by Greg Chapman
Just when the monks seemed to have the upper hand, a Skiift beast, half rhinoceros and half crocodile, slammed a monk to the ground and squashed it to pulp beneath its enormous hooves and like a switch being turned off, the soul connected to the Stygma shattered with a glistening spark.
In the centre of all this chaos, the two leaders of the vicious tribes clashed head on. Re-Kul, the largest of the Skiift, squawked and snapped at Shal-Ekh’s thread link, but the monk prophet’s link was anything but tenuous and he easily leapt out of the way of Re-Kul’s piercing beak. Re-Kul swung his gargantuan bulk about one hundred and eighty degrees, spider legs stomping and crushing the surrounding rock to scoop up the fragments with its tentacles. The rocks became bullets as Re-Kul scattered them into the fray. Two monk bodies were crushed, but their leader somehow managed to survive intact.
“This is pointless!” Shal-Ekh’s soul said.
Re-Kul’s voice was tainted by the cry of the raven. “Then surrender! You are outnumbered!’”
Shal-Ekh’s soul sneered and closed in over Re-Kul’s back to pluck feathers, black and bloody from their roots. Shrieking, Re-Kul’s tentacles whipped out, this time grabbing hold of the leg of Shal-Ekh’s shell body. Re-Kul lifted the body off the ground and entangled it in more of its own greasy tentacles.
“Withdraw or I will tear you apart!” Re-Kul said.
“If it be Okin’s will then do it!”
“Your prophecies are false!”
From behind them, a Skiift beast, part cougar, part snake and part ape fell, its abdomen ripped open, intestines dangling. Its dead weight collided with Re-Kul’s frame, knocking him off balance and inadvertently releasing Shal-Ekh from his grip.
Free once more, Shal-Ekh gathered himself and soared to latch onto Re-Kul’s head and neck. The Skiift leader tossed and turned, desperate to shake off the Stygma prophet. In his bid to be free, Re-Kul called to his Skiift brethren:
“Attack the Sederunt! Bring the gates down!”
The line of Phagun minions shivered at those words and tried to stay together. They gasped as half a dozen Skiift, mish-mashes of bird, fly, fish and fur, all turned to roar at them. Yet there was bravery among the Phagus soldiers, as they all drew their swords, ready to defend.
The beasts charged, a fish-scaled mantis and a tiger with dragonfly wings and mouthparts, closing in, spitting and shrieking. The ground beneath the Phagus soldiers’ feet rocked and rolled.
“Stay in formation! Don’t break the line!” one said.
The mantis skittered across the blood-soaked ground, its razor-sharp pincers ready to attack. The tiger hovered over the soldiers, waiting for the right moment to pounce.
“Do not move!” the brave Phagun said again.
But it hardly mattered if they had moved or not. The mantis beast leaped through the air, tiny wings sprouting out in mid-air to carry it the extra distance. It came down right on top of the Phagun line, slicing two of the soldiers clean in half with its forelegs. Naturally, the line of defence broke and the surviving members of the Phagun soldiers fought only to save their own lives.
The tiger-fly that had been waiting saw its chance and swooped down to latch onto the brave Phagun warrior, crushing his upper body between its powerful jaws. Another soldier turned and ran back to the gates, fear-flooded blood pounding in his ears. He slammed the pommel of his sword on the stone.
“Reinforcements! We need reinforcements!”
But his pleas couldn’t be heard through the thick stone. Soon though the sound of Skiift beasts crashing their way through the gates would be deafening—and undeniable.
The Phagun soldiers succumbed to the maws of the Skiift horde and Vorn wanted to retch. In all his life he had never seen anything so horrific and that had significance for someone who had once received a fleeting glimpse of hell in his childhood.
The touch of Niles pistol on the back of his neck quickly brought Vorn back to his senses and the task at hand.
“Hurry up Vorn!” Niles said, pressing the barrel in deep.
“All right Niles—there is no need for such brutality.”
“Just do it—get Colton up and moving. I want some of their hides before they’re all dead!”
Vorn leaned over and clicked his thumb and forefinger in front of the bounty hunter’s blank stare, he was still in a trance.
