The Dead Gods

by Rob Bayliss

  The dogel cursed himself for letting his mind wander again. Besides, he thought, if they believed they would find refuge in the forest, they would be very much mistaken. The Corpse Lord’s children would probably have eaten them by now. A crying shame that such a thing should happen out of sight. People would pay to watch criminals and enemies of the city being fed to the arachane, he was sure of it. Such a spectacle would rake in money and make the organiser popular with the people. He would have a word with Magistrar Sholok after the ceremony, would argue that it would be a way for the people to get closer to their god. With the revenue, he would hire warriors and the city would be his. Maybe he could leave the gladiator world and rise to the rank of magistrar. One thing would be for certain; that dog Glizaron would pay dearly. He would hammer the nails in Glizaron’s tree of pain himself.

  Dogel Serresel smiled as he walked from the afternoon light into the comforting dark of the temple interior. Dim light spilled from the candles and danced on the black walls, seeming to swim and writhe as a living thing. The air was heavily spiced with clouds of incense, which hung between the delicate points of candlelight that the blackness threatened to engulf. They were led by acolytes to gather and sit in an amphitheatre around a deep black well, the portal to the shadowed lands.

  Before the well was a stone ring, bedecked in carved symbols and hung with manacles and offerings of treasure and weapons. Serresel noticed a jet-black dagger of obsidian, the sword and armour of a Taleeli officer: the belongings of that bastard Kaziviere? he mused. Priests sitting around the ring chanted, whilst deep within the temple the drummer pounded, making the atmosphere throb. One priest turned to face the gathering, leading them in repeating the chants. Inside the well, the void appeared to fill with shadowed waters. The onlookers were aware of movement as it swirled this way and that. A sweetly pungent smell of death began to fill the room, of decay and grave dirt, as the mystic aura of the messiah heralded his arrival. Those sat on the front steps tried not to gag, as it overpowered the sweet incense that burned in braziers all around.

  The arch priest threw his arms wide as the chanting of his brothers grew louder. “Behold the Corpse Lord comes. Bring the offering!”

  A young slave was brought forward. He stumbled, his eyes glazed, drugged as he was to ensure compliance. He was half led, half dragged to the stone ring. Each of his limbs was manacled to it, so that his body formed a cross, his back to the well of shadows.

  Serresel watched, fascinated. He had heard about this ceremony before, although it had not been performed in Dofr’Arachane for some decades now. Personally he would not have drugged the offering; it would have been more entertaining to see the fear in the slave’s eyes, fully aware of his doom. How he wished it was Gutspiller tied to that ring; he would have been a strong offering to the Messiah, and worthy. Again he found himself regretting that he died in the forest, with no one to view it.

  The drummer’s tempo increased and the air hummed with its pounding. A vague shadow began to emerge, in wisps, from the well. The priest called out his summonsing with increased urgency. The slave shook and whimpered, his fear breaking down through the walls of his drugged state.

  Serresel licked his lips in anticipation, concentrating on the moment.

  ***

  The dawn was breaking across the sky. A grey half-light wended its way through the trees, lighting up the webs beyond the circle of the fire. The sounds of the forest were changing as nocturnal beasts and birds yielded the forest to creatures of the day. It was when all went quiet that you should worry. The foulness hunted by sun or moon. In his arms Nurarna stirred. She had whimpered in her sleep while Kaziviere had taken his turn to watch. Since that second night in the forest she had insisted that she sleep next to him. The terrors were all too real here; they were not just food prey to the foulness.

  What food they had was gone and it seemed impossible to hunt here, as if all the animals were wary in the extreme. There had been no sign of deer or forest pigs, or anything that would have been expected to use the trail that led from the bean fields. They should have known.

  The first night they had entered the forest, with the baying of hounds haunting their tracks, they followed what they took to be forest trail. They moved as quickly and as quietly as they could by the light of a spluttering torch. The trail seemed to twist and turn on itself. The sounds of pursuit ceased and they were left with the click and hum of nocturnal insects. They elected to wait for morning, so as to navigate by the sun. They built a fire. Nurarna had insisted upon it, despite the threat of the hunters on their trail. It was not men they should fear, she had said.

