Vlad'War's Anvil

by Rex Hazelton

  Kaylan stayed in the Realm of Vapor that was accurately portrayed in wonderful detail.

  Horbyn drempt he stood on top of a mountain, holding Crooked Finger up to a storm-filled sky that sent lightning bolts slamming into the thin iron rod. Before him, his mother's lifeless body lay on an altar of stone waiting for her son to command her to rise up.

  Travyn and Lamarik drempt of being in a hut that was built using the roots of a swamp oak to support the walls that surrounded them. Laying side by side, '

  A’Kadar and Dog drempt about hunting together in the Lorn Fast Swamp.

  The solitary flame, dancing on top of one of Horbyn's gray candles, kept watch over those who were in repose.

  All in all, the company got a good night's rest, and it was a good thing they did with the days of doubt that confronted them.

  A'Kadar and Dog followed Bala for a time as she flew off to take a good look at the place where the Warl of the Brie'Shen was once found before backtracking over top of the path the Oakenfels said they took when they left Mishal Parm. Once she reached Sky Master's indomitable heights, Bala would thoroughly search the abandoned city that sat there before returning to Mar’Gul. Barking and moaning as they went, the two large animals soon broke off the chase and circled back to the others who were quickly breaking camp.

  Merriment filled Bala's large, dark-green eyes as she giggled over Dog and A'Kadar playfully bounding after her. In the spirit of fun, she flew low to the ground to tease the two energetic beasts. Then she sighed and shot up into the sky as the massive canine and equally large feline gave up the chase. It was all business now as she harnessed her senses to the task she was given to do.

  As fast as she could fly, the swift cretchym made her way back to the Lorn Forest where she skirted its western edge, camoflauged by the tree tops she skimmed over. In time, Bala was forced to expose herself by crossing over Gore's Gap as she continued her trek to the Black Mountains. Two days later, after searching through the forest that she and Mar’Gul once called home, Bala crossed over another part of Gore's Gap on her way to Sky Master's hulking presence.

  Later, she reached the Mishal Forest that swept outward from the colossal mountain's hulking shoulders. Here she grew wary. Choosing to zig-zag her way through the towering trees, Bala approached the ruined city of Mishal Parm with care. It was here, not so long ago, the Oakenfel brothers called on both Andara and Vlad'War's Magic to make the swords they now carried, an act that was sure to catch the Sorcerer's unwanted attention.

  Though he might not be able to figure out what had actually transpired, the exertion of so much power, and the quality of magic that was employed, would unquestionably induce him to send someone to check things out. If it was discovered that Vlad'War's Anvil had been unearthed and used in the conjuring, others would follow to constinue the search for answers.

  It was these others Bala was concerned about. She needed to find out if they had been sent, how many were there, and what the composition of those who were sent included. Were there Hag? Did Ab'Don come in person? Was a large fighting force amassed? Once this was ascertained, Bala would try to determine if they were following the trail of those who dared to use the magic that caught the Sorcerer's attention.

  This was risky business indeed. But if anyone could pull it off safely, it would be the diminutive cretchym whose speed and wiles few could match.

  After reaching Mishal Parm, Bala shot past the ruins outskirts and climbed up Sky Master's steep slopes. Once she was high enough to scan the whole city with a single sweeping glance, she settled into a tall tree and began her search. Perched on a branch, with one hand extended to the tapering trunk to provide balance, she looked this way and that. But nothing moved in any part of the city's expanse.

  Mishal Parm reminded Bala of a grave yard that was so old that there was no one now living who would think to take care of it, a place where time and separation had so thoroughly chipped away at the emotional ties that bound the living to the dead that none remained to do the work. No freshly cut flowers were seen. No effort to clean things up was in evidence.

  All that day Bala kept watch.

  Then, as evening approached, she lept into the air and glidded down to the place that was once the capital city to Shloman the Great's vast empire, but was now just a pile of weather-worn stones and clumps of tall, wild grass growing where they had taken root.

