by Prior, D. P.
He stepped onto the garden path. A clutch of red-wings loitered down by the smallholding. When they saw him, a whistle peeped.
He turned to shut the door. Movement blurred. Stones came away from the wall of the house. A dagger flashed. Faster than he could even think, the axe scythed through the air, and a demon crumpled to the ground. The wings shrouding it alternated between the gray of the house walls and the green of the garden grass, but little by little, they gave way to the crimson hue of blood.
The red-wings by the smallholding backed away as he passed, then they resumed tailing him. As he approached the Aorta, hearth lights flickered through the windows of one or two homes. It would soon be dawn, and the miners would be getting ready for work. Just the thought of it made him want to see for himself if anyone untainted was inside.
He crossed to a house and rapped on the door. The red-wings drew nearer, their weapons glinting amber in the light from the glowstones.
A demon opened the door. It was vaguely female, and in its arms it cradled a poisonous-looking baby. Carnifex recoiled. The demon screamed, and another demon—a male—appeared over her shoulder. Carnifex raised the axe, but the door slammed in his face. Before he could kick it down, the red-wings charged.
The axe sang as it tore into them, a dismal dirge with no words that seemed to define the spray of blood. This time, it was indeed a slaughter, and Carnifex felt the rancid ooze of steaming ichor drenching him. But with a flare of gold from the axe, the gore was burned away.
Corpses were strewn about the walkway in spreading pools of crimson. He almost felt sorry for them, and as he scoured the lifeless remains, he wondered if they’d felt anything when the blades bit into them. They had to have done. They’d screamed as they died.
He reached the Aorta unchallenged and climbed up to the fifteenth. Arrows fell like dark rain, but the axe deflected them with ease. At the top, a shield wall was waiting, comprised of dozens of red-wings. It surged toward him, and he smashed it apart. The survivors fled, and he ran down every last one of them. He was committed now. No more holding back. No more indecision.
Each level he drew nearer the seventh, the defense grew stronger, the defenders more numerous. Dozens swelled to hundreds. Rivers of blood became oceans. Tier after tier he conquered with indomitable strength, and he was growing stronger with every demon slain. The axe reveled in their blood; absorbed it; lapped it up, and passed it on to him as vitality. It was a wonder the Founders had ever lost it; a wonder they hadn’t triumphed in Gehenna with a weapon such as this.
He smashed through phalanxes, shattered ragged lines. Demons flung themselves wailing from the walkways rather than taste his axe. They roared, they howled, but most of all, they screamed. He surged past shield and sword, hammer and spear, chopping, crushing, splitting. Their blows came to nothing, blocked by the lightning-swift might of the axe. Some he saw coming a mile off, and deftly stepped around them. The few that made it through glanced feebly from his chainmail, and the fewer still that grazed him may as well not have bothered. The axe healed him, time and again.
It made him feel the stories about his ma were true. Was this how the Dwarf Lords had been? Yet there had only been one Pax Nanorum, one axe. Perhaps this was a power reserved only for the finest of the Immortals, the elite among the Lords; those of king’s blood.
And yet, if he’d been told he was a true immortal—a god—he’d have been hard-pressed to deny it. He grew insatiable for demon blood; drunk on it. And he surged inexorably toward the seventh level and the Dodecagon.
THE RAVINE BUTCHER
The seventh-level plaza was brimming with demons. Red-wings mingled with black in a bristling mass of shadow-formed weapons and obsidian shields. The connecting walkways were flowing with them, too: streams of scarlet that foreshadowed the rivers of blood that would soon replace them.
In the background, the covered approach to the Dodecagon stood as a stark reminder of all that had been lost, all the Abyss had taken from Arx Gravis: fluted pillars that spoke of a more civilized time; the statues of Arnochian kings and the glorious heritage they represented; and the scarolite doors of the council chamber itself. They, at least, might have kept the Council safe from the life-leeching hordes, but for the fact they could only be locked from the outside.
Vermilion sunlight bled across the sky visible between the upper levels. It merged with the canyon walls, poured out its libation upon them. Clouds of vultures spiraled in the thermals, descended like shadows upon the lower tiers. A murder of crows perched in judgment on the crest of an aqueduct.
