Kevin Wright's Blog: SaberPunk, page 2
April 18, 2018
Something Borrowed Something Spew - Chapter 4. - The Chronicles of Swamp Lords
Part 4. Knock Knock, Who’s There?
“WHOA PURITY!” The Good Prince tore on Purity’s reigns.
Smoke billowed in roiling streams, blotting out the reddening sun as it fell. The town was a burning ruin of char-bones and choking black smoke, the heretic dead strewn about it like a lumber-jacked forest. Only the Black Temple stood yet intact. The Nine surrounded it.
“Yon maiden wants for saving,” the Good Prince said as he kicked a mailed leg over his saddle, dismounting, thudding ankle-deep into the muck with the delicacy of a catapulted boulder. “Captains! The time is nigh. Let no soul escape unpurified. I shall storm its most inner sanctums! I shall find the frog!”
“Aye, Milord!” Eight Captains cried as one.
“Death to the Wrackolyte!”
“For Sanctos!” roared the Good Prince. He saluted his Captains, then stormed that bastion of evil and stormed it alone for the only hurt that could pierce his boon heart was the felling of one of his Good Captains. He told them this not, though, for to do so would have been to lie. In truth he could not suffer to share the slaughter.
“For the Righteous! For the Just!” He stepped to the temple doors, hurling aside his war-shield. Taking a double grip upon the haft of the War Hammer of a Thousand Burning Suns, and with a single roaring swing, he burst the temple doors shattering off their hinges. Dying rays of blessed sunlight pierced the darkness beyond.
The villainous mob recoiled.
“Bring me the Wrackolyte frog and be spared!” he bellowed into the raucous black.
But like the Good Prince he was, he could suffer not to wait for the villains to accede to his demands, and instead did what few men are wont to do. He strode alone into darkness.
“Help! Help us!” the villains roared.
“Mercy!” they bellowed.
“Mommy! Daddy!” the villains spat.
But the Good Prince heard them not. With ears cloistered in sanctified steel, impervious he was to the villains’ auditory assaults.
“Where be yon Maiden!?” The Good Prince was wroth. He smashed on his fore-strike as well as his back, and where he could not smash flesh, he desecrated wood and shattered stone. But vile flesh huddled present in an abundatude. For the black temple was packed nigh to bursting with an army of evil, and nary a swing but purified sinners. Bones shattered underfoot as he strode on through the dark, thundering with his spike-shod boots, ramming like a muck ox with his gloriously serrated pauldrons. Men who grappled him were impaled upon spiked eructations or sawn limbless upon his sanctified serrations. Some had the honor of both. Souls billowed in pillars like the smoke.
Brittle makeshift weapons shattered like candy canes upon his shining armor and nary slowed his charge.
“My baby — you crushed my—”
SMASH! — the Hammer fell — “VILLAINS!” — dispensing purity and release — “Where be yon Bride? Where be yon Froggy Wrackolyte? Give them to ME! I will save thee, Maiden!” He smashed his way through walls of sinning flesh and despite the vile heretic fluids that poured down upon him in hurricane torrents, his armor and Good Soul shone yet untouched by the evil infesting that horrible place.
“Craven witch! Come forth so that I might smite thee!”
He trod toward the back of the Temple, for suddenly through the blood and murk he espied a door no doubt leading to the Wrackolyte’s inner sanctum. Above his helmed head the War Hammer rose and fell, shattering in twain the Bleak Altar of the Black Temple. He split a path through its remains as though it were heretic flesh, kicking aside shards and lustful effigies.
“Heretics, quail before the light of Sanctos!”
Stained glass windows smashed as bodies tore through them. Dozens fought like the inbred savages they were to escape purification, and yea, as though Sanctos himself had ordained it, miraculously did a pathway suddenly appear clear and unimpeded before the step of the Good Prince. And that path he strode. Bodies fell before. Behind.
“My hip!”
“Granpy! Gran—”
SMASH!
“AAAAhhhhhhh!”
Carcasses flew.
SMASH!
Man, woman, and child, villains all, were crushed, screaming in repentance against unyielding stone walls while dozens of others crawled out bloody through shattered windows that a child could barely wriggle through.
“Wrackolyte! Come to me, Wrackolyte!” roared the Good Prince just before he stove in the sanctum door with a single — SMASH! — of the War Hammer of a Thousand Burning Suns!
“WHOA PURITY!” The Good Prince tore on Purity’s reigns.
Smoke billowed in roiling streams, blotting out the reddening sun as it fell. The town was a burning ruin of char-bones and choking black smoke, the heretic dead strewn about it like a lumber-jacked forest. Only the Black Temple stood yet intact. The Nine surrounded it.
“Yon maiden wants for saving,” the Good Prince said as he kicked a mailed leg over his saddle, dismounting, thudding ankle-deep into the muck with the delicacy of a catapulted boulder. “Captains! The time is nigh. Let no soul escape unpurified. I shall storm its most inner sanctums! I shall find the frog!”
“Aye, Milord!” Eight Captains cried as one.
“Death to the Wrackolyte!”
