During their ritual, no one seemed to pay her any mind. By the red lamp-light she could tell that each of the two cages held Rat-bugs—deadly scavengers with venomous tail-stingers. She had seen only a few of the vermin in her lifetime, but she knew to be afraid of them.
Closer still to the center of the room, Elissa watched as the pace of the chanting grew quicker, and she beheld the true terror of the scene. Choking back the scream in her throat, Elissa saw little Bladeborn sitting in the sand at the bottom of the pit. He was crying and shirtless, with a hideous tattoo marking his chest.
The chanting increased to a maniacal pitch, as the pale-skinned cult leader called out, “…And thus, your devoted worshippers aid in granting ZIPZORAG, LORD OF NIGHTMARES the blessing of divine resurgence!”
Crackling lines of magical light, unlike anything Elissa had ever seen, played over runic writing on the pit’s walls. The cages were opened and the Rat-bugs were dumped down onto the pit’s sandy floor with her son!
Without thinking, Elissa pushed through the crowd and jumped down from the edge of the pit, landing on the back of one of the venomous insects, smashing and killing it. Cold power from the magic emanations struck her frail form, twisting her in pain. But a threat more immediate scurried toward little Bladeborn, so she ignored the force of magical energy that gripped her to dive on the second Rat-bug. She brought the thigh-bone down on the back of the thing and started hitting it, hard as she could.
Despite Elissa’s efforts, the second Rat-bug didn’t die right away. The thing’s poison tail stung her arm and shoulder before it died.
The chanting stopped short as the shocked ritualists took a moment to realize what had happened. However, the lines of energy continued to crackle.
Already numb from the poison, tears pouring down her face, Elissa dragged herself with one arm to the nearest wall of the pit, while keeping one arm around her boy.
Elissa heard the cult leader call out, “That woman! SHE HAS RUINED EVERYTHING!”
Unable to do more to protect her child, Elissa held little Bladeborn close, trying to shield him from the crackling lines of force that still hung in the air. Little Bladeborn threw his arms about her, terrified, and she held him, bracing herself in the pit against the corner walls. As her baby boy wailed, she prayed to Saint Morth, the god of the heavens, “Protect my son…please! Saint Morth, protect my son!”
One of the cage masters called across the pit to the cult leader, “What do we do?”
The cult leader retorted, “The rites have been blundered! His vengeance be upon us!”
Although she was dying, Elissa could see the air in the center of the pit shimmer, as something that could only be a pathway from a far place opened. Through this magic portal, a huge, Demonic entity appeared standing astride the pit, knocking over many of the cultists. The rest seemed stunned, frozen in fear.
Looking about in a fury that was pure evil, Zipzorag shouted, “BETRAYAL!”
As the cultists began to scatter Zipzorag grabbed and killed them. In abject horror, Elissa shrieked.
Chapter 3: Angres and Agatha
On the night Angres won his shared victory in the Arena of Blood, he went to the Enclave for a memorable party. He slept off the strong drink there, and upon awakening, made plans to throw another party in the back room for his closest friends. Angres fished in the filthy kitchens for a decent bite to eat and there, Agatha, His boss, surprised him.
“There are a lot of hold-outs to our ‘protection’ work this month,” Agatha told Angres. “My main men aren’t getting the job done, but with you behind them, the threat level will be higher. I want you and the three boys to go around and force the hold-outs to pay. It’ll be a cinch for you. Do this, and I’ll let you have the Enclave’s back room for a night, free of charge.”
Angres was still a bit woozy from last night’s socializing, and spending the morning gathering protection money wasn’t his idea of a good time. “You gotten’ be kiddin’ me Agatha! I won the Grande Finale yesterday and brought honor to us all…You’re askin’ me to do this now?”
Agatha berated her muscle-man, “You nearly threw your life away on a whim, sharing the prize with that no-name. So, listen up and listen good: this work I want you to do—it is not a request. It is an order.”
“I’m not your servant, Agatha!” Angres declared, raising his voice. “You have some gall thinkin’ I’ll go about the lower City threatenin’ folks for a bit of coin today!”
