Norhill 712
Marcellus woke six feet under pain: the throb of a concussion, blood from a broken tooth, sharp spikes with his breathing from bruised ribs, and innumerable smaller aches that made a comfortable position impossible. Been years since the last beating like that. Most times in his line of work, the enemy would go for the kill or leave you alone.
In fact, the last time anyone beat him like that was his previous experience as a captive. Twenty five years old, when as a normal Blade he fought in some nobles' war, turf grabs for the old Norhill holdings. Nasty stuff, that, but at twenty five he recognized his inordinate skill at fighting and believed it the perfect protection. Back then, war was exciting, like writing himself into a bard's tale.
In the thick of melee, one of those thrice damned Wizards unleashed a fire bomb that knocked him about like a rag doll, and the young mercenary woke to the point of a fine rapier digging into his throat. Bodies covered the hillside, a few that Marcellus knew, and his spirits sank. His side lost.
"Hmm...you appear mostly whole. Will you surrender, or will you die?” the vassal behind the sword, too clean to have actually taken part in the fighting, asked with dispassion.
"I am a son of Lydia!" the young Marc spat. His phlegm splattered on the man's boot.
The rapier dipped down to Marc's crotch and dug into the soft flesh there until a reluctant groan squeezed out of the youth. To die in faith of your country was one thing. To live an invalid was another entirely, reduced to begging with ruined body on the market corners. Looks of pity and disgust would accompany each threadbare meal, and the teenage boys would offer breadcrumbs for a hobbled dance (with no more pity than Marc had shown when he participated on the tormentor's side).
"I know a Wizard," mused the man. Starched uniform, bleached gaze. “He's very good at remodeling. For a small fee he could make you into one of my house slaves, empty-headed and doggishly loyal. Do you prefer to be a boy or a girl when you enter the bordello? I have clients of all persuasions.”
"You...couldn't really..." spattered Marc, his breeches stained red under the rapier's tip.
"Oh, its really very inexpensive if you don't mind a little...damage. Now, will you lick my boot clean or by this time next week, will you be a grinning retard of a sex toy for my gardens?"
Disgraced beyond imagination, the Blade nevertheless could not abandon the searing drive to survive. The vassal's entourage hooted as Marc licked, and the myth of his swashbuckling invulnerability tumbled down. His quick sword arm and precise aim could only stretch so far.
In the present, the Army broke camp, preparing for another day's march. They ignored the prone Blade, lost in his recollections. -Good. I don't know if I can move yet.-
Lord Ellswick's manor did more to harden Marc than the years of Blade-work before. Three months he shared quarters with living dolls, men and women raped of their minds, given nymphomaniac bodies, and left to smile vacantly. Their rote dances and open sexuality might have held a bordello appeal if not for their servile desperation to please. When out of play, the ruined toys would stare at the walls, no more present than the dead. Marc obeyed every order to its fullest, his stomach perpetually clenched at the thought of joining those zombie ranks. Thankfully, Lord Ellswick had more use for a strong young man in the kitchens and stables than in his clients' beds.
He never figured out the mystery of Ellswick's little Wizard, the strange mummy who could pump out a new sex doll every month, each one sculpted to specifications like a purebred pony. The bastard never ran low when to Marc's understanding a month's accrued mana and ten pence would get you dinner.
Still, he escaped on his first try – important because escaped slaves were branded on their foreheads. One day, the taskmaster wrestled with a haughty visitor (a man who liked his girls young enough to bleed, and Marcellus took great pleasure in slitting his throat a decade later), and the beastman cook glanced over at Marc. “Get some grain.” The cook smiled, well aware of the boy's plans.
“Yes, sir.” The Blade grabbed the sack of grain and kept walking - right past the guard post, right over the estate moat on the rickety servant bridge. He kept walking, trying to look like he was going somewhere important, until he left all signs of man behind. The beastmen who tilled these distant fields, shackled to stakes driven into the ground outside their bungalows just long enough to reach the crops, accepted his sack of grain in exchange for a good pair of shoes and directions. He fled for his life back to Lydia.
Marcellus considered assassinating Lord Ellswick more than once, but in the end decided that being alive, whole, and free would have to suffice.
