Phate

by Jason Alan

  They were soulless, decrepit things, these mages, indistinguishable from each other but for the rank symbols burned into their otherwise plain black robes. They were tall and ungainly, their hoods a void from which nothing seemed to stare. Their staves floated in the air beside them—long, shriveled sticks whose heads were ablaze with flaring jewels. Once these mages had moved with the vigor of individual purpose, but now their ambitions were as vacant as their souls. With mindlessness they heeded their master, for they knew not what else to do.

  And tonight, their master had told them to prepare for a fight…

  “Look sharp!” the eldest mage commanded, one of the few still retaining some wit of his own.

  Hooded heads turned slowly about.

  “The night may be mild,” the mage said, “the weather weak, but you can feel the tension hanging heavily in the air. Make no mistake, the master expects a confrontation, and a confrontation we shall have.” He looked to his subordinates, but they did not acknowledge him. Into the night they silently stared.

  It was quiet, oh yes, very quiet.

  And then…

  Laughter struck their ears.

  Echoing, low-pitched, drawn-out, laughter.

  The mages crammed forward, and nervously peeked through the parapet’s embrasures, their sizzling fingers asseverating their sorcery. A gust of wind hit them and a high-pitched shriek tore through the clouds, overriding the laughter. It was a maddening sound, accompanied by some debilitating dread. It darkened hearts already black, and wilted the wills of all.

  There was no mistaking…

  Dragonfear.

  “Gather formations against the wind!” the mage commander called.

  Now the soulless mages showed that they were not quite devoid of all life. With surprising haste, they spread out across the southeastern portion of the battlement, their feet heavily thumping the floor, their floating staves clinging to their sides like loyal pets. They organized themselves into three rows: the front row, ready to assault the space below them, continued peering through the embrasures; the two back rows readied to spread fire across the higher portion of the sky.

  “Steady…steady…” the lead mage charged.

  Suddenly, the stars were extinguished as supernatural clouds streamed in, swathing Forn Forlidor in thick, greyish-black bunches of lightning-wracked vapor. The spire’s violet fires were snuffed with a whining whoosh. The moons vanished, the winds uplifted, and faraway, some lonely wolfish creature cried.

  And then the world hushed.

  But the silence did not last. A twisted song came from somewhere in the clouds.

  Warloove released his spell.

  On came the Winds of Hurricane Force.

  It was as if Nenockra Rool had descended in front of the fortress, opened his moon-sized mouth and unleashed a terrible scream! Four hundred mile an hour winds, laden with millions of jagged fangs, flew out of the spectral clouds and blasted into the battlement. This was the punishment for those who dared give shelter to Warloove’s prize of the Gauntlets of Loathing Light!

  “Defend! Defend!” cried the commander, but it did not matter, for against such power, the mages were completely unprepared.

  Their eardrums ruptured beneath the winds’ deafening roar, and those without sorcerous shields were instantly blasted right out of their boots. Those who managed to withstand the initial onslaught panicked. They unleashed wild fireballs that were caught in the winds and blown straight back into their faces. Essentially, they disintegrated themselves! The hurricane’s fangs sliced through everything. The lead mage and his subordinates were skewered where they stood. Staves were splintered. Robes were sheared. Throats were cut. Limbs were separated, slashed apart and flung into the crater below.

  In less than ten seconds, the fortress’s outer defenses were annihilated, and all the mages were killed.

  Insanity, I know!

  The sorcerous hurricane next tested the pyramidal keep itself. The winds slammed into the floating sections with a million clicking clatters, causing them to shudder. But the magically reinforced walls were made of sterner stuff than Warloove had anticipated, and the gusts were turned away. The hurricane didn’t relent, though, it simply swirled into a tornado in the middle of the courtyard. Bodies that hadn’t been blown over the walls were diced to pieces in a screaming funnel of fangs.

  It was utter mayhem.

  To Warloove, it was total perfection.

  Forn Forlidor’s King Sorcerer, Lord Dark Sorciuss, calmly stood just behind the iron doors of the pyramid’s lowest section as the Winds of Hurricane Force slammed into them. He was ensconced in deep thought, wondering how the long, onerous avenues of his life had led him astray.

