Crypt of the Violator

by K. J. Coble

  Asyra shrugged. “No choice. I...couldn’t just leave you to them.” She let out a tiny chuckle. “You know, you’re right. It was Her undoing, in a way. In Her scheme to tear us apart, she ended up bringing us together in one place.”

  “Well, not all of us...”

  Metal squalled on stone behind them. Both spun at the racket and Lyssa fell to one knee, gasped at the pain of it. Asyra was glancing about and lunged for something, scooped up a splintered spear-shaft and gripped it with the jagged end pointed.

  From beneath a pile of corpses emerged one of the bronze servitors. Still-smoking holes marred its shining torso and one arm hung partially gone, melted in the conflagration that’d consumed its master and cooling into a distended shape that in no way resembled an appendage. But the skull atop its shoulders remained and the jaws stretched wide in an eldritch shriek that drove pain-splinters through Lyssa’s brain.

  As she sagged further to the floor, cupping hands to her ears, the thing shrugged off the limp remnants of a mummy draped over a shoulder and took a stomping step towards them. Asyra staggered into its path, the broken spear shaft brandished before her. She might as well have been a field mouse before a descending hawk.

  Lyssa opened her mouth to scream.

  A flutter cut her off. A whirring wheel of metal hurtled through the haze of the chamber and thunked into the servitor’s skull face. Its whole form jerked backwards at the impact and it stood, trembling, with an axe planted in the forehead between the empty eye sockets. The jaw worked, as though trying to form further sound, but glowing cracks spider-webbed out from the metal, spread across the globe of the skull. The servitor’s trembling intensified, bronze ringing with the fury of it.

  “Get down!” Lyssa started to cry.

  Before Asyra could react, the skull burst with an anticlimactic flash and a crack that re-echoed with the clatter of fragments careening off columns and walls. Smoking, headless, the servitor completely froze, a bronze statue, once more, rigid in the spot where it had stood.

  Asyra rose from where she’d dropped, still clenching the spear. With an exhalation of relief, she cast the shaft aside. Her gaze went to the floor.

  The axe that’d claimed the servitor lay at Lyssa’s feet, its steel blackened, but intact, Vothan runes still visible across its surface.

  “Pick that up for me, would you, lass?”

  Lyssa was laughing before she even turned to see Strayden of Starad limping out of the smoke on the far side of the chamber. Behind him came two more figures—Durrak and Aelren, she noted with relief. But only those two. She stooped to grasp the weapon, shocked at its weight, but also at her utterly drained weakness. She held it out limply. “You ought to be careful with that.”

  “I’ll say!” Durrak boomed. “He’s rarely that accurate.”

  Strayden guffawed at that as he reached Lyssa. He looked horrid—all of them did—battered and bloody. “You’re here,” he said in a mixture of wonderment and confusion. “You’re both here.”

  “We’re all here,” Asyra corrected him.

  “That thing,” Strayden began, suddenly tense. “It...He...came this way!”

  “It’s done,” Lyssa reassured him. “It’s over.”

  “We...” He glanced over his shoulder at the other Vothans. “We, ah, might’ve released Him.” He rushed to add, “We were looking for you!”

  “If you released Him,” Lyssa said, patting him on the shoulder, “then you very likely saved us all.”

  Strayden’s brows beetled together. “If you...say so, lass.”

  She laughed again, patted him again. What else was there to do? Around them smoldered the ruins of abominable sorcery, a plot to overturn the Order of Nature, and entire legions of the undead. They’d been through the Nine Hells and back. In fact, they still stood in their remnants.

  “What I say, is that we should get out of here.”

  “Best idea I’ve ever heard,” Asyra said, stepping to her side.

  “Then let’s go.”

  Lyssa reached out for Asyra’s hand. She had no idea what existed between them now. She didn’t know if she even understood herself well enough to embrace whatever did. But she knew she wanted her close, wanted to find out. Maybe there’d be time and a way.

  To her very great relief, Asyra accepted her hand.

  She could’ve flown out of the tomb.

  With the Vothans falling in behind them, Lyssa and Asyra walked hand-in-hand for the exit, and the world above.

  EPILOGUE

  BAZUL II WINCED AS he mounted the fresh horse his surviving grooms had brought him. In the saddle, settling as comfortably as wounds would allow, he was able to look around and at last take in the full catastrophe of all that had happened.

