God Wars Box Set Edition: A Dark Fantasy Trilogy

by Mark Eller

  “Are you going to eat me?” she begged. Her hands fluttered over her belly and moved to each side, seeming to offer the softness of her stomach to his teeth. “Please eat me.”

  “I’m going to save you,” Harlo promised, and then he cut her throat. Her grin remained. Her insane eyes roiled, and her sliced open neck began to close.

  “Ludwig?” Harlo asked, and Ludwig knew what he wanted. Stepping gingerly onto the salt, he pushed the woman to her knees. Holding her there, he tipped her head back by a firm grip on her hair, and waited until Harlo finished slicing her head from her body. Ludwig let the body fall, tossed her head to the side, and said nothing while Harlo wiped tears from his face.

  “I can’t do this anymore,” Ludwig finally said. “There’s too much strangeness going on. Too many of Hell’s minions are causing suffering and tearing people’s lives apart.” He drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I can’t help them destroy everything, Harlo. I’m done with theft and murder, and I’m done with revenge. Belthethsia can go her own way. I want nothing more to do with her. ”

  Harlo’s lips quirked with the beginning of a smile. The smile faded before it was fully born. He reached up to touch Ludwig’s shoulder, to turn him away from the salt pile where the dead woman’s remains slowly sizzled and dissolved.

  “Can we be a little bad?” Harlo asked. “A touch of graft, a bit of victimless theft?”

  Ludwig’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “What have you done?”

  “I’ve accepted a commission to haul salt for our friend, Dern,” Harlo admitted. “We haul and sell the salt. We give him the price he wants, and we pocket the rest. The fool doesn’t know what he has. He’s willing to sell for a fraction of its worth. We’ll make more money hauling salt to Grace in a year than we would make in five years robbing caravans.”

  “Yes,” Tirelle whispered in his skull.

  “That soundsss— lucrative,” Ludwig hazarded. He looked to the west, toward where he had stood when he first saw this camp. Shoulders bent and shaking, Hammer walked away. Still alive, now free, the man looked as if his best beloved had been murdered.

  Harlo nodded. “The best part is we don’t have to kill another innocent man. Dern is big and strong, but he’s too dumb to have ever done anybody harm.”

  “I’ll help you haul salt to Grace,” Ludwig said, “just so long as you promise we won’t look for Belthethsia.”

  “Never,” Harlo promised as hale began to fall. His lips firmed, and then he gave a small shake of his head. “I doubt we’ll ever see the bitch again.”

  Chapter 13-- Knight’s Fall

  Calto watched Anithia rummage through the mismatched pieces of armor in the manor’s south training room. She was searching for something light enough for her to wear, which meant not much. Everything in the room was meant for a man. Breast plates, chainmail, helmets, all were too large for her slight frame. The few warrior priestesses who made it into the ranks of the Sword and the Staff had their armor custom made. There was another weapons room she could search, but why bother? Nothing suitable would be there either.

  “Anithia, as I have told you a dozen times before, we have no armor which will fit you.” Calto insisted.

  The petite woman stood and stretched, her breasts prominently obvious in the short, too tight tunic she wore. Something popped in her back and she winced. A scry had dived at her during their raid on a demon horde the previous night, sending her backwards into a pile of broken crates and refuse. The hellkind was a nasty, dirty, evil creature which only loosely resembled a bird. Twice the size of a raven, it owned overlarge red eyes, greasy feathers, and a foul temper. It was also, he discovered, damn near indestructible.

  Groaning, Ani rubbed the sore spot on her back. “I’ve got to find something to wear. My leather practice armor is in shreds. And no, I won’t stay here in the manor when Missa is out there.” She yawned. “I need a nap. Just a few minutes to rest my eyes and then I’ll go to the other armory.”

  Calto could not help but notice how haggard she looked, exhausted but still extremely tempting in the tight pants she wore. He supposed she had a right to feel tired. Each night they went out, Ani fought and sang with the other warriors until she almost dropped. Although arrogant and unbecomingly opinionated, the woman had grudgingly earned Calto’s respect. He fought back a half-grin. Apparently, she also seemed to be pulling on his libido. If the sight of a filthy, beat up and exhausted woman attracted his attention, it had obviously been far too long since he last bedded a woman.

