by Davis Ashura
Adam’s heart shriveled.
As he approached the citadel, features became evident. First and foremost was the titanic figure seated in a high courtyard upon a raised throne made from the jaws of a dragon. Lord Shet. His sense of power dwarfed all around him: the throne, the palace, the very mountain range. All shrank to the size of midgets in Shet’s presence.
Adam descended and settled his Spirit-self upon the ground in front of Sinskrill’s god. He bowed and did his best to control the fear burbling in his mind.
Shet wore a partial, bone-white mask, one meant to hide the gnarled burns marring his features on the right side of his face. It moved with the motions of his features. Shet gestured and bid Adam stand. “Arise, child, and be welcome.” Shet’s voice rang deep and melodic, and when he smiled, his unruined eye shone falsely warm and fatherly.
Adam wasn’t deceived. Shet was cruel and despotic, and the truth of his essence was most clearly reflected by the masked desecration ruining the right side of his face, a true reflection of his nature.
“What news do you bring from Sinskrill?” Shet asked.
Adam cleared his throat. “In the months since Arylyn’s attack . . .”
“An attack made possible by your own slovenly lack of preparation,” Shet chided in the warm voice of a father instructing his errant child.
Adam dipped his head in acknowledgment. “Yes, my lord, but we’ve taken steps to earn revenge upon your enemies.” Adam spoke in what he hoped was a firm tone, one without the slightest hint of quaver. “We’ve rebuilt the ranks of the mahavans by enacting your instructions. The Spear restores those who were previously drones.”
“Your training of these once-drones consists of . . .” Shet trailed off.
“No different than what we’ve always done,” Adam replied. “The drones are hardened and tempered in the Crucible. They’re made strong, or they’re broken.”
“And if broken, I expect they’re reforged.” Shet’s words were a statement rather than a question.
Adam nodded. “If they fail again, we strip them a second time, and the pain of the second such punishment is far worse than the original such judgment. It acts as an excellent means of concentrating their minds. We then restore and reforge them a second time, giving them a third attempt to achieve the rank of mahavan.”
“The failure rate?”
“Less than five percent,” Adam answered, “and those who fail twice are decimated, one in ten are hurled from the Judging Line atop the Servitor’s Palace.” Adam managed a faint grin, a forced sentiment of pleasure that he didn’t feel. Terror filled him whenever he spoke to Lord Shet. “None survive the fall from those heights.”
“Well done,” Shet said. He smiled, a grin that carried across his features, including the mask covering the right side of his face. The resulting image was hideous, reminding Adam of a snake in the midst of shedding its skin.
“What of your plans for Arylyn?” Shet asked. “How do you intend to attack the island of my enemies?”
“By stealth and cunning,” Adam said. “We will send scouting teams to learn all we can about Arylyn. And when the time is right, we will pay them back for what they did to us.” Adam’s features hardened, and his eyes grew flat with anger. This time the expression truly reflected his sentiments. The magi had spat in the face of Sinskrill’s mahavans, defeated them, humiliated them. Such a challenge could not go unanswered.
“The World Killers?” Shet’s face grew guarded, as it always did whenever he spoke of those two, the strange magi who moved like the wind and struck like a storm of swords, they who had defeated the Servitor.
“We haven’t discovered any sign of their presence.”
“You will,” Shet said, his words sounding like a dire promise. “You may return to Sinskrill.”
Adam bowed low and prepared to ascend. In that instant, he noticed a white-cloaked knight approaching the Lord. The man moved in a vaguely familiar fashion, smooth and languid as a cat, yet precise as a raptor. He briefly wondered who it might be before he departed.
SEMINAL
* * *
Shet snorted in derision as soon as the pathetic mahavan departed. Adam Paradiso had tried his best to maintain a semblance of dignity, but in this, he’d failed utterly. In fact, during their brief conversation, the man had almost wet himself in terror, trembling like a broken cur.
