by Jay Aury
“Well,” he said, voice cracking through the silence like a whip. “The walls are a bit drafty but the gargoyles are a lovely touch. Yes… I think I can make this work.” He turned back to Socretha. “So, you said there were demons?”
An ear-splitting scream broke the stillness. Every head whirled to the walls where several gargoyles had come alive. Leathery wings snapped out as withered creatures with the faces of screaming women leaped from their rooks and swooped down on the orcs in the square. One, a brutish warrior, screamed as ragged nails slashed his face.
“Kill them!” Socretha cried. She ducked a claw, hacking with her axe, rewarded with a howl of agony and a splash of blood as the winged creature crashed to the cobblestones “Keep together!”
Red lightning seared the air, slamming one of the banshees out of the sky. The winged woman crashed, lifeless husk drawn and bony as Tiberius pulled back the eldritch lightning, marks flaring across his hide with the demon’s vitality. Smiling savagely, Tiberius turned, animal pelt whirling about his shoulders. Sheer bloodlust marked his face, magic wrapping around his arms in jagged bands. As the orcs clustered about, he blasted another of the winged women from the air, sending her broken body hurtling into a real gargoyle which shattered beneath her weight.
Screaming, several of her warriors bolted for the entrance before the face of the monstrous denizens of the keep. “Stay together!” Socretha shouted as the fleeing orcs were picked off by the wheeling banshees. “Stay together!”
Tiberius roared with laughter, magic rolling about him like a localized storm. “Come on then!” he shouted, the banshees flinched from him, winging away. “Come on and get some!”
Socretha tried to move near the sorcerer but was beaten back by a sudden dive of a banshee. Aside from a few scattered near the walls, the rest of the orcs had gathered about her, forming a protective circle of steel and green muscle.
A piercing whistle broke through the sounds of battle. The winged women whirled and landed, clustering about the great stairs as a figure strode out of the shadows.
Socretha stared in awe at the beast which walked out of the great doors of the keep. Larger than an ogre, he was man-like in bearing but his hands ended in curving talons. His head sat low on his shoulders, muzzle long and revealing rows of jagged teeth. Horns like a bull’s curved from his head, and his eyes were black like twin pools of pitch. His hide was thick like leather and spattered with scaly skin. His whole build was massive with brutal muscles that would put any orc to shame.
“Intruders? Well, this is a first in a long time,” the massive demon rumbled, stopping at the edge of the balcony like a lord addressing his people. He grabbed an orc who had been hiding under the lip, easily lifting the brutish warrior and bit off his screaming head. He chewed, and then his long mouth opened in a bloody grin. “I was worried my wives would need to go forth and seek out my dinner. But how convenient they come so willingly to my plate.”
“Yes yes, we’re the very picture of convenience,” Tiberius said. Then he actually got a good look at the monster. He paused, red eyes running from the creature’s feet to its head, lingering on the last.
“Now those,” he said with approval, “are some nice horns.”
The demon preened a little. “Why thank you.”
“And you’ve got a nice big skull there.”
The demon’s grin faltered a little. “Erm…”
“And what a marvelous coincidence,” Tiberius grinned back, rolling his shoulders, magic crawling and hissing across his hide. “I’ve been looking for a new hat.”
The demon’s grin fell. Lips curled over sharp teeth. He growled. The corpse crunched in his grip, blood spattering the dry ground. “Kill them,” he said.
The banshees screamed, launching themselves into the air once more. Their monstrous master loped forward and leaped over the rail. The flagstones cracked under his landing and he kicked off, rushing at the knot of defenders.
Tiberius met him, hurling forward a wave of blazing magic. The spell took the demon full in the chest, staggering him a moment. He snarled, swiping his claws through the jagged red lance and lunged, speeding forward on all fours like a hound.
Tiberius’s eyebrows flew up in surprise. He dove aside, barely evading the scything claws of the demon. An orc warrior wasn’t so lucky, screaming as the demon tore him apart almost distractedly before rounding back on the sorcerer.
Tiberius hurled another blast of lightning right in its face. The demon reeled, howling, but his huge claws this time caught the sorcerer.
