by James Beamon
Ruki tried to keep the cultists off the barricades with diskblades. His shots were good at disruption, but the cultists didn’t stay away long. They saw how precarious it would be for the four defenders if the zombies were able to swarm. The cultists always came back, pushing and kicking and swinging at the barricades.
Runt swung his Z-blade, dropping another zombie down the side of the hill. Mike had his hands full with his own zombie. Another zombie rushed in and stabbed Runt in the side with a knife.
Runt roared with pain.
Savvy rushed in, her dagger lashing out in flashing blurs. The zombie’s knife hand came away severed. She grabbed the thing by its hair and as she serial stabbed it she dragged it up the hill, where she proceeded to carve it out of the fight permanently.
Runt laughed. Loudly, thoroughly, madly. It was the first time Mike ever heard him laugh. The sound boomed out over the battlefield. He followed it up with a yell as he broke his Z-blade into twin axes.
“Now! Now, it’s a fight!”
DRUZE THREW HIS NETHERFIRE volley at Melvin. Melvin, in mid-sprint, dashed left past one fireball. Then he made a whirling jump over the second fireball. He came down and kept charging at Druze like lethal fire jumping was a rehearsed part of a show.
Jason let an arrow fly. He nocked another one and let it go in a blur of speed.
Druze aimed his arms at Jason and Melvin. His sleeves came alive. One swirled into a black whirlpool, catching Jason’s arrows. The other shot out at Melvin.
Melvin side-stepped the sleeve and closed the gap to the mage. His sword stabbed out at Druze.
Druze slid back like the wind pushed him. The sleeve Melvin dodge earlier came back around. It hit Melvin in the back and pushed him into the mage.
The black robes swallowed both Druze and Melvin. They became a black sphere that swirled like a storm. Then the sphere exploded.
With a piercing scream, Melvin shot out of the explosion to land in a heap. Druze stood, unscathed and unmoved by the blast.
Almost like he was swatting a fly, Druze batted at another arrow with a sleeve. He turned to face Jason, who was in the midst of aiming another arrow.
Druze took two steps toward Jason. Casting a spell with each step, he knelt and picked up giant scoops of cavern floor. He threw the massive boulders with blinding speed at Jason.
Jason hit the floor. As the boulders passed, Druze spoke another spell and pressed down with his palms.
The boulders shattered, raining rock shrapnel on Jason.
Both Jason and Melvin were on the ground, groaning in pain. Rich had to do something. He had no clue what.
He cast the only thing he could think of at the moment and sent a pair of fireballs at Druze.
Druze said something quick and blew. The fireballs went out, like he was making a wish on a birthday cake.
“This is novice magic, boy!” Druze yelled. “I’m a five-hundred-year-old spell crafter. If you want to duel me, you’re going to have to step into your gray robes. But you can’t, can you?”
Druze tapped his temple. “I know. I’ve been watching, listening. The only way you can access Magelord magic is if you’re in fear of your own life. But I’m not going to try driving an axe through your face. Or turn into a giant, venomous spider.”
Druze smiled. “I’m going to torture your friends while you watch. Their only mercy will be your Life Ending Chain.”
MIKE STOOD SIDE BY side with his crew. They all swung clubs and swords at the zombies. One of the barricades had failed, opening up the bottleneck. It took all of them to keep the tide at bay.
The cultists below were going to town at the remaining barricade. Even if Ruki Provos didn’t have his hands full dealing with zombies, he was disk dry. It was only a matter of time before it came apart. Then the swarm would overrun them all.
Dawn was breaking over the horizon. Mike looked out at his high vantage point above the town, where the wan light revealed dark bodies moving rapidly through the foothills. A large force, an army, was heading towards the town.
“You guys seeing this?” Mike asked as he bashed another zombie off the hill.
“Maybe they’re peacekeepers coming to put an end to this blasted resurrection cult,” Ruki said.
The army was at the outskirts of town. Their individual shapes came into clear view.
“Not that lucky,” Mike said. “They’re nasran. They who I think they are, Savvy?”
“Yes,” she said, swiping her dagger back and forth at a zombie. “Maltep has found us.”
“Blessed Onesource!” Ruki cried. “How the hell did they find us?”
“My blood is their blood,” Savashbahar said. “If they wish to listen, it will whisper to them.”
Explosions started going off in the town. Yells, fire, smoke, all the signs of fighting hit Mike. Maltep was coming for them hard.
“Children! Children!” the voice of the clown dude could be heard over the noise of battle. “Leave the offerings to their work, our backs are exposed! We must last, grace is almost at hand!”
The cultists working apart the barricade left it and disappeared into the guardhouse. There was still a legion of zombies to deal with and a larger opening to the bottleneck. But at least now they didn’t have to worry about an all around swarming.
The Maltep nasrans had afforded them a temporary reprieve. A sick feeling washed over Mike, something that ran much deeper than the zombie gore he was covered in.
