by Dante King
Resurrecting it took a decent chunk of my energy. But just as it had been when I’d resurrected the kraken, this massive beast was soon animated again, except with the energy of Death moving through its blood, not the spark of life.
A brutal sense of raw power surged through me as I connected my spirit to the wyrm’s undead body. Like the kraken, this was a being of primal and monstrous strength. Also, just as it had been when I’d hurled my spirit into the undead sharks for the first time, I experienced my surroundings in a very different and alien manner than anything I’d previously known.
I knew for sure now that my theory about the wyrm “seeing” through vibrations in the ground was correct. When members of my party walked across the cavern floor, I found that I could close my eyes yet know exactly where they were, as if their bodies were shining points of light in a sea of darkness.
Controlling the undead wyrm, I shook the pile of boulders off it and reared its terrifying head up. There were no eyes that could shine with the familiar undead yellow-green glow. Instead, that subtle glimmer of luminescence shone around the jagged edges of its teeth.
Rollar walked up to the wyrm, marveling at its size. He looked like a mouse in comparison to the huge thing. He tapped on the wyrm’s stony armor and chipped a chunk off it with his ax.
“It’s rock, sure enough,” he said, examining the chip. “This is a creature of rock and flesh, somehow.”
“It might be covered with stone, but it also eats boulders for breakfast,” I said, walking up to the wyrm’s mouth.
Just as the caverns here seemed like the interior of a majestic cathedral, the wyrm’s open jaws and gaping mouth was a large enough chamber to fit a house into. The creature’s innards didn’t reek of rotten flesh the way the undead whale did.
One reason, of course, was that we’d only just killed the wyrm and it was nowhere near rotting stage, but another was what it ate. I knew that it feasted on cave trolls from the scent I’d been following since we entered the Black Passage, but I suspected it ate anything it could clamp its jaws over, really. However, the way it digested things seemed unlike any other creature I’d encountered, for coming from its tunnel-like throat was the earthy smell of compost. Unlike being inside the undead whale, stepping inside the wyrm’s open jaws didn’t make you gag immediately.
“Everyone, get in here,” I said. “We’re taking the wyrm express outta these caverns.”
Everyone entered the wyrm’s open jaws. There was plenty of room for Fang, the direbear, and the wolf’s head weapons, along with the barrels of gray powder and red balls too.
Along with the wyrm’s incredible sense of detection when it came to vibrations—which I could feel rippling through its body, coming from the surface of Prand a few hundred yards above us—I found that it possessed an innate map of sorts built into its body and brain. I knew right away which way was north, and which was east, west, and south. I could tell where rivers and lakes were, and towns. They were distant, but I knew they were there.
The first order of business was to get up from underground onto Prandish soil. It would need to be somewhere remote and isolated, where we wouldn’t be spotted by the many pairs of unfriendly eyes scattered across Prand that were passing information to Elandriel.
Now, with the wyrm’s abilities to detect moving creatures on the surface of the ground, and figure out their sizes and how many of them were in any given place, this task was a lot easier.
I set off, driving the wyrm through the complex series of caverns and tunnels, of which there were hundreds. The wyrm had to have been living here for centuries, perhaps even longer. I sensed there were more wyrms around, but none were within dozens of miles. Creatures like these had to have huge individual ranges. I fancied my chances of being able to defeat another wyrm in a fight, but it would take too long to cross the vast distances necessary to hunt another one down.
Time was of the essence right now.
Contenting myself with this one undead wyrm I did have, I picked out a spot to surface. Using the wyrm’s fine-tuned sense of detecting the presence—or, rather the absence—of living things above ground, I found a location that seemed pretty deserted.
“All right everyone, get to the very back of the wyrm’s throat,” I said. “We’re about to munch through some earth and rock. If you don’t stand back, you’re gonna get buried pretty fast.”
We all went as far back down the wyrm’s throat as we could, then I sent it into the virgin earth.