  Giving up her search, Ani left the armory and headed to her room, her round bottom swaying back and forth like a metronome. Calto sighed. Likely, she would eat her evening meal alone again. A tinge of regret ate at his heart. As the new lady of his house, Ani would have made a fine mistress, but Calto now shunned her completely. All pretense of him loving her had been stripped away with Missa’s kidnapping. After all, he did have some scruples in regards to his charge. Besides, he no longer needed to coerce her into helping him. She did it willingly. Getting Missa back was Anithia’s only concern. Still— a part of him hungered for her, wanted her. He shook his head, knowing loneliness made him crave her. It had been over two years since he kicked Sulya from his bed. Since then, nobody. Her deliberate enslavement of his body had left him weary of human contact. Dargot’s betrayal had left his circle of friends vacant as well. Havlar was the only one he confided in anymore, and even then Calto made sure to speak with care. His heart sank a little lower. There had been a time when the only person he had truly needed was Larson, but the memory of his brother was growing dim, less distinct as time went by.

  He stared, blank and unseeing, at the doorway. Anithia could still be his mistress. If he started up again with her, slow and tentative, she would likely warm his bed eventually. Ani had to be lonely as well, and she had once been a whore so he doubted she held many scruples.

  A tightening of his pants told Calto his cock was thinking of her, too. The thought of Ani’s soft and shapely body moaning beneath him, his hands overflowing with her breasts, spreading her legs…

  Frustrated beyond words, Calto squeezed his eyes tightly against his imagined image of Anithia’s naked body. Leaving the armory, he headed for his office, still picturing Anithia beneath him. He walked past his office as his lascivious thoughts got the better of him and found himself headed toward Anithia’s chambers. Cursing, Calto pulled his mind away from images of carnal pleasure and backtracked to where he was supposed to be going. His focus needed to be somewhere other than the non thinking parts of his body. The present needed his attention now, not the past, and not the hopeful. For one, Pax, a scout Calto had sent out earlier, came back with no news. Apparently, the forest was empty, the queen was still safe, and there were no reports of demonkind lurking about his lands.

  Still, something was not right. After days of almost constant battle, it was all too…quiet.

  “Calto, I had supper brought to your office so we can talk.”

  Calto’s belt knife hissed as it flashed from its sheath and pressed against flesh. Nerves tense, he took a moment to gather his thoughts. Lord Havlar Ironman had taken him by surprise by approaching him from behind him without a sound.

  Cocking an eyebrow, Calto’s new second eyed the knife pointed at his gut. His broad, unshaven face, was placid, unmoved by the dagger’s menace. Calto’s eye twitched. Someone as bulky as Havlar should not be able to move so quietly, especially not when dressed in full battle armor. No, Calto was at fault. He had been so lost in his own thoughts, so tired and distracted, he had dropped his guard.

  Gritting his teeth, Calto sheathed his dagger. He brushed past Havlar and led him to his office. Scuffling feet and shouted orders echoed through the manor’s spacious halls. His knights were getting ready for another night of fruitless searching, some of them following up on increasingly worthless leads given to them by the street magician, Joss, and a few of Calto’s other guttersnipe spies. Not their fault, Calto supposed, th
at their information mostly proved false. Wherever Mercktos had taken Missa, it was not in the city proper. The filthy creature had gone to ground somewhere even Tessla could not sense him. It was time to start sending search parties into the surrounding forest and caves.

  Calto gestured for Havlar to take a seat at the small corner table where the latest scouting reports and Calto’s cooling meal waited. He took the second chair. Fidgeting, Calto eyed his spacious office as Havlar drew out of a sheath of his own reports. This office was his refuge, decorated in shades of blue and white, with books lining two of its walls; it was peaceful, relaxing but of late his office did nothing to sooth his frayed nerves.

  “Report,” he finally ordered Havlar. “What signs have you found of the child?”

