03- The Apostles of Doom

by J. Langland

  “Indeed. They apparently did not return to the Abyss like a D’Orc would,” Targh said sadly.

  Tom nodded. “This is interesting, because from my experience, half-demons do return to the Abyss. However, those that I know returned had all been to the Abyss before perishing on the Planes of Orc.”

  Helga tilted her head. “So their souls had a reference point, an anchor, to return to. That makes sense.” She nodded in agreement.

  “Therefore, I am thinking we want all of those with D’Orc blood, of whatever amount, to spend some time in the Abyss,” Tom said. “We can do rotations if needed to maintain troop levels.”

  Vargg slapped the table. “Excellent idea, my lord! Actually, I had been about to suggest that we begin rotations with all the D’Orcs in Nysegard. We generally rotated troops across the Doomalogues to ensure uniform training and experience. We should restart this program; later-generation D’Orcs need more battle experience and I am sure many on Nysegard would like to see Doom and old friends again.”

  Darg-Krallnom nodded. “Yes, I like this. Vargg, can you work out a rotation schedule with Targh that ensures proper experience levels and training opportunities in Nysegard?”

  The D’Orcs all nodded and seemed quite pleased with Tom’s suggestion, so he decided to broach the next, more ambitious thought he’d had. “One other thought I’ve had is this. We are very short-handed in terms of shamans in Mount Doom; we need more magical support here if we are to reestablish our old connections,” he said.

  “Agreed; however, we are not exactly flush with D’Orc shamans on Nysegard,” Targh said.

  “But you do have quite a few orc shamans,” Tom said.

  “Orc, human, dwarven, yes,” Targh agreed. “I would not say we have a surplus, but we do have some very good ones.”

  “Exactly. In particular you have Karth Death Cheater; I believe you told me he was one of the greatest shamans in a thousand years.”

  Targh frowned. “He is; however, he is very old for an orc. I doubt he would survive long in Mount Doom.”

  “What if he were a D’Orc?” Tom asked.

  “Yes,” Darg-Krallnom said with a grin. “That would work extremely well.” The others all nodded in agreement, seeming very happy with Tom’s idea.

  “Now, the problem is this: does anyone remember how to make D’Orcs?” Tom asked. That caused quite a bit of muttering and shuffling in their seats.

  “Well, there were quite a few shamanistic rituals required,” Arg-nargoloth replied tentatively. “Not sure if you have any shamans on Nysegard that are familiar with the process?” Arg-nargoloth looked to Targh, who seemed lost in thought.

  “We may; it has been so long; we have lost so many,” Targh said with a frown.

  “I do know, that in the case of someone who was still alive, it was simpler,” Darg-Krallnom said. “As I recall, it was a matter of the candidate smoking demon weed and traveling to the Astral Plane, where a shaman would then summon them as a D’Orc using a ritual similar to summoning a demon.”

  “Demon weed?” Tom asked puzzled. What Darg-Krallnom was saying sounded exactly like what had happened to him; except that he had simply smoked marijuana, not demon weed.

  Arg-nargoloth shrugged. “It’s an herb, literally a weed, that some demons smoke for stress relief and relaxation.”

  Tom frowned. “You mean like tobacco or marijuana?”

  Arg-nargoloth shrugged. “I don’t know what the second one is. I suppose it’s similar to tobacco but the effect is different; tobacco doesn’t do much for D’Orcs and demons. Similar to alcohol, we need something that is generally lethal to mortals to become intoxicated.”

  Tom shook his head. “So why is Tizzy always smoking his pipe if tobacco doesn’t affect demons?”

  Darg-Krallnom coughed. “He is not; he is smoking demon weed.”

  “Which is one reason he is often incoherent,” Vargg Agnoth said.

  “Hmm. I am pretty sure that it’s the only reason he’s still sane,” Arg-nargoloth said, shaking his head. “Or relatively sane.” He shrugged.

  “So Tizzy has a supply of this demon weed?” Tom asked. He wasn’t sure he liked where his thoughts were leading him. He was going to need to table those thoughts for now, however.

  “Yes,” everyone said, almost in unison.

