Oaths a progression fant.., p.7
Oaths: A Progression Fantasy Epic, page 7
The white fire streaked through the mist, cutting both scale and fur, sending a gout of hellfire bursting from the wound. The demon screamed and Wurhi cringed away.
“They are like the trick of the barking dogs! They are illusions, Wurhi, drawing us into its realm of dreams! Things there are only real if you let your mind surrender to them!” he screamed.
With dawning horror, she realised that despite his words, he sounded terrified.
The mist thickened. A sickly violet light began to spread in all directions. A thousand locusts droned in mocking laughter.
“You cannot stop the fear, but do not surrender to it!” he screamed.
The burning blade flashed again. His shadow dove away from a dozen grasping claws and pincers.
“If you do, you will die!” he cried. “If you do! You will—”
Sense fled the world in that moment.
Stone wrenched from stone. Walls and ceiling tore away. Alien stars danced before violet skies in all directions.
Wurhi screamed.
Great pillars swirled above and below without regard for up or down. Her stomach bottomed out. The floor shattered into a mass of floating stones. She clung to one, stricken with desperation. Twisted versions of Cas’ tower spiralled around her. The city of Zabyalla arched over her in the distance, except with every building writhing like maggots in flesh. The mist undulated with prismatic lights, and within stalked endless terrors with shining eyes. She felt miniscule.
On a wide, distant platform, Kyembe the Spirit Killer and the Lord of Nightmares raged in battle.
Mists filled with spittle and sparks. The immense horror struck with the speed of a lioness, but the towering Sengezian weaved through its limbs with skill and agility that seemed supernatural. His weapon sliced and burnt its shadowy flesh in great, drawing cuts. White flame consumed its body, growing with every blow it received.
Yet, while it flinched, it did not retreat. Severed limbs regrew. Burning flesh sloughed off. Wounds closed. It would not bleed, and amused malice built around it.
It would not die.
Cas’ mocking laugh echoed through the nightmare world from all places at once. “Unwashed wretches! You cannot kill my wonderful servant! You cannot slay terror itself! Cut it! Burn it! Do as you wish, but vermin can only perish before the lion’s claws.”
His taunt brought Wurhi’s mind to focus.
Cas was right.
Her companion was tiring while the demon pursued him with seemingly endless vitality. He had cut and burnt it enough to kill an elephant a hundred times over, yet it continued unabated. In return, all it would need would be a single lucky stroke to shred the slender warrior in twain.
Yet, what could she do? She was no mighty warrior or wizard. She had no magics or great cunning or—
Wait. Wizard? …Aparis! Aparis had thought Cas found some magic!
They were in the great market two mornings ago. Cas had passed through with his procession, and the princeling’s eyes were fixed on him. No, it was not on him. It was on something else… The sceptre! Cas had raised it before the demon attacked. That was the key! The very thing that would undo the lock on this hellish trap. She had to get it. But where lay the merchant prince?
His voice had come from everywhere. Wurhi’s eyes could only see the fog. Her skin felt its damp touch. Her nose…
She froze in realisation.
Her nose smelled none of it. No musk from the mammoth feral cats. No dewy scent of mist. Nothing. The demon was here to kill humans. Its illusions must be focused only on their favoured senses, like how Kyembe’s illusion of the dog mimicked only its sound! Humans relied on their eyes and ears, while scent was the realm of the animal. To find Cas, she needed her nose as sharp as an animal’s. Wurhi the Rat clung tighter to the floating stone. A haze came over her mind.
Agony ripped through her body.
Her bones felt like they were breaking apart and coming back together.
A shriek of rising pitch burst from her lips.
Far away, though distance here held little meaning, Merchant Prince Cas watched the fight through a tunnel in the scintillating mist. Although that little wretch’s dagger had sliced his arm, the cut had been shallow, and he’d wrapped a silk cloth around it to stem the bleeding. He took up a golden pitcher of wine, poured himself a rhyton, then toasted toward the battle.
The dark-skinned warrior was being cornered by his lovely demon.
