The Cor Chronicles: Volume 04 - Gods and Steel

by Martin V. Parece II

  There couldn’t have been more than a few hundred raised corpses still moving, these having been brought back by Loszians other than Nadav, and the Westerners moved quickly to dispatch these. More purple magicks shot across the valley, raising more to the cause. Thyss followed one of these to its source, but her eyes weren’t sharp enough to make out the necromancers amidst all of the carnage. While the remaining Westerners and Tigoleans came together to form some sort of cohesive force, corpses animated by the dozens if not hundreds. Thyss knew that within minutes, they would be right back where they started if she didn’t end it now.

  She sprinted to the first horse she could spot – a brown mare tied to a stake only twenty or thirty paces away. She freed the animal and nearly jumped into the saddle on its back. Turning the animal southeast, Thyss carefully rode down to the bottom of the slope, and then kicked the horse into a hard gallop. She passed the Westerners, who only watched dumbfounded, and she charged past carnage the likes of which she had never seen in her life. The mass of rotting flesh all around her threatened to turn even her iron stomach, and she endeavored to ignore it.

  Ahead and to the right of her course, she spotted a hint of movement under a virtual mountain of corpses. With a great push from underneath, a giant form burst forth with a howl of victory, for death had not taken him yet. Naran the Shet, one of the Seven Lords, stood literally up to his waist in corpses and screamed to the heavens. His face was battered and bloody with two front teeth and one ear missing, and his body had fared no better with gashes from teeth and bony hands all across that bled readily. But he was alive and victorious, and that was all that mattered.

  Thyss passed him by, but she made it little further. About half of a dozen corpses had risen just in front of her, and she did not care. She thought to ride through them, but she hadn’t considered that her particular mare was not a trained warhorse. Nor was she the best handler of animals. The mount caught sight of the walking dead and, combined with the stench that began to permeate everything in the valley, lost its nerve. The animal whinnied and neighed and suddenly tried to bring itself to a full halt. Thyss was thrown forward from the saddle directly ahead, and it was only by luck that she happened to release the reins as she flew headlong into the small group of animated bodies. That is likely what saved her from real injury, for their bodies made for as soft a landing as could be expected, and the impact itself made three of them cease to move.

  She found herself battered and dizzy, lying on her side with arms and legs wrapped up in other arms and legs. Thyss threw an arm up just in time to fend off a rotting woman’s face as it gnashed its teeth at her. She awkwardly kicked another in the chest with her sandaled foot as it came near. The attack had little force behind it, but the things had little in the way of balance or grace. Her forearm was lodged just under the jaw of the first, a position that would choke a living person, but had no effect on this thing.

  She knew she was running out of time, for she was still entangled, and the one she had kicked unsteadily regained its feet. There was a third just behind him, it. She willed sudden power into her free limb and watched in awe as her hand and forearm turn to raw, white hot fire. It cut, burned its way clean through the corpse-woman’s neck, and the head rolled off to the left as the body fell lifelessly to the right. The second was close now, about to fall upon her, and Thyss pointed her fire limb at the creature. A lance of flame, not white hot but hot enough, shot from where her hand should have been. It burned a hole almost six inches wide into the corpse’s chest, through which she could plainly see, and it too dropped to the ground. She managed to disentangle herself just as the final automaton came upon her, and she caught his neck in a fiery grasp. Within seconds, she had burned through its neck just as she had the first.

  Thyss could do nothing but stand and stare at her left arm in lost amazement. The flesh ended at her elbow, and there the flame began, stretching all the way to her fingers. She could still feel the arm, as if it were still present digits included, but they were made of something other than flesh and bone. She felt the raw power, the entropy of it, and she longed to join with it across her whole body. She would become a form of the purest flame and burn the final enemies to cinders. She could do it, become flame just long enough to end this final struggle.

  “I would never come back,” Thyss whispered, closing her eyes as she repeated the words she had said to Cor what seemed like an eternity ago. When she reopened her eyes, her normal arm, hand and fingers had returned, and for perhaps the first time in her life, Thyss wanted to cry real tears of sorrow.

