The Devil's Influence

by Chris Pisano

  “Her, I recognize,” Landyr said. He wanted to share all information, on the off chance that it could be deemed pertinent later. “She held my rank in the Elite Troop during the Demon War.”

  Chenessa nodded. “The stories of her strength and bravery are well known.”

  It had taken all four of Qual’s minions to handle the ogre. “That’s Bale, and the satyr is Phyl. I don’t know who the centaur is, but I assume him to be a friend of theirs. They hold a special place in Nevin’s memories, non-threatening rivals whose antics kept him and his friends amused. Oddly enough, Bale is the true hero of the Demon War. He was the one who cast the accursed stones back to Hell.”

  “Then he must be a clever and skilled warrior, indeed,” Landyr said. “When we attack, freeing them should certainly help us.”

  “If we attack,” Chenessa mumbled, looking back into the tunnel at Zellas and Millinni.

  Zellas wanted to strike, but Millinni stopped him. The moments they spent arguing felt like hours to Landyr as he watched Qual work his dark magics. Two other Troop members stood next to Landyr now and watched the wizard as well, occasionally glancing to their sergeant for any form of guidance. Landyr had none to give, impotent in action as his general argued with a wizard who could very well be more diabolical than the one in the cavern below.

  “You’ve seen what he’s capable of,” Millinni hissed. “A cave-in with a wave of his hand. What do you think he will do if we charge in, sword swinging?”

  “We would surprise him.”

  “Bah! Clanging steel and screaming men. He would be more surprised by the stupidity of the tactic.”

  “We need to do something because the wizard’s chanting is getting faster. Things never end well when a wizard chants faster.”

  “Sir!” Landyr interrupted the argument. “We might have an opportunity.”

  Zellas and Millinni hurried to the opening with everyone else in tow. Landyr pointed to Diminutia. A bulge formed under the leaf around his hip. Had it been different circumstances, the sight would have been lecherously comical. The bulge moved down Diminutia’s leg, the source finally revealing itself as it escaped from the opening by his feet. A rabbit.

  Landyr was disappointed, as were the others around him. Clearly, Diminutia had been wrapped up after he caught dinner. However, Landyr grew more curious by the rabbit’s next actions.

  Unseen by Qual or his minions, the rabbit scampered directly to Silver. Using its teeth, the rabbit pulled at the wizard’s hair. With purpose, the rabbit yanked and tugged. Chenessa gasped when the wizard stirred, not yet regaining consciousness.

  The rabbit stopped yanking and tried a different tactic. He hopped over Silver’s head and turned to face the wizard. Resting on its haunches, the rabbit extended a front paw and slapped Silver across the face.

  “How is that possible?” Landyr whispered.

  “We have seen sights more bizarre than this,” Zellas replied. “And it is working.”

  The rabbit slapped Silver’s face four more times. Jerking awake, he slapped the rabbit back.

  “I will be right back,” Chenessa said to Landyr. Her body dissipated, fading away like a forgotten dream. No, not fading away; turning into shadow. A patch of blackness moved along the wall, across the floor, stopping when it got to Silver.

  The wizard’s brow furrowed as he looked around. He paused and then looked to the doorway where the Elite Troop and his fellow wizards stood. His face shifted, intent, listening to whatever the shadow was telling him. He gave a deep nod and the shadow slid across the stone floor, all the way back to the doorway. Chenessa—the beautiful dark elf, not the horned monster with razor teeth—materialized next to Landyr.

  “I told him the plan,” Chenessa said, looking directly at Millinni. “That we will follow his lead. I told him to have the rabbit free the others. Whenever Silver deems it time to attack, then we will attack.”

  Zellas jutted out his jaw while he chewed over Chenessa’s words. “Follow the lead of the person closest to action. It is a good plan. I like it.”

  Landyr stifled a smile as he and the other members of the Elite Troop checked their armor and drew their swords, readying themselves for any sign from Silver to attack. He leaned in close to Chenessa and whispered, “It is a good plan.”

  She said nothing but smiled in return, wide and mesmerizing. Landyr’s heart melted, but then froze when he blinked and saw rubbery lips around two rows of saliva slicked, razors. He blinked again and Chenessa was once again a beautiful woman. Landyr forced himself to return her smile, but then moved his attention back to Silver and the rabbit.