“It will take me a few minutes Niles—you must be patient!”
“Just hurry up!”
Vorn peered into Bryce’s eyes, searching for the imprint he’d left on them—his spell. Finding it, he dropped his voice to a whisper.
“Mr Colton,” he said. “Can you hear me? It’s Gerhard. I need you to listen to me carefully. I know you are still in pain, but Niles needs you—no, I need you to perform—one last task.” There was nothing in Bryce’s expression to indicate he understood, but Vorn knew that in the deepest part of his mind, Bryce comprehended his words. “I need you to go out into the battlefield—out there.” Vorn turned to his side to show Bryce the horror. There was still no response from him, not even a blink.
“Does he even know what you’re saying?” Niles said.
“Yes—now please be quiet Niles!” he turned back to Bryce. “When you go out there, I will be in control of you. I’ll make sure you’re safe, but I need you to acquire some of the…flesh from the creatures like Nero—”
Niles jabbed his pistol into Vorn’s back. “And the hides of the other ones too—make sure he gets me some of those!”
“It’s too risky Niles—he’ll be killed—”
Niles struck Vorn over the right eye with his gun and blood flowed freely.
“You fucking make sure he gets me a piece of all them, got it? Or I’ll burn that book you need!”
The Book of Lost Names: Vorn’s greatest desire.
“Alright, alright, Niles—I’ll tell him!” he touched the wound on his forehead and winced.
“You know Vorn—for all your spells and powers, you’re still such a fucking pussy!”
Beneath Vorn’s debonair façade, he was gritting his teeth, wishing Niles didn’t have the upper hand.
“I will do what you ask Niles, just don’t strike me again!’ Vorn brought his gaze back to Bryce who sat awaiting his commands. “Now Mr Colton, take up your weapon and get to your feet.”
Bryce reached down without looking to retrieve his revolver. He loaded it with six fresh rounds and then effortlessly, he stood, legs apart, back rigid and eyes forward on the chaos of the battlefield.
Vorn stayed huddled on the ground. “Now, you will only hear my voice, even when I am not near—do you understand?”
Bryce gave a slow nod of his head.
“Good. Now walk with courage and fulfil the tasks that have been given to you.”
And with that, the bounty hunter walked into the epicentre of destruction.
Bryce’s head felt hollow, his body so light he thought he might float away. It was a feeling like intoxication, without the drunkenness. He no longer had any control over his own actions, yet it didn’t faze him.
The epic slaughter playing out before him didn’t frighten him either. Beasts, behemoths that would have found pride of place in the Old Testament, charged and reared, tumbled and died with mighty crashes. Ghosts twirled in the air, the iridescent blue of bug zappers, bright and cold. The soul filaments, wearing the thinnest of human forms, twirled about in the dark passage, swooping down on the beasts, drawing their blood. Any other man would have run from the sight, run screaming in search of safety and faith, but not Bryce—his legs were not his own.
“Now tread very carefully, Mr Colton,” Vorn said in Bryce’s head, a short-wave communication beyond the eccentricities of physical electricity. “I will navigate you through the battlefield and if you need to defend yourself, I will tell you to do so—now carry on.”
Bryce crouched behind a boulder, taking a moment to allow Vorn to assess the battlefield in search of a path. Some one hundred yards off, a great black dog, serrated
grasshopper legs growing from under its fur, leaped on an eviscerated monk and crushed it.
“Wait for the beast to move on, Mr Colton,” Vorn said in his head. “And then we’ll make a run for it.”
The dog-insect, pleased with its kill, roared triumphantly and turned to leap back into the heart of the battle. The monk’s body, pulverised to resemble little more than a blot of blood and viscera on the ground, tried to summon its soul back to it, but the thread faded to nothing.
“Now go!” Vorn instructed.
Bryce broke into a sprint, weaving between the great boulders and the Skiift dead, passing corpses of grey wolf fur to his left and gleaming iridescent scarab beetle exoskeleton to his right. He ducked and weaved into a shadow as Stygma souls passed overhead, but he was still too far from the gates where the bodies of the Phagun soldiers lay.