Finally, the hurt receded enough for the Blademaster to function, just in time to be dragged standing.
"You walk with us," snarled some sort of beastman, so mangy he couldn't identify it. For all he knew, it wasn't even angry; some species always snarled.
An ugly, clouded day with no familiar faces in sight. Two Elsian officers in soiled uniforms trudged to his right, heads bowed. The beastman paced behind, breathing down his neck. None of them wore shackles. All around the reeking rambleshack of the Army staggered along in mockery of a formation, and the terrain mixed tufts of Elsian plains grass with low dunes of volcanic ash. On the border of the Wastes? That didn't help. The border of the Wastes shifted with the season and which direction the ash rains decided to coast. They could be anywhere on the western edge of the plains.
-Kier was right. We have lost the advantage of terrain.- Everyone who ran would be dead, but what about Magnus or the others?
The beastman shoved Marcellus forward, and he forced battered limbs to hustle up to the Elsian officers. A bubble of alert, masked Empty Army sentries paced them. A handful of others trickled into the corral: another officer, a battered merchant, an affronted nobleman, and one wrapped from neck to toe in crimson cloth with a bandana across his forehead. A Crimson Acolyte.
-Great. The high class corral for very important prisoners. Either somebody's taken a fancy to your weeks without shaving, or the Army has learned who you really are, Marc.-
Did he unwittingly betray himself, or had someone else revealed it under duress?
He staggered on, mood dark indeed as he nursed a creaking body and suspicions of treachery.
**********
Norhill 712, fore autumn.
Too early the nights turned cold. Freezes crept in before dawn and fled the sun, but soon grew braver. Before long, the howling wind from the north carried with it a glacier's chill. Hoarfrost already covered the fields they trampled. If this land technically belonged to Elsia, no one yet took the time to colonize it, bordering the blasting ice storms of the Fault.
The very important prisoners marched in luxury - that is, they received actual food, cloaks for the night, and new boots when the old ones broke. They lived in captivity together like a zoo, allowed to converse but not to leave the claustrophobic circle of guards.
The Elsians bunched together, establishing a paramilitary bubble. Marcellus wasn't welcome, regardless of his own rank. Sure, he'd seen more combat and led more men, but the Guildmistress herself couldn't find respect from the military nobles snug in their nationalism. That left Marcellus to straggle beside the taciturn Crimson Acolyte, who collapsed in exhaustion by the end of each day. Not used to walking, probably, unless it was on the necks of his slaves.
Still no reasonable opportunity for escape or sight of his men. He trusted Magnus to keep Cluverius, Ofer, and Cecil safe. Perhaps they would slip away with ease without the Blademaster to worry about.
Marcellus, not being an expert in Elsia's interior geography, wondered how the Empty Army managed to avoid any form of organized resistance (not counting the farms and the screams that would rise) on its sloppy wobble through the nation's territory. Eventually he asked the Acolyte.
"I don't know," the Acolyte shrugged, “though it is a mystery that tastes of mana. It would take a very large amount to cover tracks such as these.”
They stepped carefully over the blackened remains of someone's homestead. The bodies nailed against the barn had not yet begun to rot.
“What do you make of those?” The Blademaster pointed to a raider striped naked, splashing the unsavory blood runes across the barn side.
“Nothing.”
-You're lying, Acolyte. You know exactly what those are for.-
He would have to squeeze the answer out at a later date.
The next day, two raiders dragged the Acolyte away before Marcellus could pop him like a pimple. What a waste.
Finally, the last of his bruises healed. Snow began to waft down from the grey sky. A smudge expanded across the northern horizon and swelled by the day, reflecting cobalt in the mornings. Not quite a mountain, but a glacier that chewed deep furrows into the land.
The Fault. No place for men to be, where the furrowed ice blended into the Havoc storms outside the world. Better to hold his breath and try to build a city under the ocean. Surely they would board pirate ships at the junction of the Fault's flows and the chilly edge of the Rainbow Sea?
That day, the Acolyte returned, and the raiders dragged away an Elsian officer.
"What happened to you?" Marcellus asked.
"Nothing," answered the Acolyte, flinching away.
"Right. Just like those blood runes are nothing?”
"You're not a Wizard. You wouldn't understand."
"Try me."
