“These towers, the whole area, it’s all crystal,” Yarek said into his helm radio. “Floor’s made of the same stuff as the towers. Any lookouts around the towers?”
All replied in the negative.
“Then let’s go.”
Yarek rose into a crouch and moved ahead just as other silent black-clad Reavers rose from the undergrowth to join him. They gathered under one spire, then dashed toward another. One Reaver dropped a heavy backpack and produced one of many remote-activated charges.
Yarek studied the crystal tower under which they hid. It was difficult to see through the thing’s fractured surface, but he was almost sure that he could see something moving within. Was it some kind of dark fluid? Yarek felt unsettled, as if there was something that he was missing. The Reaver with the backpack set the charge, nodded, and Yarek said, “Keep moving, but fan out.” In pairs they ran in a crouch, weapons held ready.
They crept among the twisted spires for a while, then Yarek said, “Team two, you see the fighting?”
“Yes, sir,” came the reply. “You want us to start shooting?”
“Yeah. You guys run distraction on those boys while we take care of these towers. We’ll soon find out if they’re important or not.”
* * *
The three Reavers who made up the second team crept from their hideouts. In the distance they saw mist coiling and parting in a wild frenzy as dogmen and ghouls clashed in a great mound of slippery dead. They looked like ants building a wall of their own corpses, with axes crashing into pale heads and ghouls jamming spears into howling madmen. One Reaver with a grenade launcher saw the Khan standing as still as stone, arm and finger extended, his face strangely lax. A teammate slapped his shoulder, so he turned away from his two companions and made his way to a position further back so that he could provide cover once the distraction began to work too well.
The other two Reavers raised their automatic rifles, peered down the sights, and blasted into the ghouls from behind. Knobby heads sprayed open and scab-ridden backs gave way to torrents of black blood. The heaving mass of ghouls seemed not to notice the dead falling around them, so the Reavers ejected empty clips taped alongside full clips, reloaded, and continued blasting. None bothered to look back to see the Reavers firing, and fresh reserves of ghouls continually raced forward to fill any gaps.
The Reavers reloaded and continued their assault. Finally several dozen ghouls turned as one and cast their glowing yellow eyes onto their attackers.
“Now we got their attention,” said a Reaver. “Haul ass!”
They ran, then heard the foliage behind them tearing up as a hundred or more ghouls ran behind them, shrieking insanely.
“Reaver Four!” one hollered into his radio. “Get ready with them grenades, man,’cause it’s about to hit!”
* * *
Reaver Four, who had left his companions only moments before, ran to a grassy hill overlooking the lowland where his companions planned to go, a place where they could trap hundreds of ghouls in a firestorm. Leaning pink towers hummed behind him, and seemed to throb within the mist. He ignored them as he prepped his grenade launcher.
Something hard smacked into his helm and shattered his visor. The Reaver fell back, rolled onto his belly, and raised his sidearm before he came to a rest. He saw nothing. Remembering that the enemy had no guns of their own, he wondered if a friendly bullet had strayed from the battle. He yanked the helm from his head and cast it aside. The scent of rich, green grass mixed with his own stinking beard.
He saw someone creeping through the lowland, right into the kill zone. He whirled, aimed, and saw a young girl with greasy black hair and a flat, dead face. She was naked, hunched over in a primal crouch as she stared at him. Just when he heard his companions shouting from the helm radio nearby, the girl flexed the muscles along her thighs, his nostrils dilated – and he realized that she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.
“Come here!” he said, waving to her. “Don’t be afraid! I’ll protect you!”
As she approached, he was mesmerized by her swaying hips, and he realized that some things in life were far more important than a shouting radio.
* * *
The two Reavers ran, shouting, “Grenades! Grenades!” into their helm radios as they rounded a bend leading to the kill zone. They were horrified that they were receiving no assistance against the hundreds of ghouls directly behind them, but they soon saw the reason. At the top of a hill overlooking the kill zone, Bilatzailea crouched over their dead companion, her face and arms and chest covered in blood as she picked through organs pulled from his body. She turned to them. Because their helms blocked out her pheromonal cloud, they saw her as she truly was: thin lips pulled back from jagged fangs, heavy brow contorted with fury, breasts scarred with artificial nipples, and legs heaving with inhuman musculature.
