by Taylor Leigh
A man dashed up to Thedric and he grabbed him. ‘Do you know where the Traveller is?’ Thedric shouted.
The man frowned. ‘Saw him up along the hilltop. He’s helping the wounded.’
Thedric nodded. ‘Thanks!’
He broke into a run, but not before he watched the man impaled through the shoulder by a spear. The Wolf ripped the spear clear from the man’s shoulder and then slammed it down through the man’s chest, hard enough to sever the spine.
Thedric didn’t know where to look, what to do. For once in his life, the situation was spiralling out of any control he had over it. He’d never encountered creatures like this. How could anyone fight this way? It was impossible to intimidate them, and by the way the rest of the Druids and his men were acting, they wouldn’t last much longer before complete terror overtook them. His eyes swept the battlefield, searching for his brother. Andrew was not a born fighter, and he wasn’t sure if Tollin was either. Both men seemed to rely on their wits more than brawn. Yet in this world where brawn was failing them, Thedric found wits the one hope he had left to cling to. He’d always mocked Andrew’s ways, but now, he and Tollin might be their saviours.
Thedric grit his teeth. ‘Come on, Andrew,’ he hissed. ‘Hurry up!’
* * * * *
Victoria tried pushing the huge sporepod again, slipping wildly in the water. She lost her footing and fell on her rear in the ice-crusted wet. She rested her head back against the warty pod and let out a deep, exasperated breath.
‘Elberon?’ she called. ‘I’m starting to think this wasn’t the best thought-out plan.’
The horse offered no reply.
Victoria pushed herself up and shoved against the pod again. ‘I wish Andrew were here. Sure, he’d just be telling me how wrong I’m going about all of this, but at least he’d have a brilliant solution.’
Elberon nickered.
‘Fat lot of help you are,’ she grumbled.
She gave the pod another shove and the thing rolled slightly. Victoria cried out happily and pushed harder. Once the pod started rolling it trundled easily towards the small pyre she’d constructed with the meagre amount of wood she’d been able to find. The other pods were already there, but this one had been some trouble. Victoria gave the pod one final push and watched it thump up against its five siblings.
She put her hands on her hips and looked up at the horse. ‘Not bad, aye?’
The horse snorted and nibbled on a twig.
Victoria glanced down at the water. Great clumps of spores were still floating about in congealed masses. Some of the pods were still extremely full of spores, which she found surprising. She wondered just how many spores were needed to make people go crazy. People weren’t that affected on Scrabia because the amount of spores in the water supply was so small. Perhaps the amount in the water around her wasn’t a problem either, as deadly as it looked.
She turned back to the pods in the kindling nest and began to drizzle whale-oil over them. One of Andrew’s compositions rose to a hum in her throat. She wasn’t sure if she was going about it the correct way. Fire-making was proving to be an art she’d never be proficient in, since up to this point she’d always had slaves make them for her. She struck a match and held it to the kindling, but the fire fizzled out almost immediately in the soggy pine needles. The horse glanced down at her impassively, seemingly just as arrogant as its owner.
‘Come on!’ Victoria cried. ‘Just light, will you!’
The horse snorted, as if her idea was ridiculous. Perhaps it was. Still, she lit another match and tried again. She poured on more oil near the flames and this time it took. The needles, though not on fire, were beginning to smoke. She felt a slight tinge of hope rise in her. She blew at it optimistically.
Then she heard it. Somewhere to her left, a raspy snarl.
Numb dread filled her. Victoria turned slowly, not wanting to look. At first she thought it was one of the drugged Blaiden, yet his body was deformed, misshapen and hunched. When she saw who stood across from her, she decided she would have taken the overdosed Blaiden any day.
A Denizen was standing across from her, hand gripping a blue glowing staff, smiling a nasty, pointed smile. His bright red robe was dark along the bottom, soaked with water.
‘Well,’ he drawled. ‘If it isn’t Our Esteemed Leader, High Lady Victoria. My, aren’t you a long way from home.’
He crept forwards, tiny eyes gleaming with a hateful yellow light.
Victoria swallowed and stood her ground despite her fearful shock. ‘Could say the same for you! What are you doing here?’
