“Wait,” Dalthan said amicably as he walked briskly down the lane to keep pace with the long-legged ogre beside him. “So you’re telling me that there are fairies that collect children’s teeth? And the people in that world think they’re good?! What the fuck, man. How dumb are they?”
Van, the ogre guardsman, gave Dal a smirk that would have looked at home on Wanted posters across the multiverse. “Wait till you hear about this guy named Santa Claus. You think the fairies are bad? This fucker weaponized commercialism and took over an entire world. If you see him, you stay the hell away. He’s got a habit of whipping people with a bundle of switches.” The ogre’s words paused for a beat as he tilted his head down to give the rogue a level stare. “Until they die.”
The rogue let out a low whistle of awe. Something about the story appealed to his racketeering heart. He’d never dabbled in commerce beyond fencing off a few things he’d acquired via a five-fingered discount, but he could respect a man who found a way to corrupt an entire financial institution.
Maybe he’d be willing to take on an apprentice.
His look of contemplation must have been obvious to draw a derisive snort from the ogre beside him.
“Don’t even think about it, dreg.” The ogre shook his head as he waggled a finger at the thief like a stern matron admonishing an unruly child. “The Fat Man surrounds himself with kids that are always looking to get on his ‘nice’ list. And they’ll do anything to get there. Even if you do manage to get through them, he’s got an army of midget elves that will shank your ass just for being old enough that your balls have dropped.”
Dalthan’s reply was cut short as he nimbly stepped out of the way of a knight with a breathing problem. The fellow wore an unusual style of black, ceramic armor with an oddly shaped face mask and a black cape that rippled ominously in his wake. At his heels, an entire squad of guards in white armor of a similar style, minus the cape, stomped after him carrying the strangest crossbows that the rogue had ever seen.
“Who are those people?” the rogue asked, wondering if perhaps the black knight could breathe better if he removed his helmet.
Van gave him the exasperated look of a teacher instructing the same failing pupil for the fifth year running. “This is The Hub of Evil, dreg. There are more monsters here than there are zits on a goblin’s ass. And make no mistake, we are all monsters here, no matter what we look like on the outside. I don’t have time to get to know them all, and you don’t either. My guess is a deadbeat dad with a superiority complex. You see their kind here all the time.”
Dalthan’s finely chiseled features twisted into a scowl. “Why do you have to keep calling me a dreg? I don’t even know what it is, but I know I feel pretty insulted every time you say it.” The rogue’s emerald eyes narrowed as he looked up to meet the guardsman’s gaze. “So stop.”
The ogre responded with a low, rumbling chortle that sounded like a load of bricks tumbling from a second scaffold. “Be careful who you’re trying to boss around, dreg.” Van tasted the word with a kind of relish normally reserved for a dusty bottle of hundred-year-old wine. “You see, we’re here because no one else wanted us when we died. All those higher powers in all those worlds and not a single one was interested in the chaff of society. So Lord Balerik gathered us all to his cold, heartless bosom and put us to work. But even here, there are the lowest of the low. The dregs walk around in white because they’re not good enough to finish their chores without dying. They get other people killed on missions because they’re not hard enough to do what’s necessary. Until they prove they can succeed in The Hub, they’re about as useful as tits on a wyvern.” The guard’s beady black eyes gave the rogue a significant look.
Dalthan bristled like a stray cat confronting a rabid dog. “I’ll have you know that I’m one of the most notorious rogues Wavecrest has ever seen. I didn’t just have respect in the city’s underworld, I had admiration.”
The ogre offered him a tight-lipped smirk that showed off a mouthful of yellow tusks and sharp canines. Dal found the expression as insulting as it was horrifying. “And yet, you’re dead.”
“That was an accident,” the rogue protested, only to half-heartedly mutter a second later, “Probably.”
Van erupted into a guffaw that had Dalthan reaching for the daggers that still had yet to be replaced. Watching the ogre’s obvious amusement, the thief bumped ‘Get rearmed’ up to the top of his mental to-do list.
“Are you quite finished?” the thief asked frostily while the ogre made a play of wiping tears from the corner of his eye.
