Crypt of the Violator

by K. J. Coble

  “Wait.” The Nuburran point a restraining hand on Strayden’s shoulder. He waved to the others, bristling and tensing behind torches and weapons. “Just, hold.”

  Aelren hadn’t retreated, was still prowling cautiously forward. As he drew near what had appeared as a wave of attackers, his torch lit up a figure, slightly larger than a living man, but all stone, still faintly colored with pigments that gave its features the semblance of reality.

  Strayden blew out a breath.

  “Look at them all,” Aelren was saying.

  Dozens stood, rank after rank, in the gloom. Occasionally streamers of cobwebs glimmered as the Vothans’ motions stirred the stale air. Lifeless faces scowled. Blank eyes glowered. All matched the mute ferocity of the first, fashioned to appear armored in the manner of their long-past era, the weird sickle-swords of ancient Xyxian guards in their fists. These they held at some semblance of a parade-rest, as though the host of them awaited orders.

  And the entity giving the orders towered on the far side of the chamber behind them. Columns lined the opposite wall, a pair of them flanking a monstrous throne. Upon this sat a huge stone statue, easily the size of some of the less-modest villas in Scintallard. The figure wore the headdress of royalty and, while time and dust had dulled much of what had been crafted to appear as a finely-muscled physique, the face was quite clear, smirking cruelly, blank eyes watching the intruders with obvious scorn.

  “Man in charge,” Strayden said with a whistle of awe.

  “Thyss-Mallik,” Durrak whispered.

  The name echoed in the dark, through the ranks of stone soldiers. It sounded almost as though they repeated it.

  Aelren’s course had led him to the middle of the room. There, a lane opened between the blocks of false troops, led straight to the base of the throne. He paused, looking back and forth at the statues to either side before turning to meet Strayden’s gaze. Sweat tracks glimmered down the sides of his face.

  “This way?”

  “Seems kind of obvious,” Durrak growled.

  “Yeah,” Strayden replied, “which is why I don’t like it.”

  He panned his torch about, straining his eyes to scan the far sides of the chamber. The columns marched all around the perimeter, evenly-spaced and holding up the vast ceiling, which was, itself, marked over with pictograms and script. Their party’s feeble light barely warmed the high surface, but scenes of battle and victory weren’t hard to discern.

  “The work this must have taken,” the White Guard Militant—Modyn—whispered in awe. His armor clanked as he limped to a halt in the middle of the floor and stared up. “All the artisans in Scintallard wouldn’t finish this in a decade.”

  “Yeah, it’s great,” Strayden replied drolly. He knelt as the flicker of flames caught a smudge on the floor he’d missed before. Better light revealed a track through the dust, footprints and obviously a weight dragged through it. His heart thumped against the ribs and he stood. “There! Follow that!”

  The trail writhed off to the right, around the blocks of stone infantry. Strayden shouldered past the others, still gawking at their surroundings. The tracks traced a meandering line, then a sharp angle, following the perimeter of the room and worming back and forth at points, as though struggles had occurred. Gorge rising and his pulse fluttering, Strayden hurried, rushing past the flank of the stone army and prowling along the far side of the chamber. He could hear the others following now.

  The tracks led them to the rear, right corner of the room, off to one side of the great, throne of Thyss-Mallik. A glance up at the devil sent a thrill of fear down Strayden’s spine. He swore the bastard had been looking over that them. But poor light revealed only that proud, haughty profile, staring forward over his massed ranks of false men.

  A door barred the way further. Cobwebs encrusted it, but recent disturbance had shivered them away to reveal the glimmer of gold beneath. What looked like hand and claw prints at its left edge had scrawled bare imagery of birds and reptiles and other, less obvious forms. Hieroglyphs spelled their incomprehensible instructions—or warnings.

  The trail led to the base of the door and vanished under it.

  “Well, that seems pretty obvious,” Aelren said, coming up to stand behind Strayden.

  Modyn pressed to the fore. “Then we must hurry!”

  The bloodied Militant seemed unsteady and Strayden wondered about the blow he’d taken to the head. But he wasn’t wrong. Strayden shoved his axe into his belt and reached out to the edge of the door, where the smudges showed it’d been forced, and paused. Nerves tingled. He’d seen enough trickery already that this seemed—as Aelren had said—pretty obvious. But Lyssa had been dragged off somewhere beyond that shining door. There wasn’t time to be cautious.

