok now riding one of the giant mutant lizards. Behind them, also on mutant lizards, were Isu, Friya, Elyse, Rami-Xayon, and Yumo. Anna-Lucielle rode behind them on her tame panther, and Layna next to her on an undead war spider, followed by the Order of Blind Monks, riding undead panthers. The undead Frost Giants formed an intimidating front to my army, and in their wake, the various divisions marched in perfect order. Each undead troop was carrying a corpse. When we reached the battlefield, I would finally get to create my Death Titan.
Everyone in my party had seen and experienced the violence and suffering visited on Yeng by the Warlock and his minions, and all were eager to mete out some justice. After what he’d done to their home village, Rami-Xayon and Yumo had a personal score to settle with him too.
As predicted, we reached the Warlock’s plateau by late afternoon. We’d marched at a steady but not relentless pace, and were by no means out of breath or tired. The battle lust racing through our veins at the sight of the Warlock’s massive army was more than enough to restore any energy we’d expended during the march.
We were easily outnumbered three to one, maybe even four to one. Our hurricane was gone, but the sky above was growing black with thick storm clouds of the Warlock’s making. In them flashed violet flickers of lightning and the promise of violent destruction to be unleashed. The field was drenched from the storm Rami-Xayon and I had created. Just as I had planned.
Reports had spoken of over half of the Glorious Emperor’s Imperial Army defecting to the Warlock, but from what I could see on the muddy, sodden plain, it looked more like two thirds of the former Imperial Army. They had an enormous infantry division, arranged in a square in the center, cavalry divisions flanking them on either side. To the rear were divisions of archers, and behind them were a number of siege engines: catapults and trebuchets, loaded with massive boulders to fling into my army. The troops all wore the distinctive Yengish style of armor I’d grown accustomed to seeing here, but instead of the yellow and red of the Imperial Army, they’d all painted their armor purple and white, the colors of the Warlock and his storms.
He stood before the entire army, leading from the front. He wore no armor and carried no weapon but his staff. While my army marched onto the battlefield and got into formation, he watched us in silence, smiling eerily all the while.
Eventually, as the sun touched the peaks of the mountains in its westward descent, my army was in position. The dip in the plain, which had filled up with murky, muddy water, and had become a pond, stood to my right. I glanced at it and smiled, knowing what Rami-Xayon and I had accomplished, and what I would put into play when the time was right. For now though, the secret of the murky pool would remain concealed.
I strode out in front of my army to meet the Warlock in the middle of the field. He hobbled out to talk to me, looking in physical terms as frail and weak as ever, but radiating an aura of immense power that set my teeth on edge.
“You are outclassed and outnumbered, God of Nothing,” the Warlock said to me when we got within about ten feet of each other. “And this is a battle you cannot possibly win. I have an offer for you, though.” He pulled a long, curved dagger from a sheath on his hip and pointed it at me. “Kneel before me now and let me take your head in front of our respective armies, and I’ll let your women walk away from this with their lives. Your men will be killed swiftly and mercifully, and your undead minions put out of their misery. Considering the position you’re in, I suggest you take me up on this, if you really do care for your whores.”
“I have a counteroffer, Warlock,” I said. “How about you get on your knees right now, suck my balls, and then shove your ugly face in the nearest puddle and drown yourself? Do that, and I’ll let your army walk away from this field as living men instead of my undead slaves.”
The Warlock laughed slowly and humorlessly, then shook his head.
“I gave you your chance,” he said. “Remember that when you die screaming.”
He turned around and limped back to his army, and I walked calmly back to mine.
“What did he say, Lord Vance?” Rollar asked.
“Nothing of consequence, Rollar. Remember what I told you and what to do when I give the signal?”
“Aye, Lord Vance, I do. You can count on me.”
“Vance Chauzec, God of Nothing!” the Warlock suddenly roared from across the field, his voice like the bellowing of a thousand bulls, the vociferous volume completely disproportionate to his puny physique. “You have chosen death and suffering for yourself and your foolish followers! Now, I will deliver these to you!”
The Warlock raised his hands to the sky, and the black ocean of storm clouds above began to swirl as if he was creating his own hurricane. A black tornado, filled with flickers of lightning, descended slowly from the clouds, and the spinning tip touched the Warlock’s outstretched fingers. Instead of sucking him into its whirling vortex, the tornado kept moving down, covering his entire body, while the top of the cone sucked more storm clouds and lightning out of the sky.
Then he started to take on a new form. The clouds and lightning and the tornado began to form into a massive torso, with limbs thick and stout as the trunks of ancient oaks, and a head on top of this monstrous creature the size of a house. Eyes of lightning flickered to life in the huge head. The titan, made entirely of storm clouds and veins of lightning, opened his mouth to reveal a raging tempest. A laugh like thunder rolled across the plain, and the titan pointed one of his gigantic hands at my army.
“Kill them,” he thundered, his voice so loud I thought my ears would bleed. “Kill them all.”
“A Storm Titan,” Rollar gasped behind me. “He’s turned into a fucking Storm Titan.”
