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Saturday, September 29, 2018
Friday, March 9, 2018
BLOOD: The sequal to 'Codename: La Lechuza' - REVELATION OF THE BLOOD QUEEN TEASER
THE SEQUEL TO THE 2017 BEST SELLING SUPERNATURAL ACTION/ADVENTURE STORY ARRIVES IN MARCH
By
Bowie V. Ibarra
By
Bowie V. Ibarra
Saturday, January 20, 2018
BLOOD - Preview Travis Adkins 'Mists of the Dead'
TRAVIS ADKINS TAKES FANTASY FICTION TO ANOTHER LEVEL IN HIS LATEST TITLE
by
Bowie V. Ibarra
Travis Adkins has never had issues with lack of imagination. Or articulation. Travis brings all of his best writing qualities in an amazing and enjoyable Dungeons and Dragons-style adventure title that is one part fantasy, one part zombie horror, one part comedy, and one part bawdy erotic title. Read this excerpt from 'Mists of the Dead' and see for yourself. Then, pick up a copy HERE.
Copyright 2017 Henchman Press, Travis Adkins. All rights reserved.
In the following excerpt, Warrel the Bard, Kogliastro the Wizard, and Beatrix the Cleric have been spirited from their world into a bizzare new world through a mysterious mist. As they try to understand the realities of their new world, rivals from their world appear and bring trouble. That's when the real trouble from the mystery of the mist begins to reveal itself.
= = = = = = = =
Ahead,
Kogliastro stopped walking and stood still in the midst of his light. Warrel’s
own steps stuttered to a stop, and then Beatrix’s.
As
Warrel waited for the wizard to turn around, with warranted exasperation, and
give them a good scolding, he began formulating in his head the response he
would provide. He would say he and the cleric weren’t arguing, only politely
disagreeing. Then he would apologize. But he had a feeling Beatrix would not
suffer chastisement as readily as he did.
Please
turn her into a frog, he thought.
With
movement as slow and graceful as a dancer’s pirouette, the blue mass of robe
framing Kogliastro swiveled around to face them. He brought up his hand, heavy
sleeve sagging, and beckoned with a bony finger for Warrel and Beatrix to come
forward. They did.
“Get
behind me,” he said.
Warrel
exchanged glances with Beatrix, and they moved to opposite sides behind
Kogliastro.
Warrel
watched the wizard, but said nothing. He looked where the wizard was looking,
back the way they had traveled, at the mists sieging the circumference of the
magical light, obscuring the land from view. It was quiet out there with no one
talking—quiet as a grave. Warrel figured it probably wasn’t healthy to be
immersed in such deadening silence, when all you could hear was your own blood
rushing in your ears.
“Danger?”
he asked.
“Yes,”
Kogliastro said.
Beatrix
twitched. Her eyes shut in palliative meditation, and opened again in resolve.
“The un-dead?” she asked.
Kogliastro’s
hood shook side to side. “I sense no un-dead in my divinations, only a void,”
he said. “But I know they are only part of it; the void is greater than they.
The emptiness in this world is vast, the nothing greater than the something,
the not-beings greater than the is-beings.”
“What?”
“Beings
can be, and nothings can noth,” Kogliastro said.
“But
what danger approaches?” Warrel asked.
“A
subterfuge,” Kogliastro said.
“The
illusory magic?”
“No.
The presence of illusory magic is still a distance away. What approaches us now
is the camouflage shadowing us since we arrived here.”
If
you weren’t so obtuse I could better follow what was going on, Warrel
wanted to say.
The
mists betrayed nothing. If there was some kind of code lurking in their swirls
and undulations, Warrel couldn’t see it. There was no breeze stirring them yet
still they danced, a reaction without an original action, objects in motion
staying in motion. He swept his torch across his unprotected side, hoping it
might ward off anything lurking on the other side of the light.
“My
powers have failed in this world from the start,” Beatrix uttered through
downcast lips. “I have been unable to sense any of the threats until they were
already upon us. Either my goddess cannot reach me to lend me her strength, or
this world itself is an evil all-pervasive.”
Both,
undoubtedly, Warrel thought. And a cleric who cannot turn the un-dead is
not a cleric at all; worth less than half a fighter, if that. Perhaps the
un-dead in this world are like the dead in our world—quite immune to any
and all manner of buncombe. But what am I worth? It’s not as if I can beguile
them with song, now is it?
“Bah!”
Warrel said. “Show yourself, unless thou art craven!”
“Whatcha
in sucha hurry ta lose ya head for?” a voice returned.
Warrel
braced himself. He knew that voice.
Flames
from two approaching torches ruptured the mists, causing a rift in their
omnipresence. Currents wafted aside like ghosts fleeing an enchanter.
Two
men in leather armor marched to a stop just inside the perimeter of
Kogliastro’s light.
“You
leave a trail a blind man could follow,” the one with the face full of tattooed
teardrops said.
Warrel
gritted his teeth. “Thou hast been nothing short of coccydynian, Irvane
Jillian,” he said.