  “To what end have I wrought?” he whispered. “To what end?”

  To what end indeed.

  He had reigned over Forn Forlidor for centuries, a cruel ruler held in contempt by all who had served light. Because of him, so many golden lives had been snuffed; because of him, fear had spread through the surrounding lands like a river running wild through already drenched fields. He had been blessed with great power and, like so many in so many times before, he had squandered it.

  But some things that never seem to change, do.

  Over the last century, the flames of evil within him had slowly burned out. Weary of war, weary of battle, Dark Sorciuss had retreated into his dungeon’s dimly lit depths and found that he was weary of even himself.

  After a million murders, he had bled enough of his soul. And now Warloove was conveniently murdering all his wretched minions who he no longer had the heart to murder himself.

  Yes, it was all going as anticipated. The moment the Fallen Angel had asked him to safeguard the gauntlets, he knew what was going to happen. In truth, he’d accepted the angel’s request only to experience for himself what doing a gracious deed would feel like. It was disappointing. It had been as if he threw a pebble into a sea, so little did his actions ripple the surface of the waters of fate. He knew there was no forestalling the dark forces that now rose up against the universe; he knew the Gauntlets of Loathing Light would inevitably wrap Warloove’s claws. And he also knew it was too late for him to atone for a lifetime of evil.

  One good deed would not stand him within the light.

  His followers had paid, and his own sentence was soon to pass…

  Now he heard the Winds of Hurricane Force subside.

  He was about to step outside, but upon hearing some scuffling behind him, he paused and glanced around. Far down the hallway, he saw a creature’s white hide sparkle within a solitary lantern’s light, then disappear. It was the angel’s emissary, the one who bore the gauntlets. Realizing the fortress was doomed, she must have been trying to flee. Sorciuss hoped the creature made it, hoped she wouldn’t perish between Warloove’s fangs. Although it mattered little, he would distract the demonic dark elf vampire for as long as he was able.

  “So, after all this time, I’ve finally learned compassion,” he whispered to himself.

  He looked ahead and with trembling hands lifted the guard bar and pushed the doors forward. There was a sharp huff, followed by a grating squeal, and for the first time in many years, the keep was opened. Lord Dark Sorciuss slipped outside, closed the doors behind him, and looked over his compound.

  As expected, it was devastated.

  The battlement had been completely cleared of mages, its walls painted with blood. And though he couldn’t see it, he correctly imagined the scene below—the crater beneath the fortress was a bowl of death, a giant open grave that had welcomed yet more deserving bodies.

  Sorciuss moved farther out into the courtyard, and surveyed the sky.

  Although the magical hurricane had diminished, the clouds were still billowing unnaturally. Behind them, the moons were barely visible blurs. A tentative wind blew, the Shards of Zyrinthia blinked into view, but no distant stars could be seen at all. Sorciuss continued to scan around. When he tilted his head back and looked straight u
p, he noticed two sets of eyes staring back at him from within the center of a great shadow.

  A whisper floated down to him. “Sorciuss.”

  And then came the dragonfear.

  Sorciuss held fast, his feet firmly planted on the only stone he’d ever considered home. Although he cared little if Warloove took his life, he found himself defensive when concerning his keep.

  Once again, his name came down from the clouds, but firmer, louder: “Sorciuss!”

  “You cannot have the Gauntlets of Loathing Light,” the king sorcerer responded, immediately regretting the shakiness in his voice, but not the conviction of the words.

  The eyes in the sky disappeared, followed by the shadow; but then, from some indeterminable place, Warloove said, “Oh, no? You wish their power for yourself, do you? Hmm… Lord Dark Sorciuss, wielder of the Sunsword! Sounds good, doesn’t it? But it will never be, for the gauntlets belong to me!”

  “They belong to no one, especially not to you.”

  “Oh? And who are you to deny me?!”

  “Who I am—who we are—matters little now. The world has no use for us.”

  “I have no use for the world!” The utterance of these words momentarily set the skies alight with lavender lightning.