The creature chuckled. ‘Isn’t it obvious? You must have been tracking my handiwork, or you wouldn’t be here now, would you?’
Victoria sincerely wished she’d brought a weapon with her. All she had was her box of matches and she gripped them fiercely. ‘You’re poisoning the water supply on Scottorr. But why? What’s your end game?’
The Denizen leant against a rock. ‘Oh, no, not just Scottorr. We’ve been polluting the water on Scrabia for years, little by little, and you all have never noticed. The end game, my dear princess, is control. As you’ve probably noticed, the spores have an amazing ability to not only make people more aggressive, but also extremely susceptible to influence. Open to…how shall I say it? Otherworldly forces. Supernatural forces. Most notably, the Darkness. The Darkness that you and I serve and have always served.’
Victoria shuddered. ‘What is the Darkness, anyway?’
‘The All Consuming. The Hunger, the Creator. It devours worlds and souls. We all find it in the end. Even you.’
Victoria shook her head, fighting the fear she felt. ‘I’ve never served that. I gave up on your rubbish rituals years ago.’
He spat. ‘Yes, you’ve always been a hard case. Not that it mattered. You will believe in it soon enough. Everyone finds the Darkness in the end. Everything dies. Everything becomes it. It matters not if you believe. You were destined to die anyway and it would not be of any importance!’
She crossed her arms. ‘Well, you really mucked up there, didn’t you?’
The creature’s look turned sour. ‘Yes, if the Traveller had not interfered, you would be dead. Such is so often the case. I wonder, would you be so lucky if he wasn’t always there to save you? How about now? He’s far away, unable to hear even your most pitiful screams.’
Victoria felt a chill run down her spine that had nothing to do with the falling sleet. ‘So why get Scottorr so messed up with spores? What’s the whole point? I know control, but how are you going to accomplish that?’
‘The two planets have been tense with each other for so long. There has been so much interplanetary misinformation. Fears, suspicion. The spores will only increase that. War will come, brought upon by the people of both worlds. Imagine, an interplanetary war, first of its kind!’
Victoria tried to keep her surprise from showing. ‘That’s awfully ambitious of you.’
The Denizen grinned. ‘It is not our master plan, but that of a higher nature. Something beyond this Realm.’
She barked out a hollow laugh. ‘Oh please, other Realm? You don’t actually believe that stuff!’ She remembered what had happened to Andrew when he’d taken the spores. The voices he’d heard. But no…No. It wasn’t possible.
‘It will be a war of spores. The Scottorrians will become addicted to them, thanks to the Blaiden. Then the war will happen. Scottorr attacking Scrabia for the substance they cannot grow, because it will eventually run out, once they’re all hooked. Scrabia fighting back against the evil dead they imagine walk here. And while they fight, the Darkness and Daemons will come to feed. It will be quiet at first; it’s already begun. But once they’re on this side and with our help, they shall open the portals and come through in their full glory!’
Victoria rolled her eyes. ‘It’ll never work! And anyway, you’ve failed there, haven’t you? The Blaiden aren’t trading with the villages anymore. They’ve betrayed you. They’re not tradin
g with the Tartans, they’re trying to kill them all off!’ The clarity of the situation settled on her and she laughed despite herself. ‘The planets aren’t going to go to war because the Blaiden haven’t been telling the Tartans where they’ve gotten the spores. The Tartans have no idea about the pods! They’ll not attack Scrabia! They’re too busy fighting the Blaiden!’ She giggled again. This must be what hysteria is like, she distantly thought.
She struck another match and dropped it onto the heavily smoking pile of spores. ‘The people here won’t get addicted. Tollin will make sure of that. We all will.’
‘Souls are souls,’ The Denizen’s eyes had grown wider as he watched the smoke rising. ‘Where our Master acquires them does not matter. Right now people are dying in battle here, and across the void, you say there’s no war? Then what do you call that?’ He pointed up to the sky, and despite the warning bells going off in Victoria’s head, she took her eyes from him and looked to the sky. She stared up at Scrabia, barely visible through the snow clouds. It was going black. Flashing with a sick light. Dark clouds were swirling across its surface in a huge super-storm that hid the red desert from sight. She couldn’t take her eyes off of it and Victoria realised too late that it was her mistake.
