“For the purposes of making your father a petty king,” I said. “That’s how it works. Warborn are the remains of demons slain by the Archdemon of War if they cannot master their hunger. The Warborn are consigned to the pits as their need for slaughter would otherwise destroy the world. Then there would be no war at all. Their ghosts can be summoned by the blackest of magic. They offer much more, seemingly for much less, until their appetites swell out of control. Unlike proper demons, such as myself, who keep a more measured feeding.”
“I see,” Laura said, clearly not buying any of it.
“What did they charge?” I asked, deciding to illustrate the differences between us.
“My baby brother,” Laura said. “They told me he died in the night.”
I wished such an act surprised me, but it was fairly typical for wannabe sorcerers and witches. “Let me guess, your father’s rebellion had a lot of success in the beginning but gradually became more violent until the surrounding countryside turned against it and was annihilated. Perhaps with the help of the Grand Temple since, for all their hypocrisy, they know the stench of demons when it appears before them.”
“Yes.”
“And you?”
“I hid,” Laura said, sighing. “I hid far away until the fighting was over. Nothing is left where I grew up. Nothing but the monsters.”
“No,” I said, not quite believing her explanation. It was a little too pat. “They can’t be killed by mortal means, and the Grand Temple is not what it once was. They’ll dither for decades over whether it’s moral to summon an Archon to cleanse this place and just quarantine it until they hope the demon leaves on its own. Mortal prayers have no power over Warborn.”
"Can you banish these evil spirits from them?" Laura asked.
"No," I said honestly. "Death is the only release.”
Laura lowered her head. “I understand.”
"Show me where they’re staying," I said, wondering if I actually had a chance in, well, hell, of defeating them.
The Warborn hadn't chosen to hide their presence and were still living in the former domicile. Goodwoman Laura's home was indeed quite luxurious for a Purifier's, or at least had been before a supernatural rot had caused the place to become a twisted shell of its former self. The two-story manor house overlooked a courtyard with a marble fountain and had a carriage house with two barracks for farm workers.
It must have been beautiful.
Once.
Whereas most places tainted by the damned were cold, dead, and dark, the decaying manor was covered in ivy and fungus. Strange lights circled around it in the form of will-o-wisps, the creatures fleeing from my presence as if I was a hungry beast. Finally, there was an unnatural heat to the air so that, even in the middle of autumn, it felt like a sweltering summer day. Laura had, wisely, chosen to stay away from this place.
Using magic to cover myself in black demon leather armor with a silky cloak and hood, I drew forth my glowing daemonsteel sword, the one that gave my family its name. I raised it into the air and spoke with a resounding bellow. "Twicedead, I compel you to come forth and face me. I have been summoned by one of the mortals of this world to send you back to our god."
There were formalities to be observed when dealing with fellow demons, even scum like the Warborn.
Two voices, low and soothing, but wrong, spoke from the house. "Eric Hellsword, we work the will of our master. Take the whore born from our hosts’ flesh and be gone."
"No," I said. They knew my name, that wasn’t good. It meant their power had grown to the point they could perceive the shape of my true name. It would allow them to strike at me harder than most demons.
"For what purpose do you stop us?" One of the Warborn, a female, cackled.
"I don't like you," I said, shrugging. "That is my law, doing whatever I wish because I will it."
"So be it," the Warborn said together.
The rotting bodies of what I presumed to be Laura's parents shambled out of the front door. They had fungus growing across half of their bodies even as hideous insect-like wings burst out of their backs while tiny legs and tentacles grew out of their chests. Neither wore clothes, and their eyes had rotted out, replaced instead with glowing embers.
"You can't beat me," I said, wondering why they'd even try. "Go back to your master and leave these poor mortals alone."
My sense of hypocrisy grew even more. After all, they were preying on these people no differently than I was their host's daughter.
The Warborn continued speaking as one. "Hundreds of souls exist in us, spared from Hell by becoming our fodder. They will give us the power to destroy you. You are not the Archdemon of Hell but an up-jumped ghost with some of his trinkets."
