Dungeon Master 5

by Eric Vall

  I flipped the ribs in my hand and pointed the bone downward at the Blood-Curdler, and with my new weapons, I slammed downward with both hands and felt the creature’s flesh part once more as its own ribs pierced through its chest then traveled deeper.

  I was familiar with these monstrosities, so I knew what needed to be done to slay them, thus this instructional lesson on the easiest way to murder them before more of the monsters arrived. I put all of my weight behind the bone and pushed it deep into the creature’s chest cavity, and finally, the creature made a sound for the first time since we encountered it. It sounded like a wheeze at first, and I could hear my minions shift uncomfortably behind me on their Bantams.

  The wheeze that erupted from its lips heightened to a wail then a scream, and I had to squint my eyes out of pain. I let go of the rib bone right as the Blood-Curdler dropped to the dead leaves that blew across the path. I turned back to my minions, and they all stared at me with wide, awestruck eyes, but there was no time to relax as the forest around us burst alive with sounds of running feet. I couldn’t tell how many there were from the moving shadows around us, but from what Rana had said earlier, there must at least have been one hundred surrounding us in the forest. I already sensed the god’s power here, the Blood-Curdlers were of his creation, and from the way they moved strategically in the shadows, I knew they had to be communicating with each other silently or by the will of the deity. I only had a few seconds to convey my message to my women as they prepared themselves for the attack.

  Annalise pulled Bloodscale, and her unnamed sword from their sheaths with the swish of metal against leather, and her chocolate brown eyes found mine in the darkening gloom around us. Carmedy reached for her pouches one by one, and her tail snapped behind her back as she worked at creating a potion that would take out as many of the creatures as possible at once. Morrigan whipped her head around and stared into the woods with wholly black eyes, the emerald green light surrounding her hands entirely, and the light licked up her arms like fire. Rana pulled an elven dagger, placed it between her teeth then held her right hand over her chest as rays of white blinded the rest of us in the darkness. The hilt of the Eye of Alipsis emerged from inside her, and her blue eyes glowed with the same light that streamed from her chest as she pulled the sword out from inside her body.

  Pride swelled in my chest every time they prepared for battle. When I had first met them, they had been so inexperienced, but with my guidance and instruction, they had flourished like blooming flowers before me.

  “The heart!” I yelled to them right as the first few of the Blood-Curdlers broke from the trees and advanced on my women and their Bantams. “Aim for their hearts! It is the only way to kill them!”

  Chapter Ten

  Blood-Curdlers poured from the trees in the waning blue light, and my minions snapped into action, their collective fear forgotten in the moment of action. I whirled the God Slayer over my head and slammed the blades into the back of one of the creatures at it raced past. I noticed quickly that their attention wasn’t on me but on my minions and I assumed that it was because of the hot, mortal blood that coursed through their veins. My avatar had all the parts and organs that any mortal man had, but they weren’t of the same flesh and blood that the Blood-Curdlers wanted. I wasn’t their favorite meal… but there was more.

  I threw back my head and glared up at the darkened castle and knew it was the work of the god trapped inside. These creatures were given strict instructions, murder the minions, and leave the Master.

  There was no way in hell I was going to allow that to happen.

  I stepped forward as the Blood-Curdlers overran my women and their Bantams, but my minions fought well despite their frightened animals. My eyes widened, and I breathed deeply through my nose and sucked in the earthy forest smells as I pooled my dark power into every cell of my avatar’s body. All around me, dead tree roots sprang from the rocky earth like whips and snapped and gripped around the creatures as I called on the forest god’s power.

  As I gritted my teeth and pushed my power farther into the ground, Carmedy slipped from the back of Kura with her slingshot at the ready. I didn’t have to follow the movement of the bundle as it whizzed through the air. The effects were clear as the ground rumbled with the explosion and the wave of fire that followed. The Blood-Curdlers screamed and covered their eyes from the bright light, and I watched as the feline’s emerald eyes widened then hardened in their sockets. The petite alchemist retreated into the mass of Bantams and worked feverishly at her bundles as she mixed multiple potions at once.