  The rabbit chewed through enough of the binds for Dearborn and Diminutia to free themselves with ease and started gnawing away at the leaves holding Bale. Silver positioned himself behind one of the eggs. Talking to himself, his fingers danced around. One hand burst into flame, while blue arcs of electricity swirled around his other. He attacked.

  Striding forward from behind the egg, Silver unleashed both spells, fire and lightning rushing toward Qual. The dark wizard blocked them with ease, a flick of his finger disintegrating the spells as if they had never been cast. Silver’s allies sprung into action, casting aside their wraps. Qual’s minions stepped forward to meet them. Bale tackled and wrestled with the minotaur. Diminutia and Dearborn parried with the werewolf and cat woman. Phyl and Tingle ran in circles, staying out of reach from the hobgoblin’s dagger.

  “Now!” Zellas yelled as he led the charge from their hiding spot.

  Not even halfway down the slope, the soldier to Landyr’s right turned to dust. The soldier to his left gave a strangled cry as his body melted, his armor falling filled with a mass of bloody carrion. For a moment Landyr agreed with Millinni and her desire to wait. However, she had decided to join the fray, as a missile of fire flew past him, striking Qual.

  The dark wizard shook off the attack and arcs of green electricity leaped from him to the crone who flew to Qual faster than any member of the Elite Troop. They had little effect on Millinni as she continued to launch plumes of fire. Qual blocked her attacks, never once halting his incantation. Hemmer and Chenessa attacked as well but to no avail.

  The Elite Troop focused on Qual’s minions instead. The minotaur tossed Bale into a three of the Elite Troop soldiers. Another soldier struggled with the hobgoblin due to Tingle and Phyl trying to use him as a human shield. The rest focused their efforts on helping Dearborn and Diminutia.

  Zellas and Landry stayed close together, both assessing the situation. While watching the wizard’s impotent attacks against Qual, Zellas said, “I feel our talents are needed in this arena. We need to sneak up behind—”

  Zellas was cut short by a sword arcing to cleave his skull. Landyr blocked the attack with his own weapon. Both men were surprised to see who attacked them—Prince Oremethus.

  “Your Highness?” Zellas asked, befuddled. The prince’s answer came in the form of another strike. Zellas blocked it and backed away.

  Landyr had little time to be confused; he had to defend against another attacker. The man with the skeleton hand lunged at him.

  The general and the sergeant clashed with the prince and his rogue, neither giving nor gaining ground. In between blows, Zellas tried to reason with the prince.

  “We are from the Elite Troop, Your Highness!” Zellas yelled, blocking yet another strike. Landyr had heard stories about the madness of Prince Oremethus but saw none of that now. There was nothing but stone-cold focus in the man’s eyes as he continued to attack the general.

  Landyr slashed at Mallen, but the rogue sidestepped, positioning himself closer to the prince. He tried to get through to Oremethus as well. “Prince Oremethus, we are here to help.”

  Zellas added, “We can take you to King Perciless. He would most certainly welcome you with open arms.”

  In a move fa
r too coordinated to be happenstance, Oremethus tossed his sword from one hand to the other and slashed at Landyr, while Mallen spun, using the prince’s back as a pivot point and caught Zellas’s sword with his skeletal hand. The move surprised Landyr, but he still brought his sword against the prince’s stopping his attack. Time froze as Mallen glared at Zellas, his bone hand, squeezing, crumpling the sword. Then Landyr saw it, saw the motivation for Oremethus to fight side-by-side with a mercenary, saw why they fought so well together. The resemblance to each other. Shoulder-to-shoulder, their heads so close together, Landyr recognized Mallen was no average cutthroat. He was a prince as well. “Daedalus!”

  The younger prince’s face was the dichotomy of sanity and madness, his wild eyes and wicked smile looking even more so next to the expressionless face of Oremethus. Daedalus yanked Zellas’ sword from his hand and tossed it aside as he thrust his own weapon into the general’s belly. “Perciless is not the king!”

