It was like seeing a corpse, dragged by carrion eaters freshly from the grave; but then the spindly, tattered mess stood up, and walked forward. Myrl watched as the long legs moved with deceptive speed, propelling the gawky creature towards him. The tunic the thing was wearing, once a fine garment of expensive linens and silk trim, was both ill fitted to the tall, narrow frame of the man now wearing it, and splattered with blood and other fluids that Myrl didn’t want to even guess at, as the stench of the thing preceded its rapid advance.
From the moment the wall of force had careened past him to remove his guard and the old priest from the conflict, Myrl had been staring, unbreathing at the approaching form of the nightmare now stalking toward him.
With the deceptive speed of the long limbed, a skeletal arm slithered into Myrl’s view bearing an arc of something that glinted in the torchlight. It was that flicker that brought breath back to the young king with a gasp as he stepped back and to his left to avoid the crescent of silver moving in a languid half-moon of motion, passing through where his left eye and the tip of his nose had been moments before.
A wide, misshapen mouth opened in a horse-toothed mocking semblance of a smile. The fetid smell of iron and rot burst from the maw as the tall man shouted in Myrl’s face, causing him to make a half turn to the right in an attempt to put space between himself and what could only be the man Ashe had been calling the “Mad Mage.”
A half step back to the left, and a torcing of his body as he dropped his shoulder allowed Myrl to swing the Scepter of Office to transcribe its own green, crackling arc. Myrl knew he should have been lining up his Will with his Talent to aid in his defense against this insane vision of rot and decay, but he had been awake for so long. And his body was as ragged now as his mind, further making all of his efforts cost him more than he knew whether or not he could afford. So much of his effort for these last two hours had been devoted almost solely to maintaining the morale of his party.
Putting one foot in front of another was a strain, as the stitches in his wounded leg had been torn from the surrounding skin with stomach turning pops as each one had succumbed to the pressures he had been putting on them. And now he was trying desperately to just stand.
Sliding his injured foot in an arc as his body spun to the left, he watched the glorious arc of the scepter, feeling the droning and painful pulse run up his arm from the ring, and the crown, unmoving from his brow all through the cold and nightmarish night now throbbed along with the pulses of the ring.
He hadn’t been certain of what to expect, but he had hoped to remove the threat to himself, his people and his kingdom. As the lanky figure doubled over with the impact, Myrl was disappointed to see the magics of the hereditary symbol of his kingship had not carved a path through the skinny apparition before him as it had with the madman’s twisted monstrosities.
A quick look off to the darkened corner where his High Priest, and his remaining guards had tumbled together into a sprawling mess, Myrl could see some small movements from at least one of the guards who had helped him so much this night in his efforts to secure the palace and protect his people.
With a stuttering step, Myrl moved back from his doubled-over attacker. As he moved away, he cursed himself for not bringing the scepter down on the back of the man’s skull. It would have ended this confrontation, but in a moment of delayed clarity Myrl realized he wasn’t making the best choices.
His mind was fuzzy.
Standing was difficult. He didn’t know if the pain from his leg, his crown, or the throbbing pain from his ring was the worst of his physical complaints, but standing was difficult, and he knew that would cost him if this fight drug out at all.
The wide corridor had been cool moments ago, almost chilly he had been certain, but now Myrl was sweating horrendously, and could feel the drip, trickle and cold crawl of his perspiration as it moved down the burning skin of his back and itching neck.
With a supreme effort, now that he was several paces away from the heaving, wheezing skeletal form who had attacked him from out of the shadows, Myrl pulled his thoughts together enough to cast a smaller version of the Wall of Leaves spell he had been using all night to hold back the creatures, and wove a delicate dome over the man, and then an inverted dome over the first dome, to hold it in place with increased pressure.
The shuddering form of the mad mage dropped to his knees where he had been standing moments before, and now that he had been able to draw in enough of a ragged breath into his lungs, the man threw back his head and screamed out laughter from the bottom bulb of the hourglass shape Myrl had willed to coalesce about the now shrieking, cackling man. Blood and foamy saliva struck the inside of the dome where the man’s screaming laughter forced the gorey spray from his lungs and stomach.
Across from Myrl, on the far side of the laughing corpse, a large form shambled slowly into view from the darkened hallway from which they had been attacked.
The thing looked about in the gloom, not looking at threatening everything around it as its brethren had done in every encounter Myrl had with them all night. But, now this one was trying to find a target to attack, and Myrl could almost feel the confusion of the twisted thing through his ring as much as just by watching the lumbering behemoth as it didn’t change Myrl as much as it stumbled, meandered, and ambled toward the young king.
From the spelled enclosure he had woven, Myrl could hear a mumbling yet shrill voice slurrily repeating “Il ragazzo re…” over and over again. He didn’t know the language, it wasn’t one of the ones in which he had been taught and drilled by Ashe and other tutors since childhood; but it was familiar.
A wave of dizziness and sweaty heat passed over Myrl, causing him to lurch sideways, making his right side collide with the wall as his wounded leg protested further use. The hit to his shoulder on the stone of the wall was so jarring along the length of his body that when it reached his right calf and ankle, Myrl let out his own scream.
The mutated lunar beast shambled closer, bobbing its head slightly as it scented the air.
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Myrl looked down at where his scepter hung loosely, dangling dangerously in his now numb hand. It had not torn its way through the mage the way it had done through the flesh of the monsters. To the body of the mage, it had just been another blunt weapon, just like any other. Myrl may as well have hit the man with a broken table leg.
A loud thump caused Myrl to once again look up at the oncoming beats.
…I should be paying attention… more attention than I am at any rate… and why is it so hot in this hall? …
His thoughts were becoming a jumble, as the thing approached, but his attention sharpened as the heavy scepter in his right hand blazed to brilliant green life once again, and all of its weight seemed to vanish.