  “None, Havlar said. “But I’ve other news. By order of the King’s Pair, hellborn, king’s guards, and the populace have razed all of the temples except Anothosia’s. Some of the nobility have fled. A few have been attacked, but nobody has made a move on this manor.” Havlar’s black brows knitted together in a deep scowl. His mouth was drawn tight at the corners as he kept re-reading his reports.

  Calto nodded. “I know. Disaster everywhere, but something else isn’t right. I can’t put my finger on it, but I have a bad feeling. It almost seems as if they can’t touch our temples unless they destroy our base. We’re the last thing standing between hellkind and total domination of Yernden.”

  The King’s Pair. Why hadn’t Belsac and Helace moved to destroy him? Calto picked up a fork and played with his meal, fretting, chasing the elusive missing piece of the puzzle. Surely they knew the queen could not be touched with him still alive. Calto stabbed his fork viciously into his pork, anger bubbling unbidden to the surface. If they so much as gave Elise an evil glare he’d hunt the King’s Pair down and disembowel them in front of the entire court.

  “Calto. Calm yourself. I hardly think the pig is to blame for our problems.” Havlar’s smooth baritone interrupted his mental tirade.

  Calto looked at his plate. It had broken in two with the force of his blow. Throwing the fork down, he leaned back in his chair. “I’m sick of it all. Too many years and countless lives later and I am no closer to finding the second hellhole. I’ve searched everywhere and found nothing. Every time I take a step forward something throws me ten paces back.”

  Havlar shook his head. “No, you haven’t searched everywhere.”

  Calto frowned.“I know what you’re thinking, but the possibility of the hole being inside the castle is unthinkable. I’ve blessed the entire thing from top to bottom. I’ve searched every nook and cranny. It’s just not there.”

  “Not everywhere,” Havlar said again.

  Calto gave Havlar a puzzled frown. Where had he not looked?

  “You didn’t check the secondary sewers.”

  Calto sat upright, slowly. The secondary sewers? It was possible. No. It was probable, but it was a probability he had never considered since they supposedly only came into use when the primary sewers were being repaired. As he best recalled from his predecessor’s lessons, back before Calto assumed his current position, ten or twelve decades had passed since this last happened, perhaps more. “Why didn’t you suggest this earlier?”

  Havlar shrugged. “It only recently came to me. I was going over the castle layout when I noticed another, smaller level I didn’t previously know existed. It wouldn’t have been an obvious place to look because no one ever goes down there, and castle plumbing certainly isn’t a regular topic of conversation. It’s the least likely place we would have looked.”

  Calto nodded. Havlar was right. They needed to go to the castle and investigate.

  A knock on the door startled him out of his thoughts.

  Both men stood, hands on their weapons. “Enter,” they said in unison.

  A small man dressed in a drab brown tunic and pants entered and bowed to Calto. “Lord Sir, I have my report for you.”

  A breath he didn’t even realize he held expelled slowly from Calto’s body. Moving like lead weighed down his feet, Calto stood and went to his main desk. Taking out pen and paper, he prepared to take the man’s report.

  * * * *

  Omitan stared at the blackened ruins of Loc Mir Forest, his most sacred grove of trees and forestland. Tears flowed from his rich brown eyes and trickled down his checks into a beard of the same color. The forest had withstood thousands of years of forest fires, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, wars…it had stood since the beginning of Terra Scientia being terra formed; it had been one of the builder’s first creations. To Omitan, Loc Mir was an ancient sentinel possessing a soul of its own. With each footstep he took upon the primordial land, he could feel it breathing, reaching out into the greater universe, mixing its energy with the flow of time itself. The connection he had with this and other forests was one his ancestors had owned far back into antiquity, centuries before the abandoning of old Terra. Yes, the gift of the third eye ran deep in his family, passed down through his grandmother’s people, people of the land, people of the earth, the wind, and the water. The gift, enhanced by the nano during the first outbreak, not only allowed him to feel the scarred earth, it made his ears hear the tortured screams of the innocent, as he heard screams now. The earth was wounded, decimated, and angry. His body shuddered as he took in the devastation. It was all gone…everything. All his attendants— the gelfs, the sprites, the wood nymphs, his favored ordigs— and the very essence of the ancient woods itself— corrupted or dead. Blackened stumps rose out of the earth like broken, diseased teeth. The smell of charred flesh and the echoes of the dying assailed his senses.