Its jaws started chomping at a manic rate, and its entire body undulated like a writhing serpent. We started to plow through the soil at a tremendous pace, chewing through the earth as if it was melting butter. The wyrm’s jaws were immensely efficient when it came to this task. It devoured earth with the front section while it sort of funneled the chewed-up earth and pulverized rocks out of the rear edges of its mouth instead of swallowing the dirt.
“If miners could tame one of these things, they’d be able to tunnel through the earth a thousand times faster!” Rollar said.
“Perhaps I’ll get into the mining industry once all this Blood God bullshit is over and done with,” I said.
After fifteen minutes of tunneling, we smashed through the surface. Daylight flooded into the jaws and throat of the wyrm.
Everyone gave a great cheer. It was wonderful to see blue sky, grass, and trees all around us after everything we’d been through since leaving Yeng.
We jumped out of the wyrm’s jaws, grateful and happy to be back on Prandish soil again at last. Everyone was smiling and laughing.
Except me. My mind was focused on a singular goal.
“I’m back in Prand, Elandriel,” I whispered to the cold wind, blowing in from the north. “And I’m not stopping or slowing down until your head is on a fucking spike, and the Blood God is nothing but a bad memory.”
Chapter Fifteen
I had a big decision to make and couldn’t waste any time on making it. Even now, Elandriel, the Blood God and their Demogorgon—or multiple Demogorgons, if I ended up being really unlucky—were growing more powerful by the day.
I had an ace in my pocket in the form of all the ingredients, bar one, needed to resurrect and control a dragon. The one thing that could demolish the Demogorgon. That final piece of the dragon puzzle was the Dragon Heart, locked away in the deepest and most secure vaults in Luminescent Spires. In the vault was also the last Tear of the Lord of Light: the one item that could destroy the Blood God forever. It was going to take one hell of a burglary to shift these two items, but I hoped that with my old assassin and crypt diver skills, I’d be able to pull it off.
Then there was another problem to deal with. Thousands of miles away, across harsh and rugged terrain, lay Brakith. My city and my people were under siege by the biggest army ever assembled by the Church of Light. Of course, this was all going on hearsay, but it seemed like exactly what Elandriel would have done. After all, he’d called up a crusade against me before I left for Yeng. It only made sense that he would ramp up his efforts with his assumed victory so near. Furthermore, he was one sly, sneaky fucker. He knew that by assaulting Brakith, he would keep me away from Luminescent Spires since I’d be occupied there.
Splitting my force would weaken us—something else that Elandriel could exploit. But if we focused all our strength on either relieving the Siege of Brakith or attacking the Blood Pyramid beneath Luminescent Spires, I would lose something big. If I went to Brakith, I would lose the opportunity to defeat the Blood God and the Demogorgon before they grew too powerful. If I went straight to Luminescent Spires with the entirety of my forces? Brakith would almost certainly be taken, and all my loyal subjects and friends there would die horrible deaths.
There had to be another way.
Elandriel no doubt thought he had me in checkmate. He might even be right. Was there some way I could solve both problems without suffering a massive loss in either area?
Before I did anything drastic, though, I needed to ensure t
hat the siege and the attack on Brakith was as dire as rumors had made it out to be.
Thankfully, there was a way for me to do exactly that. I had just remembered that I’d given Cranton, the First Priest of the Temple of Necrosis, a few skeletons to use as bodyguards. Being a weedy, uncoordinated mouse of a man, he needed all the help he could get when it came to defending himself. All I had to do was seek out those skeletons and take a peek at the world through their eyes. My powers had increased exponentially since I’d first become a necromancer—and then a Death God—so I hoped I could reach Cranton’s undead minions wherever they may be found.
I closed my eyes and focused on the black Death threads that connected me to all of my undead creature, from Sarge, the very first skeleton I’d created—who was being dragged across the bottom of the sea, along with the vast majority of my undead army—all the way to the wyrm, my most recent addition. There were tens of thousands of threads, but I found that by putting thoughts of Cranton into my head, I was able to pick out those of his skeleton bodyguards.
