“Sarge,” I said, turning to him. “You need to get every wizard and necromancer the Watch has. Send them all to Jacobville.” I started moving toward the door myself. “And when Lilly wakes up, tell her I went back!”
I grimaced when I was back out on the street. I thought the normal rain was bad before.
#
By the time I got back to the Pit, I could see that the dwarves had been busy. The blood was still falling steadily from the sky but a couple of them must have taken a detour. They procured a large, heavy sheet of canvas from somewhere and stretched it between a few trees, making a serviceable shelter some feet away from the Pit. Others found a barrel of water which they used to try to get the worst of the blood off themselves.
Dwarven ingenuity and work ethic. Wonderful things.
Brindar was looking down into the Pit. The flames still flickered steadily, lighting his face. Unbelievably, Raven stood with him, idly toying with one of his knives.
"Anything?" I asked.
They both shook their heads. "Not really," Brindar said. "A few minutes ago, something came and stared at us with red eyes, but it never really showed itself. It was hard to make it out, even when it was near a gout of flame."
I made three pairs of eyes that stood and looked into the fiery well.
"What do we do now?" Raven asked.
"I think we wait for the Watch," I said. "Hopefully, they'll be here in force before anything else comes out of there."
"Else?"
"Oh, yeah. There is something out already. It flew out when it first opened. I think it's what caused this blood rain."
Brindar and Raven both stared at me. "Would have been nice to know that, Grandfather," Raven said.
"Would it have made a difference?"
"No, it just would have been nice."
We continued staring. There was something moving again. It was whatever Brindar saw before, coming up the wall of the Pit, but unlike the one that Lilly scraped away, it came more slowly, almost methodically. It came up far enough that I could see a patch of darkness with two glowing red eyes. When it was still several feet below, it stopped and stared back at us, unblinking. Other than the eyes, I still couldn't make out any other definable form to it.
I drew my gun and fired. That same clean white light of a ball came out, illuminating the Pit fully. But the darkness surrounding the creature that watched us remained unlit. Perhaps that was its body. Regardless, the ball hit it, there was a screech and whatever it was tumbled away, an inky patch falling until it was out of sight.
"Wasn't sure that would work," I muttered.
We watched for a while longer, but nothing else stirred. Finally, Brindar summoned a few of his dwarves and posted them in our places. We retreated to the make-shift shelter, and cleaned off as best we could.
The next hour passed and there were no further disturbances from the Pit. But the flames burned steadily and the blood kept falling. It was going to be a huge mess when it was finally done. Assuming, of course, that the Bone Lord didn't show up and turn the whole city into an extension of his realm.
Shortly after, the Watch turned up, and Lilly came with them. She still looked tired, but there was a fire in her eyes that matched anything burning in that hole. With her were a lot of people in red robes, and several more in different colors. A whole cohort of watchmen accompanied them, and they took a cue from the dwarves and began to set up more temporary shelters from the grisly downpour.
The necromancers, however, went straight to the Pit. The dwarves there took notice and scuttled back our way. Brindar didn't say a word to them and I didn't blame him. Necromancers, including my wife when she wants to be, are really intimidating.
They surrounded the Pit and began chanting. Like with Lilly, weird effects happened to them. Darkened eyes on some, glowing on others. Hair moving on its own on several. Lots of sparks, some flames and even weird glows surrounded hands, or whole bodies.
But they were all working together. A huge glowing ball appeared in the air above the Pit. It was bright red and shot through with veins of black which pulsed in time with the sound of the chanting voices. Those veins speared out of the orb, each one touching an individual necromancer. The other wizards took up stations in a larger ring around those in red and started their own spells. I wasn't sure what the purpose of those were, but given that this was the death wizards' purview, I thought maybe they were some sort of support.
The glowing ball grew bigger. Then, it slowly started to lower toward the Pit, until it plugged it completely, exactly as Lilly's ice did earlier. It sank lower, and then stopped.
