Wasteland Road Knights Trilogy

by Andrew Dobell

  Nero looked around. He wanted to help them, but he didn’t want them following them through this tower.

  “Um…” he muttered, looking at Nyx. She looked back at him, then around the room, and then moved over to the cell of the one who’d spoken.

  “If we let you out, you’re on your own. You can get out through that drain, deal?”

  The prisoner looked at Nyx, and then at Nero. “Alright, sure. What are you going to do?”

  Nero smiled. “We’re going to kill the Whisperer.”

  The prisoner just stared at him for a moment, before he muttered quietly to himself. “Shit.”

  “Hold on,” Nero said, and walked over to the side of the cell door. The lock was simple enough. It was a chain that was threaded over a hook on the wall, out of reach of the cell’s occupant. The chain was threaded through the door and back over the hook, locking the door shut.

  Nero unhooked one end of the chain and the door swung open. He turned to Kat, Cryptus, and Runt, who were watching him. “Do the others,” he asked.

  His friends moved off to the other cells.

  “How did you do that?” the prisoner asked, looking over at the dead daemon dogs.

  Nero followed the man’s gaze, and then looked back at him. “Nyx and I are blessed with weapons that can harm the daemons, and we plan on using them.”

  “Good luck,” the Prisoner said.

  “Are they any more of these dogs?” Nyx asked.

  “I don’t know,” the prisoner answered. “They wander around down here, watching us, guarding us. The Whisperer doesn’t seem to have any human guards. I don’t think he trusts them. There’s just daemons, mutants, and some zeds… I think…”

  “Do you know where he is, the Whisperer, I mean?” Nyx asked.

  The prisoner shrugged. “I’m not totally sure, but I think he might be at the top of the tower, if he’s anywhere.”

  Nyx looked over at the doorway out of here, and pointed to it, looking back at the prisoner.

  “That’s right, through there. You’ll see the stairs, you can’t miss ‘em. I’ve not been up ‘em, though.”

  “Thank you,” Nyx said to him with genuine appreciation in her voice.

  “Go on, get out of here,” Nero suggested.

  The prisoner nodded and moved towards the drain where several of his cellmates were already gathering.

  Nero walked back into the middle of the room, closer to the doorway out of here, and waited for Cryptus and Runt to finish opening the last cell before they joined them.

  “Ready?” Nero asked.

  They all answered in the affirmative, so Nero moved towards the doorway and stepped out into a corridor that led left and right.

  Off to his left, it didn’t go far before it ended in a wall, but there was another doorway into what Nero could only guess were more cells. Looking right, the passageway was longer and led into a brighter room, but it was difficult to make out what was in there due to the group of zombies that were shambling up the passage towards them. Joined by his travelling companions, Nero stepped out and racked the grip on his shotgun.

  Nyx reached out and put her hand on his gun, pushing it down. “You’ve made enough noise with that thing; let me and Kat deal with these, alright?”

  “Yeah, we’ll handle them,” Kat said on the other side of him and stepped forward.

  Nero shrugged and then waved towards the undead. “Sure thing. Don’t let me stop you,” he said, and let Nyx and Kat stride forward, their blades at the ready.

  “You made the right choice there,” Cryptus muttered from just behind him.

  “I know,” Nero answered. He knew that it was never worth trying to argue with Nyx when she’d set her mind to something. She was doing it, and that was that. He watched as the two girls stepped up to the small group of zombies and swung their swords. Blood splattered. Limbs were severed, and the zombies fell before them. It was almost cruel how easy it was for the two warrior women to dispatch these mindless walking corpses.

  As Nero moved up the corridor, he noticed there were several more rooms like the one they had just been in, branching off this corridor, each with more cells in them.

  As the girls continued to make short work of the undead, Nero turned to Cryptus. “There’s more prisoners, what do we do with them? Let them go free?”

  Cryptus glanced into the cell block closest to them, and then back. “Make’s sense, I think,” he agreed.