"...what would you say if they offered you a chance to be a real Eon? Not just some Acolyte, eternal serving boy, but a bona fide Wizard? Even more, a Wizard with access to unlimited resources? No more spending your life waiting years for one terrific moment of power and long disappointment."
"I'd want to know the catch, cause there's always one."
"Please. Pennies for a fortunate. You merely have to...tolerate....their silly little religion. Their fallen god offers his favor in pure mana...and every death in his name feeds the mana a little more.”
A glimmer raced behind the Acolyte's eyes, not revulsion like in Marcellus. He nursed the same look as a caravaner offered an extra package or two to deliver off the books, free to keep all the profits himself for a trifle, a token, a promise.
-Guys like this, they agree to these kinds of deals cause they figure they can pull a fast one. Dip in, steal the candy, and be out before anyone knows what hit 'em. How come they don't ever seem to realize that the ones setting up the deal know they're gonna be trying it?-
The missing officer returned, sullen and withdrawn, and others were drawn away from the group. Being propositioned, the Blademaster supposed, just like the Acolyte. When his turn came, he'd spit in their faces. He'd rather meet Athos in heaven.
Drawing near the Fault with its labyrinth of cliffs, gorges, and the howl of glacial winds, he bit back nervousness. No easy way out of that place, even with the gear. The sky rolled a perpetual slate, promising hail. How in the world did they expect to provision through that terrain? They would need a dozen Wizards just to support the camp.
Then again, the Empty Armies were once pirates, adept at hiding in hell holes on the edge of Havoc. Perhaps the puppetmaster behind this whole thing would be in the frigid Fault, after all.
That afternoon, the fore ranks reached the treacherous crossing into the Fault, and the Army behind splattered into a semblance of camp. No magic emerged to force extra men onto the ribbon of a path, bordered on the left by a cliff face and the right by a gorge. Wagons full of pillaged goods went first, molasses slow on the ice. Marcellus wondered when the temptation would come for him.
Smooth proceedings over the next morning, while the last of the wagons disappeared into the gulleys of ice. Around noon, the Empty Army motioned the Blademaster's group up, ready to move them onwards.
"Well, we're first," one of the officers noted, smiling sour.
"Hmm." Marcellus pointed to the Acolyte. "Do you have anything to make them simply...forget that we're here?"
The man shrugged. "For this many minds? Not enough mana."
-Yeah. Right. You just want to see this fallen god for yourself.-
On their way to the bottle neck, a cabal of raiders on horseback cut in line ahead. Ofer rode in their midst, his jaw masked and armor sporting red squares at each corner.
Marcellus rubbed his eyes. Still Ofer, his Blade, fraternizing and laughing with the ones who killed so many of his men.
Boiling cauldron of rage roared to life, searing through the cold calculations of his tactical mind. The raiders did not expect a passive old man to blast twenty feet, tackle a man off his horse, and begin pounding his face into the permafrost.
"Betrayer!" Marcellus bellowed.
"Marcellus?!" sputtered Ofer, lip busted. "No -- its not -- I got these by -- killing an officer!" Each attempt at speech ended in another strike.
His fists aimed for the sweet spots, deep in the gut and upside the head. Ofer's companions charged up, presumably to yank the Blademaster off.
"Betrayer!”
"No!"
"What did you do with the others?!"
Instead of helping, the traitor Blade's vaunted companions formed a circle around the fighters like schoolyard gawkers. "Come on, Ofer! That guy's beating your ass. You better shape up!”
Safely back, others joined in the ribbing. "He's gonna beat you to death by the looks of it. You really might want to consider praying, since you obviously can't fight.”
Marcellus lifted Ofer up by the edges of his armor. "Where are Magnus, Cecil, and Cluverius, you traitorous little shit?! Tell me and I might let you live."
"D-dead. Since the escape attempt."
"Better fill in the details, rat."
"They...they were going to kill us all." He swallowed, managing a glower at Marcellus. "You're so ungrateful. I saved us both. Everyone else planned to follow your orders – just bend over and let them beat us to death. What the fuck were you thinking? I stepped up. You have any idea how much a Blademaster is worth to this army? I bargained for your services.”
The crowd heaved a sigh, disappointed at the turn.