Irvane
smiled. Beside him, his drooling brother Cale flashed a snarl.
“Who
are these men?” Beatrix asked.
“Well,
well, well—what’s this?” Irvane said, gawking at the cleric. “You traded in
your dwarf for a blessed little goose.”
“So
you are a rapscallious knave; that’s all I need to know,” Beatrix said, folding
her arms and drumming her mace against her hip.
“A
bad trade,” Irvane said. “Me’n Suds actually fretted quite a bit, worryin’
ourselves over how best to deal with Gumgen. Stayed up all night we did,
drawin’ big plans. Don’t matter none now, does it?”
“You
do not get to say his name,” Warrel said.
“Up
and died, did he?”
“Fuck
yourself,” Warrel said.
Irvane
focused on Beatrix again. “I’m sorry, m’lady,” he said. “We’s got no quarrel
with the Whites, but my mama always told me no witnesses, so we’re gonna have
ta dirtnap ya. It’ll be quick.” He cast his eyes at Warrel. “You won’t
be quick though, poet-boy. And when I’m done with ya, I’m gonna profane yer
fuckin’ remains.”
“Have
your wits escaped you?” Warrel said. “Has that gaudy codpiece concealing your
microphallus blinded you to the situation in which we find ourselves?”
“That
insult’ll be your last,” Irvane said. “Ain’t no Swearen around to protect ya,
and no witnesses’ll be testifying to him on your behalf in regards to what’s
gonna transpire here.”
“Yes,
here,” Warrel said. “Have you looked around? Have you any clue where we
are?”
“Don’t
know, don’t care,” Irvane said. “I feel strong here. This place fuckin’ speaks
to me. Me’n Suds might even set up house.”
“So
strong here,” his brother Suds-Cale mumbled.
“Oh,
shut it, thou warthog-faced buffoon,” Warrel said.
“Can
I kill him now?” Suds-Cale asked.
“Make
your move,” Warrel said. “The wizard will incinerate you.”
“The
wizard ain’t doin’ shit,” Irvane said, grinning big.
And
he certainly wasn’t, when Warrel glanced over to check on him. Kogliastro was
doing nothing.
“Kogliastro,”
Warrel said. “Hey. Hey. Kogster. Pops!”
Worry
flashed in Beatrix’s eyes.
“He’ll
do whatever we tell him to, ‘cause he can’t do no other,” Irvane said. “He’s
nothing but an old man in a robe, and he’ll give us that nice magic cloak he’s
got if’n we ask him to.” He snuck his free hand behind his back and it returned
with a large glasslike orb cupped in his palm. Irvane displayed it proudly.
So,
that’s it, Warrel realized. That’s the coward’s cunning Gumgen spoke of;
Irvane’s answer to the wizard’s magic—he has himself a Globe of Invulnerability,
purchased or stolen or looted from an enchanter. Now he and his brother are
immune to magic, immune to scrying, immune to divination.
“A
dirty trick,” Warrel said.
“History’s
wrote with dirty tricks,” Irvane replied.
“Written,”
Warrel said. What else did Gumgen warn me? Oh— “He might throw daggers
before closing in with swords,” he added from the side of his mouth.
Beatrix
nodded. She shifted into a sideface posture, mace primed.
Warrel
caught something from the corners of his eyes—the flutter of Kogliastro’s
beard, and heard something like a growl issue from beneath the wizard’s hood.
Kogliastro
lifted his arm and showed his palm to the Jillian brothers. “Enough,” he said
tiredly. “I have heard enough. It is obvious you will not be swayed from your
ill-intentions by parley. You force me to reveal where the true balance of
power lies.”
Kogliastro
turned his hand over, palm-up, mirroring Irvane’s pose. Then, with a suddenness
and ferocity that caused the tendons in his forearm to ripple, and a
simultaneous intonation of the word, “Erbek,” the wizard’s fingers
slammed shut into a quaking fist.
In
Irvane’s hand, the Globe of Invulnerability shattered in a wonderful implosion,
filling the bowl-shape of his palm with his own blood. He gawked dumbfounded at
the empty air above his hand where the globe had been, outwardly unaware of the
many more bleeding cuts up his forearm made by the bursting shards of glass.
Warrel’s
eyes widened and his jaw dropped, face beaming. Beside him, Beatrix tried to
conceal her own shocked amusement by covering her mouth with her fingers.
Kogliastro merely lowered his hand and allowed it to resume holding his staff.
“Ha!
Ha-ha!” Warrel laughed. “Oh thy loathsome Irvane, I truly hope—for the sake of
the last vestiges of your pitiful pride—that wasn’t the full depth of your
cunning! Ha! This is Kogliastro, man!—not some vagrant street magician!
Did you think he’s never come up against a Globe of Invulnerability before?!
Ha! Oh, thou hast really cuckol’ed the kobold!”
“A
thousand cocks on you, bard!” Irvane roared.
“What
do we do now?” Suds-Cale asked.
“We
kill them,” Irvane snarled. “And prop ’em up with poles in their nethers.”