  Omitan shook; his stomach lurched. Memories of another time, another war between himself and the Two flashed like bombs in his mind, each thought a detonation of pain wrought from someone he had lost; a friend, a lover…a child. Love and life destroyed for power, for control of the world and its survival. This was why Zorce had been banished…for survival of the planet and what was left of its inhabitants. It had nothing to do with Omitan and the other virtuous gods wishing to be the supreme rulers of everything. Trelsar, Anothosia, Flinstar, Throm, and other two gods, long dead after giving their lives to the cause, their nano fields irrevocably diffused. A heavy price for the peace garnered by shutting away the madman Zorce had become. Bits and pieces of everyone’s soul had died during the previous Godwars, their selves changed forever and irrevocably.

  Reaching a decision, Omitan wiped at his tears, now sure he could no longer stand aside and let the other gods fend for themselves. They were not only his brethren, they were his friends, and they were the last hope the people of this world had.

  Drawing in a shuddering breath of pain and remorse, the god of the wood concentrated his will on Anithia. The horde was coming; Morlon Manor lay in its direct path. To help counter this he had a gift for Anithia, something which belonged to his daughter long ago…the first High Priestess of his followers. He smiled a little at the fond memory of a beloved warrior long fallen. Sarah had been quite a bit like Anithia; strong, purposeful, only not as jaded.

  Poor Anithia. She had been through hell and back; survived where others would have given up. She was a good mother, a strong woman, and powerful in the use of her gift. She would end up a minor being someday…perhaps even a lesser god like himself. She might even be his replacement.

  The god frowned. Where had such a morbid thought come from? He had lived for over six thousand years and would continue to do so for another six thousand, or even more. Omitan knew himself to be a lesser god, so weak in power he could walk the earth without causing undue harm to the weather or time, but the entire planet was his weapon. There were few natural places on Terra where a being could hide if Omitan sought them. After all, he was the god of the earth, the god of lost things to be found. Every minute of every day he could feel the planet’s pulse as surely as he felt his own. Indeed, the insistence of this pulse explained a good deal as to why his strength ran so low. The land of Yernden demanded s
o much of his attention only bits and pieces of his real self remained aware to interact on the mortal plain.

  Long minutes passed before Omitan turned and walked away. He needed to warn Anithia before cornering Trelsar for a long talk. He doubted his fears were truly founded but felt a need to assuage them with solid consul and perhaps action. Somehow, he needed to find some way of avoiding an all out war with Zorce. Yes, the probability of it happening was slim, but he needed to be able to say to himself that he had tried before action took place. If diplomacy with Zorce failed, Omitan feared he would have no choice but to join with Trelsar and the other god in planning the death of the Two.

  Omitan stopped, taken by the thought. The death of the Two? What would happen if the virtuous gods couldn’t kill Zorce and Athos. After all, they had tried and failed in the first war. Would the other nano infected beings, the lesser ones of the world, would they ban together again and fight or would they reluctantly join Zorce this time, too afraid to go through the horrors of a godwar again? What would happen to the world if Zorce finally reached ascendancy? Shaking his head, Omitan continued walking, his seeming fading away as he did so. His mind stretched, his power flowed, and then he stood in the manor’s garden.

  The garden was in its last death throes; winter was claiming the last vestiges of a too early fall. But it didn’t matter. Soon, it would be completely destroyed, too. Although exalted and solidly built, this place had been created by mortals. It would never withstand the oncoming horde. He had seen it. Hundreds of hellkind, demons, devils, hounds, scrys…a mass of death and destruction…marched their way here with Belsac at the lead. How had the man gotten so many creatures to obey him? Where had they all come from? When originally created, Hell had been deliberately designed to hold a finite number of beings, no more than fifty or sixty thousand. Its borders had been hard set by the surviving virtuous gods.