Chaos god, p.9
Chaos God, page 9
The floor shook under my feet as I dashed toward a wide spiral staircase. There were terrified screams in the distance as I ran, but I couldn’t see anyone. Huge fissures split the stone walls, and the entire building was crashing down around me.
I darted toward an exit but running suddenly felt like trying to dash through four feet of heavy New England snow. My legs began to shake with the strain, and my heart pounded hard in my chest as a thin sheen of sweat broke out all over my body.
It all felt too real. More real than any dream I’d ever had.
Blood-curdling screams and the crashing sounds of the palace as it was obliterated around me filled my ears and pushed me to run harder. Then I finally spotted a pair of enormous wooden doors, and I raced toward them. My palms were sweaty as I pushed hard on the carved wooden doors that were easily thirty feet tall, but they didn’t budge.
“Damn it all,” I tried to say, but when I heard my voice as if from a great distance, the language I spoke was not English. I didn’t recognize the words that came out of my mouth, but there wasn’t time to dwell on that now, not with the palace crashing down around me.
I turned to my left in an attempt to find another way out, and I spied a smaller, less elaborate door past a row of stone statues. I darted forward, past the regal marble figures, and I threw myself at the door. I heaved a heavy sigh of relief when the door gave way under my hands, and I almost fell out of the palace.
The creaking and cracking sounds grew intense and deafening, and I knew I couldn’t stop yet. Without even a single backward glance, I dashed forward and away from the crumbling palace. I ran down a stone pathway that was flanked on either side with green topiaries and brightly-colored flowers. If I’d had even a split second to assess the scenery, I probably would have thought it was beautiful, but the ground shook and the stone path split apart as my booted feet raced away from the palace.
There were people scurrying about in shock and terror, and they wore flowing robes of rich silks and satins. The men ushered and pulled the women away from the crumbling palace as their hair was falling out of the elegant knots on their heads. I didn’t have time to wonder who they were, because a sharp and painfully loud snap came from behind me.
I glanced over my shoulder, and I saw the crystal pillars at the top of the palace starting to tip in my direction. I put my eyes straight forward, and I ran with everything I had.
The ground opened up in front of me, and I leaped with all of my might to the other side. My fingers dug into the edge of the cavernous opening in the ground, and I scrambled up to the other side.
I laid face-down on the broken stones as I tried to catch my breath, and I closed my eyes against the nightmare that had taken a hold of my mind. The crashing sounds and echoes of screams slowly faded away, and a steady pulsing heat started to surround me.
Fuck, this dream was only getting more vivid.
I groaned, pushed myself to my feet, and then opened my eyes to look around me. Lava spewed into the air, and ash fell like a horrific flurry of hellish snow as the volcanoes erupted on every side of me. I spun in a tight circle as I tried to absorb my surroundings, and sorrow and despair took up residence in my chest.
The volcano nearest me rumbled as the ground under my feet shook, and I tasted brimstone on my tongue. My lungs clenched in the beginning of a scream, but no sound came out.
Suddenly, a soul-tearing agony ripped through every cell and nerve in my body, and the scream tore loose from my throat. Fire and lightning and razor-sharp pain speared through my body like a billion tiny blades dissecting me down to my very atoms, and I blacked out from the agony.
I sat bolt upright on my hard bed as my chest heaved in gasping breaths, and sweat streamed down my face.
Chapter 7
It took me several seconds to shake the lingering sensations of terror and dread from my mind. When my breath finally started to even out, I reached over to my bedside table to pick up my cell phone and check the time like I did every morning, but my hand slipped right through the empty space where my table should have been.
“What the…” I grumbled, and I opened my eyes, “…fuck.”
I stared up at the worn wooden planks that made up the roof of the hut, and all the events of yesterday came flooding back into my thoughts like a tidal wave. My mind pushed stubbornly at the idea that any of it had been real, but then my newly adopted wolf-shark pup twitched in her sleep beside me.
“Uugghh,” I groaned, and I draped my forearm over my eyes.
The events of the previous day were definitely all real, and there was no denying any of it. I’d been accosted by a demon, sucked through a rainbow portal, and dropped out on the destroyed ruins of Asgard. Plus, there was a wolf-shark pup curled up happily beside me, so I’d also definitely turned into a killer whale and killed a couple of giant apex predators.
“Holy shit,” I sighed, and I looked around the room as I realized I’d left my phone on the counter at my escape room, not that it would have done me any good. My long-distance plan was shit, and I didn’t think even the best of cell phone plans would have covered interplanetary phone calls. Or was it interdimensional?
A smug voice in the back of my head reminded me of an important point. If it was all real, then so was Elora. The lingering remnants of my dreams about the seductive elf played through my mind’s eye like a highlight reel, and I wished I could dive back in and finish the dream before it had devolved into a nightmare of destruction.
I glanced around my surroundings, and I got a better look at the hut than I had in the dark last night. There was a small square window at the back of the hut that I hadn’t noticed before, and the grayish rays of the sunrise were starting to spill in through the cracks on either side of the wooden shutters.