“For Sanctos!” roared the Good Prince. He saluted his Captains, then stormed that bastion of evil and stormed it alone for the only hurt that could pierce his boon heart was the felling of one of his Good Captains. He told them this not, though, for to do so would have been to lie. In truth he could not suffer to share the slaughter.
“For the Righteous! For the Just!” He stepped to the temple doors, hurling aside his war-shield. Taking a double grip upon the haft of the War Hammer of a Thousand Burning Suns, and with a single roaring swing, he burst the temple doors shattering off their hinges. Dying rays of blessed sunlight pierced the darkness beyond.
The villainous mob recoiled.
“Bring me the Wrackolyte frog and be spared!” he bellowed into the raucous black.
But like the Good Prince he was, he could suffer not to wait for the villains to accede to his demands, and instead did what few men are wont to do. He strode alone into darkness.
“Help! Help us!” the villains roared.
“Mercy!” they bellowed.
“Mommy! Daddy!” the villains spat.
But the Good Prince heard them not. With ears cloistered in sanctified steel, impervious he was to the villains’ auditory assaults.
“Where be yon Maiden!?” The Good Prince was wroth. He smashed on his fore-strike as well as his back, and where he could not smash flesh, he desecrated wood and shattered stone. But vile flesh huddled present in an abundatude. For the black temple was packed nigh to bursting with an army of evil, and nary a swing but purified sinners. Bones shattered underfoot as he strode on through the dark, thundering with his spike-shod boots, ramming like a muck ox with his gloriously serrated pauldrons. Men who grappled him were impaled upon spiked eructations or sawn limbless upon his sanctified serrations. Some had the honor of both. Souls billowed in pillars like the smoke.
Brittle makeshift weapons shattered like candy canes upon his shining armor and nary slowed his charge.
“My baby — you crushed my—”
SMASH! — the Hammer fell — “VILLAINS!” — dispensing purity and release — “Where be yon Bride? Where be yon Froggy Wrackolyte? Give them to ME! I will save thee, Maiden!” He smashed his way through walls of sinning flesh and despite the vile heretic fluids that poured down upon him in hurricane torrents, his armor and Good Soul shone yet untouched by the evil infesting that horrible place.
“Craven witch! Come forth so that I might smite thee!”
He trod toward the back of the Temple, for suddenly through the blood and murk he espied a door no doubt leading to the Wrackolyte’s inner sanctum. Above his helmed head the War Hammer rose and fell, shattering in twain the Bleak Altar of the Black Temple. He split a path through its remains as though it were heretic flesh, kicking aside shards and lustful effigies.
“Heretics, quail before the light of Sanctos!”
Stained glass windows smashed as bodies tore through them. Dozens fought like the inbred savages they were to escape purification, and yea, as though Sanctos himself had ordained it, miraculously did a pathway suddenly appear clear and unimpeded before the step of the Good Prince. And that path he strode. Bodies fell before. Behind.
“My hip!”
“Granpy! Gran—”
SMASH!
“AAAAhhhhhhh!”
Carcasses flew.
SMASH!
Man, woman, and child, villains all, were crushed, screaming in repentance against unyielding stone walls while dozens of others crawled out bloody through shattered windows that a child could barely wriggle through.
“Wrackolyte! Come to me, Wrackolyte!” roared the Good Prince just before he stove in the sanctum door with a single — SMASH! — of the War Hammer of a Thousand Burning Suns!
March 21, 2018
Something Borrowed Something Spew - Chapter 3. - The Chronicles of Swamp Lords
Part 3. Hot Feet
“UH, EXCUSE ME,” Cornmelia tugged gently at Madam Spew’s robes, “is we, me and Lusty, proper married?”
The Black Temple of Grimnir was packed near capacity. Filthy bodies crammed against each other like rats in a meat-pie. Bodies pressed against wall and window, struggling for breadth and breath, for a glimpse of the armored wolves circling the church. Corpses littered the ground outside.
While the wretched farm folk were trying to gather information, tally the dead and living, assess the hopeless situation, identify resources in some effort to cobble together some sort of last ditch effort that might result in mass salvation, Madam Spew was the only one doing the sensible thing. She was panicking.
A total lack of humility and character is required for a true panic, and Madam Spew had been blessed with dual vacuities in trump shades. And it wasn’t a cursory half-assed, stunted white-knuckle panic. This was the true beast of panic, the full grown, three-tusked-monstrosity-snorking-liquid-foaming-fear-out-its-rubbery-black-maw breed of panic.
Madam Spew’s keen instincts of self-preservation had driven her as deep within the inner sanctum of the church as possible. To the late Wrackolyte’s chambers. It was a small chamber. A chamber without windows, doors, or other obvious means of egress. With but a single door’s distance away from the main hall fracas. A thin door. A thin old decrepit door. In short, she was screwed.
Her sole hope lay within a horribly locked trapdoor in the middle of the floor. Possibly it led to a massive deep-earth labyrinth of lower crypts and secret escape routes out into the swamps. But it was equally possible that it was merely the late Wrackolyte geezer’s
privy.