“Are you kidding me? I can do this all day. Unfortunately, we’re here.” The ogre lifted a massive hand to gesture toward a nearby archway. Flanked by fluted columns, the aesthetic reminded him of the entrance to the Mausoleum. Unlike the Mausoleum there were far more people entering than leaving.
“This place is a church?” Dalthan said, his steps unconsciously slowing as he grew closer to the tunnel.
“Eh,” Van rumbled, his hand see-sawing in a noncommittal gesture. “I wouldn’t call it a church. It is run by the clergy, but it ain’t no place of worship. Lord Balerik doesn’t do worship like the other Gods.”
Dalthan tilted his head, looking up at the tall ogre as they crossed the threshold. “Wait a second, I thought this Balerik guy was a demon?”
“Archdemon,” Van corrected as he barreled through the crowd like an orc marching toward an all-you-can-eat buffet. More than one individual gave the ogre an affronted look, but if Van saw he didn’t show it. “Lord Balerik is an Archdemon. The only Archdemon. He killed the others a millennium ago. As far as being a God? Well, dreg, what do you think an ant should call a giant?”
To that, Dalthan had no reply. He was too busy taking in the enormous room they’d stepped into. He’d never imagined seeing something of such exquisite beauty filled with what could only be described as an endless tide of living nightmares.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
The ogre, sensing the human’s dumbstruck amazement, snorted in disdain. “Welcome to The Well of Sins. Now pick your fucking jaw off the floor and get moving. We’ve got a long way to go to get to the bottom.”
Despite Van’s crass encouragement, Dalthan made no move to immediately comply. His green eyes were studying the room that did indeed resemble a well. Or perhaps a mineshaft. It was a large, round chamber whose floor was several levels below where Dalthan stood and the ceiling stretched high enough overhead that it disappeared into the darkness above.
The rudimentary knowledge of gemstones and precious minerals he’d picked up over the course of his sticky fingered life told him that the entire chamber was carved from one massive vein of onyx. Golden braziers were scattered across the room, each one lit with a smokeless green flame that bathed the chamber in an eerie green light. The wane light was made all the more sinister for the figures that it revealed.
Dalthan’s mind reeled as he tried to take in the thousands of creatures he saw marching purposefully through the chamber. The crowd was like the one he’d witnessed in the Mausoleum except magnified a hundred fold. He saw a beholder lazily bobbing through the air on a balcony two levels above him. Down below, on the ground floor, he saw a small army of kobolds dressed in simple furs and armed with pointed wooden sticks. On the floors between the two wildly different threats he saw every creature imaginable and several he had no frame of reference for. Each familiar sight begat two that were strange and alien. It proved to be a rude awakening for a child of Wavecrest that had grown up feeling like his city was the center of the universe.
“How many levels are there?” Dalthan croaked when he finally found his voice again. Van had led them down two flights of stairs and was turning toward a third, obviously confident in his belief that the rogue would follow him like a frightened duckling scampering after its mother.
“There are nine floors,” the ogre rumbled as he worked his way down to the ground floor. “Same as the city. The priest will set you straight, but don’t go poking around in the upper floors. Fucking around up there is a real quick way to run into someone who enjoys painting the walls with dreg’s blood.”
I’m going to paint the walls with your blood if you don’t quit calling me that, asshat.
Dalthan inwardly fumed at the continuous disrespect, but with so many fantastical sights everywhere he looked, he couldn’t hold on to the flame of anger for long. On the lowest floor, one side of the room was dominated by a stone wall that was filled with small cubby holes that reminded Dal of the mailboxes used by apartment buildings in Wavecrest. The other side had a smattering of altars that looked quite familiar after his trip through the Mausoleum. It was toward that side of the room that Van led him. More specifically, to the figures wearing blood-red robes that seemed to be working the altars like merchants manning a sales counter.
“Got a dreg here,” Van rumbled, his long strides carrying him to the first unoccupied priest he saw. The man surveying the crowd from behind one of the stone altars did a double take at the sound of the ogre’s voice. The lanky priest with short cropped blond hair craned his neck to try to meet the towering guardsman’s eyes. “One count of trespassing and one count of disturbing the peace.”
