by Dante King
Isu walked over, staring coolly at the decapitated, pulverized body at my feet.
“Ah,” she said. “Blood Demons walk the earth once again.”
“Blood Demons?” I said, still breathing hard. “What the fuck is a Blood Demon?”
“I’ll tell you when you have your breath back. The creature didn’t touch you with its dagger, did it?”
“No, I managed to smash its weapon out of its hand.”
“Fortunate,” she said coolly. “Otherwise, you would have become a Blood Demon too. Well, I’m not sure if the magic would have worked on a god. But probably better not to test that theory out.”
“Yeah, I’d rather not test that shit out, thank you.”
“You have truly awoken the Blood God’s anger if he’s sending Blood Demons after you. I can tell you one thing for certain now.”
“Oh yeah, and what’s that?”
“Things are about to get a lot more difficult, and a lot more dangerous, for all of us,” she murmured. With an uncharacteristic calm, she simply turned and walked off into the darkness.
Chapter Nine
After getting my breath back, I walked over to Jort’s decapitated head and pulled Grave Oath out of it. The thing’s head still wore that mocking grin, and its dead eyes remained solid red.
“Great,” I muttered, transfixed by the gruesome sight. “Now I have fucking Blood Demons to deal with.”
I took the torch and searched through the bushes where I’d sent the Blood Demon’s dagger flying. I found it soon enough. The wavy-shaped blade was around fifteen inches long, and the entire thing was made of a blood-red stone. I figured it might be unwise to touch this cursed weapon, so I went to Jort’s headless body, cut some cloth from his ragged tunic, and wrapped the dagger in it, taking care not to let it touch any part of my skin.
Isu seemed to know a fair bit about these Blood Demon things and this Blood dagger, and I was going to make damn sure that she told me everything she knew on the subject. I didn’t have the time to allow her to go on acting like this, dropping tidbits of information wherever and whenever she felt like it. Things were getting far too serious to keep playing games.
I headed back to the camp, but before I got there, I found Elyse waiting for me on the trail.
“Thank you for saving my life, Vance.” She threw her arms around me. “I’m so sorry for this; it’s all my fault. I had no idea he was a… a…”
We were on far too serious a mission to be saving strays from the woods and having them tag along. We already had one stowaway, and that was one too many in my book. Still, I knew that she had only brought Jort—or rather, the thing posing as a man called Jort—along out of compassion. I could hardly be angry at her for that. Still, she needed to know that there could be no more of this. She’d need to get tough and learn to mistrust. She’d get the hang of it soon enough and learn to detect who was genuinely in need and who was hunting for a kind heart to make use of.
I gently pried her arms off me and fixed her face with a stern look. “I know that you were just doing what you thought was right. But picking up some stranger in the middle of nowhere like that… it almost got you killed, and hell, it almost got me killed too. I know that you couldn’t have known that thing was a Blood Demon, but now, you do know that such things are out there, and that they’re after us. No more picking up strays, okay? I know that you have a big heart, but you have to treat everyone we meet from now on as a potential enemy, no matter how helpless or harmless they look, until it’s proven otherwise.”
Elyse looked as if she was on the verge of tears, and she simply nodded in response.
“I’m sorry, Vance. It won’t happen again.”
“Go on, get back to camp and have some dinner and rest up. We have a long journey ahead of us tomorrow.”
With her shoulders slumped, she turned and slunk back to camp. I felt a little bad, but she needed to understand she wasn’t allowed to do anything like that again. I returned to camp, got my wineskin out, and had a good slug of the stuff. I needed a drink after what happened.
Rollar and Drok had a good campfire going, and Drok had managed to bag a deer—I still didn’t know how the big lout could move with such stealth as a hunter—so we had roast venison and potatoes for dinner. I kept the Blood dagger hidden, but it was on my mind the whole time I was eating.
I figured Rollar might know a bit about Blood Demons since he was well-read and had done plenty of research into such things. And of course, since he was a loyal follower of mine, he would share everything he thought would be useful for me to know, unlike Isu. So, I decided to have a chat with him first.
“Rollar, my friend,” I said, “why don’t you and me go and pour ourselves an ale from the cask and share a drink.”
“That sounds good, Lord Vance,” he answered.
We poured ourselves two mugs of ale, then headed to a quiet section of the camp and sat. I took out the bundle of cloth in which I’d hidden the Blood dagger and unwrapped it.
“What do you know about Blood Demons and their weapons?” I asked.
A shudder rippled through him as his eyes fell on the red dagger.
“Not much,” he admitted, “although I’ve come across mentions of their existence. I do seem to recall a passage I read in one ancient tome saying something like, ‘When the worshipers of the Blood God grew many, Blood Demons walked the land once more.’ Now, a Blood Demon has risen, so this probably means there are more people worshiping the Blood God now.”
“Well, there was Bishop Nabu and his little coven, who we took care of, and my uncle and his oblates, who we mostly took care of. Does this mean that despite us having killed Nabu and his followers, and most of my uncle’s followers, there are still more Blood God followers now than ever?”
Rollar took a long swig of his ale. When he put his mug down, a worried expression was etched across his face.
