Under the Crimson Sun

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  On its right hand, at least. Its left hand smashed into Zabaj’s stomach.

  The creature’s voice then came from everywhere at once. You are a fool, Rol Mandred. Are you truly so deluded that you believe you can defeat me?

  “I’d say I’m exactly that deluded, yeah.” After saying that, Rol made the creature punch himself in the nose.

  Zabaj chose that moment to return the creature’s favor by punching it in the stomach in the real world at the same time that Feena and Drahar both started to strangle him on the blue earthen floor.

  Rol tried to expand his influence beyond that right arm, but found himself being beaten down by the creature.

  Feena poured more of her own abilities into Drahar. With them hitting the creature on three different fronts—the two of them magically, Rol mentally, and Zabaj physically—they stood a chance.

  At least, Feena had to hope that.

  Drahar probably felt that thought, because he then said to her, “There’s only one thing we can do, and we must do it now.”

  In her mind’s eye, she could see the spell he would need to cast, which Drahar shared with her through their mental link.

  “It will kill him,” Feena said, “and possibly us and Zabaj as well.”

  “Violence makes it more powerful. The longer this fight continues, the worse our position becomes. And Mandred’s final echo of consciousness won’t last much longer. Once it finally expires, we’ll die.”

  Feena knew Drahar was right, for all that she wanted him to be wrong. Time was their biggest enemy right then.

  “Let’s do it,” she said, wishing that there was some way that she could say good-bye to Zabaj and to Gan.

  Komir and Barglin were pulling Gan’s broken form out from under the rocks—he was still breathing, thankfully—when suddenly there was a fierce glow that was brighter than the sun.

  Komir shielded his eyes as Rol, Feena, Drahar, and Zabaj—who had joined the fracas while Komir and the dwarf were rescuing Gan—were enveloped in it.

  But he couldn’t just see the light, he could feel it. The brightness seemed to actually touch his mind.

  That was when Komir realized that it was probably the most powerful burst of mind-magic he’d ever encountered.

  After a few seconds that seemed to take forever, the light faded, dimming into nothingness.

  Three bodies were left lying on the stone floor staring up at the ceiling, and a mul who was blinking furiously.

  “What just happened?” Barglin asked.

  “Damned if I know,” Komir muttered. “You all right, Zabaj?”

  “Feena.” Zabaj kneeled down beside her.

  Barglin hefted Gan over his shoulder. “I’ll take care of him. You help the mul.”

  “Thanks.”

  Smiling, the dwarf said, “Gan was okay to me. And he was kinda funny, plus he cared about his friend. You don’t see that every day.”

  Nodding, Komir walked over to see both Feena and Drahar lying on the floor, staring blankly up at the ceiling. They both breathed shallowly, but they showed no signs of consciousness. He waved his hands over Feena’s eyes, and she didn’t blink.

  The monster was not breathing. In fact, the strange red stones that protruded from its shoulders were starting to crack and shatter and fall to the floor as powder.

  “Damn,” Komir muttered.

  Komir stared at the body in the hopes that it might change back to the familiar form of Rol—but it stayed as the strange monster.

  Then he walked over to Zabaj, who was cradling the shell-shocked Feena in his arms, stroking her cheek with his oversized hand. “C’mon, Zabaj, we need to get out of here.”

  The mul didn’t move.

  Putting his hand on his friend’s wide shoulder, Komir said more forcefully, “Zabaj—we have to go.”

  Zabaj looked up at Komir as if he had no idea who the half-elf was. Then he looked down at Feena again, nodded, and stood up.

  Leaving Drahar’s body behind, they departed, Komir leading the way, Barglin carrying Gan, Zabaj carrying Feena.

  They passed the bodies of several soldiers, as well as the pulped remains of the mind-mages who’d come with Rol.

  “I can’t believe Drahar actually thought he might be able to control that thing,” Komir said with a shudder.

  “He paid the price for thinking that,” Zabaj said.

