by A. C. Cobble
“It’s over, Isisandra,” declared Duke.
The girl laughed, and Sam sighed.
“There’s nowhere to run,” he tried next.
“Oliver, you have no idea how in over your head you are, do you?”
He gripped his obsidian dagger but did not respond.
Behind Isisandra, out of the shadows, stepped two hulking brutes with heads like wolves, torsos like men, except half again as large. They were bound with muscle, and their hands ended in long, taloned fingers. Their waists were covered with leather loin cloths, and their legs, as thick as Sam’s waist, were hinged like those of a canine. In their hands, they carried massive battle axes as tall as she was. They crouched, and Sam gasped, expecting them to launch themselves across the room.
Instead, she heard a startled cry from behind and spun.
Thotham staggered forward and fell onto his hands and knees, his spear clattering onto the stone floor. He groaned, a streamer of crimson blood leaking from his mouth to dribble onto the floor.
A man was standing behind them, apparently coming out of hiding beside the entrance to the stairwell. He was holding a blood-covered blade in his fist and his eyes blazed with delight.
“No!” she shrieked.
At the same time, Duke asked, “Marquess Colston?”
The man’s gaze rose from the fallen priest to Duke.
“Rafael, did you just stab him?” cried the duke.
The marquess smirked then swung his off hand up, flinging a cloud of powder at Duke’s face.
He uttered a strangled cry and fell back, but Sam didn’t have time to worry about the nobleman. From across the golden pentagram, the two wolf-men leapt, their powerful legs thrusting them high above the occult pattern. The creatures, three times Sam’s mass, cleared the pentagram and landed heavily in front of her.
“It’s not activated, but don’t—” Thotham’s warning ended in a pained, wet cough.
“Avoid the giant pentagram, I know,” she snapped.
She bit down on one of her sinuous daggers, holding it in her teeth, and snatched the smooth river stone from her pouch, the one Duke had nearly shattered back in Westundon. The wolf-men reared on their hind legs, and she hurled the stone at one of them.
It struck the creature square in the chest and bounced off. She was glad Duke didn’t see it happen. The stone, meant to absorb a shade, was apparently completely useless against whatever these monsters were.
Ignoring the stone, the wolf-creature swung its massive axe at her.
She ducked the axe easily but couldn’t draw close to strike as the second wolf-man thrust the butt of his battle axe at her. The end of the thick wooden haft was spiked with a sharpened bit of steel as long as her arm. Retreating, she backed around the room, avoiding the noxious cloud of powder that Duke was enveloped in. She danced farther from her injured mentor.
The wolf-men pursued her, and from a string of vile curses, she surmised Duke had survived whatever the marquess had thrown at him. Survived so far, at least.
The huge axes lashed at her again, the wolf-men’s thick slabs of muscle bunching and straining as they swung their incredible weapons. The creatures were big, powerful, and slow, so she was able to fall back and avoid the attacks, but with two of them and the certainty of a fatal blow if the axe blade struck her, she could only retreat.
She fell back to the sitting area, where Isisandra evidently relaxed in her sorcerous kill chamber, and darted behind a couch, hoping to slow the advance of the monsters, but one powerful swing with an axe smashed the couch into kindling, completely chopping it in two, and then it was casually kicked aside.
The first creature launched itself at her, flying at head height, its axe raised to swing down and cleave her as cleanly as the broken furniture.
She ducked, lunging forward and sliding on her hip, trying to reach up and slash at the beast with one of her kris daggers, but the thing was too high. She slid until she hit something hard. She looked up at the second wolf-man towering above her like a giant. Its jaw hung open, its tongue lolling out between its fangs in a canine smile. It leaned down, and the steel spike on the bottom of the axe jabbed at her head.
The Cartographer XX
Marquess Colston raised his hand and released a cloud of black dust.
Oliver gasped, inadvertently inhaling a lungful of the substance. In an instant, his world spun, and he was lost in a swirling night sky, spinning stars, and then utter darkness. Bitter cold washed over him and as he opened his eyes, he looked down at a lunar landscape filled with legions of marching spectres.
