Chaos god, p.3
Chaos God, page 3
Without a moment’s hesitation, I slammed my crowbar into his right shoulder, and he stumbled back a step. I pushed forward and threw a fast and hard punch at his other shoulder to knock him back again. Then I rapidly punched the curved end of my crowbar into his gut, and he stumbled another step back.
Before he could straighten up again, I craned my foot up and landed a full-on “This is Sparta!” kick to his chest.
The demon’s mouth fell open with shock, and he teetered on the edge of the cliff for a split second before he went tumbling backward into the gorge. His rasping roar echoed up from the abyss as I watched his body fall into darkness and disappear, and a light snicker slipped past my lips.
Then I felt a wave of vertigo overtake me as I stared over the edge and waited for the sound of his body impacting at the body, but I couldn’t tell when he hit. My head swam, and my vision started to tunnel out again, so I lowered myself to the ground as the dizzying sensation made my stomach turn.
“Ugh,” I muttered, and I laid all the way back on the ground as my head spun like a top, and my entire body felt heavy from the whole ordeal.
The combination of every drop of adrenaline finally easing out of my body, the disorientation of tumbling wildly through empty air, the impact with the ground, and the battle with the demon seemed to all catch up with me.
This was fucking crazy.
I closed my eyes, and I laid my palms flat on the rock in an attempt to ground myself as I suffered through a spinning sensation that reminded me of a heavy night of drinking. I focused on breathing deeply and slowly through my nose, and the acrid stench of sulfur and ash burned inside my nostrils. After a few moments, the dizziness edged away, and I was able to open my eyes to look around me.
The sky was a strange mix of orange light and black clouds. Despite the apparent lack of sunlight, the air was thick, hot, and dry all around me like an arid desert in the height of summer.
I sat up slowly, and though the dizzying weakness was gone from my head, my body ached all over from the battering I’d taken. That was when I noticed the small burn holes in my dark blue t-shirt, and the tiny scabs that had started to form on my arms. Apparently, the adrenaline in my body had prevented me from feeling the effects of the demon’s acidic spit, but now that I saw them, I could feel a slight burning sensation at each of the little marks.
“Ugh, fuck that guy.” I pushed myself to my feet and stared around me.
There were dry rock cliffs on either side of me, and a narrow pathway led to my left away from the cave I’d come from. On the other side of the wide gorge was a mountain that rose straight into the air, and it was so tall that I could barely see the sky beyond it. The rock walls of the cave met abruptly at the edge of the gorge, and it was clear that I had only two options. I could either go back into the cave and hope that it led somewhere, or I could work my way down this narrow mountain pass and into the strange orange light and intense heat. I considered for a moment, and something deep in the back of my mind convinced me there was nowhere to go but forward.
I seriously doubted I’d find a path back to Boston in the back of that cave.
“Son of a bitch,” I sighed, picked up my crowbar from the ground, and started walking.
I carefully picked my way down the narrow mountain path, and a while later, a deep rumbling started to reach me from the distance. I wondered idly if the sound was thunder, but I couldn’t see anything but smoke clouds in the small bits of sky between the peaks. As I made my way further down the path, I found the source of the intense heat and the orange light.
Bubbling pools of lava started to appear on either side of my path, and a little ways further into my trek, the lava spread out in large ponds all around me. Fortunately, the trail I was on continued forward in a mostly unbroken path, but I occasionally had to carefully step over a small river of lava that flowed slowly across.
It seemed like I’d been dropped in the middle of some kind of Hellscape.
I hiked for what felt like an hour or more, and I finally came to a wider path that gave me a bit of hope that I was heading in the right direction. It gave me pause, however, that the mountains had risen to higher peaks, and the lava pools were larger.
The path narrowed again and curved sharply to the right, so I hugged the vertical wall and scooted carefully around the corner with my heart hammering in my chest.
Finally, the width of flat rock spread to a more comfortable size, and I took a deep breath of relief. Then the path began to slowly angle upward, and weariness started to throb in my feet. These boots were decent for working, but they weren’t really ideal for an easy afternoon hike, let alone a barren wasteland of lava fields.
I huffed and stomped up the path, and I told myself that at least I could get a better view of my surroundings at the top of the slope. But fate had other designs, and she mocked me as I reached the peak and saw a whole lot more of what I’d already been staring at.
“Oh, come on,” I grumbled at the universe.
The mountains seemed to go on forever, and the only indication that I was moving in a beneficial direction was a swath of lighter sky in the distance. The smoke and ash hung heavy over the mountainside and lava fields, but I could see a bit of white sky far off to my right, and there was even the bright circular indication of sunlight behind the cloud cover.
“Keep going, Levi,” I told myself. “You sure as fuck can’t stay here.”
Just as I was wrapping up my miniscule pep-talk, lava, rocks, and ash spewed from the mouth of the volcano about half a mile to the left of me, and I knew I was way too close for comfort.
“Fuck!” I took off down the path and raced to stay ahead of the burning air.
As I ran, my mind raced with questions. I had no idea where I was, or how I’d really gotten here. I obviously wasn’t in Boston anymore, but where the fuck was I? None of this made any sense, and I just focused on putting one foot in front of the other as I evaded flying rocks.