  Entering Mishal Parm, Bala decided to stay low. Flitting from one hiding place to another, the little cretchym moved steadily toward the place where she had been told Vlad'War's Anvil could be found. And true to what she had been told, Bala found the partially built enclosure the Oakenfels had constructed to hide behind as they used the anvil to mend their broken swords.

  Satisfied that no one was around, nor were there any signs that anyone had visited the place since the Oakenfels departed, Bala figured her work was done in the once great city. Because she felt uneasy about spending the night in Mishal Parm, she decided to leave. So she rose into the air, higher than she had before, exposing herself to any who were near enough to see her.

  The moment she did, a flock of cretchym shot out of the tree tops that bordered the city and swarmed towards her. Quickly surrounded by those they raced to flank her, Bala withdrew her needle-sharp sword and got ready to meet the swarm.

  More than fifty weird creatures flew at her, looking like debri being tossed into the air by a strong gust of wind. Some had the appearance of enormous birds with human appendages dangling beneath them; others looked like humans with avian characteristics mixed in; two of them had faces like foxes and wings like huge bats. Mostly, the cretchym were a capricious mix of insect and human physiology. Great preying mantis with two pairs of arms and one pair of legs, all looking like elongated human limbs, were present. Giant wasps with human-like heads topped with long, flowing blond hair were included in the swarm. Beetle-like creatures, whose only human distinctive were the hands that could be seen on the end of each of their six legs, were taking the lead in confronting Bala. Each held a sword. Three carried more than one. The others set up a perimeter around the giant beetles, in case the swift, little cretchym escaped their grasp.

  With shells as thick as stone shingles, Bala's sword was useless against the monsters who flew toward her. Still she fought, her slender sword making screaching, clacking noises as it scored the cretchyms' dense armor-like casings.

  Frustrated that they could only corral the green blur and not actually get their hands on her, two monstrous locust joined the beetles. Armed with clubs they held in three-fingered hands that were affixed to their spiny arms, the cretchyms’ mandibles opened and closed as they swung their weapons at the flitting prey.

  Swords wouldn’t be used now lest Bala was accidentally killed.

  As expected, the club eventually caught Bala's darting form and knocked her off balance. When she slowed down to regather her wits after the stunning blow was dealt, one of the shell-covered creatures slammed into her and drove Bala to the ground where it pinned her beneath its bulk, separating her from her sword as it did. A nimble mosquito-like cretchym, that was more than half human, landed on the ground and leaped through the ruins on long, thin legs before it slipped a noose around Bala's neck. After the noose was tightened, the beetle-like monster extracted its bulk.

  Affixing the rope to a ring that hung from a belt it wore, the misquito-like cretchym went to work tying Bala's hands together with a strip of leather it carried.

  When the dusted finally settled, Bala found herself surrounded by the swarm that sat perched on top of the ruin's uneven walls facing the forgotten street where she was being held prisoner.

  "Who might you be?" The mosquito-man's nasal voice came out of a tube-shaped mouth that would have been a lance used to penetrate a prey's skin if the Sorcerer's dark magic hadn't mutated it. Sitting on its haunches, with its knees sticking well above its head and torso, the thing reached out with an equally long arm, poked at Bala who was only a third of the inquisitor's
size, and said, "Speak up."

  Figuring a half-truth was better than a lie, Bala replied, "My name is Bala and I live hereabouts."

  "Where exactly?" It was becoming clear that this cretchym was the swarm's leader, though he was far from being the strongest among them.

  "In a house that sits on Sky Master slopes some distance from here." Bala was refering to the home she once lived in. A man named Garvan, who was the closest thing to a father the little cretchym had ever know, had built the dwelling. She thought it was wise to bring up a place that actually existed, lest the cretchym went to check out her story. Maybe, after locating the dwelling, she could continue the ruse to delay the swarm a while longer before they began pursuing the Oakenfels, which she was convinced they would eventually do. The thought that she would be released once the old house was found never entered Bala's thinking. She knew this wouldn’t happen. So, she stoically accepted the fact that she would soon die and set her mind on building a lie that would keep the swarm in Mishal Parm for as long as she could, even if by doing so, she risked the pangs of a slower death.

