Blood and Madness

by Michael Clement

The ends of the connections festered and boiled. Someone had isolated the Lady of IronHold.

  This… all of this… wasn’t an accident.

  It was an assassination attempt.

  Suddenly, I saw a vision of Azlin and another woman, falling out of a rip in space… directly in front of the locomotive. The Lady of IronHold had seen the light and heard the roar of the engine. Then… agony had ripped through her skin as it struck her.

  A fucking train had slammed into her… and her slave. And, she had survived. I couldn’t believe it, and I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t seen and felt her memories. They were unmistakable. I could feel the steel of the engine slam into her. Hell, I could smell the train’s burning coal spill out all around her body.

  Something had been manacled to the chain that had fallen from her hands.

  Visions of… breasts and sex permeated that memory. Warmth. Safety.

  And Desire.

  Not desire with a little D. This was something more… fulfilling.

  The scent of an excited female filled my thoughts. It was so strong that it was almost impossible to come from one creature. Instead of repelling me, it caught my mind like a child snatches up an ant.

  And… I saw… a tight ass that had just enough flesh on it to be plump, but not fat... along with the hips of a goddess...

  Oh, and Her Kiss.

  It was soft, with just the right amount of wetness. Her tongue…

  Elrinaith.

  That name made my body clench… and I felt myself grow so hard that I wanted to come.

  But, she hadn’t given me permission yet. Clawing at the ground, I wanted to fuck any hole just so I could get enough friction to climax.

  But, the succubus hadn’t given me permission yet.

  I moaned, as her tongue slipped into my mouth, tormenting me with a desire that made shivers climb up my spine.

  My erection strained against my pants. It was so hard that I was sure its rock-like texture would shatter under the stress.

  Suddenly, I could see Elrinaith kneeling in front of me studying me with her big blue eyes. Hair, the color of midnight, fell down her back, while dark black horns coiled on her head.

  Her horns had been made to be handholds, to better control her… mouth.

  Tenderly, Elrinaith reached up and caressed my throbbing…

  Stop.

  I forced her away from me, exiling the memories from my mind. I only had minutes to save Azlin. Already, I could see the edges of her mind growing dark.

  Her sigils--her arcane bubbles--were all dimmed and faded, drained and useless. Azlin had used her last strength to try to master me. No wonder she had failed. Even with my tiny number of bubbles, right now, I was stronger than her.

  Usually, my spell pierced the closest bubble and punctured it like a wet grapefruit, slicing it open.

  But… all her sigils were dissolving and washing away. Her mana vault was stuttering and spitting like a dying engine; which it was.

  I had nothing to latch onto. My spell sat in my hand, throbbing like an unfulfilled stinger; a black lance with no target.

  Frantic, I flowed through her dying mind, searching frantically for…

  The Last Bubble.

  No… that was wrong.

  It was her first, arcane bubble. The one that had formed when… her father had taught her magic.

  It floated over her mana vault, glowing with a crimson glare, ancient beyond belief.

  Five hundred and twenty-three years.

  I stared at it in awe. Azlin had been born before the Darkness covered the Earth... when men had ruled the world with an iron grip, and the goblins hid in shadows.

  Raising the black harpoon of my spell over my head, I thrust it into the crimson sphere. It sank in with a hiss, as Azlin’s dying mind fought me every step of the way.

  I pushed forward, but I couldn’t quite get it to pierce her arcane heart fully.

  “No…” Azlin groaned and stammered.

  “It is the only way!” I screamed at her. “Serve me… or die!”

  I sounded like an asshole. I knew it, and she knew it.

  “Death…” Azlin decided. Her mind began to grow dark, as all her other spheres disintegrated, blowing away in a wind that was roaring all around us. Death was coming for the Deathless.

  Sins came with punishment.

  In the distance, I heard the shriek of a real demon, a messenger of Hell itself.

  A Sorceror was dying, and her bill had come due.

  Fuck that.

  My girls had been kidnapped.

  The woman who had done it had planned all of this out. She had used Azlin to derail the train, hoping to kill her as well. Two birds with one stone.

  The gold on the train had to be involved, somehow.

  And, it wasn’t a coincidence that Brynn, Scion of the House of the Serpent, was returning to Ashmouth on the train.

  There were no such things as coincidences. It was one of my family’s creeds.

  And, so was another.

  Failure is not an option.

  Screaming, I pressed harder, willing the black-tipped sphere to pierce her innermost soul, and make her mine.

  Suddenly, I felt Taesa press up against me.

  It was the body of the male zombie--the doctor--but it was still Taesa beneath his flesh. And, her touch filled me with power.

