by Eric Vall
“I appreciate it.” I grinned up at the high queen, and she ran a hand through my hair lovingly. “Please be careful with my avatar. Don’t topple it over the edge or something. I could get it back, but it might take a while, and you all would miss me too much.”
“Yeah, it’s been a bit weird without you around,” Rana mumbled softly, but from the rapid swish of her red tail, I could tell she had missed me while I was away.
“I’m sorry, but I must leave you again,” I said apologetically as I reached out and stroked each of their faces affectionately. “It’ll all be over soon, I promise. Just get my avatar to the Liebe’s nexus, and I’ll finish off the rest from my end, all right?”
They each nodded in turn, and I gave them a gentle smile as I once again closed my eyes and breathed deeply through my nose. The strange sense of lightness overtook me as my essence was transferred back to my dungeon, and the sounds of the newly arrived minions of the Liebe reached my ears.
I opened my eyes and saw what the Liebe had summoned this time. Instead of the weak and mindless ghouls, the Liebe instead brought forward towering undead men. Their tall, lean bodies were taut with muscle. Their skin was rotted and peeled in some places to reveal the red tissue below that was surprisingly untouched by decomposition. Their faces were masks of rage against the sunken-in skin, and the festering eyes in their sockets glowed a hateful scarlet. The pungent scent of death was heavy in the air, and the single eye of my cyclops blinked in disgust.
Their chiseled chests rose and fell with labored breath. They were more organized than the ghouls before them, and I watched them pour in the entrance in droves. Each corpse carried a different weapon, but the blades were sharp and shined in the dim light. I knew from the way they held them that they were skilled warriors, and I knew what they were.
Their name was the literal meaning of ‘again-walker,’ and I looked down upon the Draugr with disgust. The Liebe was finally fighting back with real effort, and I would relish this second opportunity to beat him. My opponent had brought forward his knights, but I had yet to unveil my queen in this game.
The Draugr were undead men with inhuman strength, unable to be wounded or killed by regular wounds, but unlucky for them, I was not an ordinary god. I summoned my dark power, and it pulsed from me with a new life as it transferred to the lava below my detached form. The lava began to pulsate, but the Draugr didn’t flinch or move as the bubbles of magma grew higher and began to take shape. This was the largest creature I had ever brought into existence, and it took a great deal of my power, not that it exhausted me.
I heard the Liebe take a sharp inhale of breath as a head formed only of molten rock rose from the frothing orange river. The glowing golden eyes were snake-like, and the slit-like nostrils breathed in deeply then exhaled flames and billowing smoke. As the head rose higher, the scaled neck was exposed, and pointed frills and spines expanded from the top of its head and down its neck. It’s mouth opened and closed, molten lava dripped from its massive teeth like saliva, and its head turned as a twin head rose from the liquid beside it. They resembled dragons in a way but were more serpentine as their necks swiveled towards the waiting Draugr. Their golden eyes flashed evilly, their massive jaws slid open, and a wave of heat blasted across the floor. It hit the Draugr directly, and the rotting flesh of the undead sizzled and bubbled up.
In unison, the Draugr lifted their weapons, and a mighty cry broke from their ranks as they spread out over the room. A group of sixty-six living dead rushed for the two waiting ice demons, a second group rushed for the huge cyclops, and the rest faced off with the molten snakes. I smiled to myself as a third head rose from the lava and stared down at the oncoming troops. The Liebe didn’t know what he was doing, and this was merely child’s play for me as the hydra made entirely of lava rose from the pool and stepped out onto the rocky floor of the room. The hydra was huge, bigger than both the ice demons and the cyclops. Its three heads hung in the air, and the spikes on their heads nearly brushed the ceiling of the cavern.
I watched my creations gleefully as they waged carnage all around my dungeon. My cyclops grabbed up two of the Draugr in its four-fingered fist and squashed their bodies to mush. It no longer put them in its mouth, the stench of death too much for its stomach. The cyclops lumbered forward, swung its arms like hammers, and slammed down on the Draugrs like nails lined up on a board.
The ice demons were sadly not faring well. The poor beasts were overrun, and soon both of their colorless bodies exploded in hails of ice spears, piercing into the bodies of the Draugr’s, but they barely left scratches on the undead creatures.