  The cretchym were armed with a menagerie of weapons, including short bows. Those that were more human-like wore garments that were fashioned to meet their bodies' peculiar characteristics: pants, jerkins, tunics and the like, all tailored to the individual crechym's taste. The mosquito-man was one of these. He wore long leggings and a leather vest that had a hood attached to it.

  Bred in the womb of the Sorcerer's dark magic, the cretchym were formed by melding Ab'Don's essence in with that of the winged creatures living in the warl. In part, the cretchym were engineered to counter the griffin’s avian abilities.

  Though Ab'Don hoped the winged lions would maintain their distance from human affairs, for their isolationist tendencies was forged in the fires of human avarice and greed, he couldn't count on this with any certainty. Especially after he used griffin he had captured to fight for him during the Battle of the Breach.

  These the Sorcerer tortured and humiliated with the most odious kinds of abuse, setting the table to serve a course of the Magic of Compulsion he added to the horrific diet he fed his captives. In time, some of these were turned to darkness when the bitterness they felt over their dreadful situation drove them to want others to suffer as they had.

  So, as impossible as it would seem, griffin chose to become abusers. Despising having been forced to be victims, the role they assumed masked their regrettable experience with a lie that said they had not been broken. Becoming the ones who dealt out the same kind of pain they had endured proved this. The act of dispensing suffering to others deceived them into believing they were the strong ones. Little did it occur to them that they were still stuck in the same webbing that their abuser had spun to catch them.

  These became the man-eaters whose reign of terror caught Stromane's attention and brought the griffin into the ensuing battle that created the Breach Sea. Armed with claws, fangs, and magic that was inimitably theirs, the Community of Blood came to put an end to the catastrophe their kind was perpetrating. Father fought son, mother fought daughter, until all the Dark Ones had been destroyed. But destruction touched more than the evil doers, for the Pride's heart was wounded by the ordeal of having to kill their own kind, a wound that made them withdraw from the humans even further as Ab'Don hoped they would, a wound that held sway over the Community of Blood until Muriel came to them carrying Healing Magic she didn't know she possessed.

  Gifted with the ability to fly, the cretchym made good scouts and messengers. More than that, the winged monsters were used as a quick strike force that could swoop down on an enemy like a plummeting falcon diving at a hare. This was how they were used in the Battle of Decsion. And their lightning strikes would have won the day if the Community of Blood had not come to honor their commitment to the one they called Little Sister- Muriel Blood the Twice Born. With the help of the elves glittering thread arrows, the armada of winged lions annihilated the cretchym swarm.

  Knowing that, in times past, the Sorcerer had trouble dealing with cretchym uprisings, those known to possess wisdom doubted he would replenish the winged-demons' numbers. With half of their essence coming from the man who longed to rule over everything and everyone, the cretchym were predisposed to the same desires. This made them an unpredictable and dangerous lot that could only be held in check by the fear the Sorcerer's ruthless cruelty imposed on them. But here they were, a remnant of the winged-creatures whose numbers once blotted out the sun as they passed overhead, holding Bala prisoner in Mishal Parm's ruins.

  Bala was an anamoly among anamolies since she was the Sorcerer's mutant grand-child. Something that was not possible. Using powers the Nameless Evil had given him, Ab'Don was wise enough to fashion the cretchym in a way that kept them from procreating. This was done to keep the winged-vermin under control. It wouldn't do for them to be able to ensure the survival of their kind on their own. This might lead them to think that they were not beholding to their progenitor.

  The Sorcerer accomplished this feat by doing two things: one, he made all the cretchym males, and two, all the males he made were engineered to be impotent. Only the most human-like cretchym had genitalia, though the anatomy varied wildly. Most could not function properly. And those that could, produced ineffective seed.

  But as fate would have it, every now and then, a female would appear in the midst of the maturing batch of cretchym. These were quickly culled from the swarm, using the sharp edge of a knife. But the sifting out process was not always perfectly executed, and a few of the females lived long enough to gain the strength and wits they needed to escape the Sorcerer's executioners. Bala's mother was one of these.

