The Kingdoms of Evil

by Daniel Bensen

  The Monster Killer no longer needed a dagger.

  Frantically, Freetrick attempted a roll-disengage. Onyx claws flashed past his eyes and newly scaled skin clattered across his armor as he twisted out from under her and sprang to his feet.

  The door rattled again. Freetrick brought his arms up to block another slash to his face.

  "You don't have to fight me!" He yelled at the woman. Ex-woman.

  "Ah ha!" said Feerix. "And once again my lord talks during a fight. Bad form, my lord. It can cause nothing but distraction—but I see you've just discovered that for yourself. Watch out, my lord, I made those claws sharp!"

  Freetrick tried to keep his voice level as another attack forced him back another step. "Stop this. You don't have to do this."

  "What choice do I have now?" The ex-Monster Killer snarled.

  "I did not know I left enough lips to form that 'W.'"

  "Stand down and I will help you!" Freetrick said, dodging backward again. "I'll turn you back!"

  The Monster Killer hissed and redoubled her attack. "Just to have another necromancer make me into something even more horrible?"

  "Such despair!" crowed Feerix, as Freetrick made a grab for the monster-killer's wrist and nearly had an eye gouged out for the trouble. "I rescind my statement about talking while fighting. Now, as an exercise, see if you can crush her spirit before she kills you. That would be a victory of a sort, I suppose."

  Freetrick tried to ignore the heckling. "I can protect you," he panted, "trust me."

  "Trust?!" The word became an inhuman howl as the monster-killer spun on one foot to sweep the serrated edge of a long shin into Freetrick's side. Unfortunately for her, the movement was nearly identical to a gara step, and Freetrick's instincts brought him up off the ground in a spin that placed the main force of the kick more or less on his ass. Freetrick sent a blessing to the First God's fashion sense for his armored rear and rode the kick through the air like a man on a merry-go-round.

  It took a full second before the laws of physics and the surprised monster's reflexes caught up with him, and Freetrick flew out from the spin at a tangent.

  Freetrick thanked the First God for his armor again when he crashed into the wall.

  Behind the sudden sparkling points of light that had bloomed in Freetrick's vision, Feerix whooped with laughter. "Was that intentional? My lord, be confident that even if you fail miserably as a despot, you are the best blasted jester I have yet laid eyes on. But oh please," doubled over with mirth, he still managed to wave a hand in the direction of the monstrous Monster Killer. "Deliver your final cut now, before in my laughter I rupture something."

  Freetrick turned to face the oncoming lizard-woman, and realized his back was now against the wall. "Please!" He shouted, "I can help you!" He prayed fervently that he could remember how to pull off the step he was about to do.

  "The novelty of this pleading is wearing thin," Feerix said, "in my opinion, you would do best to drop that joke and find a new one."

  As the Monster Killer lunged at Freetrick, he bent backward to drop his unprotected face below the sweep of her claws, then braced his feet against the ground, stuck out his arms, and heaved.

  It didn't exactly work. In the correct step, Freetrick's hands would have closed around the Monster Killer's hips, and the force of his legs would have been transmitted to her center of gravity. Instead, his armor locked and Freetrick couldn't bend backward far enough to get his hands that low. The Monster Killer took the force on the lower edge of her ribs, and so rather than tossing her backward through the air, Freetrick could only give her a violent shove, throwing her off balance.

  For a moment, the monster-killer was off her guard. Freetrick kicked at her legs as she teetered. If he could knock her off her feet, he would be able to pin her to the ground, and get a chance to talk to her. Assuming he could make sure Feerix wouldn't hear what he had to say—

  The door to the cell blew open.

  ***

  A mist of fine, red particles sprayed into the air and the cell door swung open to smash into the adjoining wall. Freetrick stumbled backward as the blood mist buffeted him, then cleared to reveal Bloodbyrn, striding through the doorway with a terrible expression on her face and a ring of keys in her hand.

  Freetrick saw his chance. "Bloodbyrn! Distract Feerix—strike it!"

  The Monster Killer had seen her chance, too. Freetrick whipped his head sideways and the claws raked across his ear and not his eyes. He felt flesh tearing. "Feerix!" He shouted again.

