Malcor's Story

by Eric K. Barnum

  The vampire fell still, its hand buried in Malcor’s sides as it had started pushing up to his heart. Malcor felt the regeneration ring fighting to keep him alive. He almost laughed when he tried to pull off the corpse but the hand pulled at him and he froze. Their faces bore equal looks of disgust and relief. He steeled his will and pulled the hand out. His life gushed out of the wound and he lost consciousness.

  He heard voices talking about him. Slowly, Noboyuki’s voice became clear. “Without Malcor, this vampire would have killed us all. I don’t know how he absorbs so much damage and remains alive. He has truly amazing constitution. I have never exhausted myself healing like this, ever."

  He felt Sako wiping his face and opened his eyes. He was not expecting her to be so close to him and she blushed. He tried to say a greeting but his lungs started to ache and he fell over coughing so hard he began vomiting. The priest caught him and held him trying to relax the still bleeding wounds. “Imperius has healed you Malcor, but you keep suffering wounds beyond my healing. You need good food and rest. Sadly things we will not find here.”

  Malcor nodded trying to repress a cough and noted that the regeneration ring had reached its limit. Just another pretty gemstone ring now, it still had an aura of wonder to it but no potency. Sako knelt down on his other side. Though the worst of his wounds had healed and he was no longer in danger of bleeding out, he still felt awful. The priest explained that he had suffered all kinds of injuries and, “We must rest. I am exhausted and need to replenish myself. Tomorrow, I can attempt more healing.”

  The battle had left gore and corpses everywhere, but they had no choice. Wounded as they were, they established a watch, except for Malcor, and made the best of it. Their gods watched over them that night and it passed uneventfully. Malcor awoke feeling a thousand times better to see Noboyuki looking like death warmed over. Jaga and Hiroshi had bound their wounds but clearly, Malcor had exhausted the priest’s healing abilities again. He carefully stood and stretched. “Good as new,” he said. “I feel the fatigue of healing, but have trained to fight through it. Many thanks to you Noboyuki.”

  “The holy god Imperius remains impressed by your fighting spirit and dauntless valor Malcor.”

  Sako had scouted a bit and reported that she had found an area, “It has to have a secret door or something. It strikes me as being off. I can’t say why though. I need help.” With Jaga and Hiroshi still suffering severe wounds, Sako and the priest went down to investigate the area.

  Malcor smiled at Jaga and Hiroshi. “I’ve never fought a vampire before. I think somehow I might try a different tactic if there is a next time.”

  The two of them chuckled and then laughed. They had never fought one either. “The stories always make them seem so grand and seductive. This one seemed pathetic and frightful in its hunger, but that was all.” Jaga picked up the skull and pried the eye teeth out. “Here,” he tossed them to Malcor. “Without your sacrifice, we’d all be dead.”

  They heard stone moving and Sako called back to them to join. They walked several hundred feet farther in and found a section of the wall titled. “We can’t get it to open all the way,” they said looking at Malcor. “The wall is super heavy. We think it’s intended for the ogres.”

  Malcor stepped forward and pushed against the wall looking for a handhold. He finally found one and then strained with all his might. Stars and red spots danced before his eyes and then the wall shifted, opening just enough for them to enter. “I think we found paradise,” Malcor said looking around.

  The secret door opened to a supply room containing all kinds of salted and preserved meats, sausage, and cheese. Kegs of ale and bottles of wine lined shelves to the far side of the room. At first they all approached the food tentatively wondering if the salted meats were human flesh. But, they turned out to be beef and lamb. While they still had some rations left, the food tasted wonderful. They closed the door and braced it and ate their fill. When food and drink had been sated, they found lantern oil and torches and resupplied. The time allowed Noboyuki meditation and time to heal the group some more. Watching made Malcor realize how he took Tembri’s instant healing for granted.