It would not be long now.
“To you, my nameless, valorous young lion.” He took a long sip of the smooth wine, savouring its flavour. “May your flesh fill my demon’s belly!”
Nightmares swam through the surrounding mist or hopped between the floating stones. They held no danger to him, though they were amusing in their own way. Some gave him glances as they passed, or even approached and studied him for a time until they recognised his sceptre’s light and backed away in deference.
How droll.
In particular, one was comically leaping his way across the stones, much like how a flat rock skipped across the River of Scales. It was not very fearsome: a strange little imp with what looked like a rat’s tail swishing behind it.
Oh well, he supposed everyone had their own fears. Some mind must have conjured it.
Cas smiled as it approached.
“Hail to you!” he said mockingly as he took another sip of wine.
The merchant prince held up the Dreaming Sceptre so that it would know its master.
A giant rat’s jaws burst from the mist.
There was a wet crunch.
Fangs dug into his forearm. Flesh tore. Bone snapped.
“Aaaaaaargh!” he wailed.
In agony, he dropped his sceptre.
The creature deftly snatched it from the air and pulled away from Cas, clutching it with small, clawed hands. It was a hideous cross of enormous rat and human, with long, pointed snout and shaggy black fur. It twitched, the glowing violet sapphires reflected in its beady, animal eyes.
“No, brute!” Cas shrieked desperately, clutching his arm. “Give that back!”
The creature hunched, chittering at him in a high pitch. It seemed about to flee into the mist but then shuddered, violently shaking its head. It squeezed its eyes shut. When they opened, human intelligence lurked in them. With another chitter, the rat took up the Dreaming Sceptre in both clawed hands and raised it high over its head.
Cas’ eyes went wide.
“No! Don’t!” he shrieked.
She swung it down. The sceptre’s head smashed into the stone floor.
There was a world-shaking crash.
A tremendous impact and the roar of enchanted jewels cracking rippled through the nightmare world.
Shrieking followed. The demon reeled. Its form boiled and wavered like a mirage. Black, foul ichor poured from its many wounds and new flesh no longer replaced what had burnt.
Kyembe the Spirit Killer did not let this opportunity pass. With a roar, he charged, the flaming sword-staff thrusting forward.
Meat sizzled as flaming metal skewered it.
The blade drove into the demon’s core, and hellfire exploded from every wound.
The rat-thing raised the sceptre once more.
It swung, and another world-shaking crunch ripped through reality.
Sapphires shattered. Their violet light wavered, then forever flickered out. With a scream that mirrored the demon’s, the sceptre shuddered in the creature’s claws like a stricken beast.
Then it crumbled, trickling away like grains of sand.
The hellfire redoubled in strength in the demon’s flesh and its entire form lit up like an oil-soaked carpet. For one brilliant moment, its hideous bulk shone brighter than a burning star in the dark as its shrieks were swallowed by the roar of flame that ate it. For years, it had been the greatest predator in Zabyalla.
Now, its flesh fed another. With the thunder of a collapsing building, the Lord of Nightmares crashed to the stones, now nothing more than a cremating corpse. A shockwave burst from its body, driving its foul touch from the room and every dreaming soul in Zabyalla. For an instant, thousands of voices seemed to cry out in tearful elation. Then, they too faded into the night.
Yet for one, the nightmare was only beginning.
Cas of Zabyalla screamed as moonlight filled his chamber. Before him crouched a monster chittering at him and glaring with beady orbs. Stalking toward him was a towering, dark man with pointed ears and ferocious eyes as crimson as blood, bearing a sword-staff that burned with white fire.
Upon the blade sizzled scant remains of Cas’ great protector.
“N-no wait! Please!” The merchant prince wept in panic, clutching his agonised forearm. “Don’t kill me! I’ll give you whatever you want! Gold! Platinum! Jewels! Slaves!” Releasing his forearm, he scooped up a handful of coins and gems. “Please! I’ll give you anything!”
Bone popped and flesh shuddered.
