by Mike Truk
Contents
Shadow Rogue Ascendant
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
The Five Trials
SHADOW ROGUE ASCENDANT
Book 2
of the
Shadow Rogue Series
By Mike Truk
Chapter 1
I emerged through Jack’s swirling portal back into the Sodden Hold, incandescent with purpose. In one fist I held the fallen death knight’s frost blade, its wicked length exhaling a constant stream of mist. In the other I held the gloom bow, purple and blue flickers of light playing across its surface. My heart was molten with horror and purpose, my body wracked with pain, but even as I emerged into that great alcoved room where my friends lay waiting, the last of my wounds were healing over, the physical damage no match for the heritage my father had gifted me.
The powers of a king troll.
Screams filtered down from where Iris’ undead were savaging the remaining denizens of the Hold, tearing thieves and smugglers and whores and beggars apart limb from limb. The two great candelabras swung and bounced as violence took place on the boards above them, and dust sifted down here and there onto the heads of my companions.
Cerys was up. The sight of her lifted my heart. She was pale, with great smears of purple beneath her impossibly blue eyes, but she was alive, recovered from that devastating wound that had nearly killed her, blade once more in hand.
Yashara, the half-orc queen, was also recovered, and sitting up, arms wrapped around her knees, willing herself to overcome the pain. Havatier, the weather mage, leaned against the far wall, face cadaverous. Tamara and Netherys the dark elf, however, were knocked out. Tamara no doubt for having expended too much of her healing power, the dark elf still recovering from her terrible wound she’d been dealt.
“Kellik!” Cerys rushed to my side and embraced me, then pulled back in shock and stared at the extent of my wounds. She blinked, mouth opening to protest, but the words died in her throat.
I knew precisely why. From the extent of my wounds, I should have been dead.
“Still walking,” I said, voice rusty.
Her voice was a ragged whisper. “Jack?”
“Dead. I cut him down, but not before he told me everything I needed to know.”
Havatier limped over, one hand clutching the bandolier that crossed his bony chest. “Success, then. We have triumphed?”
“No. We’re just getting started.” Purpose washed through me like a wave of fire. “But first we need to get out of the Hold. Shock will give way to fury and the city guard will be piling in here along with everything the Family can throw at us. Netherys? Tamara?”
“Not good,” said Havatier, blinking rapidly as he swayed. “Alive, however, which is a blessing. We may have to carry them out.”
“Yashara?”
“I’m fine,” she growled, voice dark and curdled like a wolf’s snarl. “Just… just catching my breath.”
“Your neck was cut,” I said. “You’re not fine. But you need to get up.”
Muscles stood out along her arms as she levered herself up off the ground, rose to her prodigious height, her beauty monstrous, her expression grim, her eyes promising swift pain to anyone who dared comment on her momentary weakness.
“We’re going to need to move fast,” I said. “Iris had access to an entire graveyard’s worth of the undead, but not an inexhaustible supply. I’ll carry Netherys. Havatier, can you handle Tamara?”
“I’ve got her,” said Yashara, moving to crouch beside the fallen healer and sliding her arms under her knees and shoulders. “She saved my life. I’ll return the favor.” And with a grunt she stood, her green features going pale as she hefted Tamara’s weight.
There was no time to argue. I threw Cerys the gloom bow as she simultaneously tossed me the frost blade’s scabbard, both weapons passing each other by an inch in the air, and set to belting the scabbard at my waist as I strode over to the dark elf.
Netherys’ temple was a purple mass of lacerated skin, pulpy flesh and glistening blood. But Tamara had worked her magic, and the elf’s chest rose and fell as she lay there, breathing shallowly, clinging to life.
