“I wanted to ask you about this place – these mountains. My master has been here before, but I’ve only ever read about them. I get the feeling he hasn’t told us everything. What can you tell me? You’ve been here before.”
“You are a very clever girl.” He put his bonsai tree down and reached into his pocket to pull out a small piece of wood and a carving knife. He began to whittle away at the wood. “Where should I begin? Your master may be a necromancer, but he is a good man. He has the best reputation of any necromancer I’ve heard of.” He caught Katie’s expression of disbelief and chuckled. “He is famous, you know. He leaves the villages around him to their own devices, and he even employs some of the villagers to collect his mail and run errands for him. These are not the actions of a monster. But the necromancer who lived here was different, which is why not everyone was unhappy when Lord Taylor eliminated him. I will not say that he was a cruel man, for cruelty requires malice, but he was not a gentle man, by any means, given the things he did. A necromancer needs corpses, and the necromancer who lived here found it much easier to make fresh ones rather than order in some older ones. But as horrible as that sounds, he had his limits, which is why the Council did not deal with him earlier. He cared little for politics or expanding his own territory.” Old Man shook his head. “It is a sad thing, Little Miss, but the Council must often live with the lesser of two evils. Not even they have the power to make Everton perfect.
“The people here lived in the shadow of his rule, but his constant search for more resources and magic drove many of them away. The people I sold plants to survived because of their influence. They were – and some of them still are – the closest thing this place has to a ruling class. But since Lord Taylor seized control, mercenaries and their ilk have grown more numerous. Demons have also become a common sight near his castle. Believe me, they are not pleasant to see. Perhaps the only reason that Lord Taylor never struck me down was because he appreciates a good bonsai tree. That is possibly his only redeeming quality.” He stared into the fire. “Be careful with your magic here. Lord Taylor has spies in every settlement.”
Katie spent the rest of her watch with Old Man. He was never that serious again. Instead, he regaled her with a series of improbable stories, like the time he’d defeated a dragon that had been menacing a large city with nothing more than an oar, or how he’d once defeated ten of the world’s finest swordsmen one after the other with nothing more than a rusty spoon. His eyes were filled with mirth as he spoke, so she was content to humour him. And they were good stories – even if there was no way they could be true.
At the end of their watch, he handed her the little wooden eagle that he’d carved. “Sleep well.” His lips twitched. “And perhaps you’ll be taller in the morning.”
She rolled her eyes. “Maybe if you sleep well, the hunch in your back will be smaller.”
He just laughed and ambled over to his bedroll, exaggerating the hunch in his back every step of the way.
* * *
Timmy kept a close eye on their surroundings as they continued their journey toward Lord Taylor’s castle. It hadn’t escaped his notice that there were a lot of mercenaries around, along with quite a few… unusual people too.
“Is there something weird about those people over there, or is it just me?” Avraniel whispered. It was so weird to hear her whispering. She normally yelled. “I remember them from when I was singing yesterday. They seemed twitchy, but not in the usual way.”
“You might be right.” Timmy put one hand on his shovel and discretely used it to toss a pebble at the civilian standing on the opposite side of the market square. He waited – and was in for a surprise.
The civilian didn’t bother to turn around. A gaping maw filled with dagger-like teeth tore out of his tunic and swallowed the rock whole. Then it vanished as a pair of what appeared to be extra eyes blinked and rolled back and forth, set in between the man’s shoulder blades. Gerald dropped the piece of bread he’d been about to eat – naturally, it landed buttered side down – and Katie’s eyes widened.
Avraniel grinned. “Well, well, well. That’s certainly something. If this is how things are going to be, this trip might actually be fun – your banjo playing aside.”
Timmy’s mind spun. This was something the Council would have mentioned if they’d known. They had assumed – correctly – that Lord Taylor was trafficking with demons. Some had even come to watch their performance last night, and there was another one standing beside the town gates, a huge thing seemingly made of black fire. Its presence was a sign of how confident Lord Taylor was. But the eyes and teeth that had appeared on the civilian’s back… those weren’t from demons. They belonged to something far worse. The things under his castle had eyes and teeth like that. But there couldn’t be two castles with lightless abysses of endless horror and despair under them, could there?
