He scrambled away, and the creature didn’t pursue. The new light showed his strange hair in greater detail. Kaskill rejoined the group, hands shaking as he tried to squeeze off the blood flow.
Lamrhath turned to him. “What were his teeth like?”
Kaskill took several short, sobbing breaths before attempting to answer. “N-n-n-normal! Like m-m-mine.” Pulsing blood wet his hands.
“You did well,” Lamrhath said. “Remember to use this experience in your meditation. Sometimes you’ll need to cast spells during excruciating pain.”
He nodded rapidly. “Y-y-yes, my lord.”
The creature spat the other half of Kaskill’s index finger across the room. It bounced off the adjacent wall before hitting the floor. A loud, unnerving laugh, lacking both harmony and pleasure, echoed out of the creature and merged into convulsive sobs.
“What’s the matter with you?” Lamrhath asked it. “Do you need something?”
It didn’t respond, but petted its own hair with one hand. The other hand searched the rough stone wall as if of its own will. Both hands were intact, unlike Dorhen’s, which had been mutilated last night.
The searching hand found its way to the floor, where the creature sat next to scattered shards of mirror. The increased lighting showed how the place rested in shambles. Crates lay overturned and smashed. Flour spills covered most of the floor, and the creature’s large footprints dotted the area in erratic patterns.
The hand stroking its hair found its face and patted its cheek. The searching hand grabbed a shard of mirror without any discretion and clutched it tight enough to draw blood. When it opened its hand again, silver dust fell to the floor from its palm, glittering in the faint light, followed by a few drops of blood.
“He knows transitional magic,” Lamrhath said. “I told you all, didn’t I?”
He turned back to his new subject. “Welcome. I’m Lamrhath, Kingsorcerer over the Darklands. I assume you want to be called Wikshen now. What can we get for you? Your desires will be provided for.”
He turned and scanned the terrified faces in the doorframe. One of the tubbiest sorcerers in the outpost held a greasy, half-eaten goose leg. He must not have bothered to let it go when he had hurried straight from the dining table and rushed down here when the news spread.
Lamrhath pointed to him as he nibbled vacantly. “You.” The fat man’s eyes widened. “Give that to Cuanth.” He sighed and did so. Cuanth, however, stiffened up, frowning as he took the food.
Lamrhath turned to the creature. “Are you hungry? There is much more if you want.”
Cuanth trembled, his mouth hanging open as he stared at the shadowed creature. Lamrhath prodded him. “Offer it to our guest.”
Cuanth approached, shaking like Kaskill had, and the creature stood, rising to a towering height. The lantern illuminated its pale face, like a saehgahn’s but not quite recognizable as Dorhen’s. The face’s slim bone structure displayed a prominent nose and strong angles at the jaw and cheekbones, a face more mature than Dorhen’s.
With its movement, the dense shadow around it grew larger. It paced side to side, staying within the small, shadowy space. Dorhen had been at least a foot shorter when they had dragged his bound, convulsing body down here. The creature’s kilt-like garment dragged behind it. Its stringy hair covered its face like a slimy curtain and hung in dark trails over its pale chest.
Cuanth opened his fist, exposing the food on his open palm as he would offer it to a horse. He held it out, keeping as much distance as possible.
The creature paused to regard the food in the man’s quaking hand and lifted it off with two fingers. After a whiff of its smoky fragrance, it licked the greasy meat. Its reflective turquoise eyes locked on Lamrhath as it took a small bite.
Lamrhath whirled around. “Bring more food.”
Two sorcerers shoved back through the doorway. The creature dropped the meat on the floor, still unfinished. Its attention returned to Cuanth, who lingered, shifting his eyes anywhere to avoid eye contact with the monster.
The creature extended its arm toward him, fingers pointing up. The shallow surface of its palm filled with liquid mercury, which hardened and reflected like a mirror. Cuanth caught a glimpse of his own ashen face in the silvery sheet glazing the skin.
“See how he recreates the mirror?” Lamrhath whispered to the sorcerers standing close behind him. “He’s bringing it back. Where was it?”