“She’s not here,” boomed a voice like thunder rolling down a mountainside, shaking Oliver’s body and his soul.
“Frozen hell,” he screeched.
The legion of faces looked up at him, and as one they spoke, their voice like crumbling iron. “She is not here yet, but you can join us if you like.”
They marched as they spoke, moving across the barren landscape toward a black sea where on the shore, a towering inferno of white fire burned. A fire he recognized. A fire he’d seen twenty years earlier when his father’s airships had annihilated his future home. His mother’s home. Northundon burned in the vision.
The fire, bone white, spiraled far into the sky, far higher than it ever had in his memory. It raged with a cold that he could feel from half a league away. The endless stream of souls marched toward it, a serpentine line, stretching out of his vision into the darkness.
He coughed, hacking up greasy ash. The legion of faces passed under his feet like blades of grass or waves beneath an airship.
They turned to look up at him again. “She has not joined us, Oliver Wellesley. Come, burn with us upon the altar. Come be a part of the sacrifice.”
He raised his arms and screamed a curse at the figures, the spirits of the dead, the ghosts of Northundon.
Through the cold of the dream, he felt a sharp line of pain bloom along his side, clipping him as he thrashed within the vision. He stumbled, feeling a body shove against him, though he had no body of his own. Another lance of pain stabbed into his arm. Sharp steel, biting into his flesh, dragged across his skin, slicing it. He realized he was stuck in a vision, or perhaps more, but his body was still in the world and was under attack.
Oliver swung incorporeal hands, the hard, obsidian hilt of his dagger still in his fist, though he could no longer see it. He ignored the spectres below and their endless march. He felt… he felt a man flailing against him, striking at him, and blindly, he fought back. He gripped the sensation of his opponent and struck at it with his dagger.
Below him, the legion traveled on, walking across the landscape of the underworld, moving toward the incandescent fire in the ruins of Northundon. The line of ghastly phantoms had no beginning, but it had an end.
Oliver gasped and coughed, blinking, trying to clear his vision. A flash of the stone chamber, lit by the giant braziers, flickered in and out of sight, spaced with the nightmare march of Northundon’s sacrificed souls. Countless men, women, children, his mother… Except…
He blinked again and vomited black ash, the taste of the grave bubbling up his throat, spilling from his mouth. Spitting and hacking, he raised his dagger, looking around wildly then stopping short as he almost stumbled into the gold barrier that formed the pentagram. His hair stood up on end and he felt the bitter cold assail him again until he stepped back.
He spun and saw the marquess leaning against the wall of the chamber, his own blade in his hand, the other hand covering his right eye. Blood leaked between the man’s fingers and his lips were drawn back in a rictus of pain.
“You’re back,” he snarled. “How are you back?”
Oliver, spitting what he knew was bile and hoped was not the ash of human remains, shook his head, trying to regain his bearings. The marquess, he noticed, was wearing black silk robes like Isisandra. They were stuck to his body in several places, glued by blood. Blood where Oliver had stabbed the man, he realized. Rafael Colston h
ad been his invisible attacker when he was… in wherever he had been.
“What did you do to me?” gasped Oliver.
“I gave you a preview of where you’ll spend eternity,” growled Colston, dropping his hand, revealing a gruesome injury to his eye. It wept blood, running down the old man’s cheek, along the line of his jaw, and dripping off his chin. “Did you find your greatest fear in that cold place, Duke Oliver Wellesley? The soul of the one you miss the most locked in eternal pain? The secret of the powder, Duke Wellesley, is that what you saw was real. That person, the one you love, their pain in the underworld was real.”
Oliver spit again and coughed. His mother… his mother had not been there, the spectres had claimed. His mother was not in the underworld. He shook his head, unable to comprehend what the marquess was telling him. His mother had not been there.
“Do not worry. You’ll be back to see them soon,” declared Colston.