“Little human!” the monstrous demon roared, raising the cursing man high. He opened his maw impossibly wide. Teeth ranged all down his jaws.
The sound drew Socretha’s attention. Horror gripped the orc. No. Not like this! She dashed forward, lungs burning. Roaring her battle cry, she jumped off the edge of the ruined fountain and brought down her axe deep into the demon’s arm.
The horned monster howled. His grip loosened on the warlock, dropping him with an oof. The steel of the axe hissed as black blood gushed from the demon’s wound, corroding the metal. He jerked about, the axe ripped from Socretha’s grasp.
The demon snarled, taking a step towards her. Socretha backed up, eyes flashing for another weapon but finding nothing.
As the demon reared up before her, Tiberius hurled himself onto its back, reached forward, and dug his thumbs into the monster’s eyes. Crimson magic raced down the sorcerer’s arms and full onto the demon’s face.
The horned thing screamed in mortal agony. It tried to pull away but the sorcerer’s grip was like iron. Yowling, the monstrous demon staggered, falling heavily to its knees as its face melted beneath the twining serpents of power writhing down the sorcerer’s arms.
Tiberius laughed as the monster fell to its hands and knees, but still the sorcerer stripped the demon’s skin. All across the bailey, orcs stared in awestruck fascination as the human burned away stringy muscle, the pink meat, and all the last of flesh from bone.
As the magic faded, Tiberius wrenched the horned skull free with a snap. Still straddling the demon’s neck, magic crackling across him, Tiberius raised the demon’s skull and crowned himself with it. He laughed, red eyes shadowed by the teeth, the horns soaring back in black bone.
“Oh yes,” the sorcerer cackled. “Now this is a hat!”
The Bandit Tower
It had been called the Moon Tower, Auria said, and in the dead of night Felix could see why. Rising out of the gloomy forest, the lone, rotten thing was like a pillar of marble. Yet by the moonlight it seemed to gleam, as if in memory of what it had once been, before the great schism of the elvish empire, before men had come and spread their kingdoms over the land now known as Lorain. A relic of an age of wonder. Awe inspiring even in ruin.
Assuming one ignored the campfires kindled at its base.
Auria glowered at the fires and what they represented. The dark elf’s blue eyes gleamed as she examined the bandit camp. “A lot of men,” she observed.
“A straight assault would be foolish,” Felix said. When he had been fully armed and armoured in his old regalia, he had little doubt he could have taken them all. But in stolen clothes, and only the thin, notched blade runed with the most basic marks, he very carefully reassessed his chances of success.
Not good, overall.
Auria gave him an amused glance. “I can clear the way,” she said. She gestured, conjuring a wisp of magic that twined round her hand and slithered along her wrist like a serpent. “They will not take me off guard a second time.”
He gave her a sceptical glance. She smiled wider.
“Watch,” she said. “And I’ll show you what a magus of the Fount can do.”
Felix was sceptical. Still, naked steel in hand, he descended with her towards the old fort.
The bandit camp sprawled over a rocky hill. A crude palisade had been erected where the old stone wall had fallen in. Small cabins had been worked in here and there, and a single crude woode
n watchtower rose on the far wall. Two men were there that night, ignorant of the figures making their way towards their keep. Assured of their master’s dominion over the scattered holdings of the Dusk Wood, their attention was fixed to the night sky.
“See?” one said, pointing at the heavens. “There’s the Scales. And there’s the Bull.”
“Doesn’t look much like a bull though, does it?”
“Well, it’s more a…a representation. You gotta fill in the gaps with imagination.”
“Hrm,” the other said, unconvinced. “And you say you can tell your fortune from them?”
“Yeah. Kinda. See, it’s like the stars. You know. Know your fate.”
“I thought you said it was a bull?”
“No, see. It looks like a bull.”
“Sounds like a load of bull.”
The first man sighed and gave up. Turning back to the sky, his face lit up suddenly as he spotted a silvery light flaring against the night. “Oh! Look. A shooting star. Make a wish!”
