The Devil's Grasp

by Chris Pisano

  The wind whipped near the travelers, confusing them. Turning in circles, Grymon stepped too far away from the others and the burning tree. Before he could right himself, he jerked. And jerked again. His chest heaved in then out, as did his abdomen. Blood cascaded from his mouth. His severed left arm fell to the ground. He looked to his friends for help as his torso slid from his waist, making a sickening thud as it hit the dirt. Like an unbalanced stalk, his one leg leg fell away while his wooden leg remained upright, planted in the forest dirt. Behind where Grymon once stood, three snickering demons appeared as misty wisps at first, until the smoke congealed to form bone white monsters. The Spirit Stone demons. Bale had not seen these demons before, but recognized them as the ones who killed his friends and relatives and got him banished from his home village. He knew that they killed Zot from the harrowing descriptions given by witnesses. He no longer felt fear.

  “No more!” Bale screamed as he grabbed the burning tree. Bending his knees and hugging the trunk, he uprooted it with one tug. “No more!”

  Surprised by the bold move, the laughing demons failed to move fast enough as the top of the flaming tree came crashing down on them. Two of the demons survived and went back to their smoky forms. Spinning in circles, Bale continued to swing the burning tree, his companions all dropping to the ground for cover. Except for Lapin, who enjoyed the twirling ride in Bale’s pocket as he continued to drink. “Weeeeee! Woooooo!”

  Noticing that the darkness moved away from the whipping fire, Silver crawled to Pik and Phyl. He nudged them and pointed. They too noticed that both the Shadow Stone demons and the Spirit Stone demons retreated from the burning tree. “Can you guide him?”

  “With some help,” Pik said.

  The three raised themselves to a crouch, waiting for the right opportunity. As Bale spun and the rabbit squealed, Silver, Pik, and Phyl rushed the ogre. They timed their attack right, pushing the ogre, guiding him. Still waving the tree like a madman swinging a fiery club, Bale ran, cutting a swath through the blanket of darkness. Staying close to Bale, the rest followed as he continued to scream, “No more!”

  The slashing and swinging continued well past the wall of shadow, but no one dared to interrupt the crazed ogre. He only stopped once they broke through the forest perimeter into a clearing of mud and filth bordered by haggard trees, dismal swamp land, and jagged rock croppings. They found Grimwell.

  Even to the group of nonhumans within the party, Grimwell often represented anathema. Today, however, its warped walls and rutted roads meant sanctuary. Despite the need of the unlikely companions to cover mileage, there was a noticeable pause upon reaching the entrance to the monster town. An unspoken relief passed through the group leaping from member to member like a jolt of electricity.

  The tree that Bale hugged to his body had burned and charred until it resembled a spent wick.

  “Read your future for a silver, lord?”

  The majority of the group stood paralyzed as if in an apoplexy of fear, for the creature huddled on the ground before them was a twisted effigy of life. Her skin was black as a nightmare, and her lank hair hung in greasy waves like a measure of despair. The woman’s body was bent and twisted, her limbs wrenched at impossible angles as if by hell’s own fury. With colorless eyes, distinguishable from the rest of her face only by the barest trace of moisture and the lavender colored pupil that marked their precise center, the woman leered up at them. When she spoke, a waft of decay brushed over them as her reedy voice intoned its way past the decomposing ridge that seemed to serve as her upper teeth. From her bottom jaw protruded two fanglike teeth, perfectly fitted into the center. They gleamed ivory-like up at the group with a palpable malignancy that suggested only the basest aspects of night.

  “Come, Prince … it’s only a silver! And quite a steal at that price!”

  “Belhurst,” Dearborn asked, “what is that?” Her hand straying to the pommel of her sword.

  With a stifling gesture, Belhurst stopped the warrior woman before she could make any menacing movements. In a quiet voice, he named the creature before them.

  “Night-hag.”

  “What does it want?” Silver asked.

  “Very dangerous. No hostile moves.”

  “We don’t have time for this, wizard.”

  “We do now, thief.”

  “We could certainly push aside a haggard old woman,” Silver queried.

