by Rex Jameson
The Dark Brotherhood
Ashton stumbled through the dirty streets of Hell’s Edge, a small town northeast of Mallory Keep, with his undead friend Clayton in tow. Before Ashton, the dark paladin and elven prince soldiered ahead, warily looking for threats, food and shelter. Hell’s Edge was a town of adventurers and bandits and the last bastion of human civilization between the Kingdom of Surdel and the orcish hordes to the southeast. The town was poorly funded and guarded only by its inhabitants, the men and women crazy enough to live this close to certain death.
Ashton didn’t know what had happened to his undead army. He only knew that they had served their intended purpose. The Red Army was destroyed. Lord Mallory, the man who had sat in his castle and allowed thousands of his people to die to a ragtag bandit army, was dead. There were no more targets to kill, and after raising a demon accidentally, Ashton had no intention of replicating his mistakes. He was the first to admit that he had no idea what he was doing anymore.
He had released something truly awful into the world. He promised himself that he would never raise another undead thing again.
Other than Clayton, his only companions over the past three days had been the silent dark paladin Cedric Arrington and the equally quiet Prince Jayden of the dark elves. The four men had quickly and quietly escaped from the field of battle.
There was no need for commands or consensus. They had not stayed to watch Prince Magnus being loaded onto a cart and taken back to the capital of Kingarth. There was no need for an “I told you so” from Jayden. There was no joyful boasting from Cedric about being the only person capable of sending the demon inside Ashton’s father back to the underworld. They all knew they just had to get out of there, and Clayton simply followed Ashton wherever he went.
In Cedric’s eyes, Ashton saw only pain and weariness. Jayden’s eyes were harder to gauge. There was a sense of exhaustion there that was unfathomably deep. When the Prince stared at Ashton next to a fire, it was like looking into a bottomless hole in the earth. The Prince was completely unkept. His shockingly white hair fell down to his chest and back in loose, knotted locks that were held together with sweat and neglect. Everyone was similarly the worse-for-wear, but the Prince seemed even more affected by depression and exhaustion than Cedric or Ashton.
Ashton followed the two others because he had nowhere else to go. He followed them because he knew they must have more answers than he did. Even if they could only tell him more about what he had unleashed into the world, it was worth enduring the silence and the exhaustion. He felt he didn’t deserve to be able to talk to people anyway. He needed to atone for what he had done in accidentally killing a celebrated, famous prince of Surdel.
The dark paladin and the dark elven prince stopped in front of an inn called “The Sleeping Pony.” On its swinging sign were the trade guild emblems for food, drink and hoteling. The men didn’t speak. They dismounted quickly and tied their mounts to a long wooden post on the side of the building. Cedric motioned with his head toward the door and then stomped through the threshold with his noisy plate armor. Jayden waited for Ashton to dismount and tie off his gray horse.
Ashton nodded toward his friend Clayton, who he knew would not follow him into a tightly packed room of people. Ashton wondered if Clayton too felt he needed to atone—that he didn’t belong to humanity due to the nature of what he had become. Ashton placed a hand on his friend’s shoulder.
“You waiting in an alley for me?”
Clayton nodded. Ashton saw the tell-tale signs of an assuring smile through the cloth that wrapped around the wounds on his face. Clayton limped away, and Ashton turned around to find the elf still standing at the doorway. He wasn’t looking at Ashton though. His eyes darted between a small gathering of men leaning against a clay and straw building a dozen doors down and the retreating Clayton.
“Everything ok?” Ashton asked. The cacophony of the main hall of The Sleeping Pony grew louder as he approached.
The elf’s white eyebrows raised, and he cleared his throat. Ashton realized that perhaps this simple question had been the first and only thing Ashton had said since his father’s corpse had ran through the King’s Guard.
“We’re being followed,” Jayden said.
“By who?”
“Two men,” Jayden said, “and I think they’re being followed by another.”