“I don’t know, Lord Vance,” he said, “but the fact that abomination walked the earth so close to us is not a good sign.” His eyes moved to the red dagger as it gleamed eerily in the firelight. “I do not know anything about that evil weapon, but I do not think it is wise to keep it with us. It will surely draw the attention of more of the Blood God’s servants like shit attracts flies. And I for one do not relish the prospect of facing another Blood Demon, considering how hard even you had to fight to defeat it.”
He was right, of course. I hadn’t been planning to keep the dagger anyway, but I wanted to find out as much as I could about it before I got rid of it. And I had an idea of just where I could learn more than Rollar had been able to tell me. Before I went and talked to her, there was one more thing I wanted to ask Rollar about.
“In your research, have you ever come across anyone called ‘Uger’ or ‘Kemji’?”
“Interesting that you should mention that.” Rollar sipped on his ale. “There was an entire chapter dedicated to their exploits in one of the ancient history tomes I was perusing.”
“Go on,” I said.
“Unfortunately, I didn’t actually read the chapter. Its entirety had been torn out of the book. It actually seemed to have been ripped out quite recently, almost as if someone wanted to ensure no one discovered anything about Uger and Kemji. They were mentioned in another source I examined, but it was badly damaged with mold and rot. The ink had faded too, and the words were mostly illegible. From what I could make out, the pair of them were some sort of ancient heroes, mighty warriors-one from Prand, one from Yeng-who allied together to fight a great evil and save the world. The old word for dragons seemed to be mentioned frequently. Perhaps it was some sort of plague of dragons they fought off? I don’t know.”
“Or maybe they used dragons to fight off a greater threat,” I said.
“Stranger things have happened in the history of this world, I suppose.”
“Uger was an ancestor of mine. He built the first castle at Brakith.”
Rollar looked quite surprised to hear this. “Well, then,
you are descended from what seems to be one of the greatest heroes in the history of Prand. A very noble lineage indeed! It is a pity we do not know more about your esteemed ancestor. I must admit, the little I’ve read about him and this Kemji character, not to mention the frequent mention of dragons connected to their names, has made me quite curious.”
Rollar and I finished our ales, and he excused himself and went off to read. I went and sought out Isu. I found her just outside the camp, sitting by herself, staring up at the full moon. At least she wasn’t practicing sucking off a wooden phallus modeled after my prick this time. I could do without the awkwardness of having to approach her while she was in the middle of that act.
“What are you doing out here, just staring at the sky?” I asked.
She turned her gaze to me, and in her eyes, there was a look I hadn’t seen from her for quite some time: intense, hungry lust. Her ravenous eyes roamed over my figure, making her intentions and desires quite blatant, before she replied.
“Just thinking of… a simpler time. Remembering another night like this, in which I was able to take physical form again after so long, when my devoted, handsome necromancer fed me the energy of the souls he had just claimed.”
I remembered that night well too. Isu and I had gotten to know each other very well just outside the camp, while Elyse had slept mere feet from us—or, at least, had pretended to sleep through Isu’s moans of pleasure. It hadn’t been ages ago, exactly, but it certainly did feel like a lifetime had passed.
With the sight of her hourglass figure, her round tits, and her curvy hips—not to mention those luscious lips and the lustful eyes she was throwing at me—parts of my anatomy were getting hot and tingly, but there was a reason I’d come to seek her out, and it wasn’t so that I could get my cock wet.
“You said you’d tell me more about these Blood Demons when I’d recovered from my fight,” I said. “And I’m feeling right as rain now, so how about you go ahead and tell me everything you know?”
“I saw you talking to that ugly barbarian about Blood Demons,” she said, “and whatever he knows about them is probably the extent of my knowledge too. So, instead of wasting our time talking about such trivial matters, why don’t you and I—”
“Cut the shit, Isu. You know a lot more about these Blood Demons than Rollar does.”
She shrugged. “You killed the creature, and you know how to kill others that come your way, so what’s the problem? What more do you need to know?”
All right. My patience had been worn through, and I was in no mood to go fishing and begging for scraps of information, which was exactly what she enjoyed.
“You know more, Isu, and you’re going to tell me everything.” I unwrapped the bundle of rags and showed her what was in it. She stared at the Blood dagger for a while, and a slight look of fear crossed her face, but then she sneered haughtily.
“What are you going to do with that?” she asked. “Are you trying to threaten me?”
“No. If I wanted to harm you, I wouldn’t use this. And I don’t want to harm you anyway. But I’m very curious about what this thing can do. I’m thinking that since it’s a magic weapon, I should try to channel some Death magic through it and see what happens. I’ve done it successfully with other gods’ weapons before, so why not with this one? How about we give that a shot, huh?”
Panic flashed across her eyes, as I’d suspected it would. She tried to disguise it with a look of disdain.
“Go ahead,” she said. “I wouldn’t recommend it, but it’s your life; do what you want with it.” Her eyes were locked on the dagger, and the look of fear that had finally taken the upper hand was unmistakable.