  Sorciuss realized he was speaking more to himself than to Warloove when he said: “With no adversaries left, evil turns inward and all we have to combat is our own souls.”

  Warloove laughed. “Nonsensical fool! Where are the gauntlets?”

  The king sorcerer pointed to the clouds. “Your darkness is a disease which no light can cure. I hope the others have the strength to contend with you.”

  “To the Dark Forever with others!” Warloove screamed, his sorcerously enhanced voice sounding like a distorted chorus. “Like you, they will burn in black fire!”

  “We will all burn in fire.”

  “No, not all…just you!”

  “You are as empty in evil as I am.”

  “Empty?” the elusive vampire returned, “I think not. I’m about to fill myself with whatever is left of you.”

  “Then you’ll be filled with nothing, for I have expended all my atrocities.”

  “Expended all atrocities?” Warloove laughed again. “Sorciuss, what is this? Are you so defeated? How disappointing! Long have I looked forward to mixing fire with you. You’re something of a legend to this world! You and this mighty fortress!”

  “If fire is all you truly desire, then you needn’t look to Forn Forlidor. Simply wait. Fire is coming for us all, it will come for you, too. The sun is dying, and the Dark Forever will—”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” Warloove cut in with an exasperated huff, “the sun dies, and the Dark Forever is coming for us all. I grow bored of prophecy and…oh, I grow bored of you. You’ve gone mad, locked up in that dungeon of yours for so long. Sorciuss, this is unconscionable. I give you this last chance—give me the gauntlets, and I might leave you with your pathetic undead life. But do this now. I have much to attend to.”

  The King of Forn Forlidor closed his eyes, drew in a breath, and said, “With all that is left of my ravaged heart…no.”

  A growl like that of a rabid beast’s echoed all over the sky. “Fool! If I had the time, you’d suffer for eons! As it is, you will be reduced to a pile of ash and blown away!”

  Suddenly, a sense of invasion overwhelmed the king sorcerer. He pivoted, and looked up over his keep.

  Against a backdrop of swirling black clouds, the largest demonic dragon in the primary universe was diving straight down at him. A flash of lightning illuminated the beast and, for a split second, Sorciuss got this tale’s first clear glimpse of Geeter. It was a horrifying sight! Geeter was indeed massive, even larger than the keep, his wings like sails stolen from an evil titan’s ship. It was as if a particularly twisted necromancer had combined a demonic dragon with a giant scorpion to create him. He had no scales; he looked to be carved from satiny black stone. He had huge pincers and six insect-like legs. His hundred-foot long tail curled over his back, the poison-tipped barb eager to skewer anything. Eyes like burning embers blazed from the shadows of his demonic face, and his acid-stained snout was overlong and oversized, the terrible maw agape.

  And then there was Warloove…

  The vampiric fiend was a little shadow on Geeter’s back, but Sorciuss knew him to be the handle of the dragon’s blade. He could feel Warloove’s stare upon him, could hear the vampire spew archaic curses, releasing a millennium of pent up hatred from the dark pit of his infernal being!

  Now Warloove pointed his finger and sent a laser-like beam of black fire shooting straight down, burning the air itself, screeching like a thing alive.

  Dark Sorciuss sidestepped the strike.

  It was close.

  Warloove’s fire exploded the stone right beside him, showering him with charred little fragments.

  “Good!” Sorciuss cried out. “Let us mix fire, then!”

  He threw his hands into the air and slapped his wrists together, his arms igniting like an enkindled torch. Then he pulled his wrists apart, releasing a geyser of purple flames just as Geeter came screaming down to devour him. Sorciuss dove aside, and the dragon got a mouthful of fire before smashing headfirst into the courtyard, missing his prey but lodging his burning fangs deep into the stone. All Forn Forlidor shuddered as if it had been struck by an earthquake. Geeter shrieked with pain. His colossal body toppled over onto the battlement wall, and he bent his neck back most uncomfortably so that his stuck head wouldn’t wrench its teeth from the stone.

  Sorciuss rolled out of his dive and sprang to his feet, expecting Warloove to be right on top of him.

  But the demonic dark elf was nowhere to be seen.

  “Damn!” Sorciuss exclaimed.