He watched in horror as the chittering beast-thing writhed and contorted in agony. The skeleton broke, shortened, and reset. Flesh rippled as fur sank beneath the skin, and claws shortened even as the snout and tail did. The animal cries became more and more human until they were the pained screams of a woman.
Finally, the transformation ended.
Rather than a rat-thing standing before him, it was the thief, Wurhi the Rat.
“Y-y-M-monster!” Cas cried, scrambling back into his throne.
“Maybe,” Wurhi admitted, her green eyes piercing his. She looked down and picked up an ornamental golden dagger, turning it over in her hands. “But much less than you, Cas of Zabyalla.”
“And we have already slain one monster tonight.” Kyembe’s white flame reflected on his crimson eyes. “Let us complete the set.”
He grabbed Cas’ long curly hair in an iron grip.
“No! You can’t! Guards! Guards! Azar!” Cas wept, trying to pull away.
Metal bit into flesh.
Wurhi sank the golden dagger into his stomach.
“A-aaaaaargh!” he screamed.
She ripped it down and out.
In a spray of red, Cas was eviscerated before his own horrified eyes. “Aaaargh! Aaaargh!” He tried desperately to hold his entrails in, retching blood even as Kyembe pulled him from his seat and dragged him toward the balcony.
“No!” he wailed, realising what the Sengezian had in mind. “You can’t do this! You can’t!”
He was still pleading when Kyembe flung him from the balcony.
The man who would be merchant king shrieked and desperately clawed at nothing.
The world spun.
The night air howled around him.
His dimming eyes glimpsed a flash of water.
Then he slammed into his own bathing pool.
A thunderous splash split the night, followed by a muffled crunch.
The water’s surface broke his body.
The stone beneath broke it again.
There would be no more heads for Cas’ pikes.
Far above, Wurhi and Kyembe gazed down at the body floating amongst spreading red in the water.
“So ends Cas of Zabyalla,” Kyembe pronounced.
“May maggots feast on his soul.” Wurhi spit after him, watching it land with a little plop on his body.
The Sengezian’s eyebrows rose. “Good aim,” he mused, clapping her on the shoulder. “Now let us take our plunder before the guards break down the door!”
Chapter 6
An Oath’s Renewal
Kyembe the Spirit Killer basked in the sun, leaning on the rail as the ship pulled away from Zabyalla’s harbour. A warm wind blew north, with gulls crying and soaring on its current. The docks bustled with activity.
He stretched, letting out a great yawn.
There had been no opportunity for sleep the night before, and the fight with the demon had left his whole body sore from his bones to his skin.
On the ship, as nearly custom, his inhuman eyes and ears had ensured he was avoided. Sailors laden with cargo went quiet and quickened their steps as they passed. Passengers gave him a wide berth. It looked like it would be a lonely voyage to the lands north of the Sea of Gods.
He would not mind.
His pack, clutched protectively in his arms, lay heavy with coin and jewels. His tattered cloak was long gone, and a fine over-robe fell open around him. It was a rich, deep, blue-black with points of white upon it like stars on a night sky, and it was fastened about his neck with a golden clasp wrought into a graceful heron. It was the right length, but a little wide.
After all, it had been tailored for a man of similar height, but much broader frame.
Of course, that man would have no need for it anymore.
By the time the sun had risen, the other merchant princes of Zabyalla had stormed Cas’ grounds with their hired armies at their backs. They had no full knowledge of what happened the night prior, but they well knew that the veil Cas cast over Zabyalla had been sheared.
They wanted recompense in blood and lucre.
Unfortunately, there had been very little of the former to divide up.
Cas’ guard and servants had taken one look at the state of their master and understood the situation. By the time the merchants arrived, they’d looted enough to keep them going for a time, then scattered to the winds.
The merchant princes and princesses split the bloated corpse of Cas’ empire amongst themselves and then returned to what they did best. Trade. As for the corpse of the man who would be merchant king, Wurhi had said they were already nailing it to a pole in the great market for the sport of all.