The
two brothers cast their torches aside and drew the bastard swords from the
scabbards on their backs.
Irvane
was fast—so fast that even with Gumgen’s forewarning Warrel wouldn’t have been
able to evade those three twinkling daggers whistling towards him. He was
spared only because a barrier had materialized between his party and the
cutthroats. The daggers ricocheted sharply off the barrier with three succinct
tings—ting-ting-ting—like the tolls of a tiny bell. Warrel recognized
the barrier—a vertical, two-dimensional abjuration twelve feet wide by twelve
feet tall, transparent and shimmering like a thin coat of water. It was the
same magic he’d seen encompassing Eralynn’s Teahouse to keep out nosy plebeians
when Kogliastro was inside.
Irvane
and Suds-Cale shifted their weight forward to charge the barrier, but were
suddenly thrust backward in such a way Warrel assumed Kogliastro had cast
another spell. But that something was terribly amiss here was all that Warrel
could really identify. There was soon too much chaos to fully consider each
occurrence in turn; one horror immediately followed another.
Irvane
and Suds-Cale were still just inside the perimeter of Kogliastro’s light, but
their bodies were arched backwards, their heads submerged in the obscuring
mists.
Both
brothers were screaming.
Warrel
cringed.
Irvane
tugged forward, trying to get himself back in the false safety of the wizard’s
light. He pulled mightily against whatever was keeping his head in the mists
and he momentarily succeeded, just long enough to reveal to Warrel and
Kogliastro and Beatrix the bloody teardrops filling in the tattoos on his
cheeks, and a slimy putrescent hand that poured over his forehead from behind
with its index and little finger sunk deep into the sockets of Irvane’s eyes in
a sinister grapple.
Suds-Cale’s
screaming ceased the instant Warrel heard the cracking crunch of his skull
breaking, which was followed by the wet, slurpy sound of his brain being pulled
from the cavity, and then the gnashings of teeth.
“Gramercy!”
Irvane cried. “Gramercy!”
His
bastard sword lay discarded on the dry grasses. Both of his hands worked at the
arm that tried to yank him into the mists by its secure grip in his eye
sockets. His face was replete with bloody tears.
Kogliastro
extended his hand and pointed at Irvane. The chant he then intoned from deep in
his throat bore all the evidence of a magically-transformed larynx. An
underlying resonance of rumbling swept over everything. The spell was aimed at
Irvane, but the tangential effects were enormous. Warrel and Beatrix were
seized and held stiff as trees, limbs shuddering.
Warrel
tried flailing but could not. He tried shouting, but could not. Beside him,
Beatrix managed a windless groan. He understood what was happening even through
his panic: Kogliastro usurped their voices.
Less
than a second had passed but it felt much longer. It was the first time Warrel
was truly terrified of Kogliastro. He had heard stories, passed off as hearsay,
about unutterable arcana, and realized now with much embarrassment and humility
how stupid he had been; he knew he was traveling with a master wizard, but
didn’t truly grasp how real and harrowing were the unfathomable magics he’d
been warned of—magics that bent reality to the wizard’s whims and gave him
total control of the destinies of others. There was no way of explaining it, or
comprehending it, other than saying Kogliastro had penetrated the immutable
matrix of the universe and come back with the scariest magic ever recorded.
This
enchantment stopped an enemy’s heart by mere postulate.
It
was too much power for anyone to possess. It was godlike.
An
entire barbarian hill tribe was blowing their war-trumpets in Warrel’s ears.
Over the resonance were countless chanting
harmonics—“Beel”—“Kray”—“Ide”—“Urd”—the arcana carrying absolute authority;
demanding, commanding.
Kogliastro
used the power to grant Irvane’s plea for mercy, but the mists corrupted the
magic as Beatrix had warned. Irvane’s heart did not stop beating; it exploded
from his chest instead, ribcage bursting wide open, spattering the magic
barrier with dollops of pulpy blood.
The
rumbling ceased. Warrel felt himself back in control of his body.
“Simple
spells, wizard!” Beatrix shouted. “Damn it!—we’re lucky to speak again!”
From
the left flank, a rotted, raggedy humanoid rushed at the cleric, arms outstretched
and flailing like some pestilence-stricken madman racing to arrive first at the
panacea. She staggered the creature with a straight kick to its chest, then
attacked, spinning in a whirl of white tunic, channeling all of her impetus at
the apex of her mace and connecting with the creature’s mouth, bashing it wide
open and sending teeth spraying like tiny hailstones. The creature went flat
and she pounced to finish it off, crushing one side of its skull with an arcing
downward strike, and then ambidextrously swapping the mace to her opposite hand
so she could crush the other side of the skull. It seemed a crucial lesson she
had been first among them to learn: always double-strike the undead.
Another
undead humanoid emerged from the mists and made a run for her, but Kogliastro
thrust out a robed arm and abjurated a second barrier perpendicular to the
first. The undead smacked into it and recoiled with a broken nose.