Once I’d located these, I chose one skeleton and blasted a part of my spirit across time and space into its skull. I opened my eyes and peered around me, seeing the world through the undead minion’s eyes.
I was across the continent, in Brakith, standing on the ramparts of the city walls. My bony hands gripped a recurve bow and aimed a strung arrow at a huge sea of Church of Light troops. They had completely surrounded the city. Hundreds of catapults and trebuchets were busy launching boulders and flaming projectiles at the fortified walls.
Still in the skeleton’s body, I angrily loosed an arrow, skewering a fat Church soldier through his throat. Feeling at least a little satisfied, I turned around to look at the city of Brakith behind me.
A stab of both anger and sadness was thrust through my belly as I took in the sight of the city. The buildings and the castle had taken a pounding from the barrage of the catapults and trebuchets. Brakith’s citizens were huddled behind walls in makeshift shelters, looking scared and thin; food was obviously running low. Many of my soldiers lay dead, piled up in hastily dug mass graves. The situation was even worse than I could have imagined, and I needed to send support there right away.
However, I couldn’t delay my mission to Luminescent Spires; Elandriel, the Blood God and the Demogorgon were growing stronger by the day, possibly even by the hour, and every moment I gave them was a chance of ultimate victory I was taking from myself.
I pulled my spirit from the skeleton and returned to my body. With this conundrum on my mind, I sat down and thought deeply. I wanted to lead the counterattack against the Church of Light army myself. I wanted to personally wipe the fuckers out, drive them from Brakith with such force that no Church army would ever be assembled again. But that would mean having to travel to Brakith.
Everyone had taken a break to eat lunch soon after we had surfaced. They were still eating and resting, but Isu was done, so I took her aside to pick her brain.
“You’re perturbed, Vance, I can see it in your eyes,” she said. “It’s not an expression I’m accustomed to seeing on that handsome face of yours.”
“Elandriel has me on my back foot,” I said. “I need to figure a few things. Since you were the Goddess of Death for such a long time, I’m hoping you’re able to answer this question. Is it possible for me to control a living person the way I can control my undead creatures?”
“As powerful as you are as the God of Death, Vance, you cannot control any living thing like a puppet,” she answered. “Not even a mouse. If you want that sort of control over a living creature, the only way to do it is to kill it, and resurrect its corpse as one of your undead creatures. There is no other way.”
I frowned. “I was hoping there would be a way to do this without having to kill him…”
“Kill who?”
“The actor in Brakith, the one who worked for my uncle for a while,” I answered.
A knowing smile came across Isu’s pale face, and her full lips curved upward, enhancing her dangerous beauty. “Ah yes, your doppelganger. I’m sorry, Vance, there’s no way to control him without killing him. And why not kill him? He assisted your foul uncle and perpetuated the filthy lie that you were a vampire, kidnapping and murdering young women from Brakith. If it had been me, I would have killed the fool long ago.”
“He didn’t know how bad Rodrick was, and he didn’t know he was an accomplice to murder, let alone multiple murderers. He’s a limp-wristed milksop and a vain idiot, but he’s not malicious. And I gave him more than enough punishment with his months in jail and in the stocks. Killing him on top of all that seems a little extreme.”
Isu shrugged. “Sometimes, to win a war, innocents must die. There’s no way around that unpleasant fact. If the fool actor must be sacrificed, then so be it. His worthless life can actually end up meaning something … by dying.”
“Are you two talking about the actor back in Brakith, the one who looks like Vance’s slightly wimpier twin brother?”
We turned around and saw Anna-Lucielle approaching us.
“Yes, we are,” I said. “I need to control him like a puppet, the way I can with my zombies. The only thing is, I’ll have to kill him first. That does present another problem, though, in addition to the whole ethical thing about killing a relatively innocent man: he won’t be able to speak.”
“How does this pose a problem?” Isu asked.