  They had spent a fretful night, jumping at every sound, yet upon investigation nothing could be found. Kaziviere had tried to keep watch, but his body was so fatigued that he had eventually joined his companion in sleep.

  They woke on their first day of freedom and waited for the sun to climb over the forest canopy. They calculated that the trail was taking them south west, so they left it and struck northeast through the forest, hoping to find the forest edge north of Dofr’Arachane.

  It was hard going. The forest was thick with dense undergrowth, while all the time the humidity sapped their strength and their water supplies. For hours they struggled, barely making any progress. Eventually, they elected to risk going back on themselves and taking the trail back to the edge of the fields. However, something had been at work on the trail in their absence. The way back to Dofr’Arachane was blocked by thick webs, which trailed across it, reaching high into the branches. He recalled that Nurarna had been terrified, and with good reason.

  “It’s the dead gods; they know we are here and are hunting us,” she had hissed, looking fearfully into the thick foliage above their heads.

  “Then all the more reason that we get back to the forest edge as quickly as we can,” Kaziviere said, raising his scimitar to cut the strands that blocked their path.

  “Rendroc, no!” Nurarna half screamed, as the scimitar struck the webs. It sliced through the uppermost strands, but bounced off the thicker, lower ropes. They thrummed and shook.

  Kaziviere’s eyes followed the vibrating threads up into the foliage above their heads. The background sounds of the forest fell to deathly quiet.

  It shot down on its silken rope from above his head, at a frightening speed: an eight-legged horror from his darkest nightmare. He felt its claws on his head, felt them scratch his back and felt the weight of its repulsive body on his shoulders. His time spent on the sands had honed his combat instincts; in the first split second the foulness appeared, he was swinging his sword. He had quickly spotted its attempt to grab his neck in its jaws.

  He jumped to the right and felt the fangs miss his neck and sink shallowly into the muscle of his shoulder. It burned and he felt a numbness enter him. His whole body spun as he followed, putting his weight behind his sword stroke and tearing his shoulder from the monster’s jaws. The creature squealed. It had not been a clean strike and it had failed to see the counter attack until the last moment. The scimitar cut through the hard exterior of its thorax, just behind its front legs. Kaziviere had swung it with the desperation of one who knew he had but one chance of survival. The blade cut deep, through vital organs and nerves, crippling the beast. It slid off him, slumping to on the floor. As it went, its claws scratched the flesh on his back, its blood and putrid insides leaving a trail down his body. The creature’s legs curled up as it went into spasm and then lay still.

  He heard a scream and saw that two others beset Nurarna. Unlike the large spider that had attacked him, these were abominations against the very laws of nature itself. The children of chaos resembled both human and spider in their foul ancestry. High up on their heads were two large disc-like eyes, with other pairs extending around their hairless heads like a crown. Their backs were twisted and bloated like hunchbacks, with black and red patterns on them. They had humanlike arms and legs, but also another set of four shiny, clawed limbs that emerged from their bod
ies between the rib cage and pelvis. Their faces were thoroughly inhuman and repulsive, their mouths dominated by huge fangs as they drooled and bubbled.

  She had drawn her short sword but the one behind her had grabbed her arms. That they were male, and their sexual arousal by the capture of their female prey was obvious. Nurarna screamed in horror and pain as her captor’s fiercely strong grip caused the sword to fall from her hand.

  Kaziviere raised his scimitar and took one step forward to face Nurarna’s attackers, but the numbing venom overpowered him. His head spun and there was a rushing sound in his ears. His legs buckled and folded as, dropping his scimitar, he collapsed to the forest floor. He tried to call out but had no voice. He watched as the two arachane bound Nurarna’s arms and legs with a sticky web exuded from their abdomens. Lying still, next to the dead monster, he watched helplessly as Nurarna was hauled away into the forest. He tried to move in vain, but was paralysed. He had failed. His eyelids felt heavy, he sensed movement around him and then all went black.