There was a pause, then the necromancers' chanting started again, louder this time. Glowing auras grew brighter, sparks snapped with a quick whiff of ozone, and eyes turned even more inhuman.
I had never been near magic of this magnitude before. It was causing the hair on the back of my neck to stand up. It was impressive as hell, no pun intended.
But the plug didn't move another inch. In fact, it started to rise, a fraction at first, but then more steadily. It was moving slowly, but it was moving back.
The chanting reached a fever pitch, including that of the wizards in the outer circle. I could see what must be lines of magical force, faintly glowing through the red rain, connecting those wizards to the necromancers.
Then, the globe exploded. Pieces of it flew everywhere, and those black veins snapped back to the individual necromancers, staggering some and completely bowling over others.
Lilly dropped to one knee, but struggled to her feet again almost immediately. She wiped her mouth on her sleeve, but I couldn't tell if she was wiping off her own blood, or more of it from the rain.
I started to run to her, but only made it a few steps before the ground shook hard, knocking all of us from our feet. There was a noise, like a mixture of laughter, music, crying, screaming and cursing, all at once. It beat on my eardrums and made my vision go blurry. I wanted it to stop more than anything. If not, I feared that this time, I might really go mad.
The rain stopped. One second it was falling, coating everything with blood, and the next, it was done. In the east, the sky was beginning to brighten. Not much more than a slightly lighter smudge of the heavy gray clouds, but it was dawn.
We made it through the night! It was daybreak, and Lilly had said that the Bone Lord needed to come during the darkest nights, those of the new moon. That was over.
Then what was this horrible noise, still gaining in volume?
Wait.
Lilly didn't say that the Bone Lord had to arrive on those nights, but that he could only be summoned on them. When I broke the shield, it was still the night of the new moon.
He rose.
Accompanied by an increase in the noise he came up out of the Pit, levitating as easily as I walked on the ground. It was immediately evident why he was named the Bone Lord.
Dark red in color, he must have stood over nine feet tall, and as heavily muscled as any troll to walk the streets of Capital City. He leered at us from eyes of burning yellow, and licked his black lips with an equally black, forked tongue. Whoever painted the shield either had it wrong or he shaved since then, because he was bald, with two short horns jutting from his forehead and pointed ears.
But none of that was what was so disturbing or gave him his name. Either his bones were growing through his skin or another’s were implanted into his flesh. Along his arms and legs, the length of the bones within were exposed, the skin pulled back, still bleeding. The same with his ribs and when he turned to survey those of us surrounding him, I saw the same for his spine. Even in his face, bone showed around his eyes, along his jaw, and in his cheeks.
As he hung there above the Pit, blood dripped from him and sizzled in the flames, which seemed to reach for the drops, devouring them hungrily.
His eyes narrowed, and he said something in the foul language of the Pit, and everything went crazy.
Every necromancer around powered up and began ca
sting spells. The Watch wizards did the same. The dwarves rushed forward, weapons at the ready.
The Bone Lord laughed it all off. Every spell that hit him either bounced away, was absorbed, or simply fizzled out. The weapons of the dwarves and the Watch did no damage at all, and I saw one of Raven’s knives, thrown with his usual expert accuracy, hit the Bone Lord dead on in an eye. It too bounced away, falling into the Pit, and the demon didn’t so much as blink.
He casually waved his hand, and necromancers and wizards fell. He avoided attacks and hit back, hard enough to drop both dwarf and man where they stood. All the time, putting in no apparent effort.
The only weapon to have any effect on him was Biter. Brindar rushed in and the Bone Lord saw him coming, grunted and tried to move, but Brindar threw his axe in a blur. The Bone Lord proved to be as fast as he was intimidating, however. Biter, aimed at his head, only grazed his shoulder before returning to Brindar’s hand.
It was enough to open a gash, which bled fire for a moment. The Bone Lord put his finger to the wound, muttered a word and it closed. He licked his finger, turned to Brindar and smiled, then gestured and barked a vile sounding syllable.