Of his servants, their fate would be their own. Some would no doubt find position with Cas’ former rivals. Some would be swallowed by the bowels of the city. Some would flee Zabyalla altogether. He was sure he’d seen Azar the Sting on this very ship, though the woman had paled and fled too quickly below deck for him to be sure.
Even if it was, it mattered little to him. This was a good day.
Buneb’s followers were growing further distant, he had enough wealth to live extravagantly for months, a villain lay dead, and another of the seemingly endless demons of the world had vanished.
His brow furrowed.
Only a little rat caused him lingering worry.
They had finished settling her debt with the lenders of The Maw—he’d gone along to ensure they attempted no treachery—and though her share was vastly depleted, she had enough to keep herself comfortably for some time. When they parted, she’d given him a fond farewell then gone off to find a cup of wine. He sighed, idly wondering how she was. No doubt she could care for herself, but she’d saved his life twice and she had been good company.
“Ah well,” he lamented. “Such is the way of things.”
“The way of what?” a voice said from very close.
“By the stars!” he jumped, whirling around. “Wurhi?”
“Hello.” The tiny Zabyallan gave him a little wave and a smile that displayed her overbite. “Why do you look so sad? You’re the one that actually got to keep most of his plunder.”
“What… what are you doing here?” he demanded.
She made a face, and spit into the water. “Someone tried to knife me a hundred paces from where we parted.”
Kyembe gasped. “No!”
“Then it happened three more times,” she scowled, and spat again.
“No! Why?”
She sighed, leaning against the rail. “Folk at The Maw saw how much I had left after I settled my and Kashta’s debts and thought it’d look better in their pouches. So, I got to thinking,” Wurhi’s eyes drifted down to the water. “There’s going to be a lot of guards from Cas’ place that’re going to be on the street and probably want my guts for a belt and my fur for a cape. The merchant princes are going to want me dead because I actually managed to rob Cas of Zabyalla and they don’t want me in their coffers next. And I’m small as well…” She made a sour face. “A rat. Everyone’s going to take me for an easy mark, especially without Kashta around anymore.”
She laughed bitterly. “I’d never be able to rest! Wouldn’t that be foolish? Everyone else in the city gets to sleep soundly again except for the woman who actually pulled Cas’ damn guts out. Nope. I say that’s camel shit. So, I decided that maybe the world can do with some seeing. I was half ready to leave before you came along anyway.”
“Wurhi, I—”
“Hold on, before you say anything.” She fixed him with a piercing look. “You knew, didn’t you? That I was a shapeshifter.”
Kyembe scratched his head. “I suspected something, yes.”
“How?”
“I felt you had a little magic about you,” he smiled. “In many ways.”
Wurhi scoffed. “That tongue of yours is going to get you in trouble one day.”
His smile widened. “It already has, many times.”
She chuckled. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I like women. Though you’re alright, I guess.”
He recoiled in mock injury. “Truly a loss for me! Though your compliment is the sweet balm that dulls the pain.”
“Oh gods, step back for a moment, that line’s gonna have me retching over the rail.”
Now Kyembe laughed and shook his head, but soon grew serious. “In truth, I suspected it when you found the kitchen with only your nose. I lived in the wilderness for some years and have met many, many people. Anyone can smell cooking food, but finding an empty hearth and cold kitchen by scent alone? That could only be an animal’s deed.”
“Ah,” she laughed ruefully. “That makes sense. You never asked about it. Even after we left Cas’ place.”
He shrugged. “If you wanted to speak of it, you would have. You do not know me well, so it was not my place to ask.”
“Well, thanks for that.” She looked at the harbour shrinking into the distance. “My mother said I got it from my father, and devils only know where he got it from. She didn’t like me to do it or even talk about it…” Her eyes grew distant. “I hate doing it, you know. You don’t know pain until your body is ripping itself apart and rebuilding in the time it takes to put on a tunic. I can’t imagine anything being like it. Worse than that, I can’t talk and I start thinking like a damn animal. Last night, all I wanted to do was scamper off to find some warm crack in the earth to burrow and hide in. Nearly couldn’t shake it off.”