  Something changed in the party as well. The unexpected relief and resupply lightened their mood considerably. Malcor had come to expect their suspicious natures, but after so many days of combat, battle, danger, and peril, they began treating him as a member of their group. While Sako and the thief Hiroshi grew closer, it became apparent to all of them that Sako did have feelings for Malcor, just not amorous ones. She held him in a strange fascination, asking questions about Tania, about his upbringing, his sword, as if she could not get enough information about it. As Hiroshi saw that curiosity drove this rather than affection, he also began asking questions, and relaxed. Knowing they were all gangsters did not lessen the surprise that even Jaga had played the part of thief in his youth. Only Noboyuki, the priest of Imperius, had joined them outside the thieving world and even he was connected through his wife. She had grown up on the streets and carried some kind of obligation that Noboyuki sought to repay.

  Though exhausted, he allowed himself to enjoy the conversation and even teased them back a bit as he mended his gear and re-sharpened his sword. He stood for first watch, resting against the secret door. Though a wonderful camp, the lack of retreat made their current location less than ideal. Mal steeled himself from drowsing and hummed a Tanian song from the days when the barbarians worshipped the emperor as a god, and their surprise to learn of the Queen. The others fell asleep to his whispered singing. With relief, he woke Hiroshi for the next shift and slumped down cradling his sword.

  Malcor’s sleep had strange dreams. Dar Shara danced in fire, and dragonshifting priestesses kissed him. Then R’Dar Ora came and seduced him while the dragons danced and spun around. The images suddenly shifted when darkness fell over them and while the others ran away terrified, Malcor stood and held his hands up high as if greeting the shadows. His dreamscape went pitch black and then resolved into grays as a darkly-robed figure stood before him. He felt his dream pulse, and in his sleep, he gripped his sword tightly. The robed figure held its hand out to Malcor and took a deep breath as if to scream. Instead a roar issued forth that pulsed the dreamscape and dropped Malcor to his knees.

  He grabbed his ears but the insane noise began to blow him back and he grabbed at the shaded ground fearing he’d be blown into the sky. And still the noise and power increased in waves each threatening to hurl Malcor into darkness. He grabbed even tighter at the ground and noted that it crunched beneath his elongating black nails that twisted into claws. His right arm exploded as tendrils of his own blood arched out into the ground and reformed as an oversized dragon claw. His forearm lengthened to almost twice its size as black unreflecting dragon scales climbed up his arm from his claws. He stared at it with fascination and noted the sound had stopped.

  The dark figure’s hand also had transformed into a dragonclaw. From somewhere behind and to the side, a single bright light shone and that figure’s claw now a shadow on the gray ground pricked Malcor’s shadow. Stabbing pain lanced through his right arm. “Malcor, your name in this place is Kell’Tayris. You wage war with fury. I am pleased. Very soon, you will need this. Your time has come. Accept this mark as your father did.”

  Malcor woke choking for air and covered in sweat. His right hand, halfway between wrist and elbow held a tear drop wound the size of three fingers and it bled furiously and burned setting his arm afire with an agony beyond a normal wound. Though he tried to keep quiet, he could not. Hiroshi looked over when he heard Malcor groan, and started to move to help. Malcor shook him off and turned his back, cowering over his wound that quickly bled through his attempts at bandaging it. Hiroshi touched his shoulder expressing concern but Mal shook it off and began praying for help.

  When Hiroshi woke Jaga for the guard change, Mal heard their exchange. “It happened out of nowhere. I felt something and then Malcor awoke with a terrible wound in his a
rm. He won’t accept help.”

  Hiroshi lay down by Sako who cuddled up to him. Jaga went over and sat down by Malcor, offering him a drink. Malcor took it and drank. “Were you attacked?” Jaga whispered.

  Mal shook his head “no” but then added, “In Tania, gifts often come with pain.” He tried to smile but the wound pulsed again. Jaga removed the bandage and looked at it wondering how such a thing could be a gift. Mal just shrugged and rewrapped the wound. “Noboyuki will not be able to heal this. It will need to heal naturally. Don’t worry about me.”

  When Jaga completed his shift and went to awaken Sako, Malcor interrupted him. “I’ll take this shift. I can’t sleep anyways. The pain has calmed, but is still too much to rest.”