With an equally thunderous roar, from thirty thousand bloodthirsty throats, the Warlock’s army charged. Their cavalry raced in two flanking arcs ahead of the main body of infantry, who came running down the grassy slope toward us, their tens of thousands of weapons flashing orange and red as they reflected the setting sun.
From the rear their war machines launched a hail of huge boulders that arced up through the air and came hurtling down at a terrifying speed. Some crashed into the midst of my army, flattening and annihilating dozens of my undead troops in the blink of an eye. Other plummeting boulders were plucked from the air by my Frost Giants, who caught the huge projectiles as if they were merely oversized balls. My Jotunn then flung them back with brutal force at the charging army, shearing lines of carnage through their ranks.
The enemy archers loosed a volley of ten thousand arrows that darkened the sky and started to come down like torrential rain.
“Shields up!” I roared, raising my shield to protect myself from the hail of arrows.
Thousands of the projectiles slammed into my undead troops, but they felt no pain, and could not be injured in the same way as human troops.
“Give them a volley back!” I yelled, and my archers and crossbowmen immediately complied.
The sky was again black with a storm of arrows, but this time they were traveling in the opposite direction. They came down in a rain of death and maiming among the Warlock’s human troops. Even though many hundreds of men fell, it did not slow the momentum or enthusiasm of their charge.
Then the Warlock himself, now a Storm Titan, broke into a charge, every heavy footstep of his gigantic feet shaking the ground beneath us like an earthquake. As he ran, he started to hurl lighting bolts, flung from his hands like javelins. Wherever these lightning bolts hit, the ground was churned up with massive explosions and undead troops were blown apart, their body parts and broken bodies hurled hundreds of feet into the air.
“Drop the corpses!” I yelled out to my army.
Every undead troop who was still standing was carrying a corpse, and they dropped these onto the ground. I closed my eyes, drew the power of Death into me like a huge tree sucking life-giving groundwater into its roots, and I visualized the Death Titan I wished to create.
The corpses littering the battlefield began to jerk and twitch as the Death magic began to swirl across the plain like a black gale. Then, as if drawn like iron filings to a potent lodestone, they began to fly through the air, all sucked by an inexorable force toward a single location. The dead bodies slammed into each other at high speed, bones breaking and rotting flesh splattering. Blackened, congealed blood sprayed everywhere. As the corpses continued to hurtle through the air, sucked in by this magnetic force, they began to build my titan.
In seconds, hundreds of corpses had fused together to create two pillar-like legs of rotting flesh and splintered bones. Then a hulking torso and powerful arms were added, and the final touch was a gigantic skull the size of a wine wagon with glowing yellow-green eyes, made of tens of thousands of shattered bones.
“The Death Titan is ready,” I roared. “Charge!”
Chapter Thirty-Three
With screams, howls, and shouts, my human allies on their undead beasts broke into a wild charge. Silent hordes of my undead troops raced across the plain to meet the advancing army in a head-on clash. As for me and Fang, the Death Titan reached down and scooped us up in one of his gigantic hands and put us through the eye socket of the massive skull, which was as big as a barn inside.
The instant I entered the Death Titan’s skull it was as if I’d become him. Every microscopic movement I made the Death Titan mimicked in real time. I looked down at the battlefield, hundreds of feet below, and saw my army surging toward the enemy army. I watched as the two separate forces, like a black tsunami and a purple tsunami, collided.
The mutant lizards plowed through the charging ranks of the Warlock’s soldiers, flinging men and horses into the air like broken toys. My undead Frost Giants waded in after them. With each swing of their enormous hammers, maces, and clubs, they scooped hollows out of the close-packed enemy ranks, flinging screaming men hundreds of feet up and back. The twin prongs of the Warlock’s cavalry smashed into the flanks of my force, flattening zombies with their speed and momentum and shattering skeletons.
“Now you will pay the ultimate price for defying us!” the Warlock—the Storm Titan—thundered, pointing both of his huge hands at me and blasting out two streaks of lightning.
I leaned back, arching my back as far as it would go, and the Death Titan moved with me, ducking backward. The lightning forked through the air where his torso had been and missed it. I sucked up Death energy into my fists, the Death Titan’s fists, turning them into Plague Fists. Just as the huge fists became saturated with necrotic power, the Storm Titan crashed into me.
I wasn’t the only one packing extra power in his fists. The Storm Titan’s mitts were bright with crackling lightning. As he hit my flanks with a vicious right hook, an explosion of thunder rocked my titan’s body and flung me off my feet inside the huge skull. A shock of pain and immense heat ripped through my own ribs, and I knew right away that this Death Titan was different to my other undead creatures. With great power came great risk, and I understood now that my own life force was tied to this giant. I could feel pain from whatever injuries he suffered, and if he was killed, I would die too.
Would this same limitation extend to the Storm Titan? I wasn’t certain, but I was willing to bet on it.
Gritting my teeth against the pain tearing up my side, I ducked under the Storm Titan’s next swing and followed it up with an uppercut that snapped the titan’s head back.