  “Okay, then,” Tom said. “Targh, check with your shamans, see if any of them know the rituals.”

  Targh nodded in agreement, seeming quite pleased with this plan.

  “I think that wraps it up,” Helga said, looking at Darg-Krallnom, who nodded.

  “It is good to have a plan, a set of orders,” Vargg Agnoth said happily. “It has been so long. Reclaiming Nysegard thrills the blood.” He pounded the table in emphasis. The others nodded as well, several also pounding the table in agreement.

  “I know it has me psyched,” Tom told his commanders. “I had the weirdest dreams about battling the Unlife last night.”

  “Slaying Unlife makes the blood sing more than any other opponent,” Targh agreed. “If your dream was good, I can assure you that the reality will be far better!”

  Tom chuckled. “I am sure. It was just odd that of all the D’Orcs I dreamt I was in battle with, all of whom I felt as if I knew well, the only one I actually knew was Vargg Agnoth. Although for some reason I thought he was only two centuries old.” Tom shook his head.

  Darg-Krallnom chuckled. “He has not been that young in nearly ten thousand years!”

  “Who did you think your companions were?” Vargg asked curiously.

  “My right hand, my general, was named Vosh An-Non. It felt like I had known him forever.” Tom shook his head, not noticing the looks of the others around the table. “And there was Vordek Deathstealer lopping the heads of vampyrs with his lichtshwert, which led me to dreaming about Erdnalla 3 and even Loki.” Tom grinned, looking up at the now very silent and still commanders around the table.

  “Can you tell me a bit more about this battle?” Vargg asked, rather cautiously, Tom thought.

  He shrugged. “There was this huge army of Unlife. The battle was at night and it was pitch-black; I don’t even recall a moon. The whole battle seemed rather ill-advised in regards to timing. The D’Orcs were going after the necromancers, vampyrs, vampires and higher undead. The orcs, humans and dwarves were taking on the lesser undead. I recall Vosh spotting a couple of Storm Liches on ice dragons and we peeled off to battle them, while I directed you to take on this necromancer vampire I had been about to take.”

  Tom looked at Vargg and then around at the very silent table.

  “Why are you all looking at him so weird?” Tamarin suddenly asked from Tom’s shoulder, as puzzled at Tom was.

  “Because that sounds like the Battle of Night’s Helm. It was about a hundred and sixty years after my ascension, and the three of us—Vosh, Vordek and I—were the closest to you at the battle. The Three Vs, you called us,” Vargg said, eyes rather wide.

  “What do you mean, you three were the closest to me? You mean Vosh and Vordek were actual D’Orcs?” Tom asked, even as a feeling of panic was seeping into his stomach.

  “Of course. Both perished permanently at your side in Etterdam,” Darg-Krallnom replied in a louder-than-usual voice. “Vosh An-Non was your commander general, the First D’Orc.”

  “And Vordek,” Vargg added, “was perhaps the greatest D’Orc animage of all time.”

  “Wow!” Tamarin exclaimed. “This is great news! You are getting your memories back! Normally it takes an experienced mind specialist to help people remember past lives. You are recalling things on your own!”

  The D’Orcs around the table suddenly laughed and started thumping the table and yelling in excitement. They were all clearly excited that Tom was getting his memories back. Tom, of course, was experiencing a moment of deep and abiding horror. He glanced down at the Rod of Tommus in his hand. Was the Rod—or rather, the Wand of Orcus—somehow infecting him with old memories from Orcus? There was no other possib
le explanation.

  “This is such great news!” Arg-nargoloth said, grinning at Tom.

  “Indeed. It is taking me by surprise,” Tom said.

  Tamarin leaned in and whispered in his ear, “You do not seem that pleased, master.”

  Tom nodded in agreement with her; he would explain later. In theory, djinn knew quite a bit about magic. Perhaps she would have some ideas about what was going on.

  ~

  Talarius moved down the corridor confidently, yet as nonchalantly as he possibly could. He wanted his exploration to seem as if he was randomly walking in areas he was entitled to visit. There was nowhere in Doom he had been barred from visiting; however, he expected that whatever new endeavor his captor was so engaged in with multiple D’Orc regiments would be something that the demon would not want him to know about.