The magma hydra, on the other hand, was destroying each creature that dared step into its path. All three of its heads moved in tandem, the massive jaws snapped around the Draugr, and the undead men went up into flames and fell away in a waft of smoke and the smell of burnt dead flesh. This beast was something to behold, and I knew the Liebe watched in horror as it moved blindingly fast and took out an entire row of ranks with little effort.
I laughed loudly for the other god to hear, and I heard him scoff in disgust.
Within mere minutes, there were only twenty of the Draugr left, and the hydra and Cyclops were closing in on them quickly. I had one more trick up my sleeve, and I wasn’t finished showing the Liebe what I was capable of yet. I retracted my power, and slowly, both the hydra and the Cyclops fell apart into drifting gray ash, mere puppets of my will.
The remaining Draugr didn’t notice the absence of my creations and stood stock still with their weapons poised in the air. Slowly, they lowered them, reformed what was left of their ranks, and headed off towards the archway on the opposite side of the room.
“Dark One?” the Liebe hesitantly called out as he followed along with his minions. “I know you’re still here, I can feel your dastardly presence. It reeks of brimstone and sulfur.”
I didn’t answer, and I didn’t challenge the rest of the Draugr as they trooped through the caverns and tunnels. I wanted this, and I wanted them to find my nexus and what waited patiently inside for them.
Chapter Thirteen
“Where are you?” The Liebe called out to me as he and the Draugr journeyed deeper into the heart of my dungeon. “Why aren’t you attacking me? Have you given up? It’d be better if you did.”
I only stifled a laugh as we moved even closer to my nexus. The Liebe was cocky, even now after I had bested him twice in a row, but soon, he would learn his lesson. My nexus was at the deepest point in the dungeon, the heart of all the tunnels and passageways that stemmed from it. Like all dungeons, no matter what direction or shaft you came from, it would lead to the nexus in the end so long as they were not being actively manipulated by their god. I watched the Draugr and the essence of the Liebe travel deeper, and I grew impatient to see what would happen when they entered the nexus and encountered the Soul Collector.
The archway that marked the entrance of my nexus was huge and engraved with ancient runes, but the Draugr paid them no attention. I sensed the Liebe as he stopped for a moment and glanced at the incantations placed within the smooth rock, but he paid them no heed. Instead, he passed through the archway, and only I knew this was the last place he would travel to before I finished him off. My nexus was dark and smelled of stagnant pools that dripped from the stalactites hung from the ceiling. Directly in the middle of the dark room stood the Soul Collector, and at first, nothing happened. The ruby red eyes of the Soul Collector stared straightforward into nothing, and the Draugr surrounded it warily with their weapons drawn and at the ready.
“What is this?” the Liebe snarled in indignation, and I felt the air around his presence heat up with rage. “Where is your essence? It has to be here!”
“You speak as if you know such things to be fact,” I chuckled darkly as I watched the eyes of the Soul Collector flicker once and then pulsed to life with a new brilliant light. “Like you, I can move my essence around to different planes of existence, and I’ve hidden it awa
y from prying hands like yours. How stupid of you to assume I would keep it in my easily accessible dungeon when I’m so far away from it.”
“Then why did you fight as if you had everything to protect?” the Liebe screeched, and the Draugr turned their backs to the Soul Collector and pointed their blades instead in my general direction.
“You wanted to play a game, and I indulged your whim,” I replied darkly. “Are you happy with your choice? You challenged the most powerful god to exist and barely scraped by. I’ve had mercy on you and your minions. Even the deaths I gave your ghouls were a form of clemency.”
“Clemency?” the Liebe screamed in a rage. “They were eaten by a goddamn one-eyed ogre made of dirt! How in the hell can you call that mercy?”
I laughed at his insolence and ignorance. “It was a Cyclops.”
“It doesn’t matter what it was, it still ate them like they were treats lined up on a bakery counter!” the Liebe shouted angrily, and I relished the distress he was experiencing.
“Are you not grateful? No? Then mercy no more.” My voice boomed around the room as once more the eyes of the Soul Collector flashed hatefully, and one of the skeletal hands twitched around the bowl in its hands. I no longer spoke to the Liebe but instead to the massive creature behind him and his minions. “Awaken, I command you to rise.”