  "Wha—" Through the ringing in his ear, Freetrick heard his half-brother's shocked cry drown in a liquid hiss. Would that provide enough distraction for Feerix? Would it be enough distraction for Bloodbyrn?

  Freetrick barely managed to avoid another attempted blinding. No time, strike it! "I can help you." Freetrick tried to pitch his voice so that only she could hear him. If only he had been able to pin her. "Listen to me. Find Grimp. He works for the Dark Synod. He'll tell you everything. You never have to be vulnerable again!"

  "Vulnerable?" She faked a strike at his face, then kneed him in the belly hard enough to bruise, even through his armor. "Lord Feerix has promised to send me back to Dewmnor, where I shall know strength greater than any of my sisters," she said as Freetrick gasped and fell back. "Naïve fools!" She spat, bearing down on him, new madness burning in her eyes, "I will go back to the black forests of Dewmnor and grind the bones of their skulls between my teeth!"

  "Listen to me," Freetrick hissed desperately as he blocked another attack, "Grimp's working for me. He's going to teach Rationalist magic to the monsters. You get it? You'll be safe from Necromancy! You'll have power of your own!"

  The next blow did not come. Later, Freetrick would curse that opening, which he wasted as he looked up at the Monster Killer with hope.

  She smiled with a mouthful of shark's teeth. "Lord Feerix! The Despot has revealed his plan to me."

  Freetrick felt cold terror coil around his spine. "What are you doing?" he whispered at her.

  "Destroying you."

  There was a bellow and crash from the red cloud across the room, then Feerix's voice. "Mutate your flesh, bitch! End this farce! I cannot kill you!"

  "But I can kill you," sang Bloodbyrn, "I would be doing castle Clouds-Gather a service on both political and aesthetic levels."

  The Monster Killer's still silver eyes snapped down as Freetrick leapt at her. She must not tell him. Feerix must not know. Freetrick seemed to float above his own body as it turned and twisted, lashed out with gauntlets at the scaled woman.

  "Lord Feerix!" The Monster Killer's new claws clattered off his armor, then swooped up to strike his gauntlet away. Freetrick knew his choices now, complete lack of choices, but how the hell was he going to kill the struck-out traitor with no necromancy?

  "Lord Feerix!" The lizard-woman called again, grinning with savagery as she blocked Freetrick's attacks.

  "Ah ah!" came Bloodbyrn's voice as Feerix bellowed with frustration. "Best to concentrate on me, old lover! Else I will penetrate your defenses."

  "Tempest blast you, wench!"

  The plan flashed through Freetrick's mind like lightning. "Bloodbyrn, let Feerix go! And kill this woman…monster!" He shouted.

  "What?" Squealed Bloodbyrn.

  "Yes!" Feerix bounded from the red haze.

  "What?" The Monster Killer looked confusedly over Freetrick's shoulder. Freetrick's gauntleted hands shot up, closed about her throat. There was pain in his abdomen—Feerix's power pressing against his meager defenses.

  "Bloodbyrn!" Freetrick gasped.

  There was a flash of red, shocking against the black and gray stone, a solid bar of liquid that Bloodbyrn directed through the air and gathering black mist, through the defenseless skin of the Monster Killer. The lizard-woman had no magic to call upon to block the attack, and when the enchanted blood touched hers, the Monster Killer jerked once, and died.

  Glowing blackness washed over Freetrick's vision.


  ***

  There was a crack like thunder, and bits of stone flew from the dungeon walls as Freetrick's twist of energy slammed Feerix against them. Now the rage and fear had an outlet, now reason and emotion both pointed in the same direction.

  "Feerix!" Harmonics in Freetrick's voice shivered the solid stone of the corridor. "We will end this now!"

  Thunder crashed, high above them and behind several layers of stone wall, but still loud enough to drown out all other sound. It was therefore only after a few seconds of practical deafness that Freetrick was able to understand the weird, open-mouthed expression on Feerix's face as the prince picked himself up.

  Feerix was laughing.

  The black mist around Freetrick suddenly sharpened into a cutting edge and slashed across his forehead. As Freetrick brought his hand up to wipe the blood from his eyes, another solid patch of necromancy sliced at the back of his neck. An invisible hand clutched his small intestines, and strange winds howled at him from all sides.

