He glanced about. Surrounding him, the terracotta floor of the dining area was dominated by the sorcerer’s forces. Panicked customers were being kept in their seats by swarms of minor demons, and those who tried to fight back were being enchanted into submission, or threatened with immolation by the imps wielding fireballs.
He had nothing on him, none of his old weapons.
And my old skills?
There were knives on the tables, after all.
But what can I achieve, really? Am I going to throw my life away for nothing? I could stab an imp, maybe… but against Redgate himself?
He might as well have considered stabbing a mountain, for all the myriad protections the lich surely enjoyed.
“So how are my old travelling companions?” Redgate asked, turning to Derezo with the amethyst eyes, exposing him to the full effect of the awful gaze for the first time. All thoughts of self-sacrifice deserted him.
“Phanar and Kanthyre? Ibbalat?” A hideous smile bled across the sorcerer’s lips. “Anathta? They are all destined to serve me – you know this?”
Never, monster.
“I shan’t be denied, countryman, and when dear Ana is mine again –”
The wizard-girl’s shriek of defiance was preceded by a single, blinding lance of lightning that went spearing out from her hands, just past Zakimel’s ear, the scream positively quiet following the thunder of her attack.
Blinking against the after-blur of the spell, Derezo looked over at the cinders of the innocent Tirremine who’d been sitting in a chair twenty feet directly behind Redgate. Their charred skeleton crumbled down in the unharmed furniture.
No shields. Just intangibility.
The magister wasn’t looking at the corpse she’d created. An ugly grimace was on her face, and her eyes, burning almost silver, were glued to the other corpse. The corpse that hadn’t stayed dead.
If Kani couldn’t keep him down…
“Tut tut,” Redgate chided the wizard, regarding her as coolly as his scintillating eyes could manage. “And we were having such a nice conversation, Miss…?”
“You know zat ve’ve met.”
“Of course, but would you spoil our game? I’d not address you as Emrelet without your permit. Would you prefer ‘Feychilde’s consort’, or –”
“No!” Zakimel cried.
Emrelet brought forth a sword of electricity, far brighter than the first bolts she’d hurled, unsheathing the tremendous weapon from the very air –
And a huge demon like a spiked boulder of dense, black metal fell right on top of her.
The magisters on either side of her flinched aside, but there was no way for the wizard to dodge, so she went down instead. Like a child diving feet-first into water she slid into the stone, extending her arms, her sword over her head; lightning spraying out about it, the demon followed, tearing into the earth.
Snaaaaaap.
Crackkkkkkk.
Duuuuuuuum!
“How tiresome,” Redgate murmured to himself beneath the rending and crashing. “Perhaps I should have killed her outright – but such bravery is to be rewarded with a champion’s death, and she at least sought not at first to flee…”
More screams and yells from the crowd. Approving laughter from the imps. Silence from the magisters, at least outwardly, even as they were forced to find new footing, the pit yawning between them.
The ground under Derezo’s chair tipped suddenly, the reverberations of the duel between wizard and demon causing the whole area to shudder and groan.
“What do you want here, Lyferin?” Zakimel shouted. “What do you want, really? Are you going to attack Tirremuir?”
Redgate’s smile was back.
“The city itself? Oh no, I’ll leave every building intact. There are examples of acceptable architecture – I’m certain I’ll find suitable accommodation in some palatial house or other. The people themselves? They are largely an irritation, yes, but only in their current form. I shall permit them to stay, once they’re all doing what they’re told. My horde must grow, until it can grow no more; that’s just the way it’s done.”
“Lyferin,” Zakimel cried over the continuing upheaval in the earth, “Lyferin, please. You were a champion. For the love of Celestium – they aren’t people once they’re dead! Can’t you see that?”
“Yet you plead with a dead man?” Redgate’s gaze moved across the magisters, looking over Zakimel’s head. “You, there, with the pathetic-looking shield-work. Lower your defences.”
“So that’s why you moved on us now!” Zakimel was actually wearing a fierce smile on his face and his moustache had never been so still. “You knew – the Incursion forecast –”
“I knew you would leave tomorrow, yes.” Redgate sounded impatient now, still staring at the curvaceous, older magister who had to be an arch-sorceress. “You – what is your name? You must stop looking for a way out. If you do not lower your shield, I will create thirteen vampires right now and send them to Mund.”
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Zakimel vanished, reappearing less than half a second later thirty feet away, almost at the rail about the restaurant. His entourage were with him.
The world seemed to dim even more.
The three remaining magister-guards were clinging to Zakimel, but they were all trapped together in a swirling, moaning column of purple energy that cast its shadow over everything.
“Bravo!” Redgate raised a gloved hand and tapped his palm with the fingertips of the other hand, a silent, sarcastic applause. “I did wonder whether I could force you to gather them up like that.”
Derezo tipped back his head, and saw the purple pillar wasn’t a column – it was a tree, five feet wide at the trunk and over forty in height. Its substance wasn’t simply shifting – the thing was comprised of a million small faces, eyes and mouths frozen open in perpetual horror. Its moaning was their moaning, its shape created by the constant flow as they went writhing around and around, up and up – until at last they were pumped along its vast branches. Like dark leaves the dead faces streamed into the sky, where they eventually vanished, shadowing the sun as they went.
“Do you like it?”
Derezo lowered his gaze, and cringed to see Redgate there, right there staring at him.
“I – I –”
“Look at them.” The lich-lord gestured lazily. “A collection of Mund’s finest trapped, and now powerless, thanks to my gift. I might extract all manner of lore from the old one, and all the promises I require from the fledgling sorcerer – and I won’t even be needing the others, or any advanced persuasion techniques. How efficient.”