Maybe.
After all, there was more than enough magic in this area. And if Lord Taylor knew the correct rituals… damn. Timmy wished he’d brought Sam. The protoplasmic horror would have known what to do.
If Lord Taylor was involved with what Timmy thought he was, then they were all in big trouble. Entities like the ones that dwelt under his castle had god-like power, but they weren’t like gods at all. Gods had goals, thoughts, and desires that humans could understand. A human could grasp the motivations of a god, if only imperfectly. But beings like Sam came from places far more inhuman than the divine or demonic realms, and they were as different from gods or demons as they were from people. Sam and his kin had been bound to the lightless depths beneath the castle for who knew how long, and it had taken Timmy more than a decade to befriend Sam and turn from food to friend. The fact that Timmy understood the Old Ways had helped, but Sam had still taken a very long time to learn how to express himself and his way of thinking in terms that Timmy could understand.
What Timmy had learned was that most of Sam’s people wanted nothing more than to devour creation, reducing everything to the primal nothingness from which all things had come. In exchange, they would grant whoever aided them incredible power. It was an extremely fine line to tread, and Timmy would have to start teaching Katie in earnest soon lest she end up as dinner for something more powerful and less amicable than Sam. Indeed, there were things down there that she hadn’t seen, which still gave him nightmares, like the Gnawer in the Deep and the Eater of Dreams. He shivered. One of these days, he’d have to introduce those things to Avraniel.
Lord Taylor could not be overly concerned about consequences if he was turning his people into these things. It meant that he had been thinning the barriers between the great beyond where Sam and his kind dwelt and the mortal world. Wonderful. They would probably have another apocalypse on their hands unless Timmy did something – again. In fact, he’d already prevented four apocalypses during his life because he happened to enjoy the way things were, the occasional battle with a recalcitrant zombie aside.
Judging from the quick flash of concern on Old Man’s face, this was also a new development. They’d have their work cut out for them. Anything that had been touched by the great beyond was not going to be easy to kill. He took a deep breath. There was no way that everyone around here was like that. Otherwise, they were in trouble.
“Come on,” Timmy said. “We should start performing again before they get suspicious.” He picked up his banjo – which also happened to conceal one of his shovels – and nodded at Avraniel. “Pick something cheerful to sing.”
As Avraniel grudgingly began to sing some catchy elf song about butterflies, rainbows, and unicorns – something that would undoubtedly make her vomit later – Timmy struck up a matching tune on his banjo. Now that he knew what to look for, he could try to get a better idea of how many of the people had been changed. To his relief, at least half of the civilians were free of any outward sign of corruption. They were supposed to save these people. It would have been exceedingly depressing if they were forced to kill all of them. Str
angely enough, those that were uncorrupted didn’t seem to mind being around those that were corrupted. It was likely then that this had been going on for some time.
Throughout the performance, Timmy split his attention between Katie, Gerald, and the demons he could feel at the very edges of his awareness. Katie must have been skipping practice sessions on her violin. She wasn’t quite as good as she should be. Oh well, she had been putting extra hours into zombie creation. Gerald, meanwhile, was barely passable on the tambourine. Thankfully, Avraniel was good enough that nobody seemed to notice that they weren’t exactly magnificent musicians. As for the demons, they too seemed content to listen, which was good. The last thing Timmy needed was for them to go digging around in his mind. He had enough experience with demons to keep them out of his head, but that would only invite further scrutiny. Demons did not like being kept in the proverbial dark.
Once they were done with their performance and had survived the well wishes of the crowd – it took an absolutely monumental effort for Avraniel to put a smile on her face – they decided to move on. They ran into more of the mutants, as Timmy had taken to calling the changed people, on their way out of the town.