Louder still, Agatha retorted, “Winner or not, you work for me! Go get that money or find a new place to bunk!”
Despite Angres’ champion status, Agatha was boss.
That morning, Angres got the coin from the shop owners with three others. It went down smoothly; he merely had to show his face and the merchants fell over themselves to ingratiate before him. The three other Enclave ruffians, who had bungled the extortion last week, were shown what a little “proper” arm twisting could do.
“See there, boys?” Angres said after the last merchant had coughed up the coin. “No broken bones or blood, but we got what we came for. You just need to let them know we’re really their ‘friends’ with their ‘best interest’ at heart.”
“You are number one, Angres!” an Enclave muscle-man stated, slightly in awe. “Gladiator champ an’ the toughest thug on the lower levels!”
Angres didn’t appreciate being called a thug, toughest one or not. Still, he let it go.
However, on the way back to the Enclave, Angres and the boys met an unforeseen complication.
A gang known as the “Hazords” didn’t like Angres being in Agatha’s Enclave. The Hazords sent their Lieutenant, a rogue named Twin-Fists, along with eight of their best muscle-men, to track Angres down and punish him. They caught up with Angres and the three other Enclave thieves, and then backed them off the main tunnel-street into an alleyway near airshaft 359.
“Stand down, you insects!” Angres yelled furiously. “Or me and my boys will squash you!”
“You don’t stand a chance, Angres!” threatened Twin-Fists in a low, gravelly voice. “We got you two-to-one! I don’t care how heroic you are in the arena—this is real life! MY territory! Even you are gonna’ get a beating now! Hand over your clubs and knives and none of you will get hurt…much.”
“What do we do, now?” whispered one of Agatha’s thugs nervously. “They have us trapped!”
“I’m thinking,” Angres claimed. He held a chunk of brick out of sight behind his back and thought if he was lucky he could take out Twin-fists with a solid throw. “Smash ‘em down and run soon as you can… Win or lose, we’re in for a fight…”
“Face it, Angres, you’re going to fall…hard!” Twin-Fists called, filled with braggadocio. Angres watched Twin-Fists strut and flex. There was more at stake than just the money. The reputation as a strong-arm that Angres had would suffer were he to get beat down by the Hazords, and Merkee would be laughing at him all the way to the hells when he heard.
Taking his turn to make threats, Angres retorted, “You wanna’ mess with us? I’ll call out infernal light to strike you down where you stand, you son of a wormfish! Crawl back under the trash that spawned you, Twin Fists! You junk-filled, floor-feeding, bad excuse for carcass!” Angres thought if he could delay the fight with hurled curses, there was a chance that some of Agatha’s other men would come looking for them. “I’ll summon up the devils of the freezing pits if you mess with me an’ my boys, Hazord slime ball! I’ll—”
Just then, the word: “BETRAYAL!” uttered by Zipzorag, was heard by everyone in that section of Fortress City. It was not a “sound” that everyone in the area heard, but a Demonic utterance of “thought” delivered to the mind.
All of them paused to shake off the bizarre effect or figure out what they experienced. Angres had experienced it also, but he recovered almost instantly. He took advantage of the lapse in attention he saw in Twin-Fists and the other members of the Hazords, throwing his chunk of brick with force and ac
curacy. It beaned Twin-Fists square in the noggin, and the Hazord leader screamed in pain, falling to the dirty floor of the alley, clutching his bleeding brow.
Then, Angres tore into another two Hazord gang members, grabbing one about the neck in his massive hand and kicking the other in the kneecap with his studded boot. His men took the initiative and fought alongside, clubbing down three others before they could react. Angres and the men of Agatha’s gang continued to beat the incapacitated Hazords long after they were down.
Before he left the scene, Angres stomped his heel on Twin-Fists’ right hand, breaking every bone in it.
“Didn’t I warn you, Twin-Fists?” Angres bellowed, as the Hazord Lieutenant howled in pain. “They can call you ‘Lefty,” now! That’s what you get!”