Warrel
encountered his own undead, a putrescent smaller humanoid bounding from stunted
leg to stunted leg, coming closer. He identified it as having been a gnome,
though now it was barely held together by its rotting muscles and
tautly-stretched ligaments.
He
waved his torch and his prediction was confirmed: the undead gnome retreated
from the fire. It hopped side to side beyond the reach of the flame, trying to
find a weakness in Warrel’s guard.
Kogliastro
put up a third barrier, this one in front of Warrel, and then a fourth
connecting all the barriers together, and then topped it with a ceiling,
completing the magical box.
More
undead emerged from the mists and into the wizard’s light. In the time it took
Warrel to cast his eyes around full circle, score upon score of undead had come
out of the mists and gathered on all sides of the magical barrier.
We
are as the trolls caged in the menagerie, Warrel realized grimly. Except
it’s quite the other way around, now, isn’t it? The ones craving flesh are on the
outside looking in.
By
the hundreds they came, heeding some demon trumpeter’s call; forgotten souls
from the tempest tossed, human and elf, dwarf and gnome, halfling and orc;
anointed in malodorous cadaverine leachate trickling dark and dirty from ruptured
skin and nostrils, in stages of decay as diverse as the mob’s members; the
pauper in patchwork clothing, bloated with noxious gases; the orc impaled by a
bardiche, feet made of cold and sticky clay; a physician ill-served by the
plague mask even still perched upon his countenance, breached seams dripping
maggots; the knight in corroded and sundered armor, sundry rivets mislaid; the
dames in brocade dresses with lips of lurid blue; the marbled appearance of the
courtesan in a golden girdle; men of nobility in frayed doublets with lacy
ruffled collars; a peculiar humanoid uncatalogued by cryptozoology with a
feature full of outreached tentacles, beak like a squid gaping with hunger,
garbed in a cracked chitinous cuirass; the kingsman donned in a surcoat bearing
the sigil of a kingdom nonexistent; the elf aristocrat decorated in a cloak of
darkleaf—thou are not exempt from this fate; none are. Why need I further
pore—this corner holds at least a score, and yonder twice as many more. The
dead who know nothing: who is the fool?—who is the wise man?—who is the
beggar?—the emperor?
Livers
and intestines were the first to rot after death, Warrel knew, leaving nothing
to digest the nutrients these undead sought. The brains they devoured were
given over to total nothingness—wasted into an eternal oblivion. On Erda, the
world he knew, life must needs eat life. But on this broken, misty world, life
was given unto non-life.
What
a grisly joke has been played upon us all, he thought.
Their
approach was noiseless—trancelike—not a single breath or sound escaped the
dusty abyss of their mouths. The impossibility of their very existence aside,
they should not have had the capacity for such coordinated movement. Even
well-drilled armies of living men sometimes had a stumble or two when they
marched in formation, but not these undead; they did not bump against each
other or cross feet. Somehow they were functioning cohesively—without even
communicating. And now they were at all four sides of the barrier, trying to
get in.
“Kogliastro,”
Warrel uttered bleakly. “Is there anything that can be done?”
The
wizard answered by plunging his staff into the ground, stabilizing its
lifeguarding light, and evoking a magic missile in his palm. He loosed the
missile through the shimmering barrier at the nearest undead, magic slapping
its face with a wet poof. The head recoiled; clear damage had been done.
Kogliastro
evoked another magic missile, and another, launching them at the same undead.
Its head recoiled from each blow, each blasting away a chunk of its skull. Two
more missiles followed and obliterated the skull entirely.
The
wizard flowed in a magnificent arcane dance, loosing magic missiles into the
air and through the barrier. They came at first by the dozens, then by the
hundreds, the pinkish-orange projectiles racing like tadpoles at the
innumerable targets before them. Surely the mists overhead obscured a display
greater than any performance of fireworks ever recorded on Erda—perhaps a show
even grander than the celebrated ceremony at the Garden of Light in Solux, when
millions of hatchling torchflies swarmed the shores during the night of the
long solstice, brightening the sky as full as day.
The
missiles plunged inerrant on their course, poof-poof-poof, destroying
skulls, orange tracers recalibrating to strike the next target, brains and bone
fragments popping out in showery eruptions, mostly headless corpses dropping
clumsily to the ground, twisted and entwined in macabre poses, a tangle of arms
and legs, limbs interlocking in some perverse, necrotic orgy of mortflesh.
Hesitantly
hopeful, Warrel watched on as minutes passed and piles of undead littered the
field. Not a single sliver of weed was visible through the rotting mass.
He
is doing it, he thought. Truly the wizard is as a god.
Except
the stream of magic missiles had now begun to sputter, like the dwindling
momentum at the end of some divine orgasm. Warrel threw his gaze over to
Kogliastro and observed a blue robe with gold piping soaked through with sweat,
the lower half stumbling, losing coordination.
“He
is exhausting himself,” Beatrix said.
She
dashed to be at his side, but before she could reach him to support him
upright, the wizard crumpled in a ripple of deflated robe, one final magic
missile shooting from his palm and weakly slapping some undead’s face in a
gesture most impotent.