  ***

  Tamzine had found him, after these long months she had found him and rescued him from that haunted forest. She was naked and wanton. Her hands eagerly removed his clothing and worked at him until he grew painfully hard. She sat astride him, her thighs smooth and cold, and lowered herself onto him. She slid up and down on him, panting in pleasure. He wanted to reach and touch her, but his arms felt so heavy he could barely lift them. He wanted to tell her how he had missed her, how she was his word of power, how she had kept him sane and given him a reason to live, but the words sounded slurred and garbled. She looked down at him and smiled, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Her whole body shimmered and his vision seemed disjointed. The vision of her swayed above him as if he were drunk and the world spun uncomfortably. His stomach heaved as a wave of nausea threatened to overcome him. How had she found him?

  He tried to adjust his position, but his lover had him pinned down. He was on a steep slope and the ground was lumpy and uncomfortable. It snapped and crunched under their combined weights. His hands reached down to the ground seeking to move and his fingertips found something smooth, round, cold and hard. With an icy sense of foreboding, he instantly knew what it was. Nonetheless his fingers were irresistibly drawn to find and trace the orbits of the empty eye sockets and nasal cavity. He quickly drew his hand away and heard the sound of his lover’s sighs and gasps. He heard the skull tumble away down the pile of bones he lay upon. His hand desperately sought a weapon. He found a splintered femur and grasped it. She sighed again and increased the rate of her rhythm as she rode him. She shook her tousled hair, cupped and squeezed her breasts as she smiled down at him, encouraging him on. He knew that when he climaxed he would die.

  She gasped and bubbled; she wiped her mouth again. He looked at her. She was openly drooling; it splashed onto his chest. He felt a familiar burning sensation upon its touch. He tensed and relaxed his arms, striving to bring their strength back, but he could barely lift them yet. He would need her to come closer.

  He pushed his groin upward and against her, as if seeking her depths, and moaned. Smiling and bubbling, she responded by leaning down, as if to kiss him. He slowly raised his arm to bring his bone dagger pointing upward, hidden under his chin. He brought up his other hand to cup the other. She moved closer; he could smell the filthy insect breath. She opened her mouth as it came onto his.

  “Tamzine!” he gasped, as he stabbed the bone with all the strength he could muster, through the mouth and up into the brain cavity of the female arachane.

  Chapter 16

  Her dead weight sagged and sank onto him. Gathering his strength, he heaved and rolled her over to the side. In horror, as the illusion dissolved, he desperately scrambled over the bones, pulling away from her deathly embrace. His vision slowly returned from the venom-induced hallucination and he retched now he saw the true appearance of the arachane that had defiled him. It had glamoured him; for a sweet moment he had been back with Tamzine, but this illusionist was foul beyond measure. She was like the monsters that had dragged away Nurarna. Nurarna! Where was she? For that matter, where was he?

  He lifted his head and looked around. Night had fallen and the full moon shone brightly down, illuminating the place where he had found himself. He was in a deep, wide, pit-like valley surrounded by sheer cliff walls. Behind the pile where the arachane had set him down were broad steps, roughly hewn into the cliff. All around were the skeletons of dead trees that had fallen over the edge from the forest above. Up along the edge of the depression he could see the trees draped in silk nets that shone silver, reflecting the moonshine. Some of the ropes crisscrossed above the pit. The floor of the valley shone white, except it was not the actual valley floor. He realised with mounting horror that the ground was covered with bones upon bones.

  He sensed movement from the beast he had felled, as her limbs began to twitch. Around her head he saw wisps of shadow. He realised that he had seen such a thing before, far away in the cold marshes of the north, as the immortal repaired itself. He looked around for a weapon amongst the heaps of bones and saw the distinctive tunic of an overseer, discoloured with age. He dug urgently with his hands, uncovering the remains and found a belt. He hauled the belt out from under its grim cairn and his eyes flashed in triumph. Attached to it on a frayed leather loop was a rusty axe. He snatched it up and hauled himself upright, willing his unsteady legs to support him. He staggered over to where the abomination was stirring.

