Fallen Sepulchre

by J D Franx

  “Oh, sweetie… that stupid witch bled all over you.” Bending down, Kyah cut a piece of Voranna's inner robe. She wrapped her child in it, leaving the bloody rags in the mud. The cold sparked another outburst of crying as Kyah walked down the alley past Kanin. He was still alive, whimpering as the hex magic slowly ate away at his face and legs. Kyah used her toe to push him onto his back. Looking around, she knelt at the dying man's side.

  “You tried to kill my little girl,” she whispered. The man's eyes and nose had dissolved under the caustic effects of the hex. His lips were also gone leaving him with a gruesome dead man's grin. “Can you hear me through the haze of agony?” she asked and poked at the hole where his left eye used to be. He screamed and nodded. At least, she thought he did. The quaking tremors rippling through his body made it hard to tell.

  “H... h... help... help me.... pl... please...”

  “Help you? Why would I help you when you tried to murder my baby? My sweet Kaylla...” she said, gently rocking the cooing baby.

  “No... no... no. Please...”

  “Stop begging. It's distasteful, and it will do you no good. You want to know why?” Kyah glanced around the alley, making sure she was still alone. “I'm trying to decide whether to let my baby devour your soul or whether to let you suffer until you die. My love? Now, he would put you out of your misery, and he'd never let our baby devour your soul. But he's dead now, murdered by betrayers. Your friends were lucky. They died fast. Their souls are already in one of the Nine Hells.”

  “K... kill me. Pl... please.”

  “Very well, Kanin. Because it is what my love… what Kael would have done—shown mercy. I know it is what he would have done. Besides, there are plenty of souls for my baby to feed upon and many years for her to do it.” Kyah drew the blade she used to kill Voranna from within her baby's new velvet wrap and eased it slowly into the thug's heart.

  “Say hi to my Kael when he finds you, Kanin. If you manage to retain your self-awareness, and if not… eh, I really don’t care,” she admitted as she stood. Leaving the bodies in her wake, she meandered away, singing soft lullabies to her baby.

  DAL DAGORE

  Sythrnax grunted as the very last of the Dwarven Host fell. Every Dwarven man and woman had fought until their last breath—though, he had expected nothing less. Even with the Dwarves outnumbered five-to-one, over half his force had been slaughtered by the bearded bastards while securing the Animus Seal. Most were Vascuul so the Vikress would be satisfied once the Dwarven Seal opened and it released more of their kin from an exile far worse than death. From across the city square, he saw Gahainna heading his way. She was walking which meant the Vascuul frenzy had been minor. He smiled. The Dwarves feared nothing, and the Vascuul only frenzied on fear. His smile widened when he noticed the two creepers with her were dragging a prisoner through the dirt by his feet—a Dwarven priest.

  He clapped his hands together and the sharp report echoed off the high stone walls. “Well done, Gahainna! A Dwarven prisoner! That’s a first after over eight hundred years of war. I am impressed.”

  The gorgon hissed in disgust. “Do not be so easily impressed,” she snapped. “The priest is burnt from channeling too much pretender magic.” She clicked her teeth together, and the Creepers dropped the priest to the ground. He immediately struggled to stand and eventually regained his footing.

  Sythrnax grinned. “Draven BloodPounder… my, my. Of all the priests to give up, I never for a minute would have believed it would be you. Dwarven royalty we have here, Gahainna.”

  “He is yours, Sythrnax. I care not who he is.”

  “Then, return to your sisters and enjoy the feast.” The gorgon queen nodded and slid past Sythrnax, but he grabbed her arm. “The General. Is he dead?”

  Gahainna shrugged. “Know not. This fool’s explosion probably killed him and nearly me as well.”

  Sythrnax grasped the gorgon by the throat. “Is he dead?” Gahainna tried to shrug and lifted her hands. “Then, you will gather your sisters and search until you find him. He uses magic that can harm us. Do you understand?” Gahainna gurgled and he released her. “Search the entire Deep Earth if you have to but find that Dwarf and the axes he carries. Am I clear?”

  The gorgon nodded and turned to leave. Tucking her feet back beside her legs, she slid away, cursing and spitting.