  Strayden touched the golden surface.

  Nothing happened.

  Cursing his nervousness, Strayden reached for the edge of the door, where it met the frame, and crooked his fingers into the crack. Finding a grip, he pulled. Nothing gave. He turned and handed his torch back to Modyn. Both hands freed, he got a double-grip, now, spread his feet for leverage, and pulled. Fingers numbed, sinews popped, and Strayden quickly felt his pulse rise to his temples, pounding as the strain accomplished nothing. He released with an explosion of breath and turned, sweating, to shake his head at the others.

  “Maybe not so obvious.” He pointed at Modyn and Aelren. “You two, together with me.”

  It took a moment of fumbling and cursing, but they each positioned themselves to support the others, Modyn gripping just below Strayden, Aelren on the floor with his boot heels against the doorframe for leverage. The others stood back, angling torches for light—some more helpfully than others, Ordin singeing a comrade in his clumsiness.

  Ready, Strayden nodded and the threesome leaned into it.

  Again, fingers trembled and slipped at the edge. Again, joints crackled with strain and the red tide of Strayden’s blood rose in a squeezing wave to his face. Sweat sparkled his brow. Teeth ground till he thought one had split. But nothing. The thrice-damned door mocked them with its immobility.

  “Gruzh’s balls!” he roared, released his grip.

  The others let go, as well, Modyn dropping onto his back with a clatter of armor. He wheezed and his brutish, scarred features remained brightly crimson, the color deepening as fresh blood leaked from his mashed nose. Strayden looked up at Horsa in alarm and nodded at the kid’s wineskin. The youth took the meaning and scrambled to the Militant’s side, propped the man up, and uncorked the skin to offer it to him.

  “Well, that was thoroughly effective,” Aelren hissed.

  “I suppose you have a better idea?” Strayden griped back at him. A wave of rage crested and he slammed a boot against the unyielding gold surface. The blow didn’t even leave a mark and pain shot up his leg. “Gruzh’s stinking ass! How in the Endless Hells did those bony, rotten things pry their way through!”

  “Think I got an answer to that,” Durrak answered from the left side of the door, where he held his torch out to light what looked like a circular hole in the wall.

  Strayden stepped to his side and looked. The hole was crafted into the semblance of a sun, with the beams and corona as its rim, about a foot across and twice that deep. At the back of this cylinder a handle made it plain that one was to grip and turn, probably triggering some lock or counterweight that would release the door.

  A hand severed at the wrist and still gripping the handle made it clear that opening the door would come at a cost.

  “Why do I get the feeling locksmith was the most dangerous profession in Old Xyxia?” Strayden quipped.

  Durrak chuckled but his features pinched in concentration as he nudged the head of his axe into the space, prodded the chopped-off appendage. With a crackle, the fingers came apart and the whole thing crumbled from the grip. Durrak wrinkled his nose. “It was one of theirs.” He met Strayden’s gaze. “So now we know.”

  “But what do we do about it?” Strayden half
-crouched to look around the insides of the cylinder. “There’s a groove. You can see where the blade, or whatever, retracts. It must trigger when the handle’s fully-turned.”

  “That’s great!” Aelran snorted. “All we need is someone with a hand to spare!”

  Durrak rolled his eyes at the pun, while the others giggled nervously. “You’re an idiot.”

  “I’m an idiot who’s keeping both his hands,” Aelren replied with a significant glower at Strayden.

  “And no one’s asking you to stick it in there” Strayden scowled at him “your hand or otherwise!” That triggered more chortling and Ordin nudged Aelren, but Strayden’s focus went back to the lock mechanism. “We are going to have to figure something, though.”

  “Rope,” Durrak said. When Strayden looked at him questioningly, he went on. “We tie one end to the handle, the other end to an axe, and twist. It shouldn’t need that much force, if one of those things was able to work it.”

  Strayden nodded. “Get on it.” He glanced at the tracks dragged under the bottom of the door. “And hurry.”