  Beating the odds that were heavily stacked against her, Bala's mother escaped and found other females like herself who lived in a community hidden in the Great Ral Mountains' towering heights. Even more improbable, a male cretchym, that was inexplicably fertile, had earlier found the females and became the father of the emerging community. He said he was drawn to the females by a fragrance whose compelling nature he likened to the way water smelled to one who was dying of thirst.

  Though it appeared fate had a hand in creating the colony, it couldn't protect the fledgling community from the Sorcerer who considered the enclave to be an abomination that needed to be expunged from the living warl. But as it turned out, Ab'Don failed to erradicate the illicit swarm in its entirety. Bala and her mother managed to escape the slaughter and found refuge with a kindly mountainman named Garvan who lived on Sky Master's slopes. It was his house that Bala pointed the inquisitor to.

  As it turns out, when Dandaryll said that Bala could be viewed as his half-sister, she was, in fact, his niece. Yet not only was she Dandaryll's niece, Bala was a niece to all the cretchym who now surrounded her. But this gathering of uncles could care less. In their malicious minds, good sport was where you found it, and the diminutive cretchym was the best chance this motley swarm had for some entertainment in a very long time. Niece, nephew, half-brother, it didn't matter to them. They would have had fun at Ab'Don's own expense, if he didn't terrify them so much.

  One of the cretchym, who looked like a tall man draped in a long cape that was actually a set of long, sweeping wings, stepped forward. Folding his hands in front of him, looking like a merchant who was pleased with the product he was about to bpurchase, the cretchym sniffed through nostils that looked like the nasal cavities in an exposed skull. "Wyzlethrom... do you see anything strange?" He asked.

  Puzzled by the question, taking a cue from the way his comrade was studying Bala, the mosquito-man gave the prisoner a more thorough exam. There is something different about this one, Wyzlethrom thought. But lacking fully developed masculine attributes that would make him appreciate the difference, the commander was at a loss for what the tall cretchym was insinuating.

  Then one of the beetle-like guards who had two horns growing out of his face, one just above his flat nose and a larger one that protruded from his forehead, exclaim
ed, "By the Fires of Darkness... he's a she!"

  The proclamation incited the swarm into excited murmurings as Wyzlethrom took another look. This time he didn't miss Bala's obvious feminine form. Though she had large insect eyes the shape of almonds, and her skin was as green as oak leaves in mid-summer, the diminuitive cretchym was indeed a female, and a well-shaped one at that.

  "You're a female," Wyzlethrom's nasal voice intoned. "How can that be?"

  Looking around at the flock of males with eyes as cold as ice, Bala sarcastically replied, "I guess I'm just lucky."

  "Lucky for us." A rictus of a smile slowly slipped into place on the tall cretchym's bony face. The whites of his eyes appeared in deep set sockets as he looked sideways at the others. "We've never had a female before, at least not one of our own kind. There are rumors that say others like you existed in the past, rumors that the Sorcerer has punished the teller for telling. But who would punish us if we decided to indulge ourselves with something that is clearly not a rumor?"

  "Indulge?" Wyzlethrom, feeling things were about to get out of hand, feared he could lose control of the swarm unless he went along with the momentum he doubted he could stop.

  "Oh come on," the tall cretchym spat out his words as he continued to rub his hands together, "We're males. She's a female. We're going to indulge in the same thing males and females are indulging in all across Ar Warl."

  How can this be happening to me? Wyzlethrom was struggling to come to grips with the situation. Slight of build, he had always felt physically inferior to his cretchym brothers. Only an exceptional intellect had carved out a place for him in the larger swarm. Not only was he brilliant, he was devious too. Good at politicking, Wyzlethrom had steadily risen in the cretchym hierarchy. But now the nagging sense of physical inferiority was about to be magnified if he was forced to watch others do to Bala that which he was incapable of doing, since he lacked the kind of tools needed to do the job.