Bone Lord 3

by Dante King

  “It went ahead,” I said calmly, “and shit got a little crazy for a while…but I took care of things. You don’t need to worry about the Demogorgon, trust me. As for my jerkoff uncle, his shriveled head’s around here somewhere, with Grave Oath stuck in one of his eyeballs. The rest of him is mixed in with the rest of the minced meat splattered all over the walls.”

  When Elyse caught up, she threw her arms around me, hugging my right side tight and planting kisses on my neck and cheeks.

  “Thank the Lord you’re unharmed,” she said, tears of relief streaming down her cheeks. “When we saw the explosions from afar—”

  “You saw both of them?”

  “Yes. The first one was like a great explosion of blood-red light. We felt it from miles away, and the shockwave it sent through the ground and air was enough to throw us all from our mounts, even at that distance. We thought you had to have…had to have…died. The second was still incredibly powerful, but nothing like the first one. It reminded me of one of your corpse explosion spells, so when I saw that, hope bloomed anew. I hoped that, against all odds, this meant you were still alive.”

  “Sadly, the Charm Goddess wasn’t as lucky as I was,” I muttered. “If I’d just moved a little faster, I could have saved her. Just a fraction of a second faster…”

  “Lord Vance, you defeated both your uncle and a demon of the ancient world,” Rollar said. “That in itself is beyond what any man—even god—could have achieved. It is a tragedy that the Charm Goddess has passed, but you did the impossible: you stopped the Demogorgon from materializing fully after the ritual was started. Her death will not have been in vain.”

  “Her death might not even be that final, Rollar,” I said, grinning. “Hell, she’s barely been dead for a few minutes—Xayon had been dead for way longer. And I did bring the Wind Goddess back, quite easily. So all I need is a willing body and I’ll be able to bring the Charm Goddess back too. And I think I have the perfect body in mind…First, though, we need to find Grave Oath. Help me look through the rubble and find it. How are the others doing?”

  “Everyone is fine, Lord Vance,” Rollar answered. “They’re just mopping up the last of Rodrick’s troops outside. The battle is won.”

  “Who are those people in the cages?” Elyse said as we started searching through the gore-spattered rubble for Rodrick’s head and Grave Oath.

  “They were going to be sacrificed, like the ones hanging from the ceiling—oh, wait, yeah, the ceiling’s gone. Don’t worry, I’ll free them once I’ve found my uncle’s ugly head.”

  “Your uncle looks a lot like you, you know,” she said with a cheeky grin.

  “You know what I mean.”

  Rollar found my uncle’s shriveled head about a hundred yards outside the temple.

  “Lord Vance!” he roared. “Catch!”

  I looked up and saw the head, with Grave Oath still embedded in the eyeball, spinning through the air toward me. I caught it by its beard and plucked the dagger out. My uncle’s face was twisted into a grimace of agony. He had died in extreme pain, and while I had been denied the pleasure of looking into his eyes as Grave Oath had sucked his soul out, I was okay with that. Justice had been served in a deliciously poetic fashion when he had been ripped apart like a chicken drumstick in a drunk barbarian’s hands, by the very demon he’d spent all these years trying to summon.

  “I’ll travel to the Sea of Souls, Rodrick,” I said, looking coldly into the dead eyes of the severed head. “There, I’ll find your soul and stuff it into a cockroach’s body. And then I’ll step on you and grind you into paste underneath my heel…and then I’ll repeat the process, over and over and over.”

  I tied the head to my belt, using the long beard to make a knot; I wasn’t quite finished with my uncle, not just yet. By this time, the rest of my party had started trickling into what was left of the inner sanctum of the Temple of Blood.

  “You have won a great victory!” Friya exclaimed, beaming. “It is as I foresaw in my dreams. You, Raiser of the Dead, were able to defeat the minions of the Blood God, and prevent the Demogorgon from permanently materializing in this world. We are safe! The world is safe!”