I shrugged. "You have me there. At least I’m not making pretenses of mercy when I’m a shitstain feasting on souls.”
The two bodies snapped together as the manor house tore itself from its foundation, then smashed together into a twenty-foot-tall human-sized form that absorbed the pair into its chest. I blinked, watching the process as I realized the fungus was a medium for them to animate it. Hundreds of souls, probably most of the now-damned army they’d recruited, wailed from its interior.
"PREPARE FOR PERDITIO—" The merged Warborn didn't have a chance to finish its speech before I slammed my sword into the ground and started draining away souls from its body. I was a demon, too, after all, and what was stolen by one could be stolen by another.
"No!" The merged Warborn hissed, charging forward.
I took advantage of my smaller size to grab my blade from the ground, duck between its legs, and make a running jump onto the creature's back. Jamming my blade into its spine, I began to feast on the spirits within. The spirits I absorbed cried out in terror even as I could sense very little of their original selves remained, only mindlessly obedient drones for the merged Warborn. I drew on their power, and then blasted the merged Warborn with spells of death and living darkness. It threw me from its back, but it was already at less than half its power.
While I was much stronger.
"Thief, they worship us!" the merged Warborn cried out.
"And they fear me," I said, chuckling. “This is war, and whoever is strongest, smartest, and luckiest gets the spoils.”
The battle ended in a decidedly anticlimactic manner. The Warborn took a few steps back and crumbled into a pile of brick, wood, fungus, and slime. I called forth their spirits into my sword and bound them for return to the pit.
While disappointing as a battle, it was a profitable one. A few hundred souls were mere pocket change in the Great Celestial War, but these could be easily molded into demons ready to serve my cause. That was when I was struck by a blast of glowing white light from behind.
I groaned as I got up, finding myself once more in a binding circle. Goodwoman Laura was standing outside of the circle, holding a finely crafted staff with a crystal on top. A young man, maybe twenty, lie just outside the circle. His throat had been slit, and his blood currently powered what was surrounding me.
I smirked. "A compatriot or victim?"
Laura snorted. "Just a man from the village who believed I could save it."
"That staff is a mark of an inquisitor," I said, chuckling. "Not the kind to be held by a nineteen-year-old farmer's daughter."
"I have a youthful face," Laura said, smiling. "I was sent by the empress to deal with this matter when her soldiers failed."
“So, they weren’t your parents?” I asked.
“They were,” Laura said, sighing. “I just left out the part where I was Inquisitor Hardwin’s apprentice. The inquisitor general was less than pleased to find one of his agents was the daughter of petty demonologists, especially when she was working on similar areas of study, so he sent me to clean up their mess.”
I stood up. "And you thought the best method was to summon a demon?"
"As you say, the Grand Temple is hesitant about summoning Archons these days," Laura said. “Perhaps because they
know they would judge their corruption. Instead, I thought it best to fight evil with evil.”
"I suppose this is the best place to test such things," I said, looking back. "Isolated, superstitious, and with a host of corpses to justify whatever atrocities worked here.”
“Indeed,” Laura said.
“What about the payment?” I asked, cheekily. She could have summoned me without it and bound me with a blood sacrifice instead.
"I always wanted to fuck a demon." Laura smirked. "I have orders to bind you and bring you to the general. I was already working on carrying forth Inquisitor Hardin’s work when I was summoned before him. This should prove demonology is a discipline which can be used for good.”
I sighed. Such a brilliant mind as hers was wasted in the Inquisition. “You’re not the first to think so.”
“My masters have said as much. I think otherwise. Soon, the empress and inquisitor general will have an army of your kind to fight for them. To bring order to the world and unite the Telllarus kingdoms.”
I sighed. "I'm afraid you have a new master now."
Laura was about to rebut when I reached into her and used the mark I placed on her, plus the fact my essence was inside her, to stop her heart. The binding circle died with her before I walked over to her corpse and placed my hand over her breast.