Kogliastro
lay on the ground. His hood had fallen back in his collapse and the man
underneath revealed to Warrel and Beatrix with absoluteness. This was a man
deep in senescence, a grandfather several generations grand, a sweaty balded
pate above two cataract-infused eyes, twitching as if in momentary senility.
Amidst the white beard a mouth appeared, laboring to propel oxygen through its shallow
passage and refill the strained lungs powering the decrepit carbon engine.
Beatrix
knelt at his side and supported his head.
He
is but a cluster of cloth draped upon a frame of bundled twigs, Warrel
thought.
Kogliastro’s
pupils rolled in Warrel’s direction. They studied Warrel for a time, and then
the wizard said, shakily, “I see you looking at me through the pitying eyes of
youth—the ignorant eyes gazing upon something they think will never happen to
them. Know this, Warrel: One day you too will be a young man looking out upon
the world from the lenses of an old body, and none who look upon you will see
the man you still believe you are.”
Outside
the magical cube, there was no indication the number of undead had been at all
reduced. A new wave of zombies scaled and conquered the mountains of unmoving
corpses, and the vanguard was pressed to the barrier and gawking like spoiled
children at the window of a chocolatier’s storefront.
Beatrix
sluggishly turned away from the sight of them and lowered her head, gulping.
“How long will your barrier hold, Kogliastro?” she asked.
“I…
cannot know for certain,” he replied.
Beatrix
nodded soberly. She cast her eyes around the interior of the cube before
finding and focusing on the bit of handle jutting from Warrel’s boot, the
handle belonging to the Pixie Prick.
“I
would like to make use of your blade, Warrel,” she said. “May I borrow it?”
Shaking
his head in answer to her question was a frustrating distraction. Warrel was
deep in thought, mulling over an idea with a projected outcome that was surely
too hopeful to happen in any kind of real actuality. But if the wizard’s magic
missiles had been able to pass through the barrier from this side, perhaps
anything could.
“Face
the inevitable,” Beatrix said. “Be not a coward who dies a thousand deaths.
Lend me your blade and I will demonstrate courage.”
“No,”
Warrel said.
“Warrel!”
“No!”
he said. “Cleric, postpone thy martyrdom and humor the possibility, however
remote, that the lunamoth doctrine suckled from the teats of your goddess
serves only to propagandize dying as a trivial, minor inconvenience. I do not
share your conviction that life is but a meaningless flicker against the
backdrop of some grand immortality; I see life in its full, limitless
potential. So, please, be still a moment and let me conclude my thoughts.”
“Ugh—you
dare advise me,” she scowled. “Such a ubiquitous trend—the male
pontificating the female what she should or shouldn’t do with full agency over
her own body.”
“Oh,
drop the dogmas!” Warrel snapped. “I’m not trying to claim dominion over
you—I’m only asking that you not pass your ghost beyond the veil before we’ve
exhausted our options.”
“What
options?” she asked doubtfully.
“I
might have something,” he said.
“And
if you do not?”
“Then
my blade is yours to plunge into your breast—or whatever the ritual is your
goddess demands.”
“Fine.
Do what you will—but be quick about it,” she said. “If I suffer tortuous death
at the hands of the un-dead, your name will be the last curse uttered from my
lips.”
“Yes,
yes, fine,” he said. I’ve been cursed plenty before. He focused his
attention on the sweaty old man in the skins of robe on the ground like a
collapsed monument. “Kogliastro, are you still with us?”
“Yes,”
the wizard said.
“Clarify
for me: will anything go through the barrier from this side?”
“Yes,”
Kogliastro said. “Attacks from within may pass.”
“Do
they need be magical in nature?”
“No,”
Kogliastro said.
“You’re
quite sure?”
“Yes,
I’m quite sure.”
“And
nothing can pass through from the other side?”
“Nothing.”
“Absolutely
nothing?”
“Correct.
Unless I authorize it.”
“And
you’ve authorized nothing to pass?”
“Correct.”
“Are
you sure?”
“Yes.”
“So
nothing at all can pass from the other side?”
“Nothing.”
“Are
you very, very sure?”
“Yes,
Warrel, he’s sure!” Beatrix said.
Warrel
put up his hand. “Okay, okay,” he said.
He
turned to face the nearest wall. Zombies pressed up against the other side,
front to back, shoulder to shoulder, showing their teeth. Their ranks could go
on infinitely.
Warrel
shuddered. I must make room.
He
extended his torch at the barrier, expecting some kind of resistance despite
what the wizard told him, but there was none. The flame passed through, as did
the solid of the torch itself. An anomalous force tugged at it from the other
side, but he understood it was actually the barrier prohibiting any particles
from reentering once they had already passed through.
The
undead shuffled backwards one step at a time as the flame drew near. Warrel
released the torch and it fell to the dirt on the other side, rolling a short
distance on the slight incline and singeing scattered blades of grass as it
trundled over them. After everything settled and all movement had ceased, there
was roughly four feet of space between the vanguard of undead and the barrier.