  Nero nodded. “Alright, let’s do it. Let’s start back here and work forward,” he suggested and made his way back along the corridor. Cryptus and Runt followed as Nero walked into the cell block. It was nearly identical to the one they had just been in, and again, most of the cell’s were occupied.

  It took a moment or two to convince the first prisoners they freed that they were there to help them. They seemed to think it was some kind of trap, but they soon saw the truth of it and joined the first set they freed in climbing down the drain.

  Moving on, they did the same over the next few cell blocks, except that Nyx and Kat had joined them after finishing off the group of zombies. Within the next twenty minutes, they had emptied all the cell blocks of the prisoners and were sending them on their way out of the tower with instructions to bypass the camp under cover of darkness and head north.

  “Do you think they’ll make it?” Kat asked as they guided the last group of inmates from the block closest to the end of the corridor.

  “I don’t know. Maybe?”

  “If we survive this, we might be able to catch up and help them,” Nyx suggested.

  “We can always hope,” Nero agreed, as he ushered the prisoners out of the room. There was a sudden flurry of movement in the hallway to the side of the prisoners who were leaving the block, and some yelps of pain.

  “What was that?” Nero asked as the prisoners started to scream and run. Nero pushed forward, out into the corridor and turned left into the room with the stairs.

  The wide circular room was dominated by a huge stone spiral staircase that led upwards. Craning his neck, Nero realised they were at the base of the tower, which was now revealed to be hollow up through almost the entire height of it and lit by sconces affixed to the walls.

  A many-legged mutant spider creature scuttled back through the room with its three victims. Two prisoners were attached to it by the sickly white webbing it used, kicking and screaming in terror, while the third hung limply in its jaws. Nero ran forward, sprinting towards the thing with his gun up, ready to fire, but he wanted to get closer.

  “Shoot it! Please, stop it!” a prisoner yelled as the thing reached its mess of webbing on the far wall, which stretched up, spanning the gap between the staircase and the inner wall.

  “Do it!” the other prisoner yelled.

  Nero was scared of hitting them, but as the thing started to climb, he got a better view of it and took the opportunity.

  The shotgun discharged with a bang and hit the mutant in the body, making it squeal and hiss at Nero. Its victims forgotten, it dropped the man it had had in its jaws to the floor and rushed forward towards Nero.

  He fired once more, and then again, hitting the thing in the face both times, causing the beast to lose its footing and fall, crumpling to the floor where it stopped moving.

  Nero walked over, watching it carefully. He wanted to be sure it was dead.

  “Hey, my turn,” Nyx said from close by and walked up to the mutant. Hefting her blade, she swung it overhead and slammed it into the neck of the spider mutant with a thunk.

  The mutant’s thick black blood leaked over the stone floor, but it was most certainly dead now.

  “Uh, a little help?” the female prisoner called out.

  Between them, they had soon freed the two prisoners who were still alive and sent them on their way out of the tower.

  “Alright, he’s up there, isn’t he?” Nyx said, standing at the base of the stairwell, looking up. They could see the underside of whatever room, or series of rooms,
was up there, but little else.

  “He’ll be ready for us by now,” Cryptus said. “He must have heard all the fighting down here.”

  “Nothing we can do about that now. We’re here, so, let’s pay him a visit, shall we?” Nero suggested.

  Nyx nodded and started to make her way up the stairwell. The steps were over two meters wide, but were open on the outer edge, with a gap of around four meters from the side of the steps to the inside of the wall. As Nero climbed up, leaving the ground far below, he couldn’t help but feel a certain amount of vertigo, which led him to stay near the axis of the spiral.

  “This is pretty freaky,” Kat exclaimed from just behind him.

  “I know what you mean,” Nero said. “I do not like these stairs at all.”

  They seemed to be walking forever, when in actual fact, it was probably not much over five minutes before the underside of the top floor came into view, and then as they rounded the corner for the last time, the hole in that floor revealed itself.

