by Steve Lang
Ragnok the Eradicator, king of the centaurs, stood frowning as he surveyed his land from the top of Scowl Castle in the heart of Moktar. His lands were bordered by the Death Sea to the west and the Bog Lands to the east. The northern territories were guarded by the libmoks and to the south was the desolate land of Oblivion, a pathetic region where a plague had been unearthed from a mining operation hundreds of years past. This virus would infect any living creature that entered and turn them into a mindless reptilian monster set to wander the planet until they died of natural causes or were eaten by a larger carnivore. Ragnok had the female alien imprisoned in his dungeon now, and reported to Asura that she was on the brink of talking, spilling her knowledge of how the portal creation device worked.
“Can this device fulfill the prophecy Gregor and his pathetic wolven keep on about?” Ragnok said.
He was speaking to three shades who were staring into a bubbling cauldron. They were ethereal creatures, formless save for strange silhouettes in the shapes of what could have been men. They were beings from the fifth dimension, and not subject to the will of Asura, or his henchman Ragnok, but they did provide council to the hotheaded centaur king. They had been watching the cauldron since the human woman had been brought to Scowl Castle, searching for the signs that the prophecy so long foretold by the wolven was actually coming to pass. It bubbled and churned a green liquid that emitted a putrid scent, like rotten eggs being boiled in sulfur. Ragnok could not spend much time in this room without becoming nauseous.
“These humans very well may be the ones you have been waiting for all this time, Ragnok.” One whispered.
Ragnok furrowed his brow.
“How can we use it? The woman won’t talk, and I must get that portal opened. We have other worlds to conquer and the weapons these people have access to are devastating beyond anything we are capable of, even with magic. If I can get my hands on some of their fire devices I will be unstoppable.”
“They have cylinders that fly high, light the sky and melt sand into glass when their glory is revealed. With these weapons you would dominate entire star systems.” One shade whispered.
“I just need to get that…thing working.” Ragnok said. “Not even Asura could stand in the way of my power! All I would need to do is set one off and keep the rest as insurance. No foe would dare challenge me after such a display.” Ragnok said.
“You must be careful with these words. Asura has many spies, you see. Should he think you wish to overthrow him, it could be the end of you.” A shade cautioned. Ragnok knew this was true and it was his fear that stayed his tongue from indulging the idea further.
Yawl entered the room, sniffing the air with satisfaction. He had not eaten yet and the odor of eggs boiling sparked his hunger.
“What do you want?” Ragnok asked.
“My lord, the female refuses to tell us anything other than she can’t open the portal. She keeps rattling off a series of numbers which she insists are her identification. Would you like me to tear her arms off?” Yawl asked.
Ragnok thought about it for a moment rubbing his chin with his right hand. That kind of torture usually worked on the people from this planet, but what if this alien multiplied when her appendages were removed, her detached arms forming two more of her or fifteen more humans? She might also sprout tentacles, or perhaps release a contagion upon the castle, a blood-borne virus that could destroy them all. Had Ragnok known that none of this would happen, Stephanie might have met with an unpleasant and horrifying end; however, she owed her life to the superstitious nature of Ragnok the Eradicator.
“No, don’t do that. We know nothing of these creatures or what viruses they carry.” Ragnok said.
“You could allow her to go free. We could follow her back to her own people. Allow her to take the box with her, and perhaps one of her people will be able to open the portal.” A shade said.
Ragnok cut his eyes left and right, thinking, smiling. “Yes, let’s do that. Set her free, but make it seem like she’s escaping. I don’t want the human to think she’s getting away too easily.”
“Yes sir, as you wish.” Yawl said.
