by D. P. Prior
There was a grating sound, as the edges of the floor slid back to reveal holes through which the water began to drain away.
Nameless tipped his head back and gasped in stale air. The door at the far end slid apart to reveal a long antechamber knee-deep in water, which was emptying amid a great torrent of noise.
Ensconced torches, which should have been too sodden to take, burst into wavering light. Not the light of natural flame, but a mauve radiance that sat like a halo atop each torch.
He waited for the water to clear before stepping into the corridor, footsteps echoing in time with the drip, drip, drip from the ceiling.
Following Abednago’s instructions, he ignored the flanking doors running along both walls, and approached the stone double doors at the end.
Two crumpled skeletons lay before the doors. Each wore chainmail, brown with rust, each carried a spear, and each appeared to have died from horrific wounds. One’s skull had been pulverized, leaving nothing but fragments atop its spine. The other had a gaping hole through its sternum, a crushed leg, and a missing arm. The city may have sunk beneath the waves, Nameless thought, but that wasn’t what had killed these two.
He searched in vain for a means to open the double doors. There was no handle, merely a crack down the center. There was an inscription engraved in the stone. He found he had to squint to read it, as his vision had grown cloudy and he was sweating once more. The scratches he’d picked up from the zombies were itching like crazy, and one or two of the bites were festering.
No matter, he thought. He’d endured worse, and he knew from experience that his body was hardy enough to fight off any infection. Any common infection, he added with a niggling concern. He banished the thought to the back of his mind.
The letters came into focus. They were inscribed in Old Dwarven, the language of the Annals Lucius had been so obsessed with; the very books that had led him to the black axe. Nameless was no scholar of the ancient tongue, but he’d picked up a few words and phrases.
He rubbed away some of the sediment from the grooves chiseled into the door, and frowned at the word he’d revealed:
GENUFLECTIO.
Was it an instruction? Was that the key to gaining entrance?
He dropped to one knee and bowed his head.
The grating of stone upon stone caused him to look up to see the door cracking open down the center.
Beyond it was an immense chamber forested with fluted columns, a massive dais rising in the center like a stepped island. There was an intricate throne at the top of the edifice. It was carved from stone, and upon it sat the skeleton of a dwarf robed in sodden brown that may once have been crimson. A lopsided crown of gold bedizened with gems encricled a rusty helm that encased much of the skull, and above the seated figure, floating in midair, was a sight that froze the breath in Nameless’s lungs.
A great double-bladed axe hung suspended, gleaming like a small sun. It was a perfect facsimile of the Pax Nanorum, only this one was gold rather than black.
He distrusted it instantly. He may have been a numbskull, but he’d be damned if he was going to fall for the same trick twice.
He looked away, scanning the chamber, noting the three other entrances: open archways that led to more torchlit corridors. Half a dozen algae-coated pillars had collapsed, split in two like felled trees, and there were flights of stairs around the perimeter that led to a gallery. More broken dwarf skeletons were piled up in the corridors, their backs to the throne room, as if they’d died defending it.
Nameless approached the dais, treading carefully on stone slick with seaweed. Here and there, water collected in pools, where the drainage grilles were clogged with debris. He hopped between chunks of fallen masonry, until he reached the bottom step, then made his way to stand before the throne.
The dwarf king’s skeleton was intact. Perhaps he had escaped the fate of his brethren and had perished either by drowning, or in some other more natural way. The golden light of the axe glinted from the king’s crown-topped helm and gave a yellowish tint to the exposed parts of his skull. There was a brooding sadness about the figure, and Nameless felt deep in his bones the terrible loss of something that could never be reclaimed. If the legends contained even a grain of truth, the Dwarf Lords of Arnoch were heroes, each and every one of them, great warriors stubbornly holding back the hordes of nightmare that spilled from the mind of the Cynocephalus.