  Carmedy lifted her slingshot into the air, but this time, she pointed it upwards towards the dead branches overhead. The cat let go of the leather bands with a snap, and three bundles flew into the air at once. Once they reached their highest peak, there was a loud crackling in the air as the packets roared to life with bright fire and kindled the branches. The Blood-Curdlers screamed in fear and took a few wary steps back from my minions and their birds as sparks and burning embers filtered down from the sky.

  Meanwhile, Annalise reached behind her as she stood in her Bantams saddle and pulled both Bloodscale and the unnamed sword from their sheaths. Their blades glowed in the orange and red light made from the fire burning above, and she tucked both swords close to her body and flipped from the saddle as she attacked.

  Now ready, I moved my power from my body and transferred it to the roots that hung in the air like writhing snakes, and they came to life under my dark touch. Dirt and dust lifted in the air as the roots snapped through the air, wrapped around the Blood-Curdlers like pythons and ripped them from the ground. The roots squeezed the creatures, and bloodless, colorless intestines exploded up their throats from the force. Other dark brown roots grabbed the Blood-Curdlers and used their pointed ends like feelers and ripped through their paper-thin flesh. The creatures gripped onto the vines as they struggled to tear free, but I held tightly to them with my power and crushed them into blobs of pale skin and innards, but I wasn’t finished with the undead creatures yet.

  I hoped the god was watching as the dark power I had transferred into the ground came to life and burst from the earth in a mix of onyx black and untamed emerald which licked at the feet of the Blood-Curdlers like fire. The creatures howled in pain but kept fighting forward towards my minions. I knew we were at a disadvantage, there were only five of us, and each time we killed one, ten more would appear from the woods. Soon, we would be overrun by the creatures unless we finished this swiftly.

  I lifted the God Slayer towards a horde of twenty Blood-Curdlers as they crammed together with their pale arms reaching out for Rana as she thrust forward with the Eye of Alipsis and skewered one of the creatures directly through the chest. The fox-woman pulled back with a roar, and the Blood-Curdler tumbled to the group dead at her Bantam’s feet. I turned my head as I slashed with the God Slayer and took down two of the creatures at once while Morrigan’s hands slammed out, and the death fog burst from her palms like an inferno and consumed five of the Blood-Curdlers at once.

  My minions were doing well under the pressure of so many foes, but from their strained faces, I knew they were worried about whether we would win this battle or not. I was about to show them that their fears were unfounded when an arrow flew past my head. Though I was not the target, the pointed tip narrowly grazed the side of my face, and I didn’t need to be a god to feel the power that pulsed from the arrow. It flew past, through the air before it sunk into the chest of one of the Blood-Curdlers that attempted to grab onto Carmedy. The feline screamed as the creature collapsed onto Kura, and she hastily shoved it off with frightened paws.

  I whipped my head in the direction the arrow had come from and saw that, down the path that led from Sangiam, a person approached with the clank of armor, a bow held tightly in her hand as she took aim once more. I growled deep in the back of my throat as I recognized the intruder immediately from the brilliant gray hair that whipped about her face in an unseen gale and her
blazing, blood-red eyes as she homed in on a Blood-Curdler directly behind me and let the arrow whiz through the air. The shaft buried itself deep in the unholy creature's chest and easily killed it where it stood. What I assumed was a goddess stood in the path with her hip cocked and a wicked smile on her lips as her insane eyes rolled in their sockets and searched for her next target.

  She wore armor that barely covered her body, but I knew she didn’t need it. It would take more than a weak Blood-Curdler to harm a true god, and that was yet another reason none of them attacked me but instead went after my women. The plated chest piece that came down from her shoulders cupped her breasts and put them on display for all to see, and if I looked close enough at the ample cleavage, I could see purple veins and decay over the colorless flesh there. The spiked pauldrons over her shoulders twisted to sharp tips, and the cuirass over her stomach plated together at a seam then flared out at her hips into sharp points like knives.