Of course, Adam hadn’t realized it. He likely thought he’d acquitted himself well, that he’d managed to maintain his facade with no one aware of his terror.
Fool.
Shet saw through all lies, and before his sight all truths were made manifest. The lord of Seminal smiled in grim humor as he imagined Adam’s incredulity when the god finished wrecking the magi and then turned about and broke the mahavans.
A white-cloaked knight interrupted Shet’s reflections. The figure, a human, strode toward the throne, proud and strong. Shet eyed the man, studied his tall, lean form, the way he paced like a panther, and approved of the manner in which he groomed his black hair, keeping it martial-short. He also noticed the man’s unusual skin color, tea touched with cream, and equally unusual, how the knight’s dark eyes held no fear. Instead, arrogance filled the man’s features even as he dropped to a knee.
Shet remained impassive, waiting for the knight to speak.
The warrior served an elf princess of poor repute. In the three centuries of her life, she’d steadfastly refused all offers of marriage, going so far as to withdraw from her mother’s court. This human was said to be her only companion, and with her elf magic, she had made him puissant.
Two traitors to their kind. How delicious.
Of course, the knight’s power could have been tenfold greater if not for the Orbs of Peace. Millennia ago, the glowing crystal globes had been forged and scattered throughout Seminal. They were meant to prevent humans from fully accessing their lorethasra and deny the rise of another god like Shet. The other races had thought the Orbs would keep them safe.
All they had done was ensure Seminal’s eventual enslavement.
Shet gestured for the knight to rise, and the human did as commanded, but he also rested a hand on his sword. The god straightened slightly. He feared nothing, but sometimes this man could put him off balance. He moved too gracefully, too much like Shokan.
Shet mentally sneered at the notion. Shokan is dead. A notion flitted across his mind: he couldn’t recall his great enemy’s features, the same with Sira, the Lady of Fire. It was of no consequence.
“We have found one of the Orbs,” the man said.
Shet’s heart stirred with excitement, and he shifted on his throne, leaning forward. “You have the Orb with you?”
The knight reached into his cloak, into a null pocket—a voided area meant to secrete prized possessions. From it, he withdrew a crystal the size of a skull. It glowed, a coruscating wash of blue and green in endless conflict. “One down, my lord . . .”
“. . . and six to go,” Shet finished. He reached for the Orb and caressed it. He sensed the weaves billowing off of it, the ones that essentially stripped all humans upon conception and kept them weak.
It also sapped Shet’s strength, and that would not do.
The god crushed the Orb, and for an instant, he thought he saw relief pass across the human’s otherwise impassive face. Shet mentally shrugged. If not for the fact that they pursued the same ambition, he would have long since done away with the knight and his elf princess.
“Find the rest of the Orbs and bring them to me,” Shet ordered.
“As you command, my lord.” The human slowly backed away, his posture properly bent in obeisance before he reached the proscribed twenty feet. There, he straightened, turned on a heel, and stalked away, moving like a lion in the long grass.
After the knight departed, Shet’s mind returned to Earth. More work was needed to herald his arrival. After breaking the chains that had once shackled him to this mountain, this place where he strove to remake his nation of domi
nation, Shet had reached out to the many beings who naturally inclined toward his mastery.
They had answered and bowed to his rising power.
Except on Earth.
The god had never directed his call there, and it was time to correct that oversight. Shet sent a summons to his minions on that faraway world. Minutes passed, and eventually he grunted in satisfaction when he felt the stirring of those born to serve him.
A thought came to him then, and he smiled. He included one final command to his servants. It wasn’t likely to prove fruitful, but luck favored those who forced any opportunity.
Let mahavan and magi battle one another with firewagers. They could bring glorious ruin upon one another. The traitors.
SINSKRILL
* * *
Adam inhaled great gulps of air after exiting the anchor line to Seminal. Sweat poured down his face, and hunger gnawed his insides. He held onto the Spear even as he collapsed to a knee. Traveling to Seminal always left him weak and feeble as wet clay, and he needed a moment to collect himself.