Just behind Myrl there came a popping noise, and Myrl felt a wave of relief wash over his head, easing some of the constant headache with which he had been dealing all night.
As the thing reared back and raised both pitchfork like paws high above itself to deliver a raking deathblow to Myrl, he threw himself at the thing’s body, swinging the scepter for all he was worth, a vivid green arc scribing itself across his vision, all but blotting out the twisted once human form before him from his line of sight.
He barely felt the scepter strike the body at first, but later, much later, Myrl would remember and replay the feeling of his eldritch weapon eating its way through the flesh, and tugging slightly with resistance as it passed through bones as well.
The high pitched howl of the thing’s death pounded at Myrl’s ears as he stumbled and fell past the collapsing body of the brute.
Myrl lay on the cold stone floor, reveling in the cool feel of the smooth, polished marble, while the thing’s blood, now covering most of Myrl’s right side, steamed and bubbled, hissing in the cool corridor’s air.
Laughter from somewhere behind him made Myrl roll painfully and awkwardly over.
His shielding spell he had trapped the rogue wizard in had fallen as his concentration had broken in the fracas. And now the skeletal form of that crazed mage now walked toward where he now lay.
His voice a hissing, wet splutter, “You… you are not my Il ragazzo re… you are a boy. And...heheh... you are a king. You are not THE BOY KING!” His voice became a howl of rage.
Myrl watched as the walking corpse stepped closer, the left side of the man’s face now sagging and slack. His right eye, a dark, gorey hollow dribbling ichor down his cheek.
The raging wizard fluttered his left hand toward Myrl, his right holding a long, curved dagger steadily pointed at him, and he shrieked at Myrl. It had a certain cadence, like the rhythm of a spell, though once again, it was in that language Myrl did not know.
He fumbled the scepter clumsily up, hoping to use its magic to block whatever the man was about to throw at him, as he had done earlier with the falling stones of the Great Ballroom.
And nothing happened.
The decaying wizard yelled again. Gesturing even more forcefully with his dagger.
A silvery-blue glow softly pulsed at the man’s sternum, and his entire lanky form shuddered in pain. It was possibly pain, or possibly it was ecstasy; Myrl wasn’t certain of anything.
But, to the cadaver’s right, the still mound of steaming flesh began to stir once more. It began, again, to howl as it had before, but with a voice completely edged by rage and pain.
And with that, the silver-blue glow of the medallion returning, the failed spell the rotting scarecrow of a mage had attempted to cast, and the reanimated flesh of the beast all linked together in Myrl’s mind to form coherence.
This wizard had turned himself into an asaloge. The Artifact he was using required more Talent than the mage possessed, or maybe the mage had just used more than he had, but he was pulling himself apart by overusing the Talent and forcing the creation of the beasts. And probably forcing the things to obey him. And maybe every one of the things that he had invested his Talent into had torn him further apart as they had been dispatched.
… wonderful analysis… huh… Now, if only Ashe were here to say ‘Good boy, you figured it out!’ your night would be complete… huzzah… he thought, dryly.
Myrl felt his end coming for him, and he smiled. He now knew that this shabby corpse was suffering from asalogee, the overextension of the Talent, and would soon join him in death. He consoled himself that his people would be safe.
Reaching his left hand behind his back, he pulled the small, spelled knife he had forged, and readied himself for the final rush that would end his life.
A clattering the darkness of the hallway behind the forms of his approaching killers just registered, as the walls of the concourse around them all lit up like the noonday sun, and a voice like thunder rolling down from the East spoke that light into being.
“RISE, RHOONA! GODDESS OF THE SUN, AND QUEEN OF THE SKY!!”
There was a general shout and roar as more voices than could possibly be represented by the six guards he had left assailed Myrls ears with cries of “FOR THE KING! FOR THE KINGDOM!! RHIADA!!”
The shining spears of his guards, followed by those same guards themselves, wounded and stumbling, but running all the same, sprang from the light, and pierced the newly risen form of the lunar beast, causing it to break out in a new spate of hideous howling. It spun, breaking the hafts of several of the spears with great CRACK noises that echoed in the passageway.
Its clumsy and ill-formed body, still trying to reform itself from the diminished parts left to it from Myrl’s attack, nonetheless raked and tore at its attackers, sending the bodies of several guards flying. Myrl cringed at the thumping noises, knowing that some of these noises were the last those bodies would ever make.
The wizard screamed again, “Il ragazzo re…!” And stepped haltingly toward Myrl, the silver-blue light from the Artifact that hung about its neck blazing to life as he tried once again to summon his Talent to attack Myrl directly.
He had almost shambled into Myrl’s range, had just begun to lean, looming over the young king. Myrl wondered if a kick from his left leg could distract the madman enough to allow Myrl to either crush the man’s skull with his scepter, or slash at him with his knife, when a very curved sword tip burst through the wizard’s chest.
Myrl watched as a confused peace came over the man’s face, and his neck bent, tilting his ruin of a head down at an angle to allow his remaining eye to see what new thing had happened to him.
The blade tip sank back, disappearing with soundless grace as it retreated into the chest, the weapon withdrawing.
The wizard wheezed, and sank to his knees over Myrl’s legs.
There was a bright SNAP! of sound and pain that brought the world about Myrl into sharp focus before it faded to black.
He could feel himself being moved, and several voices shouted a thousand different things as Myrl fell to the abyss of unconsciousness.
One voice, a very feminine voice, edged with anger and concern said, “Is THAT the king? Why has the king been allowed to play around in this abattoir? Doesn’t he have people for this?”
And then the darkness enfolded the young man with soft arms and a promise of oblivion.