Thankfully, the path was wide enough to allow me enough room to evade the flying volcanic rocks. A moment later, the lava stopped spewing into the air and started to flow like cold tree sap down the mountainside instead. I raced as fast as I could, and within minutes, sweat was pouring down my face and back.
I ran for what seemed like an eternity, but it was probably less than ten minutes. I came to a sliding stop as my path suddenly opened out into a wide black field of cooled lava. Several smaller peaks pierced up into the air ahead of me, and further out, I caught the distant smell of saltwater and the gentle sound of ocean waves.
“Fuck yes,” I sighed with relief, and I started to make my way toward the sound of the sea under the expanse of grayish-blue sky.
I gazed around again, and I could tell the majority of the lava was behind me at this point. A foul, rotting smell wafted toward me on a stale breeze from my right, and I longed to know if it was early in the day or approaching night so I could get my bearings. Based on the sun’s position in the sky, it was either midmorning or early evening, but I had no way of knowing which at the moment. I figured I was heading either east or west, but I’d just have to wait to find out which.
I looked to my left, and my heart nearly stopped with a potent mix of shock and hope.
At least three miles off to my left, I could just barely make out the shapes of several man-made structures nestled in the space between more flaming mountains and what appeared to be sandy desert on the horizon. Or at least, I thought they were man-made because the shapes were far too uniform and angular to be natural formations. Then I saw a narrow plume of smoke rise up steadily from somewhere in the middle of the slightly dilapidated structures, and I knew it was a campfire.
“People,” I murmured to myself, and I realized how entirely dry my throat was from the sooty air I’d been breathing. I spit on the ground in a futile attempt to rid my mouth of the gritty, ashy taste, and I longed for a glass of cold water. “Ugh, gross.”
I steeled myself, turned toward the encampment in the distance, and started walking.
Chapter 3
If you’d like to see a map of the area around the encampment, you can find it on my Patreon (search Google for ‘Patreon Eric Vall’), or you can find it in my Facebook group (Search for ‘Eric Vall’ in Facebook Groups). It’s also linked on my website at www.ericvall.com
I swiped the back of my hand across my forehead to wipe the sweat away for the hundredth time. Almost immediately, sweat started dripping down my temples again. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to force the heat away.
I gazed up at the bright spot where the sun shone behind the dense cloud cover. Enough time had passed that I could tell the sun was moving higher into the sky from the horizon which meant it was midmorning, and I guessed that I was traveling north. A small voice in the back of my mind snickered that I couldn’t be sure I was going north because I didn’t know if this planet’s sun rose in the east.
“Shit.” My footsteps paused as I admitted to myself that nothing about this place looked like any part of earth I’d ever seen before. “Where am I?”
I gritted my teeth and kept walking. I wasn’t going to find any answers out here, and my best option was still the meager encampment ahead of me.
I’d hiked for at least an hour since I’d first seen the camp, and it felt like a mirage I’d never get to. I lowered my eyes to the ground and watched my dusty boots as I trudged doggedly on. I distracted myself from the distance I still had to go by finding small rocks and kicking them down my path. This went on for a while longer before I allowed myself to look up again.
“Finally,” I muttered, and I wiped more sweat from my face. At this rate, I was in real danger of dehydrating before the day was over, but I was definitely getting closer to the encampment.
The little buildings were near enough that I could see they were made out of stones and some pretty beaten-up pieces of lumber. I had to assume whoever lived here had scavenged for anything they could find in this horrific landscape of mountains and lava. It was pretty resourceful, actually, and I had hope that these people might be helpful.
Stone formations that were about my height were scattered randomly along the hundred yards between me and the edge of the encampment. I moved between them and occasionally paused to study the quiet camp.
As I peered around a large boulder, the dry wind shifted, and the smells of a campfire and roasting fish wafted to me. My stomach rumbled loudly, and my mouth began to water at the smell. It felt like it had been days since I’d eaten last, even though I knew it could only have been a few hours at most.
I tilted my head and strained my ears to see if I could pick up any voices or movement that would give me an indication of how many people there were. I was a little apprehensive about who lived there. I suspected they were humans, but it was just as possible that this was a village full of demons.
I quickly darted to the next stone pillar, and I was gifted with an almost straight line of sight to the campfire between two of the awkwardly shaped huts. Then I forced my breathing to be as quiet as possible as I studied the fire pit.
There was a wide circle of large lava stones, and strong bright flames licked up from the hole in the middle. I judged by the size of the flames that the fire pit had been dug at least a foot into the ground, which was good. It meant these people had some smarts about them at least. They’d used the readily available lava stones to build the walls of the pits, which again showed their resourcefulness. A makeshift A-frame was built over the top of the fire with slightly bent pieces of metal. A few narrower bars were laid across the A-frame, and several thin-looking fish were slowly roasting over the flames. A huge black cauldron was nestled into an offshoot of the main fire pit, and I could only assume they’d dug a second space underneath it for shoveling coals under the large pot.
