Blackest Knights

by Phipps, C. T.

  Challenge accepted.

  Not being new to the game of evil magics and powerful caves, I drew my sword before stepping through the opening. The boulder was no wider than one of the university’s maintenance vehicles, but the cavern before me stretched on for quite a distance. If I squinted, I could make out a speck of light that must have been my destination. I had dealt with doorways to other worlds before and there was always the chance of being stranded in that other world, but I trusted that if I made it through this alive, I would be allowed to return through the same portal that I entered through.

  In other universes, planes of existence, or whatever this was, distance was never the same and just because a walled tunnel looked like solid stone didn’t mean that it couldn’t reach out and strangle you. With that in mind, I didn’t rush toward the light as most would but instead walked slowly in that direction with my mystical sword raised high and ready for an attack.

  The tiny light in the distance radiated a surprising amount, and I was able to see a little of my surroundings as I advanced. The walls looked like a smooth stone, and no grooves or weathering were anywhere to be seen. If I were to guess, this entirely unnatural tunnel was either bored by a cylindrical stone-eating creature of nightmare proportions, or it was cut by an alien weapon of unimaginable power. Given what I’ve seen in the past, either option was entirely plausible.

  While the walls were smooth, I could feel something behind them watching me and waiting for my guard to drop so that it might attack. From the corner of my eye, I saw glimpses of tentacles breaking from the tunnel wall as if it were a puddle, before darting back upon my notice.

  I walked for what seemed like a much shorter period of time than the distance implied and the source of the light became clear.

  The tunnel ended in a large room with a pedestal in the back. On the pedestal was the Obsidian Key. The key was obviously named after its dark color, but my archaeological education showed me that it wasn’t obsidian at all. Obsidian tends to go through a process of hydration when it’s exposed to air. Archaeologists such as myself use the predictable absorption of water by the mineral to determine how old it is. It presents itself as a clear edge on anything made of the volcanic glass, but even from the entrance of the room I could see that the over nine-hundred-year-old key had no clear edges.

  Instead, the key was made from a material that wasn’t known on Earth. The black substance that made up the key drew in my gaze and seemed to pull at my mind. The light from the two wall sconces, lit on each side of the room, didn’t reflect off of the key. It seemed to absorb the light.

  Aside from its basic characteristics, the key itself didn’t have the standard toothed look but was instead a rod of about six inches long and an inch and a half thick that ended in an orb made of the same material.

  I was wary stepping into the room. The moment that my foot touched the floor, an oily substance began dripping from the walls and pooling in the center of the room. The substance started out as an oily liquid but solidified into vein covered flesh the seemingly grew from the puddle.

  Legs, arms, a torso, and a head grew from nothing and vaguely assembled themselves into the shape of a man. As the skin and body solidified, so did the clothing and the armor.

  Standing before me was the reanimated corpse of a Crusader Knight. His chain mail was rusted and covered with organic matter. Draped over his armor was the Crusader mark of the cross. It draped over his body and armor in tatters. The thing lifted his head and sockets filled with black eyes took me in.

  “I’m here,” I spoke loudly to the Obsidian Key’s champion. “I intend to leave here with the key or with the key destroyed.” I nodded to the being in front of me. “A crusader? I’m guessing you found what you were looking for.”

  The thing’s voice was painful in my mind. “We found only our destruction. The key demanded a protector, and if you are not strong enough it will make you stronger so that you can be that protector.” He lifted his ancient hands and looked at them before clenching them into fists. “Not a one of us was strong enough, so the key demanded that we all stay.”

  That was when I noticed that the flesh hadn’t covered the thing’s body when it had formed. Between its fully formed hands and elbows were the oil filled veins of an almost organic substance, but not quite. The same existed between the torso and each of the limbs, including the head.

  This wasn’t just one Crusader, it was the entire group that the Historiae Tenebras had described chasing after the Key.