  “So hard to control the more primal species, is it not, old friend?” Sythrnax said turning back to Draven.

  “Friend? Long ago maybe, coward. Wouldn’t know about controlling others. My people had no interest in the subjugation of other races.”

  Sythrnax nodded. “As long as they didn’t have magic, true. Not so true if they did, though. Correct? I found your little device in Arkum Zul.”

  Draven laughed. The effort nearly dropped him to a knee. “We never even tried that until after you cowards attacked the Lesser races. Using the Arterius device was about survival, not control.”

  “Semantics, really,” Sythrnax shot back. “It no longer matters. Even your... god cannot help you now. All your people are dead.”

  “Not all of them, coward,” Draven snapped. “The young generation fled, and Dravik is on his way to get help.”

  Sythrnax shook his head. “My Vascuul will find your brother and kill him, but your young are already dead, along with the old, the infirm, and everyone else who fled hours ago.”

  “You lying bastard!”

  “Come now, Draven. We both know better. Perhaps visual stimulation will help.” He grabbed Draven by the neck and dragged him across the street and to a collapsed building. Tossing the Dwarf to the dirt, Sythrnax laughed as Draven took the scene in. Hundreds of bodies had been tossed into the depression created by a destroyed house. Young children and old women, along with the oldest warriors sent to protect them had all be killed and thrown into the pit like garbage. Deep claw marks and bite wounds scoured most of the bodies, but many others had been killed by bladed weapons.

  Draven let out a slow breath of air as he stared at the last of his people. Warriors he had respected, young ones he had trained, old women who had stitched him up, and one who had saved his life when he was wounded fighting the Mahala.

  “You bastard,” he whispered. “You did not have to kill them all.”

  “No, I didn’t. But your kind are worse than all the other Lesser races combined. You are stubborn, and you never quit. Even your youngest fought to the death. That is why the Dwarven race will join the Dragon Behemoths in extinction today, old friend,” Sythrnax said. “Nothing else matters. There is no help coming.”

  “You are wrong Sythrnax. It will matter when others hear what you have done here,” Draven barked with anger. He calmed quickly and smiled. “And my god is on his way to help.”

  “You’re burnt,” Sythrnax said, laughing. “You have nothing left to give to channel your phony god’s power.”

  “Nothing, but my body and my life,” Draven smiled.

  “Even your pathetic god would never dare enter this world and face one of our kind let alone me! Your insolence has only grown over the aeons.”

  “Perhaps. And perhaps, the other gods will stand by and let you destroy Talohna. But mine won’t. Izotan, the one god. I am always your vessel, and I am your body for as long as my flesh can hold you,” Draven shouted as light poured from his eyes, ears, and mouth. White flames erupted from his hands and arms while the fire quickly spread throughout his body.

  “You dare!” Sythrnax roared, summoning his staff. “If you are so foolish, child, then today one of Talohna’s new gods will die.”

  The threat was answered as the white flames exploded and Draven was gone. A fifteen-foot, flaming white avatar stood in his place.

  “This world has changed, Sythrnax,” the avatar told him.

  “You are a fool, Izotan. You waste your power and your existence for nothing.”

  “Wrong.” The raw power of the god’s voice boomed against Sythrnax’s mind and body as it echoed in the underground c
avern. “We helped the Lesser races once. We will help them, again.”

  “At what cost?” Sythrnax yelled, his anger growing. “You are not a true god! None of you are. Your presence here and the life you just took is proof of that. Only our true gods could act in Talohna with impunity—those we both used to worship! Those who are long gone. Those you try to mimic with your blasphemy! Your actions here will be catastrophic for the Lesser races, yet you still make an appearance in this reality.” Sythrnax smiled. He could feel the god weakening already. The vessel could not hold him for long.

  “Any cost to this world will be better than the life they will live on their knees under your rule,” Izotan roared. The white flames danced higher. “You will die today, Ri’Tek.” The avatar’s hand slammed into the earth.

  Ready for the attack, Sythrnax stepped back into his jump vortex and vanished as the massive fist cracked the earth open wide.