  He stepped back as Aelren produced a length of rope from his pack and he and Durrak got to work fashioning their solution. The others watched in various states of impatience or boredom, torches sputtering, chain mail hissing as they shifted. Horsa tended to Modyn. Ordin and one of the others wandered off to the side, eyeing the rows of statues.

  “Stay close,” Strayden growled.

  Their torches’ illumination danced over the stone infantrymen. Strayden had to admire the eerie artistry of them. At the same time, he had to agree with the Militant’s awe at all the work that had gone into them and their surroundings—all to commemorate a dead tyrant.

  Waste.

  His gaze went to the ranks arrayed closer to the huge effigy of Thyss-Mallik. Not all had weathered the ages as well. A dozen or so appeared to have crumbled to the floor, leaving eggshell-like shards in piles around the stubs of broken-off ankles and shins.

  Curiosity piqued, Strayden prowled a little further from the work at the door. A few cautious steps brought him near the crumbles. Ordin followed, his torch adding extra details as he drifted between statues. Strayden knelt and examined the remains. They didn’t look like marble or stone, seemed rather brittle, instead, like terracotta. Picking up a fragment, it looked like he held a peeling that had been part of a forearm. Shards of still-standing feet and legs appeared the same, almost like they’d been hollow.

  Hollow...

  Strayden stood, jolts of alarm lighting up and down his body. He glanced about, searching the uncertainly-lit gloom. Piles of dust and fragments showed dragged marks, showed foot prints. And they all led towards the entrance to the chamber—the direction the Vothans had come in.

  “Don’t touch anything,” Strayden hissed to Ordin. When the brute didn’t reply, he turned to him. “Don’t—”

  The big fool had his hand on the shoulder of one of the statues, leaning on it to support his weight. He frowned at Strayden, uncomprehending.

  With a crackle, the arm of the statue exploded, sending splinters and powder flying. An arm—a real one—emerged from within and grabbed Ordin by the front of his corselet. The Vothan froze, dumbfounded and powdered in disintegrating terracotta, as a hideous shape writhed forth from the collapsing shell of what they’d supposed was a monument.

  Strayden reacted without thought, dropping the shard he’d picked up and hefting his axe in both hands. The thing had Ordin in both arms, now. Funerary rags and long-dried flesh crackled as it grappled for his throat. Strayden pivoted to one side, cocked back, and swung. Vothan steel blasted into the abomination’s spine and kept going until it lodged deep in the foulness of the thing.

  The living dead thing flinched and both hands sprung free of Ordin, who staggered and fell backwards, bleating. It tried to turn with Strayden’s weapon still in it. But the motion rent it further open—and further in half. An arm batted frantically, glanced off Strayden’s helm as it missed his face and the whole thing came apart, falling in halves to the floor. Dust and acrid-smelling putrescence piled at his feet and many-legged things scattered free.

  Crack!

  Strayden spun at the sound. Movement shivered in the dark, amongst the statue ranks all around them.

  Crack-crack-crackle!

  Dust filled the air in gagging clouds. Line after line of statue warriors shivered and began shedding what became clear now were actually shells. Not shells, Strayden thought in a horrified moment. Some kind of sepulchers...these men were condemned to stand guard for eternity, encased until disturbed.

  And disturbed, they were. Dozens of forms squirmed free of their encasements, stumbling, staggering, and turning, all of them, towards the party clustering at the door to the rear corner of the chamber.

  “Ordin, get back!” Strayden started to backpedal, himself, holding his axe before him. “Durrak, we’ve got trouble!”

  “I can see that!” the Nuburran called from where he and Aelren worked, feverishly now. “What the hells did you do?”

  Strayden didn’t have time to answer. A dead guard lurched for him from the left, arms outstretched for a lethal hug. Rather than give it his axe’s edge, Strayden slammed the claws to his right with the handle, sent the thing half-spinning. With it off-balance, Strayden lifted his boot and kicked it in the back, knocking it into the wave of monsters following, triggering a many-limbed pile-up.

  Dead claws caught on Strayden’s left sleeve. He tried to flinch away, but the thing was already on him, jaw stretching wide, time-blackened flesh cracking and peeling away from bones. And the icy touch of before lanced into his flesh, stole sensation, stole strength. With a bleat of alarm, Strayden shot an elbow into that face, rocked the head back with a puff of dust. But it kept coming, and something now had a grip on his leg, that numbing touch. He looked down to see the top half of the mummy-guard he’d cleaved before fumbling for his ankle.

