God Conqueror 3

by Logan Jacobs

  Alan completely ignored his pleas to the point that I didn’t know whether he even comprehended what Max was saying.

  The other Eukalonians in the hall joined in the chorus.

  “Whatever curse they put on you, you’re stronger than it, lad,” the old man shouted. “Use your mind to break through the fog. You’re still Alan on the inside, I know that. And I know how hard it is, but you have to reach down inside of yourself, find that thing that makes you Alan, grab onto it, and don’t let go!”

  Alan raised one of his horrible jointed spidery legs, pointed it at the old man, and shot out a strand of sticky web that filled the old man’s mouth and gagged him.

  “Fuck you Alan!” yelled the girl shackled next to the old man. “You’re not even fucking trying!”

  The old man had seemed perhaps a little overly optimistic to me, but I wasn’t convinced that the girl’s attitude about Alan’s behavior was entirely fair under the circumstances, either.

  Regardless, the thrashing Max disappeared past the wooden door clutched in the many legs of the Alan-spider and accompanied by the original Thorvinian guards, who seemed completely used to the outbursts of the other captives and undisturbed by them.

  I heard the same sequence of sounds this time as before-- the eerie foreign chanting, then the flash of green light, then the pronouncement about Max also joining the service of Thorvinius, then the tortured screaming.

  When the door opened this time, Max’s transformation wasn’t as obvious as Alan’s had been. He had gone bald and his skin had paled and the veins were showing through a bit, and his eyes had gone completely white with no pupils as if he were blind, all of which created a distinctly creepy effect, but other than that, he looked much the same as he had before. It certainly wasn’t as dramatic as sprouting eight giant spider legs.

  His behavior, however, was just as drastically subverted as his cousin Alan’s had been.

  “Max?” the other Eukalonians cried out fearfully to see how he would react to them, and if he had withstood Thorvinius’ power any better than their first victim had.

  He didn’t ignore them as the spider man had. Instead he scowled, spat, and jeered at them in response to their pleas.

  “Max, you’re stronger than Alan,” the girl that had cussed out his cousin tried. “If anyone can beat this thing, it’s you.”

  “Thorvinius is stronger than us all,” Max replied. His voice sounded similar to before, but it was raspier and hoarser now. “Why would I want to remain on the losing side with you all and suffer, when I can serve him, rise with him, and benefit from his dominion over earth?”

  The old man was turning red in the face with his efforts struggling against the spiderweb gag, but he still couldn’t get an audible word out, and with his hands shackled, he obviously had no means of removing the gag.

  Max approached me with a sneer on his pale, hairless, faintly alien-looking face.

  “Ooh, pick me, pick me,” I said sarcastically.

  He unshackled me while the other Thorvinian guards watched. Then he led me through the door into the mysterious transfiguration chamber and closed it behind us.

  The chamber was small compared to the hall outside where all the waiting captives were chained. There was another doorway on one of its walls, through which I assumed Alan must have scuttled away to go receive his instructions as a new Thorvinian recruit, since I no longer saw the spider man anywhere. Five people still remained inside the chamber besides my self: three Thorvinian guards, the slimmest ones who had been able to fit through the route that they led the crew of captives along, the newly bald and sadistic Max, and a stranger.

  The stranger had no eyes at all, and no gouged out eye sockets either, his face was just flat and seamless where the eyes should have been. He was dressed in only a loincloth and his body was either painted or tattooed, I couldn’t tell which, in elaborate red tribal markings that spread all across his chest, back, and limbs. He clutched a small triangle-shaped dagger in his hand, which was interesting considering that the two previous captives to enter clearly hadn’t been killed or visibly maimed, although they certainly had screamed in pain. I didn’t know whether that had anything to do with his blade though, since it seemed more likely to coincide with the processes of their monstrous transfigurations.

  The stranger’s appearance was so striking and bizarre that at first I didn’t even notice the room’s solitary piece of furniture, or rather, two pieces of furniture. One was an altar. The other was a statue of a golden ape with a toothy gaping leer and six arms. I knew that the six-armed ape was one of the several incarnations of Thorvinius.