I slid my arms under her form and stood, and was surprised by how light she was; Netherys was so intense, had such a forceful personality that I’d expected her to weigh more than the sylph she proved to be. Her head rolled to my chest, and gazing down at her unconscious features I could almost pretend she was an innocent; that this open, vulnerable expression on her face was her truest self, and that I wasn’t holding a murderous adherent to Mother Magrathaar, the witch goddess who rode the storms and had prophesied that I’d bring about such terrible chaos and bloodshed that Netherys had willingly bound herself to my side.
“Havatier,” I said, “you’ve got point. Cerys, cover our rear. Let’s get the fuck out of this place.”
“Very well,” said Havatier, drawing a deep breath and raising a hand before him as he limped down the length of the rotten crimson and yellow carpet toward the stairwell. “Though I must warn you, I am near depleted. I shan’t be able to manage more than a spell or two.”
I laughed darkly. “I’d never have guessed. Do your best, and by the Hanged God’s raging cock I swear I’ll destroy anyone who survives your first blast.”
Strength was continuing to flood into me. The hideous wounds dealt by Everyman Jack were receding with each passing breath. I could feel my muscles itch, my skin prickle as they grew back, my energy rising. I moved ahead of Yashara, only three steps behind Havatier as he climbed back up to the elite quarters of the Sodden Hold, back into the madness.
Iris had turned the Hold into a charnel pit. We emerged into the broad hallway that led past the finer rooms and found it festooned with the dead: gutted corpses, torn off heads, blood sprayed across the walls and even the ceiling. The lighting was fitful, most of the lanterns having fallen to shatter across the wooden floor, and the smell of smoke was thick. Fires were starting up. Everywhere the shadows moved, birthing hideous shapes of the long or recently deceased who stalked the hall in search of fresh prey.
Havatier hesitated, so I moved past him, driven by my feverish confidence, straight at a mass of Iris’ undead who lingered at the mouth of the hallway. They turned to regard me, putrescent features dripping with fresh gore, but made no move to attack. Instead, they stepped aside as I drew close, and bowed.
Now that gave me pause. To have the monsters who’d torn apart my old family bow to me as if I were their sovereign? Unease churned in my gut, but then I shoved it aside and moved on, entering the Crimson Boudoir, that old den of iniquity and sin where I’d spent some of the best days of my past life. The life before Jack’s betrayal.
It was now a scene of bloody ruin. Tables were overturned, the ornate drapes and tapestries torn and shredded along the walls, the great cartwheel chandelier hanging obliquely from its dusty chain. Bodies lay strewn across the floor, eyes staring accusingly up at me as I stepped over them. Flames were crawling along the rafters on the far side of the room, choking the air with dark cottony smoke, and everywhere stood Iris’ servants, waiting, staring at me, their sunken, milky eyes barely reflecting the incarnadine flickers of fire.
My mind was racing. To climb to the surface and reconnect with Iri
s, or return to the sewers? We needed to collect Pony the war troll and Pogo, his goblin handler. But it was so hard to think; I felt flushed with the desire to fight, to kill, to fuck. My entire body was on edge, the power rushing through my veins making me near delirious, my thoughts feverish, and I craved nothing so much as more confrontation, more death, more destruction.
The dead at the far end of the Boudoir parted and Iris stepped forth, emerging like the Hanged God’s bride in her black wedding dress, her features as pale as bone as she parted the black veil she wore over her face to reveal her rosebud lips, her black-rimmed eyes. It was like witnessing a queen’s arrival at her court, the dead all orienting on her, and the thought that each and every one was bound by her power, moved by her will, that throughout the Sodden Hold she manipulated a force so destructive it had annihilated a Family stronghold, was made all the more terrifying by her beatific smile.
“Kellik!” There was real joy in her voice, and she ran forward, hands extended to me, moving lightly over the corpses her creations had torn apart, to stop and reach up and cup my cheek.
Her touch was cold but welcome, like a cool towel on a fevered brow.
“Success,” she said, eyes gleaming. “I can read it in your face. You found him.”
“Yes,” I said, hitching Netherys higher up my chest. “He’s dead. You were fantastic, Iris. Flawless execution of our plan. Thank you.”