All else was still as Carnifex walked toward the waiting army of demons. None of them moved; not a single one, save for the wavering of weapons, the flicker of flaming eyes.
The Axe of the Dwarf Lords thrummed with anticipation. It had been made for this—the smiting of evil; and now Carnifex realized that he had been, too. Through his boys, Droom had said, the dwarves would become like the Dwarf Lords of legend. The homunculus responsible for naming Carnifex and Lucius had told him as much. Hope, it prophesied, would spring from the womb of Yyalla Thane.
The axe seemed to follow his thoughts. “You will be their salvation, Carnifex. Together, we will drive this pestilence from the ravine, and make of the ashes of Arx Gravis another Arnoch. And then we will turn the survivors of your race into a new line of Dwarf Lords.”
It was a promise to raise Carnifex up on a wave of hope. It tempered his despair, honed his anger and gave it purpose. If he could just see this through, just climb one last blood-slick mountain of violence, a new age would dawn: a new age of pride and glory.
He quickened his pace to a jog, which built to a run, then a full-tilt charge. He crashed into the front ranks like a boulder. The axe was a whirling blur of gold, and the demons were chaff to be winnowed and threshed. Spears snapped, swords were sheered in two, hammers shattered on impact with the scintillant blades. Shield upon shield was dented and cleft. Weapons clattered to the ground like hail. Cries, screams, the slump and thud of bodies; the whoosh of air that followed the blistering strikes of the axe. It was intoxicating. Invigorating.
And the Pax Nanorum sang—a grisly symphony that harmonized the clangor of battle, the screams of the dying into a strident portent of victory. They were going to win. Together, they would triumph.
The ground beneath Carnifex’s feet was slick with gore—more blood than even the axe could burn away. It soaked into his britches, spattered his beard and face. He tasted its copper tang on his lips, savored it like mead. He was beyond the fear of contagion. He was a whirlwind, an elemental god of death. He was insane with righteousness. Glory effused from his every pore.
Corpses piled up around him. He climbed upon them, higher and higher as demons continued to fall. And then he glared down in rage and let cry a howl of frustration. He stood atop a mountain of the dead, the rest of the demons encircling its base in a sea of scarlet and black.
He roared at them to come on; screamed at them to face him. When they didn’t, he ripped the severed heads from his belt, held them aloft by their hair. It wasn’t enough. Still, no one dared stand against him.
He snatched up a broken spear, shoved its tip into the underside of a head then rammed the butt into the chest of a fallen demon. He did the same with the second head, then the third. And when the hordes still did not come on, he swept the axe down again and again, decapitating the dead and cramming their heads on spears, swords, anything he could find in the mound of bodies; and bit by bit he built a palisade around him in imitation of the dwarf skulls on spikes he’d seen in Gehenna. When he’d finished, he screamed out his challenge again.
At first, nothing happened. Then, as if they’d been given an inaudible command, the demon army parted, affording him a view straight down the colonnaded walkway with its statues of dwarven kings.
At the far end, the door of the Dodecagon ground open, and three figures emerged. The two either side were ghastly revenants, draped in hoary gowns of cobwebs. The one
in the middle was a giant shrouded in glacial white. Its head was a polished orb, and its eyes were scorching sapphires. As it glided from the council chamber, flanked by its ghostly helpers, it held out an ebon skull with flaming patterns swirling upon its forehead.
Silence settled over the plaza, save for the steady drip, drip, drip of blood from the piled-up corpses, the swoosh of the crimson torrents cascading into the ravine.
As the three drifted nearer, Carnifex slipped and slid down the hill of the dead to wait for them at the bottom. His heart pounded. The axe pulsed in his palm. Its aureate glow guttered, as if it were unprepared for this new threat. Frightened, even.
Twenty paces from him, and one of the revenants howled like the wind gusting through the nooks and crevices of the chasm. In response, the red-wings drew back further, retreating onto the walkways that intersected with the plaza.
“Beware,” the axe whispered in his mind.