“Grimnir damn your hinges!” Madam Spew keened in panic, pounding the trapdoor with her tiny green fists. Pupils constricted to a slit, she squealed as she yanked on the handle. “Arrgh!” She fell back. The trapdoor was locked from the inside, or stuck, or just too damned heavy. Fever-mad, she scoured the Wrackolyte’s den. Tossing the bed, scattering reliquaries, emptying drawers.
There had to be some escape. Something. Somewhere. The geezer’s suicide-saw? Anything. But there wasn’t. Only the trapdoor. She recommenced yanking and screaming.
“Um, Madam, is me and Lusty married?” Cornmelia repeated.
“Curse your leg, no!” Madam Spew ceased her fruitless yanking. Cleared her throat. Dabbed jittering tears from her crimson eyes. Her hands were raw. “You didn’t drink that freak’s blood, did you? And I didn’t consecrate the ceremony, did I? So, no, you ain’t married. Course, we’ll both be dead in about five minutes, so what’s it matter?”
“Oh, praise you, Madam.” Cornmelia fell to her knees and grasped Madam Spew in a suffocating embrace. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
“Ulp!” Madam Spew’s eyes nearly burst. “Put me down.”
“Sorry.” Cornmelia plopped her down. “What do we do now?”
“What do we do?” She adjusted her purple wig. “Are you serious? What happens if we can’t open this trapdoor?” She stomped the trap. “Lord Slaughterhand comes in and kills us along with everyone else in this crap-hole.” The furor in the main hall grew. Madam Spew glanced over. “Lock the door. Hurry.”
Cornmelia clanged over to the chamber door and slid the burglar-bar across it.
“HEY!” a muffled voice yelled from the main hall. “The Slaughterhand’s saying we can all be purified if we bring the croaker-witch to him! To justice! He’ll purify us! All of us! Show us the light! Hooray! We’re saved!”
A great cheer arose in the main hall, all bustle and burble chattering loose. Feet pounded across flagstones, drapery was torn from housings, and pews were overturned in a sacrilegious search for salvation.
“Where is she?!”
“Don’t know!”
“I saw her go into the den!”
Feet pounded outside the door.
Someone pounded on the door. “Open up, ya hear?”
“Bite me, you inbred freakers!” Madam Spew tore at the trapdoor handle, her webbed feet scrabbling for purchase. “Rrrrrrrg!”
“LET US IN!” the mob roared.
“Come on,” Madam Spew slobbered at the trapdoor.
“I can open it.” Cornmelia stood akimbo. “But, then I get to go with you.”
SLAM! Behind them, the chamber door jumped nigh off its hinges as the Sloddergumps attacked it.
“Deal!” Madam Spew cried, hopping back.
Cornmelia plopped down and began unscrewing her leg. “I … I can hear something moving inside.” She looked up. “Oh, Madam, what’s down there?”
Madam Spew stared at the trapdoor. What horrors lay within the sacred sanctum of the Dark Lord? Any horror. Every horror. Slicerpedes? Warped chitterlings? Was it the dead Wrackolyte himself? Had Grimnir blessed his bones with the gift of undeath? His last act in life had been his own murder. What other powers might such a venal act grant? Madam Spew salivated. Was he even now waiting in the darkness, waiting for the warmth of blooded walkers to free him? To satiate his dark thirst? Madam Spew looked Cornmelia in the eye. “It’s, probably nothing. Go ahead.” She hid behind a chair. “Open it.”
Pounding again at the chamber door—
“Open up, froggy!”
SLAM!
The door flexed more with each subsequent strike—
SLAM!
But the burglar-bar held. Somehow.
Cornmelia removed her peg-rake-leg and pounded the tines between the trapdoor and frame. She spit on her palms and rubbed them together, gripping the peg leg two fisted, then tore back with the slow inexorable strength of continental drift. Her back flexed, hide dress ripping, her thick arms bulging, shivering, veins standing up as torrents of blood gushed through them, udders shivering as she grunted like whatever her dress had been made of. “Errrg… Come on!”
The burglar bar cracked at another slam.
Valiantly, Madam Spew sprinted across the room and threw her weight against the peg leg and — CRACK! Something gave, and Madam Spew and Cornmelia scattered across the floor.
“Uh, Madam…” Cornmelia held her snapped peg-leg up in vain.
But the trap door lay agape. Dust swirled from its depths as something within its cryptic bowels stirred.
“UH, EXCUSE ME,” Cornmelia tugged gently at Madam Spew’s robes, “is we, me and Lusty, proper married?”
The Black Temple of Grimnir was packed near capacity. Filthy bodies crammed against each other like rats in a meat-pie. Bodies pressed against wall and window, struggling for breadth and breath, for a glimpse of the armored wolves circling the church. Corpses littered the ground outside.
While the wretched farm folk were trying to gather information, tally the dead and living, assess the hopeless situation, identify resources in some effort to cobble together some sort of last ditch effort that might result in mass salvation, Madam Spew was the only one doing the sensible thing. She was panicking.
A total lack of humility and character is required for a true panic, and Madam Spew had been blessed with dual vacuities in trump shades. And it wasn’t a cursory half-assed, stunted white-knuckle panic. This was the true beast of panic, the full grown, three-tusked-monstrosity-snorking-liquid-foaming-fear-out-its-rubbery-black-maw breed of panic.