Frida shifted at my side, and her tooth-filled mouth opened wide in a huge yawn. Then she sat up and looked at me with bright black eyes as her shark tail began to wag.
“Hey, girl,” I said softly. I reached out to pat her smooth head, and I realized her skin felt a little dry.
Frida whined at me and backed away from my touch. I could only assume that her skin felt as dry to her as it did to me. I could tell she needed to splash around in the ocean a bit and get the moisture back in her body. She was an aquatic creature after all, and I needed to give her all the things a creature of her species required in order to keep her healthy and happy.
I’d never really had a pet before. Growing up, my dad said there was never enough room and time for me to have a dog or anything. I’d tried small creatures like fish and even a hamster after I’d moved out on my own, but those weren’t the best companions. I’d managed to kill all four of my fish within the first two weeks because I didn’t know how to properly balance the pH in the water. The hamster hadn’t lasted much longer. After a few weeks, the little guy had escaped his cage, and I never saw him again. I could only assume he’d crawled into the walls and gotten stuck somewhere, but I liked to think he was on his own little escape room adventure now. I’d moved out of that apartment shortly after, so I never really learned what had happened to him.
“Wanna go for a little swim, Frida?” I asked as I shoved away the unpleasant thoughts about my past failures at keeping pets. I was determined to take good care of the little puppy, she was much more sentient than a stupid goldfish who would eat itself to death or a glorified rat.
My yellow lab-sized wolf-shark pup hopped straight down to the dirt floor and spun in an excited circle. Then she sat her shark-tailed butt down and yipped impatiently.
“Alright,” I chuckled, and I reached down to scoop up my steel-toed boots. “Let me put my boots on.”
As I jammed my feet into my dusty boots, I thought through the events of the previous day, and I considered if my chosen plan was still my best option. I couldn’t see any way back to Earth from my current situation, which left me to live on this barren wasteland of lava and stone, probably indefinitely. I could try and collect some supplies and head off on my own in search of a way back to Earth, or just a better place to set up residence, but the idea of walking away from this camp and these people didn’t sit well with me.
I decided that staying with Wyn, Elora, Ayen, and the others was still my best chance of survival in this unfamiliar and hostile landscape. Perhaps we could even have a pleasant life together if I could take out the Demon Lord.
Something about the challenge sent a thrill through my veins and made my lips quirk up into a scheming grin.
Then I wondered if the asshole even had a name, or if the people just refused to speak it, like how all the characters in Harry Potter refused to say Voldemort’s name. I guessed I would find out one way or another, because I had every intention of taking the bastard down and freeing these good people from his reign of terror.
The only question was how I would manage to pull it off.
But I couldn’t deny that there was another reason I wanted to stay: I wanted to get to know Elora better. She intrigued me, and I was curious if she was as attracted to me as I was to her.
I finished tying my boot laces, and I stood up and stretched the stiffness from my body.
Before I even brushed the linen curtain aside to walk out of the hut, I heard the irritating tone of Ryfon’s voice.
“You know as well as I,” the prick announced. “There will be three, or the Demon Lord will raze the entire camp to the ground. Your sacrifice is for the betterment and survival of the rest of us.”
“It will do none of us a bit of good.” Ylva scowled. “Eventually, enough full moons will pass, and we will all of us be sacrificed to the Demon Lord. Why must we put off the inevitable?”
“What a wasteful attitude to have,” Ryfon said in an overly arrogant voice. “If we appease the Demon Lord, he may choose to take pity on the rest of us.”
I spotted Elora standing with her arms crossed over her ample chest a short distance away from where Ryfon was trying to badger any three villagers into volunteering for the sacrifice. I started to walk over to her, and I took a second to enjoy the sight of her breasts pressed together, and the cute way her lips pursed in agitation.
“What’s going on?” I asked the beautiful elf quietly.
“Ryfon is demonstrating his eagerness to deliver three of our people to the Demon Lord,” Elora grumbled.
“He’s a real piece of shit,” I said.
Elora looked at me then, and her eyes softened as her gaze caressed over my face.
“What Ayen said last night is true,” Elora said, and the corner of her full lips tugged up slightly. “Ryfon is a bastard.”
“So what?” I asked. “Ryfon gets to choose the sacrifices?”
“No,” Elora said with a frown. “As much as Ryfon would like to claim that kind of power, he does not have the authority to force anyone into the sacrifice.”
“So then…” I hesitated, and I thought maybe I was treading into uncomfortable territory. I didn’t want to push or insert myself where I didn’t belong, but if I was going to be a part of this community, and potentially help them, I needed as much information as possible. “How were previous sacrifices chosen?”
“More often than not, people would volunteer,” Elora sighed, and she rubbed absently at the exposed skin of her upper arms. “In the beginning, the elderly and injured would sacrifice themselves. That was an inclination that lasted for many years. As I told you last night, our numbers were once in the hundreds, and we had many older members in our community, as well as people who had sustained serious injuries or contracted illnesses. Those members of our community knew they would not survive long in this environment, or without proper medication, so they offered themselves up to allow the younger and healthier people a real chance of survival.”
“That’s quite noble,” I said softly.