“In order for him to convincingly fool the Church of Light troops and Elandriel’s spies, he needs to be able to talk. Which he can do as a living actor—he imitates me perfectly—but then he can’t fight. No amount of faking it will disguise his embarrassing lack of coordination.”
Anna-Lucielle smiled. “He doesn’t need to die in order for you to do what you’re hoping to do with him. You’ve forgotten about this, haven’t you?” She took out the Beauty Mirror.
I had to grin; I had indeed forgotten about the Beauty Mirror. “I think I know where you’re going with this,” I said.
“I just need to give this to the actor, and he’ll be completely indistinguishable from you. And to control him…”
“I’ll use the Dragon Sword,” I said, “blending your Charm magic with the Death powers I use to control my undead minions. So when he’s got the Beauty Mirror on him, he’ll essentially be a living zombie I can control like a puppet. That little milksop will suddenly be able to fight as furiously and savagely as a Northern barbarian berserker, because it’ll be me who’s actually doing the fighting.”
“There’s only one problem with this plan of yours, Vance,” Isu said. “Everything would be perfect about it, except that you don’t currently have a connection to the actor. Not in the way you do to your undead creatures, who you can sense and communicate with over hundreds of miles. Nor do you have such a connection with Anna-Lucielle.” She flashed a somewhat catty smile at Anna-Lucielle as she delivered this thinly-veiled—but relevant—insult. “How will you take control of him when you cannot link your power directly to the Charm Goddess over such a vast distance.”
Isu had taken to wearing her hair up in recent days, and her dark, silky tresses were held in place with a pair of sharp bones in place of hairpins. I stepped over to her and yanked one of the bones out, causing her hair to tumble down over her slim, pale shoulders.
“What is the meaning of this, Vance?” she asked.
“This will solve that little problem.” I twirled the sharp bone around my fingers and made it spin and dance as if it had a mind of its own. It was a cheap street magician’s trick I’d learned as a teenager to impress girls.
“An old bone?” Anna-Lucielle asked.
“Not just any bone,” I said, drawing the Dragon Sword. “Activate your Charm magic.”
Anna-Lucielle called up her Charm magic, which appeared before me in the form of a glowing pink heart. Fitting, I supposed, but not exactly what I would choose for my own form of magic.
I conjured up the gray skull of Death magic. It wa
s about the most unlikely pairing of powers I could think of, but it would work perfectly for my intentions. Like a master alchemist, I combined both powers, visualizing in my mind exactly what I needed them to do. Then, I took the new, mixed magic, and imbued the bone with it. The bone turned from a dull yellowish hue of cream to glossy black, with a curious pink iridescence when held up to the light. I admired my handiwork for a few seconds, then handed the enchanted bone to Anna-Lucielle.
“What do I do with it?” she asked.
“Stab the actor with it,” I said. “Somewhere non-lethal of course, and it doesn’t have to be a deep wound; just enough to draw blood. With this bone—I’ll call it the Zombie Bone—I’ll be able to control whoever you stab as if they were one of my zombies. They’ll still have some will of their own, of course, being a living person instead of one of my undead minions, but I’ll give you a message to pass on to the actor. This message will ensure his cooperation.”
“I assume it will have something to do with being killed if he doesn’t cooperate?” Anna-Lucielle asked.
I smiled. “Something to that effect, yes. I’ll get nice and creative about the very slow, very painful manner in which he’ll meet his end if he refuses. He’ll cooperate.”
Even Isu had to smile now. “A most cunning plan, Vance,” she said. “You are using the many advantages the Dragon Sword brings with great ingenuity, I must say.”
“I’ll make sure that whiny little coward agrees to this,” Anna-Lucielle said, a wicked gleam sparkling in her eye. “And if he gives me any attitude about it, I’ll jab this bone straight into his eyeball.”
“You’ll have to give him your plate armor and one of your signature weapons to complete the illusion,” Isu said. “Any shrewd commanders in the Church army will quickly realize something’s amiss if the fool is wearing your armor but using a regular lance or sword.”