Angres and his three comrades left the fight with hardly a scratch, and the Hazords who had dared to challenge them were left writhing in pain and blood on the ground. Eight versus four it had been, and Angres and the Enclave won.
Angres and his comrades dashed for home through the dim alleyways of Fortress City.
Angres said proudly to the other three with him, “It looked pretty bad there for a bit, but once the fight was joined we smashed them good!”
“Do you know what made that word, Angres?” one of his men asked, catching his breath.
“I have no idea what it was, but it was a lucky break that saved our skins,” Angres asserted.
“It sounded like the word ‘betrayal’ to me,” another of Agatha’s muscle-men stated. “Yet, I heard it in all me’ bones. In me brains, even.”
“It was a word spawned in hell, I’m sure,” Angres told them. “It gave us the opening we needed to defeat the Hazords, but it’s a bad omen…Quick now, let’s get home! I’m afraid that sound came from somewheres near the Enclave!”
The leader of the Enclave, Agatha, decided to investigate the “unholy sound” that seemed to come from a place near their den. After Angres reported back and explained the encounter with the Hazords, Agatha enlisted him again. Agatha, Angres, and two others proceeded into the red curtained corridor that was diagonally across the tunnel-street from the Enclave, where they thought the word “betrayal” had originated.
In Agatha’s location, the word had been acutely loud. Afterwards, those in the gaming hall went silent for a moment, and then everyone in the Enclave heard—distantly—what sounded like men screaming in pain.
However, most of the grizzled toughs in Agatha’s gaming den didn’t want to go home right after the unexplained sounds. They had been reveling in Year’s End debauchery, and even such a unique sound, almost magical in its origin, only slowed them down.
But their normally raucous laughter was somewhat quieted following the unique noise, and slowly, they began to trickle out of the Enclave. Agatha had heard the sound too, and she saw that her employees were beginning to jabber jaw about what the sound was and gossip about bad magic. She had to put a stop to it. She shut the doors to the Enclave, for it was her territory that was most affected by the voice. The City Guards would do nothing; it was her responsibility.
Agatha was a beautiful and mature rogue who had carved her way out of humble beginnings to become the matron of the Enclave. She was short-tempered, brave, and quick-witted. But unusual “sound” had rattled even her normally cool head.
Agatha’s champion, Angres, had reluctantly agreed to track down the noise with her after the morning’s dust-up with the Hazords. Agatha was going to make sure that Angres earned his pay, since he was getting more than anyone else she employed. There would be no champion’s party for him tonight until the current matter was settled.
Two others were with them: sure-handed Shyla, who was an expert with cards, and Edann, who had a way with locks.
The four of them entered the forgotten morgue where the bones of the dead were stacked floor-to-ceiling. Taking in the morbid reminder of the last plague, they all began to sweat.
Edann said, “Who would have guessed this place is right across from our shop?”
“I knew about the infirmary here,” Agatha explained. “There are many ossuaries off the lower floors, and nothing ever comes of it….”
“But Agatha,” Edann protested, “All these bones! Over a thousand people must have remains here! And deeper down whatever made that noise...might still be waiting!”
Gesturing with her large, stoneware knife, Agatha said, “These bones are just a coincidence, you fool! More than likely, it was an ancient fan breaking apart, and that is all. It might have been a couple people, maybe three or four, falling down an airshaft and hitting the rotors. Something like that is all it was…Don’t let dull-witted fear carry you away!"
“Agatha, the voice, the word!” Shyla said, frightened and agitated. "Who can talk in your head like that?"
"Be silent, you two,” whispered Angres commandingly. “Edann may be dull-witted, but this time he has a point. Whatever made that noise might still be here!”
“Are you afraid, too, Angres?” Agatha asked.
“You know I ain’t afraid, Aggie,” Angres replied.
“Then keep moving!” Agatha said. “And stop calling me that!”
Agatha led them further in, and Angres whispered, “This thing that spoke the ‘word’ is like no ordinary beast of the dark. I just don’t know what kind can do that…”
Agatha went past stacks of broken beds, noticing that several desiccated bodies still rested in a few of them.