“Papers, please.” Timmy tried not to stare, but it was incredibly difficult. The soldier in front of him had at least seven eyes, only two of which were on his head, and three extra mouths, none of which looked even remotely human. And was that a pair of tentacles on his back waving at them?
Timmy took a deep breath and bit back a comment before shooting Avraniel a glare that told her how much trouble they’d be in if she couldn’t stop giggling like an idiot. What made it even worse was that the poor fellow’s eyes were all rolling in different directions. How could he even tell what was going on? The other soldier beside him was hardly any better. He couldn’t even talk because he had a claw coming out of his mouth and a pair of nebulous wings on his back. His legs, what Timmy could see of them anyway, were stumpy and elephant-like – and studded with eyes. This wasn’t a little bit odd. This was flat out weird.
Silently, Timmy handed their papers over. The soldier took a quick glance at them – it was hard to be sure when he had so many eyes – and then handed them back.
“Blablargh!” the one with the claw coming out of his mouth said as he waved them along with the aforementioned claw. “Blablargh!”
Timmy gave a sigh of relief. Presumably, that meant they could go. He shook his head. How could none of the townsfolk think this was weird? Perhaps they’d gotten used to it, or perhaps they’d been bribed. People could put up with some very unusual things for the right price. The massive circle of stones he’d seen outside the town did not bode well either. Sam’s kind had often been summoned in places like that. He wasn’t the only one to notice the stone either. Gerald asked him about them later that night while they enjoyed another dinner courtesy of Old Man and the rats.
“What were those stones near that town?” Gerald asked, quivering. The bureaucrat had been on edge ever since they’d run into the mutants. Normally, Timmy would have chalked that up to his timid disposition. Gerald was, after all, a man who practically fainted at the mere thought of a man-eating plant. But even a brave person would have been put off by the nightmarish appearance of some of the mutants. They’d passed one on their way out of town that had been little more than a misshapen abomination of tentacles, teeth, and wings. Gerald had huddled behind Timmy, and the necromancer had decided to humour him. Gerald was trying his best, and Timmy considered it a small victory that the other man hadn’t run off screaming about how they were all going to die. “They look as though they might be used in some kind of ritual.”
Timmy put down his spoon. “Do you really want to know?”
“Uh… maybe?”
“Well, you asked.” Timmy took a long sip of his water. The town had been selling ale, but he didn’t want to eat or drink anything from that place. Who knew what would be in it? “This world is only one of many. But there are places where the boundaries between worlds wear thin. Underneath my castle is one such place. Stones like the ones we saw outside that town are usually put up in similar places, and they are often used to bring things into this world that have no right to exist here – things that want nothing more than to drown the world in a tide of blood, sorrow, and despair.” Timmy paused. “Basically, they want to kill us all and destroy the world. Those mutants we saw were created by mixing people and those things from beyond this world.”
Silence.
More silence.
“What?” Gerald yelped. “Please, tell me you’re joking. Demons are bad enough but… but…” The bureaucrat summoned a whole plethora of religious icons, at least one for each of the major gods worshipped in Everton and the surrounding area.
“Nope.” Timmy reached for some more of the lovely noodles that Old Man had cooked. The plant merchant should have been a chef. There was less travelling and more pay. “If Lord Taylor has been turning people into mutants, he’s already got at least one gate to the great beyond open, and he can’t be that far off from doing something truly crazy.” He smiled. “Can you pass the salt, please?” Rembrandt flicked the salt over to him. “Thank you. You see, Gerald, the only reason we’re not already dead is that the gods of their kind – I mean the beings that walk in the endless darkness between worlds – they can’t enter our world through gateways. They have to be summoned here, incarnated in flesh and blood. Most of the time, that isn’t possible. But with enough time, magic, and resources…”
Old Man chuckled softly. “Almost anything is possible.”
“Yes, which is why we need to pick up the pace. If we’re going to talk things over with Lord Taylor, which is not going to be easy, we need to do it before he summons some kind of inter-dimensional god of doom to kill us all. I’m guessing he’ll be a little reluctant to negotiate if he has a primordial entity capable of crushing worlds and devouring civilisations on his side. That’s not really something I can kill with one of my shovels.”