  Then, the eyeless stranger opened his mouth and began his strange ululating chant. From inside the room, I could hear every syllable of it perfectly, but I still had no idea what any of it meant. Then, he walked toward me, with as much confidence as if he could see exactly where I was, even though I hadn’t even been making any noise.

  Max, who was still gripping me as if he thought I might try to make a break for it, forcibly raised one of my hands toward the eyeless red marking-covered singer, and the singer lifted the triangle-shaped little dagger and slashed it across my palm. Ah. So that was what it was for. And that was probably the moment when Alan had yelped.

  Then Max dragged me over and slammed my cut hand down on top of the altar and pressed it there so that my blood oozed onto the altar’s surface. As soon as the contact was made, a blinding green flash filled the room, emitted from the altar itself.

  The eyeless singer intoned, “You now serve the lord Thorvinius. Bone and blood, sinew and spirit, he empowers thee and thou art beholden to him.”

  I wondered if I had undergone some kind of irrevocable change, some kind of psychological distortion. I cautiously probed my mind for any spontaneous desire to pillage and burn my way across the countryside and slaughter every poor unfortunate soul that I came across. I searched my heart for any newfound passionate devotion to The Devourer. I looked at the leering golden ape behind the altar to see if any fond emotions would well up uncontrollably inside of me.

  But nah, I still just thought Thorvinius was an evil bastard and needed to fucking die.

  Then, pain erupted inside of me that felt a lot like the time I had been pulverized to death by a huge boulder during a rock slide. My organs were imploding. My bones were simultaneously cracking and reforming. My muscles felt like they were tying themselves into some kind of elaborate sailor’s knots.

  I didn’t wait around to see what kind of Thorvinius-loving part-beast monstrosity I was about to be transfigured into.

  While I still had enough intact sanity and consciousness to do it, I reassimilated that self, and found my self back a mile away from the fortress surrounded by my friends and followers.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I sent out my fifth self again and said, “I know what we need to do.”

  “You’re back!” Ilandere exclaimed happily.

  “I’ve been here the whole time,” I pointed out.

  “Yes, but all of you are back now,” the little centaur princess replied.

  “Don’t get greedy,” I teased. “Remember when there only used to be two of me? And now you expect to have five of me around!”

  “Well, I don’t expect it, but it’s nice,” she said.

  Elodette sighed impatiently. “Okay, can you just tell us what your big revelation is?”

  “Yeah, none of this sounds like good news to me,” Lizzy said.

  The she-wolf and the centaur had made it back to camp twenty minutes ago, and I’d been keeping all of my companions updated the whole time through my other mouths on what my self inside the fortress was witnessing. “Sounds to me like Thorvinius can just nab himself more slaves any time he wants so he’ll never run out no matter how many we kill.”

  “Also, I didn’t know that some of them were given the shape of spiders,” Ilandere added with a shudder.

  I responded to Lizzy, “Exactly. If we keep doing things the way
we have been doing them, that is. Which is killing the Thorvinian units that we come across. We need to go straight to the source and cut off Thorvinius’ supply.”

  “But his source is just any old village or temple that worships some god that ain’t him,” Lizzy said. “We can’t just butcher everyone in the kingdom to stop ‘em from getting turned into Thorvinians…”

  “No, his source is that altar that they pressed my hand to,” I said. “The altar with the golden ape. He might have another one at his other permanent base, I don’t know. But this is definitely one of them, and with the altar in use, this fortress serves as a sort of slave production factory. I think the altar must be powered by nerisbane somehow. Or maybe the kerinyet drug was smeared on that knife. But either way, Thorvinius has figured out some way to expedite these transfigurations, and the altar is a critical part of the process. So if we destroy it, we can weaken him significantly. And if we destroy both of his altars, we can prevent him from replenishing his forces at all, and it will become possible to defeat his existing host, one kill at a time.”

