The Maleficent Seven

by Cameron Johnston

  “Jerak Hyden, the man-made god!” He liked the sound of his own words.

  All he needed now were a few dozen subjects to begin perfecting the process. He would turn them into vampires, remove their limbs and hang them from hooks, draining their blood to power his new creations.

  “That will not be happening.”

  He stopped and spun, but nobody was near.

  “Behind you.”

  He spun again. Nothing.

  His back vibrated with laughter. He peered back to see an inhuman mouth had formed on the rear of his shoulder. He screamed and reached back with clawed hands, ripped his own flesh free and tossed it onto the embers of a ruined building.

  He stared after it, panting, one arm hanging limp.

  “Pointless.”

  It was on the other shoulder now – another mouth, the skin darkening around open lips. “You willingly took my blood into your veins, Jerak Hyden. You ate the flesh of my spawn, my own flesh and blood. Like calls to like, and a body is naught but clothes to me.”

  “No, no, please, Lorimer,” the alchemist begged as his body began to change, to grow tall and strong, dark-skinned and supple. “I am so very close to perfection.”

  “There is only room for one perfect being in this body,” Lorimer Felle said. “However, I shall let you live for all the good work you have done here.”

  Jerak Hyden sobbed in relief even as his flesh was stolen from him and altered, flowing like water. “Thank you. Thank you. My great work to advance humanity is everything to me.”

  The vampire lord’s mocking laughter answered him, his new body looming large over the alchemist’s dwindling bag of flesh and bone.

  Lorimer Felle took possession of the body and excreted all that was left of Jerak Hyden into a mewling bag of skin dangling in his hand. He used his vampiric flesh crafting arts on what was left of the alchemist to strip away muscle and bone, and to craft a loathsome new body to house the alchemist’s consciousness: a limbless slug the size of a small dog, one with horrified human eyes.

  “You will live, but you will never speak with a human tongue. You will read no book and write no journals. You will craft nothing. You will learn nothing. You are nothing.”

  Jerak Hyden screamed, a wet bubbling escaping soft sluggish mouthparts.

  “You are loathsome vermin in my sight,” Lorimer said as he dropped the creature that had been Jerak Hyden into a muddy puddle filled with refuse. “Sup on rot and decay as you deserve.”

  The vampire lord wrapped himself in a blanket and walked barefoot towards the northern edge of town where he could sense his manservant already awaited him. Estevan bowed in greeting, his wide-brimmed hat with its red feather bobbing in the crown, now somewhat foxed. He was accompanied by a scruffy donkey bearing heavy saddlebags already packed for travel. Red Penny was with him, bound in stained bandages and covered in bruises but carrying Amogg Hadakk’s massive axe over one shoulder like it weighed nothing. She offered a respectful nod in greeting. A small girl at her side watched him with oddly fierce eyes.

  “Thank you for fighting with us,” Red Penny said, a strangely abashed expression on her face. “We are alive only thanks to you and the others.”

  Lorimer studied the girl and the heavy axe. “That,” he said, “is not normal.”

  She snorted. “What is normal now? My new god charges me to build a cairn for Amogg and then return the axe of her ancestors to the Hadakk and tell them of her glory. He owes her that… uh, speaking of which…”

  The little girl stepped forward and handed Lorimer a bucket and a filthy old rag.

  “What is this for, child?” he demanded.

  The girl steepled her fingers in prayer and grinned. “For toileting. The god of courage says you are full of shit.”

  Before Lorimer could fully process, Red Penny flushed, scooped the girl up under an arm and set off at a brisk pace back towards the centre of town with a hearty, “Safe travels!”

  “What just happened?” Lorimer asked, staring at the bucket and rag.

  Estevan unsuccessfully tried to stifle his mirth. “It would seem that Tiarnach, too, has survived the death of his body. The townsfolk seem to have adopted him as their god of courage, so I imagine their belief somehow sustained his spirit.”

  Lorimer shot Estevan a betrayed look and flung Tiarnach’s gifts to the mud. He pulled on his clean clothing and then turned to look over the town one last time.