  The shadows circled around the arachane’s head as the bone dagger retracted gradually from her mouth. The writhing shadows solidified and fell against the body. Her head snapped up. He raised the axe and chopped at the neck again and again until the hideous head fell from its shoulders. The body slumped back onto the bones, but already wisps of shadow circled, attempting to link the head with the torso. He grabbed the head and put it under his arm to ensure it did not reunite with the foul creature at his feet. Fighting further waves of nausea, he turned from the body. Gripping the axe, he walked to the edge of the bone pile.

  His eyesight was getting sharper as the venom left his system. He looked over the valley between the piles of bleached bones. He quickly fell to his haunches as he saw movement about a hundred yards away. The figures were under a web, from which hung numerous bodies entombed in silk like flies in a spider’s larder. Two of the arachane were standing over a prone dark body. Nurarna! It had to be Nurarna!

  He scrambled down the bone pile. He moved as carefully as he could so as not to start an avalanche of skulls that might alert the two arachane, whose attention was devoted to his companion. Approaching them directly would make too much noise, as he heard bones cracking and skulls crunching underfoot. He threaded his way behind a pile of bones between him and the figures, keeping low. As he rounded the pile he let out a gasp of horror.

  There in front of him, abandoned at the bottom of the heap of skulls and ribs was a man, at least what had once been a man. It was a head and torso. The legs had been eaten away to half way up his thighs, the stumps blackened and wriggling with maggots. Likewise, the arms had been eaten to the elbows and the head partly stripped of skin, half its flesh gnawed away. That it was a man was discernable by the sight of his blackened, engorged manhood. Kaziviere almost vomited anew, as to his disgust, he saw that this wreckage of a man was somehow still alive, chest rising and falling in laboured breaths. Kaziviere realised then that the arachane had used the captured man for sexual gratification and eaten him alive while ensuring that no vital organs were consumed, prolonging the unfortunate man’s agony of existence. He mouthed a silent prayer to the Fiery One in thanks that the arachane who attacked him had not been able to administer a full dose of venom, or this could well have been his fate. Under his loin cloth he felt his previous ardour was finally calming, as the painful engorgement receded. Another effect of the venom, no doubt. He offered another prayer of thanks.

  He knelt by the man, raised his axe and plunged it into his fo
rehead. No one deserved such a fate, not even a man of Acaross. These arachane were no gods, far from it. These filthy demonic vermin would pay. Nurarna! Had the slave girl not suffered enough in her lifetime? It was his fault Nurarna was suffering at the hands of this inhumane filth.

  He edged slowly closer. Nurarna was sobbing, her hands and legs bound by silken ropes, but with her belly exposed. Up above his head he saw women in various stages of pregnancy, bound in a similar fashion, still alive. Others were mummified remains, mere dried husks of what once were humans. He noticed that their stomachs had been ripped open, the arachane hybrids torn from the human hosts that had nurtured their gestation.

  This was the cruel fate the demon scum had for Nurarna. Kaziviere remembered the tales that Nurarna had told him of the spawning of their foul race. They were parasites on humanity; they had been as dead gods and still were, in their present nightmare form. Kaziviere mused as to why they were mating with humans. Nurarna had said that the dead gods had been chained and left in a pit in the forest for decades, where they had been forced to eat invertebrates, causing their undead flesh to change into its present, monstrous form. This place must be the self-same pit, a place of sacred meaning to the arachane, as it was now a foul nursery for their race. The spider that had attacked him had little human traits left. He had mortally wounded it and it had bled. It was not a foul shadow beast like the head of the one whom he carried. More likely it had been some foul, throwback hybrid between arachane and beast. Perhaps, they were no longer content with preying on humans, like their dead god forebears; instead they were forming unholy unions to retain, or perhaps regain a semblance of their lost humanity. Kaziviere smiled to himself, realising the irony. They had shed their mortality, not understanding that mortality was a trait that had made them human. His hand gripped the axe tightly. It was time to give these vermin a lesson in mortality once again.