Brindar screamed and collapsed, grasping at his face. I ran over and pried his hands away. His face was completely covered with a solid mask of bone. I could hear him struggling to draw a breath.
“Lilly!” I screamed, and my voice must have gotten through the noise to her. She turned to me, paled, then grabbed one of the wizards and pointed to us.
The woman she grabbed ran to us and fell to her knees next to Brindar.
“He can’t breathe!” I said.
“I can see that,” she said calmly, but I could see the whites of her eyes surrounding her irises. She was close to panic herself. “I’ll help him. But Lilly said you need to use the gun. It’s past midnight, whatever that’s supposed to mean.”
How could I possibly have forgotten that? I shot the shield the night before, so now I could reset it. All I needed to do was say “Bone Lord” to it, and the demon was done for. Especially if he was distracted with all the powerhouses throwing magic at him. It was a trick that had worked several times for Lilly and me.
And I had another edge. I didn’t need to call him “Bone Lord” and hope the gun knew who I meant. No. I had his real name.
I left Brindar in the wizard’s care, trusting that she would do her job and ran forward, pulling my gun as I went. I lifted it to my mouth and loudly said, “Galog Ossimarie!”. Then, I skidded to a halt in the slick, blood-soaked ground and fired.
The little, metal ball that came out was a lot like the one that destroyed the shield, which made sense. If anything, it was a little brighter and cleaner feeling.
It hit the Bone Lord right in the chest, throwing him back, clear of the Pit. He crashed to the ground on the far side.
Everything stopped, and it felt like the world held its breath. There was no movement from the Bone Lord, and everyone else froze.
In the sudden silence, the damage was evident. Wizards and necromancers were down all over the place, some not moving. Lilly was unsteady on her feet, and her eyes met mine across the battlefield. I smiled, and she returned it for a moment before looking around her at the devastation.
It was terrible, what happened here. But I was relieved that Lilly was alive and unharmed. I looked back, and the wizard helping Brindar had managed to make a hole in the bone mask so that he could breath. One more good thing to take out of all this mess.
I walked forward, determined to see if the Bone Lord truly was dead, and if not, pull the trigger as many times as it took to make sure he was. Hell, I was going to do it anyway, just in case he had any ideas about coming back.
I kept my eyes on him as I walked along the Pit, which was still open, the fires still burning every bit as strongly. That, more than anything, made me think that the Bone Lord was still alive. I began to walk a little faster when his body started to melt, much as the dwarves who tried to summon him did.
With a disgusting slurping noise, the huge torso began to cave in on itself, the arms and legs oozing into puddles.
Well, good. He was dead then. Now, the necromancers could figure out how to shut the Pit and the clean-up could begin.
“Whoa! That hurt!”
The voice came from the Bone Lord’s body.
With blazing speed, a man stood up from the reeking puddle of goo the demon had turned into. He was impeccably dressed, although covered in gore and bits of things I didn’t even want to know about. He smiled at me, then cocked his fingers in an imitation of my gun.
“Pow!” he said.
I felt like I had been hit by Wulfonson’s hammer. I flew back several feet, crashing to the ground, unable to breathe and my vision turning black. But I held on to my gun. Wheezing, I turned over, trying to get him in my sights.
He was still standing there, apparently unfazed. His whole body suddenly vibrated rapidly and the mess that was on him flew off in all directions. Seconds later he was clean and dry, like any dapper dude going off to his girls for a date.
“How you doing over there?” he called out.
I drew in a little air, enough to set me coughing, trying not to retch. I couldn’t hold my arm steady enough to take a shot at him again.
“You don’t look good at all,” he said, and brought his hand back up, in the same gesture he used before. “Don’t worry, it’s almost over.”
“No!” The scream came from out of my view, but there was no mistaking the voice.
“Lilly don’t” I thought, but I still couldn’t get my lungs to cooperate to say it out loud.