"Arise," I said. "I have need of an agent like you. I will claim your soul either way, but you can serve me as a creature of evil or be one of the many foot soldiers used as cannon fodder eternally on the Fields of Despair. I am sorry to say that will be the last choice you will have for a long time. Centuries at least.”
Laura's eyes opened, now glowing. Her teeth like knives. A Bruxa. She’d made her choice.
“Where now?” Laura spoke, her voice empty of all emotion. It would be years until the demon inside her became able to approximate who she was.
“Deliver the late Goodwoman Laura’s experiments to the Inquisition,” I said. “It’s good to spread such knowledge. Then we’ll go wherever wars are fought. We do not need to spread it but merely feed.”
“Yes, Master.”
The Greatest Battle
John Gwynne
The Year 7 of the Age of Lore, Hunter’s Moon
Corban crawled through the undergrowth, the earthy scent of moss and mulch thick around him as he worked his way between trees wide as a tower. By the angle of sunlight filtering through the tree-top canopy above, it was around high-sun, but in Forn Forest, it was only ever varying degrees of twilight and shadow. Insects and worms scraped and slithered over his hands, up the sleeves of his tunic. Behind him, he heard the rustle and squelch of his companions following through the saturated ground, a whispered curse from one of them as they snagged on a branch of thorns. He carried on, elbows and knees levering him through the forest litter, thick-growing fern and vine.
Slowly, it dawned on him that something had changed, was different.
He paused, tried to control the sound of his breathing, which seemed deafening to him. Figures caught up with him, one either side.
‘Why is there always the unpleasant part before a fight,’ Farrell muttered. ‘Running for days, or sitting in the snow, shivering, or crawling through this muck—’
‘Or listening to Farrell whining,’ Dath said from the other side of Corban.
‘You’re not doing this with a war-hammer strapped across your back.’ Farrell grunted.
‘No one forced you to choose a weapon that is roughly the weight of a full-grown draig,’ Dath whispered back.
‘Quiet.’ Corban hissed. ‘Can you hear anything?’
Dath and Farrell were silent for long moments.
‘No,’ they both whispered.
‘Exactly,’ Corban said. That was what had changed. None of the usual sounds of the forest, insects whirring or chirping, birds singing. Things hunting and being hunted, dying. Nothing. Silence hung in the air, unnatural and malignant.
‘We are close,’ Corban said. He drew in a deep breath, calming his nerves, cinched tighter the buckles that strapped his round shield across his back and set off again, squirming and crawling his way through the perpetual twilight of Forn Forest.
The trees thinned for a while, giving way to thorn-thick shrubs that made the task of crawling through the undergrowth even harder. Then a tree appeared before Corban, roots breaking through the ground, thicker than Farrell’s chest, the trunk of the tree wide as a barn.
‘We’re here,’ Corban whispered, crawling to the tree and rising onto his knees, shifting his weight and sitting with his back to the gnarled oak. ‘This is where Craf said to meet him.’
Dath and Farrell caught up with Corban, Dath swearing as his unstrung bow got tangled in another snare of vine.
‘Now, we wait,’ Corban told his two friends.
They checked their weapons, loosened blades in scabbards, then Farrell dug inside a pouch on his belt, producing a slab of cheese.
‘Anyone?’ he said, offering the cheese.
‘How can you eat at a time like this?’ Dath said, lips curling disdainfully.
‘Don’t like fighting on an empty stomach.’ Farrell shrugged as he took a knife from his belt and carved a chunk.
‘Seems you don’t like doing anything on an empty stomach,’ Dath said, pointedly looking at Farrell’s belly, which was beginning to hang over his belt.
Farrell opened his mouth for a sharp retort, then seemed to think about it and shrugged again. ‘Fair point,’ he said.
Movement drew Corban’s eye, a shadow at the edge of his vision, shifting in the murk of the forest. Corban stared, saw it solidify and take shape.
Storm.