That
will do, Warrel figured.
He
reached a hand behind his back to untie the lashings securing the crossbow to
his knapsack. Once accomplished, he displayed the crossbow to Kogliastro and
Beatrix.
“This
is The Albatross,” he said. “The heighth of gnomish ingenuity. This,” he
bounced it in his hands, “is equal to almost the entirety of my life savings.
I—”
“Get
on with it,” Beatrix said.
“I’m
getting there, I’m getting there,” Warrel said.
He
spun again to face the undead. With a nervous exhale, he released the
ammunition casing from the crossbow’s stock, and verified with a quick glance
that six Bolts of Massive Explosion were lined up inside. They phosphoresced
with an ominous green iridescence, sheening to glowing tips, a luster lusting
only for carnage, wholesale.
And
so you shall have it.
He
settled the stock against his shoulder and lifted the crossbow at a rotting elf
in the forefront. Its pointed ears were browned and withered at the edges and
the cartilage of its nose was disintegrated, exposing a festering nasal cavity.
Warrel sighted center-mass, the crosshairs targeting a magnified view of the
elf’s chest, showing with gratuitous detail the slimy curls of intestine
peeking out through multiple ruptures.
Warrel
cocked the foregrip with a staunch jerk back then forward, the crossbow
releasing a hiss of air in synchronization with the forward motion, drawing
back the mithral bowstring. A Bolt of Massive Explosion was conveyed by some
mechanism inside and positioned in the flight groove.
Warrel
tapped his finger on the tickler guard. It was all that stopped him now.
“Hold
on to your butts,” he said.
He
pulled the trigger. His eyes were able to witness only a single image of the
bolt, a brief instant of the distortion of space by a zooming body captured in
his memory as a wraithlike umbilical cord linking the crossbow to its target.
And
then all the fires from all the furnaces of all the hells opened wide their
abyssal jaws and expelled apocalypse on the dark and misty lands. All was
fire—the undead were fire, the soil was fire, the air was fire—burning
greenish-red and engulfing even the mists—the mists that succumbed even after
losing form and sprinkling droplets of evacuees that were immediately boiled
and annihilated.
Warrel
winced and shrank back, shielding his eyes with his forearm. The ground
trembled below his feet. He squinted at Kogliastro and Beatrix, at their bodies
bathed in a wash of neon light, and dreadfully wondered if this might not have
been what the wizard had in mind when he said nothing could pass. Warrel
counted one, two, three seconds. But inside the magic cube, even at the nucleus
of the explosion, the tall grasses were still green and thriving and he felt no
trace of heat from the inferno without.
The
raging fire was too wide-ranging to make any assessment of its true
proportions. For all Warrel knew, it could have conquered this broken world
entirely. And once he admitted this to himself, he recognized the terrified
expression frozen upon Beatrix’s countenance. It meant to say, the gnomes
have it within them to destroy the world—gods help us all.
A
minute passed, at least, before there was any change in intensity. The flames
receded and the mists in the sky were replaced with roiling black smoke. The
fire divided, died off, separated into small tongues lapping away at meager
remnants of corpses like pennants of fallen soldiers rippling in the wind after
a battle. The field was black, scorched and smoldering. There was no undead
left standing anywhere in sight—which was quite far, for the fire had sent the
mists into full retreat and provided Warrel his widest vista since he first set
foot in this gloomy world.
Beatrix
sprang to her feet and investigated the carnage around her. When Warrel espied
glimpses of her face, he felt he could almost read her mind: Her oaths forbade
her from encouraging, approving, or permitting such wanton destruction, but she
was so relieved to be alive that she praised the wanton destruction for saving
her, and then all the feelings of guilt came flooding in, and surely at this
point she was a mess of amalgamated emotional dissonance. It explained her
withdrawn silence.
Inexorably,
new undead appeared at the horizons in the form of misshapen silhouettes,
weaving around the numerous small fires still burning, drawn to the occupants
inside the magic barrier.
“They
will keep coming,” Kogliastro said, wincing as he sat up. “And I must dissolve
the barrier soon—I cannot recuperate with this lingering magic taxing my power.
How much ammunition do you carry?”
“I
have five bolts left,” Warrel replied.
“Of
the same variety as the one you loosed?”
“Yes.”
“Good,
good—fantastic,” Kogliastro said, with burgeoning enthusiasm. He pointed at the
way they had been travelling. “We must continue seeking the source of the
illusory magic. There is an intelligence behind it. If we locate it, we may
find safety.”
Somehow
I doubt that, Warrel thought.
“Clear
a route with your weapon, as far as you can,” Kogliastro said. “Thenceforth we
can flee before more un-dead close in on us.”
No
other options were coming to mind, so Warrel set about the task. Beatrix
blinked away from eye contact and said not a word as he slipped past her to the
barrier opposite. He felt her fingers brush his wrist, probably carrying the
intent to halt him but not with enough real conviction to make it manifest. She
turned her head lugubriously in his wake, as if it were demanded by creed that
she witness the chaos her silence sanctioned.