  I shook my head. “Not yet it isn’t. There’s another one of these motherfuckers out there, someone like my uncle. Someone even more powerful than him, someone who’s also working for the Blood God. He recognized me too—and I think I know who he might be.”

  I hadn’t gotten a look at his face, but the way he had addressed me had rung a bell. The beggar…

  “What happened to him in the explosion?” Friya asked.

  “He escaped through a portal long before that,” I said. “We might have won this battle, but I don’t think the war is won yet—not by a long shot, actually. I have a feeling that big red fuck is going to be surfacing again, somewhere in Prand.”

  Elyse walked up to me with a look of fierce determination on her face. “Even if that’s the case, there’s one thing I’m sure of,” she said. “We can prevent that from ever happening here again. Use the Lord’s tear, Vance. Destroy this evil place forever.”

  “We have to get these captives out of here first,” I said. “No one among us is sure what the Lord’s tear will do.”

  My party and I freed the captives from the cages and we untied and ungagged them. They were all peasants, abducted by Rodrick and his army from the various villages they had sacked on the way here.

  “Who are you, my lord?” a young man asked when I pulled the gag out of his mouth. “You bloody saved all our lives, you did! We was going to be slaughtered like pigs, like the rest o‘ them!”

  “I’m Vance Chauzec, the God of Death,” I answered.

  The young man dropped to his knees and bowed his head. “I will worship you from now on, Lord of Death,” he said. “I ain’t going to bother with that useless Lord of Light no more! He didn’t do nothing for my village or the others when these bastards came, and he didn’t answer any of their prayers when they was strung up from the ceiling of this vile place and had their throats slit. Fuck him! You’re my god now—you’re the god of all of us. You actually saved us, unlike that soulless bastard! Isn’t that right, everyone?”

  The freed peasants let out a resounding cheer and dropped to their knees. “To Vance Chauzec, God of Death!” they roared in unison.

  Getting a bunch of new followers was a welcome bonus after everything I’d done. Still, I wasn’t quite finished yet. There were two more things I needed to do, and the first of them came running up to me in the form of a slender, long-legged, dark-haired stunner. Her eyes were not on me, though, but on the corpse of the Charm Goddess on the ground.

  “No! Lucielle, no!” Anna cried, tears streaming down her cheeks as she collapsed into my arms. “I came all this way, Vance, I came all this way, and, and…and she died before, before…”

  “Before what, Anna?”

  “Before I could become Fated,” she whimpered. “That was all I wanted, to become Fated. I did all of this, and now that chance has been taken away from me forever.”

  I tilted her face up so that I could look into her eyes. She was surprised to see a broad smile on my face, I was sure.

  “Why are you smiling?” she asked.

  “Screw being Fated. How would like something way better than that?”

  “Better than being Fated? What do you mean?”

  “A goddess, Anna—being a living goddess. How does that sound?”

  Her eyes shone with fresh hope, and a certain greed, and her frown turned upside down, turning into a wide grin. “Yes! Yes, I’d do anything, I’d give anything for that! Anything!”

  “Are you sure about that? Absolutely anything?”

  “Anything. I swear it.”

  “All right. Be warned though, this will hurt a little. You’ll feel pretty great afterwards though.”

  “What?”

  The first time I’d resurrected a goddess, it had been very difficult. Now, though, I was a lot stronger than I was then, an
d Lucielle had died very recently. Her soul would still be very strong, even though her body was dead. Despite the fact that I had expended a lot of energy in this battle, I knew it would be easier this time around. This would be dead easy.

  “See you on the other side, Anna,” I said, smiling, and then I stabbed Grave Oath into her heart.

  Her eyes bulged in their sockets, and she let out a sharp gasp of both shock and pain, before her eyes closed, her head lolled on her neck, and her body became limp as she died in my arms. I was ready, though; before Grave Oath could suck out her soul, I had already plucked Lucielle’s soul from the Sea of Souls and grabbed some life essence from my heart. Like a master alchemist I combined these elements, forcing them all into Anna’s dead heart, which surged back to life, pumping fresh energy through her body.