While waiting to recover, he stared around the Throne Hall.
He and Axel were still alone. The light from an early afternoon sun glinted off a forest of gold-enameled columns that led from the double-doors at the Hall’s entrance to the Servitor’s Chair set at the second step of a tall dais, atop which rested the empty throne of their Lord. The titanic statue of Shet’s warrior persona loomed over it all.
Adam blinked as a flash momentarily blinded him, sunlight bleeding through the stained-glass windows lining the room and forming part of the vaulted, ribbed ceiling. There up above, images depicted Shet in various poses of humility: providing shelter from a storm, battling ignorance with the long-lost Book of Binding, or shepherding humanity to a brighter future.
All of them were lies.
Shet was unfettered power made flesh, with no thought or ambition but to acquire ever more. He could never be allowed on Earth.
The last of the journey’s lassitude left Adam, and he strengthened his knees, levering himself upright. He allowed Axel to gently pull the Spear from his lax fingers.
“How did it go?” his brother asked as he strode to the Servitor’s Chair, seated himself, and laid the Spear across his knees.
Adam inhaled a settling breath. “It went as expected.”
Axel leaned back in his chair. “Tell me everything.”
Adam did as bade and spoke of all he had seen.
“The lord still supports us?” the Servitor asked.
“I believe he does,” Adam said. “Yet it is hard to be sure. Every historical account indicates how much he hates failure, and we failed him when Arylyn attacked.”
Axel’s jaw briefly clenched. “We can still make amends for that unfortunate incident.”
His brother was a fool if he believed it, and Adam kept from rolling his eyes by the barest of margins.
Thankfully, Axel didn’t notice his scorn. “We will bury the magi,” the Servitor said.
Adam merely nodded agreement, remaining quiet while a long-considered thought circled to the forefront of his mind. As always, he hesitated to speak it.
Axel saw. “What is it?”
Still Adam paused. He knew his thoughts were blasphemous, but at this point, weren’t all options on the table, even the profane? “What if we ally with Arylyn?” he asked. “Perhaps together we could learn how to seal the anchor line between Seminal and Earth.”
Axel’s gaze sharpened. “To what end?”
“To prevent the death of our kind,” Adam said. “I don’t trust Shet.”
“Neither do I,” Axel mused with a frown. His gaze grew distant, as if he was lost in thought and hope burgeoned with Adam.
Perhaps Axel will let go of this terrible plan of attacking Arylyn. Doing so would only weaken both islands. Deal with Shet first, and then crush the magi.
“Arylyn has always been and will always be our enemy,” Axel said, dashing Adam’s hopes. “They invaded our island and attacked us. We won’t go to them on bended knee. We are not ‘kindred covens’ as the witches might reckon matters.”
“But when Shet returns to our world, I fear he’ll treat us as kindred covens and kill us both.”
“A possibility,” the Servitor admitted. “But just as possibly, we’ll earn the Lord’s favor and evade his judgment.” The Servitor spun the Spear and rapped its steel-shod heel on the white-marble floor as he rose to his feet. “The decision is made.”
Adam mentally grated against the Servitor’s decision, but he also knew better than to argue. The matter had been settled. He bowed low. “As you say, my liege.”
CHAPTER 4: EVIL AWAKENS
November 1989
* * *
SOMEWHERE UNKNOWN
* * *
Sapient Dormant, the Overward of the necrosed, heard a strange, commanding call. The signal reached across the firmaments like a plucked, stretched, threadbare tendon, a chord that penetrated the large cave that Sapient had made his own. The ancient necrosed shifted, dimly recognizing the great mind who had sent the call.
Can it be?