All in all, it was a very well-built fire pit that would suit these people for a lengthy amount of time, and I guessed that this wasn’t some temporary camp. Whoever lived here wasn’t just passing through the area, and that gave me pause about who they could be. It would take a hardy group of people to choose to live in this kind of place.
“Or desperate,” I breathed quietly to myself.
Either way, I knew that just marching up to their camp with a bloody crowbar in my hands was not going to be the best way to go about things. I chewed my lip for a second as I looked around me. There were a lot of stones, boulders, and crevices all around. I picked one that I thought I could recognize later, and I stashed my crowbar in the narrow space between two large boulders.
I dusted my hands off on my pants, and I started to walk out from behind the boulder when a man suddenly stepped around from the other side and blocked my way.
“Who are you?” the man demanded as he scowled at me. “What do you want?”
The guy’s accent sounded vaguely Scandinavian, and he was dressed oddly in light leather armor that reminded me of that show Vikings on the History Channel. The armor covered his chest and forearms, and a lightweight fabric was draped underneath like a tunic. He had pale skin, and his brown hair was shaved on the sides in a wide mohawk that fell to his shoulders. His left ear was pointy like an elf’s, and it extended a few inches away from the shaved side of his head. His right ear was much shorter, though, and the scar tissue at the end told me he’d lost the tip of it at some point. His deep-set brown eyes narrowed suspiciously at me as his pointy chin inched up with disdain. He was several inches shorter than me which only made me want to laugh at his attempts to stare down his wide nose at me.
Judging by his averagely muscled frame, I thought I could take him out easily, but that wouldn’t do me any good if he was an important member of the camp. Plus, he had a broadsword strapped to his hip, and even if I still had my crowbar in my hands, I didn’t feel up for another fight right this second.
I started to answer, but before I could get a word out, the guy stepped into my space and shoved me back against a boulder.
“What the f--” I gasped as the pointy-eared guy pressed his forearm against my chest and leaned in close to my face.
“Where did you come from?” The man continued his interrogation. “How did you get to this place? Are you alone? What are these clothes?”
“I--” I tried again to answer, but the guy leaned harder against me, and the air squeezed tight in my lungs.
He hauled me away from the boulder, and I immediately decided this guy was a real jackass. I kept my mouth shut and figured that playing along for the moment was my best course of action. He pushed me toward the encampment’s fire pit, and I walked patiently in front of him.
Even if I felt like fighting, it probably wouldn’t have done me any good. I was going for this camp anyway, and now I had myself a personal escort. Waiting for my moment, and gathering as much information as I could was still my best option. My irritation at this cocky-looking male ebbed away, and I glanced around the camp as he pushed me straight toward the fire pit.
There were at least four dozen small huts, and they didn’t look much bigger than twelve-by-twelve shacks. The roofs were constructed with dried reeds that had been woven tightly together, and their walls were made with a combination of natural stones and reclaimed wood.
“Gather all!” the man called out in a loud voice.
I quirked an eyebrow at him, and he scowled back at me.
“Sit,” he said, and he pushed on my shoulder.
I shrugged and lowered myself onto one of the smooth and flat stones that sat in a circle around the fire. As soon as my weight was off my feet, I realized that the ache in my muscles was nowhere near as intense as I would have expected. I was sore, sure, but I didn’t feel like I needed to sleep in a bath of ice for a week to feel like myself again.
“Weird…” I murmured under my breath, and I took a quick stock of my aches and pains.
The small scabs from the demon’s acidic saliva had faded into little pink circles like tiny spots of sunburn. The ache in my chest and arms from the demon’s punches was almost entirely gone, and even the soreness in my back from where I’d landed on the ground was pretty tolerable. I must be in better shape than I thought, or I’d spent so much time fighting that I had just built up a natural tolerance to physical abuse. Either way, I was glad for it, because I got the feeling I wasn’t even close to out of the woods yet.
Roughly two dozen people had started to emerge from the various huts and gathered hesitantly around the fire pit. There were people of all ages, but I didn’t see any young children present. I guessed the youngest person in the camp was a boy with curly black hair who appeared to be in his late teens. There were women and men, some with pointed ears like the asshole who’d confronted me, and they all appeared exhausted and hopeless.
Their faces were smudged with ash, and their clothes were tattered around the edges. They walked with hunched shoulders, and they had sorrowful lines etched into their faces. Some of them seemed to walk in a fog, like life was barely anything more than moving through their days into the next one. Several more gazed at me with suspicious and weary eyes.
“What is happening, Ryfon?” a burly man who appeared to be in his thirties demanded of my captor.
The man was nearly as tall as me with broad shoulders and thick bands of muscle across his chest and arms. He had a similar accent to the asshole who dragged me over, and his thick ashy-blond hair was pulled away from his face in neatly twisted braids. A short, dark blond beard covered the strict line of his jaw, and he had rounded human ears and strong angular features. He also had a crooked nose that, combined with the straight scar that ran through his left eyebrow to the top of his cheekbone, told me he’d been in more than his fair share of scuffles. He wore leather armor like Ryfon, a dark gray cloak hung from around his shoulders, and he seemed like he was already tired of the one-eared asshole’s attitude.
The blond wall of a man lowered himself onto a stone seat one away from my own and studied me with open curiosity.