  “I suppose there are worse people to meet again,” he said. “So long as it is not more than once a century. Never leave me alone with these fools, Estevan.”

  The old man smiled and looked away, embarrassed. “I shall endeavour to survive, my lord.”

  “Are you sure you do not wish to become a vampire?” Lorimer asked, again.

  “Thank you for your kind offer, my lord,” Estevan replied. “But I fear I am too soft-hearted for such a life.”

  The vampire patted his shoulder. “So be it, my loyal friend.” He looked to the north. “Now to collect on the debt that Maeven owes me. Fade’s Reach must be liberated, and the remnants of the Lucent Empire will not willingly loosen its grip on our lands.”

  He knew Maeven would betray him all over again given half a chance, but he was more than her match. Once his people were free, he would prove that.

  EPILOGUE II

  Black Herran found that dying was much like getting rid of a bellyful of bad wind, except this time her soul was the stink. It was a relief to be rid of that creaky old aching body and become a being of pure spirit.

  The shadow demons she called her sisters held tight to her soul, dragging her through razor forests of volcanic glass and rivers of magma towards the black spires of Duke Shemharai’s castle.

  It was hardly an unexpected fate; she had made her dark bargain for power long ago, and now that debt had come due. Her family would be safe, and whatever became of her, that was by far the most important thing she would ever do. Forty years ago she could never have imagined thinking such a thing.

  The jagged towers of Duke Shemharai’s castle loomed ahead, walls of black glass wreathed in fire. Flickering faces appeared inside the flames, screaming in torment. Shemharai decorated his home with many such tortured souls, a display of enormous power and wealth, given souls were the currency of Hellrath. Their howls of pain were music to his ears but Black Herran found it all very gauche.

  The road to his towering keep was lined with rusty, swaying gibbets. Human souls and condemned demons hung there to be gnawed on by imps and all the lesser things of this infernal realm. Some of the prisoners reached out to her through the bars, pleading, begging and cursing as the guards escorted her past.

  A handful of tattered souls recognised her. These were some of the old nobility of Essoran she had plucked with her own hands and sent down to the Duke as gifts. Those souls began to laugh and jeer. Whatever forty years of torture had done to their minds, they had not forgotten who had condemned them to this hell. The scavenging demons scattered, put off by their victim’s sudden and unexpected mirth.

  The door to the keep had been fashioned from the skull of an ancient dragon. The jaw lowered to admit them, yellowed fangs the size of Black Herran welcoming them into Shemharai’s lair.

  The path to the great hall was lined with the nobility of Hellrath, those few who didn’t want Shemharai’s head stuffed and mounted on their walls. Hellknights in spiked black steel wielding baroque blades watched silently as she passed, their eyes leaking eldritch flame. Barons in twisted forms of human-headed beasts capered and jeered. Robed and antlered presidents surrounded by their scribes and minions sized her up and found her wanting. Hawk-headed counts and marquises draped in jewellery forged from human souls trailed their taloned fingers across her, causing agony as they tasted but did not harm her soul.

  Black Herran did not shudder or cry out. She looked them in the eye. “I will remember this,” she said. More than one looked away before she was dragged onwards by her shadowy guards.

>   The doors yawned open with an ominous creak, revealing a smoky hall dimly lit by soul-braziers, the wails of those being consumed inside echoing through the hall’s rafters. Great stained-glass windows looked out over lakes of fire and smoke.

  On a dais sat a throne of bones bound in stretched human skin. Perched atop a cushion of living, moaning flesh, sat the great Duke Shemharai – a bloated toad the size of a war horse with eyes and tongue of flame. Two hellknights with bodies of black iron and razor-edged claws flanked him.

  Her guards dragged her forward, and the assembled demon nobility filtered into the hall after her. The shadow demons let go of her and grovelled low before flowing away into the corners of the gloomy hall.

  “Black Herran,” Shemharai said, purple lips smacking and spraying spittle. “I gave you power in exchange for many promises, not all of which came to pass. Your debt has come due, and for your failures you will service me from now until the time your pathetic little human soul wears out.”

