by Dante King
I had no time to pounce on him because the captain was already back in the fight. He was Fated, so my necrotic star had only slowed him down and done little more than blind him in one eye. We exchanged a flurry of blows, with him attacking both with his shield and his longsword, and me frantically parrying and counter-attacking with Grave Oath.
The second Crusader was getting back to his feet, and the captain’s shield was glowing subtly brighter, which meant that he was about to blast out a magical shockwave. As the captain opened his mouth to utter the shout that would activate his shockwave, I leapt toward him and threw another star while I closed the distance. His roar boomed from his mouth, cut short when my star slammed into his other eye socket.
The shockwave activated the moment I landed on his shield, and the blast blew me back like a hurricane wind. But this was exactly what I had wanted. It propelled me into a far higher leap than I could have made unassisted. I somersaulted over the second Crusader, landing behind him just as he returned to his fighting stance.
In the split-second before he could spin around and face me, I buried Grave Oath into the back of his neck, through a tiny gap between the bottom of his great helm and the top of his gorget. He shuddered as I sucked his soul out of his body before he collapsed in a heap at my feet, shriveled and very dead. I could almost feel Grave Oath swelling with power from the mighty soul I’d just captured.
Just then, another soul entered my blade, and then another, sucked in via the black anti-light threads that connected my dagger to Fang and my skeletons.
“Good work, skellies,” I said as I glanced across the sanctum.
Elyse was feeding her golden rope through the eye slit of a Crusader’s great helm. The object must have wrapped around his neck because he dropped both his sword and shield before tearing off his helm and trying to pry off the rope.
Another soul raced through the air and entered my dagger.
Rami sidestepped a Crusader’s broad swing before she gripped him around the waist. In an impressive feat of strength, she flipped him over her shoulder, then jammed both sais through his helm’s eye slit.
Another soul soared into Grave Oath.
I shot another look over to my left as a Crusader sent out a shockwave from his tower shield. The blast hit one of my skeletons, and it exploded in a cloud of bones. Then, Sarge engaged the Crusader in a one-on-one duel, swinging his golden greatsword with effortless speed and skill.
At that moment, Grave Oath pulsed slightly in my hand again as yet another soul was sucked into the weapon via the anti-light pathways. I heard Fang bellow out a triumphant roar.
A groan came from my right, and I saw the captain pluck out my throwing star from his eye socket. He grimaced as he tossed the object away. From either side of his bloody eyes, black veins expanded, like rivers on a map.
“Lord of Light, hear my supplications!” he yelled, and a burst of light suddenly pierced the stained glass above him. The colorful beam split into two and struck the captain’s butchered eyes. Then, it was gone, and he stared at me with eyes glowing like two small suns.
“Now, necromancer, I will cleanse your stain from this world.”
“You seriously have to come up with some better lines, asshole,” I muttered, Grave Oath at the ready in one hand and a throwing star in the other. “Come on, let’s see what you’ve got.”
Chapter Fourteen
The captain stormed across the space between us with a wordless snarl, and I sprang forward to meet him. Our weapons clanged, and sparks flew as we both cut, slashed, lunged, and parried in a blur of speed. The captain’s agility and dexterity were off the charts. I couldn’t help thinking that I’d met my match.
Every attack I threw at him, he was able to dodge or parry, but I was able to do the same. Back and forth we pushed each other, exchanging blow after blow, trying combination after combination, switching stances and guards, each searching for that one crucial gap in the other’s defenses that would end this deadly duel.
As I fought, I felt more souls flowing into Grave Oath from my allies’ kills. We were winning, all right. In a moment of respite, with both myself and the captain circling each other warily, breathing hard from the intensity of the fight, I noticed that he was the last Resplendent Crusader left alive. Three of my skeletons had been destroyed, but Sarge was still standing, his greatsword dripping with the blood of our enemies. Elyse and Rami were looking exhausted but unharmed, and Fang was wolfing down a chewed-up Crusader, plate mail and all. I could have called all of them in to finish off the captain, but I didn’t. I wanted to win this fight on my own.