She
sighed, barely audibly, “How can my fall be happening so fast?”
Warrel
aimed at the farthest spot he could see in the blackness, where the mists were
converging, and fired a second Bolt of Massive Explosion.
This
time he could behold the detonation in all its glory. The initial burst was a
spherical eruption of flaming spikes that looked like the form of some giant
enraged quillrat, then a growing column of greenish-red flame shooting into the
sky and billowing off like a mushroom. The all-consuming wave of fire came
next.
He
did not wait the full minute or more for the fire to dissipate. He cocked the
foregrip again, lifted his aim to a higher trajectory, and pulled the trigger.
He wasn’t sure what kind of range The Albatross was capable of, but he figured
it must be great.
Another
mountain of fire erupted behind the first. Warrel aimed higher and fired again,
then aimed higher and fired again, repeating until the last bolt was expended.
He agonized upon each explosion, wondering how much each shot was costing him
monetarily. He decided he oughtn’t analyze it too thoroughly; after all, any
man who watched his fortune slipping away would feel the same paroxysms of
grief.
“Good,
good,” Kogliastro said. He attempted to stand, but couldn’t get further than
one knee. He wobbled, on the verge of toppling over.
Beatrix
caught him. “I’ve got you, I’ve got you,” she said. “We are in no immediate
danger. Dissolve your barrier. Let your strength return.”
“No
time,” Kogliastro said. “We must flee now.”
“Then
we shall carry you,” Beatrix said, purchasing Warrel’s compliance with the
austerity of her gaze.
They
took opposite sides of the wizard and draped his arms across their shoulders,
raising him gently to his feet. To Warrel it seemed less like a human body he
and the cleric shared between them and more akin to some hollow construct of
papier-mâché they were charged with delivering undamaged to some far-off
exhibition. He feared at any moment he would harken the sound of a breaking
bone.
Beatrix
pulled Kogliastro’s staff out of the ground and slipped it into his hand. He
adjusted it in his grasp to extend the light before them.
“Be
swift,” he said. “Now, forward, as the fires die.”
The
barriers dissolved with a flicker. Hot air blew at them like the ambient heat
of a summer sun baking the concrete of a city street, along with the marinade
of smells such a street would carry. The pungent stench of crispy, cremated
corpses burned in Warrel’s nostrils as if he had snorted the entire stale
contents of an old pepper grinder.
They
ran, gaining speed as they coordinated strides. Their bootsteps sunk deep in
the sweeping black bed of powdery cinders, ashes stirring like dead leaves in a
poofy gust of autumnal breath, fiery red coals snowing at their trail.
The
craters at the detonation points served as beacons through which they waded in
and out, and at the third crater Warrel burst into hysterical laughter.
Beatrix
confusedly glanced over at him, then returned her eyes forward. “What could you
possibly find so funny?” she asked.
“Oh—”
Warrel said with a grimace, “Only that I laid The Albatross down and forgot to
take it up again. I ask you: how much must I give?—how much must this land
take?”
“Good
grief,” Beatrix said. “You know we can’t go back.”
“I
know,” he panted. “Just imagine all the other treasures that might be lost out
here in the mists.”
“I
am imagining living—not treasure,” she coolly replied.
Her
breathing was regulated despite the exertion of running, in contrast to
Warrel’s increased huffing and puffing. He had worked hard to keep up his
cardio and thought the natural endurance of half-elves quite unfair.
“Yes,
living,” he said. “Aren’t you glad you stuck around? I bet you’d have felt
awful silly killing yourself before I managed to get us out of there.”
“Yes,
Warrel,” she said. “I’m sure I would have felt very silly.”
“And
considering you’d likely have returned as un-dead.”
“What?”
she said sharply, looking past Kogliastro to throw a quick glare in Warrel’s
direction. “What does that mean?”
“Just
a hypothesis I have,” Warrel said. “If you die with your brain intact, your
body belongs to the mists. I think.”
Beatrix
scoffed. “And you were going to give utterance to your hypothesis when?”
“When
and if the need arose, I suppose.”
She
growled. “Argh! You flighty bastard!”
“I’m
not flighty,” Warrel said.
She
nodded a thought to herself, with conviction, unable to hide the sneer of her
lips. “I’d have gone for your brain first,” she said, “though I’m sure
it would’ve provided me little satisfaction.”
“Oh,
truly thou art rife with zingers,” Warrel replied.
“You
impertinent flake,” she hissed. “By the gods, it’s as if I have direct audience
with the uncrowned king of imbeciles.”
“Enough!”
Kogliastro burst. “Both of you, enough!”
Warrel
was not frightened so much at the wizard’s anger as he was by the mists closing
in at their sides. They appeared rageful, swooping in swiftly and violently,
wanting nothing less than outright revenge for the casualties they suffered by
fire.
The
scorched land gradually gave way to unscathed pastures. The mists tried to
smite at the wizard’s light, sending wispy assassins to encircle the bright
bulb at the end of his staff. The luminosity dimmed under their efforts, but
did not extinguish.
