The Battle of Ebulon (15 page)

Andrew rattled one of the chains that held him
to the wall, tuning his voice to the pitch of helplessness and fear
that so many of his previous playmates had used on him. “Let me
out! I promise, whatever you want, I’ll do it!”

The guard appeared unmoved by Andrew’s pleas as
it shuffled forward and tossed the tray on the ground at Andrew’s
feet. It stood before him for a long moment, staring at him with
that single bulbous eye; then the grotesque mouth twitched upwards
in a horrid parody of a smile.

“It shakes the chains all it wants, but can’t
get out. Galluk’ur decides, Galluk’ur makes it food. Galluk’ur
wants it. Not dead. Tender.”

Before Andrew could begin to put voice to the
questions the thing’s statement provoked, it reared back with one
of those misshapen hands and slapped him across the jaw. Andrew
felt something crack — despite the emaciated appearance, it was
strong and the hoof-like material of its lower hand was nearly as
dense as steel — and his head whipped to the side. Blood dribbled
over his lower lip, and Andrew’s probing tongue could tell that at
least two of his teeth had been cracked off.

When he refocused his eyes on his attacker,
however... Andrew was smiling widely. “Mistake, my friend.” In
order to slap him, the creature had gotten close enough for Andrew
to reach; now he lashed out with his free hand, the straight razor
gleaming even in the darkness as it sheared through the creature’s
stomach.

As Andrew had expected, the beast doubled up
over the wound, clasping one of those strange hands against it as
black and red sludge seeped through the wound. He used that moment
to rise and pull his already-changing flesh free of the other
shackle. Assuming his true form, the shattered teeth replaced with
their steel counterparts and his handsome human face replaced with
a hellish harlequin mask, Andrew leaned forward, panting his rancid
blood-and-oysters stench into the guard’s face.

“And people who make mistakes around me don’t
live to repent them, pal.”

He jerked the straight razor up and drove it
forward, popping the creature’s eye with a wet sound that was
nearly buried beneath the creature’s shrieks. Yellow fluid began to
dribble from the edges, but Andrew dug deeper, using the height
advantage and increased strength from his dreamself to bury the
blade into the skull and the soft meat that lay behind it. After
another moment, the thing began to twitch and shudder
uncontrollably and its voice dwindled to nothing but gasps. A
moment after that, it slid from his blade and hit the floor still
twitching as it sank into the fecal mire.

Andrew leaned his head back and took a deep
breath, relishing the scent of terror and death that had been
released by the creature in its final moments; the miasma of the
dying rejuvenated him slightly — not as much as dealing with it in
his preferred manner might have, but enough to tend to the wounds
on his body and grant him the psychic strength to lay hands on the
fomori’s spirit as it sought to flee.

Returning to his human shape,
Andrew focused his will into manacles of his own; chained by that
will, the dead Orc’s escaping spirit was trapped, bound to him as
one of his
bean sidhe
. The air rustled, dust motes and ground bones rising up to
take form similar to the dead beast’s, albeit with the wounds that
had killed it clearly visible. It thrashed against the air,
obviously attempting to fight the invisible restraints that bound
it to its killer, but discovered that such resistance was futile.
Andrew’s grin spread wider in response.

“Awww. Poor baby. Shouldn’t have meddled with
my playtime, you know. It might have been Irana standing in your
place, otherwise...” He sighed, casting his eyes skyward. “And she
would have been much better company, I’m sure. But you’ll
do.”

Andrew narrowed his eyes, making a beckoning
gesture to the thing. Thankfully the ghost saw at least as well as
the creature it had come from, missing eye or no, and didn’t seem
any more impeded by the darkness than Andrew himself was. It
shuffled a step closer, hanging its head as though expecting
another blow.

“Now, my little pet. You’re going to take me to
this Galluk’ur. And then we’ll have a little chat about the menu.
Here’s a hint: I’m not on it.” He gestured at the cell door with
the razor. “Now march. On, you huskies!”

The ghost, head still hung low but unable to
refuse the command of its master, turned and began to shuffle out
of the cell, Andrew trailing behind it.

*****

The
bean sidhe
had led Andrew through the
warrens, actual light creeping in as they wound slowly upwards
through roughly hewn stairwells and spiraled passages that appeared
to be natural at first glance; with further inspection, he could
see hundreds of pinprick-sized notches in the stone with occasional
larger gashes. Looking at these kept bringing an image of something
akin to a giant centipede burrowing its way steadily
upward.

At one point he tried further conversation with
the spirit of his former captor, inquiring as to their whereabouts.
“Underhollow,” was the only word it said that made sense, and was
merely repeated when Andrew had asked for more clarification; he
could only assume they were somewhere below the palatial estate
that he had first been taken to.

After a time they came to a
more open place, a wide grotto perhaps twenty feet to a side, and
apparently designed for more comfort than the rest of the place.
Here there were brilliant torches flaring with blue and green flame
that registered to his unnatural sight as well as his human eyes.
Thick carpeting had been laid out to cover the dense soil, and
crests in the style of the old people Andrew’s dreamself had once
known — large triangular affairs, forged from steel, silver and
gold, colored in blues, purples, blacks and toxic greens with
mutant animals and skulls upon them — were mounted along the
walls.
Ah, the fomori’s lair. Where they
can kick up their feet... erm... hooves and do what comes
natural.
He snorted as he took stock of the
room, but did so quietly; the scent of blood, flesh and rancid
anger and aggression was coming from somewhere up ahead, likely
beyond the small green door that sat at the end of this hall, and
he had no desire for the things manufacturing those scents to be
aware of him.

Yet,
he amended.