  “Yeah. C’mon, Karalith and Tricht’tha should be waiting for us at the carriage. We need to be out of Urik as soon as we can.”

  Gan didn’t feel very good.

  He woke up to find himself lying in a hammock that was rocking back and forth. Below him, several items were secured with straps, and looking over, he saw two older people asleep on another hammock.

  After a second, he recognized them as Torthal and Shira Serthlara, the owners of the emporium.

  It would seem he was rescued.

  “You’re awake.” It was Karalith who spoke the words, and Gan looked down to see her standing in the middle of the carriage, her palm against one of the boxes of goods for balance.

  “I guess so. Either that, or the afterlife involves being greeted by people you know in settings you’re familiar with while being in considerable pain.”

  Karalith smiled, but it didn’t extend to her eyes. “No such luck, I’m afraid. You’ve got a lot of broken bones. And we’re in the middle of the wastes, so it’ll be a while before we can get you to a healer.”

  “It doesn’t feel like I’ve got a lot of broken bones.”

  “That’s because we’ve given you a draft that numbs the pain.”

  “Which also explains why I’m so sleepy even though I was unconscious a minute ago.” Gan swallowed, an action that almost hurt. “What happened to Rol?”

  At that, Karalith just gave him a solemn look.

  Gan sighed. “That’s what I was afraid of. I was hoping that—”

  “He nearly killed Feena. She’s still catatonic—Zabaj is watching over her. Barglin’s up front with Tricht’tha, watching over the reins. Turns out, he’s pretty good with the crodlus. We may keep him around a bit.”

  It took Gan a few moments to remember who Barglin was. “The dwarf came along?”

  “According to Komir, he saved your life.”

  “I’ll have to thank him, then. Meantime, I can thank you.”

  “Oh, no need,” Karalith said with another of those incomplete smiles. “We got the King of the World for three thousand gold. Nobody’s ever pulled a game like that before. We’ll go down in history for this one.”

  Karalith’s voice caught, belying the boastfulness of the words.

  Gan couldn’t blame her. “Some history. Feena and I are both in bad shape, Fehrd and Rol are dead, and this strange force has been unleashed on the world.”

  “Well, the strange force shouldn’t be an issue. Komir and Zabaj said that Rol was dead, and whatever possessed him died with it.”

  Gan leaned back and stared at the ceiling. “Well, that’s good, at least.”

  “I’ll go tell Barglin and Komir that you’re awake.”

  “Thanks again, Karalith. If you guys hadn’t come for us …” Gan trailed off, for once unable to find the right words.

  Karalith just nodded and walked gingerly to the front of the carriage.

  Gan let the rocking of the carriage and the effects of the draft lull him to sleep slowly. They were obviously going at a steady clip, but given that they’d stolen so much gold from King Hamanu, they needed to be away from Urik in a hurry.

  Without Fehrd and without Rol, Gan had absolutely no idea what he was going to with his life now.

  First, obviously, he was going to have to heal. But Gan had always followed the lead of the other two. Somehow he doubted that the emporium would be willing to let him stay on—and he wasn’t even sure he wanted to. Tricking people out of money really wasn’t Gan’s thing. He preferred to take it more honestly.

  But the choice wouldn’t be his for a while. Certainly not until he heale
d up. Attempts to move his limbs had sent pain slicing through his body, pushing against the power of Karalith’s draft, and he thought it best simply to stay still.

  As he faded into sleep, he wondered what the frip he was thinking playing that damned frolik game …

  EPILOGUE

  Templar Tharson strode through the winding corridors of the dungeons beneath Destiny’s Kingdom.

  Tharson had never had much use for the place. Since becoming commander of the Imperial Guard, he’d had to spend far more time there than he was comfortable with. He preferred the simplicity of the soldiers’ barracks. None of the ostentatious lion architecture that infested the city-state like a disease, just simple beds, simple walls, simple doors.

  A simple life.

  His life had become anything but simple, of course. The higher he got in rank, the more politics entered into it.