  Blazing with hatred, Daedalus shoved his skeletal arm forward, impaling Zellas. With one pull, he disemboweled the general, blood and entrails slopping to the floor.

  “No!” Landyr bellowed. Forgetting who his foe was, he slashed at Oremethus. The prince blocked the strike. With strength belying his haggard state, Oremethus stepped forward, grabbed Landyr, and twisted, slamming the soldier to the ground.

  On his back, Landyr could not catch his breath; his lungs suddenly empty and shocked into paralysis. Temporarily crippled, he could only lie on his back and look up as the two princes looking down upon him. Daedalus reached for Landyr, blood oozing from bony fingers, but stopped. Both he and Oremethus looked over their shoulders. They smiled and walked away.

  Landyr’s lungs rippled within his chest. His breath returning in short, pained puffs, he turned over. The cold stone floor felt good against his cheek, inviting him to close his eyes and sleep the rest of the battle away. But as he drew in more and more air with each breath, his vigor renewed. He got to his feet and at last saw what had distracted the brothers.

  The eggs were hatching.

  Claws tore through the leathery shells, followed by snouts gaining their first breath of freedom. Then mouths and teeth, hungry to rip into this new world. Little by little, the dragons made their way from their eggs. But none of them were any kind of dragon Landyr had ever seen before.

  Each dragon possessed the aspect of a different World Maker. One had every color of gemstone for scales, even its wings. A stone dragon clawed its way out of its shell. One of fire, drooling lava as it snapped its jaws, and one of ice. Wind swirled around the dragon of air, while blue ribbons of lighting danced along the glowing skin of another. Features darker than nothingness, the void dragon ripped apart its shell. The dragon of metal and the dragon of bone made short work of what had contained each. Even the blue dragon born from water shredded through its egg. Acid seeped from the scales of another dragon. The muscles of the dragon that had been attached to the Eternity Seed looked like twisted vines, with random patches of fir tree needles for its scales.

  Now that the dragons were almost finished clawing their way free from their eggs, Qual no longer needed to divide his attention. His laughter echoed through the cavern, booming and ominous, that of a twisted god ready to smite. Extending his arms, he floated from the ground, scoffing at the binds of gravity that tethered mortals to the earth. With a wave of his hands and a few bellowed words, the top of the mountain blew away, detritus thrown outward as if the eruption of an invisible volcano. Wind rushed in from the outside, swirling, and punishing. Qual’s robes flapped about, opened and exposed his true form beneath. Dozens of insect legs of various lengths and sizes curled and unfurled. Adorning them like macabre jewelry were lengths of entrails flopping about and varied organs that swelled and deflated as Qual floated higher.

  Clouds rolled into the sky above, crashing into each other, accumulating together. The sky turned black and grew even darker. Emerald fire spread through the clouds with every crack of verdant lightning. Landyr shuddered. Foes with swords and shields were what he trained for, yearned to fight. He could even accept battling creatures with raking claws and gnashing teeth. But a wizard? One who could blow the tops off mountains and summon storms of green lightning? He could not parry a lightning strike, no matter what training he called upon. He could only ready himself for death. Or, perhaps not?

  Silver ran to the center of the room, to the pulsating black mass, and shoved his hands inside the gelatinous egg. Deliquescent fluid slid down his arms as he removed Qual’s heart. Landyr wanted to believe it could be that easy, just destroy the wizard’s heart and the madness would end, but he knew better. Qual confirmed it—he looked down at Silver and laughed harder. Until Silver sank his teeth into the heart.

  Qual shrieked and launched himself from the sky, arms outstretched, fingers desperate to rend. Mere feet away from Silver, he stopped, caught in a flurry of crimson webbing. Millinni.

  The old crone waved her hands about and spat bitter words from her mouth as if they were made from soured milk. Webbing the color of blood flowed through the air, entangling Qual. He floated upward again, trying to free himself. Arms pulled while his insect legs slashed and cut through the strands. Ink colored ichor dripped from Silver’s face as he continued to force Qual’s heart past his lips.