  Admittedly, they had made no great secret of their activities; the long line of D’Orcs had been more than obvious. However, his captor had not directly informed him of what he was up to. As a soldier, Talarius thought it looked like a small invasion force had been assembled and deployed. The question was, to where?

  That was the point of Talarius’s wanderings. The D’Orcs had all gone down to a large maze-like region of Doom, with walls lined with large indentations. Following the trail of disturbed dust through the maze, Talarius came to an indentation that was actually a tunnel. A natural rock-walled tunnel, in fact; not the carved stone of the corridor.

  The halls were dark in most of Doom, since D’Orcs could see fine in low light; thus Talarius was using his visor to see with. However, there was a glow above the entrance to this hallway that provided better illumination. He glanced up to the light source at the top of the tunnel’s entrance. There were some glowing runes above the archway.

  Talarius frowned, not recognizing the runes, but suddenly realizing all the other archways had non-glowing runes above them as well. Was this some sort of runic gateway? he wondered. From the dust patterns it was pretty clear that everyone coming this way must have gone through the archway and this tunnel. Talarius found this quite curious. He shrugged. There was only one way to find out where the tunnel went.

  ~

  As Tom and Tamarin headed down the hall towards his quarters, Zelda intercepted him. “Lord Tommus!” she called, coming up to them.

  “Good morning, Zelda!” Tom said, grateful for the distraction from his new paranoid thoughts.

  “Beya Fei Geist is in the Temple of Doom with a request,” Zelda said.

  “Okay,” Tom replied. “Let’s head over there.” They changed course and headed to the temple. Tamarin, once more full-sized to avoid getting bounced off Tom’s shoulder while he walked, started small talk with Zelda. As they chatted, Tom found himself mentally tracing through the Rod of Tommus, looking for any sign of Orcus.

  When he had found the Rod, it had been inert. He had not detected any significant mana beyond that of the spells locking it in place. Given the pressure they had been under, he could have missed some residual mana, but surely he would have noticed any animus? He needed to discuss this with someone, like Tamarin or Antefalken, who understood animus and memory and all this crazy spiritual stuff.

  His assumption, based on what he’d learned in the weeks since he’d been summoned, was that mana was simply energy; that life and spirit were animus. Using his demon senses, or perhaps his animage sort of senses, it was very easy to tell the difference between the two. Animus was clearly alive; spirits and such, which he had so far only really encountered in his dream, were collections of animus held together with mana bodies. Dream walkers, he gathered, were doing astral projection. That would jibe with his own summoning. One would presume, then, that what Tom thought of as a “soul” was this bodiless animus. Therefore, any memories of an individual—in fact, the consciousness—would be contained within the animus. Thus, it seemed to Tom that if the Rod was trying to infect him with Orcus’s memories, it would have to have animus in it. He had been certain that there had not been any in the Rod.

  Could it have come from somewhere in Mount Doom? Following the links between Doom and the Rod, perhaps? If so, why had it taken so long? What had changed? That made Tom blink. Tartarus had changed. He had not previously had a connection to Tartarus. Could Tartarus, a supernatural prison for those even the gods feared, also contain some remnant of Orcus that was now trying to possess him?

  Tom sighed. This was one case where having read too much science fiction, fantasy and horror was working against him. All sorts of alien or supernatural possession scenarios were now running through his head nonstop. His stomach, or whatever this body had for a stomach, was twisting itself in knots.

  “Lord Tommus!” Beya Fei Geist’s translucent dream manifestation greeted him. “Zelda, Tamarin!” The shaman nodded to the others.

  “Beya Fei Geist! Good to see you. I hope the boys aren’t causing you problems?” Tom asked, suddenly concerned that his shaman was having trouble controlling a couple of demonic preteens.

  Beya chuckled. “Not at all—quite the contrary!” She shook her head. “No, we had an astral meeting last night with all your shamans, including Trig Bioblast!”

  “Excellent!” Tom grinned at her.