The Denizen snarled and dashed forward faster than Victoria could react. He shoved her aside with the force of a galloping horse, claws swiping out, and collapsed upon the smouldering spores like a mother hen. Victoria sat up in the icy water and glowered. Her matches were soaked and she watched in dismay as the Denizen poured out the whale-oil into the water, leering at her wickedly. The oil drifted round her, rainbow on the surface of the water. She swore and picked herself up, grabbing a rock as she did so, quite sure she was about to be murdered but in no way going down without a fight. That was when everything around her shifted from bad to worse.
A heavy, rumbling noise reached Victoria’s ears. She shut her eyes and cursed silently.
The ground beneath her feet shuddered ever so slightly. Victoria heard Elberon let out a terrified whinny and the Denizen gasped, then began to chuckle. She opened her eyes as the earth shook again and turned round. The ground felt as if it gave way beneath her. Her stomach spun and dropped. Victoria should have known he’d be here. Her bad luck guaranteed it.
The Guardian stood behind her and for the first time she got a proper look. It had to be at least ten metres tall. It had come up from the far side of the pit they were in, where the shrubby bushes would have kept it well-hidden. As she saw it now, she understood how she hadn’t noticed it before; it looked just like the boulders.
The Guardian stood on two huge, scaly legs, as big as tree trunks. Great clawed toes splayed out from each foot, large enough to crush Elberon like a beetle. The beast’s body stood erect, sporting a great, heaving belly and huge sweeping tail. The monster’s long front limbs were tucked close to its stomach. She could see its claws flexing and relaxing. The beast’s head was the most horrible part: Huge and square, it looked too big for its body. Great serrated teeth stuck out from every corner of the beast’s mouth as if they had been broken and grown back numerous times in no real order. Two beady, yellow eyes were hidden beneath a great scaly crown. Horns lined the animal’s side, making its hide look as formidable as armour. Odd fleshy protrusions jabbed out from behind the animal’s shoulder blades, as if it had once had something growing there that had since been torn free. It did not look like any natural thing. If Victoria did not yet believe in Realms, in that instant she did. For this beast could not be something from Scrabia or Scottorr, it was so strange and wrong.
Then she noticed something else. Something strange and horrible. Something black was leaking out of the beast’s mouth, like smoke, but almost as if it had a life of its own. It writhed through the beast’s teeth, twisted round its head, like it was carrying some inky parasite in its jaws.
Its tiny, yellow eyes glinted malevolently. Its mouth was formed in a jagged, strange grin, just as insane as the Blaiden high on the spores. Victoria wondered if the beast was drunk on them as well. She gasped and stepped backwards, unable to disengage her eyes from the creature’s stare. The Denizen whooped and crawled to the very top of the spore pile. ‘Destroy her!’ he shrieked. ‘Rid the worlds of this woman!’
She slogged through the water, treading backwards, heart thudding against her ribs. The Guardian took a step forward, foot slamming into the earth so hard it almost caused Victoria to fall. Water sprayed from the impact. The beast lowered its great head, watching her, and pulled up several gallons worth of spore-filled water into its jaws, almost languidly. It moved forward with growing speed, bending down low again as it advanced. Its mouth started to swing open. Victoria could see the huge gaping maw, all of the teeth, the dark throat, where that strange blackness writhed. She wondered if she’d even feel it when the creature swallowed her.
And then, the beast leant its head down and snapped its huge jaws together round the gathered sporepods, the Denizen still standing on top, and jerked the bundle into the air. Victoria watched in open-mouthed horror as the beast flipped the pods and the still screaming Denizen into the air and swallowed them whole, staring her down with an all-too intelligent look. Almost a smirk. She felt ill as the beast’s jaws clamped together with a heavy snap, effectively ending the creature’s cry of panic and betrayal. Apparently, the Guardian served no-one, and also rather obvious, it was addicted to the spores. Why else devour the entire group?
Black wormed its way through its teeth.