  The bottom fell out of Freetrick's rage as he realized that Feerix was a much better necromancer than himself. He dug into his new reserves of energy, flailing wildly at the attacks that swarmed over him. Somewhere in the dizzy confusion, with blood running over his eyes and phantom fingers palpating his chest cavity, Freetrick recognized that Feerix had neatly forced him into a defensive battle. He couldn't spare the concentration to focus on attacking, and so his half-brother could imagine new torments at will. It would only take one of them to break through.

  Desperately, Freetrick attempted to enclose Feerix in another fist of power, but in the half-second it took for him to focus on the attack, his defenses lapsed, and a wave of hot agony splashed over his face. For a terrifying instant, Freetrick felt the probing edge of Feerix's life-twisting penetrate his innate necromancer's defenses and brush against the tissues of his brain. Would Feerix bother to transform him into a monster, or would he just give his half-brother and rival a quickie remote lobotomy?

  Freetrick felt his opponent slip out of the magic encasement. He couldn't see, because of the blood in his eyes, and now the black mist that had coalesced around his head. The floor began to shiver and buck beneath his feet, and tiny, vicious bolts of lightning flew at his eyes. A sensation like millipede legs crawled up his back. Freetrick couldn't summon the concentration necessary to cast a counter-attack, let alone think of one creative enough to take Feerix by surprise.

  Try strength then. Without warning, Freetrick expanded the protective forces on his skin into a bubble, then a flat screen, then a rushing battering ram that shot out at Feerix. Where Freetrick thought Feerix was. Freetrick's peripheral vision caught a movement in the mist and he lurched sideways just in time to avoid being punched in the face by Feerix's gauntlet. He lurched into a wall of force that closed around him, that squeezed him, that took all of his power to stop from crushing him, that left him hanging in the air, completely defenseless.

  Freetrick felt the attack rushing toward him, a strike to cut through his defenses and twist his internal organs, but could summon no more necromancy of his own to block it. Feerix was laughing up at him like a madman, black mist boiled around them, and the attack didn't come.

  "Ahh-ha!" Feerix screeched, his eyes wild, his grin enormous. "Congratulations, dear half-brother. You have finally become enough trouble to merit my full attention!"

  The prince cast out his left hand and the black mist swept away and vanished. Freetrick squinted against the relative brightness of the crystal light. Against a wall, Bloodbyrn slumped, pale and, literally, Freetrick was sure, drained.

  "Look at me, you worm!"

  Freetrick's eyes darted back to Feerix. Right hand outstretched to hold Freetrick's invisible cage, panting with exertion, eyes glittering with malice, Feerix grinned at him.

  "Look at me, for I shall be your death!" The invisible cage shook.

  "Feerix, you fool," gasped Bloodbyrn from her place against the wall. "You would kill him now, without witnesses, and place yourself in my father's hands? That would be a useless, thoughtless gesture even for you."

  "Shut your blood-sucking bitch up!" Snarled Feerix, his eyes still boring into Feerborg. But he seemed to think for a moment, before his face curled again into its habitual expression of rage and contempt. "Yes. You will meet me in the Arena of Mutual Slaughter."

  Freetrick blinked. Bloodbyrn had just very adroitly stopped Feerix from killing him.

  "Well?" The prince hissed.

  "Well what?" Freetrick remembered the last time he'd been in this position. Had Feerix run out of reasons to keep Freetrick alive?

  "Do you accept my Challenge of Monomachy?"

  "Monomachy? What the hell is monomachy?"

  "Black and dripping god I am weary of your ignorance!" Feerix looked angrier now than he had at any time during their actual battle. "Answer me!"

  Somewhere in Freetrick's exhausted brain, something clicked in the area responsible for remembering his classical education. "Single combat?" Then came the more recent memories of reading through court histories. "You're going to try to succeed me."

  "I am going to disembowel you, Feerborg, before the entirety of the Dark Nobility."

  "And I am sure they will all be terribly impressed by the skills you demonstrate in doing so," said Bloodbyrn.

  Feerix seemed to consider.

  "Yeah," said Freetrick, "whatever happened to waiting until I was a worthy opponent?"

  Bloodbyrn hissed in a breath as Feerix's face snapped back into rigidity. "You have graduated from pleasant diversion to cause for alarm, my lord." He sneered. "Congratulations."