His companion peered at the flash. “That shooting star’s getting awful close.”
“It’s all perspective,” the other said. “Angles and what not. Pie and triggernometry. See? Only looks like it’s a big ol’ ball of flame been lobbed at us. ‘S not really.” He looked closer. “Oh…”
Bandits rushed out of their tents as the fireball ripped off the top of the tower, lighting the scene below like a massive torch of blue and silver flame. Men jabbered, stabbing fingers at the sky. Felix and Auria heard them as they hastened up to the crumbling wall.
“Now what?” Felix gasped.
Auria flashed him a smile, her violet cheeks flushed a deeper purple with excitement. “This,” she said and pressed her hands against the mortared stone. She closed her eyes, and began to speak. The words were strange to Felix, but he felt the power in them. Flowing into the woman and spreading across the stone in ripples of pale blue light. The wall rumbled, trembled with force. She gave a sudden shout.
With a boom the wall exploded outward in a rain of blocks and dust. Screams came, soon cut off. Felix stared in surprise, then caught himself and vaulted what remained of the wall and into the enemy camp.
There wasn’t much to speak of. Near every man had been drawn out by the watchtower’s destruction. The wall had cannoned into them, burying a number flat out, while the massive blocks had crushed limbs and heads of the few survivors. A few plaintive groans rose from the ruined camp, whimpers soon silenced as bodies gave in to their injuries.
Auria strode over, her heels clicking on the stone. She surveyed the damage with haughty surety.
“Good enough for you?”
“Nearly,” Felix said as guards rushed from the tower’s doors. Two men, better armoured than their fellows, though that was saying little. They wielded cruel hooked swords and wore a pair of bandanas as masks across their faces. Felix swung free his blade and maneuvered to the side, forcing them to come at him one at a time. The first man swung, his hasty blow easily parried, and Felix socked the man in the mouth, sending him stumbling back. He turned to face the other attacker, only for a ball of flame to turn the man into a living torch.
Felix spared a moment to give Auria a grateful look, then spun to face the first man again. The shock of seeing his companion dance while aflame had stunned him, and Felix promptly skewered the bandit, yanking free his sword and letting the man fall dead to the ground.
“Suppose that’s all of them,” he said.
“Nearly.”
Felix turned towards the tower as a man stepped out. He wore a ragged coat stitched with a jagged diamond pattern, one mimicked on the white mask he wore. Two eyeholes were punched in the pale material, showing a pair of glittering green eyes. A cocked hat with a feather completed the ensemble. In a gloved hand he held a slowly spinning blood red gem. Its crude faces gleamed like mirrors, with fine worked golden filigree covering it like ivy.
“The Arcris!” Auria gasped. Her eyes narrowed. “Give that to me.”
“I rather think not,” the man said, hefting the gem. “It took a great deal of effort to get this. Almost as much to gather these men, which you have so thoughtfully killed,” he noted.
“It is the lady’s,” Felix said. “I suggest giving it to her.”
The masked man looked his way. “And you must be the naked man from the woods. I suppose I owe Tommen an apology. Though you appear to have found some clothes. Who are you?”
“Felix Gravere. The Rune Knight.”
“Never heard of you.”
Felix sighed. “I suppose not. Will you surrender the Arcris?”
The masked man cocked his head. “No. I rather think not.” Leisurely, he drew a long gleaming sword. “I think instead I’ll kill you both.”
“Bastard!” Auria spat and swung her arms forward, shouting a word of power. Magic flared about her hands, firing like a spear of blue light, but the masked man merely raised the Arcris. The flows of power redirected, barreling into the jewel, absorbed and vanishing with a crackle.
Auria gaped. The man lowered the stone. “Now, where were we?”
“Here,” Felix said, and lunged.
The masked man parried, skillful as sin, and Felix knew he wasn’t facing another crude swordsman. Steel rang on steel as they fought about the ruins. Felix backed him up, driving him into the looming tower of night.