  32.

  Cor hoped that he would never again have to travel by way of Loszian magic. Though it seemed to be almost instantaneous, it was a long instant of painfully bright light and nauseating weightlessness. Or perhaps it was more like falling. He’d experienced the same thing several times in his life while asleep, and it always woke him suddenly, as if he had fallen from a great distance and landed in a bed.

  When his eyes cleared, he found himself overlooking the valley and standing next to Menak with the Loszian’s beacon stone between them. He hadn’t realized how much time had passed as bright early afternoon sunlight began to warm the black steel on his back. The valley appeared as something out of nightmare with mounds and heaps of corpses everywhere as far as he could see. Some had been long dead, their flesh in various stages of rot or gone completely, while others were fresh and clad in armor. While he did not take a count, he estimated that only a couple thousand of Rederick’s great host survived. There were only a few hundred dead up and moving, but more rose with each passing moment.

  Cor looked for his friends, the Seven Lords and other familiar faces. He found Naran stumbling back to the wounded tent. The Shet bled from a hundred wounds, and Rederick and Mora supported him under each arm. Lord Karak moved with a small force of Tigoleans dispatching group after group of animated dead. Keth did the same on the other side of the valley, and Cor swore he saw Marya alongside him. He breathed a sigh of relief when he found Thyss, running across the field, and he squinted and furrowed his brow to find to what she ran. Just on the edge of his vision he could see a number of tall, dark forms on gilded chariots that caught the angled sunlight.

  “Gods damn her,” Cor mumbled, and he turned to Menak. “Lord Menak, I would be much obliged if you would personally see to my son’s safety.”

  Receiving a nod from the Loszian, Cor charged down the grass trodden slope. He stopped for no one. He ran right past Rederick as the red haired king stopped supporting Naran just long enough to try to embrace him. He ignored the questioning looks from soldiers and archers, and he knew that Keth had spotted him. Cor knew what went through Thyss’ mind; she would burn away the remaining Loszians and end this battle. She was too damned impetuous, too damned confident sometimes that her gods would protect her. Cor learned long ago from a seven foot Shet and a black and gray haired Dahken to trust in only himself and his sword.

  Thyss stopped running and sheathed her sword, and this allowed Cor to close the distance more rapidly. His muscles were fresh, for he had exerted himself little thus far while others had bled and died, and his fear for her fueled them further. Somehow, he knew he must reach her quickly. While he no longer had the advantage of height and he couldn’t really make out the Loszians anymore, he would have sworn to seeing at least two dozen chariots. He would not leave to chance or Hykan that she could defeat so many necromancers.

  Thyss held her arms up the sky above, and a great pillar of flame appeared in midair and thundered downward. Cor couldn’t see where it struck, but he thought he heard crazed screams mixed in with the sound of a raging inferno. She seemed to cross her arms in front of her, though he couldn’t be sure as he approached her from behind, and a blast of orange fire shot forth from her being to strike something he could not make out.

  He had crossed almost half the distance from Menak’s tent to Thyss, and the Loszians were somewhere beyond that, when he saw something stir beyond. Someth
ing dark moved, and it was the motion on which his eyes focused. As he ran, he knew it also moved closer to Thyss. He made out a tendril of darkness, a black magick that had been no doubt woven by one of the Loszians. Thyss saw it as well, and she raised her palm slightly to invoke her ten foot wall of fire. She stepped back in sudden fearful surprise as the blackness reached right through the flames and took hold of her.

  “No!” Cor screamed as the magick enveloped her.

  * * *

  The black mass of energy did not frighten Thyss, though she realized too late that it should have. As it reached right through her flames to wrap itself about her entire body, the first thing she noticed was the weakness in her muscles and the nausea in the pit of her stomach. It grew thrice fold at least, and she doubled over with the sickness of it, landing on her hands and knees. Her beautiful golden hair fell down into her face, and she saw it started to turn silver. Her bronze skin, common among the ruling class of Dulkur and the Chosen of Hykan, began to wrinkle, and splotches of deathly gray appeared across it.