  Reappearing a short distance away, Sythrnax used the connection inside his staff to call forth the Vascuul dragon Behemoth. As the beast dropped from the sky accompanied by several of its DragonKin, he disappeared into a vortex, again. Izotan bellowed with rage when Sythrnax stepped out of his jump doorway further away. The dragon smashed into the god’s avatar, and both rolled through the city as they knocked over buildings and destroyed walls. A trail of white fire followed in their wake.

  Sythrnax stared in awe as Izotan called forth more magic from the gods’ realm and his size doubled. Easily snatching the dragon by the neck, white flames and molten rock roared from the massive avatar’s fists and poured through the dragon as it bit and snapped at Talohna’s god of stone. The DragonKin dropped from the sky, trying desperately to help, but the god smacked them from the air like the pests they were.

  Kurse crashed to the dirt beside his master and slowly rose to his feet. “Ideas on how to bring down a god?” he muttered. The mutated Vascuul seemed more indifferent than hurt even with jagged pieces of broken bone pushing through both arms.

  Sythrnax laughed. “Of course,” he chuckled. “Kill a god with a god, not a fledgling god-child.” Turning to Kurse, he handed the DragonKin commander his staff as the Vascuul dragon exploded among Izotan’s roaring white flame. “Take this to commander Nyr at the seal and tell him to proceed. I will stall the phony god.” Kurse folded his broken arms around the staff. He nodded and leapt into the air, his wings carried him away.

  Sythrnax slowly headed for the towering god. The dragon fell dead, nothing but a pile of charred bones. The avatar turned to face him, so Sythrnax slid into another vortex as the ground exploded around him and stepped out of the modified Fae magic much closer to the Dwarven god.

  He winced. The heat from the white-hot molten stone surrounding the charred dragon was intense, even behind his magical shield. “You probably should have left the dragon alive, Izotan.”

  “Still the dictator,” the god rumbled. “You Ri’Tek will never change. That is why we fight, Sythrnax. Regardless of the cost.”

  “Even at the cost of your own life?”

  “Yes,” Izotan thundered.

  It made Sythrnax’s head and body ache, but he felt the sudden change in the atmospheric pressure around the ruins. He smiled up at the creature who long ago had been considered one of his own.

  “Feel that, Izotan? The seal your precious Dwarves protected for so long has just been opened.”

  “It won’t save your life,” the god barked. Snatching Sythrnax in his giant hand, Izotan lifted him to eye level. It took all his concentration to keep his shield in place while the god’s power raged against his magic. “I can feel the hatred this vessel and that of his brother had for you. The crimes you committed against their family, their race—”

  “How dare you judge me?” Sythrnax snapped over him. “You may have ascended, but I was born centuries before you. You were still Ri’Tek at one point in your life.”

  The avatar growled. “I see the Vikress is still polluting our true past with lies and propaganda. You know well that I was one of those whom you call the Lost. I gave the Dwarven race my protection because I am one of their ancestors—not a scaly, treacherous Ri’Tek bastard.”

  Sythrnax laughed in the god’s face as he saw the first inhabitant of the Dwarven seal rocket from the dimensional rift almost a half mile away. He had stalled long enough. “Perhaps, but you have retained one of our weaknesses—you talk too much. That dragon you killed so carelessly?” Sythrnax asked as he nodded over Izotan’s shoulder. “It’s very big brother just escaped the seal.” The avatar dropped Sythrnax and whirled, but it was too late. As he fell into his vortex, Sythrnax watched the Behemoth Vascuul slam into the god’s avatar and drive it into the ground. Stepping through another vortex well out of range of the monstrous battle, he saw the Vascuul dragon unleashed over twelve thousand years of frustration on the Dwarven god. Putrid black flaming acid tore into Izotan’s avatar, snuffing the white flame. The attack went on relentlessly uninterrupted until the avatar shrieked and melted, leaving behind no trace it or Draven BloodPounder had ever existed.

  Kurse dropped from the sky and landed gently at his side. “Primal god,” he said. “Makes sense.”

  “They were in a sense, yes. More so now that they are Vascuul,” Sythrnax replied. “Unfortunately, that is the only one left.”

  The mutated DragonKin commander shrugged, indifferent as ever. “Better than none. There is one of your kind from the seal who wants to speak to you.”