  “But how do we even gain access to the altar at all?” Elodette asked. “Do we all have to get ourselves captured like you did as prospective slaves? And then break out of the shackles somehow and launch an attack once we’re all inside that waiting hall together?”

  “No, I don’t think they’ll fall for that again,” I responded. “They were already suspicious of me when they brought me in, but they were dumb enough to do it anyway, and now that I vanished into thin air right before their eyes, they’ll definitely know something was up.”

  “We’ll create a diversion to draw them out,” I said through another of my mouths. “At the main gate. Also, we drop fire bombs through their ventilation shafts to choke them out with smoke. Under the combined chaos of both of those distractions, three of me will go into the fortress, and the first one to reach the altar will destroy it.”

  “Just you?” Lizzy asked.

  “Just me,” I confirmed. “I think there’s a fair chance the fortress will sustain severe structural damage. And even if it doesn’t, the smoke could be suffocating. Whoever goes in might not come back out. So I’ll leave two of my selves out here to fight with the rest of you. And Lizzy, I’ll need both you and Elodette to be keeping the Thorvinians busy outside their front doors.”

  “Deal,” Elodette said.

  “What about us?” Gavin asked. “What do you want us to do, lord?”

  “Fighting the main battle outside the fortress,” I replied. “You and Elodette will be captains directing that attack. Everyone in the order who chooses to take up arms, will follow your lead.”

  “What am I, chopped liver?” Lizzy demanded.

  “No, but you’re more of a berserker than an officer,” I answered. For the sake of being able to utilize the she-wolf in her more powerful form I would have liked to launch the attack by night, but that would have disadvantaged all my other troops, so I couldn’t do it this time.

  “What about us?” Ilandere asked as she gestured at herself, Florenia, and Willobee. I knew they weren’t going to be the only noncombatants. Many of the vestals and some of the priests had made it clear that they also intended to stay out of the fray and support us in other ways.

  “You’ll be cooking, cleaning, and tending to the wounded,” I said. “You and Florenia will be in charge of everyone planning to stay back at camp. You can divide up the tasks.”

  Then, unexpectedly, I heard a shy little voice come floating out of the air to ask, “What about me?”

  I’d known Tarlinis was still around, because he made the occasional remark of encouragement to someone who was tired or struggling, and seemed determined not to let his former followers forget that he existed. But I didn’t know to what extent he’d be interested in being involved on our attack on Thorvinius.

  I thought about it and then said, “Well, since you have the ability to be invisible, you can ferry supplies from the camp to outside the fortress during the battle, like more arrows for archers who run out. And you can help transport the wounded back to camp. All without being seen and becoming a target yourself.”

  “Hmm, okay,” the invisible god agreed. “And if it gets too risky, I’ll just make myself insubstantial and drop whatever or whoever I’m carrying so that I can’t be harmed.”

  Well. He wasn’t resented by the order for his shortcomings, but his popularity also probably had certain limits. I guessed that any potential wounded were probably still better off being partway rescued and then abandoned by their god than not rescued at all. If Tarlinis moved them part of the way, then that might make it easier for others to retrieve them and bring them all the way back to camp.

  “Deal,” I said.

  “When do we attack?” Elodette asked.

  “Tomorrow at first light,” I answered. “We’ll take tonight to prepare.”

  I looked around at the eighty or so faces surrounding me. My new followers looked nervous, but they also looked determined, and they were nodding their heads in response to my announcement. For better or worse, it wasn’t just Lizzy, Florenia, Ilandere, Elodette, Willobee, and my selves anymore. These people were also depending on me and throwing their weight behind my cause.

  “Willobee,” I said, “I want you and Elodette to work on a solution to be able to treat weapons with your bile without dissolving them. Or if that’s not possible, then we won’t use it on blades, we’ll just use it on arrows, and you need to figure out the timing of how far in advance they can be dipped before the steel starts getting compromised. It’ll really help us, because that way even a superficial arrow wound will turn into a fatal one. And Ilandere and Florenia, make sure you figure out who among the order is good at crafting arrows, and get that started right away. That’s a top priority.”