  Freetrick tried not to let his terror show. Frantically, he dug through everything he remembered about Skrean duels. He had certainly studied them while he was trying to ban them. "Well…what if I say I won't duel with you. What if I reject your call?"

  "What if I simply extend my power and rip your bleeding heart from your chest right now, half-brother?" Gripping fingers of solidified mist pressed against Freetrick's ribs.

  "Feerix," said Bloodbyrn, "what delusion convinces you that Feerborg is so dangerous to you?"

  "You flatter your man, Bloodbyrn," said Feerix. But he snorted, and the fatal spell relaxed. "His immediate death, while gratifying, is not important enough to give up the game I play. Tomorrow," he glared back up at Freetrick, "we shall meet at the Arena of Mutual Dismemberment, and there, under the eyes of the assembled dark nobility of the Kingdoms of Evil, we shall have our duel."

  "Well what if I won't participate in your game?" Only after Freetrick said it did he see Bloodbyrn's gestures. Gibberish, he had just struck-out another of her attempts to save his life.

  But Feerix only laughed. "I suppose it would be too much to expect a decent lack of cowardice on your part." The disgust smoothed out, became…craft. "A contingency which I have, of course, planned for. You will fight me, my lord."Feerix looked up at his helpless half-brother with a vile, leering smirk. "You will fight me, or forfeit the life of your friend Istain."

  ***

  "Istain?"

  Bloodbyrn searched her memory for such a person, but, exhausted as she was, its provenance eluded her.

  He was someone important, apparently, for the voice of her lord had taken on an edge that other, less well-disposed persons might have called hysterical. "No. Strike you out, Feerix. You don't have Istain. Istain's in the RU!"

  Aha. It was only a small, clue, but it was all Bloodbyrn needed to ascertain that Feerix had somehow acquired one of her lord's old acquaintances from his time living across the mountains among the Do-Gooders.

  Moist blood, why had she not thought of that? Bloodbyrn found herself wondering, first at Feerix's cleverness, and then, when the ridiculousness of the application of that adjective to that person became clear, at the identity of the dark noble who had put Feerix up to this. Who was backing Feerix's bid for power against her and her father?

  "Let's say I don't believe you," Feerborg was saying. "What the
n, huh?"

  "Well then," the prince retorted in, to Bloodbyrn's mind, an excessively obnoxious tone, "let us say that if I do not see you tomorrow at the Arena of Mutual Dismemberment, he will have great and mortal cause to say…now what was the phrase he taught me?" Feerix gave what he probably thought was a sly grin to his prisoner. "I shouldn't have given the letter back to you."

  Feerborg responded to this gibberish as if his half-brother had reached out with a gauntleted hand to seize him by the throat. "What?" He choked.

  "That was a phrase you would recognize, from what the Do-Gooder told me." Feerix shrugged. "But if you need further convincing that I truly hold your friend in my clutches, I can give it. Provide me with but a little time, and I can supply you with a finger or toe…"

  "No!"

  Bloodbyrn closed her eyes. Feerix had her lord Feerborg now, body and life-force both. Was it possible that her father was behind this? But if so, why had he not told her of his new hostage? And if not her father, then who?

  "Then you believe me?" said the prince, "Good. And Feerborg, half-brother, what I do to him will…" he jerked his head at the body of the female prisoner Bloodbyrn had dispatched for her lord, "make a few purple scales look like a positive improvement."

  Thunder shook the corridor and Bloodbyrn hissed with pain as her ears popped. Black necromancers' mist filled the air and Lord Feerix staggered back under what must have been a great and unexpected blow. The prince put his hands up as Feerborg descended on his half-brother like a furious god.

  The idiot.

  ***

  Of course it took lord Feerix a bare moment, once he had recovered his equilibrium, to strike back at his sibling's vainglorious offensive. Blackness flared, and the Ultimate Fiend was sent spinning through the air to smash into a wall, then the ceiling, where he stuck like a wet wad of paper.

  Bloodbyrn considered her options carefully. Another reminder of the exigencies preventing Feerix from simply killing his half brother might cut this cruelty short, or might enrage the prince enough to do the very lasting damage she sought to avoid. An attack with the blood-magic might purchase the time to escape, but only if Feerborg cooperated, which he would most likely not.