The dark elf opened the door by a wooden handle, grabbed Ashton by his soiled hood and robe and shoved him through the portal. The main hall was packed to the walls with men in various stages of drunkenness. Ashton stepped over four passed out men, face first in the foul smelling floor rushes, as he caught up with Cedric at the main counter. There were at least five dozen men in a place that only sat twenty to thirty.
Cedric was leaning against the bar, conversing with the barkeep. The bartender had loose black curls and a clean-shaven face. He wore a light brown tunic that covered his rotund belly and a matching loose jacket and pants.
“I don’t care how well I know you, Cedric,” the barman said loudly, “and I don’t care how much coin you’ve got. If you smell like you do, you need to go wash. Them’s the rules. You damned well know it!”
“Harold, I just need something to drink,” Cedric said. “Something strong.”
“And you can have it,” Harold said. “After your body soaks up some soap and water in a bath barrel. They’re already preheated. You’ll be back here before you know it.”
“I’ll need barrels for three then,” Cedric said as Ashton stepped forward.
“What in God’s name have you three been doing?” Harold asked, eying Ashton’s soiled clothing and Jayden’s matted hair. “Lover’s quarrel in the mud? Or were you actually fighting on the front?”
“The Red Army,” Jayden said, casting Ashton a warning glance that clearly told him to keep quiet and let Cedric and Jayden do the talking.
“Ah,” Harold said, “then you’ll be celebrities once you get cleaned up. They say the Crown Prince has been murdered, along with that bastard Lord Mallory. Shame about the Prince.”
“Aye,” Cedric said simply.
“Shame,” Jayden agreed.
“Been a bunch of posters put up around town,” Harold said, looking at Ashton briefly as he cleaned a wooden mug.
“Posters?” Jayden asked.
“Big reward for this necromancer,” Harold said, pointing toward posters on the wall at the end of the bar.
Ashton and Jayden drew near. There were two different versions.
The first notice had a rather dramatic rendering of a man with a flaring cloak and staff with a goat head on it. Necromancer. Charged with the death of Prince Magnus, Lord Mallory, and hundreds of King’s Guard at Mallory Keep. Thousands more potentially killed in Perketh and Dona. Wanted dead or alive.
This poster was newer and overlapped an older one. The older one had a picture of a simple man in a cloak, a man not all that different from Ashton but with no discernible facial features under a dark hood in the engraving. Supposed Necromancer. Wanted Alive for Questioning. Do not approach. Inform General Ross of the King’s Guard.
“I see,” Jayden said.
Cedric, who had never left his leaning position near Harold, held his helmet in the crook of his arm. He wiped his matted dirty blond hair from his face and stroked his stubbly chin and cheek.
“Can you send up your barber after you’ve drawn baths?” Cedric asked.
“The new man is good with a novacila and pumice,” Harold said.
“What happened to Gerald? That pumice is such a pain. Plucking and pulling. Give me a copper razor any day.”
“Oh sure!” Harold said sarcastically. “Maybe I should call for a depilatory cream. Mix together some of that readily available arsenic and our copious supply of quicklime and starch.”
“A razor will do,” Cedric said, raising his eyebrows and grinning slightly for the first time in days.
“Gerald’s dead,” Harold said simply. “Some type of plague.”
“Spe
aking of which,” Jayden said, sweeping the floor with a foot to reveal an older layer of reeds. “You should clean out these rushes. There’s no telling what diseases thrive here.”
“Why clean it out,” Harold said, “when you can just lay down a new coat. Besides, the beer, piss and vomit soaks down to the floorboards. You would need to take a pick axe and a shovel to it to remove it.”
“Or just drop a lantern on it,” Jayden said, “and let the fire clean it once and for all.”
Harold grunted and attacked another mug with the same rag.
“There’s plenty of other bars and inns in town,” Harold said. “I know you know them, because we barkeeps talk, and you’ve been kicked out of all of ‘em.”
“I’m sure the new guy will be fine,” Cedric said, rolling his eyes. “Which room?”
“Eleven,” Harold yelled a couple of times as a fight broke out near the doorway. “Get the hell outside with that!”
The combatants eventually obliged, and Harold shook his head as he cleaned another wooden mug.