  Her eyes flickered open, and I saw right away that she was no longer just Anna. There was someone else there too, in those gorgeous eyes, someone far, far older than Anna.

  “Welcome back, Lucielle,” I said.

  “You chose a perfect body for me, Vance,” she said. “For us, I mean. I’m still Anna, but I’m also…this is confusing, this is really weird. But I like it!”

  “I like it too, Anna-Lucielle. Anna, you’re a goddess now. And Lucielle, well, you’re Anna.”

  “I may be a deity now,” Anna-Lucielle purred, a seductive look glowing in her eyes, “but I still desire to worship you in any way you want me to, Vance.”

  “There’ll be plenty of time for that,” I said, “but first, there’s something I need to do. Who here knows how to use this Tear of Light to permanently demolish this shithole?”

  Rami-Xayon walked up to me. Before speaking to me, she gave Lucielle a nod, and an intense look passed between them. She then turned to me.

  “I do, Vance,” she said. “You must cast the Tear of Light into the heart of this evil place: the center of the pool of blood. The tear will be destroyed, but so will the Temple of Blood—forever.”

  “That’s good enough for me,” I said. “I’m tired of lugging this thing around anyway. Everyone, stand back! This place is about to blow!”

  My party took the freed captives to safety outside the temple, until only I remained, gripping the Tear of Light.

  “I win, Blood God,” I growled, staring at the foul pool of blood. “And this won’t be my first victory either. First I’m going to destroy every last one of your temples…and then I’m going to rip you apart, and crush you under my heel like the bug you are. Screw the technicalities for now. Even if it’s never been done before, even if it’s supposedly impossible—I vow I will transfer your soul into a bug’s body and crush you under my heel, nice and slow. Maybe I’ll play around with you a little first, too. Suck on this!”

  I tossed the Tear of Light into the center of the pool. It disappeared into the blood with a plop, and for a moment nothing happened. And then the ground started to shake. First there were tremors, but then the shaking turned into something like a full-blown earthquake, which became increasingly violent. The walls and pillars that had remained started to crumble and collapse, and a bright white light blazed out from the center of the pool. The blood began to bubble and boil, seething furiously, and red mist rose from the pool as the liquid hissed.

  There was a tremendous boom and everything was bathed in blinding white light. For a few seconds I was blinded, but when my vision returned, I saw something extraordinary: nothing; everything was gone. There was no pool, no pillars, no walls, just a crater where it had all stood, and rubble everywhere. And what was more, I could sense that no power, evil or otherwise, remained in this place. It was all gone—and good riddance.

  I walked away from the ruins and joined my party and my new worshipers.

  “My work here is done,” I said, dusting my hands off, “but there’s still a long road ahead. The Blood God doesn’t rest, and he doesn’t sleep—so I won’t either.”

  I glanced down at my uncle’s severed head, still tied by his beard to my belt. It was over between me and him now. I’d had my vengeance, and I needed to move on.

  I untied the head and dropped it to the ground. It could rot here, along with the rest of these vile ruins. Before I turned to leave, though, an idea for a final goodbye materialized.

  “Drok,” I said, “you don’t happen to have an urgent need to take a dump right now, do you?”

  Drok grinned and nodded. “Drok can shit!” he exclaimed with glee.

  I pointed at my uncle’s head. “Cover this ugly thing up, will you? Let us enjoy our victory with only beautiful things in sight.”

  As me, my party, and my new followers walked off into the rising sun, Drok the barbarian lifted his kilt, squatted over Rodrick’s severed head, and unleashed hell.

  End of Book 3

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  About the Author

  Dante King is an author of Men’s Adventure fiction in various flavors. His books involve strong male protagonists who know what they want and do what’s required to get it.

  You can connect with him at DanteKingAuthor.com