“Then we’ll pick up the pace,” Old Man said. “I can skip a few of my usual stops. If this all works out, I’m sure I’ll make my money back when my old customers come out into the open. Besides, I don’t think it will be long before Lord Taylor invites us to his castle. It’s not often that an elf ventures to these parts, let alone one who can sing as well as Avraniel.”
Old Man was true to his word. They picked up the pace, moving swiftly through the few towns in the region before making their way up the long, winding trail to the highest part of the mountains. High above them, perched like some obnoxious and demented bird of prey, was the castle they sought: Dark Mountain Castle. Its name was yet another sign that necromancers were, on the whole, terrible at naming things.
It was bigger than Timmy’s castle, much bigger, but far more depressing. The walls were shabby and overgrown with weeds and mould. A few seemed on the verge of falling apart. Naturally, the walls of his castle were kept in scrupulously good condition since replacing good masonry was so much more expensive than taking care of it. There were also flocks of strange, unearthly creatures with far too many limbs, teeth, and eyes circling a vortex of multi-coloured energy that shot up into the sky from the depths of the castle. The vortex seemed to be every colour at once, but its edges were tinged with colours that defied description, colours that hovered at the very edges of Timmy’s ability to perceive. Adding to the feeling of imminent doom were several large demons that patrolled the skies on leathery wings, their massive forms shrouded in black fire and smoke. Before their eyes, one of the demons dove into one of the many caves that dotted the area. Timmy’s lips curled. There was no telling what Lord Taylor had hidden in these mountains. There could be an army of demons here, and they’d never know.
Old Man led the caravan toward the castle and then stopped on the vast stone bridge that spanned the gap between the gates and the mountainside.
“Stay out here with Old Man,” Timmy told Katie.
“But –”
“Lord Taylor will be expecting a performance, but we’ll say you’re sick and can’t play.” Katie could tell that he was completely serious, which didn’t happen often.
This whole place gave him the creeps. It practically oozed otherworldly magic, and the dozens of mutants that had crawled up onto the bridge didn’t help matters either. One of them spent the next few moments screaming in mindless agony before one of the mutated soldiers handed them a note explaining that Lord Taylor wished to see them perform before speaking to Old Man about bonsai trees. After a brief discussion with Timmy, the mutants agreed that Old Man and Katie would wait on the bridge until called for.
“Lord Taylor is bad news,” Timmy whispered to Katie. “Stay here. If something goes wrong, leave. Get back to our castle.” Timmy grinned. “And then, when you’re strong enough, totally come back and avenge me.”
Katie rolled her eyes. “You’re not going to die, master. Now, hurry up. The sooner you get this done, the sooner we can go home and build another zombie titan.”
“Fair enough.” He nodded at her and then left with Avraniel and Gerald. The bureaucrat was clutching his tambourine with white knuckles while Timmy had his shovel – disguised as a banjo – slung over one shoulder. He turned back to the soldiers as Cezanne turned invisible and slipped into Gerald’s pocket. “We’re ready. Take us to Lord Taylor. We would be honoured to perform for him.”
“Blablargh!”
Timmy shook his head. Was that supposed to be a yes or a no? It must have been a yes since the soldiers began to lead them across the bridge and into the castle proper. Hopefully, this would all work out, but he wasn’t about to get his hopes up. They’d be lucky if they could get through the next hour or two without levelling the castle.
* * *
Gerald needed every scrap of courage he had to keep from turning around and running out of the castle as fast as he could, screaming his head off the entire way. Timmy’s castle was imposing, but this castle was downright terrifying. The cobblestones under his feet were cracked and covered in what he sincerely hoped was not dried human blood. Given the scowl on Timmy’s face and the human bones scattered across the courtyard, however, it was a pretty safe bet that it was.
Unconventional Heroes 2 - Two Necromancers, an Army of Golems, and a Demon Lord Page 17