“I know that hurt!” I roared. “And that was just a love tap compared to what else I have in store for you!”
I smashed a left cross into his face, then kneed him in his gut. When he doubled over, I gave him a roundhouse kick in the side of the head that sent him reeling backward. Each blow I struck had enough force to demolish half a castle; wielding this kind of power was dangerously addictive.
The Warlock, however, was by no means beaten. With a clap of thunder from his lightning mouth, he hurled two bolts of lightning. They hurtled toward me and struck me directly in the chest. I felt the pain even through my enchanted full plate armor, and the wind was knocked out of me. Inside the Death Titan’s head, I staggered backward as a terrible burning sensation tore through my chest. My Death Titan mimicked the movement, and I had to concentrate to avoid stomping on my own troops beneath its giant feet.
Down on the ground, the momentum of my army’s charge had been slowed. They were being surrounded by the Warlock’s far greater numbers.
It was time to unleash the secret weapon.
“Rollar,” I gasped, “it’s time!”
My words came out of the Death Titan’s mouth and resounded like thunder across the battlefield. Rollar knew exactly what to do. Leading a large division of zombies and skeletal infantry, he wheeled his direbear around.
“Retreat!” he roared. “There’s too many of them, the battle’s lost. Everyone, retreat!”
He fought his way out of the pocket of Yengish troops who had surrounded him and led the retreat. My other soldiers raced after him, hotly pursued by the Warlock’s men, who believed they now had victory in their grasp. Rollar led my forces straight to the large pond of murky water and plunged in.
The water was chest high close to the edge, but in the center it was a good thirty feet deep, just deep enough to conceal what Rami-Xayon and I had transported from the ocean in the dead of the night, picking it up and carrying it via a gigantic tornado we’d conjured. As my troops poured into the water, I gave the beast that was waiting in the brown water the command … and the kraken rose.
The pursuing Yengish soldiers skidded to a halt, with hundreds falling into the water. They stared in disbelief and terror at the gigantic beast as it rose from the water. The kraken’s numerous huge tentacles writhed menacingly, its wagon-wheel eyes glowing with fury. Then, with an earsplitting scream from its beak, the kraken attacked.
It surged out of the pond, propelled by its tentacles to a terrifying speed. It snatched up screaming Yengish soldiers and tossed them hundreds of feet up into the air, or crushed, and popped them like overripe little berries in its tentacles. The tide of the battle was turned, and Rollar turned his fake retreat around and charged the panicking enemy troops with a triumphant cry.
The Storm Titan looked on as the kraken and my forces decimated his army, but he had not given up his fight just yet. He blasted a couple more streaks of lighting at me in quick succession, then broke into a charge and dived at me with his crackling fists.
I dodged the lightning bolts and jumped up with a spinning reverse tornado kick that smashed the diving Storm Titan in the head and sent him flying off to the side. He hit the ground with a crash, the earth beneath him tearing asunder, its very foundations trembling.
I roared with victory and pounced on him. As he writhed, I pinned him down, smashing punch after punch into his head. The memory of the decimated village entered my mind as I pounded his skull into mush with my Death Titan’s Plague Fists. Each blow struck the Storm Titan’s head with the force of a hundred tre
buchets’ boulders, and soon his skull looked more like a pile of black, lightning-streaked scrambled eggs than a head.
Light still glowed in his eyes, albeit dimly. Somehow, the Storm Giant and the Warlock within still clung to a faint spark of life.
“Any last words, asshole?” I said.
“God of … Nothing,” the Storm Titan croaked, his voice now more of a pathetic wheeze than rolling thunder. “Do it. Finish me.”
“With pleasure.”
I stood up, picked up the Storm Giant, and held him aloft above my head. He let out a final groan as I brought his body down onto my bent knee, breaking his back. I roared my triumph and tossed the broken titan’s body aside. The earth trembled as the mighty weight connected with the ground.
I watched as the clouds and lightning faded away and shriveled, leaving behind only the broken, bloodied corpse of the old Warlock within a huge crater.
It didn’t take much longer for my forces to win the battle. I strode through the fleeing enemy army, each stomp of my huge feet crushing dozens of men at once. I scooped up others with my huge hands and flung them like handfuls of screaming ants over the cliffs at the edge of the plateau. Within minutes, it was all over.
I disassembled the Death Titan and felt its power fading away as it crumbled into a lifeless pile of corpses. The skull I was in collapsed into a shower of bone fragments. My undead troops picked off the last survivors and stragglers of the Warlock’s army while Fang and I made our way down the now-shapeless mountain of bodies.
My women threw themselves at me, and I gave each a kiss before I addressed the rest of my army.
“You all fought well today,” I said to them, “and you’ve all made me proud! But while the battle is won, my mission is not finished just yet. I came here to find the Dragon Goddess, and this tower is on her last surviving temple. I know that the Warlock was trying to create dragons. There has to be something in here that’ll point us in the right direction. Everyone spread out and search the tower from top to bottom. Come find me as soon as you discover anything!”