Without missing a beat, Felix took in the room, spotting fine furnishings and carpets overlaying the crumbling stone. Treasure was piled in chests and crates and spilled naked and gleaming on the floor. A bandit king’s keep indeed. A number of huge braziers burned a brilliant flame of violets and blues, the magic of the mage fire crackling across the pale walls of the tower.
Felix pressed the attack. The runes along his blade flashed as their blades clashed. The bandit was skilled. He wielded his blade one handed, parrying and deflecting Felix’s strokes.
Auria hastened after, lingering on the edge of their contest, biting her lower lip while magic spun about her hands, too wary to cast lest the spell be again absorbed by the glimmering jewel.
And all the while knight and bandit duelled. Felix caught the other man’s blade with his. The runes along his sword blazed with light and a sudden impact sent the bandit’s weapon spinning away.
The masked man looked at his stinging hand in surprise, then the marks which glowed down Felix’s sword. “What is that?” he said.
“Runes,” Felix said, levelling his blade at the other man. “And I suggest you surrender.”
The masked man took a wary step back, clutching the glowing stone tightly. “No,” he said. “No, I rather think not.”
The masked man lifted the spinning jewel, and the moonlight struck the tower. The walls glowed, washing white. Streams of blue light flowed down from the walls and into the jewel in Wraith’s hand. The masked man tilted back his head, inhaling deeply.
“Yes,” he said, static crackling from the Arcris and down his arm. He held up his other hand, gathering a rolling mass of fire in his gloved palm. Sparking. Twisting. “This is power. Powaaaaaargh!”
Wraith screamed, stumbling back. The Arcris bounced with a ringing clang off the stone floor, but his severed hand flopped uselessly like a dead spider. Wraith clutched his bleeding stump of a wrist, retreating back a step as the magic faded from him.
“What?” Felix said, his bloodied sword held easy. “You were standing right there.”
The masked man hissed like a snake. He grabbed one of the basins and suddenly overturned it. Mage fire spilled across the floor, blazing blue. Felix jumped back from the spreading flames, just catching a glimpse of the masked man as he fled through a door at the rear of the tower.
“After him!” Auria cried. She swept her hand forward, her own magic slicing through the flames, parting them like a writhing sea. Felix nodded, bounding through the gap with Auria close behind. They raced down the steps to the lower level of the tower. Stones glowed blue light down the depths and into the cell
ar of the tower. Bursting through a rotting doorway, they found the masked man atop an ivy clutched dais with the sigil of a half-moon carved on its surface. He turned, eyes glittering hatefully while blood from his stump splattered on the dais. He struck the carving of the moon with his free hand.
The dais glowed. A wind rose, stirring his cloak and hood. “This is not over,” he said, and seemed to dissolve in the whirling light, picked apart into silver ashes and scattered into the air.
Felix stared at the dais as the shine of magic faded away.
“Huh,” he said. “Look at that.”
Auria frowned and paced nearer, inspecting the dais. “A warpstone,” she said irritably. “Figures.”
Felix put two and two together. “I suppose you can’t tell me where it warps?”
“Sadly not,” she said. Then glanced his way. Her smile grew warmer, and so did her eyes. “You did well, my Knight.”
“I did swear my aid,” he said.
“Yes,” she said, stepping nearer, wrapping her arms around his shoulder and pulling herself against him, her breasts molding to his chest. “And I am far from ungrateful. I promised you to see my home. And I intend to keep that promise.”
“Kind of you,” he said.
She laughed. “No. Not kind,” she said, leaning up. “Never kind.” And she kissed him with lips black as night.
Victory Night
From the wall of Fulgrim’s Keep, Socretha looked out over the once accursed vale. The clan’s campfires burned like lurid stars across its expanse. Drums beat through the night, thumping while warriors celebrated their conquest.
She turned back into the bailey, where her own bandmates were. Banners had been hung about the interior in rude ownership of courtyard. Orcs moved about, drinking with celebration, raising a toast to the main keep where Tiberius had made his home. The sorcerer’s name was on their tusked lips, said in awe and savage devotion. Some had already marked themselves, cutting savage designs in their green flesh, darkened with ochre to tattoos in allegiance to their master’s own markings.