“TIME GROWS SHORT, BOY,” Druze said. “Cast the spell.”
Druze had summoned magic chains that wrapped around the arms, legs, and necks of both Melvin and Jason. The chains kept them standing and rooted in place. Netherfire burned in front of Melvin, so close that the fire was slow roasting him. Druze was casually flicking razor sharp sleeves at Jason, cutting away the skin on his chest and flesh arm, one piece at a time.
“Ok,” Rich said as he looked at his screaming friends, their faces looking sickly under the pale blue light of the netherfire torturing Melvin. “Just let them go.”
The sleeves stopped flying. The netherfire winked out of existence, returning the cave to a dark calm. Jason and Melvin’s chains remained fast.
“Just tell me why,” Rich said. “Why is trapping the Death Null so important to you?”
“Haven’t you figured it out yet, boy?” Druze asked. “How else is a human able to live for centuries without tapping into this thing’s death negating abilities?”
“You... Rew!” He spat as the realization dawned on him. “You both feed off it?!”
“Exactly,” Druze said. “This thing sits in some forgotten corner of the world, silently keeping death at bay for us. That is, until you freed it. Now it’s time to set things right.”
“You think this is right?” Jason shouted. “Die already, like everyone else!”
Druze’s sleeves shot out. Jason yelped as the sleeves cut across his cheeks.
“Shut up, boy, robes are talking,” Druze said. He looked back at Rich, disgust in his eyes. “But I can scarcely call you a robe. Before Rew was born, before she devised her witchlock, I sent real mages to their death renewing Kaftar’s spell. Accomplished, powerful mages—some of them my own sons.”
He walked over to the Death Null, looking it up and down before he turned to face Rich again.
“The last thing I’ll let happen is watch their sacrifice go in vain, ruined by a child scared of magic.”
Druze walked back over to Rich, pointing at his bound friends. “Now cast. Or the fire gets hotter and the blades get sharper. If it’s any consolation, Rew was innocent in this.”
“Innocent?” Rich asked. “She’s feeding off an innocent creature and she’s the faultless one?”
“Look at it!” Druze yelled, pointing to the Death Null. “Does it look innocent? Rew went with the same assumption you made when you saw it, the same assumption everyone makes. Can you blame her?”
Rich looked at the Death Null. It was tremendous, dark, terrifying. They had
trekked all over the world just based on how it looked. He couldn’t blame Rew for using it to extend her own life; he would’ve taken the same offer if he just had the visual to go by.
“We’ve wasted enough time here,” Druze said. “Rew truly doesn’t know the deadly consequence of the spell. That was before her time and her lock. In her eyes, you will have died a martyr, saving us all from evil. Now cast.”
SAVASHBAHAR WAS PROUD of her companions. There had been no escape from death visible anywhere, yet they all continued to fight on bravely. Together, they had seen victory over one battle.
Runt and Mike sent the last two zombies over the hillside. It was quiet on the hill now. Most of the undying ones were either cut into pieces or over the side of the hill, unable to return to the fight. But the quiet was deceptive. The town below burned.
A familiar voice shouted at them from beyond the guardhouse.
“Savashbahar is with you. Send her down to us.”
“Go to hell!” Mike yelled.
“Wait!” Savashbahar yelled. “I am coming.”
She looked at Mike. “This is not your fight. Not this. If it was, I imagine you would fight bravely. And I would be at your side, fighting with you.”
Savashbahar put her hand over Mike’s mouth before he could protest. She exchanged nods with Ruki Provos and Runt. None of their blood would be on her hands.
She put her knife away and walked with deliberate care down the hill, past busted barricades and broken bodies. She kept her chin high. There was no manufactured fear in her heart to dishonor her. She would die proud.
RICH TOOK OUT HIS SPELL book. He flipped pages slowly, trying to think of a way to save himself and his friends.
“Don’t think about casting something other than Kaftar’s spell, boy,” Druze said. “I recognize the difference between the old tongue and modern spellcraft. Remember, I used to be alive when people still spoke it.”
Rich got to Kaftar’s page. There was nothing else to do. Nowhere else to go. He swallowed, a dry, harsh feeling.
He was about to speak his own death.
Rich looked up at Druze and recited Kaftar’s words, loud and clear so the mage could hear they were from the old tongue.
THE LAST TIME SAVASHBAHAR had seen Demirtash, he had been prepared to kill her. She had aided foreigners, stolen, even extinguished Maltep’s sacred fire. Now Maltep’s Chief Hexenarii stood in front of her, his face grim and taut.
Behind him, the faces of many warriors looked toward her.
“Kill me quickly, Demirtash, for it looks as if you’ve emptied half of Maltep to deliver your justice.”
Demirtash took a step toward Savashbahar. He stood for a moment, looking at her in silence.
Then he reached out fast.
Savashbahar did not feel the bite of his dagger.