And in that moment, sunken in the madness of my own revelation, surrounded by smoke and flame and the undead, my companions about me and our enemies flown, I meant it. No matter that it was delivered by the destruction of my childhood memories and home. We’d done the impossible.
She cocked her head to one side, smile widening. She’d daubed something dark upon her lips. Black ink? Old blood? I didn’t want to know. “It’s but a small repayment of the debt I owe you, dear Kellik. But we must hurry. Enemies are pressing down upon us from above. I can feel my children being snuffed out rapidly on all sides even as we speak. A great force must be fighting its way toward us.”
“The sewers,” said Cerys, stepping up alongside me, all business, an arrow nocked to the gloom bow. “We have to collect Pony and Pogo regardless.”
“True,” I said. “Iris, how many of the undead do you have left? Can you hold them off?”
“The Sepulcher of Insufficient Mercy was a treasure trove,” said Iris. “Far more corpses were piled into those catacombs and basement rooms than I’d have ever thought possible. But alas, they were badly rotted and in poor condition. Most of them are gone.”
“Then we’d best hurry,” I said.
“Oh Kellik. Don’t you understand? Wherever I walk, flowers bloom in my path.” And she rose on her tiptoes to brush her lips against mine, pressing her chest against Netherys’ still form, the lightest of kisses, but what a charge, as if a bolt of power had flown between us at the touch of her lips.
I blinked, not understanding, and then Iris stepped back and extended her arms out to the sides, palms raised, and closed her eyes.
And the dead about us began to stir. Old thieves, wretched beggars, young gentlefingers, the ruffians and brigands and burglars and whores of the Sodden Hold. One and all they began to rise, twitching and clawing at the shattered furniture, dragging their ruined bodies erect, swaying and gaping mindlessly at us as Iris bound them to their will.
“There,” she whispered, her voice husky, eyes opening once more. “My numbers are replenished. That will slow them down nicely.”
“The White Sun have mercy,” croaked Havatier, turning about as if trying to keep all the undead in sight.
“Let’s go,” I said. No time to ponder the ethics, the implications, the dangers inherent in Iris’ company, her very instability. I led the way through the Boudoir, not looking at the faces of the undead, not wanting to see an old friend brought back to ghastly unlife, and into the hallways. The sound of shouting and the clangor of battle sounded dimly from above. I moved quickly to the entrance point we’d used, passed through the rooms and back into the muck chamber. A lantern illuminated the knee-high boots, the racks of goggles, the benches toppled on their sides, and three young teens stood to one side, not caring that their throats were slashed and coils of intestine hung from great wounds in their guts.
Don’t look, don’t look, don’t look, I commanded myself as I hurried past them, toward the stone door that led out of the warrens and back into the sewers. I could feel entire sections of my soul being assaulted by the horrors around me, but closed those portions down, slammed those doors shut, and bolted away the emotions that I knew I’d have to deal with at some point or another. Instead, I wrested the stone door open and climbed through into the sewers, back out into the large tunnel and its humid stink.
Two mismatched shapes stood close by; one was massive, its great bat-eared head nearly scraping the rough tunnel ceiling, a huge hammer held loosely it its claws, piss-yellow eyes gleaming in the gloom as it studied me: Pony the war troll.
The other was tiny, a hunchbacked goblin in a filthy and torn black suit, who paced back and forth, rubbing his hands together in concern. At the sound of our footsteps he spun around with a cry of relief: Pogmillion, quartermaster and accounts keeper of Yashara’s Mailed Fist.
“There you are!” His voice rung off the mildewed walls. “I must confess I was succumbing to doubt, perhaps even despair, and was about to advise Pony that we retreat, but - Mistress Yashara! Your neck!”
The half-orc warrior growled at Pogo, striding past him and forcing him back against the wall as she emerged, Tamara in her arms.