Madam Spew’s keen instincts of self-preservation had driven her as deep within the inner sanctum of the church as possible. To the late Wrackolyte’s chambers. It was a small chamber. A chamber without windows, doors, or other obvious means of egress. With but a single door’s distance away from the main hall fracas. A thin door. A thin old decrepit door. In short, she was screwed.
Her sole hope lay within a horribly locked trapdoor in the middle of the floor. Possibly it led to a massive deep-earth labyrinth of lower crypts and secret escape routes out into the swamps. But it was equally possible that it was merely the late Wrackolyte geezer’s
privy.
“Grimnir damn your hinges!” Madam Spew keened in panic, pounding the trapdoor with her tiny green fists. Pupils constricted to a slit, she squealed as she yanked on the handle. “Arrgh!” She fell back. The trapdoor was locked from the inside, or stuck, or just too damned heavy. Fever-mad, she scoured the Wrackolyte’s den. Tossing the bed, scattering reliquaries, emptying drawers.
There had to be some escape. Something. Somewhere. The geezer’s suicide-saw? Anything. But there wasn’t. Only the trapdoor. She recommenced yanking and screaming.
“Um, Madam, is me and Lusty married?” Cornmelia repeated.
“Curse your leg, no!” Madam Spew ceased her fruitless yanking. Cleared her throat. Dabbed jittering tears from her crimson eyes. Her hands were raw. “You didn’t drink that freak’s blood, did you? And I didn’t consecrate the ceremony, did I? So, no, you ain’t married. Course, we’ll both be dead in about five minutes, so what’s it matter?”
“Oh, praise you, Madam.” Cornmelia fell to her knees and grasped Madam Spew in a suffocating embrace. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
“Ulp!” Madam Spew’s eyes nearly burst. “Put me down.”
“Sorry.” Cornmelia plopped her down. “What do we do now?”
“What do we do?” She adjusted her purple wig. “Are you serious? What happens if we can’t open this trapdoor?” She stomped the trap. “Lord Slaughterhand comes in and kills us along with everyone else in this crap-hole.” The furor in the main hall grew. Madam Spew glanced over. “Lock the door. Hurry.”
Cornmelia clanged over to the chamber door and slid the burglar-bar across it.
“HEY!” a muffled voice yelled from the main hall. “The Slaughterhand’s saying we can all be purified if we bring the croaker-witch to him! To justice! He’ll purify us! All of us! Show us the light! Hooray! We’re saved!”
A great cheer arose in the main hall, all bustle and burble chattering loose. Feet pounded across flagstones, drapery was torn from housings, and pews were overturned in a sacrilegious search for salvation.
“Where is she?!”
“Don’t know!”
“I saw her go into the den!”
Feet pounded outside the door.
Someone pounded on the door. “Open up, ya hear?”
“Bite me, you inbred freakers!” Madam Spew tore at the trapdoor handle, her webbed feet scrabbling for purchase. “Rrrrrrrg!”
“LET US IN!” the mob roared.
“Come on,” Madam Spew slobbered at the trapdoor.
“I can open it.” Cornmelia stood akimbo. “But, then I get to go with you.”
SLAM! Behind them, the chamber door jumped nigh off its hinges as the Sloddergumps attacked it.
“Deal!” Madam Spew cried, hopping back.
Cornmelia plopped down and began unscrewing her leg. “I … I can hear something moving inside.” She looked up. “Oh, Madam, what’s down there?”
Madam Spew stared at the trapdoor. What horrors lay within the sacred sanctum of the Dark Lord? Any horror. Every horror. Slicerpedes? Warped chitterlings? Was it the dead Wrackolyte himself? Had Grimnir blessed his bones with the gift of undeath? His last act in life had been his own murder. What other powers might such a venal act grant? Madam Spew salivated. Was he even now waiting in the darkness, waiting for the warmth of blooded walkers to free him? To satiate his dark thirst? Madam Spew looked Cornmelia in the eye. “It’s, probably nothing. Go ahead.” She hid behind a chair. “Open it.”
Pounding again at the chamber door—
“Open up, froggy!”
SLAM!
The door flexed more with each subsequent strike—
SLAM!
But the burglar-bar held. Somehow.
Cornmelia removed her peg-rake-leg and pounded the tines between the trapdoor and frame. She spit on her palms and rubbed them together, gripping the peg leg two fisted, then tore back with the slow inexorable strength of continental drift. Her back flexed, hide dress ripping, her thick arms bulging, shivering, veins standing up as torrents of blood gushed through them, udders shivering as she grunted like whatever her dress had been made of. “Errrg… Come on!”
The burglar bar cracked at another slam.
Valiantly, Madam Spew sprinted across the room and threw her weight against the peg leg and — CRACK! Something gave, and Madam Spew and Cornmelia scattered across the floor.
“Uh, Madam…” Cornmelia held her snapped peg-leg up in vain.
But the trap door lay agape. Dust swirled from its depths as something within its cryptic bowels stirred.