“What type of ale do you have today?” Jayden asked.
“You can’t drink down here until you’ve washed up,” Harold reminded him. “You guys are going to run off all the customers.”
“I’m asking for later,” Jayden said, licking his lips.
“Roasted pale malt,” Harold said, “until it’s amber. Dark. Oats. Yeast.”
“So, it’s the strong mix then?” Jayden asked.
“Of course,” Harold said, mocking outrage at any other suggestion. “I have to test each batch, and I won’t be found dead sipping a weak cup. You want weak, you head down to The Fat Orc’s Wife or The Slippery Eel.”
Jayden smiled. “I thought you said we weren’t allowed back into them. Kicked out, you said.”
“Anyone would kick you out,” Harold replied, “with the way you lot smell right now!”
Jayden raised his white eyebrows and hands and looked to Ashton with mock defeat. “Eleven, then?”
“Eleven,” Harold said firmly, cleaning another glass and then the counter where an unruly, happy customer was sloshing around his drink as he sang a bawdy tune about a lusty midwife.
Cedric led the way up the stairs, helmet still in hand and a black cloak dragging along the steps. Ashton avoided the cloth. They entered a long hallway. Cedric expertly turned right without looking at any of the signs and pushed in a door to the left. Ashton just caught the numerals for eleven as he passed through the opening.
Three bathing barrels had already been prepared. The floor was soaked through with water and a film was clearly visible from the layers of soap that had been spilled here. Ashton looked down at the cracks in the floor, expecting to see bar patrons, but instead there was just brown earth. The room was situated behind the bar, so the dirty water fell outside.
Jayden disrobed first, as he was less encumbered and certainly the least shy. He slipped into the central barrel. Cedric had problems getting rid of his armor, and Ashton, having some experience with such gear at the smithy, helped him undo the fastenings of his breastplate. Cedric took the wooden basin closest to the door. Ashton entered his bath last, the one closest to the only window in the upstairs room. The water had been boiled at some point in the past but not anytime recently. It was lukewarm, but for a person who had been traveling, it was like a thermal vent in the lap of luxury.
Ashton laid there for a few minutes, only moving to submerge his head in the soapy liquid and listening to the clamor from the nearby main hall carrying through the water.
After the third dunk, he noticed Jayden was looking at him. He leaned against the barrel and stared back, waiting for Jayden to have something to say.
“No one’s going to understand what happened at Mallory Keep,” Jayden said.
“I certainly don’t,” Ashton said, wincing as Jayden glared at him. He shut up after that.
“Just start from the beginning,” Cedric said. “He’s of no use to us ignorant. He’s a piece of this puzzle. I’m sure of it.”
Jayden twisted his mouth and then frowned before speaking again.
“We first came into contact with them 20,000 years ago,” Jayden said. “The demons. There was a dark elf amongst us named Selenor. We didn’t have restrictions on magic, but back then, there was nothing especially dangerous about wielding it. There were no necromancers. Only magicians. Selenor was a projector. Astral projection, they call the art. From our world, she would travel out into the stars, touching other worlds. She grew tired of the other local planets. All barren and lifeless. So, she ventured farther. My great grandfather told me she used to draw crowds—almost like parades—regaling the people with her adventures amongst the stars.”
Cedric shook his head and dipped back briefly into the water, rubbing soap on his scalp as he came back up.
“She found an ancient being,” Jayden said, “one of the oldest. At least, that’s what this other woman claimed. Said she was a queen, that she had created whole races of creatures. That she could teach Selenor how to visit different planes of existence. That was the first we heard about the Abyss. The Void.”
Jayden stared off into space for a few moments. The mumble and thuds of the muted crowd from the main hall seemed more pronounced as he focused his hearing. Ashton waited on baited breath.
“This creature,” Jayden said, “this Queen. She was very interested in us. What we were working on. The magics we possessed. As part of a cultural exchange, we educated her. In return, she gave our world a name: Nirendia. She said she wanted to come here, to see our world. Our Council at the time agreed to it.”