  After what felt like only a few minutes from Jaga’s return to sleep, Malcor heard a sound they had all dreaded. Outside the door, the corpses clicked and twitched to unliving motion. Something on the door’s other side called to those corpses. Through the stone, they could not tell except the occasional sounds of metal scraping across the stone or a growl. One by one, Malcor held his hand over his friends’ mouths as he quietly woke them one at a time. The sounds were either moving past their door or coming towards.

  One by one, they drew their weapons. The priest had rested nicely and suggested they hide, rather than wait. Sako nodded and quickly flipped through her spellbook and indicated she’d be ready in about ten minutes. They moved back to the end of the storeroom. “I’m going to use an illusion to make us look like we’re part of the dark “undesirable” part of the storeroom, at least I hope so, from an ogre’s perspective.” She began casting her spell. “It’s important that none of you move. My illusions cannot adjust if you move. So get comfortable and stay very still.”

  Step by step, as she chanted, she moved to stand with them. When almost finished, the door shuddered and they heard an ogre spit profanity. Streams of dust rained down from the ceiling, and then they extinguished the lights and everyone stood still. A few moments later, the door pulled open as torch and lantern light burst into the room. “Hold very still,” Sako whispered. “We are cast off junk…”

  A scarred ogre looked into the room. It stepped aside and four orcs in fine Imperic-styled armor entered and began stuffing food, ale, and other supplies into satchels that they then handed back through the door. The orc closest to them sniffed and looked in their direction at one point as if sensing something, but at the ogre’s questioned threat, went back to work grabbing things. Several minutes later, the same orc looked down at the pool of blood to pick up a link of sausage that had fallen off the table. As he picked it up into better light, it noted the fresh blood. The ogre misunderstanding the intent as hunger, chose that moment to lurch forward and slap the orc’s head. “You! Pack! No more warning!”

  The orc stood back up from where it had fallen and reached for his satchel, which had fallen in Malcor’s blood pool. Its eyes narrowed and it looked around the room, peering into the dark back area intently. Being more careful to avoid the ogre’s wrath, it continued to scan. Everyone held their breath but with the ogre ready to beat it to death, the orc did not have time to express its concerns. They finished gathering their materials together and then left.

  Chapter Fifty Two - The Storeroom War

  About an hour later, they heard the last sounds of the group’s passage leaving the area. They all sighed with relief and relaxed tense muscles. Malcor slumped down cradling his arm, which had soaked through multiple layers of bandages and still freely bled, though more slowly now. Noboyuki insisted on trying against Mal’s objections to heal the gaping wound. The warm flow of healing washed over Mal and eased his suffering but did nothing at all to the wound. Without Malcor at full strength, they would not be able to open the door so they settled down for another day. Malcor, soothed by the failed healing spell, fell into a fitful sleep.

  At some point, Sako shook him awake indicating the need for quiet. Outside the heavy stone door, they heard sounds. Metal on stone, clicking, and occasional grinding sounds reached them. As the noises progressed, the anxiety of the party grew until Malcor said, “Noboyuki, will you use another healing on me? I will attempt the door. I do not think it wise to stay here much longer.”

  The others quickly agreed when Mal noted that the orc may have finally been able to talk to someone who listened. “We must be ready for the worst. We come out of here with everything we got. I will open the door as fast as I can, but use it as a shield as long as you can.”

  They made ready. Sako prepared a fire spell that would roll out from the doorway. Hiroshi would try to get past the door and secretly outflank and backstab whoever the leader turned out to be. Noboyuki readied a holy fire spell, similar to those Malcor had seen the priestesses use in Tania. Jaga would fight and give Mal time to clear the door.

  They girded up their armor, readied their tactics, and Malcor moved to the door. Gripping it at ogre height made the wound in his arm tear open and though torrents of blood ran down his arm, he strained and pushed. At first, nothing happened and then the door ponderously sighed, lifting just enough for the counterweights to engage, and Malcor pushed with all his might. The uneven stone floor grated as it moved. Blood and rivers of sweat poured off Mal’s body. On the other side, something snapped and the door flew off its track. They saw a brief glimpse of light as a hailstorm of arrows, darts, stones, and crossbow bolts launched at them. Caught off guard and off balance, Malcor fell forward with the door, which shattered into pieces when it smashed to the floor.