February 21, 2018
Something Borrowed Something Spew - Chapter 2. - The Chronicles of Swamp Lords
Part 2. The Perfect Knight
IT HATH BEEN TOLD by all that Good Prince Gildemaar was the perfect knight.
With the setting sun gleaming off his gold gilt spike-plate and helm, the ancestral War-Hammer of a Thousand Burning Suns gripped burning above his head as he sat astride his white war-destrier, Purity, he certainly looked the part. A golden lion blazed upon his shield.
And was that noble beast not a true reflection of the Good Prince? Was he not noble and fierce and deadly, but only when necessity forced his hand? And such a sad misfortune it was that necessity had forced it so very many times.
The Good Prince shifted his iron glare to his left and then right. Flanked he was by his Eight, four to each side, all armored in silvered spike-plate, all Captains, his Paladins of Sanctos, each one the pinnacle of knightliness, the best, excepting of course when compared to each other, for they were all equals. Though, the Good Prince was a first amongst equals for he was so clearly superior to all of them. And in every way imaginable.
“O’ Captains … my Captains,” the Good Prince spoke, and because he wore a gleaming golden helm, and his perfect lips regrettably could not be seen to move beneath it — though it brings much pleasure to imagine them to do so — it seemed his voice thundered down from the very heavens above to grace the ears of the Good Captains like the Lord-God’s own voice might. Perhaps even more so? “See how the villains seek succour at the stone teat of their dark lord and master?”
The destriers bristled beneath the lobstered-steel legs of the Nine and scraped and kicked their spike-shod hooves in the dirt. Yea, verily, could they too smell the reek of evil wafting up from the town. But truly, to call it a town would be to disrespect all well-intentioned towns in the realms of Shagra’Lor. Call it rather, a shite-burgh, for that was what to all eyes indeed it appeared to be.
“I see naught but women and children, Milord.” Captain Illnius Rageheart squinted. “A few old men with rusted farming tools.”
“Yea … villains.” The Good Prince hefted his war hammer. “The one chance in their tragic lives to truly be purified, and yet they scurry like rats to their dark temple.”
“The temple ‘tis the sole structure not burning,” Captain Illnius explained. “And they cannot hide within the surrounding fields for we hath set those ablaze as well.”
“And what dark rites perform they behind yon scabrous walls, me wonders?” the Good Prince pondered.
“A wedding celebration, Milord,” Captain Illnius answered. “Before torching the eastern fields and after trampling a crippled waif — I espied a peasant maid in wedding garb at the Black Temple entrance—”
“A maiden fair, you sayeth!?” The Good Prince stood instantly erect in his saddle. “Set to marry against her will, no doubt? In yon temple? Yea, a beauty methinks?”
“Methinks it were good we espied her from afar, Milord,” Captain Illnius drew his sword, “for it were plain even at a distance she were far from good.”
“A maiden fair forced into a vile pact of forced matrimony, servitude, slavery,” the Good Prince growled. “No doubt she shall be forced to undergo the vilest of the Craven Lord’s dark breeding rituals. The forbidden practice of occult lustations. I … I shudder to think, to imagine, to picture — yes, Oh, yes, yes, YES! Picture in my mind’s eye the heinous crimes soon to be pene — perpetrated. Ahem. A dark priest no doubt is present to seal this corrupt bargain?”
“We espied a corpulent croaker priestess—”
“A dark-frog champion!?” the Good Prince roared, gripping Purity’s reigns so tight his arm shuddered. “We shall cleanse her with Sanctos’s holiest flame!”
“Shall we set a pyre, Milord?” Captain Illnius asked.
“Aye, Captain!” He lifted his burning war-hammer. “The whole temple shall be the pyre!”
IT HATH BEEN TOLD by all that Good Prince Gildemaar was the perfect knight.
With the setting sun gleaming off his gold gilt spike-plate and helm, the ancestral War-Hammer of a Thousand Burning Suns gripped burning above his head as he sat astride his white war-destrier, Purity, he certainly looked the part. A golden lion blazed upon his shield.
And was that noble beast not a true reflection of the Good Prince? Was he not noble and fierce and deadly, but only when necessity forced his hand? And such a sad misfortune it was that necessity had forced it so very many times.
The Good Prince shifted his iron glare to his left and then right. Flanked he was by his Eight, four to each side, all armored in silvered spike-plate, all Captains, his Paladins of Sanctos, each one the pinnacle of knightliness, the best, excepting of course when compared to each other, for they were all equals. Though, the Good Prince was a first amongst equals for he was so clearly superior to all of them. And in every way imaginable.
“O’ Captains … my Captains,” the Good Prince spoke, and because he wore a gleaming golden helm, and his perfect lips regrettably could not be seen to move beneath it — though it brings much pleasure to imagine them to do so — it seemed his voice thundered down from the very heavens above to grace the ears of the Good Captains like the Lord-God’s own voice might. Perhaps even more so? “See how the villains seek succour at the stone teat of their dark lord and master?”