His heart quickened at the thought he had been brought here for a reason, that fate was at last smiling on him and had offered him a glimpse of what his people—Gandaw’s pale imitation of the lords of Arnoch—could have been. Might still become. That hope alone, so great as it was, set his mind to crying warning.
Had he not felt the same way when he’d plucked the black axe from the depths of Gehenna? Had his heart not swelled with pride and the anticipation of a golden age for his people when he returned to Arx Gravis as the Corrector, and offered to lead them out of their self-imposed exile?
Nameless turned and started back down the steps. He’d not make the same mistake again. No, Arnoch was just a legend, and whatever this sunken city really was, it had the reek of deception about it.
“Wait,” a voice as dry as dust grated from behind him.
Nameless spun, the breath catching in his throat.
The skeleton on the throne held up one bony hand. Its skull pivoted to look at him through empty sockets.
“Have you come back to us?” the king said. “Is it over?”
“What…” Nameless licked his lips and tried to give his fear voice. “What are you?”
The skeleton looked down at its hands, raised fingers to prod at its fleshless face, and let out a forlorn sigh. “How long has it been? The city has risen, yes?”
Nameless slowly shook his head. “I came in a magical craft that traveled beneath the waves. The water has just now drained away.”
“And yet years have passed, eating the flesh from my bones.” The king tried to stand, but his legs broke away from his torso, and he had to remain seated. “Then we failed. The creature must still live. Whoever you are, whatever brought you here, you should go, while you still can.”
Nameless took a step toward the throne. He wasn’t sure whether or not to bow, and elected instead to stand with his arms folded across his chest.
“This creature you refer to must surely have perished. Arnoch has been lost to the world since the dawn of history.”
The king looked up at the axe floating above his head. “No, it lives. Even after all this time, it lives. See how the Pax Nanorum glows in warning.”
Pax Nanorum. Just the mention of that terrible name sent Nameless to his knees. Tears welled in his eyes, and his limbs began to shake.
“No more,” he said through chattering teeth. “No more. Leave me alone. Haven’t I done enough already?”
The king turned his empty eyes back toward Nameless. “What is it, my brother?”
“The axe. I have seen it before; held it, but back then it was black.”
“No,” the king said. “It has always been thus.”
“But the name…”
“‘Peace of the Dwarves’. It is written in the old tongue upon the haft.” The king gave a grating laugh. “Old tongue, indeed. Old even when Arnoch was young.”
“But I wielded the Pax Nanorum,” Nameless said, each word a poison to be spat out. “It made me… made me do such things.”
The king reached out a skeletal hand. “Come closer. Let me touch you.”
Nameless rose and stepped up to the throne. He shut his eyes as the king’s cold, hard fingers caressed his face.
“There is strength in you. Great strength. I’ve not felt its like since the time of the Arnochian Immortals, the chief of whom wielded the Pax Nanorum. There is something else, as well. You are sick. A fever? An infection, perhaps? Whatever evil resides within you now, it is not moral.”
Nameless mopped sweat from his brow. His limbs had grown icy and leaden. He could h
ave sworn he was coming down with a cold, maybe something worse. What was wrong with him? Normally he’d have shaken off infection without even noticing it. Was it the zombies? Had they afflicted him with some vile magic?
“The axe was destroyed,” Nameless said. “But too late. My people… So many of my people…”
The king gave a slow nod. “It is an ill fate to be a dwarf. The Cynocephalus dreamed us into being to fend off the horrors of his own nightmares, and it is for that reason the nightmares sought us out, strove to destroy us.”
“But my people are not natives of Aethir,” Nameless said. “Not truly. We were brought from the world of Urddynoor and changed by the Technocrat Sektis Gandaw. If we bear any relation to the dwarves of Arnoch, it is by way of parody, caricature.”
The king gestured above his head to where the axe emitted its golden glow. “I know nothing of what you say, only that when you entered Arnoch, the city recognized you as a dwarf, for otherwise the waters would not have drained.”