Demirtash’s arms were around her. For the first time since she was a young girl, her older brother held her in his embrace.
“Sister, you were right,” he said, “To fight, to help those foreigners, to strike at the mage factory. A hundred Hollowers came to us, led by the mages. If we had listened to your call to arms we could have struck first. Now we are all that remains of sacred Maltep.”
Maltep was no more. It was news to make the ancestors weep. She returned his embrace.
“I am sorry, Demirtash.”
“We need to fight,” Demirtash said. “We need Hexenarii. All our Hexenarii. You are outcast no more, dear sister, but the bravest among our chosen warriors.”
The warriors shouted in unison, a cry a woman from Maltep had never heard.
“Hexenarii! Hexenarii! Hexenarii!”
RICH FINISHED CASTING the spell. He closed the book and dropped it.
Druze looked at him, anger etched across in his features.
“Where’s the chain? You expect me to fall for your utterance of random words? I am out of patience! Now—”
A strangled sound came out of his throat. He reached for Rich. If he was trying to talk, nothing but choking came out.
“I wasn’t trying to fool you with random words,” Rich said. “This is one of Kaftar’s spells, the one called ‘Equal Hardship’. I couldn’t beat you, Druze, so I had to join you.”
Rich dropped to his knees, feeling heavy already from the weight of the spell. He looked over to his friends. The chains around Melvin and Jason dissolved, and they ran over to him.
“Dude, that was epic!” Jason said. “What’d you do?”
Rich pointed. Druze was frozen in his reach toward Rich, horror on his face. Gray stone grew, spreading upwards to his face, outwards to his hands and feet.
Rich looked down at his hands, white marble grew from his fingertips and spread up his hands.
“No!” Melvin cried. “God, Rich, you didn’t have to do this!”
“C’mon,” Rich said. “We’ve seen the movies. The bad guys aren’t exactly known for their big hearts. He was going to kill the both of you after he got what he wanted. Hell, he even sent his sons to die. I don’t think today was the day he learned charity.”
“Shit!” Jason swore. “Dude, is there a way to negate this?”
The white marble was up to Rich’s shoulders. His back felt solid, dense.
“If there is, I’m sure you’d be the one to find it,” Rich said.
Rich felt the marble spreading up to his neck. He couldn’t move, so he settled for a wink at Melvin.
“See ya around.”
He saw no more.
Epilogue
M
elvin sat in the cavern, his hands holding his knees. Mike was on one side of him, smoking a weird reddish brown cigar he got from the nasrans. Jason sat on the other side, looking at the last bit of grains fall in his hourglass.
Just a few feet away from the gray statue of Druze, the Death Null stood quietly. It acted peaceful, even if it didn’t look it. If anything, it still looked ominous, powerfully evil, and dangerous.
Melvin hoped they had done the right thing.
Nothing happened after the last grains fell to the bottom of the hourglass. Either Jason’s calculations were off or the Death Null’s countdown was a lackluster affair.
Suddenly, a brilliant white light filled the roof of the cavern over the Death Null. Black streams descended from the light over the creature. The Death Null reached up towards the light. Then the light flashed, too bright for eyes.
When darkness returned to the cavern, the Death Null was gone.
“I’ve got a strong feeling all Death Null wanted was to go home,” Melvin said.
“Of all the things to peg that creature,” Jason said, “wayward traveler stuck in this world wasn’t one of them.”
“Does everything in the universe get stuck on this rock?” Mike asked, smoke following his words as spoke. “Bet if we look hard enough we’ll find all the socks ever lost in the dryer.”
Melvin’s eyes went to the kneeling marble statue of Rich. His face was serene in the torchlight. He looked noble, like something Michelangelo would’ve carved.
“I was kind of hoping Izal’s cult was onto something,” Melvin said as he looked at the statue. “Rich could use some of that grace about now.”
“Yeah,” Jason said, “but grace would’ve brought back that evil immortal prick too,” he finished nodding at Druze, forever frozen reaching out with horror on his face.
“I should’ve hit that fool harder,” Mike said, puffing on his cigar.
Jason flexed the hand of his bone arm. “At least this still works,” he said. “There’s grace in that.”
Melvin stood up. The others followed suit. Melvin gave his brother a helping hand; Mike looked beat to hell after the night he had.
“What do we do now?” Jason asked.
“What else would we do in a fantasy world of magic?” Melvin asked, letting a smile play across his lips.
“We get Rich back.”
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About the Author
James Beamon is a science fiction and fantasy author whose short stories have appeared in places such as Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine, Apex, Lightspeed and Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show. He spent twelve years in the Air Force, deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, and is in possession of the perfect buffalo wings recipe that he learned from carnies. He currently lives in Virginia with his wife, son and attack cat. He's serious about the attack cat... do not point at it. Pendulum Heroes is his debut novel.
Read more at James Beamon’s site.