The destriers bristled beneath the lobstered-steel legs of the Nine and scraped and kicked their spike-shod hooves in the dirt. Yea, verily, could they too smell the reek of evil wafting up from the town. But truly, to call it a town would be to disrespect all well-intentioned towns in the realms of Shagra’Lor. Call it rather, a shite-burgh, for that was what to all eyes indeed it appeared to be.
“I see naught but women and children, Milord.” Captain Illnius Rageheart squinted. “A few old men with rusted farming tools.”
“Yea … villains.” The Good Prince hefted his war hammer. “The one chance in their tragic lives to truly be purified, and yet they scurry like rats to their dark temple.”
“The temple ‘tis the sole structure not burning,” Captain Illnius explained. “And they cannot hide within the surrounding fields for we hath set those ablaze as well.”
“And what dark rites perform they behind yon scabrous walls, me wonders?” the Good Prince pondered.
“A wedding celebration, Milord,” Captain Illnius answered. “Before torching the eastern fields and after trampling a crippled waif — I espied a peasant maid in wedding garb at the Black Temple entrance—”
“A maiden fair, you sayeth!?” The Good Prince stood instantly erect in his saddle. “Set to marry against her will, no doubt? In yon temple? Yea, a beauty methinks?”
“Methinks it were good we espied her from afar, Milord,” Captain Illnius drew his sword, “for it were plain even at a distance she were far from good.”
“A maiden fair forced into a vile pact of forced matrimony, servitude, slavery,” the Good Prince growled. “No doubt she shall be forced to undergo the vilest of the Craven Lord’s dark breeding rituals. The forbidden practice of occult lustations. I … I shudder to think, to imagine, to picture — yes, Oh, yes, yes, YES! Picture in my mind’s eye the heinous crimes soon to be pene — perpetrated. Ahem. A dark priest no doubt is present to seal this corrupt bargain?”
“We espied a corpulent croaker priestess—”
“A dark-frog champion!?” the Good Prince roared, gripping Purity’s reigns so tight his arm shuddered. “We shall cleanse her with Sanctos’s holiest flame!”
“Shall we set a pyre, Milord?” Captain Illnius asked.
“Aye, Captain!” He lifted his burning war-hammer. “The whole temple shall be the pyre!”
February 2, 2018
Something Borrowed Something Spew - Chapter 1. - The Chronicles of Swamp Lords
Part 1. The Bruiser Bride
A MOUNTAIN OF IVORY cow suede eclipsed the hapless vestibule in the Black Temple’s entrance, casting a long, great shadow across the loaded pews. There it paused, waiting for its big entrance. The bride.
“By Grimnir…” Madam Spew mouthed as soon as her enormous croaker eyes adjusted to the wave of dark. What in shades was she? Human? Madam Spew squinted. Mutant? The result of eons of inbreeding? All three? By the Dark Lord, she was even more repulsive than the groom.
The groom. Madam Spew turned to him. He who stood before the Bleak Altar, gawking at his bride to be. Guffawing silently. Like an idiot. Because he was an idiot. These Sloddergumpians. The groom continued giggling. Drooling. Until Madam Spew leaned over the altar and backhanded him — SMACK! — across the face.
He settled then. A little…
The music commenced with the bride’s first step down the aisle. Her particular form of step being more of a spastic hobble. CLANK! … THUMP! … CLANK! … THUMP! All eyes were riveted to her as she fought her way down the aisle, tearing swathes in the carpeting with her left leg, the foot of which ended in a rusted garden rake. And her face…
“Thank the Craven Lord for veils…” Madam Spew muttered. But not loudly. She was mean and cruel, and maybe even stupid, but she was a survivor. And croakers weren’t overly popular in these parts. Or any parts, really.
The groom’s tongue hung dripping like an engorged leech as he stared at the scandalous amounts of ankle and rake tine peeking from beneath his bride-to-be’s gown. And as his eyes clomb skyward to her continental bosom, defying gravity with the aid of taut cow-udder suede, erect cow-teats jiggling intact, he nearly fainted.
The best man, Stymie, the groom’s own brother, stood sullen at his side, toothless, gumming at the last link of a sausage chain. And he’s the good looking one…
Madam Spew horked a rocket of phlegm behind the Bleak Altar. She averted her eyes from the groom and his burlap sack-jacket, so named either for its construction material or what the rips exposed through it.
By Grimnir! What had she done to warrant this assignment? Had she killed somebody? Maimed somebody? Of import? Ten days’ stomp west through the Craw. Not even a useless meat-shield to stand between her and whatever the swamp vomited up to eat her. To perform nuptials because the resident geezer Wrackolyte, rather than continue his appointment here, had opted to saw off his own head. Was that even possible…? A close look at the mutants fouling the pews told Madam Spew the geezer had the right idea.
CLANK! … THUMP! … CLANK! … THUMP!
The bride neared the altar—
Madam Spew stifled a giggle. No — no… Compose thyself… Calm… Don’t look up…
“Here Cometh Yon Bride” was rendered with surprising skill. Surprising because the two-man band rendered it wholly through the arts of jug blowing and armpit farts, though considering the ensuing stench it is possible not only armpits were involved. As the bride reached the altar, the song ended upon a long and inspiring note of high-pitched flatulation. A surreal silence followed…
“Ahem…” Madam Spew stared at the ceiling, the only safe place. Tears oozed from the corners of her crimson eyes. Stifled giggles bucked her blubberous frame. “Well now,” she said, fighting for the words to start the nuptials. Any words, really, any that wouldn’t get her killed, “that … certainly … was, now … wasn’t it?” Madam Spew raised an eyebrow. “Eh?”