  The plackart of her armor were shaped into the same type blackened metal as the red of it but it came down into a point between her legs. Most of her thighs were bare and what was covered was partially obscured by blood red swaths of ribbon that rippled as she walked. Her gauntlets were long and came up above her elbows, and the flesh between the arm coverings, and the pauldrons was wrapped in the same scarlet ribbons. Her armor looked like it was a weapon all in itself, and from the way she sauntered up the path, she knew it and knew how to use it.

  As she lifted the bow once more, I saw that it was made from bone as I had suspected, and the grip where she placed her hand was the remnants of a skull and the sharpened tip of the arrow she poised to shoot protruded from the left eye socket of the skull.

  The arrow ripped past me, and I felt the crackle of dark power that emanated not only from it but from her. The other gods were unseen, but I could sense their powers as they moved about the forest and aided us in the attack.

  Once more, I didn’t need their help, nor had I asked for it. I gripped the God Slayer and moved to strike out at the goddess, but she was gone in a flash as she worked a wide circle around the Blood-Curdlers, her arrows flashes in the darkness before they took out many creatures. In the shadows, I saw the whip of red hair and knew that the woman who rode the tiger in the battle against the Tintagal soldiers was finally showing herself, and her colossal claymore was a blur through the air as she stabbed out ferociously. The gray-haired woman raced passed me, and I had enough time to roar a question at her as we were shoulder to shoulder.

  “Why are you here?” I yelled, and she whipped her blood-red eyes to glare at me, and the cackling, insane laughter roared up her throat as I spoke again. “I didn’t call for you. Why are you here?”

  “Why are we here?” she repeated through peels of laughter that rose and fell in pitch madly as she placed another arrow in the crook and aimed nonchalantly. Her cool reply almost rocked me back on my heels as her scarlet eyes leveled with mine and glimmered with madness. “Because the Sanctum of the Heavens has fallen, and my friends and I want to raise hell with the infamous demon.”

  Before I could speak again, she was gone, and I watched as the woman with red hair slashed forward with her massive claymore and killed four of the Blood-Curdlers at once. The sword she held resembled the Eye of Alipsis when the Tichádáma wielded it, and the unearthly glow that surrounded the blade confirmed that it was indeed a weapon forged by the gods like I had thought. The armor the red-haired woman wore was much different from the other woman’s and silver metal covered her entire body except for her head, where her long, wavy red hair waved like a warning. Her eyes resembled the Blood-Curdler’s in a way, and they glowed a feral yellow in the darkness like that of a predatory cat on the prowl through the jungle.

  From behind the Bantams and my minions perched on top of them as they fought off the approaching Blood-Curdlers, I could see the top of the bald man’s head who wielded the long-staffed scythe. He wasn’t as graceful in his movements like the two women were, and I could tell he was having difficulty killing the creatures with the sweeping movements of the curved blade, but despite this, he put a dent in the ranks of the horde. I could sense the presence of the second man but he was hidden away in the shadows, and if I weren’t busy destroying the Blood-Curdlers, I could have pinpointed him easily in the tree line. I knew that his power was best used on the living, anything with a mortal soul and a beating heart, for which these creatures were neither of those things. If he tried to use his powers now, he’d only harm my minions, and he must have observed that I was very protective of my women and wouldn’t allow a hair on their heads to be harmed.

  I pushed forward through the horde and destroyed the blood-sucking creatures as if they were wheat before my scythe, and they shrank away from me as Carmedy let loose another ball of fire into the air. Their horde had been at least a hundred men and women, and now, there was only a few left as we picked the stragglers off one by one.