“Cluverius tried to stop me. Well, the raiders skewered him. Good try, old boy. I sold your skills to the Empty Armies, and in return they let us live. Its because of me that you got the soft ride with the officers and Acolytes!”
“You sold me into slavery while I lay unconscious, little man,” Marcellus hissed. Some part of his mind scrambled for the coldness. Frozen logic to find and exploit the details of this event for an escape. An edge. Hell, even a good spite. Yet the hissing of his cauldron burned that out. All he could see was the sack of dung at the end of his hands, and all he could feel was that delicate, quivering trachea...
“What did you tell us? Do whatever we have to for survival! Your exact words, Marcellus Blademaster. You would have died in the dirt just like Magnus! At least this way we have a chance. You got the better end of it! I ended up a petty raider, their lowest dog, and I've had to fight for every bloody flag on my armor!
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
"You signed up pretty easy." His fingers tightened. “At least a Blade dies with honor.”
"What the fuck do you want? I'm a mercenary, and so are you!"
One of the guards butted Marcellus in the back with a quarterstaff. "Hurry this shit up. Kill him or get up."
His cold mind finally snapped in, and he transformed from boiling pitch to frozen sky. With a snarl, he shoved Ofer away and stepped up. “You're a Blade no longer, boy. You're revoked.”
Though Ofer remounted without trouble, he left his pride on the ground; his raider mates laughed outright at him into the Fault. They let Marcellus walk at his left heel, further mockery.
-I could escape here.- He flexed, sure of his killing prowess against these swashbuckling fools. -I won't, though. There would be no point.- Heart colder than the ice underfoot and equally treacherous, he charted a new course.
The chasm gaped wide and hungry to his right, bounding their path to a twisted ribbon a few men wide. While the raiders steered clear, hugging the wall, Marcellus flaunted himself on the edge. One foot over the other an inch from a long fall and short stop – it gave him the heady sort of suicidal rush more often sought by adolescents.
-I'm a Blademaster. Been fighting for my life since before most these idiots were born. Now they want to lead me into their stronghold? Let them.-
Ofer glowered at him now that the brat was safely out of arms' reach.
-I hope they take me right to the leader of this gang, fallen god or deluded Wizard, so I can strangle him with one hand.-
**********
Deep in the Fault, the fortress of the Empty Armies floated entombed in the ice over waters frigid beyond all rights. Devil water that should have frozen solid, yet rolled on to kick spray like daggers into the face of anyone who dared leave the fortress. A rolling, slate ceiling of storms obscured the few hours of daylight, and the surrounding floes shifted regularly. Except for the stray pack of gaunt wolves and whatever monsters lurked in the waters below, the fortress stood alone on top of the world. It resembles a weathered mountain more than anything, an overgrown glacier with spikes out its back where the aloof towers of the magic men rose.
Inside, magic kept the air warm, if stale with too many bodies; it buttressed the rock of the fortress itself against warping in the cold; it even created stones that glowed like false suns so that the Armies could grow corn in the bowels of rock far away from the sky. If the Eons called magic currency of the gods, then that place could crown itself Elysium.
-Every last drop fueled by the blood of Elsian farmers.-
In those claustrophobic hallways, two castes emerged: warriors and slaves. The former trained endlessly, with a sadism in their eyes that would do the Shaitan proud, while the latter choked and died in the bowels of the ice in forced labor camps.
A little investigation the truth about the last of the Blademaster's mates. They indeed died as Ofer had said, though the traitor severely embellished his own weight in the negotiations. No surprise there.
Somewhere in deep winter, after languishing untold days in the brig with many of the less treasured prisoners, Marcellus at last met with someone of power: a general in his extravagant mask.
“Good to meet you at last, Blademaster,” said the general. “Given your reputation, we will be putting you to work immediately.”
“I want to meet your leader,” Marcellus replied. “He owes me a caravan and every man who served it.”
“Yes, yes,” waved the man. “We all do, at first. He's a busy God. You will have to take a number. In the mean time, we have already prepared a dojo – you will train our best and strongest.”
“For what?”
“Why, for the assault on the Forest of course.”