The bride stood bawling next to her groom.
Tears of joy?
Madam Spew glanced at the groom, middle finger lodged wriggling up to the knuckle — the second knuckle — in his left ear. And it was a middle finger because he only had three. On each hand.
Possibly not tears of joy…
Madam Spew adjusted her purple wig and bone tiara and forced herself to look upon the couple, and to do so without laughing. To focus. FOCUS! She had to get through this. Just another test she must endure at the promise of advancement. Advancement brought power. Power brought better assignments and meat-shields to escort her through swamps. And then more power. “Let’s kill this quick, okay?” she said.
Crickets chirped. Followed by blank stares.
“We are gathered here today to bind these two…”
She galloped through the ceremony like a rabid deer and soon approached the end. This was it. The big finish. She had made it. Deep breath. Go. “Lusty Weggins, do you take Cornmelia to be your woefully dreaded wife?”
Lusty giggled and guffawed and wiped his brown waxy finger on his bride’s dress in a repulsively affectionate manner.
Cornmelia nearly vomited.
Madam Spew just stared at Lusty, awaiting an answer. Tapping her foot upon the altar. Staring soon evolved into murderous glaring.
“Well, cretin?” Madam Spew muttered from the corner of her prodigious maw. “Yes? No?”
A grumble rumbled through in the audience.
“He can’t talk,” Cornmelia sobbed as she leaned forward. “He were born with limp-tongue. He wrote ‘yes’ … on my gown … in earwax.” Her voice broke, spluttering on. It would probably continue on for about fifty years or so, barring the blissful intervention of a boil plague, or suicide, murder.
“Right.” Maintain. Carry on. “And do you, Cornmelia, take this … this … THIS? To be your woefully underfed husband?” Behind her hand, she whispered. “You can say ‘no.’”
Cornmelia blew her nose again and glanced back at the best man, a forlorn glance, then back at the groom. Her gaze fizzled and died, writhing on the floor. “I … I do.” Her head fell in defeat.
Lusty guffawed and hopped and slapped his thigh, dancing around like an inbred mutant, which he almost certainly was.
“Are you sure?” Madam Spew peered at Cornmelia.
“Yes…”
“Really, really sure?”
“Y-Yes,” Cornmelia whispered into her turnip bouquet. “Please, do not ask me again.”
“Right.” Madam Spew’s voice rang out through the church. “Then, through the power vested in me by the Craven Lord Grimnir, I now pronounce you— Wait! Is there any one amongst us here today who feels emphatically that these two should not be allowed to … to breed?” She looked around. “Anyone … anyone at all?” Please…?
Echoes…
Stares…
Glares…
The best man glanced away, gumming a knuckle…
“Perhaps emphatic is too big a word,” Madam Spew said. “Does anyone feel … strongly?”
Nothing…
“Mayhap someone has a slight misgiving?”
Still nothing.
“Perhaps someone wants to comment on the weather? Or the structural integrity of this church? Anything…?”
A grumbling rose now in the pews.
Cornmelia wept openly.
Grumbling devolved to rumbling.
“Why ain’t we got us a real Wrackolyte?!” someone yelled.
“Cause he sawed his own head off rather than go on living here!” Madam Spew hollered. “And after a half day here, I wholly condone his decision!”
A rotten wool blanket of dead silence fell upon the church. But the grumbling soon persisted. But not from the crowd. Huh? From outside? The altar vibrated beneath Madam Spew’s feet. A candle danced. An act of the Dark Lord…?
Cornmelia bawled into her bouquet.
Madam Spew glanced up at the chandeliers rocking. “Right.” She drew her ceremonial bone knife and a wooden chalice. “Place your hands over the altar.” Madam Spew positioned the chalice underneath their hands and placed the knife upon their pink wrists.
“So, then … by the power vested in me by the Craven Lord Grimnir, I now condemn you, man and—”
The front doors burst open and a scarecrow of a man rattled in.
“WHAT NOW?” Madam Spew stamped her foot.
“Lord Slaughterhand’s a coming!” the scarecrow screamed. “Killing everybody! We gots to hide! We gots to run!”
Hoof beats pounded outside the church. Armor flashed past the windows. Riders stampeded innocents.
“Oh thank you, Craven Lord,” Cornmelia whispered.
A MOUNTAIN OF IVORY cow suede eclipsed the hapless vestibule in the Black Temple’s entrance, casting a long, great shadow across the loaded pews. There it paused, waiting for its big entrance. The bride.
“By Grimnir…” Madam Spew mouthed as soon as her enormous croaker eyes adjusted to the wave of dark. What in shades was she? Human? Madam Spew squinted. Mutant? The result of eons of inbreeding? All three? By the Dark Lord, she was even more repulsive than the groom.