He didn’t need the warning. The severed jugular of his confidence bled him dry.
Fifteen paces from him, the hellish trio stopped to confer. He could see the patterns on the skull now: letters etched in ruby flame. They spelled a word that froze the blood in his veins, a name that cut to the heart of who he was:
Thanus.
As the three devils continued toward him, his legs began to shake. The axe whispered at him to run, yelled at him, screamed.
Ten paces from him, and the world turned on its head.
The skull became a helm; the revenants, dwarves; the giant, a man in a white toga.
“Thumil?” Carnifex said, blinking over and over to make sure he wasn’t seeing things. “Cordy?” She still had on her wedding dress. Her face wore the ghastly pallor of dread.
Carnifex looked down at himself, at his blood-drenched britches. Gore clung thickly to his boots. His hands were stained red, all the way to his elbows. He lifted them to his face. It was sticky with clotting blood, setting over his features in a mask. And he knew what it looked like—the reflection in the window of the Scriptorium. Oh, shog, he knew.
A motley-clad dwarf in a tall hat came out of the Dodecagon: Stupid. He watched the trio before Carnifex, and his hat bobbed as he nodded. Behind him, white-robed councilors started to gather in the entrance. They were all looking toward Carnifex, eyes wide with horror, as if he’d done something wrong.
Aristodeus, carrying Yyalla’s scarolite helm, took a step closer. Then another. He mouthed something Carnifex couldn’t hear above the rush of blood in his ears. Another step, and the axe shuddered. Its golden dweomer died, left it blacker than shadow. Another step, and the Pax Nanorum recovered with a bloodcurdling cry. Its blades exploded in aureate brilliance, and the giant ghoul who’d been Aristodeus dropped the helm. It clanged and rolled across the walkway.
Carnifex took a lunging step forward, drew back the axe. The giant stumbled away. One of the revenants rushed in front, pallid hands raised. It was screaming at him, imploring him. Carnifex switched his ire onto it, swept the axe down. The revenant slipped on blood and pitched to its back. It was the only thing that saved it. Carnifex swore and stepped in for a second go, but the world tipped again.
Cordy was there now, standing over Thumil, the scarolite helm clutched in her trembling hands. The arm holding the axe dropped limply to Carnifex’s side, and the golden glow coming off the blades stuttered and died.
Aristodeus stepped up, took the helm from Cordy. He said something, but Carnifex wasn’t listening. He was appalled by what he had almost done; appalled by the terror on Thumil’s face as he scooted back on his haunches and got to his feet.
Carnifex’s breaths came in strangled gasps. They grew ragged and thin. Every exhalation was a rasping wheeze. He needed air. Shog, he couldn’t breathe.
Cordy moved in close and flung her arms around him. Blood squelched between them. Its cloying stench was thick in his nostrils. It soaked into her wedding dress, smeared her face. Droplets pearled her beard, oozed down her cheeks like tears. And then she started to sob, washing them away into streaks of pink.
Carnifex tried to drop the axe, but it clung to his fingers, as if glued in place by congealed blood.
“The seethers, Cordy.” He hated the way he sounded: frail and broken, like a distraught child. “They fed Lucius to the seethers.” The words burned like acid as they left his lips. Tears welled from his eyes.
“Carn,” Cordy sobbed. “Oh, Carn.”
“It’s going to be all right, son,” Thumil said in a quavering voice. “Just put the axe down.”
“This is what I feared,” Aristodeus said, holding out the scarolite helm like a talisman. “What I tried to avert.”
“Just lay down the axe,” Thumil said, as if that were the only thing that mattered.
Carnifex steadied himself on the warmth of Cordy’s embrace. A breath of air found a breach and rushed into his lungs.
“I can’t.” He tried again to release his grip. “Shog, Thumil, I can’t.”
“Let me put the helm on you,” Aristodeus said, “then you’ll be able to.”
The axe hissed. It bucked in Carnifex’s hand.
He shoved Cordy away before he hurt her. Before the axe made him.
“The helm,” Aristodeus said. “You must wear it.”