  The Zadam escarpment smoldered in the ruddy light of dusk, from the ruins at its crown to the charred encampments at its feet. Death and destruction carpeted its slopes, the slain of the day’s fighting heaped in amongst twisting piles of mummified corpses that had come close—so close—to claiming them all. Closer, still twitching with the last, hateful sparks of their unnatural lives, the spider things lay, leaking their effluvium, legs folded up upon themselves.

  The horrors that’d vomited from the tombs of Zadam had taken both Scintallan and Xyxian by surprise, turning their desperate duel into a three-way brawl. Ironically, the Xyxians’ surge to victory—smashing in the Scintallan flanks and compressing them into a tight circle—had left them most exposed. The even greater irony had been watching undead Xyxians savage living ones. It’d turned the tide.

  Of course, Bazul had no doubt his own troops would’ve been consumed fully, as well, had not the supernatural attackers suddenly crumpled into the sand where they were.

  Some had proclaimed it a miracle. Bazul knew better.

  Downhill, the army was trying to reform. Units were little better than refugee mobs, at this point, but training, habit, and some of that old, Scintallan stubbornness compelled them back together. They had perhaps three thousand left, here. But word was filtering through, from the surrounding wastes, that other small bands that’d survived the disaster out on the dunes were wandering in, now that the great crisis appeared to have passed. One of his aides had hoped they might have five thousand left, by the time the survivors gathered to lurch back for the coast.

  Back to the sea, and beyond that, Scintallard.

  Disaster.

  Bazul nudged the horse to his left, at a slow walk towards the single Spire of Zadam, still glowering down over ruins old and new. A pair of mounted armored men, the purple livery of the Imperial Guard still obvious under the grime and gore, made to follow. The Emperor waved them off. He would be alone now.

  Stopping near the Spire, he took in the view of the wastes and the battlefields of the last several days. Everything below was smoke-smear and the stain of thousands of dead and dying upon the sands. He wobbled a little in the saddle, overwhelmed by the utter wreck of it all. He’d seen his share of wars, and even reverses, but they paled in comparison.

  In the distance, the sands fumed and writhed with Xyxian survivors, small parties riding or running still for the horizon, larger units reforming, but with no intent of return. The Xyxians had had enough. The sight of Zadam’s eldritch legions unleashed—all the worst ghost stories of Xyxian childhoods come to life—had broken their will utterly. Besides, after the calamitous losses—even before the undead ambush—the surviving claimants to the Deathless Throne would be retreating to the centers of their respective power, re-gathering loyalists, recalculating schemes and strategies. None would be strong now, for some time.

  Bazul sighed. He knew the feeling. He’d return to Scintallard with less than a fifth of the force he’d brought with him, with only a few coastal cities conquered and the rich heart of Xyxia still unquenched. The uproar would last years.

  All had been ruined.

  But in ruin, there was opportunity.

  A brief racket sounded from downhill, boisterous laughter that sounde
d almost obscene amidst the carnage. Bazul glanced that way, saw the Vothans congregating around one of their own. Hegruum stood before this one, the bloodied, wounded giant with arms folded, scowling as a smaller, brown-blonde bearded companion gestured and spoke—a story being retold, no doubt. The Vothans laughed again, hearty and unbowed by the disaster. Remarkable folk, they were.

  Bazul recognized the storyteller, now, the one he’d decorated, the one that had carried the Imperial Banner until he’d tossed it aside to race after Lyssa. Strayden. That the brute was alive, after having apparently emerged from the tombs, was perhaps as much a miracle as had happened this day. That he’d brought out Lyssa with him—along with the little Ybbasid spy—was even more so.

  A flash of stained white robe drew Bazul’s eye to the sorceress—his daughter—side-by-side with the Ybbassid and listening to Strayden from the edge of the circle around him. His daughter. And her powers grew, each day. Only a fool couldn’t sense it. Exposure to Zadam’s darkness may have only quickened it further. Bazul’s advisors—not those increasingly treacherous White Guardsmen, but older, darker councilors he’d inherited from his own father—had warned him about her potential.

  Cyrok was right to fear her. Soon, something would have to be done.

  Bazul twitched the horse’s reins and urged it uphill, among the ruins. He let the guards follow him now, unconcerned at their scrutiny, dull brutes that they were. Movement above, in the deepening dark amongst slabs of rubble, drew him. He passed a side lane and noticed the twists of another spider corpse, entangled with a horse. Beneath the pile of them, Bazul caught sight of a crushed, drained form, flesh sunken in upon bones and grayed. Fine armor and a splash of torn, near-purple cloak brought a jolt of recognition.