  “Of course, Qaar’endoth,” Florenia said.

  Willobee was snickering with glee at the prospect of the damage that his vomit was going to inflict. Usually the gnome seemed completely harmless, whimsical, and fun-loving, but there were always the occasional moments that reminded me I was glad he was on my side.

  “Lizzy,” I said. “You and I are going to climb the backside of the Cliffs of Nadirizi tonight after dark and use that nose of yours to sniff out their ventilation shafts or any other unmanned entry points. Gavin, you know your guys-- talk to whoever knows something about incendiary weapons and let’s figure something out that we can drop down into the fortress. Maybe using animal fat or something. Or moss or lichen. Whatever they think will burn fastest and produce the most smoke.”

  “Got it,” the square-jawed priest agreed.

  “If anyone has any questions about what you should be working on,” I said, “come find one of me, or Gavin, or Hester, or Elodette, Ilandere, or Florenia.”

  “Or me,” Tarlinis piped up.

  “Er, yeah, sure,” I said.

  And with that, the whole camp was set into motion. There were people testing and adjusting their weapons, preparing and eating food, compiling medical supplies, and discussing strategy with Elodette and Gavin. My greatest concern was that some kind of Thorvinian scouting party or prisoner escort party like the one I’d infiltrated earlier would stumble upon our camp, and we’d get wiped out before we were ready, so I made sure to appoint sentries.

  I helped patrol the woods around our camp, I helped carve, notch, bind, and fletch arrows, I helped sharpen blades, I listened in on Elodette and Gavin’s planning session, and I went with Lizzy to go look for a good route up the other side of the cliff. It was not even guarded, which was a reflection of how the Thorvinians clearly didn’t think that anyone would be able to climb it, or be stupid enough to try.

  The hours passed quickly and soon enough Lizzy purred, “Ready to go, Vander?”

  “Ready when you are,” I replied, and she immediately morphed into the four hundred pound canine version of herself.

  I took the improvised balls of flammable material that some of the priests had provided us
with in a pouch at my belt. Then, Lizzy and I started making our way up the cliff which was not as steep as the face into which the fortress was carved, but still steep enough that sometimes I had to resort to using my hands as well as my feet.

  “This is worse than Mount Ugga,” I said, and the she-wolf grunted in agreement.

  “Actually, not worse,” I said after another minute. “Because at least there aren’t any rock slides this time, and also, it’s just you and me. Can you imagine bringing a horse or a centaur up this way?”

  Lizzy made the hacking sound that seemed to translate to a laugh when she was in her wolf form.

  She had gone first and was climbing above me, and sometimes her shaggy tail, which was actually one of the few parts of her that remained the same in both of her forms, brushed in my face and obstructed my vision or made me sneeze. I would have given her more space, but it was kind of hard to predict how much space she needed, because while I climbed at a steady pace, Lizzy leaped from platform to platform, and sometimes left me struggling to keep up, and at other times left me impatiently waiting with my face in much closer proximity to her wolf rear end than I ever really wanted it to be.

  But we made pretty good progress, nonetheless. Then, when we were about halfway up the cliff and about a hundred feet off the ground, a small rock about the size of a child’s fist bounced off my shoulder and plummeted off into the darkness, and ricocheted off the cliff again and again as it descended. My first reaction was relief that it hadn’t been a larger rock or signaled the start of a rock slide, but then within the space of the same second, apparently in reaction to the rock, Lizzy’s hind paw slipped. I lunged and wrapped my arm around her waist and managed to latch that hand onto a hold on the other side of her. I wasn’t supporting her full four hundred pounds, since the face wasn’t absolutely vertical, but it was close enough that I had to scream, “Change! Change back!”

  Lizzy morphed back into a human in my arms, which relieved the enormous strain that had almost sent both of us plummeting to the ground after the pebble, and grabbed onto the rock face for herself as she panted for breath.