“Okay,” I said coolly. I was bluffing, of course, and she was trying to call my bluff. The only thing left to do was to ramp this up, strike some real fear in her. Truthfully, I was a little nervous about it too, but Isu needed to be put in her place.
“Okay what?” she asked, trying to keep up her nonchalant act.
“I’m going to channel Death magic through this dagger.”
I reached down and gripped the hilt with my bare hand—and Isu’s eyes all but popped out of their sockets.
“No, no,” she gasped, staring at me as if she was expecting me to burst into flames at any moment. “Put it down, you crazy fool, put it down, stop touching it!”
“Why? I’m a god. I can do what I want. And what I want to do right now is channel Death magic through this weapon.”
“Don’t even think of doing something so idiotic!” she shrieked, her composure shattered. “Drop the dagger before you kill us all!”
“Well, if you told me why you’re so worried, I might be inclined to listen to you. I mean, it’s just channeling some Death magic through another weapon. Nothing I haven’t done—”
She lunged for my wrist with wild desperation and uncut fear in her eyes.
“Drop it, you idiot!” she hissed. “You have no idea what you’re about to unleash!”
“Damn right I don’t,” I said calmly, “because you refuse to tell me.”
“I’ll tell you! Just put it down, wrap the vile thing up again, and bury it deep below the earth!”
“I want your word that you’ll tell me everything you know, Isu.”
“On my honor,” she muttered reluctantly. “I’ll tell you all I know about Blood Demons. Now put that thing away!”
I smiled, dropped the dagger back into the rags, and bundled it up again. I quietly slipped in the little section of leather I’d secretly lined my palm with too. My assassin’s training had developed my sleight of hand to an advanced level, and this little trick had paid off. I’d never intended to touch the dagger with my bare skin before I knew what I was dealing with.
“Tell me what you know,” I said. “All of it.”
“The thing you just killed, the Blood Demon, was not simply a creature of the Blood God. It was a limb of the Blood God himself.”
“A limb?”
“Think of a squid’s legs. Have you ever seen a squid using their many limbs? The limbs are part of the creature, but it is almost as if they each have a mind of their own, as well. They are directed by one greater mind, yes, but they are also capable of some independence. Nonetheless, the fact remains that they are part of the beast, and the body of the beast is what gives them their strength. If you cut one off, well, the creature is barely damaged, really, and it can quite easily grow another one. Unlike human beings, of course, who may well die if one of their limbs is removed.”
“So, how do we kill the Blood God?”
“With more difficulty than can ever be imagined. You saw how powerful the Blood God’s limb was. It used to be a man, yes, a small, weak man who would have been very easy to kill. But that thing you fought was not a man by any stretch of the imagination. It was not like the undead either, not simply a reanimated corpse. You saw when your foolish cleric first brought the wretch out of the woods; he looked exactly like a living, breathing human—something you cannot say about your zombies.”
“I could tell that he was lying when he spoke, though.”
“As could I, but you could only tell that he was not telling the truth, not that he was not actually human.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” I said.
“You tried to use Grave Oath on him, didn’t you?”
“I did—and it did nothing. I might as well have stabbed him with a fucking toothpick for all the good it did.”
“That’s because Blood Demons do not have souls. Nor are they alive. They are not even ‘alive’ in the sense that your undead are. There is no reanimation present at all. What you were doing when you beat the creature with the Death-magic-enhanced mace was essentially beating the Blood God’s hand out of the puppet it was controlling. Eventually, your Death magic overcame the power of the Blood God to keep his ‘hand’ in the empty corpse he had taken possession of.”
“So, I basically just smacked that motherfucker’s hand out of a glove.”
“I can handle illness,” I said.
“Not this kind. It always ends in death. Then, your empty corpse would have been filled with the power of the Blood God. You would have become a Blood Demon yourself, just like that fool of a peasant. Well, perhaps, being a god with some measure of power, you would have been able to fight off the ‘infection’ and overcome the Blood God’s magic. Best not to test that theory in practice, right?”
I gulped. The dagger’s weight felt like a millstone.
“Why were you so afraid of me using the dagger to channel Death magic?” I asked. “And what would have happened if Jort had cut me with it?”
“The results could have been catastrophic for all of us,” Isu continued. “That dagger contains an intense concentration of the Blood God’s power. Fusing your magic with it would be to invite him to take possession of both your body and soul. That way, he would be able to take physical form in this plane in the body of not just a man but a god. He would have taken over your body, heart, mind, and soul. All the work your uncle and the Blood God’s other followers are trying to bring about would have been achieved. You would have become the Blood God incarnate.”
“Damn,” I murmured, staring at the bundle of rags. “Good thing I didn’t try it, huh?”
“Yes,” she muttered. “Good thing indeed.”
“How did Jort end up becoming a Blood Demon? Did he die of natural causes, to then be ‘possessed’ by the Blood God, or did someone else make him into a Blood Demon?”
“Someone would have cut him with one of those daggers. And then he would have wandered the earth in search of another dagger like the one that made him. There are many, scattered across the world. Most have been buried or hidden in inaccessible places. That’s why the fellow looked so disheveled. His corpse probably had to wander for weeks before finding this dagger. That’s why you will need to bury it deep.”