  Black Herran did not much care to spend her afterlife wasting time on pleasantries and pretty talk. She got right down to business.

  “You really are a jumped-up little toad, Shem. The very last thing I will be doing is listening to an incompetent like you.”

  Silence. Absolute shocked silence filled the great hall. Even the tortured souls burning in the braziers ceased their screaming for a moment.

  Shemharai laughed, a wet squelching of slick skin folds and flaps. “Your human arrogance always did amuse me, wretch. It will be a great pleasure to train you to grovel at my feet. Your screams will be delicious music to my ears.” His eyes burned bright and his flaming tongue licked drooling fat lips.

  Black Herran looked at the assembled nobles of Hellrath and smirked, then scoured her gaze all the way round the rest. Some few who had intimate, sorcerous dealings with her in the past quickly slipped back into the crowd and made for the door. How wise of them.

  Black Herran’s gaze settled on the Duke’s iron guards. “Alas, poor little Shem, left so vulnerable without dead Malifer’s protection. You always relied on his might far too much.”

  The great Duke flopped forward on his throne, mottled flesh bulging grotesquely. “The problem with mortals is that they think so very much of themselves when they are naught but food and entertainment. You have no power here, wretch. No magical rings on withered flesh and bone. No allies, no hope. Your arrogance earns you only more imaginative agony.”

  Black Herran snorted. “I have earned my arrogance by being prepared, and you have never been imaginative. Did you think I sat on my arse for forty years patiently waiting for you to claim my soul? What a fool. The problem with you, Shem, is that you treat your underlings like property, and that does not earn loyalty, only fear. I, on the other hand, earn both. Now, my sisters.”

  The world outside the great windows turned black. Then the screaming began, wails of panic and pain swiftly working their way deeper inside the castle.

  Shemharai loosed a great belch and his two guards launched themselves at her, iron fangs and claws seeking to rend her soul. She stood her ground, and the smoky hall exploded as hundreds of her shadowy sisters slipped through the cracks in the stonework and sank their fangs and claws deep into the assembled nobility. Alone, shadow demons were considered weaklings, but nobody had ever seen so many working together. They had never suspected she had bred and fed so many of them.

  Some of Shemharai’s own guards turned and slew their brethren, closed the door to the hall and turned their blades upon any of the exalted guests trying to escape. Howls and hisses filled the air as burning black blood slicked the floor. The iron guards’ claws dug into the shadow demons, shredding her sisters with ease while their own hardened bodies only bore shallow furrows from the weaker demons. But the numbers flooding the great hall began to tell, and the guards were worn down, carved up and cracked open for her sisters to feast on their hearts.

  Some of the greatest demons present to witness her humiliation were already down, a handful of counts and presidents were swarmed and torn apart before they even knew what was happening, some stabbed in the back by their own underlings. Knots of barons and hellknights desperately fought the shadowy tide swamping them, burning swords, sorcery and talons slaying dozens of her sisters. An unstoppable torrent flowed in from outside to fill in the gaps.

  In front of Black Herran, three of the oldest and greatest of her shadow demons rose up, great hulking black things with obsidian claws and fangs far larger than their kind normally produced.

  “How did you breed this army?” Shemharai demanded. “You have not the personal power to sustain them. Which of the other dukes aids you? Tell me and I will devour you quickly.”

  “I prepared for this day alone,” she said, “right from that moment we made our tawdry little deal. I took a weak little shadow demon you only used for spying and made a binding pact with it and all the progeny of its future bloodline. Mortal souls are the currency of Hellrath, Shem, and those I had in plenty. While I was conquering Essoran, I sent untold thousands of souls down to birth and feed this army of mine, and for the last forty years my sisters have feasted and grown strong. Every enemy I encountered and disposed of in the years of peace since then only added to their strength. And then came the Lucent Empire and the Falcon Prince – the perfect way to amass power far in excess of your own. I admit, I may have meddled a little in that whole debacle. Somebody had to give that dolt the idea to forge an empire. While you demons made your little deals and picked off souls here and there I reaped the souls of my enemies like fields of wheat.”