The pretentious blond prick looked over at Dalthan, took in his white outfit, and then proceeded to sneer down his crooked nose. The expression of sadistic delight made the man’s unfortunate face look positively malformed. Dalthan might have broken the guy’s nose if he hadn’t been afraid it would improve his looks.
One word, jackass. One word and I’m going to rip your intestines out and hang you with them. It’s been a long day and I feel like a spot of murder would be refreshingly therapeutic.
A little voice reminded Dalthan that he was supposed to be railing against the “Neutral Evil’ label on his character sheet. A moment’s consideration quickly rationalized the killing as a righteous act. Good guys got away with murdering evil people all the time. No reason he couldn’t do the same.
His exercise in internal justification was interrupted when the blond man giggled like a psychopath pulling the wings off of a butterfly. “Well, well,” the man said in a cringe inducing rasp. “Only just arrived and already a criminal. Tut tut. I believe I have the perfect chore for you, dreg.”
Suddenly Dalthan snapped his head to the side hard enough that his vertebrae made an audible crack. The angry tension that had settled across his handsomely sculpted face smoothed into a placid mask of serenity. A smile, far too wide for his lips, began to blossom across his face. Van, seeming to anticipate the oncoming violence like an old sailor sensing a hurricane, unshouldered his club in preparation of the approaching storm.
I’m going to enjoy this, the rogue thought as he took one graceful step toward the frowning priest.
Before Dalthan could gouge the man’s eyes out with his thumbs, a warm, husky voice sent a shiver of delight rushing down his spine that was so intoxicating it made his knees tremble.
“I think I’ll take care of this gentleman’s needs, Travis,” the new voice said in a vibrating purr that turned the head of every male in earshot.
Dalthan’s green eyes blinked as his awareness rose from the depths of madness like a drowning man breaking the surface of a storm-swept sea.
The shithead cleric frowned in consternation as he looked over Dalthan’s shoulder. “But, Lady Belial, there’s no need for you to sully yourself with a simple dreg.”
That word almost set him off again. But before he could give in to the madness, he felt the electrifying caress of slender fingertips gliding across his shoulder and down the length of his bicep.
“Ancev himself sent me to greet our new arrival. Do you plan on second-guessing not only myself but the Ur Priest as well?” This time the heat in the woman’s voice was not the warmth of a summer tryst. It was the lick of a bullwhip across the back of a disappointing servant.
“Of course not, m’lady,” the priest, Travis, said hastily as he began to back away. “I’ll just move to another altar.” With that, the man dove into the crowd like a frog leaping into the safety of a scummy pond.
Somehow Van had managed to disappear without a trace. It appeared that the tailor had not paid him nearly enough to put himself in the proximity of a creature like Lady Belial.
And what a creature she was.
Now that it was only the two of them by the altar, Dalthan was able to take a long, hard look at the woman. Long, straight hair the color of midwinter snow hung down to the small of her back. The hair color accentuated the elf’s dark skin and vibrant red eyes. Lips that were stained a shade of light blue smiled the wicked smile of a mistress that was already waiting at the back door before the dutiful wife could leave from the front.
She watched silently while Dalthan’s green eyes licked across the sensuous curves of her body like a blind man seeing colors for the first time. The snug red dress she wore gave him plenty to see, its plunging neckline leaving a large swath of her bare ebony skin from her neck to her navel. The skin that it didn’t cover was almost more exposed, the sheer fabric clinging to her frame as if it had been melted and poured over her.
“You like what you see, Dalthan?” the vivacious vixen said with amusement dancing in her ruby-red eyes.
The rogue, for all his charismatic skill, could do nothing except nod his head like the simpleton he was.
A giggle as warm as the arterial blood of a punctured heart filled the air with a playful melody. “Good,” Belial purred as she reached out to entangle her delicate fingers with his. “But before you see any more of me…”
“...we need to talk about getting you some experience points.”