-Oh, good grief.- “Just what in the hell are you going to get out of there?” He could not recall an attempt to force entry into the Dryads' land in living history. Legend held the land itself would rise up in fury to butcher anyone who so much as put ax to tree.
Unwholesome in his enthusiasm, the general explained the legends to Marcellus. Half-forgotten things, they hinted at a treasure beyond reckoning that the Dryads guarded with their last breath. The secret to immortal life and eternal power, as if every man was a Wizard.
Marcellus fought back a surge of animal rage. His men dead for this same old story...always the lust for power. He would have eviscerated the general then and there, done with the whole matter, but for the burning need to garrote whatever foolish prick assembled the Army. “Fine. Give me authority. Now.”
“Glad to have you aboard, Blademaster.”
So that was how he became an officer of the Empty Armies, a saboteur waiting for his moment. Each officer was required to drink a bowl of vicious black fluid, called the blood of God, in order to receive their mask. It was a private ceremony held in a smoky room, and the men who returned from their oath swearing did so with that same maniacal glint in their eyes as a feral dog. Marcellus entered in turn, slugged the priest who officiated, splashed a little of the nasty stuff on his linen shirt, and walked out declaring himself remade.
When the shaky priest asked what happened, Marcellus grinned all teeth. “I was overcome with the glory.”
Why make up new cons when the old ones worked so well?
His men, if anyone could call the rabid dogs such, displayed a bloodlust that bordered on religious orgasm. He forced them to learn the weapons with wooden sticks lest someone start chopping off fingers, and even then someone broke a bone every day. Most were competent fighters under normal circumstances, but every last one of them displayed an incredibly short temper. Simple corrections would send them flying into tantrums, and the slightest attack on their bravado prompted full blown brawls.
In the way they fought and bit like animals, the relish they took in suffering and blood, and the vacant gazes they fixed on far away spots when left alone, Marcellus began to suspect these men were fundamentally....broken. Missing a piece, something stolen away that left them savages to suit the legends about Beastmen. Too much like Ellswick's pleasure slaves.
Horrible, cloying nightmares forced him awake in a panic night after night. He would dig his fingers into his thighs until the pain sang and remind himself. -I am not a slave. I am free. Ellswick will never command me again.-
Three months in the cramp and dank, stifled behind a bone mask that limited visibility and stank of mildew, and still too far from the fallen God of the Empty Armies, Marcellus smiled at the one blessing Athos threw his way.
Ofer walked into the dojo, apparently now of the elite. Eyes flat, that slight list which the Blademaster by now recognized as the symptoms of the feral.
Oh, this would be pleasant. He was going to take his time.
“Front and center, new blood. Defend yourself!” Marcellus pulled down a pike, savoring the feel of its heft as he approached Ofer.
The boy snarled and darted for an ax as if he stood a chance.
With zeal the Blademaster proceeded to bleed the boy with deliberately shallow wounds. Each grunt of pain was like the pleasurable sigh of a lover. A release better than sex. Marcellus fought till the boy dropped his ax and fled for the door, and then he rammed the spear through the boy's spine at the neck. Oh, the thwock of impact felt like biting into a fresh hunk of roast. -That was for good men!-
Ofer's blood ran down the handle of the pike, warm against Marcellus' hand. It writhed alive, twining up his forearms, red streaks across the bitter black of skin, and drew him into an Other-sight. A shadow world and echo of his dojo, smeared with all the blood of injuries – especially deliberate ones – where the crimson rolled like a tide down out into the halls. Down the halls, down a gullet, roaring from every death in the whole fortress to a throne room and a hungry coldness. There Shaitan sat, corpulent off their deaths, building himself ever stronger...
He jerked back from Ofer's corpse, dropping the pike and freezing in his boots. His breath didn't even frost the air, and he felt as though his flame had come within an inch of snuffing out.
Of becoming like these blood dolls...
-Every....blood letting feeds him. Feeds IT. Does he goad them into it? The bloodrage, encouraging the officers to cannabilize their own ranks to keep him full?-
Empty Armies...this was no pirate band. Not even an army in the sense of an organized band bent to the same goal.
It could be no less than a blasphemy and affront to Athos.
A Devourer of man and world.
**********
Home in Lydia, the Blademaster could have unloaded his grief on Lynia. The Guildmistress bore her own scars, and they shared that bond of war and worn years. In time, he would have healed.