Stephanie had been sitting with her back against the cold wall of a dank dungeon cell, frightened, alone, and chilled to her bones. A small sliver of light was her only illumination in the oppressive darkness and it was coming from a lit torch on the wall outside her cell. She heard moans and groans from nearby cells where those driven mad by captivity spouted obscenities into the gloom. The insanity of their calls was maddening, and her spirit sank with each passing hour. On the way to her cell upon her initial capture, she had seen a number of medieval torture devices lined up like soldiers in some of the torture rooms, and Stephanie wondered which ones they would use on her. Stretching racks held the wire-thin corpses of the emaciated dead and dying. Other victims, creatures of races she had never seen, dangled from the walls like miserable marionettes. One of the people strapped to the rack was a half-wolven, half-lizard man who shouted that he would never be subjugated by the centaurs. A tiny fellow about three feet tall resembling a mole from Earth was ushered into an iron maiden and sobbed as he entered the spike-filled chamber. Stephanie could hear him pleading for his life, crying and begging them to let him go until the door slammed shut. Silence and a trickle of blood ran from beneath the door into a drain. Three porcupine men were crucified to a board by their hands and feet and a few of the centaur guards were using them as target practice with their bows and arrows. One of the guards had large, deadly crossbow in his hands, and had already put two bolts through one porcupine man’s knees.
This was all Stephanie was able to see as the guard, using a prod to move her along, marched her down one filthy hallway after another toward the freezing cold cell where she currently sat, wishing she was anywhere else. Her treatment had been abhorrent and she could not figure out what she had done to deserve such a dastardly punishment. She paced the cell and found it was no bigger than four feet by four feet, and the ceiling was only two inches above her head. If she stood on the balls of her feet she would bang her head on the rock roof of her cell. Beyond the physical confines and the darkness, her cell was rife with the odor of stale urine. She was dwelling on her misery when she heard something on the other side of her cell door: a scratching, clinking sound.
“Food! Wretch! Come get some food!” A male voice yelled.
The door swung open and a plate with something wriggling on it was shoved through her cell door. In the half-light she could see that it was still alive and seemed to be a cross between a cockroach and a caterpillar. Her gag reflex took hold, and she felt warm, stinging bile rise in the back of her throat. She never saw the delivery man and her door slammed shut a moment later. Stephanie waited to hear the lock turn and seal her in, but it never did. Her mind began to race, sure that at any moment the man would remember his folly and come back to lock her in again, but he never did. Suddenly, she was terrified that he would never return and that she had what might only be a brief window to escape. Millions of butterflies slam-danced in her stomach. The roach-caterpillar thing was squealing now, emitting an eerie sound that, in the darkness and loneliness of her cell, made Stephanie want to escape that much more. The critter wriggled out of its plate and crawled half onto the floor as she watched its black form move with curiosity.
“You and I both, pal. I’m getting the hell out of here.” She said.
Stephanie walked over and tried the door, expecting an electric shock or that the handle would turn into a venomous snake. Visions of a horde of centaurs waiting to pounce on the other side of the door played in her mind, but she could hear nothing. She pressed lightly, and the black iron door swung open on rusty hinges, the hanging torch bathing her face with grim, flickering light from the hallway. Screams of agony, moans from the condemned, and an odor of rotten meat permeated the air she breathed as Stephanie tried to remember from which direction she had come. The hallways stretched into darkness in either direction, disorienting her all the more. Takin
g one last look back at the little bug in her cell, which had already crawled halfway to where she had been sitting, she shuddered and closed the cell door with the quietness of a church mouse.
Stephanie decided to go right and passed by one cell after another of pathetic, condemned souls, staring through small—head-sized—barred portals out at her. Life or death, your life or death, get out of here and fast, she thought. One or two cellmates spat in her direction, a few grunted and spoke in a language she had never heard, and she was almost sure they were cussing at her.
“I haven’t gotten out yet.” She whispered under her breath.