  Then, Taesa did something unthinkable. Mist flowed out of the doctor’s body, leaving only enough to continue to control him. But, a considerable portion flowed into Azlin.

  Taesa’s barbed tentacles of mist poured into the Lady of IronHold’s body, latching to her spine, heart, and mind. It sank in deeply, penetrating her flesh with ease, now that it was undefended.

  That physical connection with Azlin made all the difference.

  My barbed spell-spear sank all the way into the crimson orb, spearing it like a fish.

  Azlin thrashed in pain, fighting the curse, as the surrounding darkness grew until only my mental construct remained in the light.

  This wasn’t working. Even though I had caught her, Azlin’s body was growing cold.

  But, the Elf’s body was warm.

  Rearing up, I yanked Azlin’s soul out of her dying corpse. It wiggled in the air like a fish out of water. Anger radiated from her soul as she thrashed and fought against me.

  The Lady of IronHold would rather die than serve me.

  Too fucking bad.

  I slammed the spell spear down into the Elf’s mind, sinking the barbed prong deep into her flesh.

  One second.

  Two seconds.

  Three.

  The Elf sat up with a startled gasp of breath.

  - 6 -

  “You fucking bastard,” Azlin hissed with the lips of an elf.

  I opened my physical eyes.

  The Elven woman was glaring at me.

  Then, I felt my spell pull tight, and… settle.

  Calmness flooded her eyes, as the Dark Lady of the Malignancy withered away into nothingness. Her anger. Her personality. All of it just dried up and flaked away, to be replaced with something new.

  The Elf leaned back on the gold and stared at me with eyes full of love.

  Dammit.

  I hated that.

  I needed to reverse that rune on my spell. It was… beyond evil to capture someone’s mind and soul, and then wipe their memories clean, making them who I needed them to be.

  I hated it.

  But, it kept happening.

  When your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

  Then, the light of… self… flooded back into her eyes.

  With a snarl of rage, Azlin woke up and grabbed our mental connection with her mind. With a snap… she ruptured it.

  The most intense headache that I have ever felt flooded my mind. Screaming, I fell to my knees as waves of pain radiated through my soul. I could feel the severed end of our connection flapping in the wind, gushing power, and soul energy into the ether.

&nb
sp; When she had canceled her own spell, it had been planned, and the backlash had still been awful.

  This time… I hadn’t snuffed out the spell.

  She had ripped it to pieces.

  Moaning, I grabbed my head and shrieked the words that activated the spells that Blister had created. I had already eaten the Earth’s life around me. Crawling away from the Malignant, I searched for more life.

  There…

  Buried underground.

  A Ley Line.

  Blister’s spell latched onto it and fed directly from the powerful connection. He had created his spell to search out a power source, any power source, to keep me alive. Because, if I died, then no one would be his buffer. His enemies could attack him directly.

  Warmth flowed into my skin, wrapping around it and flowing upward to my head. Twisting, I kept my eyes on Azlin who seemed to be attempting to heal herself as well. Heat hit my face and centered around the broken soul connection. I felt it begin to cauterize and then seal up like a baby’s umbilical cord.

  It took so much power that the earth below my hands began to burn. Corpses of ants, bugs, and worms ignited beneath the ground, burning with an unnatural hellish fire. I had killed them earlier. Now even the remains of their bodies turned into ash.

  The Line fed me strength and energy. Crashing in the train car had injured more than I had realized. I felt energy wrap around a nearly broken rib, several cuts and abrasions, and the remains of my concussion.

  Azlin stood up first. “You fucking, Goblin. I’m going to kill you.”

  The Elf pulled out a long, wicked dagger.

  “I’m going to gut you, and then…”

  A javelin flashed out of the night, slamming right into her back. Its tip was covered in a blue glow that snapped and sparked like a butane torch.

  Azlin shrieked and fell to her knees, clutching at her back.

  Thump.

  A second javelin lit up the darkness on top of the wrecked passenger car. It burned as bright as the first.

  Then… another.

  And, another.

  Goblins stood on top of the cars, holding the sparking blue javelins.

  “Kneel.”

  It wasn’t a request.

  It was a demand.

  Their skin was deep blue, almost black. Milk white hair fell like a lion’s mane fell down their backs. Crimson eyes, the color of freshly spilled blood, glared at us.

  They weren’t the same sort of Goblin that my father was. These were Maradrogs; Goblins of the Mind. Their shamans...

  All along the roof of the damaged train javelin-torches ignited.

  Fuck.

  There were a lot of them.