As Cuanth’s shoulders relaxed, the creature stepped forward and slapped the mirror-hand over the sorcerer’s forehead, shattering the glass and removing it from its body. Cuanth stumbled backward, holding his bloodied face. The creature walked along the wall until the darkness trailing behind it smothered what little light gleamed through the window. The shadow thickened and smothered the lantern light.
Several sorcerers cast spells of hovering light globes, which glowed like cool-flamed candles. Cuanth huddled beside Kaskill, wiping blood off his face and plugging the gash on his forehead with his robe sleeve.
The additional food hadn’t arrived yet. Instead, a woman’s voice murmured in the doorway above, inquiring about the commotion.
“Bring her in,” Lamrhath said to the men clogging the doorway.
She let out a scream as they grabbed and pushed her forward. The noise level elevated higher than he’d prefer around this unpredictable creature. They ripped off her corset and tore at her gown until it hung on one shoulder by threads, exposing a lot of her flesh. Lamrhath didn’t care what condition she arrived in.
“Remember Selka?” Lamrhath asked, taking her bare arm and pulling her forward as the creature stood proud and silent. She didn’t fight as much as before and she stoppered up her protests. “You enjoyed her a day ago. You can do so again. Whatever you want, I will provide,” Lamrhath said. “In my house, you can sate every pleasure within your creed.”
He shoved Selka forward. She froze when the creature didn’t move at first.
It paced around her in study as she trembled and whimpered. It grabbed a lock of her hair and leaned in to smell it. Its fingertips slid from her bare shoulder down the length of her arm. Wrapping its fingers around her wrist, it lifted her hand to smell her skin.
It sank its teeth in. She screamed and writhed as if her hand were mortared into a tall brick wall. Her blood added to the existing stain on the creature’s chin.
Many sorcerers drew up their red hoods, as they customarily did for sacrifice and torture. With their hoods up, they became one amorphous body of red, standing emotionless and detached from the frantic scene before them.
She fell to the floor with a slap across the stones when its jaw unlocked. Forgetting about her bleeding hand, she winced and shielded her head. Instead of falling atop her, as Lamrhath and everyone else expected, the creature stepped over her and sprang toward the sorcerers. It snagged the back of Cuanth’s hair and slammed his forehead into the stone wall. He left a dark trail down the rocky surface as he slid peacefully to the floor.
The rest of the sorcerers scattered in the creature’s path. They packed into the corridor until they became wedged in. The creature stalked up the steps and yanked a few into the room with him as others willingly jumped off the stairs to get away.
Harn got to work ordering men out of the kingsorcerer’s way. The creature chased the scrambling sorcerers, snagged one, lifted him high, and threw him at the wall. His neck broke on impact; the next few weren’t so lucky. Some sorcerers kept the creature distracted so Lamrhath could climb the stairs and exit the area. Bodies flew and crumpled; the creature ripped hair and clawed eyes along its way toward Lamrhath, who easily made his way through the up-sloping corridor.
When it found a clear path, the creature broke into a sprint. Wind caught its blue hair. Lamrhath turned at the sound of the rapidly padding feet and extended his palm, from which blossomed a “fire flower,” dancing and blazing with intense heat.
The creature stumbled to a stop, beads of moisture quickly forming on its ches
t and upper lip. It walked backward. Lamrhath advanced, pushing the small inferno at it.
“Oh, now I remember. You don’t like fire,” he said over the roar of the flames. “Well, you’ll learn to respect me because I know all the fire spells through each advanced level, and I’ll incinerate your ashes into diamonds if you want to try and fight me. I told you I am kingsorcerer. I’ll also tell you I have no sense of humor, so don’t think of disobeying me, you putrid maggot.”
He pushed the fiend all the way back into the cellar, where it fell off the stairs, landing on its feet with a surprising show of grace. When Lamrhath eased his fire flower down to a puff of smoke, a sorcerer standing by closed and locked the door. Caging the creature was more important than freeing the last remaining injured sorcerer, who begged them to open the door, or Selka, who had fainted.