  Tharson hated politics.

  At least at his rank, he got paid more. A few more years in service to Hamanu, and he’d have accumulated enough coin to retire.

  And if he could bring a victory to the king, he could retire in luxury.

  The creature that he and Drahar found in the arena was the first step toward realizing that goal.

  Of course, there had been setbacks.

  The worst was yesterday’s debacle at the Pit of Black Death. The creature Rol Mandred had turned into went mad, killing several of the court’s top psionists, including Drahar. In the chaos, the new owners of the Pit disappeared with three thousand gold.

  Tharson had already sent a garrison of soldiers after those owners, but they had a large head start—it had been hours before anyone at the palace even knew that something bad had happened at the arena—and the templar didn’t expect them to be caught.

  There would be no helping them if they came back to Urik, though …

  But Tharson did not despair. Drahar’s death was tragic, but he had done his part in identifying this new resource that they could exploit.

  It was up to Tharson to exploit it.

  He arrived at the dungeon that was occupied by a fighter named Daj Douk.

  Looking into the barred window of the dungeon door, he saw that Douk was covered in reddish bumps all up and down his skin just like Mandred had been.

  Tharson smiled. Soon he would have an army of unstoppable creatures at his command. And then he would be able to conquer Tyr in King Hamanu’s name.

  The Voidharrow had lost its form.

  The plan had been given a brutal setback. The weakling human Mandred had proven a perfect host, feeble minded and easily taken over. True, he prattled, but after millennia alone in the destroyed universe, the Voidharrow had to admit to not minding that so much. Perhaps that was why he had let Mandred retain a fraction of consciousness—which was foolish, in the end, for that had enabled those little beings to stop the Voidharrow, preventing him from spreading glorious chaos in Tharizdun’s name.

  The Voidharrow required another host.

  Around him were mostly corpses.

  The only one still breathing was the minion. But his mind had been shattered by the effort of destroying the Progenitor’s host.

  Which was fine, as the Voidharrow did not need his mind. In fact, the lack of it would save him the trouble of having to destroy it.

  Slowly—ever so slowly—the Voidharrow gathered itself. The red powder on the stone floor of the arena near the shoulders of the former host started to quiver and coalesce and liquefy.

  It took some time—the Voidharrow had been greatly weakened by the minion and the woman and that strange half-breed who had distracted him on the physical plane—but eventually, he was successful in returning to his natural state.

  Then it was simply a matter of oozing across the floor to the prone form of Chamberlain Drahar.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Keith R.A. DeCandido first started playing Dungeons & Dragons in high school, and continued to play well into his so-called adulthood. He has also written well over forty novels, as well as dozens and dozens of comic books, short stories, novellas, ebooks, and nonfiction. Most of his work has been in a variety of media universes, ranging from television shows (Star Trek, Farscape, Supernatural) to movies (Serenity, Resident Evil, Cars) to videogames (World of Warcraft, StarCraft, Command and Conquer). He writes the monthly Farscape comic book (in collaboration with series creator Rockne S. O’Bannon), and also has written for Cars: The Adventures of Tow Mater. His other recent novels include Supernatural: Heart of the Dragon and Unicorn Precinct; the latter is the sequel to his 2004 original novel Dragon Precinct, a high-fantasy police procedural whose protagonists started out life as D&D characters Keith played. Keith is also an editor, having put together dozens of anthologies and edited many fiction lines, including the Marvel novels published by Berkeley Books from 1994–2000 and the monthly line of original Star Trek ebooks from 2000–2008.

  Outside the publishing biz, Keith is also a first-degree black belt in Kenshikai karate, the percussionist for the parody band Boogie Knights, a contributor to The Chronic Rift and HG World podcasts, and a lifelong fan of the New York Yankees. He lives in the Bronx with several humans, felines, and canines. Find out less at his Web site at DeCandido.net, read his inane ramblings at kradical.livejournal.com, or keep up with him on Twitter or Facebook under the ID of KRADeC.