  Nero stalked up the last few steps beside Nyx and stepped up into the shadowy space beyond. They were in a wide, not too long corridor or room, but it was difficult to be sure as the walls were mostly obscured by old, raggedly, sheer drapes that undulated slowly in the air above a thin mist that hugged the floor. There were lots of them hung from the ceiling and over the walls. To their right, there was one clear passage through the drapes, and it led to a set of stone steps.

  “Looks like we go this way,” Nero suggested.

  “Looks that way,” Nyx agreed.

  “I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Kat spoke up.

  “Be on your guard,” Cryptus suggested.

  “Always,” Nero confirmed as he started to walk towards the steps, ducking around and under the drapes as they moved.

  As they grew closer, they saw that the steps didn’t even reach two meters off the floor before they reached a raised platform, topped with an ornate gloss black throne.

  Sitting on that throne was a figure, but he didn’t look human. This humanoid figure was the Whisperer, and its skin was coal black with a strange, almost velvety soft quality to it. As the figure sat there, a lazy black mist rose off of it, fading into nothing in the air around it. The figure also sported a pair of long black horns that sprouted from its forehead that were over a foot in length.

  They had seen the Whisperer before, and recognised him right away as the Night Lord’s blood red eyes looked down at them. Nero had no idea if gender really meant anything where daemons were concerned, but while he had no obvious genitalia, the Whisperer didn’t have breasts, and its shape was mostly male, so Nero usually thought of the Whisperer as a him.

  “Have you quite finished causing trouble in my tower?” the Whisperer said, his voice deep, soft, and somewhat calming.

  Sittting beside him, perched on the throne’s arm, a female-shaped figure with fangs, claws, leathery wings sprouting from her back, and a cruel frown on her face leered down at them. She wasn’t wearing much apart from some jewellery and other accessories, meaning she was basically naked.

  She smiled at Nero and licked her lips, her expression changing to become more suggestive than anything else. She arched her back, pushing her breasts out as if displaying herself.

  Nero stopped moving forward and flicked his eyes back to the Whisperer. “Not quite,” he answered.

  The Whisperer chuckled to himself. “Cute. You came here to challenge me. How entertaining. Of course, I knew you were coming, didn’t I, Nyx.”

  “And yet, you’re still here,” Nero challenged him.

  “Why wouldn’t I be? I wouldn’t miss this for the world…” The Whisperer stared at them for a moment, and then stood up suddenly. “We’ve become quite close, you and I, haven’t we, Nyx?”

  “That’s not how I would put it,” Nyx replied.

  “What’s he talking about?” Kat asked.

  “Has she not shared with the group?”

  “There was no need,” Nero answered. “It wasn’t important. You can Whisper into Nyx’s mind as much as you like, it doesn’t change anything.”

  “He’s been talking to you?” Kat asked.

  “Sometimes,” Nyx confirmed.

  “I think I would have liked to know about that,” Kat stated.

  “I knew. It wasn’t much, just the usual crap,” Nero explained.

  “Is that right?” the Whisperer said, stepping down from the platform towards them. “I think it was a little more than ‘crap’, don’t you?” he asked Nyx. “We shared our minds, didn’t we? Shared secrets. I think I know you better than you think.”

  “He read your mind?” Kat asked.

  “I… I don’t think so? I don’t know,” Nyx answered.

  “He’s doing this on purpose, you know,” Nero said, lifting his shotgun to hold it in two hands.

  “Wait,” Nyx said, putting her hand on his arm.

  “I don’t like this,” Kat said.

  “Of course, you don’t, little, Kat. You know, we talked at length about killing you, or Nero, one or the other,” the Whisperer continued, walking up towards Nyx, getting quite close to her. Nero noticed the other daemon, the succubus, was standing as well now, at the edge of the platform.

  “Nyx,” Nero said glancing at her hand on his gun, a note of questioning in his plea. “What are you doing?”

  “Hear him out,” Nyx suggested.

  “What?” Nero asked in shock. What was she doing? They needed to attack him, kill him, right now! They couldn’t let him talk. These daemons were tricky, you couldn’t let one into your mind… But then, that’s what had happened to Nyx…

  Nero began to question why they were here, and what Nyx might really be up to. Did the Whisperer get to her? Did he compromise her mind?