Lamrhath walked away as the last two sorcerers standing outside the door listened to their companion sob and beg to be let out. His voice ended in a wet gurgle, followed by a heavy thud.
“Ssss-i-lencccccce,” rasped an inhuman vibration through the wood grains when the screaming ended.
The next morning, Lamrhath and his associates rushed down to the basement. The metallic smell of blood wafted out when the door opened. The same airy, black substance filled the room, like yesterday but thicker.
Lamrhath motioned to his four lantern bearers. They also brought every chain accessible in the manor. The lantern bearers descended first, followed by one sorcerer prepared to cast a large fire flower to clear the room of the living darkness, and then Lamrhath.
The leading lantern bearer stumbled over one of the bodies from yesterday, sprawled at the foot of the steps. Holding the lanterns high, they began waving the lights around when it became apparent how the darkness parted around them like a thick school of frightened fish. Their hands trembled. The silence hung as thick as the cloud. No sign of the creature yet.
One of the lantern bearers stuttered, “Hurry and cast it already.”
At Lamrhath’s nod, the one with the spell pre-charged in his glove stepped forward. They should’ve reached the center of the room at this point. Everyone lowered their eyes for what would occur.
A bright flash filled the room, chasing the majority of the shadow away. Afterward, they could see all the way to the back wall.
The creature had been stalking around soundlessly, but it jolted and fell in the sudden extreme light. The caster’s fire flower blazed for a few seconds and extinguished slowly, leaving them with lantern light and the windows to light the room. The creature’s face showed shock and oblivion, his eyes never quite settling on any of them.
A woman groaned. Selka. She was still alive.
The lantern bearers stood to protect Lamrhath, holding their lights forward as he moved behind them toward the woman huddling in the corner opposite the creature. He took her hand and squeezed it. She didn’t respond, so he patted her face, applying more pressure when she remained lethargic. Her face wore a large smudge of dirt and she smelled like urine.
“Selka,” Lamrhath whispered.
“My lord?”
“Yes.”
She rubbed her eyes. Her other hand showed black and blue splotches around a swollen, scabby bite mark running across half her hand. Selka was tiny compared to the monster; he could’ve bitten the whole appendage off at the wrist. When she noticed the creature cowering under the lanterns, her eyes teared up and she gnawed her sleeve. Her clothes were in horrible condition, though not much different from what Lamrhath remembered.
Lamrhath took her good hand again. “Tell me what happened to you.”
“Well, I—I fainted, I think.”
“Were you awake at any point last night?”
“I think so.”
“So what did he do?”
“Um.” She looked again at the creature. Whatever was happening to him, he had become a stupid, mumbling oaf, petting his own blue hair and stroking the wall with his other hand.
“Don’t be afraid, we’re here now,” Lamrhath said. When her eyes returned to his, they were large and watery. “Did he rape you?”
She looked down at herself, still groggy, and cupped her exposed breast, her fingers pressing into the soft flesh. It had been showing since yesterday when the sorcerers had torn her clothes. The sight of its pink, pointing nipple distracted Lamrhath. He’d tasted that part of her several times since this outpost’s establishment, and the memories ushered in his relentless ailment again. It had been a few hours beyond what he usually managed with his ailment. He’d spent the entire night scouring the library with his associates for information on Wikshen, rather than what he usually did.
He squeezed her hand for his answer.
“No, I don’t think so. At least not while I was awake.”
“Did he attack you?”
“No.”
“What did he do?”
“Nothing. It was too dark. But he never bothered me. He didn’t even acknowledge me.”
Lamrhath pointed behind him. “That’s the young elf you pleasured the other day. Are you aware?”
Selka squinted, and then covered her mouth as a spark of recognition hit her. “What happened to him?”
“A disaster.”
He helped her to stand. Her legs shook, and she leaned on him for support. He leaned away to stave off his growing erection, and she wobbled on her own feet before fixing her equilibrium.
