Vicious Magick (3 page)

Varello sits on one of the many stone
fenceposts encircling the old cemetery. Lute in hand, the moon
breaks through the clouds as he starts to play, slowly at first,
then increasing the tempo randomly, plucking a melody in fits and
starts.

Near the crumbling tombstones, there are
movements, sounds of stirring, scratching. Over the din of the
lute, rumbling can be heard beneath the ground.

A decaying hand punches through the earth,
that stereotypical image of deadder resilience.

Varello smiles.

After some confusion caused by the similarity
between all the grayish brick buildings, Zanther finally locates
his hotel, only to be surrounded by twenty members of the Royal
Guard. The Chief Guard looks Zanther over. Zanther reaches for his
longknife and, again, the hilt comes off in his hand.

“Uh, can’t we talk about this, maybe over a
few drinks?” he asks, laughing nervously.

One of the soldiers starts to say something
about how a drink would be nice, but he’s quickly silenced by the
angry glares of a few of his cohorts. The Chief Guard claps irons
on Zanther’s wrists and gives him a push in the direction of
Claustria Castle.

Varello skips across the darkened plains, the
wet grass and sod sloshing under his feet. He strums his lute as he
goes, a horde of deadders shambling in his wake and groaning
incoherently. A stray dog wanders up to Varello, he whistles to it,
it freezes, and he keeps skipping along as the dog is absorbed into
the horde.

A lost sheep, a few wolves, they all become
food for the undead, the animals’ bones dissolved by a sea of
gnashing teeth and toxic saliva.

Zanther is chained to the wall, stripped to
his underwear and blindfolded and gagged. It’s your run-of-the-mill
castle dungeon, complete with mildewy, jagged stone walls and
ironwork comprising the bars and shackles.

Madra orders the guard outside to stand down
so she can interrogate the prisoner alone. She unlocks the cell and
walks right up to Zanther, pulling off his blindfold.

“I told you you’d regret it. Now we’re going
to do this on
my
terms,” she says as she puts his blindfold
back in place.

Novanostrum is sitting in an alley with a
view of the castle, smoking his pipe and puzzling to himself.

Can’t leave this guy alone for even a second.
Hmm…what can I use to blast through stone?

His eye is immediately drawn to the wooden
staff.

Yeah, thanks for pointing out the obvious.
But if I start calling up bolts and fireballs, they’re going to
figure out pretty quickly they’ve got a wizard on their hands and
there are only so many of us. Not great for my continued
anonymity.

With what feels like the force of a very
strong magnet, Novanostrum can feel the staff dragging him towards
a barrel in front of a shop dealing in powderblasts.

Yeah, that’d do it.

The wizard rolls the barrel nonchalantly down
the sleeping streets, the wood clunking against the cobbles. Every
time it bounces, he shudders, bracing himself.

When he gets close enough to the castle, he
scans the stone wall for a clear spot not in the immediate vicinity
of any guards. He puts the barrel into place and just as he’s about
to strike a match he hears…music. Someone strumming a guitar off in
the distance.

He pauses to see if he can hear more, and he
does. He hears screaming.

Deadders

It should be mentioned here that deadders are
the reanimated corpses of the deceased. Most deadders are human,
due to the way human corpses are stored (animals left out in the
open tend to decay pretty rapidly), but animals can be deadders,
too. Deadders can be reanimated any number of ways, whether they’re
created through powerful magicks, by infection with a virus, or by
accidentally listening to Foll K’narr reciting one of his
longpoems.

Deadders are about as strong as insane or
drunk humans. They don’t feel pain, so they don’t (and don’t really
have the capacity) to worry about muscle strain or overexertion.
There are a few ways to decommission a deadder. The first is to
convince him he’s dead. Since their intellectual functioning is
comparable to that of dogs, this is basically a futile effort. The
next method is to break the spell keeping them animate by casting a
new spell or killing the puppetmaster. The last way to stop
deadders is by burning them to dust. Cutting them into pieces just
leaves you with a bunch of irritated body parts biting and
scratching their way towards you.

Varello leads his undead army straight down
the main boulevard and towards the castle, with a few beggars and
bystanders screaming as they are absorbed by the putrid mass.

He continues to play, oblivious to the
destruction occurring behind him. As he approaches the castle
gates, the guards manning the door drop their pikes and take off
down side streets.

The horde of deadders parts around Varello
and charges the giant wooden door, toppling it with the sheer power
of their numbers.