  “Listen to her,” the Whisperer hissed. “We could be good together, you know. We could do such wonderful things.”

  “What? No, we couldn’t. We wouldn’t. We’re the Road Knights…”

  The Whisperer laughed as he stepped around Nyx. The succubus giggled as well, and it was not a comforting sound. “The Road Knights? How quaint. You have no idea who you’re dealing with, do you?”

  “I have a pretty good idea,” Nero answered, putting a note of threat in his voice. He did not like the way this was going, but he would not be thrown off course by this daemon’s lies.

  “Do you? I think Cryptus here—Cryptus Apocryphum, to use his full name—might know more than you do,” the Night Lord answered, stepping up to Nero, and then looking over at Cryptus.

  Nero glanced to his right at Cryptus and felt his stomach drop slightly. “What are you talking about?” Nero asked.

  “But Cryptus isn’t your real name, is it, Lazlo?” the Whisperer continued.

  “Lazlo?” Nero asked.

  “Oh, yes. Lazlo and I go way back, don’t we? He’s more of an old friend than anything else.”

  “I knew you once, a long time ago,” Cryptus answered, a look of hatred on his face. “But that was in another life, a life I left behind. A life I now regret. No, my name is Cryptus, and I will see you dead before I die,” Cryptus answered with venom in his voice.

  “Really. It wasn’t that long ago, my friend,” the Whisperer continued. He turned to face Nero again, his blood red eyes boring into his soul. “No one ever really leaves my thrall, Nero, of that you can be…Ugh! Ack!” The Night Lord’s eyes grew wide as he arched his back, gasping and grunting in pain as the point of Nyx’s blade protruded from his sternum.

  Chapter 17

  Nyx

  Nyx had heard enough from this hideous daemon. She’d played along for a little bit, wondering if her little act might deceive the daemon or not. She hadn’t been sure, but it looked to her like the Whisperer had bought her little rouse.

  As the daemon stepped around her and moved to face Nero, he’d put his back to Nyx. For a moment, Nyx couldn’t believe it. He’d left himself wide open to her. Was the daemon that confident that he’d subverted her t
hat he was happy to open himself up to attack from her?

  She twisted slightly as he spoke and put the intention to stab him front and centre in her mind, but the daemon did not react.

  Maybe the daemon couldn’t read her mind at all? Maybe what the Whisperer was talking about was all a lie as well.

  She couldn’t help the slight smile that played over her lips as she got a better grip on the handle of her sword. When the daemon turned back to Nero to taunt him, she lifted it and thrust it forward, stabbing the Night Lord in the middle of his back.

  The blade sank into the daemon’s body in much the same way that it did in any other body, and the daemon himself writhed in pain.

  “Uragh, no, what have you done?” the Whisperer wailed as she held her sword in both hands to keep hold of it. The daemon tried to turn, to twist and look at her, but the blade held him there, transfixed and immobile. As she watched, she noticed something. Something strange. Something odd. The black mist that had been rising off the daemon’s body was now no longer floating off into the air around it. Instead, it was being drawn down and into Nyx’s sword. It was as if it were sucking the power from the daemon himself, drawing it into the blade, and yet, she had no idea how she was doing it.

  “No. No, not like this,” the Whisperer grunted and threw himself forward, yanking himself off the end of her blade where he dropped to the floor. He knelt there for a second, and for a moment, Nyx could only watch as she stared down at her sword. It was no longer drawing the energy off the Whisperer, but she couldn’t help but look at it in wonder.

  What had it been doing?

  “I knew you hadn’t turned,” Nero said from beside her.

  She glanced up at him and smiled. “There was never any doubt, surely,” she said.

  “What… What did you do?” the Whisperer asked as he rose up to his feet and backed off. The succubus had descended the stairs and stood beside her master, fury all over her face as she stared at Nyx and Nero, flexing her claws.

  “Do?” Nero asked. “We’ve not even started yet.”

  “No, you can’t do this. You can’t kill me. It’s impossible.”