  “It can wait. There were none of important rank stationed at the fight when the seal opened,” Sythrnax said.

  Kurse frowned. “Perhaps tell him that, then.” The DragonKin turned and held out his hand. Sythrnax stared bewildered, not quite sure if his eyes were showing him reality.

  “Son?” Sythrnax let out. “Can’t... be...” The naked man walking his way was undoubtedly his son, though he was certain his son had been dead for decades before the exile. “How?”

  “Father? What happened?” The young man stumbled on his feet, but Sythrnax caught him. The connection was immediate and he knew the man was his son—one of the most powerful Syddic priests to ever live.

  Sythrnax grinned and held his son. “Ghul...”

  The Vikress would be extremely happy the High Syddic priest who had first created the Vascuul was alive and free.

  FOREST OF ABANDONED SOULS, YEAR 210

  THE AFTERLIFE

  “Which one?” Kael asked as he hung the second last token from the ninth limb of the Tree of Life and dropped to the ground.

  Jasala frowned. “I don’t know, but it is not going to work if we choose wrong, and we are out of time. Perdition’s barrier is already starting to waver. Garz’x and the others will be here and soon.”

  Kael rubbed his forehead in frustration. They had been trying for decades to reach the forest, but every time they tried, they had been pulled into a different hell by demon magic under the command of Garz’x. Now that they were finally here, he could not decide. “Yeah. Tydariel or Arreal?”

  Jasala pushed her hair back over her Elvehn ears. “I cannot guess. If it were me, I would use Tydariel’s.”

  Kael sighed. “She did seem more honest, and she didn’t try to capture us—or kill us.” Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes and hung the lock of wired golden hair from the highest branch on the tree’s Paradise side. Nothing happened.

  “I’m alive,” he proclaimed. “So, that’s a start.”

  “Tydariel told the truth,” Jasala said. A nervous laugh of relief slipped past her lips.

  “Uh, yeah, but why isn’t it working?” Jasala shook her head and stared at him. “Everything you were told by Yrlissa, and what we’ve learned over the past two hundred years all lead to the Tree of Life being the doorway out of here. Nine branches on the Perdition side and three on Paradise’s side. We must be overlooking something... think, Jasala. You’ve been here for like a million years.”

  “I’m sorry, Kael. The tokens represent your control of all the realms
of the afterlife. Joining that power with the Tree of Life is supposed to be your way back.”

  “Is it because Garz’x surrendered his realm and then changed his mind when he discovered the double cross? He’s not exactly a normal demon lord like Rajazeye.”

  “No, he gave it willingly. From what I was told, that is all that matters. His token is good. They all are. He’s only coming after you now because he knows you will turn over the extra tokens to Salo RedMaw.”

  The barrier on the forest’s left side ruptured, exploding outward as Garz’x and his hordes poured onto the field. The demon lord’s distance between them was uncomfortable.

  “Jasala?” Kael asked as he prepared to fight.

  The ancient DeathWizardess cursed under her breath and both her hands flared with magic. “I am sorry, Kael. I have told you all I know. Yrlissa Blackmist told me that joining my control of the afterlife with the Tree of Life would get me home. I have told you all of what she shared—knowledge from the mouth of a god. But like every other Kai’Sar who has died and arrived in the afterlife whole, I could never accomplish what you have. My vines were far from growing to maturity at the time of my death. I never had a chance. Even if they had, I do not have your affinity for magic, your intelligence, or your will.” She paused for a second and quickly gave him a hug. “I will hold the demons back for as long as I can. You will have about five minutes to either figure out how to leave or else run so you can try again another day.”

  “Jasala, wait. I can’t let you do this.”

  “You have to, Kael. I could not come with you anyway.” Her voice caught in her throat, and regret danced in her eyes as she released him. “Thank you for the years of freedom you gave me and for all you shared during our years together. Now, I must go. They’re coming.”

  “I should be thanking you,” he said. “For everything. I couldn’t have done this without you. I am going to miss you.”

  “Good luck, my friend,” Jasala said as she turned away. Without looking back, she added, “If you do get back and you find her… tell Yrlissa I know it wasn’t her fault.”