The Guardian started towards her, shaking the wet earth as its feet smashed down. Victoria turned and ran for the slope. She grabbed onto the rope she’d tied there and started to haul herself up towards the horse. She could hear the beast behind her quickening its pace. It let out a roar so loud it shook the teeth in her head. She didn’t dare look back.
Her boots slipped against the wet rock and moss and she fell flat on her stomach, hands burning against the rope. The beast snapped its giant jaws beneath her. Victoria stared down and kicked away from the Guardian and scrabbled upwards, knocking shards of rock into the creature’s face.
Elberon’s eyes were set wide in panic and he reared back as Victoria pulled herself up to the ledge. She pushed herself away from the edge and watched the beast beneath her throw itself forward up the slope. Its heavy body could hardly hold it up and it slid back down to the bottom in another body-shaking roar of rage. The Guardian threw one of its arms up and its huge claws hooked the ground a metre from where Victoria and Elberon stood. Chips of stone flew as the talons raked the rock. She whirled round as she saw the beast start to haul itself up again.
She dashed to Elberon and tried to keep him still as her fingers wildly jerked at the reigns that tied him fast. She glanced back to the cliff edge and saw the yellow eyes briefly bob up over the edge of the cliff. She swore. The knot was too tight for her fingers to undo. She reached for her knife and pressed it to the reigns, urgency speeding her movements. She started sawing.
The ground shook again and Victoria cut the reigns free. She swung up onto Elberon’s back just as the horse immediately took off down the tunnel. Victoria flattened herself against the animal’s back as he raced through the passageway. She prayed she wouldn’t get knocked off by a low hanging rock. The roar of the Guardian chased after them through the rock and Victoria squeezed her eyes shut, wanting to leave the nightmare far behind her.
Chapter Fifty-One
‘This place is creepy as hell,’ Marus snarled, ducking behind a curved pillar as several Denizens ran by, padding on their clawed feet. Reginald had to agree with Marus’s statement. Something about the place was clamping itself round his chest, making him feel miserable and sick at heart. The feeling was only growing stronger the deeper they moved into the building and he didn’t want to think about what would happen once they reached the throne room. So far, the Denizens had been the best sight they’d seen. Some of the shapes that lurched about in the darkness Reginald knew he’d never be able to era
se from his mind.
Arkron groaned. ‘I really wish you hadn’t said that. We’re on Daemon territory, after all!’
‘All the more appropriate!’ Marus muttered. He whirled round to look down at Reginald. ‘Where’s the throne room?’
Reginald thought for a moment. At the best of times he wasn’t familiar with the palace, but now, with it under the influence of being between Realms, everything about it seemed out of place. He could have sworn passages were swapping places, changing shape, disappearing altogether. It made his head spin. ‘I think we have to go left, then climb about five flights of stairs.’
‘Goodie,’ Marus said. ‘I was missing the climbing after all of that running up to this place!’
A high pitched inhuman scream echoed through the halls. The palace shook violently, throwing all three of them to the floor. A large, long bodied insect weaved down the hall, thousands of feet striking up sparks. It snapped its pinchers together hungrily as it passed them. Arkron watched it go and then hurried across the hall towards the way Reginald had directed. The hall that separated them was an imposing distance. It twisted, almost alive in the dark red light. Marus and Reginald raced after her, pushing their hesitation aside. Reginald cursed as Marus surged ahead of him; he hated that the man never seemed to tire. He staggered slightly, panting, and was just about to call out to the two of them when something hit him hard in the side.
Reginald slammed into the ground with a grunt, his sword scattering away from him, and felt a heavy weight land on top of him. He looked up into the yellow eyes of a Denizen and suppressed a terrified cry. The creature wasn’t itself. It was as if the Denizen’s body had been merged with that of a creature from nightmares. Long spidery legs jabbed out of its back and something metallic was buried into its tall skull. The creature let out a horrible roar and swiped his tusks towards Reginald’s neck. Reginald didn’t think, he just grabbed the tusk. The force of the Denizen’s attack caused them both to roll and Reginald tumbled with the creature till he was on top, still gripping the tusk. He grabbed the other tusk and slammed the creature’s head back into the floor.