In the dark halls where laughter came only as mockery, he festered. Tales of the Empty God resembled some of the more unbalanced Wizards Marcellus knew of; he drew obvious parallels to the Shaitan, but he refused to contemplate the possibility he could fail in the assassination. Even Wizards died.
His attention narrowed, nights full of choked dread, and soul drawn tight. Raw willpower kept him from collapsing over the long months, and he missed opportunities a man of his experience should have grasped. He did not realize that, like himself, others in the Army had faked their pledge to the Empty God. They sought an avenue of hope, and he was not there for them.
If some of them disappeared in flashes of light, neither dead nor devoured, it was a mystery. How their families praised Athos to have their loved ones returned.
Try as he might, Marcellus could not keep a hold of a wider world. As months drew on, he lost track of the seasons in the perpetual crap of Fault blizzards. Eventually he could not say if years hpassed. His best method of time keeping was to count generations of soldiers dead on his dojo floor by their bloodthirsty partners. Late at night, he wondered if as his ability to mark time devolved, he would slip away from civilization. Become a beast once more, as the first sinners were corrupted into the beastmen millennium ago.
He resolved himself to a final act. If death or worse would come – and it always did – then at least he would find a way to take down this Devourer with him. He told himself it was a service to Athos, but mostly he wanted to see it scream.
**********
A trifling civil war sparked up. Several of the older Eons and their assorted followers challenged the generals for control of the army. Why should grunts lead when the Wizards commanded hundreds of years of life and control of the elements? Both sides claimed the devout and true way under the Empty God, who for his part did not care a whit as long as the blood flowed. Too long cooped up, the feral heat growing, until tavern games and even brutal arenas couldn't sate the men. Like the animals they had become, the men hungered to get out and feast.
Marcellus stayed out of the fray, watching the battle lines crisscross the catacombs and the scuffles turn to fisticuffs turn to muggings turn to murders turn to outright war. He kept a tight handle on his dagger and waited to see who would come out on top.
Given a few good weeks, the Empty Armies would have simply collapsed under their own weight, but the Devourer moved to reprimand its children. It withdrew its gift from the Eon's faction. Suddenly, the rogue Wizards found themselves dry of mana, their spells little more than fancy effects. They tried to call for the Shaitan in the face of angry mobs; at least if the chaos killed them, it might take others as well.
Not a single Havoc produced an effect. They might as well have expected astrology to save them.
Compare to Lydia, where the prisons forced their inmates to consume heavy amounts of opium to keep them too befuddled to muster any will for Havoc on the chopping block. Priests called it a mercy of Athos to prevent temptation; the Blademaster called it practicality.
It could not be sheer coincidence. The Devourer could not be mere Wizard. Marcellus had to face the bitter possibility that whatever the Devourer represented, it may have dwelt in the arms of the Shaitan – beyond the killing power of his blade.
-However its got to happen. Kill the bastard; put your men to rest.- Quieter, a suppressed thought. -Put yourself to rest.-
Old man Marcellus, that sensible part of him stuffed in the attic, had to admit that after twenty plus years of being a Blade, he had cracked off the deep end. Gone native, nuts, driven mad, submerged in a fantasy rockslide right into crazy land.
Assured of his insanity, he could move on. Time to find a Wizard, and see what magics the Eons could leverage to kill demons.
**********
Meanwhile, the Empty God in his bleak throne room obsessed over far distant matters. He all but ignored the revolt. Not a creature as such to need food or drink, he fed off the dying gasps of slaughter. A Wizard would cut off an arm for the kind of extraction efficiency the Devourer could boast. The Eons staggered along blind, sucking away fractions of power like crumbs.
No amount of mana could make up for his broken state. Only the Maiden would do. Nestled in her pretty shrine, the Maiden drew strength from her Guide and her people. (One in particular drew Talia, a little aberration of mors and nymph who played at border patrol against the Wastes.) Even with all the men at his disposal, the Forest would bog them down, and the nymphs would whittle them down like rotten branches. All even before he began the true confrontation against the Maiden. No, she was too well fortified.
Except, of course, for a moment of weakness every thousand years, when the Maiden hovered in between Guides...