Pony lumbered forward and without asking took Netherys from me, his sinewy blue arms lifting her with the utmost ease, and then accepted Tamara from Yashara right after. The sight of him gave me more comfort that I’d imagined possible; there was something fantastically reassuring about a placid war troll who’d crush your enemies without any compunction and take any amount of damage only to rise again with a blink to stand once more by your side.
But it was more than that: I just really, really liked Pony, I realized.
“Good to see you back up,” I said, clapping his stony shoulder. It was like patting a cave-in. The last I’d seen him he’d been nearly dead from acid damage. You’d never have guessed it given how well he’d recovered.
“Plans?” Pogo hurried over to where I stood. “Retreat, yes? Shall we flee to the far side of the world, never to return? I hear Paruko is particularly pleasant this time of year, or perhaps Mendev with its fiery mountains and -”
I drew the frost sword. It immediately began to exhale thick condensation which flowed down its length and over my fist. The blade itself was a snarl of black metal, inlaid with subtle glyphs I could barely make out, and it chilled the air all about me.
“What is that?” asked Pogo, clearly impressed. “To be clear, I know it’s a sword, that much is self-evident, but -”
“We move to the Snake Head,” I said, turning to address my small crowd of friends. “Same route we came in by. This entire part of the city will be swarming with guards and Family enforcers. We’ll requisition a boat and cross to the far bank, then make our way to the Field Gate. We need to be quit of Port Gloom as quickly as possible.”
Cerys blew a lock of red hair from her face. “Cross all of Port Gloom on foot? We’ll never make it.”
“You’re planning too far ahead,” said Yashara. “We need to take this one step at a time and assess each development as we come to it.”
“Wise words,” said Havatier. “I’d argue in favor of getting a boat and heading out to sea. I’ve enough magic to fill a sail for an hour or two.”
“It might come to that,” I said. Screams were starting to become audible from the far side of the muck room. “Yashara, please close that stone door. Pony, see if you can’t damage the door so it can’t be opened. Iris, can you sense the enemy’s progress?”
“My children are dying quickly. Whomever is leading the attack is remarkably…” She tra
iled off, staring into the middle distance. I was about to speak, but then she gave a quick shake of her head as if clearing her thoughts. “We had best hurry.”
“Sounds good. Cerys, take point with me. Yashara, bring up the rear. Let’s go.”
I hurried back along the tunnel we’d traversed only an hour or so before. Over the now washed-out acid pit trap, moving carefully around the perils we’d evaded, till we emerged at long last once more at the exit pipe that speared out into the muddy bank of the Snake Head.
I ordered our lantern doused as we took the final turn, and then cautiously approached the rusted iron mesh that feigned a barrier to the outside world, listening intently. Dawn was now an hour passed, and faint pearlescent light stole in through the grating. If anybody was going to lay an ambush, it would be right here, as we emerged from the pipe onto the wooden pilings that we’d have to traverse so as not to sink thigh-deep into the slimy muck.
I chewed the inside corner of my lips as I reached the iron grating. It was cleverly hinged so as to open with but a push, but designed so that doing so would make an awful racket; coming in, Netherys had disguised the sound, but that wasn’t an option now. What had served as a defensive measure to warn the Family guards of an approach would now serve any ambushers just as well.
“What is it?” whispered Cerys, ghosting up beside me.
“We can’t underestimate the Aunts and Uncles,” I whispered back, staring at the great shadowed river flowing just five yards away down the bank. “They know about this exit. They’ll guess we might use it to bolt, which means trouble might be waiting for us outside.”
Cerys bit her lower lip and gazed at the grating. “No way we can open it silently, which means they’ll know we’re coming. What can we hit them with that will throw them off when we appear outside?”
Somehow Iris heard our low conversation. She looked like a ghost where she stood, her black wedding dress melting into the darkness, her pale face seeming to float in the gloom. “They would be surprised to see the dead emerge.”