  “Few could. At a betting tent, I wouldn’t lay my gold that none in this party could.”

  “What?” Silver asked in a voice that was far louder than intended. Without realizing himself, he spun about to face the wizard, but blackness overwhelmed his senses, and he was on the ground without even feeling himself fall, the night-hag perched upon his back. Her move was so sudden that even Dearborn, inured as she was for the unexpected in battle, had no opportunity to react.

  Diminutia, ever quick to gather his wits, made a move to help his friend, but it was met with a sound so maleficent it would have paled an ogre’s bellow and muted a dragon’s roar. A gaze of hideous intensity transfixed Diminutia. Spasms of pain rippled through his musculature dropping him to his knees. His head swam until he would have been hard pressed to utter his own name, and his only possible response was to lie down. To his friends, he appeared to have drunken himself into a stupor so deep that even falling down posed difficulty.

  With a movement as distinct as a mumble, the hag moved again, leaving her perch atop Silver’s back for the spot where they had originally encountered her. A visible distortion in the air over Silver’s back, like rising steam, was the only evidence of her passing. Dearborn knelt slowly towards him, her eyes never leaving the crone.

  “He lives,” Dearborn reported to the others after searching his neck for a pulse.

  “Had she meant for him to be dead,” Belhurst said, “he would be beyond all of our power to save. Look there.” He indicated the spot above Silver’s back with a directed finger. “That isn’t heat you see rising. It’s his will to live. In time it will return to him, but he will not be of much use to us for a while.”

  A moan rose from the mass that was Diminutia’s sprawled form.

  “And him?” Dearborn asked. “What has befallen him?”

  “A mind cloud,” the hag cackled. “Nightmares that not even the light of day can chase.”

  “Let’s not see them,” Phyl suggested mildly. “We have our own nightmares as is.”

  “Agreed,” said Belhurst. “The trick now is to appease her. She seems to be interested in your pithy friend, Bale.”

  “Bale?” several of the members of the group asked incredulously, turning toward the wizard.

  “But she said ‘Prince,’” stated Phyl dumbly. “She called him ‘Prince.’”

  “Yeah,” said Bale. Then, as he noticed that several of the others present had begun to shake their heads as though clearing away a stray, but unpleasant memory, he, too, began to shake his head slowly. He watched the others through narrowed eyes, not wanting to be the odd man out when they all stopped.

  “Bah! Prince!” snorted Pik.

  “Yeah,” said Bale again, still shaking his head as though the mystery would shake itself out.

  “It is weird, Belhurst. Isn’t prince more of a human term?” Dearborn asked.

  “Yeah,” said Bale again.

  Belhurst cleared his throat before answering. “Well, no, not really. As most nonhumans lack the, um, taste for a more complex political structure, they tend toward monarchies. Though as I understand it princes don’t …”

  “What!” snorted Bale, now clearly perturbed. “What do you want?”

  “I’m not sure I take your meaning, Bale?”

  “You all keep calling my name then don’t say anything when I answer you.

  “No one has been calling your name, Bale,” Belhurst stated.

  “I mean, it’s rude. In case your moms never told you,” finished the ogre.

  “But no one said your name, Bale,” Belhurst com
plained, clearly upset at allowing himself to be drawn into an inane conversation with the immense creature. He had seen what destruction Bale was capable of when perturbed and would have preferred to skirt the issue, but the big lummox intrigued him.

  “Yes. You have. You’ve been saying, ‘Prince. Prince. Prince.’ But whenever I answer with, ‘Yeah,’ you just keep on talking.”

  “Your name … your real name … is … Prince?”

  “Yes!”

  Silence befell the group, none could register the concepts set before them until Pik started laughing, a hard belly-cramping, tear-forming laugh formed from a violent mix of comedy and insanity. Unable to stop himself from doing anything else, Phyl joined with a knee-shaking guffaw. The wizards laughed along as well but hid their zeal by turning their backs. Dearborn found no energy to laugh, sitting on the ground with Diminutia’s head on her lap and stroking his hair. “Need I remind everyone here that we just got finished fleeing from demons only to stumble upon a nightmarish hag who felled two of our own.”