  Too many to be a coincidence.

  This had to be part of the assassination attempt. If the train didn’t kill Azlin, the Goblins had been sent to finish her off.

  I looked over at all the golden loot.

  And… that had to be their payment.

  Azlin screamed in agony, but she couldn’t remove the spear. I could smell it roasting her new flesh.

  Dammit.

  She smelled good.

  There were too many to fight.

  I knelt.

  - 7 -

  The Goblins began to stamp the butts of their javelins on the top of the train cars, making a rattling, metallic thumping noise that grew to become an ear-shattering attack of almost unbelievable volume. Then their feet began to pound as well.

  Finally, wails that sounded like tortured children began to caterwaul out of their mouths. It was so much sound that I wanted to run and hide. It was almost worse than Azlin’s fear magic.

  My pale witch cowered next to me. I saw her hands twitch and jerk as she fought to not draw her guns.

  Taesa would need hundreds of rounds to kill them all. And, she just didn’t have them.

  Azlin fell to the ground, twisting and turning as she tried to remove the javelin. But, it was jammed in their good.

  “Save me,” she hissed. “Or, your bitches die.”

  Suddenly, the Goblins went quiet. It was so dramatic and abrupt that my ears couldn’t believe that they had stopped for several seconds. Echoes of their screams still lived in my head.

  I looked out at them, as they waited with expectation.

  This wasn’t good.

  The Blues only worshipped one thing... their shamans.

  Speak of the Devil, and she will appear…

  A tall thin Gobliness materialized between two of the railroad cars. She was painfully anorexic. I could see every rib and bone in her body poking out. Long white hair hung down her back, and her eyes were too big and luminous. Black fingernails that looked like jagged claws stuck out from her body like tentacles, tapping an unheard lullaby to themselves.

  She was the tallest female Goblin that I had ever seen. Around her neck was a golden torc that glowed with its own radiance, illuminating her bone-white skin.

  I had to look at her twice before I could believe it.

  She was an albino Blue. I had never heard of such a creature.

  When she took another step forward, I swallowed hard. Her forehead bulged and throbbed with a life of its own. The fucking thing looked like someone had slit open the skin below her hairline and had pushed a live kitten into the gap. Then, they had pulled the skin back together, stitching it with a child’s messy understanding of surgery.

  And, the kitten had survived the process.

  Her voice walked before her.

  “I am called The Hollow Bride…”

  All the Goblins knelt and bowed their heads.

  “She Speaks…” they all chanted. The noise echoed through the dark behind me, and it felt like even the cold itself had stopped to pay attention.

  The only noise now was Azlin’s sobbing. The once Lady of IronHold was twisting on the ground, unable to remove the javelin that pierced her new body.

  The tall albino Blue outstretched her hand and then jerked it upward.

  The javelin ripped out of the injured elf, spraying me with blood. It floated in the air, hovering like an angry bee, waiting to plunge its stinger into whoever was stupid enough to draw its attention.

  The Goblin Shaman stepped toward us, entering the light fully.

  Like Azlin’s old body, she wasn’t wearing a top. Dried up old tits stared at us like corpses at a funeral. I couldn’t take my eyes off of them. It was like watching a train wreck. They were that nasty.

  “The soul of the Mournflower of IronHold lives within her,” she said, pointing at the Elf.

  Then, the Gobliness smiled with teeth that were black and rotting in her mouth.

  “I hate that fucking name,” Azlin growled, reminding me of Mary. The Dark Lady of IronHold sat up, ignoring the fact that she was still bleeding profusely from the wound in her back.

  Then, she spat on the ground. “And, if you think I’m going to call you the Hollowed Bride, you’re fucking insane… Shole.”

  All the Goblins began to growl and stamp their feet. Shole was a racial slur, like Hob, except worse. It meant corpse fucker and shit eater all wrapped up in one.

  The Hollowed Bride growled, then pointed at Azlin. “Be Silent. You would be dead if that foolish male hadn’t saved you.”

  Turning to me, she added. “Why are you here, Son of Mog?”

  That was the problem with Columbia.

  I was never, Bazal.

  I was always, The Son of Mog.

  Even at nine, I had realized that if I stayed in Columbia with my father, instead of leaving with my mother, that I would never be… me. I would always be in his shadow.

  I would always be, ‘His’ son.

  Never, Bazal.

  Then, she dropped a land mine on my thoughts.

  “Are you here to free him?”

  The words slithered through my soul and bit at the most tender, vulnerable portions of it. My father had always annoyed me. He knew things that would happen before they happened. I could never lie, cheat, or deceive him.