Feelers of fuligin quested from the head of the axe, brushing against Carnifex’s skin. Where they touched, they burned like frost. One wormed its way into his eye, and his vision grew hazy.
Aristodeus’s voice was a booming roar, none of his words decipherable. Thumil’s robe grew indistinct: frayed tatters of cobweb.
Warmth caressed Carnifex’s fingers. He flinched and focused his eyes. Cordy was holding his hand. He saw her plain as day, her wedding dress streaked and spattered with gore from embracing him.
“Trust him,” she said, imploring him with her eyes. “Trust Aristodeus.”
“I can’t,” he said. He tried to step back, but she tightened her grip.
“Then trust Thumil.”
Carnifex stared at his old friend, his marshal, the Voice. It was like looking at someone he didn’t know. Someone he used to know.
“I can’t,” he said again.
The axe began to glow golden once more.
“Then trust me,” Cordy said.
Without waiting for an answer, she hooked her arm in his and led him along the walkway. The axe was like an anchor, holding him back, but when Thumil took his other arm, Carnifex didn’t resist. He let them half-walk, half-drag him toward the Dodecagon.
Aristodeus rushed ahead of them and cleared the way. White-robed councilors emerged onto the walkway and stood off to the sides. Stupid nodded as the philosopher entered the Council Chamber, and then Cordy and Thumil walked Carnifex inside.
“Now!” Thumil barked over his shoulder.
And the door began to grind shut.
THE NAMELESS DWARF
The doors closed with a muffled clunk behind him. There was a succession of thuds, a clang and a hiss, and then the ensuing silence was almost deafening.
The hidden blue glow that suffused the walls of the Dodecagon made it seem colder within than it actually was. Emerald motes swirled in the air, backlit by phosphorescent veins of scarolite. The embossed heads of Dwarf Lords stared accusingly from each of the doors that studded the twelve-sided chamber. To Carnifex, it felt like entering a hall of judgement, where he’d already been tried in absentia and found guilty.
“It is worse than that,” the axe said, once more reading his mind. “We have been trapped, sealed in a tomb. There is no way out.”
Carnifex started to pant, faster and faster. He was vaguely aware of Cordy on one side of him, Thumil on the other. Aristodeus turned to face him, holding out the scarolite helm.
“Don’t look at it,” the axe whispered.
He didn’t. He stared instead at the debating table, at the twelve empty seats. Would it have made much difference to the city if those seats were always vacant, if there was no Council of Twelve engaged in endl
ess debates that led nowhere, changed nothing?
Or is that what they really did? He no longer knew. The things he’d seen outside in the ravine, in the bowels of Gehenna, he couldn’t tell truth from deception anymore. What if the councilors were the demons in charge, divvying out dwarves to be fed upon, just as they had ensured the fair distribution of tokens?
“It’s all right, Carn,” Cordy said. She went to stroke his forearm reassuringly, but her fingers met the clotting gore that caked his skin. He felt her stiffen, but she didn’t recoil.
“You’re quite safe,” Aristodeus said. “All you need to do is let me place the helm over your head.”
Carnifex flinched and pulled back.
Thumil gripped his arm tight. “There’s nothing to be afraid of, son. We’re here, Cordy and I. We’re both here with you.”
“It’s a trick,” the axe said.
Could the others hear it? Carnifex didn’t think so. None of them reacted to what he heard in his head.
“It’s just you ma’s helm,” Thumil said.
“It’s special,” Aristodeus said. “It can help you. See the letters? ‘Thanus’. Old Dwarven for ‘Thane’.”
“It’s the same helm your pa kept,” Thumil said. “The one he brought out every year on your birthday.”
“Yyalla’s helm,” Cordy said. “The helm of a Dwarf Lord. It will protect you, protect us all. But only if you wear it. You must wear it, Carn.”
“Lies,” the axe said. “Don’t listen to them.”
“Within the ambit of the helm’s theurgy,” Aristodeus said, “the axe’s hold on you is weakened. Wear it, and the glamor will be broken.”
“More lies,” the axe said. “Remember what you saw when they first stepped out onto the walkway? That was the truth. This is an illusion cast by the black skull masquerading as your mother’s helm.”