“Hell!” shouted one of the Reavers. He stopped and fired his rifle at the demon. Bilatzailea leaped backwards with such force that her top half was painfully jerked about by her powerful legs, then she crashed into the tall foliage of the woods and disappeared.
The ghouls rounded the bend. Both Reavers were trapped in their own killing grounds. They braced themselves and fired, dropping at least a dozen ghouls who were trampled underfoot. When the subhuman beasts crashed into them, they beat at the grasping limbs with the butts of their rifles. Then they fell into the screaming mass, where it was dark and hot and full of claws, then they knew no more.
* * *
Jago ran up the side of a tree and grasped an overhanging branch in one hand. He saw a solid wall of stabbing, hacking dogmen pushing against a flood of shrieking ghouls. He grasped his wide, heavy dagger in his free hand, then immediately threw himself on a pile of bobbing, pale heads and shoulders. It was a wonder to him that, only a few moments before, he had been terrified and unable to hold his dagger in his sweat-slick hands. Now, he barked and lashed out at the heads of the enemy, slicing open faces and necks. The crowd parted and he slipped down to the floor; the battle frenzy was upon him, demanding that he thrash about and stab and kick the enemy. He no longer feared death. He no longer even knew his own name.
Before he even hit the wet floor, he threw himself into a tightly-packed cluster of ghouls. He punched a ghoul’s face so hard that the skull collapsed into a splattered mess. He saw the dagger in his hand, realized he’d forgotten it was there, then jammed it into another ghoul’s throat. The stench, the spray, was maddening. A spear shot up beside him and he spun about, avoiding the thing as he bashed an elbow into the spearman’s throat, twisting its head about with a resounding crack.
The horde of ghouls parted to be free of him. Those he had killed earlier, who were still standing in death, fell all around him. Jago fell to his knees and slipped about in the tide of black blood. He felt spear shafts smacking him as he rose, but they felt like playful slaps in the rush of adrenaline. He gripped a spear shaft and jerked a ghoul toward him, more in an effort to regain his own balance than anything else, then raked his dagger across eyes, mouth, and throat as an afterthought. He tasted something like rancid skunk as opened veins sprayed into his mouth before the ghoul keeled over.
The ghouls suddenly shifted to fill a gap further down the killing line. Before Jago could rush back into the battle, he heard a terrible roar that ended in an ear-splitting shriek. Further down the line, he saw no less than three dogmen fly overhead, knocked aside like rag dolls. Moving bodies parted just enough for Jago to see the thing: A hulking reptile in the shape of a man, seven feet tall when not hunched over, and covered with scales of red and black. The monster roared again, baring shining fangs, and when it swung its massive fist it easily sent a handful of dog warriors crashing to the ground. A large dog warrior ran up behind the demon and slammed an axe into the back of its head with enough force to split a man in half; instead, the axe bounced away from the demon’s scales, numbing the dogman’s hands. The lizard devil blinked, then swung about and back-handed the dog such
that its head bounced about on shattered neck. The dogman was dead before he hit the killing grounds.
Any seditious thought that Nilem had massaged into Jago’s brain fled at the sight of the demon’s destruction. He immediately turned and ran past his fighting brothers until he came to the Khan. Once outside of the battle, he could feel the ache in his limbs, the pain of dozens of wounds, and the burning in his lungs.
“Khan!” Jago shouted. “Khan! A devil! A giant red devil is-”
But the Khan only stared and pointed at nothing.
“Khan! Khan!” he shouted, but there was no response. Finally he muttered to himself, “Is the Khan really that weak?”
* * *
“Long ago, in the beginning, there were many mothers and many children.”
Wodan was not sure when it happened, but Zamael had changed forms. He was now a tall, thin figure in a flowing black robe. His white mask seemed small in proportion, and partly hidden behind a dark hood. They were no longer in the forest, but in a dull, gray wasteland. Wind pulled ragged sheets of mist across the dead landscape. Wodan was neither hot nor cold. He was sure that the demon was inside of his mind, controlling his perception.