  The dust and debris and door protected Malcor who prayed for his friends, and then his training and devotion carried him upright as Coming Undone leapt into his blood-slick hand. Not expecting a warrior of such dreadful countenance to be outside the room, the goblins and orcs nearest him cowered back as those behind rushed forward to attack the room. Malcor began singing in draconian to take his mind off the pain. As he did so, he felt energized and better.

  “Oh Mother, where do the children fly? They left yesterday for a place to die. The River flows and fire burns but Mother she loves us forever. She loves us. She guards us. She watches over us till the fire burns and the children come home. Darkness waits for them, the children in the dark cannot see. They cannot breathe. They cannot stand the light. I will stand as their light. I will be their shining star. I will be their guide until the children come home.”

  Coming Undone tore through limbs and armor as Malcor charged into the center of the archer group. Though they scrambled to reload, he made sure that another volley did not occur. Behind him, a ball of fire rolled out into the horde. In its light, he saw the orc from the storeroom earlier. No ogres. The orcs commanded this time instead of the less cunning ogres. These orcs wore gleaming regalia marked by purple shaded swirls.

  Malcor noted the orc commander and started cutting his way at it through the horde. Seeing him, the commander ordered orcs into line behind the more easily-scattered goblins. Malcor cut past an outthrust saber and smashed into the orcs’ shield wall. They caught him and almost faltered and then pushed back trying to gain some distance. He reached up to the top of the shield with his left hand and stepped back while pulling down. The unfortunate orc, being pulled forward and trying to push that way at the same time fell at Malcor’s feet as Malcor used its head like a stepping stone to slash left and right behind the gap. Though the orcs tried to close the gap, Coming Undone chipped and shattered armor adding the sound of broken glass to the combat. Several reinforcements jumped forward with pikes seeking to skewer him. One of the pikes cut through the bandages on Malcor’s arm. As if time had frozen, Malcor felt himself slip out of the River pre-wincing in the surety of how much a pike attack against the teardrop wound was going to hurt. Instead, he stood up from the River and felt his arm quiver. Still holding his sword, his arm elongated and dragonshifted into an oversized black dragon claw… and then the River took him again.

  The pike tip shattered on black dragon scales and the orc dropped the pike shaf
t as it frosted over with cold. That caught Malcor’s attention briefly as black dragons typically used acid, not cold. His dragon arm, almost as long as his body, swiped out. He caught his sword in his left hand while the dragon arm smashed goblins back from his right side. The claws on this arm and its scales reflected no light. The orcs scrambled backwards from the transformation, fear and alarm darkening their combat fever.

  Malcor pressed his advantage. His dragon arm raged stronger than many men and the orcs fell back trying to avoid his wide-ranging claw attacks. He moved forward and saw the orc commander grin as it dropped his steel helmet and raised its sword and shield to accept the challenge.

  Behind him, a blade stabbed into his back and he swung full circle with both claw and sword as his sword decapitated and then his claw slapped the headless corpse into a group of fighters. The orc commander called out its challenge and Malcor tried to complete his spin, but off-balanced with his new arm and dropped to a knee just barely recovering. The orc cut down and though blocked by the dragon scales, it cut and gleamed with fell magic power. The wound hurt more than it should have and the orcs around it, cried out joyously seeing this man-beast able to be hurt.

  Just like that, Malcor lost it. The waging emotions in him going from peril to triumph to unexpected dragon arm and victory and now to another twist in the tide of this battle – it was simply too much. His mind shut down and primal fury took over. His mouth went ice cold and darkness shrouded his vision. He tried to step out of it by leaving the River but instead got stuck there. A dim part of him registered his combat with the commander, but it felt weird watching him fight, taking damage, inflicting damage, and feeling absolutely nothing. Feeling nothing, but watching it… fascinating. He could not take his eyes off the dragon arm. A living weapon grafted to his body, it seemed to have a will and mind of its own. Just now, a weapon shattered on his hand scales and then the remnants of that weapon frosted back towards the bearer. Instinctively, the arm twisted to slash at the orc and as it did so, several finger talons shot out to clip nearby orcs. With fascination, Malcor watched those talons barely seem to touch but eviscerate those warriors.