“Stay back,” I said to them as I weaved beneath the captain’s wide swing. “This one is mine.”
“Pride is a squalid vice.” The captain blocked my dagger with his shield, then pushed me back.
“Get him, Vance!” Elyse yelled.
“Suck out his soul!” Rami cried.
Fang simply rumbled with satisfaction, ignoring me and focusing on his half-finished meal.
The captain and I continued to circle each other, and an idea popped into my head as I passed the corpse of the first Crusader I’d killed. They channeled magic by commanding their voices; the shields themselves weren’t enchanted.
As I jumped over the corpse to dodge an attack from the captain, I wondered whether, since I possessed some magical powers of my own, I couldn’t channel them through the shield. If so, I could use their powers against them. It was worth a shot, so I rolled back to where I’d come from, dropped quickly to my knee, and scooped up the dead Crusader’s tower shield.
The captain whirled around and turned his glowing eyes on me. “You dare defile that sacred shield with your unholy touch?”
He charged, his shield held in front of him like a battering ram.
“I’ve heard about enough of your self-righteous bullshit for one night, you pompous asshole. So I think it’s about time that I made it… stop!”
As the captain closed in, I could feel Isu’s presence all around me. Magical power pulsed out from my heart, surged through my every vein and nerve ending, and crackled with electrical potency in my extremities.
The captain roared, swinging his shield in front of him, and I let out a shout, mirroring this motion and whipping the tower shield in front of me. His shield started to glow, and I heard the whispering of magical words echoing in his great helm. At that moment, power rippled through my fingers into the shield, and I felt my own lips moving, whispering an incantation in a language I did not recognize. In an instant, the shield I was holding turned from gold into a glossy obsidian-like black.
With a simultaneous surge, we crashed into each other, shields first, golden shield slamming into obsidian shield. We battled each other with sheer physical strength, each pushing as hard as we could. Then, we shouted the words that would blast out shockwaves from the shields. For a terrifying moment, it felt as if my entire being was being filled with the necrotic energy to the point where I would explode. It was as if I was dying a thousand times in the blink of an eye, and then being resurrected. The captain’s shock wave broke, and his shield shattered against my unyielding black shield.
All the energy coursing within me spiralled to my arms and then out through my shield in a titanic wave of stone-shattering force. The captain was launched up through the air as if an ancient titan the size of a mountain had just kicked him. He was catapulted up a hundred feet in the air and hurled almost two hundred feet back. His body smashed through a giant chandelier, severing the chain that suspended it from the ceiling and sending it crashing to the ground. The captain’s body continued until it struck the huge organ pipes with a resounding chorus of gongs. The pipes shattered in a cloud of dust, and disembodied limbs were flung through the air. The shrapnel toppled down before skittering along the ground.
“Holy shit,” I murmured, an ear-to-ear grin smeared across my face. “That was pretty fucking cool.”
The shield became hot in my hand, and I threw it down b
efore it melted into a pool of liquid metal.
I turned to look at Elyse and Rami, and both of them were staring at me with their jaws dropped and their eyeballs virtually popping out of their sockets. If I’d had the chance to have witnessed what I had just done from where they were, I’d probably also be standing there speechless and slack-jawed.
Before they could say anything, a slow clap echoed through the cathedral. I turned to see a portly, hunched-over figure shuffling out of the cloud of dust and debris from the smashed-up organ. He was an old man, bald, warty, and age-spotted, with one eye larger than the other. His swollen, wine-stained lips were curled up in a mocking grin.
He was beyond obese. I couldn’t imagine how someone that corpulent could even walk. With difficulty, it seemed. He was inching forward at a tortuously slow pace, dragging one foot limply behind the other. He leaned on a gnarled walking stick and wore the brilliant white robes edged with gold thread of a bishop.
“Nabu, you disgusting slug,” Elyse said.
“Well done, well done, necromancer, apostate, and… foreign whore,” he sneered, still clapping slowly. “You have bested my Resplendent Crusaders. An impressive feat. Not nearly impressive enough, though, to deal with the likes of me.”