  Warloove could be anywhere: in the sky above or beyond the battlement; disguised as a shadow flitting across the walls; or perhaps standing invisible right next to him.

  Sorciuss backed away from Geeter’s thrashing body and moved into the shadows of the battlement’s wall, all-the-while looking all around.

  A minute went by, then another, but still there was no sign of Warloove. “Come for me!” the king sorcerer called out, the unknown whereabouts of his opponent becoming increasingly insufferable.

  No answer. Just the whistling wind and the grunting dragon who was still struggling to unstick his fangs from the courtyard’s stone.

  Where are you, dammit?

  While Sorciuss continued to slink and scan about, Geeter managed to free his fangs and flip over, his tail whipping around and smashing into the base of the battlement’s wall. A hundred-foot wide section caved in and crashed down into the crater, the rumbling echoing for miles around. Geeter paid it no mind. He perked up his head, then leaped into the air and disappeared into the clouds.

  Sorciuss tentatively stepped from the shadows, his hands raised, a sorcerous song tickling the tip of his tongue. From above came a rumble of thunder, a dash of lightning, and then…

  Death.

  Warloove shot down out of the clouds with supernatural speed, a smoky, shadowy blur of savage darkness! His body solidified, then landed with a deafening thud directly in front of Sorciuss. His claws stabbed outward, erupting with searing black flames.

  Dark Sorciuss stumbled backward, his own hands discharging a translucent energy shield before him.

  It was futile.

  His shield was instantly disintegrated, and he was smothered in fire.

  Warloove stepped forward, his abominable white child face leering through his cloak of smoke, his fangs extended, his yellow eyes burning with enkindled rage. He spat on the king sorcerer, then yelled, “You know nothing of what I have endured! A sobriety that spans beyond all time! I will have the gauntlets, weakling, and you will suffer!”

  Sorciuss’ knees gave and he knelt as one humbled before the avatar of a dark god. Such fear he had never expected! Such pain! He moaned, “Plea—Pleeeease!” but the fire wouldn’t relent. It completely engu
lfed him; it seemed to curse at him in some crackling, molten language. The pain went from awful to excruciating. Sorciuss screamed and screamed, but Warloove showed him no mercy.

  And now Warloove’s face sprang out of his smoky shroud to bury its fangs in the king sorcerer’s neck. Oh, how Warloove howled and cackled while he drank! His bloodstained lips quivered as he sucked away what poisoned life was left of the burning, half-dead king of Forn Forlidor. Then both of his claws stabbed forward, puncturing Sorciuss’ chest, his fingertips still spewing flames that licked the king’s insides like a hundred fiery tongues.

  Unable to withstand the strain of such heat, Lord Dark Sorciuss’ bones exploded.

  For several seconds he swam in a sea of agony, then his consciousness spiraled down into the utter darkness of nonbeing. Reduced to a dried-up bag of burning flesh, his body slid from Warloove’s grasp and slapped to the floor.

  “Suffer! Suffer! Suffer!” the demonic vampire screamed, throwing his fire at the flaming corpse.

  As promised, what was left of Sorciuss turned into ash and blew away.

  And still Warloove’s flames flowed.

  Seized with the ecstasy of murder, he burned Sorciuss’ spot until the heat melted the stone. He would have burned right through the bottom of the courtyard had Geeter’s cries not distracted him. He ceased his sorcery and looked at his smoking claws, his chest heaving, his fangs dripping reddish-black blood.

  “The gauntlets!” he cried.

  He let his seething settle, then turned about, his face receding into his cloak of smoke, his fangs retracting into his mouth.

  Geeter glided down, and this time gently landed in the courtyard.

  Warloove strode up to him and whispered, “Geeter, clear the keep.”

  The dragon faced the front doors of the fortress, then bowed his head and drove it forward like a battering ram. The doors gave as easily as a melon beneath a mallet, exploding inward in crumpled pile of metal. Geeter stretched his great maw over the smashed entrance. He sucked in his breath, rolled back his eyes, and exhaled acidic fire. The level’s interior burned like an oven. Everything within melted—wood, stone, and steel alike.