  “We made a few plans that I wanted to discuss with you,” Beya said. Tom nodded for her to continue. “We would like to start reaching out to other clans and groups; recruit more shamans and reestablish tribal allegiances to Doom.”

  “Very good. How can I help?” Tom asked.

  “Well, other than in Trig’s world, which is quite odd, I must say, travel between tribes is time-consuming; and then there is the matter of proving the things of which we speak.”

  Tom nodded in agreement and gestured for her to continue.

  “So, our thought was that perhaps we could borrow some D’Wargs for our expeditions, and also some D’Orcs to come along with us. It would pretty quickly demonstrate the veracity of our claims,” Beya said.

  “It could also freak a lot of people out,” Tamarin said.

  “I agree with both of you,” Tom said, thinking about the ruckus they had raised in Astlan.

  “If we do this, can we try to keep knowledge of what we are doing limited to the orcs? In particular, I don’t want to alert any elves or humans who might decide to raise alarms.”

  Beya nodded. “I do not think that should be a problem, although we will have difficulty not alerting other jötunnkind.” She frowned. “Often there are other jötunnkind in orc communities.”

  Tom shrugged. “I am less concerned with jötunnkind than elves and humans.”

  “Excellent. Thank you, m’lord,” Beya said, bowing slightly.

  Tom grinned. “Zelda, can you see to it that Beya is put in contact with someone who can arrange whatever the two of you decide is needed?”

  “Indeed, m’lord,” Zelda said. “We still have the hunting lists; we can use those to choose escorts.”

  “Excellent,” Tom said. “Also, in addition to the regiment commanders of the selected D’Orcs, coordinate with Vargg Agnoth and Targh Bowelsplitter. They are working up rotation lists for our Nysegard contingent.”

  Zelda’s eyes widened in surprise, having not yet heard of this development. “Certainly.”

  “Nysegard contingent?” Beya asked.

  “We have reopened the Doomalogue in Nysegard!” Tom grinned at her. “We now have a permanent gateway to Nysegard and have reestablished contact with the D’Orcs that were still there.”

  “You had D’Orcs stationed in Nysegard?” Beya asked in surprise.

  “We actually had outposts in six hundred and sixty-six worlds. I would have to believe there were outposts in your localverse as well: Ithgar, Astlan, Etterdam, Targella, Romdan, Avalon.”

  Beya bit her upper lip, thinking. “What would they have looked like?”

  “Large volcanoes. They were essentially smaller-scale replicas of Mount Doom, including mana generators,” Tom said.

  Zelda nodded. “They would hav
e been central to everything involving Orcus on each world.”

  “Interesting... I will need to research this and discuss it with the other shamans, but locating these volcanos could give us some good direction on where to go first,” Beya said.

  Tom nodded, having not thought of that. “Actually, that would be very good. As we reopen these old gateways, I would prefer to not go in blind. On-ground reconnaissance would be very useful.”

  Nysegard, Krallnomton

  Talarius had wandered through several tunnels, running into some dead ends before finally discovering a passage that had light at the far end. About a third of the way down, he encountered a widened area, somewhat like a room extending to his right with an exit directly opposite the hallway he was coming through.

  In the room, two D’Orcs sat on stone benches at a stone table, playing cards. Both had large axes with hilts ready near their right hands, resting against the table. The D’Orc facing Talarius’s hallway looked up as he entered and nodded in recognition before playing a card from his hand that caused his partner to curse softly. Well, softly for a D’Orc—it was actually rather loud.

  Very relaxed sentries, if you ask me, Ruiden said in Talarius’s mind. And playing cards in the dark?

  Yes, very relaxed, Talarius agreed. Actually, sentries playing cards was not at all unusual; it was their lack of reaction to him, an enemy combatant and hostage, just strolling by that was unsettling. Well, that and playing cards in a quite dark room. The only light was that from the tunnel he was following.

  And they are not in the least bothered by your presence? Ruiden asked.

  Apparently not, Talarius agreed. He had to admit that he was more than a little disappointed by their lack of reaction. What was the point of being held hostage by a paranoid demon lord if you could not provoke their paranoia?