Yanu nurtured many Chosen, much as a spider laid thousands of eggs. The Devourer searched out the weakest, a simpering little snot called Miranda, and spent every effort to insure her qualification. His own gravity tugged at him, as if his chest were a black hole, and he could not afford to wait. In another dozen years, he would collapse under his own weight – much less survive a millenium.
One misstep would alert Yanu and destroy all hopes of freedom. Of becoming whole.
"Of course," he assured the Forest, floating with it in the Other-place's sky, "I want Talia to sleep peacefully as much as you. I just don't think that Glisinda would prove healthy for her. Miranda is a much more stable candidate. Can you really trust Glisinda to let Talia sleep for her years as Guide? You know how covetous she is..."
Mortal men to concern mortal Dryads. Background bloodshed to feed him even as he tore what he needed from Talia's throat.
It wouldn't be hard. She was a child and coward.
**********
As a rule, Marcellus detested Wizards. Their kind delighted in the kind of overwrought luxury that drained whole countries dry, and their long lives only served to isolate them from the common man. If he could conjure any other option, the Blademaster would gladly have stabbed the Eon who today he would meet.
Decked in his full raider regalia, Marcellus felt a twinge of worry at its familiarity. Could not even recognize the stench of the mask any more. Somewhere along the way, he had assumed the clothes of his enemy as his own. What else slipped in?
“Colonel Blademaster, welcome.” A slave girl, every bit as artificial as anything Ellswick would sell, curtsied to him. She was naked, on display, and spoke in formal Elsian. “His Lord will see you shortly.”
The girl escorted him to a waiting room in the frozen tower, the eastern wall crafted of clear glass to show the frozen hell hole outside. Deep cushions, sumptuous smells of spice and opium, and warmth that Marcellus scarce recognized after so long in the chilled dojo. Luxury bought on the blood of innocents. -I deal with devils, hoping to escape unscathed. Foolish. No one ever makes it out of such things unmarred.-
Long minutes passed while he stewed.
When the Wizard at last arrived, he was a figure of surprising girth who wore a doublet and leggings, not the typical wrappings. The man's triple chin and baby dimples gave him an almost jovial bounce.
“I've never seen a living Wizard's face before,” Marcellus said in his accented Elsian. “Most certainly never a fat one.”
“Ah.” The Eon chose to respond in Norhill. “Well, most my colleagues prefer chiseled perfection. I pride myself on being a bit of a rogue. I was fat before I became Eon. Why should I hide it now?”
“I suppose.”
“What brings you, great colonel? Word is that you very rarely leave your training grounds.”
“Word is,” Marcellus rolled on his tongue, “that you are a bit of a critic.”
“About what things?”
“Some folks say you don't believe in the Empty God. That you have whispered to various people that perhaps we should throw off his gift and become mere men once more.”
To his credit, the fat man held picked up a cup of tea with firm fingers. “Are you here to kill me, then?”
“No, I aim to kill the Empty God. He's an agent of Shaitan, a beast who feasts on innocent blood, and an abomination before Athos.”
“Ah. Well, at least if it comes to execution, now that you have admitted as much, we will not go to the chopping block alone.”
“I need a weapon. Something that can pierce him. Truly hurt him. I don't know what that thing truly is, but I don't like half-finished jobs.”
“So why do you trust me?”
The Blademaster snorted. “Who ever said I did? Necessity, not fondness.”
“Ha! You are one of those who hates every Wizard born, are you not? Loathing for what we make ourselves.”
“Athos never meant for us to seize such powers.”
“Mmm.” The fat Wizard swirled his tea. “Its a shame. I hope one day you can learn to see us as individuals, rather than monsters. Mana is a tool, a technology, and no more evil than the iron plow.”
“Water is not evil, but you can drown with it. What have you got for me?”
With a shrug, the fat Wizard led Marcellus from the waiting room into the strange bowels of a Wizard's alchemy. The mercenary did not understand the complexity of the metallic arrays that spewed lightning back and forth or the nature of inventions that belched steam or oil. Subtleties of aetheric extraction and resonance amplification meant nothing to him. Yet Erasmus the obese Wizard envied the warrior's simple morality.