Snapping the fingers of his right
hand, a dull purple spark sprung from the tips of his fingers and
hovered for a moment. Brushing his hand at it caused the foo-light
to blossom into a small violet flame the size of his fist and sent
it floating serenely towards the closest of the torches. His lips
quirked in an unpleasant and predatorial grin, Andrew directed the
purple flame to each of the torches in turn, until all of them were
glowing and flickering with his own purple fire rather than the
balefire the Orcs seemed to prefer.

“There, that’s better,” he whispered. “And now
that the stage is set...”

With another snap, the
straight razor appeared in his left hand, gleaming and reflecting
back the purple glow throughout the room. Pursing his lips and
blowing at the back of his unwilling tour guide, the
bean sidhe
was scattered
back into dust motes and moonbeams once again, leaving Andrew alone
in the chamber.

Andrew slid along the wall
towards the door at the far end, his natural attunement to negative
thoughts and feelings proving almost as good as any radar scope,
providing a general idea of what waited on the other side. Two
beasts, one to other side of the door if his senses were correct.
Several more scattered within, with something that radiated more
violence, rage and jealousy than the rest combined, resting in the
center of the others.
That’s the one I
want. With his power...
Andrew didn’t let
the thought finish itself, as planning too far ahead wasn’t in his
nature. Still, with that amount of juice, he could return with a
veritable army of
bean sidhe
and other dream remnants. The people above, those
who claimed his mother’s blessing and looked so soft and weak, so
fearful of war and what it would bring, would grovel before him...
and if the Orcs — or whatever other beasts they feared — dared
cause trouble elsewhere in the city, all the gods of old wouldn’t
be able to help them.

Licking his lips in anticipation,
Andrew shot one booted foot out and kicked in the door. Even as he
did so, he slid to the left and into a pocket of shadow cast
between two of the wall torches, his body evaporating into the
darkness and sliding smoothly through the small cracks in the
wall.

Two guards — similar in their physical respects
to the one he had dispatched below, but both armed with gleaming
golden pikes and daggers of cold iron at their hips, wearing
breastplates of green gossamer and thick leather boots over their
hooves — stumbled out of the shattered doorway as the remnants
drifted down around them.

Slipping out of the shadows
on the opposite side of the wall, Andrew flickered back to
physicality directly behind them. With a savage slash, he tore a
long flap of flesh from the back of one guard’s unprotected neck;
as it flailed at the wound and its companion turned to face the
intruder, Andrew executed a quick curtsey. “Shouldn’t have
interrupted my playtime, dearies. Now
you
have to be my
playmates.”

Whipping the razor back in the
opposite direction, ignoring the heavy clanking of weapons being
readied behind him, Andrew nearly decapitated the turning guard.
His free hand dipped to the first guard’s belt, snatching at the
hilt of the dagger — wincing and feeling a bit of himself dying,
his fingers blackening at the contact as the iron’s sterile sanity
rubbed against his chaotic nature — he jerked it free and shoved
upward with it, burying it in the wound he’d already created and
forcing it through to emerge from the creature’s eye.

Spinning, holding the razor out in
front of his eyes as his dreamself drank deep of the dying Orc’s
lifeforce, Andrew immediately put it to work and tethered their
spirits to him as his features shifted into his true visage. Now
wearing the hellish harlequin’s face, he sketched a salute as he
surveyed his opposition.

There were fewer than he’d thought
— apparently that central malevolent force, or perhaps remnants of
previous inhabitants, had clouded his assessment — but the
half-dozen fomori forming a rough line before him still appeared
dangerous enough. Four were armed as the two he’d already killed,
but the two in the center were much larger, had two eyes and full
hands rather than the mutations evident in the others, and were
hefting heavy mauls. From the stench and quiver of fear that they
sent through him, Andrew could tell the heads were made of pure
iron.

“
An
maith la do duine digeanta.
” A good day to
die, indeed. At least he’d be taking several of these pricks with
him, he thought. Keeping the razor before him and willing that
the
bean sidhe
forming behind him should prepare their own weapons, he made a
beckoning gesture with his free hand. The two with mauls began to
advance on him, their mates closing in behind
them.

Andrew tensed back on the balls of
his feet, preparing to launch himself in a bundle of manic energy,
but stopped — as did the Orcs — as a harsh and guttural sound, more
cough than word, came from behind the soldiers.

The two with mauls shuffled to either side,
providing Andrew with a line of sight to what lay behind them. An
altar of some sort, draped with gold and green silk, atop which sat
a hideous-looking statue made of onyx. It’s shape reminded him of
what he’d thought while in the stone throat of the stairwell;
carved in the semblance of a monstrous centipede with dozens of
mouths, the blasphemous icon was two feet tall and three wide,
seeming to radiate malicious energy. Standing behind it was a
creature that was the spitting image of the fomori immortalized in
stone in the square above; three eyed and nearly an equal mix of
pig and man, this one wore thick robes that matched the altar’s
draperies. It grunted out the phlegmy sound once more, and started
to advance.

When it stood merely three feet from Andrew, it
curled one side of its mouth, revealing rows of fangs behind the
protruding tusks, and hissed.

“
Tuatha
. You dare?”

Andrew lowered the razor, his
grin blooming once more, revealing his jagged bear-trap teeth. “I
dare much, fomori. Surrender yourself, and maybe I don’t
kill
all
your
friends.” He paused, then dropped a wink.
“Maybe.”

The priest — if that’s what it was
— raised its hands, green liquid fire dripping from the fingertips
and wreathing the thing’s lower arms. Andrew could feel something
like a funnel forming in the air, a shaft of negative emotion
coming from the blasphemous idol on the altar and moving towards
the priest. The other Orcs were dropping to one knee in apparent
reverence, their heads bowing.