  An axe blasted into the crown of Strayden’s attacker. Ordin wrenched back, pulling the monster with it. With a quick yank, he pulled his weapon free and dropped the thing with a two-handed shove. But another grabbed him from behind, arms wrapped fully around. He writhed, tried to fold over to throw it off, but his balance went and they tumbled together to the floor.

  Strayden tried to reach him. But a tide of mummified figures washed over the pair of as they struggled. Bony fists rose and fell, knuckles coming back painted red. Ordin’s howls of fury became squeals of pain that were then lost over a horrid cacophony of thundering blows.

  And the things were still coming, still clawing for Strayden’s flesh.

  “Shield wall!” he wheezed as he scrambled the last couple yards to the others.

  He needn’t have said anything. Shields locked together in a grim semicircle around the door, opening only long enough to drag him through. The moment their rims clacked back together, elmwood and steel bosses rang with a rain of impacts as the mummified guards crashed into them. Vothans had dropped torches to bring weapons to bear, only Horsa and one other—providing illumination for Durrak and Aelren—giving them light to fight by. For long, hammering moments, all was a weird, pummeling brawl in the black.

  “Out of time!” Strayden bawled to Durrak as he took a spot in the line.

  “We’re ready!” the other man replied. He nodded to Aelren.

  Together, they’d tied the handle and then twisted the lengths of rope into tight coils then fastened them to Durrak’s axe. The latter served as lever as the pair wrenched the whole thing around, twisting to the right. Stone and something distantly mechanical grated and clanked. A boom went through the walls and floor, felt even over the thunder of mummified fists punishing shields.

  The shriek of a blade slicing down sounded over everything. A momentary glint of steel flashed through the taut lengths of rope, splaying them explosively free, one coil lashing back into Aelren’s face. Both he and Durrak flopped away as dust plumed from the lock hatch. Aelren didn’t immediately get up.r />
  And the door didn’t budge.

  But a crash at the far side of the chamber indicated something had. Strayden couldn’t exactly see through the zombified press against the shield wall, but between blows and silently biting faces, he caught the golden glimmer of a fresh door slammed down over the hall through which they’d entered this terrible place—cutting them off.

  “The hells did you do?” he screeched at Durrak.

  The Nuburran was wobbling to his feet. Metal squealed again as the lock trap retracted into its hidden groove. He snatched a torch left guttering on the floor and thrust it in, scowled. “I...I think we twisted the wrong way.”

  “The wrong way?” Strayden squawked as a rotten fist shattered on his shield face.

  “There weren’t exactly instructions!” Durrak roared back. He reached down to pull the apparently recovering Aelren to a sitting position. The younger man’s face was a smear of blood, the snap of the rope looking to have broken his nose. “Worry about your pretty face later,” Durrak barked at him. “Work to do!”

  Mummies shouldered into the shield wall, bowing already tightly-packed Vothans back till their hobnails screeched on flagstones. A rag-festooned arm shot through a gap to clutch Strayden’s sleeve. Wrenching his shield to the left, he scissored the appendaged off at the elbow by sawing the rim against his neighbor’s. But the piece struck the floor intact, twitched, and continued to flutter for a grip.

  “Hurry the hells up!”

  To Strayden’s left, Modyn let out a great cry as he hacked down an attacker, broadsword describing fiery arcs in the torchlight. A frenzy had gripped the Militant, as the battle-joy often overtook Vothans, and he wove a steely pattern before him. But that fury spilled out of control, clanging off Vothan helms and shields around him as he mowed into the wave of attackers. A careless slash jolted the axe from a Vothan’s grip to his right and left the man grappling with a mummy, hand-to-hand.

  Seeing his error, Modyn plunged his sword into the attacker’s flank, a wound that would have been certain death for the living, but was more impediment for the living dead. The mummy wrenched about, trying to free itself from the blade and tangling up with Modyn. The Militant cocked his head back and slammed the brow of his helmet into the thing’s face. It crumpled under the impact and dropped, twitching.