“Wait!” Vorn ordered him. “Prepare yourself!”
Bruce stooped and cocked his revolver. As shrieks and howls of dying Skiift soared into the dark, the ground trembled in rolling concussive blasts—of two great stone gates opening.
“There, look—to your right!” Vorn said. Bryce saw another hundred Phagun soldiers spill out from between the gates. These soldiers were battle hardened protectors, their pale flesh adorned with scars. Immediately, the Phaguns were on the attack, hacking at the bodies of the monks and slicing the hides of the Skiift in honed formation.
“They are your prize, Mr Colton!” Vorn said. “Wait for your chance and strike!”
Bryce watched a Phagun warrior scramble up the back of a sleek sabre tooth tiger, melded perfectly with the lower half of an eagle’s body. He sliced open its flesh, shattering one of its enormous vertebrae beneath, but in its death throes, the creature lashed out and tore open the warrior’s chest with a clawed blow.
The bounty hunter dove towards the Phagun warrior’s corpse, huddling in relative refuge behind the tiger-eagle’s deadened shape. He produced a Bowie knife from a sheath on his hip and began to cut away the warrior’s exposed flesh.
“Good—now some of the other creature’s flesh behind you!” Vorn echoed.
Bryce turned to see a shadow looming across his vision, a Phagun warrior had witnessed his desecration and was now glaring at him with fiery hatred.
“Blasphemer!” the warrior said. “Mutilator!”
Thankfully for Bryce, the Phagun’s outburst failed to arouse the attention of any other warriors, who were in the heart of the battle. Casually the bounty hunter pointed his gun and fired. At such a close proximity, the warrior’s head burst in a shower of black blood.
“Move, Mr Colton!” Vorn said. “There are more of them—run!”
But it was too late. Three Phaguns approached, blood soaked and enraged. They slashed at Bryce through his coat, gouging a long wound in his back. Even with his body incapacitated and beyond normal sensation, a cry of pain still escaped his lips. For a moment, another voice—the voice of the demon in his arm, cried for release, but there was no stopping the Phagun assault. They stabbed and hacked at the hit-man until he slumped to the ground—dead.
The hit-man, the human who’d dared engage in a battle that was not his, was quickly forgotten, the Phaguns returning to the battlefield to take on bigger game. The Skiift had lost a third of their army, the Stygma were down to eighty monks, the devastation performed by their souls still palpable and formidable just the same.
Re-Kul and Shal-Ekh continued their life and death struggle, hell-bent on destroying each other—one for Okin, the other for his own misguided selfishness.
Yet fate still had another hand to play, as from the darkest depths of the passages of the under-city, came the remnants of another enemy, the slumbering horde of Lepers, with their lethal touch. When Shal-Ekh glimpsed them, wearing their foul skins, he knew it was Okin’s will that had brought them here this day.
34
Gavenko shuddered beneath the power coursing out of Thomas’ body. Thomas resembled the Sederunt flame, but one billion times intensified, like the sun on the eve of becoming a supernova.
The King looked upon Thomas’ force, centred in his eyes and tried in vain to turn away. Thomas’ eyes were constantly shifting, from the inherit gold of the Phagus, to the lustrous grey of a Phagun who has passed over and then to something else—a colour that Gavenko could not describe, a colour that did not exist.
But the true exponential nature of Thomas’ power came to the fore when he spoke, his voice a chorus of drums, echoing from out of nothing, commanding and soul-wrenching. Gavenko was limp in Thomas’ grasp and his ear-drums threatened to burst.
“Choose King—will you surrender yourself to me, or will you face certain death among your kin?”
Gavenko’s reply was so minuscule it was almost trite: “I don’t…understand.”
“Your kingdom, your city, it is not worthy of you, nor your predecessors,” Thomas told him, his lips moving as slow as time. “This Flesher world and its inhabitants no longer deserve to wear the skins I bestowed upon them—you will all sacrifice those skins—one way or the other. But I am not without mercy—unlike you Gavenko, I offer my children choices.”
“Who do you purport to be…the Great One?” Gavenko said. “You are an exile—with madness on his mind!”