Then, he tore off his robes, revealing an ancient naked body marred with bloody wounds where Oliver had blindly stabbed him in his panic. Thin limbs, a desiccated frame. Just bones covered in brittle, parchment-like skin. Like script on the page, tattoos flowed across that skin, covering the man from his forearms, to his calves, to just below his neck. Every bit of his body was worked with black ink.
“He’s an elder. The markings… Don’t give him time to call the spirit,” rasped Thotham from the floor. The old priest hacked wetly, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. He shifted, inching across the floor and grasping his spear, but he couldn’t stand. The puncture to his back was too much in his already-weakened state.
Marquess Colston laughed, and Oliver realized he shouldn’t have hesitated.
The man’s tattoos swirled like smoke trapped in a glass lantern, crawling across his body, forming from letters and symbols into shapes and lines. Lines like muscles, shapes like wings. Wings and claws.
Oliver’s mouth fell open as the man’s skin split wide. Pale, white flesh emerged through the torn outer layer, shedding it like a snake’s skin. A dried tattooed membrane fell to the floor and a hulking brute emerged. Muscle bound and naked, it stood twice his height and four times his width. Hands larger than his head clenched into fists. Legs thicker than his torso kicked aside the last of the dead skin. A voice like Colston’s boomed with maniacal laughter, filling the cave and bouncing back, its echo compounding as the terrible sound continued.
Wings — dark, bat-like, and huge — spread from the creature’s back, blocking out half the light in the room, stretching wider than a pair of carriages.
With a hop and several powerful beats of the bat-wings, the pale, naked monster flew twenty yards into the air, hovering there for a moment, before looking down at him.
“Frozen hell.”
The Priestess XVI
A sharp point of steel, attached to the end of a battle axe taller than she was, wielded by a giant muscle-bound wolf-man-beast, thrust down at her face. She didn’t have time to curse, didn’t have time to come up with a pithy quip. She could only act on instinct. She reached forward and hooked her kris daggers behind the wolf-man’s legs and hauled back, digging the sinuous blades into the back of the legs of the creature and propelling herself between them.
Her leather trousers slid easily across the slick, stone floor and she felt the tip of the battle axe crash into the stone behind her, cracking the centuries-old surface, smashing loose a shower of rock chips. But she was still moving and scooted clear, drawing her wavy blades hard across the wolf-man’s legs, severing the tendons as she scrambled away.
The beast howled, filling the chamber with its angry pain. It spun, trying to chase her, but its legs betrayed it and the beast collapsed with a yowl. It scratched and clawed at the stone floor but couldn’t find purchase on the smooth surface. She danced away, out of reach, and the wolf-man snarled helplessly at her.
“Duke!” she cried, turning to see what had become of the nobleman.
Her jaw fell open as she saw a… a thing… flapping twenty yards above Duke, who was still foolishly holding the tiny obsidian dagger like it was going to do a damn bit of good against a monster that big.
Then, the fiend dove, plunging directly toward him.
She meant to run to his aid, but instead, she was ripped off her feet, one arm held in the grip of the second wolf-man. She swung the dagger in her free hand, trying to stab the blade into the monster’s arm, but it caught her and held both arms in iron grips. She hung suspended a yard above the stone floor, helpless. She kicked at the creature, booted feet falling unnoticed against the rock-hard muscles of the monstrosity’s chest and stomach. Its hot breath gusted over her face as it opened its maw.
She turned away, avoiding the rank stench of the wolf-man’s breath, and saw Isisandra standing a dozen paces away, grinning in anticipation.
The wolf-man snapped at her, and Sam flung her legs up, catching the bottom of its jaw with her knee, clacking its teeth shut. The wolf-man shook its head and eyed her, peeling back its lip, barring its finger-length fangs.
She knew a glancing blow wouldn’t stop it again.
Grimacing, she closed her eyes, and her skin began to burn. It felt like a red-hot poker was being dragged across her flesh, the skin melting beneath the heat, each inch excruciating and infinite, but she knew that in the space of a breath, from wrist to wrist, her black tattoos flared bright red-orange. Scorching embers embedded in her skin made her twist and scream in pain, but it burned the wolf-man as well.