Silence enveloped the Draugr as they slowly turned and stared over their rotted shoulders at the Soul Collector. Its fleshless hands tapped menacingly along the sides of the carved skull bowl, then flipped it over and stroked the bone as the Collector pointed at the carved etchings there. Directly between the eyes of the skull, a leviathan cross was cut into the smooth, white bone.
“Ego sum quod Diabolus et ego sum euntes ut degluttiat vestra animarum,” the Soul Collector whispered softly beneath its hood. Its voice was dry and rattled deep within its throat like the skitter of dead leaves across the ground, and the sigil on its bowl glowed with crimson light.
With the crack of rock, the Collector’s stone wings spread out behind it and brushed the walls of my nexus with their massive width. I couldn’t see its face clearly, but from the casted shadows, I could make out the shape of a pointed chin and pointed yellow teeth that protruded from the thin lips. With a whisper of its unseen lips, the Soul Collector stepped off its pedestal and reached into the depth of its robes to retrieve a silver sickle. With its skull bowl in one hand, the Soul Collector raised the sickle above its head as the lips underneath the hood split into a vile smile.
In the blink of an eye, the sickle slashed down on one of the Draugr, and black, tar-like blood spurted from the undead warrior’s mouth as it held onto its split belly while its putrid intestines threatened to spill out onto the stone floor. Before the other monsters could even react, the Soul Collector lunged forward with deft precision and cleanly cut the Draugr’s head off. The decayed head rolled away into the shadows as black blood seeped up from the rotten meat of its neck.
I watched in amazement and delight as the Soul Collector’s tongue snaked out and licked its dry lips. Then it knelt in front of the headless Draugr and collected not only the congealed blood that spurted out of the headless carcass but also the sickly yellow soul that flowed from the Draugr.
At that, the remaining Draugr rushed forward with their swords held out in front of them and a collective roar sprang up their throats, but the Soul Collector righted itself and towered over the powerful undead with the very same smile in place. One Draugr ran forward and lunged with its sword, only for one of the Collector’s massive wings to swing out and slam the creature into the wall with a thundering crack. It held the bowl with ease as the Draugr slumped to the floor, and its unhealthy sallow soul whispered out of its mouth and nostrils, its gray matter splattered across the wall where it had hit.
The red eyes of the Soul Collector glittered and glowed with pleasure as its forked tongue flicked out once. As all of the Draugr converged on the Soul Collector’s turned back, it flapped its huge wings once and took to the air, and then I saw its face and knew what it was.
In my lifetime, I had only seen a true demon once, and it was clear to me what the Soul Collector was. A demon in the flesh, cursed and encased in a stone tomb almost like I once was. The creature in the air and I had an understanding that my other creations did not. It understood the pain of being locked in a crypt and the unending wait to be released. This being’s fate was worse than mine though as I was able to escape my dungeon with the help of my minions, but this demon could not.
He would forever be my slave. Perhaps I should have felt a bit of empathy for him, but I didn’t. All will end up serving me in the end.
It took mere minutes for the Soul Collector to annihilate the Draugr and pool both their black blood and souls in its bowl. The screams of the Liebe were loud in my ears as the Soul Collector replaced both of his hands around the bowl and stared down at its contents. Then It raised the bowl to its thin lips under the hood and sucked the liquid down with wet, gurgling sounds of pleasure. I watched as the forked tongue slipped out and ran over its dry lips again to pick up any stray blood it may have missed. Its whispering voices were louder now as the scarlet eyes of the Soul Collector brightened, and a humming came from deep in its throat. The creature stepped back towards its pedestal and turned once it returned to its rightful place. It held out the bowl once more, lowered its head, and the red glowing of its eyes died out below the black hood.
It was finished, and Liebe knew I had won as I always did.
Now there was only one thing left to do, so I closed my eyes and breathed in deeply as I transferred my essence across time and space. As I moved through different planes of existence, I could feel the Liebe chasing after me as he rushed to return to his dungeon, but he was too late as I opened my eyes and raised my head.