Nameless opened his mouth to protest, but the king silenced him with a wag of a bony finger.
“Touch the Axe of the Dwarf Lords,” he said. “If you are not of the bloodline of the Immortals, she will reject you.”
“I cannot,” Nameless said, sweat running down his face in rivulets. “Not after what happened before. I’m sorry, I must leave.” He turned to do so but stumbled and nearly fell. “What the shog is wrong with me?”
“Please, my brother, touch the axe. There is so little time, and I must know. Must know if you have the blood of the Immortals running through your veins.”
Nameless took another step down. “Trust me,” he said, “I don’t. I’m a miner’s son.”
The king let out a groan of utter hopelessness. “Then it was all for nothing. All for—”
A crash sounded from one of the corridors, echoing off into the silence that enshrouded the city.
Nameless turned to face the king, who was staring in the direction of the noise.
Nothing.
No more sound.
And then there was a muffled thud, and the king’s head dropped to his chest. “As I feared,” he said. “It is still alive.”
Another thud, followed in quick succession by another. Footsteps. Heavy pounding footsteps, rapidly drawing nearer.
“Quickly,” the king said. “You must take the axe. It is your only hope.”
Thud, thud, thud.
“No,” Nameless said, scanning the room for alternative weapons. “I will not.”
“Then it is over,” the king said. “I have failed.” His head fell again, and this time, the torso crumpled onto the throne and shattered.
The thudding footfalls grew faster and louder, like the beating of a heart about to burst.
Nameless ran down the last of the steps and lunged for a chunk of rock. He whirled, coming up in a fighting crouch, as a colossal man charged into the chamber, stopped, and stared straight at him.
Nameless felt the chill of its malevolence sweep over him, commanding him to flee. His fingers tightened around the rock as he backed away.
Whatever it was, it wasn’t natural. The head was a mask of leather, crudely stitched with thick black thread. The body was the color of dead flesh, recognizably human but massive, twice Nameless’s height, broad-shouldered and bullish.
It lurched toward him, and he let loose with the rock. The throw lacked any force. Whatever sickness afflicted him had all but drained his strength. The rock bounced harmlessly from the monster’s skin and clattered across the floor.
A haze of red passed before Nameless’s eyes, and he retched. Clutching his roiling guts, he headed for the corridor he’d entered by, but the creature moved to cut him off.
“Great,” Nameless muttered. “Shogging great.”
He just wanted to lie down and sleep, but he knew it would be a sleep he’d never wake up from. Either the illness would claim him, or the hulking aberration would crush him, like it had done everyone else who’d stood against it.
“I will not be ill,” Nameless growled through clenched teeth. “Someone give me ale, for shog’s sake.”
The monster ran straight at him, and he just about managed to roll beneath a bludgeoning fist. Before he regained his feet, the thing had hold of him by the hem of his hauberk and slung him into the wall. Nameless hit with a sickening crunch. Salty blood dripped to his lips. His head swam with dizziness, and he swayed as he stood. Heavy footsteps thundered toward him, and it was blind instinct that made him fall flat on his face as another hammer blow sailed over his head and punched a hole in the rock.
Nameless roared his frustration and threw himself toward the closest corridor. He twisted and rolled amid a spray of rock shards sent up by the monster’s pounding fists. He ended up on top of a skeleton and prized the sword from the dead dwarf’s fingers.
“I refuse to be sick!” he bellowed, spinning, and swinging the blade in a murderous arc.
The sword struck flesh but rebounded, jolting his arm and sending stabs of pain through his shoulder. He scrabbled backward, tripping and losing his grip on the blade.
The creature came at him relentlessly, unstoppable even as Nameless cast dust into its blank eyes and snatched up a sturdy spear.
“Die, you shogger!” he bellowed. He thrust with every last ounce of his strength, burying the spear deep in its chest and twisting. The tip punched through the monster’s back but there was no blood, only sawdust.