  Ah, cousin, Bazul thought with a wicked smile. It seems your manipulations are at an end, at last. He’d sensed Eddar’s trickery in all the misfortunes that had befallen the expedition and he’d learn the truth of it in time. But, for now, it was enough to know one complication had simply taken care of itself.

  Dark shapes scuttled about a seemingly minor mastaba-style tomb, well below the tier of the Great Pyramid. Bazul gave the horse a little more heel, hurried it uphill to their activities. Drawing close, he gestured for his escorts to hold back, just out of earshot. The shapes stilled in their activities as he came to a halt and loomed over them.

  “Highness,” one of the figures said.

  “You found it,” Bazul replied.

  The man nodded. He looked like a simple teamster, filthy and poorly-clad. But his eyes flashed with cunning. His three companions had the same look. They’d be as at home cloaked and stooped around a magical pentagram, chanting incantations, as rooting about in this tomb. Bazul knew.

  Another figure, clad like the first three, emerged from the cracked door of the mastaba, flinched at the sight of the Emperor, and nearly dropped what he’d brought out in his hands. With a snarl, the leader snapped the item from him and held it up. Fading light was not enough to give it the cherry shimmer that emanated from its polished clay.

  Bazul leaned over in the saddle for a better look, felt his skin prickle in anticipation. It was a jar, molded into the likeness of a snake coiled atop a massive egg—the serpent forming the lid. Hatch-marked script flowed around the egg. The craftsmanship was timeless.

  “You’re sure?” Bazul asked hoarsely. “By all accounts” he glanced downhill towards Strayden of Starad’s storytelling “the Violator perished in the burial vaults below.”

  “One of His forms did, yes,” the leader of the tomb-robbers hissed. “But He can have others.” The scuttling man held the container high. “Canoptic jar,” he said. “Within it are the organs of Thyss-Mallik, removed and hidden for all time.” The man’s smile made Bazul’s blood flow stop. “Hidden from all but us.”

  How this weird, little man and the members of his depraved cult—fostered in the shadows by many, many Emperors of Scintallos—had come by such knowledge, Bazul wasn’t certain he wanted to know. But he reached out and took the jar from him, held it up to inspection. It looked as normal as pottery bought in the Scintallard bazaar.

  “Get the rest.” He glared down at the man. “Leave nothing.”

  “With the Wards broken and Thyss-Ulea’s hold over Him shattered,” the cultist said hurriedly, a fleck of drool purling off his lip, “the Old One can return whenever and wherever we choose.”

  When we choose? Bazul glanced at the jar again, felt more than a bit of unease at such proclamations of certainty. But what choice did he have?

  “Good,” he growled at the cultist. “I will soon need every ally I can get.”

  THE END

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  Did you love Crypt of the Violator? Then you should read The Witch of Vendar by K.J. Coble!

  A PERILOUS WORLD…

  Aldair has trembled on the brink of catastrophe for an age. Now a reckoning draws near. Decadent and divided human kingdoms do not see it, focused on their petty rivalries. Only one King, lord of a dying nation, warns of it, but none heed him.

  And the Fey, the prideful elven nations of the south, see only advantage in catastrophe. The rise of a blood cult in their midst doesn't give them pause. The mania of a new monarch and his war-mongering only emboldens their vengeful, greedy impulses.

  These misguided peoples will collide in a war of darkest magic and fearsome new technologies. And none will suffer more than the innocent.

  A SINGLE SHIP…

  But some want to slow the rush to annihilation. Some want to preserve the light. And this starts with sending help to an ancient city, besieged by fire and shadow and murderous lunacy. And this help comes aboard the unlikeliest of vessels, a notorious pirate ship, captained by a man condemned by the Church, crewed by criminals and witches and some who are not even human.

  THE WITCH OF VENDAR.

  About the Author

  Born too strange for a normal world, K.J. Coble endures adulthood through long-distance running, rock ’n’ roll guitar, and his writing. A love of history, weird fiction, and explosions fills his world-building. In his stories the righteous may suffer, but the corrupt get their comeuppance, and evil always receives its justly-deserved kick in the teeth.

  Lairing somewhere in the Midwest, he is tolerated by his wife, three kids, and a very opinionated coonhound.