My minions had brought my avatar deep into the dungeon, and I stood in front of the heavenly body of the Liebe as his milky white eyes searched the air for something. His true form was tall and lanky, his limbs long as they stretched out into empty space. The Liebe’s face was a soft oval shape, and like most god’s who kept their heavenly forms, was beautiful in all ways. His mouth hung open in horror, and I reached deep into my void pocket and retrieved the God Slayer. The weapon sang to me as I slammed it down on the wet rock of the Liebe’s nexus. I summoned all of my power to me and pushed it deep into the depth of the weapon as its blades sang in the air like a chorus. My eyes were heavy on the face of the Liebe as he regained consciousness, and that was when I whirled the God Slayer over my head.
I wanted him to see his death coming.
The Liebe’s amber eyes widened in horror, and I smiled wickedly back as the pulsing power forming over my head trailed after my polearm. In a split second, before he could react, I brought the blades down and sliced his face in two. His lips, sliced cleanly in half, hung down in a silent scream, and he brought his hands up to protect himself, a second too late. I plunged the tip of the God Slayer deep in his throat, and blood sprayed from the wound and misted across my face. Right as I was about to pull away, two steel blades plunged through his chest, Annalise’s tensed face revealed over his shoulder as she screamed in rage. The High Queen and I pulled our weapons free at the same time, and the Liebe stumbled forward, one hand pressed to the gushing wound on his throat.
Annalise came around the god and flicked both of her swords to clean them of his sticky blood. Her beautiful face was a mask of fury, and her lips were pulled back against her teeth in a vicious snarl. I had never seen her like this, but what this deity had been doing to his townsfolk enraged my wife. As a princess and now the High Queen, she would never treat her citizens the way this god had.
“Fire in the hole!” a giggling voice came from behind me, and I whipped my head to look over my shoulder to see Carmedy knelt on one knee, her left leg held out beside her for balance. One of her emerald eyes was squeezed shut as she aimed the slingshot directly at the stumbling Liebe. The alchemist let go, and the small bund
le flew through the air with deadly accuracy. It hit dead in the middle of the Liebe’s gut and exploded with such force that it blew a hole entirely through him.
Gore and chunks of flesh sprayed into the air as his glazed-over eyes widened. Blood dripped from his nose, and he blindly felt at the gaping hole in his body where most of his lower abdomen had once been. Choked off noises sprang from his throat and his wild, hazy eyes found me in the middle of his nexus. I smiled widely at him, and blood poured from his lips and dripped down his front as he stumbled towards me. He reached out for me, his grabbing hands tensed in anger as he moved to strike out weakly at me.
“Master,” a bored voice came from behind me, and I turned to face Morrigan as I easily sidestepped the wounded and dying Liebe. In the High Elf’s hands was the sacred elven bow. “Shall I send him to his grave?”
I was delighted with my minions. They had not only beaten the perils of the Liebe’s dungeon but also assisted me in killing him without having to ask for permission. I glanced down at the beautiful weapon the elf held and stepped aside, a gesture of silent permission to send the Liebe into the abyss.
As she pulled back on the bowstring, a black arrow of magical power crackled to life and moved through the air in slow motion. I watched it turn and spin as it headed directly for the Liebe’s upper chest. It slammed into him with a wet thud, and the Liebe glanced down as the magical arrow took effect. Black and purple energy swirled around the entrance wound, and the power seethed from the arrow. A fearsome wind pulled the arrow inside of the Liebe’s body, and his screams rose in pitch as his chest sank in, pulled toward the black power. The swirling mass painstakingly drew the god into the black hole it created, and soon, his screams were muffled and far away as he was swallowed by the hole and the hole along with it.
My minions and I stood silently for a moment, and slowly, from the space where the Liebe had just been standing, a shifting pink orb rose from the blood splattered floor. It undulated and bounced in the air as it moved towards me, and I stepped forward to receive the power of the Liebe. He fought hard, but like all others, he fell to my superior power and cunning in the end. The bright blush colored orb pressed into my chest and fused with my power. An overwhelming sense of warmth washed over my limbs, and for a second, a giddy feeling bubbled up in my chest. Then it was gone as I completely absorbed his power.