by Dante King
“I’ll get a few harpies to pick up the bones one by one and fly them up onto land.”
“These harpies are strong, I know, but are they able to carry something as heavy as dragon bones? Even your undead Jotunn had trouble carrying the heavier bones, and these harpies aren’t half as strong as the Frost Giants.”
“I do have a few hundred harpies, Yumo-Rezu. I’m sure between all of them there’s enough strength to lift a few old bones.”
A glint of anger flashed across her gorgeous face. “Those ‘old bones’ are the key to defeating the Blood God and his Demogorgon, Vance. Don’t take them for granted, because without a dragon, the Blood God wins, no matter how strong you are.”
“I meant no disrespect, Yumo-Rezu,” I said. “Don’t worry, I’ll come up with a watertight plan to get the entire skeleton onto land from here.”
“Beggin’ your pardon, Cap’n Vance,” Percy said, interrupting our conversation, “but may I present my opinion this topic?”
“Go ahead,” I said.
“Here, by Castle Island, you’re roughly halfway between Brakith and Luminescent Spires. Now, you’re going to need this dragon when you’re much closer to Luminescent Spires, are ye not? I expect that’s where the final battle with the Blood God will play out, seeing as that’s where the Blood Pyramid is. Even if you get the skeleton up onto the clifftops, how are ye going to get it to Luminescent Spires? I expect you’ll need your Jotunn to carry it, and they’re strong bastards, aye, but they stick out like a sore bloody thumb, don’t they, being twenty foot tall and all that?”
“You’re right,” I said, seeing where Percy was going with this. “Elandriel’s got eyes up and down the entire length of the coast, and he’s surely got thousands of spies stationed all over Prand. He probably knows by now that I’ve got the Dragon Gauntlets, and he also knows that we took an intact dragon skeleton out of the mountains in Yeng. If he gets word that the skeleton is being transported across Prand toward Luminescent Spires, he’s going to do his damndest to either capture or destroy the skeleton. But on the other hand, if you keep the skeleton here on the ship, a few miles off the coast, and head quietly down to the region of Luminescent Spires…”
“No!” Yumo-Rezu yelled. “We can’t just leave the skeleton behind! It’s the key to everything!”
“Last I checked, Yumo-Rezu,” I said coolly, “it wasn’t you who was in charge.”
Anger continued to simmer in her eyes, but she backed down. “I apologize for that uncalled-for outburst,” she murmured, staring sullenly at the ground.
“I know that you don’t want to be separated from the dragon skeleton, and believe me, I know how important it is for my quest, but I think it’ll be safer out here on the ship than it would be if we tried to transport it across land, where Elandriel has eyes and ears everywhere. The sea, on the other hand, has been virtually depopulated of ships. If Percy takes the ship in a wide arc across the open sea to the region of Luminescent Spires, the dragon skeleton will be right there when I need it, and Elandriel, who no longer has a navy, won’t be able to get his greasy hands on it.”
Yumo-Rezu’s shoulders slumped, and she looked like was on the verge of tears, but she nonetheless acquiesced to what I’d proposed. “Fine,” she muttered, her eyes still locked on the ground in a forlorn gaze. “Keep it here … but if anything happens to those bones,” she snarled, spinning on her heel to face Percy with a look of icy fury on her face, “I’ll peel your ugly face off your skull, pirate. Slowly.”
“Don’t you worry, Dragon Goddess, I’ll guard them bones with my life, you have my word on that,” Percy said, grinning nervously.
“I’ll leave a harpy with the ship,” I said to Yumo-Rezu to offer her some reassurance. “Perched right up there on top of the mast. I’ll have eyes on the ship at all times, and you know how fast and far these creatures can fly. If I even catch a hint of a speck of an enemy presence on the horizon, I’ll be able to take action.”
She folded her arms across her chest and scowled. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you if anything happens to the skeleton,” she muttered before spinning on her heel and storming off in a huff.
Percy shook his head and chuckled. “Women eh, Cap’n Chauzec? From the lowliest tavern whore to this Dragon Goddess, sometimes ye just can’t reason with ‘em.”