  She could withstand the sickness in her stomach no longer and in fact came to the conclusion that she might just feel better if she vomited. Once she let it go, her body pushed over and over to rid itself of the illness, but what came forth was not the remains of a partially digested meal. Instead, she vomited sickly and sour yellow fluid, large amounts of blood and maggots. She coughed and spit repeatedly, unable to stop for the vileness of it. She lifted one hand to push some of her thinning gray hair out of her face, out of the puddle of vomit, and in so doing, a great swathe of it fell out to mix with the fluids and maggots.

  By Hykan, she thought, I am dead.

  Her hearing seemed to be blocked out by a great droning sound that she couldn’t identify, but somewhere in the distance, she picked up the sound of Cor’El’s wails.

  33.

  Cor blinked twice in confusion, for the carnage filled valley was suddenly gone, replaced by a vista that was so bright he had to squint and shield his eyes. He was on a breezeless beach with a bright yellow sun shining directly overhead. The almost pure white sand was extremely fine, the likes of which he had only seen once or twice in his travels, and reflected the sun brightly back into his eyes. A calm ocean that stretched as far as he could see was only fifteen or twenty feet away, and gentle waves lapped softly up the sand while ocean birds called out and flew across the sky. The sun that shined yellow instead of orange was not the only strange thing about this beach, for the seawater was not water at all. It was clearly a sea of blood.

  Cor realized that he was seated, leaning back in a chair the likes of which he had seen before. It was a high backed thing that he thought was made of wood and covered with brownish red material, which he knew to be leather of some kind. The chair lifted and extended outward under his feet to raise them a good two feet off of the ground, which had him leaning, almost laying back at a comfortable and yet awkward angle. He held a vessel in his hand, which was filled with some sort of beverage that he could feel to be very cold. The vessel was perfectly clear and seemed to be made of what some Tigolean merchants called glass, yet he had never seen glass to be worked so masterfully. It was about two inches wide at the base and continued upward for about eight inches. Then the glass tapered over another four or six inches to a less than inch wide opening at the top. Inside the vessel was a golden liquid not dissimilar from ale served at any common tavern. Cor sniffed at the vessel’s mouth and decided that it certainly smelled like a kind of ale.

  Cor didn’t have to look to know that the closely cropped, red haired man he had once met as Dahk sat beside him in a similar chair. He also noticed for the first time that he was almost naked, wearing only the oddest piece of clothing. It seemed to be like breeches, but it covered only from his waist to just above his knees. The material, the likes of which he had never before seen or felt, gave off an odd shine in the bright sunlight.

  “What am I doing here?” Cor asked.

  “We needed to talk.”

  “I don’t have time,” Cor said, struggling to sit upright. He could not seem to get the chair’s leg lifting apparatus to retract or close or whatever it did. “I have to get back.”

  “Relax,” said Dahk, with a slight open motion of his hand, and Cor felt suddenly compelled to do so.

  “They’re killing Thyss. She’ll die if I don’t get back.”

  “Cor, I promise you and you must believe me that no matter how long we stay here together, it will be as if you never left,” Dahk said, and he lifted his own drink to his lips. His was identical except for the wedge of some sort of fruit with a green peel that was impaled on the mouth of the glass vessel. “Gah,” Dahk said with disgust as he took the fruit wedge and tossed it into the blood sea. He threw his head back and took a long draught, suddenly lurching forward with a grunt as the ale inside ran over his stubbled chin. He wiped the back of his hand across his chin, smearing blood across both.

  “Blood,” grumbled Dahk, “it’s always blood with me.”

  “Are you not the God of Blood?” Cor asked.

  “Perhaps,” Dahk replied, and he tossed the bottle into the sea in resignation. It blooped as it disappeared into the vitae. “Cor, do you know why you’re the strongest?”

  “You’ve asked me this before. I really need to get back.”

  “No,” Dahk disagreed, “you want to get back, and I’ve told you that no time at all will have passed when you do. Do you know why you are the strongest?”

  “Because you made me that way.”

  “No, try again. What has made you different your whole life from everyone else, even other Dahken?”