“Then, after some time,” Elora continued, “mothers and fathers began to give themselves up in order to save their children. Occasionally, the bravest of us would go to save others from having to make the sacrifice.”
“I’ve never known a love like that,” I murmured quietly. “It’s incredible.”
“I believe they had hope that we would have found a way out of this place by now,” Elora continued, and her voice caught with emotion. “My heart breaks to think of how they would react to seeing us still trapped here, under the Demon Lord’s villainous gaze.”
“You know as well as I,” Ryfon shouted with a tone that was tight with undignified rage, “the Demon Lord will have his offering. One way or another, we must give him what he demands!”
“Oh, silence.” Ylva scowled as unshed tears shined in her steely-gray eyes, and she clung to Rathal’s arm. “Let us live in denial for this day.”
“The Demon Lord will have his sacrifice,” Rathal said with a heart-wrenching level of gravity. “You need not remind us every minute from now until the full moon rises.”
“Time grows short,” Ryfon declared ominously, and he pointed one finger aggressively at the people gathered around the fire pit. “Let not your pitiful desires blind you to the passage of time.”
I glanced around the group, and I found that most of the villagers silently tolerated Ryfon’s shouting. They seemed resigned to his actions like it wouldn’t do them a bit of good to tell him to shove it all up his ass. I couldn’t help but notice the clenching of Goren’s fingers on the dried reeds he was weaving together into a basket. The young boy’s head was bent down, and his black curls fell over his forehead, but that couldn’t hide the single tear that slid slowly down the boy’s cheek.
The sight of the kind teen’s carefully leashed rage made my blood boil, and I had to restrain myself from marching over to Ryfon and smashing his nose in.
“Despicable,” Elora practically spit the word, and her fingers gripped around her toned bicep until I was afraid she might cut into her own skin with her fingernails.
I took a deep breath, and I laid a hand ever so gently on the beautiful elf’s tense forearm to draw her attention away from the one-eared bastard who was still pontificating to the people.
“I think Frida wanted to go for a little swim,” I said casually. “How about you come with us to the beach, and you can tell me why it’s not as easy as gutting the Demon Lord like a fish?”
“Yes,” Elora sighed, and she began walking toward the dunes. “We can gather some more food while we are there. Besides, I cannot stand to listen to his abusive coercion for a moment longer. I will not be able to keep my opinions to myself.”
I wanted to ask Elora what she really thought of Ryfon, and why she didn’t make it clear how much of a piece of shit he was, but Ryfon wasn’t nearly as big of a threat as the Demon Lord. I turned my focus to the bigger issue at hand, and I pondered how best to ask about the regional ruler.
“Why don’t you just band together and take out the Demon Lord?” I asked.
“If only it were as simple as you suggest.” Elora sent a withering look in Ryfon’s direction, and then she turned to walk away.
“What do you mean?” I asked as we reached the loose sand that led to the beach.
“The Demon Lord is very powerful,” Elora sighed, and the burning irritation at Ryfon seemed to slip away from her beautiful features. “A Demon Lord is much stronger and more deadly than the demon that you killed when you arrived.”
“Right.” I nodded, and it seemed logical to me that this world would suffer all manner of demon-types. “I get that, but what if we all worked together to kill him? I mean, he can’t be more deadly than a pack of wolf-sharks, can he?”
“It is not only his lethality and violent nature that stops us,” Elora explained. “The Demon Lord rules this region, and he provides us with a semblance of protection from the hordes of other demons in the lava fields and the swamps. Without the Demon Lord’s… protection, we would be obliterated and eviscerated within hours.”
I thought about that for a few minutes as we walked the rest of the way to the water’s edge. There must be some reason the Demon Lord allowed the people to live in his region at all. I wondered if he thought of them like pets, like a little kid lording over an ant farm, or was the situation far worse? Maybe he fed on the humans and elves that lived under his tyrannical gaze. That thought sent a shudder racing down my spine, and I felt even more determined to liberate the good people I’d met so far from the Demon Lord’s hostile rule.
Frida romped around our feet in an excited circle, and when we were a dozen yards from the slowly lapping waves, she raced off and splashed into the water.
Elora and I stopped a few feet from the damp sand, and we silently watched Frida chase the waves and swim around in the cool saltwater. I peeked at the beautiful elf out of the corner of my eyes, and I enjoyed the slow spread of a genuine smile across her pouty lips. It didn’t seem like there was anything worth finding joy in on this planet, and I couldn’t help but feel a tiny bit smug that I’d brought a pleased smile to this gorgeous woman’s face.
“I must admit,” Elora said a few minutes later. “She is rather cute, even if she is a monstrous creature.”
I grinned like a doofus as I watched Frida roll on her back in the shallow waves and flap her shark tail from side to side.
“She’s just a baby,” I mused. “I’m sure she’ll grow, but you said she’s small for a wolf-shark. You called her a runt.”
“This is true.” Elora smiled ruefully at me. “I did call her a runt.”
“Maybe she won’t be as large as the wolf-sharks we battled yesterday,” I pointed out.
“It is possible,” Elora admitted. “I believe her small size is why Frida had been pushed aside from the pack. She likely would have starved without you.”