“Nod and smile, Percy, nod and smile,” I said, grinning. “Sometimes that’s all you can do.”
I didn’t have time to stand around idly chatting to Percy about the problems we so often encountered with the opposite sex, though. At this very moment an enormous Church army, perhaps the largest ever assembled on Prand, could be laying siege to Brakith, while on the other side of the continent, Elandriel was probably slitting virgins’ throats and conjuring up something truly hellish in the bowels of the Blood Pyramid which would, if I let him go on with this madness unchecked, present the greatest existential threat to all life in the world since the birth of the first ancient gods.
I needed to get on with things, and the first order of business was to scout over the tops of the cliffs and see what the lay of the land was beyond this mile-high barrier of rock that stretched as far across the horizon as my eyes could see.
Scouting, of course, would be an easy enough task. There was no reason to wait, so I flung my spirit into the nearest harpy and set off for the cliffs, climbing higher into the sky as I flew. I expected to find the land above the cliffs empty, for there were no settlements, not even villages, anywhere nearby; the land in this area was dry and arid, and the plague of harpies had no doubt doubly convinced any peasants looking to set up a farm anywhere around here to look elsewhere.
The tops of the cliffs were shrouded in either fog or clouds, making it impossible to see what lay beyond them without getting really close. As I passed Castle Island and got closer to the Prandish shores, however, I saw the glint of what had to be steel on the clifftops. I flew higher to get a better look, getting to within a few hundred yards of the land on top of the cliffs … and that was when the ballista spear smashed through my harpy’s chest. I felt the impact as if the missile had punched into my own chest, but no pain accompanied the thump, seeing as my undead creatures were incapable of feeling this sensation.
Despite punching a skull-sized hole straight through the harpy’s torso, the ballista didn’t kill my undead creature, but it certainly would have put an immediate end to the life of a living one, and he force of the impact did send my harpy into a tailspin, plummeting toward the crashing waves below.
I recovered, pulling the harpy back into flight before it plunged into the waves, but before I could soar upward, another ballista spear smacked into the harpy. This one took my undead creature’s head off, and that was it. The undead harpy was officially dead, and the section of my spirit I’d had in it was jolted forcefully back into my body.
“Shit,” I muttered, staring at the distant cliffs. “We’ve got company up there.”
“What did you see, Cap’n Vance?” Percy asked.
“Someone’s up there,” I said, pointing at the fog-shrouded clifftops. “And they’re ready for harpies.”
“Church of Light bastards?”
“I don’t know, but most likely, yeah,” I answered. “This is going to make flying my party up onto the clifftops a little more of a challenge than I was hoping for.”
“Arr, those scurvy dogs really have got the whole bloody coast covered, don’t they?” Percy growled. “I suppose we could go another fifty miles up the coast, there’s another smuggler’s spot I know of where you may be able to sneak ashore.”
I shook my head. “No, that would just add further delay to my plans, and I can’t afford to lose any more time. I’m just gonna cut the fuckers down and fly my troops up there. With a mass harpy attack I can take out whatever troops are guarding those cliffs. I’ll lose a few dozen harpies, probably, but I’ll be able to get my party onto Prandish soil within an hour or two.”
“There may be a way to get into Pra
nd without losing any of your harpies, Cap’n Vance,” Percy said. “If you dare to take the Black Passage.”
“I thought the Black Passage came out at the base of the cliffs, and you had to scale them?” I asked.
“Aye, it does,” Percy answered. “One part of it, anyway. The part that Cap’n Redbard took. But according to legend, there’s another section of the Black Passage, if you keep going past the exit by the bottom o’ the cliffs. One that goes deeper into the earth, into a series of ancient caverns. The caverns are supposed to be connected to an abandoned silver mine, where … arr, no, forget I even suggested this idea. Perhaps it’d be best to do what you first said, and sacrifice a few harpies to clear out whoever’s on top o’ those cliffs. Far less risky to the living members o’ your party, even if you lose forty or fifty harpies.”
I was intrigued; if there was a stealthy way to get my party into Prand, I wanted to hear more about it; the risky aspect only piqued my curiosity and stirred a sense of excitement and anticipation within me. “Tell me a little more about this, Percy,” I said.