A spell flew past me, one that I’d seen before. A black globe, spitting and crackling with energy, it had once opened a Death Knight up. This time, it hit the Bone Lord and staggered him enough so that whatever it was he was shooting at me missed.
He smiled, and his gaze slid past me.
“Impressive,” he purred. “I like you. I think you’ll do nicely.”
He gestured, nothing near as dramatic as what I’ve seen Lilly and others do to cause big magics. It was a casual move, much like when he pointed his finger gun at me. But I heard Lilly scream.
I turned over, rolling on my back, my vision blurring. Lilly was outlined in a black fire, and around her appeared a globe of yellow light, much like that which came from the shield. Her arms were held stiffly down by her sides and her neck was stretched out, her head back and her teeth bared in a grimace.
The globe started to rise. I staggered to my feet and spun back to the Bone Lord, who was also rising into the air. I raised the gun, sighted, and he casually did the same thing to me. “Pow! You’re dead!” he said, sounding for all the world like a child playing a game. He was faster than I was.
This time the black didn’t stay at the edge of my vision. It came down like a heavy curtain, blocking everything out, and that was the last I knew.
#
“Grandfather? Grandfather! Wake up!”
I felt my head turn more than I felt the slap, but it did the trick. I was laying on my back, staring up at a gloomy sky through the bare branches of a tree. It felt nice, to lie here, my head cradled in the soft dirt.
The next slap woke me further. Which was when the pain hit. I felt like I had been beaten, rolled across the ground, thrown down a flight of stairs, and then beaten again. Everything that could hurt, did.
“Grandfather! Get up!”
“If you hit me again, we’re going to have words,” I mumbled.
I was starting to recognize the voice. It was Raven’s. He was trying to bring me around but was probably taking more enjoyment out of hitting me. It was the only way he could get away with it with Lilly around…
“Lilly!”
I shot upright, my head splitting so badly that I could only groan, lean over, retch, and then shut my eyes until the nausea passed. I took a couple of deep breaths, forcing myself to remain there for a moment and try to recover my strength.
&n
bsp; “She’s gone,” Raven’s voice came to me. “So is that demon. Can you get up?”
I nodded and, swallowing my pride, allowed him to help me stagger to my feet. Bodies lay strewn across the graveyard. Watchmen, dwarves, wizards and necromancers moved slowly among them, helping those they could and making the others as dignified as possible.
The Bone Lord had risen and cut through us like we were nothing to him. The best the Watch could offer, as well as Raven, Brindar and I, hadn’t even slowed him down.
And he took Lilly.
“Where?” I croaked.
“We don’t know,” Raven replied. “They rose into the air, and then sped off over the rooftops. The wizards say they couldn’t track it.”
I tried to stand on my own but was having a hard time. Raven kept his arm around me, helping me stay on my feet.
“Duke,” he said quietly. “For what it’s worth. I saw her. She was fighting the whole way.”
I looked at my sometimes-rival, sometimes-friend. His face showed nothing but honest concern.
“Thanks,” I muttered. I managed to stand on my own and surveyed the area again. “Brindar?”
“Over there.” Raven indicated the temporary shelter the dwarves erected. It was still standing and Brindar lay beneath it, the same wizard still tending to him. The bone mask was halfway gone. Whatever she was doing, it was taking time, but it was getting done. At least he could breathe now.
I nodded and began moving away.
“Where are you going?” Raven asked.
“To find Lilly.”
“How?”
I shrugged. “I’m not sure. But I’m going to try.”
“I’ll come,” he said.
I considered him. I wasn’t being entirely truthful. There were two places that I was going first, then possibly a third. The first was home. There was a whole bunch of extremely powerful little people living in my basement, and they adored Lilly. That was my first stop.
Only no one other than Lilly and I knew they were there. Brownies aren’t welcome many places, mostly due to their sometimes-well-earned reputations for mischief and almost unstoppable magical prowess. If Raven was with me, I was going to have to let him in on the secret, and frankly, I didn’t know if I could trust him that far.
Duke Grandfather- The Whole Story Page 88