Thomas’ body flared with luminescence and Gavenko shrieked as the light brought him to the brink of blindness.
“I am Okin!” Thomas said. ‘I am your king, your ruler, your saviour and your destroyer! I gave you all this and all you have ever done is misuse it and gone to war over little more than indifference! This shell that I wear now—this Thomas—is the closest thing to perfection in my eyes and he will become the norm—now CHOOSE!”
Gavenko’s vision faded back to normality and he found himself sobbing with terror, like a helpless child trapped by a rabid dog.
“Please…alright…I understand now…I see you, oh, Great One.”
“Choose!” Thomas said, impatience raising his voice another octave.
“I cannot…please…tell me what I have to do.”
Thomas released his grip on Gavenko and the King toppled backwards over the throne, the great seat now simply there to support his exhausted frame.
“You have your choices—stand aside as king or die as King at the hands of your enemies.”
Gavenko fell to his knees, his eyes burning red from tears of defeat.
“But who will rule? Will you rule us? Have you come back to rule over us?” Thomas shook his head with such assuredness.
“Then who?” the King said.
Thomas looked to Stephanie, who stood waiting outside the reach of the Sederunt flame.
“Your daughter,” Thomas said.
Gavenko turned to look at her. “Calea? She is a traitor!”
“No Gavenko—she was only trying to start what I must now finish. She and her son will rule over the city of the Phagus—and in harmony with the other Flesher tribes.”
Gavenko stood and cautiously faced Thomas. “But those tribes are at war—they are no better than I or my people by what you say!”
“Only because one tribe has not yet made its choice and I will offer it to them soon enough, but do not trouble yourself with their choices—you must make yours. Stephanie is the only one suitable for the throne.”
“So what do you expect me to do…just surrender my crown?”
Again Thomas shook his head. “Much more King—much more than your crown.”
Gavenko searched Thomas’ face and then his daughter’s, who was stony-faced. She knew what was coming.
“You want me to…die?” the King said, voice trailing.
“Sacrifice King,” Thomas said. “This world is wrong, it needs to be righted—rewritten—and to do that sacrifices must be made. Thomas has made his sacrifice, Braegan his—even a humble human made her sacrifice for my cause.”
Gavenko looked to the stone floor at his feet, saw how much older it was than his time as king. He looked at his hands, pale and smooth—they
had never known the rigours of battle, yet they had been soaked in so much blood.
“Am I such a failure? Was my rule never worth anything?’ he said
Thomas approached him, his god-like stature suddenly softening.
“You believed you were protecting your people, like Re-Kul and even Shal-Ekh, but you were all blinded by hatred and intolerance. The Lepers are anything but grotesque—still you only ever saw the horror of them and over time, they evolved to fit your idea of them as monsters.
“Your hatred even passed on to your children and now look at what that has brought you Gavenko—one dead son and daughter who keeps the greatest of secrets from you. See your mistakes Gavenko and do the dutiful thing and atone for them.”
Gavenko was losing his hold on himself, his body shaking with fear.
“But must I die for my mistakes…?”
“You wanted to execute your daughter for what you believed were her flaws—you killed her lover for his. There cannot be one rule for them and none for you.”
The King fell to his knees before Stephanie, lowering himself to the ground to grovel before her. His daughter recoiled from him.
“I’m sorry Calea…” Gavenko cried. “I’m so sorry…”
“You need to choose Gavenko,” Thomas said. “Do you surrender yourself, and your crown to Stephanie and your soul to me—or do you wish to fall at the hands of your brethren?”
The King didn’t want to let go of his daughter, of his chance to be a grandfather to a future king, but he’d heard the truth in Thomas’ words—the wisdom in Okin’s judgement of his rule. It had all been a mistake, but the fear of death still clung to his heart. He turned to beg the three-in-one for mercy.
“What if I served Stephanie and her son—as an advisor? I have ruled, poorly yes, but don’t I still have something to offer? Don’t I deserve to get a second chance?”
Thomas reached down and hauled the King to his feet. “You know your choices—now make one!”
Gavenko nodded solemnly and looked to his daughter one final time.
“Do you forgive me, child…can you ever forgive me for what I did?”