“Humans should have been included in that discussion,” Cedric complained.
Jayden ran his hands through his white hair. He then leaned back to stare at the ceiling.
“We tried to prepare our world,” he said. “We knew of certain magics that limited projection, allowed us to corral a creature like her into a certain space. We spread this magic over the world around Surdel. It took us thousands of years. The surface was covered with magic, and a natural cavern lined with the stuff exists under this land thanks to a long ago cataclysm.”
“But you didn’t seal the dark elven cities,” Cedric added.
“Yes,” Jayden said. “Back then, the humans didn’t have cities. Ours was the dominant population. We ruled the land. Even the eastern wood elves bowed to our dominion. We thought our cities were strong because our people were strong and wise. We were idiots. This Queen came to this world about 15,000 years ago. We met her below Balahambria. It was a great city back then. Lots of history and magic. All lost to time and demons.”
“You doomed us all,” Cedric accused mildly, and Ashton realized these two men had had this same conversation many times. Cedric was just going through the motions.
“I wasn’t alive back then,” Jayden said. “I’m only 2,000 years old. My mother too was unborn then. Anyone involved in this cultural exchange is long dead. I’m as liable for what happened there as you are for the rise and fall of the paladins.”
Cedric grunted and lowered himself into the barrel so that only his nose and parts of his face were exposed above the cold water.
“Anyway, Balahambria was the first to fall,” Jayden said. “We found out what she really was then, as best anyone can figure out what she is. She’s false. She lies, but of one thing we’re certain: she’s a demon lord.”
“What’s a demon lord?” Ashton said.
“I can’t tell you what defines it,” Jayden said. “She boasted of many things. Her conquests. Her creations. She claimed that she created the modern form of demons. Before her, they were more ethereal. Dark creatures. She gave them the claws, the fire, and the form.”
“What does she look like?” Ashton asked. “I met a woman, a dark goddess, in Dona.”
“What was her name?” Jayden asked.
“That’s what I kept asking her,” Ashton said, “and she wouldn’t answer.”
Jayden sighed. “So, she d
idn’t tell you…”
Cedric popped back up from his barrel.
“She told me a name,” Ashton said. “She claimed it was the name that the Prince of Demons used for her. She claimed she had created creatures called naurun. She claimed she had raised that Prince of Demons from these very demons she had created.”
“Fire creatures,” Jayden said. “Naurun means fire creature. That’s what you raised from your father at Mallory Keep. You raised one of the creatures she helped spawn.”
“So, you have met her?” Cedric asked, running his hands through his dirty blond hair and leaving his palms in his eye sockets.
Ashton nodded, his chin splashing against in the water.
“What did she have you call her?” Jayden asked.
“Mekadesh,” Ashton said. He looked around expecting her to appear, but she did not. “She said the Prince of Demons calls her Mekadesh.”
Jayden exchanged a mirthful look at Cedric, who submerged back into his barrel. Jayden chuckled briefly and then turned back to Ashton.
“That’s a more recent name,” Jayden said. “Still ancient but not the first. As I told you, when she first came to my people, she told us that her people, the durun, called her Queen.”
“But queen is a title,” Ashton said.
“For her, it was a name,” Jayden said, “or maybe she was the first queen to have ever been. Regardless, she wanted us to call her that. It was unlikely to have been her first, but her birth name may be lost to time. We know her people call her the Queen of Chaos.”
“Her people,” Cedric scoffed. “You mean the demons you’ve captured and tortured?”
“You have fondness for them?” Jayden asked.
“No,” Cedric said defensively.
“Of course you do,” Jayden said. “After all, you can’t kill them can you? You know why that is. You’re not dumb, even if you’re under her spell.”
“Watch your tongue,” Cedric warned from his barrel. His eyes were dangerous.
“Her people could be numerous,” Jayden said. “These durun, who I’ve never seen, are said to be her original people. She created the naurun, but they’re not all her people. The demon lords we know about came from them, and they each lead factions of the fire creatures. She claims to have made other creatures.”