“This fat old piece of shit is Nabu?” I asked Elyse with a snort. “He looks like someone even Grast could kill!”
“Looks can be dangerously deceptive,” Elyse replied. “He’s far more powerful than any of the men we just fought.”
“Who are you, necromancer?” Nabu demanded. “I have seen you in my dreams, but I do not know your name. Tell it to me, before I destroy you.”
“I am Vance Chauzec, rightful Lord of Brakith, and I’ve come here to suck your rotten soul into my dagger. After seeing what you look like in person though, I feel like I’ve wasted my time. I’d do better sucking the soul out of a plague rat than capturing your pathetic soul.”
“Ah, the Lord of Brakith. I know the current one, and, yes, Vance… You are his nephew, are you not?”
“When I’m done with you, I’m going to kill that thieving, lying piece of shit as well.”
Nabu laughed mockingly. “You are a naive fool, aren’t you? Well, no matter. Your body will be on the meathooks with all the others soon enough. I will eat your heart before the morning sun rises, and my powers will become even greater.”
“You have abandoned the Lord of Light,” Elyse said, her hand clenched over her mace.
“I’m sorry, what did he do to your god?” I asked her. “Eat him?” I smiled at the overblown bishop.
“One such as me can serve two masters. Blood for the Devourer. Righteousness for the Luminescent One.” Nabu pointed his walking stick upward, the sheer effort making him wobble on his feet as though he might topple over and cause an earthquake. Then, he righted himself and set his eyes upon me, the walking stick still pointed at the stained glass ceiling. One of his eyes was gold, like the captain’s had been, but the other was blood-red. “Come, necromancer, let me feed upon you!”
Nabu raised his hands to the sky and cried out a booming command that echoed through the many aisles of the cathedral. At the very highest point of the ceiling was a domed skylight, and the unfiltered light of the full moon shone through in a pillar-like beam. It bathed him in its glow, and his body started to shift. It was as though a hundred leeches writhed beneath his skin, and then, it started to melt away, filling the air around him with a light haze.
In seconds, gone was the obese, hunchbacked old man. Standing in his place was a towering giant. The transformed Nabu was over eight feet tall and built like the strongest of blacksmiths. He was clad in full plate armor of shimmering gold, and the gnarled old walking stick he had been holding had been transformed into a two-handed warhammer fashioned in gold and laden with runes.
“All right, Nabu,” I said. “Maybe your soul is worth taking after all.”
Chapter Fifteen
“I will destroy all of you fools!” Nabu roared, his voice no longer the husky croak of an old man but instead the thunderous bellow of a mighty warrior. “After I devour your hearts and drink your lifeblood, my master will make me a demigod!”
“The Blood God is very much alive and well, I’d say,” I commented to Elyse, “unless the Lord of Light has had a very radical change in diet. I’m pretty sure your god doesn’t require blood sacrifices and human hearts, and there’s no way this crazy shit Nabu is pulling can come solely from his bishop’s powers.”
“You’re right,” she said, staring at Nabu with a mixture of hatred and horror. “The Lord’s ring he’s wearing does give him mighty powers, but this is something else.”
“It doesn’t matter how he got these powers,” Rami interjected. “What matters right now is not getting killed by them—look out!”
Nabu aimed his warhammer at us, and a torrent of blinding white flame tore through the air. Instinct kicked in, and I dove out of the way. Elyse and Rami also performed some rapid evasive maneuvers, but one of my skeletons wasn’t quite so lucky. The pillar of fire blasted straight through him, the roaring flames swallowing him up. A second or two later, when Nabu dispelled the inferno, there was nothing left of the skeleton but a few scattered, smoldering ashes.
“It’s going to be quite hard to drink our lifeblood if you burn it all up,” I muttered, ducking and rolling as Nabu summoned another stream of white fire from his hammer.