  I nodded in understanding. When the Crusaders came and found the Obsidian Key, they fought the protector but couldn’t defeat it. The protector then bonded with their remains to become more than it was. This corpse golem was both the protector and the Crusaders and was stronger for it.

  The dark orbs that it had for eyes raised from its clenched fists. The protector stretched out its right hand, and more of the black ooze spread down its arm and out. It stretched into a length of solid black before forming into a sword of bone and flesh. A Crusader’s sword worthy of the protector of the Obsidian Key.

  It said nothing as it lunged for me in the dark of the room.

  I spun, bringing my sword around to parry the blow from the bone sword. The strength of the attack shook me to my core. I was surprised to see that my sword’s powers of destroying anything it touched that was not of our world had no effect on the bone sword. I had assumed the sword was an extension of the protector and its power, but my sword’s lack of effect on it meant that it was just reinforced bone.

  The bones of the Crusaders, I assumed. I slid back the way I had come, my feet scooting through the dirt, but I didn’t stop moving. Instead, I used the momentum to spin and swing low. As I had expected, the vigilant knight had continued toward me as spun. My blade came around, and I aimed it at his legs as he thrust toward where my back had been. With incredible speed, the protector brought his blade out of its thrust and down to block my attack. He put force behind it and sent me and the blade bouncing back.

  For a conglomeration of corpses, he seemed eager to keep my blade away from his flesh. That told me that my sword could hurt it, I just needed to figure a way past his supernatural speed.

  Not for the first time, I found myself wishing that I had figured out a way to bring my pistol along.

  I only barely recovered in time to bring my sword up to block the next attack. Instead of blocking it entirely, I parried and let the protector’s momentum drop his blade toward the ground. The bone blade cut into the stone floor as if it were made of sand.

  I tried to hold his sword there with mine while letting go with my other hand. I backhanded the monster before thrusting out with a punch. It felt like I was punching the walls, but I didn’t stop. I hit the protector with one more punch before it bent forward and slammed his chain mail draped forehead against my own.

  I saw stars as I fell back and bounced off of the floor. By sheer luck, I managed to hold onto my sword. As the stars cleared from my vision, the protector knelt before me with its sword stretched out toward my neck.

  “You have fought well, good man,” the protector’s voice was barely a whisper, but the pain in my mind was no better than the first time it had spoken. “It will be an honor to add you to me.”

  “Honor?” I demanded. “Was it honor that made you break your oaths in search of the Key?” I smirked. “I thought the Key would take you to Heaven. What happened to that?” I tightened my grip on my sword before I hissed, “Where was God during your righteous mission?”

  I was betting on there being enough of the original Crusaders left inside the protector of the Key to manipulate. The fight was essentially over. I couldn’t beat this thing in speed, but maybe I could get it to do something human and make a mistake.

  “The Church was wrong,” the protector’s voice was rising in my head, bringing more of the pain with it. The bone sword inched closer to my neck. “They were wrong about everything. The Key will take those that are worthy to the Holy
Lands, to Heaven, to the Plateau of Leng. The worthy can send their enemies to the lands of Dream or to past days. The Key is more than we hoped. The Church was wrong about so many things.”

  I leaned closer to the bone blade, bringing it within a hair’s width of my neck. “Only the worthy can use the Key?” I gave an exaggerated laugh. “You’ve never touched the Obsidian Key, have you?”

  As the last syllable left my mouth, I tilted my head to the side. The bone blade went through the air where my neck had been. I twisted my wrist as I leaned and blindly brought my sword up.

  An alien shriek filled my mind, threatening to tear my sanity apart. I clutched at my head as I writhed on the floor. I no longer held my sword and had no idea where it had landed, but that was the furthest thing from my mind.

  As the shriek became more bearable, I opened my tear-filled eyes and cast them about. The protector was on its knees and clawing at its chest as a black stain of rot spread out from under its right breast. It consumed the creature, returning it to the basic supernatural components that it had been created from. The flesh limbs of the Crusaders fell to the ground as the connecting tissues broke between each of them.