The corridor ended, and around a corner she was confronted with the most horrific Frankensteinien laboratory she had ever seen. Her father would watch slasher films with her as a child, the kind of grind house films that were specifically designed to turn the stomachs of squeamish viewers and torture their senses. She had seen a movie once, where a mad man in a mask, made from human skin, chased smart mouthed twenty-something’s around an old two-story western manor, sawing them in two with a chainsaw. The lunatic parade went on until all of their lifeless corpses were strung up and treated like sides of beef for a cannibalistic family. The movie haunted her dreams for months and she never watched it again. The chainsaw massacre paled in comparison to what she was witnessing in this dungeon, however. Slabs of meat were piled on wooden tables with butcher knives sticking out of them in pools of thick, dark blood as flies buzzed around the rotting matter with hungry eyes and bellies. Bodies that had been torn in half, like tissue paper, dangled from meat hooks bolted to the ceiling. Torches on the walls and support posts illuminated the grizzly scene, but what surprised her most was the creature she saw in front of her, chained to a far wall. The thing looked at her wearily with the head and neck of a Minotaur stitched to the shoulders of a centaur like a deranged jigsaw puzzle.
The creature had been sleeping a moment earlier, until it heard her enter the lab and its eyes popped open with a start.
“Don’t, cough, cough, leave me here.” The beast croaked. She began to feel ashamed of her fear, and sorry for the abomination. All four legs had been chained to the wall, giving it no room to move.
“I’m sorry. What can I do for you? I need to get out of here and back to my crew before the guards realize I’m gone.” She said.
“K…i…l…l me.” It said.
The monster was pathetic and alone. She looked toward the door and back at it. She didn’t know whether she could perform a mercy killing and had taken an oath to protect life when she became a doctor.
“The crossbow. Use it.” The thing said.
It tilted its head toward a table where an iron crossbow lay with a bolt nocked, ready to fire. The minotaur-centaur horror leaned its head forward, giving her a target right in the center. Stephanie looked at the crossbow with trepidation, but picked it up. Time was a factor and she feared that centaur guards would round the corner and cook her goose at any moment. She did not know if it was the energy of this planet, or if her imagination was working overtime, but she could feel this creature’s pain. Like an empath, she experienced his humiliation, the fear and sorrow for having been dissected and stitched onto the body of an enemy.
“I’m real sorry about this.” She said. The trigger felt stiff under her finger, but as she raised the crossbow to her shoulder, something seemed familiar and easy about the next motion. She fired.
The minotaur-centaur monster dropped to the ground, hanging grotesquely from its chains as if the puppeteer had gone off and left his creation. Stephanie decided to take the crossbow with her in case she needed to use it against the guards. She looked around for more bolts and found two on the table. She had to sit on the floor and nock another bolt with both feet pressing against the bow as she pulled the string back. A documentary her brother was watching back home showed how the Chinese made their crossbows long ago when wars were fought without radioactive weapons. They were the most technologically advanced single-user combat weapon in the world, and this weapon looked identical to what she had seen on that program.
“Some of the similarities are amazing, even so far from home.” She whispered to herself.
She thought one more bolt would be enough, so she pulled the bolt from the creature she’d dispatched, grimacing as the steel bolt slid out with a sticky, sucking sound until it popped free. Stephanie ran out of the room of horrors and down another passage where she overheard two guards talking casually from an adjacent room. She stopped in her tracks, flattening against the wall, hoping it would hide her in the event they rounded the corner.
“Yawl said the invasion would begin after the blood moon, but that was days ago and I haven’t heard another word about it.” A man said.
“That was before the strange craft arrived and that box came out of it. Have you seen it yet?” A woman asked.
“Strange object, that box. You know what it does?” The man asked.
“No, Yawl wouldn’t say, even after he met with Ragnok. But I think the shades know what it is.”
“I heard something moving around inside of it. There’s a living creature in there, I’m almost certain, but the box is sealed up tight.” He said.
“What about the human woman? You know what they’re going to do with her?” She asked.
“No idea. There’s so many secrets around here. I’m just paid to fight and guard Ragnok, whatever else happens is no concern of mine.” He said.