  Cor didn’t answer at first; he just stared out across the blood sea and thought. He thought about how he didn’t care, about how he just wanted Dahk to tell him and stop the nonsense. He thought about Thyss, envisioning her demise at the hands of Loszians while he sat on a strange and beautiful beach drinking ale with a god. He thought about how tiresome the gods were becoming with their constant need to interfere with the on goings of the world. For what purpose did all powerful beings meddle in the affairs of men?

  Cor decided to change the subject. “What is this place?”

  “Ha!” blurted Dahk. He reached down between their chairs and pulled another glass vessel out of a white and red container that was filled with slowly melting ice. He used his other hand to twist some sort of metal cap off of the glass, and this he tossed sidearm into the sea. “Okay, I’ll answer your question first. This is a place I go sometimes. It reminds of someplace I used to know, just a little different.”

  “We’re not really here are we?” asked Cor.

  “Such an existential question. I’m impressed,” Dahk replied. Receiving a look of confusion for the trouble, Dahk chuckled and said, “No to answer your question. We’re not actually here. We’re in my Vault. At least I think we’re in my Vault. It’s possible that we’re actually in your mind, and I just think we’re in my Vault.”

  “How can I think we’re someplace when I didn’t even know we were going to speak?”

  “Good question,” Dahk replied mischievously. “Maybe you should ask yourself that.”

  “I don’t understand you.”

  “Nor should you, my boy.”

  “So,” Cor asked slowly, “why are we here, wherever we are? Why have you come to me again?”

  “Two reasons. For one, to ask you that question which you refuse to answer even though you know the answer,” Dahk said. He placed his drink in between his legs and held out the first two fingers of his right hand. He then covered his extended index finger with his left hand.

  “What’s the second?” Cor asked, avoiding the question.

  “I have to tell you something,” Dahk said in an eerily vague tone, and he dropped his hands into his lap. He leaned over the arm of his chair toward Cor and said in a most confidential way, “There’s something you must know. After you finish this mess in that once pretty little valley, you’re going to meet a
man, a Tigolean named Ja’Na. He’ll claim to be a scholar, claim to have transcribed many stories from the Chronicler Himself.”

  “Okay.” Cor drew the word out oddly, unsure as to whether or not he used it correctly, but it felt right.

  Dahk gave him an appraising look and smile slightly before continuing, “You must know that he is in fact one of the Chronicler’s conduits. Everything he says is completely true. You have my word on that. He will show you his most recent Chronicle, and again, it is completely true.”

  “What does it say?” Cor asked, his childhood curiosity suddenly piqued.

  “I’ll not say, because I tell you too much already. My fellow Gods will have my head on a pike for this as it is. Suffice it to say that it is a Chronicle of all the crimes against mankind that have been visited upon the world of Rumedia.”

  “By the Loszians?” Cor asked.

  Dahk nodded solemnly and stared down into the container of ice between them. “By the Loszians and their gods, by my fellows, by me.”

  “Why do you tell me this?” Cor asked. As before, Dahk’s answers to his questions always led to more questions.

  “Because you need to know,” Dahk replied. He looked back into Cor’s face, and his face was full of misery, and maybe guilt. “Because the Chronicler is right in that everyone needs to know. I know you will take this knowledge and do what is right.”

  “What is that?”

  “Whatever you must,” Dahk replied, leaning back in his chair with a deep sigh, and he again picked up his drink. After holding it to his mouth for a long moment, he said, “I really wish my beer didn’t taste like blood.”

  The two sat quietly, staring into the calm sea and listening to the birds for some time. Cor finally tasted his own beer, as Dahk had called it, and found it odd but not unrefreshing, especially in the heat of the yellow sun. Dahk did not speak again, and Cor was happy for the silence as he thought. He finally finished the beer and tossed it out into the sea as he had seen Dahk do. The god reached down and handed Cor another, and the Dahken easily twisted off the cap. Rather than throw the small, jagged metal disc, he simply dropped it into his lap. Half way into his second beer, Cor finally decided to answer the question.