And
though Warrel did not turn his head long enough to investigate fully, he was
almost certain putrefied hands and arms were reaching at them from the mists.
He
almost cried aloud, We aren’t going to make it!
They
passed through an opening in a low stone wall, the first architecture Warrel
had seen since leaving the abandoned town. The grass began to reveal
interspersed flagstones that clapped loudly under their bootfalls, leading
somewhere, certainly.
—Hopefully.
“Stop,”
Kogliastro said. “We are there.” He unwound his arms from the cradle of their
shoulders and leaned forward heavily on his staff.
Directly
before them was debris where a large manor once stood, evidenced by the ruins
of pillars, walls, and supports suggesting the shape of the original structure.
There was no telling what its final fate had been, whether fire, storm, or
pillaging. Strangely, however, the mists did not invade the area. They seemed
unable, being stopped and turned away at the tentative borders.
“There
is nothing here,” Warrel said, breathing hard.
“Yes
there is,” Kogliastro said. “We see an illusion—a false projection of reality.
Behind the illusion the structure still exists, intact and mostly undamaged.”
“It
does?” Warrel asked. “There’s a… house here?”
He
stepped ahead and flattened his palms against one of the pillars, but his skin
did not quite make full contact, as if there were some invisible surface area
he was not allowed to see. He knew there was something there; he could feel a
finished surface on his fingertips, like polished wood or a painted exterior.
He walked sideways, following the imperceptible vertical plane with slaps of
his palms, feeling the solidness even where his eyes were sure there was
nothing.
“There
must be a way in or someone wouldn’t be bothering to hide it,” he said. “A
door—there must be a door.”
His
brushed against the jambs of a doorframe and felt for its outline. The doorway
was large—he could tell that straight away—something imposing and impressive
for moneyed gentry to flaunt at passersby. He laid hand on the doorknob, but it
only rattled in his grasp. He floated a hand upwards and found a hinged
knocker, a cold metal cast of some indefinite form.
“Hello!
Is there anybody there?!” he called out, rapping.
Only
stillness answered him, though every word fell echoing through the shadowiness
of the house, the air shaken by his call.
Warrel
stood perplexed. He called again, “Is there anybody there?!”
But
never the least stir made the listeners.
“Open
says me!” he shouted. He fumbled down at the knob and probed for a keyhole
while one hand slipped into his jacket for his howler quill. “I may be able to
pick the lock.”
“No,”
Kogliastro said. “Stand back. I am not strong enough yet to dispel the
illusion, but I may be able to… just stand back.”
Warrel
backed away uncertainly, glancing over his shoulders for any sign the undead
had caught up.
Kogliastro
lifted a shaky hand and said, “Repulverie.”
A
large rectangular shape burst thunderously in the false emptiness and yellow
light gushed forth from the nothing. Kogliastro had repelled the door from its
frame, Warrel gathered, and he was now seeing the interior the illusion had
concealed. It was well lit, and there were no mists inside—that was good enough
for him.
Kogliastro
collapsed to his knees. Beatrix collected him under his arms and hoisted him
up. She assisted him to the doorway as he hobbled weakly on crouched legs.
And
Warrel was suddenly off his own, plummeting forward, his nose barely missing a
flagstone. He cried, “Oomph!” as he ate a mouthful of dirt.
He
was dragged backwards, back to the mists, his shirt bunching up in a roll
against his chest, a firm pressure around his ankle like a terminal anchor. And
he was too tired, too fatigued—and he knew it—to struggle against his
assailant.
The
undead leaped, and Warrel heard the whistle of air through its gaping mouth,
and soon the teeth would be clenched on his scalp, and he braced himself for
the surge of pain.
There
was an unexpected sound, though, a loud thunk, following an altogether
different whistle of air. Warrel saw the blurred crystalline club swinging in a
pendulum arc, and felt the impact in the atmosphere when the undead’s face was
crushed into its scalp.
A
hand gripped the collar of his jacket and he felt himself dragged once again,
this time forward, turned clumsily half-over with his knapsack holding him at
an angle. The coarse dirt abruptly changed to smooth hardwood flooring, and the
hand released him.
He
lifted his head. There was Kogliastro on his hands and knees in the blankets of
his robe, and he thrust a hand back and said, “Etrun.” The rectangle
shape, now recognizable as a paneled door, flew back into its frame as if drawn
by gravity. Kogliastro then fell flat on the floor, exhaling an exhausted sigh.
Warrel
propped himself on an elbow, and breathing hard, trying to syncopate the
beating of his heart, gazed up at the pale apparition who had delivered him
from skeletal clutches.
“Yours
is the aura of a corrupter,” Beatrix said. “But I postponed your death all the
same. Like for like.”
Warrel
nodded. He had the urge to shamelessly and effusively kiss her boots, but
settled for patting them instead. The doeskin was soft yet unyielding to his
touch.
“You
have my undying gratitude,” he said. “Pardon the pun.”
= = = = =
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