“Every house had its own way, its own art, its own story to tell. Every child was connected to his mother. What the child knew and felt, so too did the mother. So there was perfect harmony within each house.”
Whenever Zamael said the word house, Wodan could feel the demon’s meaning shifting in his mind. House and home sounded closer to hive in his ears, as if the ways of demons could not be easily translated for human understanding.
“But there was a Mother of mothers,” Zamael continued. “She was the oldest of our kind, the first. She alone had secrets. She alone had knowledge of a world that existed before our kind. And She grew very powerful with age.”
“What is she?” said Wodan.
“None can know. None can ever know! To know Her in full, to look upon Her face, is to be destroyed. How can I make you understand? Even her youngest children make your kind quiver with fear. All rational sense leaves you. You want only to run and hide, to do anything but understand. What is the Mother of mothers? She is the Flesh Queen, the Grand Mother, the Lord of Hosts and a messiah who closed one age and began another. Legends trail in the wake of the hem of Her garment as She passes. With her right hand She grants immortality to any species of Her choosing, and with Her left she brings final darkness upon those unworthy. She prunes the Tree of Life itself!”
“Why bother to tell me this?” said Wodan. “My mind is made up. I know why I’m here.”
Zamael ignored him. “It was custom, among our people, that any mother old enough should give up her life. In a great ritual of death, an old mother would give up her life and her experiences to her daughters, so that the people could remain strong, fresh, young… and eternal. More time was granted to the Grand Mother because she was the first. She had more to teach her children than any other.
“But even her time to take part in the ritual of death came. Oh, you should have seen the host gathered in the dark! Daughters and children arrayed in all their glory, all singing and giving veneration to the Grand Mother who gave them all life! But when the ritual began…”
Zamael twitched strangely, as if fighting some compulsion.
“When the ritual began, the Grand Mother gave us… a new truth. She said that She had many daughters, and many children by many daughters… but those other perspectives had resulted in too much complexity. Our culture was fractured, our power was fragmented, by unwarranted and hostile points of view. We were broken, and only She could put us back together.
“I am old, little one. I am very old. I was there, in person. I had grown godlike in power, and would preside over the death ceremony. I was there when She interrupted the ritual of death, and when several daughters tried to restrain her out of a sense of mercy…”
“The old crone fought back, didn’t she?” said Wodan.
Zamael twitched again, then said, “Violently so. It was the beginning of a civil war among our people, a war in dark heaven down below. While you humans thought the few of us on the surface, the young who scampered about in play, were like monstrous gods, you had no idea that the vast majority of us were in the middle of an unimaginable war that spanned hundreds of years, perhaps thousands, far beneath your gaze. Hive turned against hive, cousin against cousin, mother against mother. Champions rose and fell, unknown to your pathetic kind. It was not even known that a mother could die, so powerful were they. Some were imprisoned, others had their eggs poisoned within them, others were torn apart and scattered, alive but fractured.
“I fought for my mother against the Grand Mother and her children. I sucked in brain matter and spat out death. At my peak, my engorged mass was covered in hundreds of humans who crawled about, muttering prayers and existing only to tend my sores and dispose of my waste. I was a great god-warrior. Some even thought that my strength could rival Her own.
“But it was not to be. The Grand Mother grew in strength once more. Her divine body learned a way to absorb a daughter and annihilate the very soul. None could stand against Her. None ever will. One by one the rival hives were destroyed. Even loyal daughters who stood with the Grand Mother were destroyed as well, and their children hunted down like animals.
“Only I was spared. I am the only god who is a grandson to the Grand Mother.”
Wodan felt an impression on his awareness. He could feel Zamael bending over and throwing up an awful, nauseating river of brain matter while another stood over him shrieking in triumph. Wodan could feel overwhelming agony and a sense of weakness, stupidity, and failure as Zamael was forced to admit defeat in exchange for having his life spared by a creature of inconceivable power and cruelty.