As I came up from the roll, I flung a throwing star at him. He was wearing a helm now, but it wasn’t a great helm like those of the Resplendent Crusaders. While it did protect his cheeks, it was open around his eyes, nose, and most of his mouth. This gave me a much bigger target. I didn’t intend to hurt him with the first throwing star I sent his way, though. I merely wanted to test his reflexes, to see if, beneath this outer shell of a towering warrior, his reaction time was still that of an elderly drunkard.
It wasn’t. Moving with almost superhuman speed, Nabu deflected the throwing star with a contemptuous flick of his gauntlet.
“Is that the best you can do, Lord Chauzec? I could have bested you without assuming this form!”
“Oh, I haven’t even gotten started with you, you wrinkly pile of troll shit. We’re only just—”
I had to dive and take cover behind a concrete pillar when Nabu sent another roaring wall of white fire my way. Even though the pillar was at least four feet thick, the intense heat from the supernatural fire made my skin blister, and I had to jump back.
I’d felt Isu’s presence earlier, when I’d picked up the Crusader’s shield, but she hadn’t shown herself, and now, she seemed to have disappeared. A pity. I could have used a new power about now. Still, I was sure I could take out Nabu with what I already had. It was simply a matter of outwitting him. And then kicking his ass.
Fang snarled and pawed the floor as he prepared to charge Nabu. The giant lizard’s scales may have been impervious to steel, but I doubted that they could resist fire of this intensity. I sent out a hasty mental command to Fang to step back and take cover; I couldn’t afford to lose him now. He scrambled out of the way, scuttling behind a row of pillars just as Nabu sent a flaming torrent in his direction.
“We need to get that asshole’s warhammer out of his hands,” I said to Elyse, joining her behind a pew where we were temporarily shielded from Nabu’s view. “Get your rope ready. I’ll distract him. When he’s busy with me, you send your rope over to him. Use it to yank that fucking hammer out of his hands. Got it?”
Elyse gritted her teeth and nodded, and her hands began to glow with golden light. Nabu was busy blasting jets of flame at my skeletons, who were ducking and jumping behind pillars and pews. While he was distracted, I scrambled on my hands and knees over to the pillar where Rami was hiding.
“You enjartas are good with throwing stars, right?” I asked.
She nodded, so I pulled a couple of mine out and handed them to her.
“I need you to distract Nabu with these while I make a run for a Crusader shi
eld. Wait until I get to that pew over there.” I gestured to the spot almost 10 yards away. “When I give you the signal, launch a couple of stars his way.”
I continued crouching as I went over to the pew closest to the shield. I figured I’d need something more powerful than my new shield trick to deal with Nabu. But it was the only shot I had. And he was dispensing with more of my skeletons with every passing second.
Grave Oath throbbed in my hand, almost bursting from the power of the souls it had consumed. I turned it over in my hand and stared at the demon head on the pommel.
“I sure as hell hope this is gonna work, Isu,” I whispered. “I could use some confirmation before I run out and expose myself to a wall of fire, though.”
A brief, chilly gust of wind ripped in through the smashed stained glass window, and it swirled around me.
Isu was here.
“It doesn’t surprise me that you choose to call upon your goddess,” whispered a faint but familiar voice on the rippling wind. “Picture in your mind the coldest, darkest tomb, where the power of Death rules over everything. Send your mind, heart, and soul into the deepest, most ancient tombs of the Old Men, those freezing black graves buried deep beneath the vast glaciers of the Forgotten North. Burrow into the frozen ground and retrieve the petrified bones. Suck the ancient, unending death into your very core, and then channel it.”
The wind whipped away, and Isu was gone. Well, she’d given me a plan. After I managed to absorb the power of our dead ancestors, I’d direct that power through a Crusader shield.
As the sounds of battle roared around me, I closed my eyes and pictured the vast white wastes of the Forgotten North, ice and snow as far as the eye could see. I didn’t simply picture this though. I willed myself to be there. With a curious sensation, almost as if my soul was being sucked out of my body, I felt myself flying at incredible speed across the sky. Mountains and oceans zipped past beneath me in a blinding blur, as if an incomprehensibly vast god had slapped the world and spun it like a ball on his fingertip.