  Incensed, Bale reached into his pant pocket not inhabited by Lapin and pulled out a silver coin. He handed it to the night-hag. “I agree with Dearborn.”

  The hag smiled a gnarled-tooth grin and accepted the coin. “You, sir Prince, are the strongest and bravest of the lot. But it is your intelligence that will guide you to greatness.”

  Despite the wretchedness of the bare ground, both Phyl and Pik fell to it, their laughter unstoppable. Dearborn twisted her face in disgust at their behavior, longing for the discipline of her lost Elite Troop; she turned her attention to Diminutia. She never gave much credence to the felonious career of thievery. Yet, observing Diminutia for this journey, getting closer to him, she recognized some of the same qualities within the field as she saw within the army: life-depending trust; bravery, albeit in a different form, but bravery nonetheless; and a deep bond with associates that transcends mere friendship.

  Dearborn stroked Diminutia’s hair while replaying the events in which he demonstrated these acts. She then stroked the soft skin of his face. Chuckling to herself, she knew that softness could have only come from using the same lotions housewives of wealthy men would use. That detracted from his manliness, but certainly not from his handsomeness. Stroking his square jaw and chiseled cheeks, she could not resist leaning in to kiss his inviting lips. To her surprise, he kissed back.

  Dearborn pulled away to see sapphire-blue eyes staring deep into hers. A wan smile formed. She then looked to the night-hag, standing near and watching the display. “I thought you said he would not be joining the waking world for some time?”

  “I guess some fairy tales are true,” the hag snorted and turned to walk away. “Now, follow me.”

  Still confused, both Dearborn and Diminutia looked to Belhurst who flashed a grin and mouthed the word, “Love.”

  Blushing, Dearborn and Diminutia helped each other to their feet. After kicking sand on Pik and Phyl, still on the ground, they aided Silver to his feet, now semi-conscious and wobbling like a drunkard. They all followed the night-hag as she led them into town.

  The streets were indistinguishable, bare footpaths etched into the ground. The structures could hardly even be called hovels, mere openings formed in the rolling knolls of the landscape. The rippling land, devoid of any form of vegetation, held both the color and stench of rot. The entire town looked as if the neighboring mountains had defecated it into existence.

  Belhurst looked around, catching movement in every shadow, every nook, and every ravine from the corner of his eye. As he turned to focus, he saw only filth and waste, mired by rotting leaves. But no movement. At times, the ground itself seemed to ebb and flow. After a few more futile glances, he realized he witnessed the town’s inhabitants. Watching him. That was when he also realized the night-hag had to be some form of mayor. “Good mistress, we need your assistance in …”

  The night-hag interrupted with laughter, course and unnerving, the noise of a cat being strangled. “Wizard, I assure you, there is nothing good in me, or Grimwell. And I know why you’re here. You can’t have it.”

  “How …?”

  “The only reason why we ever have visitors. And all visitors are unwelcome.”

  “Praeker Trieste is on his way here as we speak.”

  The hag stopped walking. The arcane movements that avoided detection even stopped. With a glare in her milky-black eyes, the hag turned to Belhurst, the stench of her breath befitting the anger of her words. “You bring him here? The one creature that fears nothing, even Grimwell itself?”

  “We did no such thing! Housing the stone is the only invitation he needs.”

  Without another word, the hag turned and continued to shuffle through town. Belhurst and his companions saw no other recourse than to follow. Through sand and silt, they walked to the center of town, marked by a hole in the ground no larger than a man’s fist and gaping like a stab wound.

  “No!” a voice coughed from the ground.

  “We must,” the hag replied.

  Just as Belhurst was ready to question whence the voice came, the ground shifted as if unhappy about what lay beneath it, offended by the hideousness it hid. Offal earth slid away from a dozen points, forming a circle around the hag and the visitors. Unfolding from out of the forged flaps came twelve creatures more hideous than the hag. Some held faces scarcely more than covered skulls, many missing lips and cheeks. Few had two eyes; most either sported empty sockets seeping noxious fluids, or had shredded flaps of skin stretched over malformed cranial bone. No noses to speak of, pocked pimples or jagged slits were the best any creature could offer.