Stephanie raised the crossbow in line with her body and got ready if one or both of them walked around the corner, but a moment later she heard them moving on in the other direction. As their hooves were clopping away she began to breathe again. She waited another moment and then peered around the corner, but saw nobody was there, so she darted past the door. She came across two more corridors and then she found a staircase leading up. Beside the staircase was another room with a large wooden plank door that stood half open. Stephanie walked up the door and peered into the room. She was surprised to find the TSA-2056 sitting on a table in the center of the room. There was no one around and she could not leave the device behind, but she had a dilemma. The crossbow was too cumbersome to carry and take the star gate at the same time. She would have to drop the weapon. With quiet footsteps, she walked over to the table and picked up the TSA-2056 device with both hands, remarking how light it wasFrom within she thought she heard something squeak or chatter.
Without another moment to spare, Stephanie ran out the door and up the staircase to an upper level floor that led to a courtyard outside. Again, there was nobody around, but she could see some centaur guards about a hundred yards away with their backs turned away from her. Stephanie took her gear and ran for the door, ducking low behind a hedgerow. There was a small hole in the castle wall that was just large enough for her to crawl through with the star gate.
“OK, let’s do it!” She whispered to herself.
Ten minutes later she was free of the castle walls and running across an open field toward a grove of twisted, misshapen trees on the border of a deep forest. She knew she’d find some cover once past the tree line.
Yawl stood next to Ragnok as they watched her run into the Bog Lands, the inhospitable and ancient forest many had entered, with few to return.
“Go with her, make sure she gets through and finds her friends, but don’t let her see you.” Ragnok said.
“Yes sir. I’ll signal you with the Stone of Goran when she reaches them. Do you want me to do anything with them when I locate the other humans?” Yawl asked.
“Just watch and see what they do. Wait until our forces arrive. We almost have a strong enough army to take the wolven and Minotaur nations. We’ll wipe this land clean of them once and for all.” Ragnok said.
Yawl bowed and left the room.
Ragnok turned to his mirror, and the reflective surface began to shimmer until the form of a large lizard man in a black robe appeared before Ragnok.
“Asura, we are almost ready for the war. Y
awl will find the mechanism which activates the star gate and then we can attack.”
“Good, very good.” Asura hissed. “Once we have those air weapons from the humans our forces will be unstoppable. Eritria is the first of many worlds we will conquer together.”
Behind Asura, in the half-light, Ragnok could see the silhouette of an undead warrior shambling toward his master. The ghoul had been a reptilian soldier at one time, years ago, but now survived off the flesh of the living creatures Asura tossed at it. A rat in his hand squirmed to break free of the dark lord’s grip.
“My army of the undead allied with your centaurs and the libmoks will wash over this land and bathe it in wolven and Minotaur blood. They are the only ones strong enough to stand against us now. But not for long.” Asura said, smiling wickedly. “You’ve done well Ragnok, and soon your time to rule Eritria will come. I have my sights set on so many other worlds.”
“Under your command we will be the strongest army in the universe.” Ragnok said.
“Recover the star gate device and whatever controls it, and make sure it’s ready for the attack. We must be able to capture the human weapons. I have seen this in my visions of the future, and in them a tremendous cloud of fire rises high into the night. It destroys all it touches with a poison cloud.” Asura said.
“Yawl is following the female human we allowed to escape.” Ragnok said.
“Good, keep me informed of your progress. We’ll attack once the portal device is secured and functioning.” Asura said. As the mirror began to swim back into focus and disengage its communicational function, Ragnok saw his master toss the rat over his shoulder to the joy of his undead servant, who began to gobble it alive, squealing and wriggling.
Ragnok walked over to the window overlooking his fields and watched the earth woman running with the rectangular, metallic star gate held in her arms like a large package. He hoped Yawl would be able to uncover the secret of its operation. Thinking she had escaped undetected, Stephanie ran into the woods and disappeared from his view with Yawl not far behind.
CHAPTER 11