  The last part to detach from the torso was the head. I wish that I could say that what was left of the Crusader who’s head it was looked grateful, but that wasn’t the case. His eyes were dark with a betrayal that ran deep. His entire life had been betrayal. The Church had betrayed his mission. His hopes and dreams had betrayed him when he found the Obsidian Key. I had betrayed him by not being the good man that he thought I was.

  “I never said I was a good man,” I scooped my sword up and stood slowly.

  Kicking the head out of my way, I stepped toward the Obsidian Key. The feeling of eyes on me made my skin itch, and I couldn’t help but feel like the Key was examining me.

  The Key was everything that I had been trying to find for almost a decade, and I finally had it within my grasp, but I was struck with an odd realization.

  This otherworldly location for the Key hadn’t been powerful enough to keep determined Crusaders or a dumb student from Miskatonic University from finding it. How was the Miskatonic University Armory supposed to do any better. It was hypocrisy because I kept so many dangerous items there, but this wasn’t just a weapon. This was a device of alien or mystical origin that could get people into that Armory. It could convert living beings into monstrous golems of unstoppable horror, and it could deposit those golems anywhere. There was nowhere that this Obsidian Key could be that would keep it out of the wrong hands.

  Even my hands were the wrong hands. All my strength went into the swing as I brought my sword over my head and down on the black device. It shattered into pieces, and the lights began to flicker on their sconces.

  As they did, everything vanished from existence, replaced by endless void. One second, I would be on solid ground and the next I would be falling before landing again in the same spot I had just stood.

  I turned and ran out of the room and into the tunnel. Sprinting with all of my strength when there was ground beneath me and then briefly floating in nothing before sprinting again. Fear tore at my soul as I wondered what would happen if the fire went out on the sconces permanently before I could get to the exit.

  One last burst of speed and I leapt, falling through the opening in the boulder and hitting the sand.

  Rolling over, I watched as the side of the stone flickered in and out of existence a few more times before stopping entirely.

  While my quest might have been completed and I had seen the Obsidian Key shattered, I had an odd feeling in the pit of my stomach that I hadn’t so much destroyed it as annoyed it.

  Perhaps the Key would return one day to consume other Crusaders, but for now, I had done the best I could.

  Nancy reached out her hand to me and helped me off of the ground.

  “Is it done?” she asked.

  I nodded slowly. “It’s done. I destroyed it for now at least.”

  Nancy frowned at that statement, but she understood. Nothing was ever gone for good that could forever rest, and worlds on other planes of existence didn’t follow our rules.

  If the Obsidian Key ever returned, I was prepared to do my best to keep it out of the hands of my enemies.

  I might not be a good man, but I was decent enough.

  Paladin of the Night

  By Michael Suttkus

  This story is set in the Straight Outta Fangton series.

  The Comté de Saveur was the kind of place that normally would have kept Shannon out, wearing a tank top that just missed reaching her jeans. The closest thing she had on to formal wear was a necklace and shoes with moderate heels. But her “date” waved her in, and even the snooty maître d’ at the door didn’t want to argue with Langston Kennelworth.

  Truth be told, wearing her outfit was a form of rebellion and something she felt put most of her opponents—predominately rich, older, white men—off guard. Shannon had taken quite a few cases to court where they’d assumed she was a complete amateur and crushed them. It might not be the case here, Langston was a big fish with an army of lawyers compared to her smaller firm, but she also knew he was dirty as hell.

  Still, there was something off about the restaurant as she moved around it. Everyone’s eyes were upon her, and quite a few of the patrons weren’t eating. They were a pale and predatory looking punch, like Langston, and it made her feel like she was walking through an incredibly fancy hospital. Langston, himself, was sitting at a table in the middle of the room with a trio of suit-wearing bodyguards. He was a pasty-skinned slick-blond haired man in a power suit and tie.