‘I was wondering where she was,’ Dath said as a huge wolven emerged from the gloom, tall and broad, silvery fur streaked with black and grey and latticed with old scars. She padded over to them, silent as mist, and loomed over Corban, bent her head and gave his face a lick. Corban stroked her cheek, tugged on one of the prodigious canines that protruded a hand span from her jaws.
‘Good to see you, girl,’ he said.
‘Always feel better with her around,’ Dath sighed.
‘She’s never far,’ Corban said, ‘whether you can see her or no.’
Storm cocked her head, ears twitching.
A sound, somewhere above.
‘What’s that?’ Corban asked.
His friends listened.
The forest was still eerily silent, but there was a sound, high above, a rustling in the branches that suggested it was more than just the wind.
‘Dath’s knees knocking,’ Farrell said, chuckling at his own joke.
‘All feel fear, the hero and the coward,’ Dath intoned.
‘Aye, but it’s what we do about it that matters,’ Farrell finished.
Corban felt the familiar stab of grief and loss at those words. They had been recited so often through the years that they had become a mantra to him, but he never forgot who had said them to him, first of all.
Gar, my friend. I miss you still. Time heals, Cywen told me, but when it comes to you, it hasn’t.
Somehow, that sense of loss felt greater today, its edge sharper.
Perhaps it is because Coralen is not with me. How I miss her, too, when we have spent so many years at each other’s side.
The sound above grew louder.
A dark smudge shifted amidst the shadowed branches, and then a bird was spiralling down to them. A crow, feather’s black as charcoal, scruffy and poking in all directions. It landed on Storm’s back, and she growled, low and menacing.
‘Sorry,’ the bird squawked and hopped off to land on Farrell’s knee.
‘Ouch,’ Farrell muttered, but he didn’t shoo the bird off. Instead, he cut another slab of cheese and offered it to the old crow.
‘Hello, Craf,’ Dath said, and the bird bobbed his head.
Corban held back his impatience, his wanting to know. He knew Craf too well where food was concerned.
Craf took the cheese and g
ulped it down. ‘Thank you,’ he cawed.
‘Welcome.’ Farrell grunted.
‘Well?’ Corban said.
‘Kadoshim there,’ the bird croaked, shaking and ruffling his feathers. ‘Craf scared.’
‘You’re a brave bird,’ Corban soothed, stroked Craf’s chest. ‘How many?’
‘Craf see seven. Maybe more. And men.’
‘How many men?’ Farrell asked.
‘Lots,’ Craf croaked.
They all knew that Craf couldn’t count past twenty, so it could mean a score, it could mean a hundred.
Not incredibly helpful.
‘Show us,’ Corban said.
With a grumble, Craf hopped off Farrell’s knee and beat his wings, flapping away and landing on a branch in the next tree. Corban, Dath, and Farrell crawled after him, Storm slinking into the shadows, becoming a silvery blur.
They followed Craf like that for a while, as he flew from branch to branch, waiting for them to catch up through the undergrowth. Then Craf landed on a rotted tree-stump atop a ridge. When they reached him, Craf was pulling a slug the size of Corban’s thumb from the stump and slurping it down.
Storm came and lay beside Corban.
‘There,’ Craf said, pointing with his beak.
They were situated upon the top of a ridge, a steep incline dropping thirty or forty paces down to a gully, levelling out into a shadow-filled glade. At its far edge, a sheer cliff of granite reared, higher than the ridge Corban and his companions lie upon. There was a deeper shadow of a cave at the cliff’s base.
In the glade, figures moved, men and women, dressed in leather and fur, short-swords and bucklers strapped to their belts, the glint of warrior-rings in beards and braids.
‘Vin Thalun.’ Dath hissed. ‘Thought we’d seen the last of them.’
‘Like flies to dung.’ Farrell growled.
Corban counted eighteen.
A fire-pit burned in the glade, pots bubbling over it, fat dripping from a carcass turning on a spit, a willow-screen about it to shield the flames from prying eyes.
Something passed between the warriors in the glade, all turning to look at the cave in the cliff face.
Art of War Page 5