He pushed her toward the door, and she stumbled on her own. “Go on. Before something else happens.”
Picking her way around the dead bodies and sticky blood pools, she made it to the steps and climbed them with both hands and feet. By now, his heart was pounding with sexual thrill, and he averted his gaze from the impression of her rear showing through her thin, ragged skirt.
Lamrhath rubbed his face and returned to the creature being bound in chains. Dire trouble could be facing his faction, but his ailment never cared about order of importance.
“This isn’t working, my lord,” one of the sorcerers said.
“What isn’t?”
“These chains. Every time we put a shackle around his wrist, his skin swallows the iron.”
Three days later…
They’d made good progress with the creature. After the second day, he spoke his first sensible words and confirmed his name was Wikshen. Daghahen hadn’t lied. But Wikshen refused to comply, and they couldn’t simply set him free, not when he offered such delicious possibilities to progress Ilbith’s agendas. Alternately, if they set him free, he might try to conquer Ilbith and advance his own cult’s status instead—or so they had read in the one book found in the manor’s library which happened to share tales about Wikshen.
Wikshen himself was a legendary conqueror who came with his own following of worshippers. Lamrhath had to leash him up. Ideally, he would absorb the Wikshonites into Ilbith, uniting the two societies to create a new one more powerful than history had ever seen.
Holding a Wikshen required special procedures. They couldn’t use iron or any other metal to bind him because he could absorb any mineral into his skin for an easy escape. After discovering how the light helped subdue him, they moved Wikshen to the highest turret in the manor.
Lamrhath ventured up there often to see his progress. No sounds came through the door as Lamrhath turned the key, which was normal. Wikshen had made it known he was a reserved type of monster, waiting for the right moment to strike.
Inside the round room, every mirror in the outpost had been dusted off and set around a large, wooden armchair bearing Wikshen tied down with rawhides and ropes. The mirrors reflected sunlight through the windows, the beams fed through lenses they’d scrapped from spyglasses and various instruments, guiding the sunlight directly onto Wikshen to render him as helpless as a feeble old man. Wik, being a spirit of darkness, dwindled in sunlight, which voided his magic abilities and a lot of his bodily strength too.
They couldn’t feed too much sunlight to him, however. Occasionally,
an attendant turned mirrors or put a screen over a window to prevent the sun from killing him. They had assessed the sun’s effects when a sharp ray made a spot on his skin sizzle and blister. He wore a few blisters already. They couldn’t let him catch fire and die. If they did, the pixie would escape. It was more valuable to them now, trapped within this body.
“Good morning,” Lamrhath said to Wikshen. “Are you still alive?”
He said nothing and his breaths came shallow, head flopped against the back of the hard chair, eyes closed. His whole form sat limp, as if he were melting.
“Are you ready to talk and explain all of your secrets?”
When Lamrhath moved to see his face better, he turned it away, keeping his eyes closed. “Come on now, look at me.” Apparently, Wikshen preferred looking toward the bright sunbeam on his other side.
“I want to be your friend. I want to make you comfortable. We found some reading material about you. You like pleasure—so do we. You particularly like good, flavorful food. Well, we have a good kitchen and lots of resources. We’ll prepare anything you like.”
Wikshen’s throat rasped, his chest rising and falling deeply.
“All right, here.” Lamrhath moved to the window on that side and dragged a folded room divider in front of it to block out one of the stronger sunbeams. Wikshen finally opened his eyes and sighed in the dimmed lighting. He lifted his head.
“And if you speak to me, I’ll order them to light one less candle to plague you tonight.” They’d brought most of their candle stock up here too, using the same lenses and crystal balls to magnify their glow.
He pulled up a chair beside Wikshen and sat. The rawhide had been wound over and over around his forearms and looped under the arms of the chair. His torso was bound to the back of the chair, weaving the strands through the intricately carved holes. All the knots were tied at the back of the chair so Wikshen couldn’t reach them. No chains or buckles were used to bind him, or else he might absorb the metal into his skin the way Dorhen had escaped his cell the other day.
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