  I smelled death in the air though it wasn’t a natural human death, this was the scent of unearthly creatures released from their flesh prisons. I noticed early on that the Blood-Curdlers, besides the first one who attacked, worked and moved in droves almost like an army, and they came in waves or all at once to smother us. I didn’t use all of the powers that I had taken from the deities in dungeons, only the forest god’s power because I knew I had to save my strength for the god that waited above in the castle. Despite the unasked-for help, I was glad for it and would thank the gods when we were finished.

  I chuckled deep in my throat as the last Blood-Curdler standing slammed backward by a blow of Morrigan’s whipping green elf magic, and I watched as her left hand thrust out to let loose a blast that punctured a hole in the beast’s chest. The elven woman’s eyes hardened for a second as she thrust her palm out once more, and the black heart beating inside the whole was consumed with her power and exploded. No blood burst out as the Blood-Curdlers were devoid of blood, and most of their organs were dry as bone too. Even their hearts simply turned to ash and floated off in the wind. The last night-creature crumbled to the earthen path and the white-haired elf slumped onto the neck of her Bantam as she breathed hard.

  My other minions sensed Morrigan’s weakness and rushed to their sister’s aid. I pushed the God Slayer into my void pocket and ran to my elven lover as well. She began to slide off the large bird, but I caught her in my arms. Her heart was beating wildly, and I could feel the pulse through her clothes. My white-haired lover was breathing heavily, and Fea and Macha flew above our heads as they cawed loudly in distress.

  Morrigan’s head fell back into the crook of my arm as Carmedy’s hands rushed over the thin woman’s extremities and checked for any visible wounds. I watched as Morrigan’s wholly black eyes returned to normal as she breathed heavily through her mouth. She held onto me tightly, and her face was paler than usual. I held her with one arm and reached out with my free hand to stroke her cool cheeks with the back of my hand.

  “Are you all right, my love?” I whispered as I stared down into her eyes and searched for any pain or any other reason to worry.

  “Y-yes,” Morrigan struggled out as her hands tightened on me and I let her rest for a moment before she spoke again. “I only overexerted myself, I believe.”

  “Yup,” Carmedy uttered as she nodded once and began whipping up a potion in a small bulb-shaped bottle. Her paws moved deftly as she mixed in a few brightly colored herbs then reached into her pack and retrieved the precious Azoth we had found in Nergal’s dungeon. The feline tipped the bottle twice and allowed two silver droplets into the liquid below. She swirled the mixture together, and as she offered it to Morrigan, it gave off a pleasant flowery scent. “Just be more careful next time.”

  Morrigan reached out for the mixture the cat offered, eyed it for a moment, then tipped her head back against my arm as she drank it down. Within a few seconds, her heartbeat had calmed, and she no longer shook. I slowly let go but kept my arms out in case she fell again, but she seemed s
teadier on her feet now than she was before.

  Morrigan gave the feline a small thankful smile which Carmedy returned happily as she rearranged the bundles at her waist. I kept my eyes on my elven lover, but she seemed fine as she raised her head to me and stroked my cheek lovingly. I studied her face as a small amount of color returned to her cheeks. While I wasn’t angry with her, she had done something she knew that I wouldn’t be happy with.

  “If you don’t know how to control that power, and it takes that amount of energy from you, you shouldn’t use it until you know how to control it properly.” The words fell from my lips, and I knew my tone sounded harsh, but it was something that both of us knew needed to be said.

  Morrigan’s cheeks tinted pink as she lowered her face away from mine, but I caught her by the chin and forced her to look into my eyes. Her dark eyes shook in their sockets as she looked into my handsome face, and I knew she was sorry, but eventually, I would have to train her on how to use this newly discovered power. She couldn’t go around using it if it drained her of all her energy. I needed all of my minions healthy, strong, and resilient, and they shouldn’t do things they didn’t know how to do. It was the very same with Rana, and I cursed myself for not training her with the Eye when we had spare time.