Long life meant a very long time to reflect on such simple failings, and Erasmus realized – if too late – that his devil's bargain with the Empty God would lead to his own doom.
The duo came to a shelf filled with identical gadgets. Each featured a stock of wood and a long barrel of metal, though the complex tubbing and crystals intertwined at the junction of butt and barrel varied with each incarnation.
Erasmus declined to describe the theory of guns to the mercenary. Best to keep such knowledge to himself, lest the mercenary break under someone's spell later. “These are a very simple tool. Point, aiming along the barrel, and trigger here. It will fire out a pellet at high speeds, much like a condensed arrow.” He had yet to find a suitable blasting substance, and so each gun still needed a reactive, mana-infused powder. Too expensive. “You will have only two or three shots. Use these spheres as ammunition.” Solidified heavy water, perfect for sucking out mana.
“If this doesn't work?” Marcellus hefted the gun, familiarizing himself.
“Then I do not have the answer, and I would recommend cutting off his head. That usually works.”
“Good enough, then.”
They spoke for a few minutes more as Marcellus worked to understand the strategy of his new gun. Erasmus declined to mention the penalties the mercenary would face if the Academies ever so much as suspected he knew of their toys. Benefits of being a rogue magician, freed of his bindings to those stiff bastards...
The Blademaster forced vile words out. “Thank you, Wizard.”
“Good luck to you, then.”
Thus Marcellus departed much better armed.
**********
Norhill 714, somewhere in spring
Five or six months after his entrance into the fortress, as best he could track, Marcellus reckoned he could not find a single preparation left that would increase his chances of success. It would be somewhere in Spring for Lydia, the mountains swirled in flowers and bird song. He could taste his longing, as thick as blood, but how could he abandon the debt he owed to his Blades?
So that morning – as cold and dismal as the one before – he rose as Marcellus the killer, the assassin with a soul coated in frost. Purposefully, he recovered his gun from its hiding spot. He strutted through the Fortress catacombs with it in a simple sack over his shoulders, forsaking the Empty Armies regalia. -If I'm gonna die, I'm going to do it in my own gear.- A Wizard could miss or blink like any human, and so besides the gun he carried a satchel of smoke bombs.
Men parted before him. Deep underground now, veins of ice fluted the walls. They occasionally flared crimsons as if they pumped blood. The ice formed gigantic runes like slashes across the fortress, spiraling downwards with him. Beautiful in the same way as the final tumble of a shot hawk.
He avoided the public antechamber, instead moving through a slave hallway to arrive at a door cast in silver. Cracked the door open and slipped through, tense in every nerve.
Marcellus the killer entered a room as bleak as the frigid nights, coated in frost and bare of all human comforts. Twin braziers spat plumes of acidic smoke in strange patterns, more like living things than air, and choked the room. They twined around a wasted ghoul of a man, face frozen into permanent disapproval and fingers clenched into claws, who slouched in some stolen throne of ivory and oak.
The eyes twitched, and the Blade froze, taunt and leery.
“Yes, dear Yanu. Of course you made the right decision,” the Empty God whispered in a tongue far older than Norhill.
-A trance?- wondered Marcellus. He knelt, unpacking the gun.
“Give your Chosen a little time to grow into her power. You will see how perfectly she fits the Maiden.” Lascivious, drooling words, emphasis on maiden.
-I hope you die in pain, abomination!- Marcellus aimed, fired, and tumbled backwards to an incredible recoil. It nearly broke his collarbone, but at least the sphere blasted straight into the Devourer's rotten head. Emerging on the other side, swollen to the brim with violet light of mana, it plowed into the distant wall and shattered.
Despite a healthy section of brains missing, the Devourer stood from his throne. An embalming fluid leaked down his neck, and his expression twitched as the creature inside poorly manipulated facial muscles.
For his part, Marcellus faced the situation practically. If that perfect shot did nothing, then he did not have the ability to kill this thing. He was only human.
He ran, making three full strides before the twin columns of smoke crashed into him, as solid as rock. They dragged him back to the walking corpse, where he steeled himself for death as the creature babbled in its tongue.
-My good men, I have done my best for you, even if it wasn't enough.-
The Devourer leaned close, sliding its cold hands over his temples, and Marcellus felt himself sucked into the lonely dark.