“Arr, I shouldn’t have mentioned it,” he muttered, shaking his head. “I should have known you’d be chomping at the bit to tackle it at the slightest mention of risk. Cap’n Vance, I think you should just sacrifice a few harpies and take the clifftops from the Church troops. I’m a fool for even thinking of mentioning the Black Passage.”
“Tell me about the dangers involved, Percy,” I said, smiling. “Come on, whet an old crypt diver’s appetite.”
Percy sighed and rolled his eyes. “Sometimes it does as much good trying to talk some sense into you, Cap’n Vance, as it does to those goddesses o’ yours. All right, all right, I’ll tell you, but for the record, I think it’s a far too risky endeavor to even consider, let alone set off on.” As he said this a trace of real fear entered his voice, and I knew that if this battle-scarred old pirate was anxious about something, it had to be more than your garden variety of evil. This, of course, only made me more eager to discover what was in these ancient caverns.
“There’s a very good reason those mines were abandoned when the shafts broke through into the ancient caverns,” Percy said. “Arr, and only one o’ the miners actually made it out alive, to tell the truth o’ the matter. And he, mind you, was no milksop—he was a mine warrior, and he’d fought his fair share of goblins and cave trolls and all manner of evil subterranean things.”
“I’ve fought plenty of monsters too, Percy. If cave trolls are all we have to worry about down there, I’m not too concerned.”
Percy chuckled darkly. “It’s not cave trolls at all, Cap’n Vance. It’s something that eats cave trolls, swallows ‘em whole, like. Something that gives cave trolls nightmares.”
I realized what he had to be talking about, and when I understood, a broad grin brightened my face. “Wyrms...”
“Aye, bloody wyrms,” Percy said. “Now that you know what you’re up against, I’m going to assume that you’ll forget that silly idea and just launch a mass harpy attack against the cliff defenders … right?”
“And miss out on the chance to add an undead wyrm or two to my undead army? I thought by now you’d have gotten to know me better than that, Percy.”
“Like I said, I should have known,” he said, shaking his head. “I suppose I should go call your party members and get ‘em to assemble on deck?”
“Perhaps you do know me better than I thought,” I said, flashing him a cheeky grin.
A few minutes later, all my party members were standing before me. I explained the situation with the clifftops being covered by ballista-wielding defenders, and said that to avoid losing a large number of harpies, I had decided to take the Black Passage. The harpy army would be sent on a journey parallel to the coast, where they’d stay out of ballista range, seeking out a place to fly ashore that wasn’t defended by ballistae and Church troops. It could take hours, but most likely it would take days. I explained that the danger of the Black Passage was not simply limited to the inky black labyrinth, or the maze-like passage through underwater caves. When I told them that we might have to face a wyrm or two in the ancient caverns, more than a few eyebrows were raised. One or two of my party members hadn’t heard of wyrms, though, so I had to explain exactly what we might be up against.
“While the two words sound the same, ‘worms’ and ‘wyrms’ are two very different things, although they do bear a few similarities,” I said. “They both have long, limbless bodies, and they both live underground. One, however, lives in your garden and is as small and limp as Elandriel’s cock, while the other is a monster with armored scales covering its body, ten-foot teeth that can slice through steel and rock like they were made of butter, and the ability to swallow a cave troll whole.”
Drok, predictably, was the most excited of all of them about this. “We fight wyrm!” he exclaimed gleefully, practically jumping up and down with joy. “Drok cannot wait! Drok people will sing songs about Drok killing wyrm! Drok be hero of legend!”
“You’re already a great hero, my barbarian brother,” Rollar said, grinning at his fellow barbarian’s infectious enthusiasm. “But we must approach such a foe with caution. Wyrms are some of the deadliest monsters in all the world, almost on par with dragons when it comes to ferocity and difficulty of killing.”