  Once unearthed, the twelve stood, as best they could, in judgment of the visitors. Gnarled bodies wracked with generations of malevolent mutation, knees bending improbable ways, arms split and shooting like spears escaping torsos that looked like clenched fists, backs twisted like knotted hemp. No clothing among them, all wearing the filth of the ground that birthed them, ungrateful miscarriages refusing to discard mother’s placenta. “We are the elders of Grimwell, and we forbid it.”

  Phyl retched, and Pik felt his stomach weaken. Dearborn closed her eyes while Diminutia turned his head downward, offering only furtive glances. Even Belhurst and Follen would have admitted to never seeing such befoul monstrosities. Bale slid the back of his hand across his nose, hoping no one thought he was doing more than scratching an itch. He then looked down as he felt a stirring in his pocket to see Lapin poke his head out. Even though Lapin was a rabbit, Bale could tell that his eyesight was blurred.

  “What’s goin’ on?” Lapin asked. “Why’s everyone look so nauseated?”

  “Don’t know,” Bale replied. “Some of Grimwell’s inhabitants are arguing with each other.”

  The hag neared one part of the circle. “We are descendents of the first demons released from hell by the wizard Wyren. It is our birth burden to make sure the stones are never to be used again.”

  Mucus flowed from the rotten pores of the town member who countered. “And this, to you, means handing the Sun Stone over willingly? To strangers?”

  Belhurst stepped forth and replied, “We assure you, we will not use the stones. We are looking for ways to destroy the stones.”

  Senses addled by alcohol, Lapin found it difficult to understand the conversation. He looked up at Bale and whispered, “One of the stones is here?”

  “I think it’s in that hole,” Bale whispered back.

  “Huh. Really?” Lapin whispered to himself. With his heartbeat thrumming in his ears, he found it impossible to hear the spirited discussion among the wizards, the Grimwell inhabitants, and everyone else. His vision was blurred enough not to know how many people were actually arguing, but he was pretty sure everyone was talking at once, but lacked the knowledge to do so in a logical manner. No matter. He was bored of the conversation he couldn’t hear and didn’t understand and sought the means to end it. He burrowed back into Bale’s pocket.

  He reemerged with a bal
l of twine he had discovered a few days earlier. Tying one end around his waist, he tapped Bale on the hip. When he caught the ogre’s attention he handed the other end to him. “Here. Hold this.”

  Blurred as his vision may be, he hopped from Bale’s pocket to the filthy ground. He approximated where Bale had pointed earlier. Sure enough, he saw five holes. As he ran closer, the number of holes decreased to two, then only one. The stench emanating from the hole would have surely knocked any other animal over, maybe even killing it. But all of Lapin’s senses were dulled, and he was sure Bale’s pants smelled even worse. With little thought, Lapin jumped in.

  Not sure what to do, Bale just stood there holding the one end of twine as the ball unraveled. Within a few blinks, the ball unspun and the line of twine was taut. A little concerned, Bale began to pull the string. He felt the weight of Lapin as he pulled the string. With every pull, his heartbeat quickened, especially because the overcrowded conversation became louder and faster with every breath.

  “You must listen to me!” Belhurst yelled.

  “We must do nothing you demand!” one of the elders yelled back.

  “I have seen their souls,” the hag argued.

  “I find it impossible to believe their souls are any more pure than this town,” another elder said.

  “I’ll kill you for what you did to me,” Silver slurred as he became more conscious.

  “Greater have tried and failed,” the hag hissed back.

  “This is for your own safety. The safety of the entire world,” Belhurst said.

  “Our people are in charge of their own safety,” one elder said. As if on cue, the grounds behind them slithered while figures emerged from huts and holes. The inhabitants showed themselves, showed they were no less disgusting and disfigured than the hag or elders.

  “What the hell is going on,” Silver shouted, finally coherent enough to stand on his own.

  “Give us the Sun Stone!” Belhurst yelled.