Yelping and staggering back, its bestial eyes stared in confusion at its singed and smoking hands. The creature whimpered in agony, clutching its clawed hands close to its chest.
She landed on the floor in a heap, immobilized from pain. Ragged breaths, uncontrolled tremors, her skin burned.
“Finish her!” cried Isisandra, and the low rumble of a growl drew Sam’s attention back to the wolf-man.
Hatred burned in its eyes. It leapt at her.
Sam drew on a reserve deep inside, jumping to her feet. Power surged along her tattoos and through her veins. She swung her hand up, catching the giant wolf-man at the throat with one hand, and then she squeezed and spun.
Unnatural strength rippled along her arm, and the beast’s startled cry was cut off as she crushed its throat in her grip. She turned and tossed it into the center of the golden pentagram.
It fell and slid, legs kicking helplessly as it struggled and failed to breathe. As it flew through the air and slid on the ground across the golden bands of the pentagram, its flesh was flayed. Wide strips sloughed off the creature, blood streaking the black stone and golden metal floor. The creature thrashed and twitched, then quickly stilled. Mercifully, Sam supposed, looking at the strips of flesh and gore that trailed ten yards behind the beast.
Sam shuddered and let her arm drop, already feeling the exhilarating rush of power begin to recede. She turned from the wolf-man to face Isisandra. The girl stared at her, mouth open, astonished.
The Cartographer XXI
The hideous fiend loomed huge in the cavernous room, its wings outstretched, its pale naked body reflecting the light of the fires in the braziers. It hung twenty yards above him, the beats of its wings stirring his hair, filling his nostrils with a foul stench. Marquess Rafael Colston was gone, replaced by an ugly, pig-nosed, boar-tusked, bat-winged, goat-hoofed nightmare. A big, big nightmare.
“Frozen hell,” muttered Oliver.
Then, the thing plunged at him.
He flung his obsidian dagger at the creature but didn’t bother to wait and see if he struck it. Instead, he darted to the side, running as fast as he could. He jumped, sliding across one of the tables on the edge of the room, realizing as he did, the thing was slick from still-wet blood.
Less disgusting than… whatever it was that Colston had transformed into, thought Oliver as he dropped over the side of the table. He then squeaked in terror as the table was yanked away and tossed across the room.
Scrambling on hands an
d knees, Oliver skittered across the floor, barely avoiding a fist that slammed down onto the stone, and then getting tumbled as the leathery skin of one of the giant bat wings caught him and flung him against the wall.
He stood, his back against the rough, natural stone of the wall, and drew his broadsword.
The Colston-monster laughed at him, the cackling boom filling the room again. It swung its giant fist at him.
Oliver ducked, and massive knuckles pounded into the wall above him, raining a shower of loose rock down on him and shaking the chains bolted into the wall beside him. He slashed up with his broadsword, catching the thing on the wrist, drawing a thin line of red blood.
The monster snarled at him, and instead of risking another punch into the wall, it bent to grab him. Seeing the thin trail of blood dripping down the milky-white hand of the monster, Oliver had a flash of inspiration and feinted to the left. The monster moved with him on the feint then narrowly missed as he ran by the other way.
Oliver sprinted and then leapt forward, his body smacking hard into the stone floor and sliding. He sensed motion behind, and air gusted over him as an open palm swept through the space where he’d been running, narrowly missing him.
Stinging from the impact of his jump, he crawled forward on elbow and toes to Marquess Colston’s discarded clothing.
Heavy feet sounded behind him, and in a panic, he frantically pawed through the silk robe until he found a belt and a pouch. Frightened fingers worked futilely at tight drawstrings, and he knew he had only heartbeats left until the creature closed on him.
A low chuckle behind alerted him that time was up, so he spun, tossing the still-tied bag into the air and slashing at it with his broadsword.