  Shannon had seen him in the sunlight a few times, but he struck her as the kind of guy who did most of his work in the dark. She’d tried to find out who his financial backers were, but it was a disorganized mess of shell companies, fiction, and bogus tax returns. It was possible he was mobbed up but more likely a bunch of particularly well-entrenched white-collar criminals as the results were far too professional: whoever had done his accounting had a long history of hiding money.

  “I suppose I should have expected nothing else,” Langston said, looking at her attire in disgust. “This place has standards you know.”

  “If I played along with your standards,” Shannon said. “I doubt I would have ever come to your attention. But let’s get this over with. Make your offer, I’ll say no, and we can move on with our lives.”

  Some of Shannon’s older associates, belonging to other “charity” firms, had warned her against going against Sanguine Security Ltd. They’d talked about bribes, corruption, and jury tampering as the tip of a very large iceberg. It was 2007, though, and the Financial Crisis was looming large in everyone’s mind. Now as the time to take down for-profit prisons and Wall Street profiteers while they were still reeling.

  “So certain, are you?” Langston asked, taking another bite of his steak. He clearly hadn’t bothered waiting for Shannon before ordering. Neither did he offer her anything. “You’ve become quite an annoyance.”

  “You’ve become quite a parasite,” Shannon said. “Using prisoners to make yourself rich. Forcing them to use ridiculously expensive services to keep in touch with people outside. Keeping them in longer by imposing ridiculously easy to break infractions. You prey on the helpless.”

  “On criminals. Most people don’t care.”

  “More and more people care every day. Which is why you invited me here. If I wasn’t being rather successful and bringing attention to these problems, you wouldn’t have bothered.”

  There were other accusations too. Shannon didn’t automatically believe them: prisoners going missing, human trafficking, and stories of them being led on midnight forays they didn’t remember clearly the next day—but they kept popping often enough to be kept in mind. It was a potential smoking gun to force the settlement her firm wanted. Honestly, Shannon wished she could drive Sanguine out of business entirely.

  “Now,” Langston said. “That is t
rue. I have to say, I don’t understand you. You had a successful career in sports. Modeling. You could have been quite famous in those circles, maybe one of those lovely but tough MMA girls, but you gave it up to defend criminals.”

  Shannon was impressed. He’d managed to denigrate she was a pretty face and the fact she was trained in beating people up simultaneously. “I gave it up to oppose criminals. I defend prisoners.”

  Langston laughed lightly. “It’s only a crime if it’s against the law. And so far, it is not.”

  “Thursday is coming. You won’t like the results.”

  The lawsuit would be years in the making but Shannon had taken a grassroots approach to acquiring her smoking gun against Sanguine. Michigan was a state that had recently elected a number of very popular new politicians who were reforming the legal system for a “bold new vision of the future.” Among the items on the ballot were laws guaranteeing company transparency where human rights were concerned and the right for independent investigations of alleged prisoner abuse. Shannon had relied on her own stage presence to sway people. Personally, she didn’t like playing those games, but the camera loved her.

  “I know, you’ve been quite busy drawing people to your side. It’s becoming quite expensive paying for politicians to stand up against the movements you’re making popular.”

  “Maybe you should invest your money better. You’re going to need it when I dismantle this network of yours.”

  Shannon shouldn’t have said that. It was tipping her hand, but she wanted to let him know he wasn’t going to be feeding off the blood of innocents anymore.

  Figuratively speaking.

  “And what if I invested it in you?” Langstone leaned back in his chair and pushed a check across the table. It had more zeroes in a check than Shannon had ever seen in her life.

  “No,” Shannon said, after a longer pause than she’d wanted. She’d expected bribery, but that was ridiculous.

  “Think of all the good you could do with me backing you. You could build schools for the underprivileged or whatever.” Langston’s expression told her that he wasn’t the one offering the check but his backers—and they clearly were more interested in her than he was.