Again the chord was plucked, but the sound didn’t ring in Sapient’s low-set ears. Rather, it echoed in his corrupted heart, tolling low and dull like the shutting of a coffin. It set the ruined organ to beating more quickly, and Sapient’s pus-like blood oozed sluggishly through his body. The call sounded again, and this time the Overward’s lungs inhaled the cave’s dank air. His blood further thinned, and the sound of dripping water penetrated his hearing.
Sapient opened his eyes. He lay upon a bed of broken bones—the remains of the many victims of his malice—and his joints creaked and cracked, sounding like distant rockslides as he sat up and stared about.
To any but a holder or a dwarf, the cave would have seemed pitch-black. Not so to Sapient. His onyx eyes, reflective despite the gloom, could see all. The cave he’d made his own stretched twenty yards from a boulder-strewn, choked off entrance to his bed of bones and the crumbled back wall. Spiny stalactites aimed like daggers from the ceiling toward a clear stream that held scuttling, blind crabs. The water flowed near the foot of his bed. A thin seam of gold spread root-like through the black rock that formed the walls, glistening in the occasional flash of light that breached the cave’s entrance.
Again came the call, pulsing like a beacon, and once more Sapient’s heart answered, skipping a step as it beat harder and faster.
An old memory stirred within the necrosed’s mind, but it didn’t surface as he tried to fathom who might have dared intrude on his sleep. He inhaled deeply, and his nose flared like filters as he slipped out his dark tongue, which was made black against his albino-white skin and pale lips. He tasted the air.
Nothing.
He waited minutes.
Still nothing.
Fatigue pressed upon him, and he lay down again, resting on his bed of bones and closing his eyes.
The call sounded once more.
This time Sapient’s gaze snapped to the ceiling. He recognized the one who had signaled him. Lord Shet.
The call, both order and vow, told Sapient that the anchor line would soon open and the god of the necrosed, the one who’d created them and saved them from destruction, would stride across the land. Shet, who had given them a purpose, a plan, and a promise.
Sapient shivered in anticipation, and his lean form quivered. He ran a four-fingered, rotting hand over his bald pâte and considered how best to answer the Lord’s summons.
Sapient lay unmoving for hours as he pondered his next step. He’d only recently arisen, and his thoughts, thick as gelatin, took time to clear and grow lucid. Eventually, he had a notion of what to do and he sat upright.
His joints creaked again, shoulders, wrists, back, knees, and hands. He stretched his long limbs, yawning as he clawed his way upright to his spindly eight-foot height. While most of his necrosed brethren chose bulk to aid their strength, Sapient had always chosen speed. He wasn’t as strong a
s the others—Kohl Obsidian, for instance—but his speed was unmatched. When it came to battle, speed evaded power and quickness destroyed slow strength.
Sapient’s mind further clarified and he wondered how much time had passed since he’d last roused. It was likely a century or more, given his hunger. And feeding would prove difficult with all the asrasins—including the mahavans—hidden away on their cursed islands.
The Overward’s mouth curled. Traitors. Their weakness had led to Shet’s defeat. The same weakness that somehow failed to humble them. Far from it, in fact. The Servitors of Sinskrill actually believed they could compel Sapient’s service, that he’d willingly bent his knees to their reign.
Prideful idiots.
Sapient had lied when he’d made obeisance to the Servitor’s Chair. He’d only done what was needed to earn their trust, all to further his Lord’s ultimate aim.
“Vengeance shall be mine,” Shet had said the last time Sapient had spoken to the Master. “Against all asrasins.”
And so it will be, Sapient thought.
But first, he required sustenance. A witch or warlock would do. Even an unformed. Whatever being he came across. Then he would gather his brethren and storm Sinskrill.
Sapient nodded to himself. The other necrosed would argue. They fought against one another as much as they did the rest of the world. It was in their nature since none of them remembered Shet and his glory. None of them remembered their god’s promise to lift the curse laid upon them by Shokan, to restore them to life, to free them from the bondage of undying death.
ARYLYN
* * *