A massive hand took hold of the spear shaft and pulled it free, before snapping it and casting it aside. The wound drew together, and thick black stitches ghosted into view, holding it tight.
“Shog,” Nameless swore.
He darted past the creature, narrowly avoiding a haymaker that collapsed a section of the wall. Snatching up the sword again, he dived for the throne room, came up running, and sprinted to the top of the dais.
The monster was right on his tail, kicking its way through a fallen pillar and splashing across a pool of water.
Nameless waited until it was on the step below, and swung with both hands. The sword cut right through the collar bone, burying itself deep in the ribcage, but the creature continued upward, as if merely bitten by an irritating fly.
Nameless darted behind the throne, but a tremendous blow shattered the stone and sent him tumbling off the back of the dais.
The breath was punched from his lungs as he hit the floor hard on his back.
The creature glared down at him and prepared to jump, silhouetted against the glow of the axe still suspended above the ruined throne.
Nameless wished with all his heart that he’d taken the dead king’s advice, but it was too late. He tried to push himself backward with his legs, but his strength had finally seeped away.
This was it, the end he deserved. He prayed to the victims of Arx Gravis for forgiveness, even as the monster leapt.
With a flash and a speed impossible to imagine, the Pax Nanorum shot into his hand. In that one timeless moment, golden fire coursed through his veins, burning away every last drop of malignancy and filling him with incandescent rage.
He twisted away from the creature’s leap, surged to his feet, and brought the axe down in one fluid movement. It cleaved through leather and sawdust, and the head came away from the body. He struck again, this time half-shearing through its hip, but once more, the wound healed, and the ghastly head spun in the air and affixed itself back upon the neck.
“What the Abyss?” Nameless whispered as the thing gathered itself for a charge. Could nothing stop it? Not the entire might of the people of Arnoch? Not even the Axe of the Dwarf Lords?
He spun clear of its lumbering grasp and circled away around the chamber.
This time, as the monster ran at him, the axe communicated something deep within his mind, and he flung it with all his renewed might.
The air whistled, and the blades flashed golden as they tore straight through the monster’s waist, cleaving it in two. The legs ran on for a second
and then stopped to wait for the torso to climb back on top of them.
The axe turned in midair and flew back to Nameless’s hand. It had bought him a few seconds, nothing more, as the creature bunched its massive shoulders and charged again.
Nameless cast a look behind. He had his back to the corridor he’d entered by. With his new vigor, he might be able to make it back to the craft. Perhaps Abednago had been watching and was ready to leave before the creature could board.
He took a step toward the exit, and then all his old stubbornness reasserted itself.
This shogger had wiped out a civilization. It was invulnerable to attack, a relentless killer that would stop at nothing.
His mind flashed back to when he wore the impenetrable armor of the Lich Lord, carried the Shield of Warding; when he’d wielded the terrible might of the black axe with the strength of the fire giant’s gauntlets.
With a gut-wrenching realization, he thought this is how he must have seemed to the hapless victims at Arx Gravis, to Thumil and Cordy, and to the friend who had stopped him, Shadrak the Unseen.
“No!” he roared as the monster bore down upon him, fists raised for the killing blow. “I won’t stand for it!”
Argent streamed from the twin blades of the axe, obliterating the golden glow and erupting with the force of an exploding star.
The silver conflagration ripped through skin and leather as the chamber rumbled and the very air itself seemed to scream.
Light exploded in Nameless’s head, and he toppled into a well of infinite blackness.
NILS
Nils was starving. His guts were clenched tight as a fist, his veins were on fire, and he had a mouth full of saliva that overflowed down his chin in thick ropes of drool. He was so hungry, he’d have ripped off his own arm and wolfed it down, if he’d had the strength.
A deep rolling voice had awoken him. His cheek was pressed against warm fur, but his side was mostly numb from where he’d been lying on something hard and ungiving.