  “I own you,” Shemharai screamed as his allies died all around him. “My name has been carved into your very soul.”

  Black Herran cackled and held up her hand. “You may own my soul, Shemharai, but Hellrath’s greatest law is might makes for right: you can only keep what you can take and hold – and when I kill you that claim is void. With Malifer destroyed, you are doomed.”

  The air surrounding Shemharai ignited, cloaking his mottled flesh in eldritch fire. His tongue lashed out and garrotted one of the oldest of her minions, burning right through its shadowy neck. Whatever else Shemharai was, he was still a Duke of Hellrath, grown fat and powerful after feasting on human souls for thousands of years. The shadows swamped him, nipping and tearing at his fiery flesh. Many of her sisters perished, burnt to ash with a single touch.

  Black Herran looked back at the entrance to the great hall. The path out had been cleared, and those surviving nobles still trapped were pressed up against the wall, using sorcery and skill to ward off the dark tide of fangs and claws seeking to devour their hearts.

  Shemharai laughed, his webbed hands taking a dreadful toll of the lesser demons swarming around him. “I am a duke! This pitiful collection of rejects cannot bring me down.” Black Herran’s demons hissed and leapt on him in a fury, and for a moment drove him to his knees, but their attempts to actually hurt him only succeeded in inflicting scratches.

  Two of Shemharai’s turncoat guards opened the doors to admit a group of her demons laden down with heavy clay pots, the lids carefully sealed with thick wax.

  Black Herran waved them onwards. “That may be true, Shem, but who said I was only relying on the weapons of your kind? I had my shadow demons steal one of the mad alchemist’s little creations. I enhanced it especially for you.”

  The demons leapt into the melee wielding the heavy pots like rocks, shattering them against the Duke’s hard hide. Dirty green liquid slopped all over Shemharai, extinguishing his flames. He turned and ripped his attackers’ heads from their bodies, and as the rest of the pack backed away from him he waited, confused as to what her plan entailed. His dread armies would already be on their way to the castle and any delay could only benefit him. Or so he imagined.

  Black Herran thought that Jerak Hyden would have loved to take notes as the acid ate into the Duke’s demonic flesh. Large patches of his outer hide blistered and sloughed off. He howled, dived and rol
led as if it was some kind of fire he could extinguish. Then his burning hate-filled eyes fixed on her.

  She backpedalled, her demonic sisters sacrificing themselves to slow the Duke down. His eyes never left her as his inner hide bubbled and crisped, flaking and falling away to reveal soft pulsing pink patches.

  He almost caught her, his tongue curling around her ankle. One of her demons brought a slain hellknight’s barbed blade down to sever his tongue just in time. The Duke reeled back, squealing and spraying blood everywhere.

  The Duke was wounded and panicking as claws dug into the acid-burned holes in his thick hide. He rolled and flailed, threatened, raged and ate lesser demons whole. But eventually, he fell, one leg ripped free and gnawed on as the pack flayed him alive. The demon wielding the sword rammed it through his bloated belly, pinning the Duke to the floor of his own castle.

  Black Herran picked up a fallen knife and approached. She plunged it into his bloated body and tried to slit him open from neck to groin, but found his demonic flesh still too tough. Her suborned hellknights did the butchery for her, cracking open bone and sinew to reveal the mewling Duke’s pulsing black heart.

  She cut it free and held it aloft in victory, then she sank her teeth into it.

  Duke Shemharai shuddered and lifted a flayed hand towards her. “Please… I will…”

  She tore a chunk of tough muscle free and began to chew. Thick black liquid gushed down her throat. His heart-blood burned like fine whisky as it slid down the gullet of her soul. When it hit her stomach that heat began building to a furnace. She bit and tore and endured the searing agony. With every bite she took a portion of Shemharai’s power for her own, but her will was equal to the task. She didn’t even notice when he perished.