The lich’s gesturing hand slowly formed a fist. Two of the magisters inside the moaning tree slapped their hands to the sides of their heads.
Cries of protest came from the moustached diviner and sorceress – cries of pain came from what must’ve been the other diviner and the enchanter. But all the sounds they made were muted by the ghostly substance in which they were snared, and drowned out by the tree, by the general tumult from crowds.
The lich’s fist tightened, and the two magisters’ heads exploded. A fine trail of sand streamed down from Redgate’s clenched hand, pearly white grains showering onto the table.
The headless magisters didn’t just fall down dead – they evaporated into the purple pillar, carried away on the nethernal tornado. Derezo could see the mouth of the sorceress-magister opening and closing as she spoke frantically to Zakimel, but there was no way to hear the words and lip-reading was far too difficult even at the best of times.
This was decidedly not the best of times.
Redgate slid to his feet without overtly moving, a dizzying thing to watch – it was as though the whole world tipped over to accommodate the lich-lord’s desire.
Once he was upright, he spoke. “As for you, Derezo – you shall have to be made a vampire after all, I think. You shall serve as emissary, to your former friends, and convey my regards. I very much doubt you will be able to do them much harm, until they are forced to destroy you. That shall harm them. That shall harm them very much…”
Only as the lump of iron burst from the ground and the wizard-girl followed it into the air did Derezo realise the rumbling he’d been hearing wasn’t the blood thumping in his ears.
It looked like she’d wrapped the demon up in some kind of silvery substance – the stuff was binding its limbs, straps of base metal thicker than Derezo’s waist woven around its torso.
One rivulet of the wizard’s metal had forced its way inside the demon’s mouth, and as they both reached the open air Emrelet weakly raised her fingers – lightning flowed from the sky, touching the silver and coursing inside the fiend’s black body.
For just a moment the demon was illuminated from within – the roasting smell made plain that inside its shell there was something like flesh. Then it collapsed with a loud clang, a husk of spiky iron, and started falling apart.
Only after it died did the girl seem to realise the precariousness of the situation; she glanced at her trapped colleagues, and there was true fear in her eyes when she returned them to the lich-lord.
“Very well-executed, madam,” Redgate murmured. “You shall make a fine general for my armies.”
There was no lightning left in the girl’s wide eyes. Even she was terrified.
There was a moment of indecision – just one moment. Derezo watched as she made her mind up.
She vanished, plunging up into the sky, not even at an angle – just falling upwards. A form of flight and fleeing designed for maximum speed. Getting her out of his zone of influence.
The lich-lord laughed, and threw his arms wide, gazing after her.
A magenta rainbow ripped through the sky, and a –
Derezo’s mind shattered, seeing Ord Ylon’s remains appear in the air, a zombified monster of immense proportions. He felt the putrid wind of its wings as they flapped, slow and forceful.
He fell backwards out of his chair as though the screams of the enraptured Tirremine audience propelled him. He was able to roll with the motion, then half-ran, half-scrambled towards safety –
Safety – safety –
There was no upper range. There was no real limit to the arch-sorcerer’s reach. Already the sleeve of his arm cast a shadow over Mund. Where could Derezo go?
Away. Away!
He made it perhaps four yards before the icy grip of a wight fastened about his shoulders, hefting him and slapping him down onto his back upon the tiled stone.
It was a kobold. An undead kobold, its bleached, mangy fur dripping with putrefaction.
It didn’t matter. Something had broken inside Derezo’s neck. He couldn’t move. He would lie here, between the tables of screaming people, and the repulsive wight would kill him… He would awaken as a vampire…
Then the wight paused, glancing back as if uncertain of its task.
Under its arm, Derezo saw Redgate standing on the table – over its head, the glistening dragon-corpse climbing the air –
And something else.
A burning portal opened fifty feet up, directly over the lich-lord, and this time it was like a golden gateway of well-defined bars opening on a yawning, magenta darkness behind.
Some amorphous, gleaming presence came through as the gate swung wide, resolving itself into a winged man with the head of a lion. In his clawed grip he bore a sword that trailed starlight.
The wind shrieked – the lion roared, gold mane streaming – and like a comet the strange creature descended at the lich.
But Redgate only laughed again, taking off to meet this new foe with greater, steel-barbed wings springing from his robe – and the wight turned back to Derezo, grinning as it reached out once more with its chilling fingers, stretching to lay hold of his throat, complete his transformation.
Phanar – I’m sorry…
I should have obeyed.
Then all such choice was ripped from him, removed forever.
* * *
Derezo’s last memory as a living man was the icy grip, squeezing him so hard it felt like the wight was trying to pop his head off. He never afterwards recalled the moment of his death. His consciousness snapped long before then.
Yet it coalesced all the same in the shadowland, and went whither such spirits were bound, finding itself at last crying out in bliss, adrift in the red river. Eldritch moons coursed overhead and only hours later, apparently, Derezo was back in shadowy Tirremuir, attending upon Master with a crate of bottles of his best grape… receiving his own cup of thick, dark wine.
Receiving his orders.
Deep down inside, there was rejection. The old Derezo still existed, contorting, hidden like a pearl in a clam on the seabed. But he couldn’t deny his nature. Couldn’t deny the weight of all that water keeping him concealed. Couldn’t deny his master.
As the waves drew him on by daylight hours towards the city that had birthed him, he lay in the same bliss as he’d found in Nethernum. He was dry and comfortable inside his coffin. He knew his purpose. He knew his place, and, even if he wept against it, his new, pallid flesh craved such surety. He would bear Phanar the message he needed to hear.
The monsters always won in the end.