“Why were you spared?” said Wodan. “Why bother to keep you around?”
Wodan felt both resentment and loyalty radiating from Zamael’s shuddering form. “Perhaps I was too similar to her. Perhaps she wanted the pain of the conquered to live on. But I was forced to spit out my tremendous mass of brains. I shrank to my present size, and became a shadow of my former power.”
Wodan did not know how he could leave this strange place, or get the demon out of his mind, but he stifled his fear and said, “Demon, did you tell me all of that to make me fear you, or feel sorry for you?”
“Oh, brave little monkey!” Zamael spat. “I tell you these things to show you that the Grand Mother knows mercy. She can extend mercy to you.” Zamael waited for the words to sink in. Wodan blinked, and in an instant it seemed as if they stood on the edge of a cliff. Wodan was disoriented by the sudden change, but forced himself not to fall. He could see small, walled cities in the distance. Dark smoke hung over flaming rooftops. Strange black mounds oozed across the distant landscape.
“We have cleaned house,” said Zamael. “Now Her children, my uncles, have come together to wipe out your kind. A few will be allowed to remain. Do you understand? You cannot even hope to defeat the meager forces I have brought together here in imitation and adoration of Her great host. How can you hope to stand against them?”
“I’ll be fine,” said Wodan, swallowing his dread as he watched a city disappear under a writhing black mass.
This isn’t really happening, he said to himself. He’s making it seem as if they’ve already won. So far, they’ve only moved against Hargis. There’s still time. There has to be!
“Oh no, there’s no time!” said Zamael, crouching over him from behind and extending his hands toward the smoke-blackened horizon. “There is only the hope that She will show mercy. Not to you, understand – but to your children.”
“My children?”
“Yes! Have you understood nothing? There can be nothing for you, but we can take a drop of your seed – just a drop! – and grant your children immortality, and a place, a home, in the world to come! Why, little one, I am living proof that Her mercy is without limit!”
Zamael pressed one hand to Wodan�
��s back, seemingly to comfort him but also giving the impression that he could throw him from the cliff.
Finally Wodan turned to the strange mask hovering only inches from his face. “I appreciate the offer,” said Wodan. “And one day, I will go to your Grand Mother.”
Zamael’s head turned slightly.
“And when I find her,” said Wodan, “I’ll leave a trail of dead behind me. I’ll find her and I’ll choke the life from her, which is all the mercy she deserves.”
With a terrifying wail, the black-shrouded figure flew at Wodan like a sea of dark talons and gaping mouths. In terror he felt himself falling from the face of the cliff with darkness blasting him on all sides, raking and rending, tearing his limbs free with hateful weapons beyond his comprehension.
* * *
“All charges set, sir!” said a Reaver.
Reavers crouched in the shadows of the crystal lair. “Okay,” said Yarek. “Let’s get ready to move.” Yarek studied the crystal towers once more. Phosphorescent tracers rose and dipped along alien liquid channels. He glanced at the floor. Something nagged at him. There was more liquid, or some solid mass, deep beneath the glass. He knew that he was missing something.
In any case, he thought, whatever this place is, it must be important to them. Setting off the charges will hurt them. That’s all that matters.
“Sir,” said a Reaver, leaning against a tower. “I see movement.”
Yarek looked about, distracted. “Who’s missing?”
“Reaver Seven here with Three. We’re still in the towers, sir.”
“Get ready to move, then... on my... signal...”
“Sir?”
A Reaver near Yarek shouted, “Demons! Demons!” and Yarek whirled, saw reptilian forms slinking about, green with wild feathery-manes. The Reavers opened fire all around. Yarek saw one near, too near, beady eyes boring into him as it charged. Yarek raised his rifle and dived backwards as the thing leaped with jaws wipe open. Yarek laid on the trigger in mid-air and blasted out the back of the thing’s throat and head, then fell and slid along the smooth floor as the demon crashed into the ground near him, convulsing and spewing blood.
Demonworld Book 5: Lords of the Black Valley (Demonworld series) Page 13