  Even though the wizard’s roars were terrifying, Landyr appreciated them more than the laughing. Laughter meant Qual was in control, but unintelligible screaming meant he was in trouble. Although, a being with this much power was rarely in trouble. A practiced incantation and the webbing fell away, gossamer filaments floating to the ground. Qual turned to attack.

  The black clouds swirled and funneled into the mountain’s new opening, coming to a point on Qual’s left palm. Flowing from his right were five tendrils of black smoke ringed by sporadic crackles of lightning. The fingers reached for Millinni. She conjured a hand of her own. Incarnadine flames reached past the fingers of smoke and caged Qual in their grasp. The crone spun to Silver and extended her other hand. Rivers of argent light flowed in waves, loosely binding Silver as he continued to devour the vile heart.

  Qual howled. Anger. Pain. Fear. Landyr assumed the wizard had not felt those sensations in centuries, judging from the desperation that wracked his cries. The mage tried to flee, strove to fly from the cavern, but Millinni’s grip on him was not to be broken. Even his tendrils of smoke appeared to betray him, now flowing to Silver, through Silver, and through Millinni as well. The green lighting flashed and crackled, faster with every bite Silver took from the dwindling chunk of meat. The smoke loosened, consuming all three wizards; the ribbons of light growing brighter. Millinni let loose a cry, one of pain and sacrifice.

  The smoke, the lightning, the light suffused, enveloping all three wizards. At once, the confusion stopped, all of it falling away like sand through fingers. Qual remained floating in the air.

  All fighting stopped as everyone looked up at Qual. Even the newly hatched dragons seemed to cower next to their eggs, eyeing the floating being.

  Landyr tightened the grip on his sword, still not certain how to fight a wizard with such power. But Qual seemed different as he looked around the cavern, almost bemused. Green arcs of electricity danced along his hands as he moaned, “The power.”

  “No,” Chenessa mumbled from behind Landyr. He spun but stopped himself from striking. She repeated, “No, no, no, no, no, no . . .”

  “What?” Landyr asked. “What happened?”

  Chenessa pointed to Qual. “It is Silver. Silver.”

  “Where? I don’t see him.”

  “In Qual! Even though he had Qual’s heart, he couldn’t destroy it unless he ate it, but doing that would kill him. Millinni . . . Millinni sacrificed herself to merge Silver and Qual, but since he ate Qual’s heart, he now possesses Qual.”

  Silver in Qual’s body extended his hands over his head and a sphere of
green lightning danced around him. Landyr whispered, “And his power.”

  “Yes,” Chenessa replied. “But I don’t know if he can control that kind of power.”

  Landyr and the others watched Silver fight against his newly acquired body. While he struggled, trying to contain the surrounding lightning, the princes took advantage of the situation.

  The dragon with scales of gleaming gems launched itself skyward, Oremethus riding at the base of its neck. Daedalus followed, perched upon the skeletal dragon. The other ten dragons pursued, following their leader, the stone dragon snatching up Haddaman along the way.

  A tenuous truce formed by mutual confusion and fear, the fighting did not resume. Mercenary and soldier alike gathered around Landyr. “They’re heading to castle Phenomere. They’re heading to King Perciless.”

  “We’ll never catch them,” Dearborn said.

  Cezomir elbowed Lina and asked, “Ever race a dragon before?”

  The cat woman turned her back on the werewolf as a response.

  “Maybe we can ride Tingle?” Bale suggested.

  The centaur snorted. “You can’t be serious.”

  Bale shrugged his massive shoulders. “What? I’m just trying to help!”

  “Qual can open portals if Silver can control that kind of power,” Lina said.

  The sorcerer’s body jerked and twisted, a grimace of pain on his face.

  Landyr said, “He has no control over his magic.”

  “Let me try,” Chenessa said, her body dissipating once again. As a shadow, she floated up to Silver. Black streaks danced around the wizard as if caressing him. Whatever she was doing, whatever she was saying, was working. His body no longer fraught with spasms, just mild tremors, he looked down to everyone below. The lightning surrounding him lessened from great bolts to tiny arcs, quickly fading to nothing. He extended a trembling hand and a rippling portal appeared on the ground.

  The image within the portal was distorted, but a confused King Perciless was visible sitting upon the throne. Landyr stepped through, and the others followed.