“Nothing comes even vaguely close to being as tough and fierce as a dragon, you hairy, ignorant ape,” Yumo-Rezu said haughtily, glaring at Rollar with venom in her gorgeous almond eyes. I had to suppress a chortle; nobody could say anything that could be even tangentially construed as diminishing to or critical of dragons without the Dragon Goddess chiming in, especially when her already feisty personality was enhanced by Yumo’s fiery temper and mercurial temperament.
“All right, Yumo-Rezu, I’m sure Rollar didn’t mean to offend any dragons or dragon goddesses with that statement,” I said. “Did you, Rollar?”
“No, no, of course not,” he grumbled, nevertheless shooting Yumo-Rezu a withering glare.
I picked up the conversation before an argument could erupt in earnest. “The point is, wyrms are huge, deadly, and very difficult to kill, which makes them ideal additions to my undead army,” I said. “And, what’s more, they’re capable of tunneling dozens of miles underground in a day, perhaps even as much as a hundred miles according to legend. If I can kill and resurrect a wyrm—or, even better, a few wyrms—I’d have a devastating new weapon to use against Elandriel, one that I could move in secret across Prand, and have it strike out of nowhere. The harpies are brilliant, but for all their maneuverability and ability to fly over great distances in a straight line, they’re far from invisible, and Elandriel’s troops will see a giant flock of harpies from a mile away. With wyrms, though, the huge beasts could be right under the army’s feet and they wouldn’t have a fucking clue, not until the earth opens up under them and entire divisions are literally being swallowed whole from below.”
To my surprise, the most enthusiastic supporter of this plan turned out to be Elyse. She’d come a long way from being disgusted by my zombies and freaked out by Fang. “That’s brilliant, Vance!” she said, delight sparkling in her stunning blue eyes. “A weapon like these loathsome wyrms would be unimaginably effective against Elandriel’s vile followers. It would be a trap unlike any other for the unsuspecting fools.”
I suspected that at least some of her eagerness to capture and deploy wyrms against Elandriel and his Church of Light troops came from a part of her that desired revenge against the Church authorities who had stripped her of her rank and title, excommunicated her and declared her a heretic.
“Such beasts would make for mighty undead warriors,” Isu said, her pale eyes gleaming with dark delight. “You have my support for this bold plan.”
“They would indeed make for a potent weapon,” Ji-Ko said, and his monks murmured their own support for this plan.
Everyone else voiced their agreement too; as intimidating a prospect as it was to have to navigate the Black
Passage and then fight and kill wyrms in the ancient subterranean caverns beyond it, the advantage such creatures would give me in battle was undeniable. Even though they were still recovering from the battle against the harpies, my party was ready to give their all to the quest.
“You guys make a Death God proud,” I said to them, meaning every word I said, “and I’m honored to serve with every one of you. Percy, steer us to Castle Island. We’re going through the Black Passage, and then we’re gonna kill some wyrms!”
Chapter Thirteen
Castle Island was a bleak and inhospitable place. The monstrous jumble of boulders that gave the island its name were gray, the only color variation being the black, white, and green streaks of harpy shit. Since the ballistae had been installed on the cliffs, the harpies seemed to have been roosting here, out of ballista range.
Percy dropped anchor as close as he could get to the isle, then my party and I set off in rowboats for the rocky shores. Percy said to us that the entrance to the Black Passage could be found at the highest point on Castle Island. Beyond that, he had no further advice to give. He wished us luck and said he’d see us at the final battle, which he was eager to dive into. Like all those under my command, he couldn’t wait to slit a few Church soldiers’ throats. He promised to keep the dragon bones safe—a promise I had insurance on, with one of my undead harpies now a permanent resident on the ship’s mast—and then wished us farewell.
Standing on the rocky shore of Castle Island, we watched the warship turn around and sail away, while the flock of harpies, like a mass of black storm clouds, flew off over the ocean in the opposite direction. Aside from Fang, Talon, and Rollar’s undead direbear, there were no undead creatures with us. It was just me and my party.
I felt strangely alone and almost naked without being surrounded by my undead troops. They were not simply inanimate pawns I could use in my battles. Instead, I had discovered they were a part of me, extensions of my spirit, and physical manifestations of my power. Without the undead, I may have still been a god, but I would forever be an incomplete deity in the absence of their presence.