“Should we…go farther?” Shyla asked.
“Yes,” Agatha answered firmly. “We still need to know what made that sound… There is a possibility that the cracking we heard was a falling ceiling tile that landed on the bones.”
“I don’t think so,” Angres countered. “There is no evidence of that.”
Edann stammered, “Agatha it wasn’t a cracking…It was screaming…!”
“Be silent, Edann!” Agatha ordered. “I see another light ahead, coming from this hallway.”
Agatha went down a narrow path with walls made by stacked human bones. The other three followed, Angres, then Shyla and Edann. They saw a faint red shaft of light cut through the dark, giving a blood-red shade to the skeletal bodies so carefully piled. The bones gave way to a section of stone wall with a shattered hardwood door set into it. Deep shadows alternated with the flicker of what seemed to be many crimson-burning oil lamps in the room beyond.
Closer to the door, the lights they carried revealed remnants of a one-sided struggle. Lying on the ground was a cold smoking pipe that had been snapped into two pieces, a single sandal, and a trail of blood that looked like someone had been killed there and dragged inside.
“Is that—blood?” Agatha said.
“There sure is a lot of it!” Edann said. “I say we scatter to the four directions right now…”
Agatha looked inside and nearly retched. The room was covered in grisly remains of many bodies, torn apart by what could only have been an inhuman destructive force.
Angres looked and said, “…What could have done this…?” Angres said, almost too softly to hear.
“Oh, ye gods!” Edann started to say. “I know what’s in there! This is the—”
The realization of the likely cause had dawned on Agatha at the same time as Edann. The gangleader tried to head off the lockpicker’s stammering before the simpleton was overwhelmed, "Shut it up now, Edann!”
“No, look,” Edann explained, “This place is cursed! This is that Demon cult… I told you about them! I just didn’t know…. I didn’t know they could really call a Demon!”
Agatha said sarcastically. “Edann, you’re just grasping at straws! There is no such cult in this—”
“A D-Demon cult?” Shyla choked out.
“Th-they steal people to feed to their master,” Edann said. “I really only heard rumors, but…”
“Just rumors, ‘till you find something like this,” Angres exclaimed. “Edann, let’s move a few of those old beds in front of the doorway and cal
l it good!”
“Wait!” Agatha exclaimed. “Can’t you hear that? I hear a child crying, from somewhere inside!”
Shyla said quickly, “Leave it be! Let’s just go!”
They could all hear it now. It was certainly a child crying, coming from inside the room.
“Curse it all, that’s a little kid in there!” Agatha decided. “We are not going to just wall him up and leave him! I’m going in to get him!”
“No, wait!” Shyla exclaimed. “Agatha, don’t go in!”
Yet Agatha was inside now, determined to get the child. Angres and the other two called out to Agatha from beyond the door as she boldly stepped forward, resolved that the answer to what made that first sound was linked to the child.
The carnage inside the room was beyond anything Agatha had ever seen. Walking cautiously to avoid the bodies, she went toward the place where the crying originated.
In the dim red light of the hanging oil lamps, Agatha could see a pit was set into the floor in the center of the room. In the pit was a boy, perhaps two or three. When she saw the little one’s rose-cheeked face, she felt assured it was not some kind of Demon luring her in. Yet Agatha noted that across the child’s bare chest was a large, dark tattoo. Such a symbol had no place on one so young; it must have been put there as a mark for sacrifice.
It enraged her to see a child treated in that way. She vowed to herself that she would rescue the poor boy, a victim of cruel fate.
The child stood in the pit next to the crumpled form of a young lady, one Agatha didn’t recognize as being from her part of town. Red welts dotted the young woman’s immobile hand. Unlike the other dead in the room, it looked as though she had died from insect stings. Agatha saw the remains of two dead Rat-bugs on the sandy floor of the pit.
A spiral staircase rose to a balcony at the end of the large room. Agatha worried about what was up there. She said to herself. “I’m only here for this child, then gone.”
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