The groom. Madam Spew turned to him. He who stood before the Bleak Altar, gawking at his bride to be. Guffawing silently. Like an idiot. Because he was an idiot. These Sloddergumpians. The groom continued giggling. Drooling. Until Madam Spew leaned over the altar and backhanded him — SMACK! — across the face.
He settled then. A little…
The music commenced with the bride’s first step down the aisle. Her particular form of step being more of a spastic hobble. CLANK! … THUMP! … CLANK! … THUMP! All eyes were riveted to her as she fought her way down the aisle, tearing swathes in the carpeting with her left leg, the foot of which ended in a rusted garden rake. And her face…
“Thank the Craven Lord for veils…” Madam Spew muttered. But not loudly. She was mean and cruel, and maybe even stupid, but she was a survivor. And croakers weren’t overly popular in these parts. Or any parts, really.
The groom’s tongue hung dripping like an engorged leech as he stared at the scandalous amounts of ankle and rake tine peeking from beneath his bride-to-be’s gown. And as his eyes clomb skyward to her continental bosom, defying gravity with the aid of taut cow-udder suede, erect cow-teats jiggling intact, he nearly fainted.
The best man, Stymie, the groom’s own brother, stood sullen at his side, toothless, gumming at the last link of a sausage chain. And he’s the good looking one…
Madam Spew horked a rocket of phlegm behind the Bleak Altar. She averted her eyes from the groom and his burlap sack-jacket, so named either for its construction material or what the rips exposed through it.
By Grimnir! What had she done to warrant this assignment? Had she killed somebody? Maimed somebody? Of import? Ten days’ stomp west through the Craw. Not even a useless meat-shield to stand between her and whatever the swamp vomited up to eat her. To perform nuptials because the resident geezer Wrackolyte, rather than continue his appointment here, had opted to saw off his own head. Was that even possible…? A close look at the mutants fouling the pews told Madam Spew the geezer had the right idea.
CLANK! … THUMP! … CLANK! … THUMP!
The bride neared the altar—
Madam Spew stifled a giggle. No — no… Compose thyself… Calm… Don’t look up…
“Here Cometh Yon Bride” was rendered with surprising skill. Surprising because the two-man band rendered it wholly through the arts of jug blowing and armpit farts, though considering the ensuing stench it is possible not only armpits were involved. As the bride reached the altar, the song ended upon a long and inspiring note of high-pitched flatulation. A surreal silence followed…
“Ahem…” Madam Spew stared at the ceiling, the only safe place. Tears oozed from the corners of her crimson eyes. Stifled giggles bucked her blubberous frame. “Well now,” she said, fighting for the words to start the nuptials. Any words, really, any that wouldn’t get her killed, “that … certainly … was, now … wasn’t it?” Madam Spew raised an eyebrow. “Eh?”
The bride stood bawling next to her groom.
Tears of joy?
Madam Spew glanced at the groom, middle finger lodged wriggling up to the knuckle — the second knuckle — in his left ear. And it was a middle finger because he only had three. On each hand.
Possibly not tears of joy…
Madam Spew adjusted her purple wig and bone tiara and forced herself to look upon the couple, and to do so without laughing. To focus. FOCUS! She had to get through this. Just another test she must endure at the promise of advancement. Advancement brought power. Power brought better assignments and meat-shields to escort her through swamps. And then more power. “Let’s kill this quick, okay?” she said.
Crickets chirped. Followed by blank stares.
“We are gathered here today to bind these two…”
She galloped through the ceremony like a rabid deer and soon approached the end. This was it. The big finish. She had made it. Deep breath. Go. “Lusty Weggins, do you take Cornmelia to be your woefully dreaded wife?”
Lusty giggled and guffawed and wiped his brown waxy finger on his bride’s dress in a repulsively affectionate manner.
Cornmelia nearly vomited.
Madam Spew just stared at Lusty, awaiting an answer. Tapping her foot upon the altar. Staring soon evolved into murderous glaring.
“Well, cretin?” Madam Spew muttered from the corner of her prodigious maw. “Yes? No?”
A grumble rumbled through in the audience.
“He can’t talk,” Cornmelia sobbed as she leaned forward. “He were born with limp-tongue. He wrote ‘yes’ … on my gown … in earwax.” Her voice broke, spluttering on. It would probably continue on for about fifty years or so, barring the blissful intervention of a boil plague, or suicide, murder.
“Right.” Maintain. Carry on. “And do you, Cornmelia, take this … this … THIS? To be your woefully underfed husband?” Behind her hand, she whispered. “You can say ‘no.’”
Cornmelia blew her nose again and glanced back at the best man, a forlorn glance, then back at the groom. Her gaze fizzled and died, writhing on the floor. “I … I do.” Her head fell in defeat.
Lusty guffawed and hopped and slapped his thigh, dancing around like an inbred mutant, which he almost certainly was.
“Are you sure?” Madam Spew peered at Cornmelia.
“Yes…”
“Really, really sure?”
“Y-Yes,” Cornmelia whispered into her turnip bouquet. “Please, do not ask me again.”
“Right.” Madam Spew’s voice rang out through the church. “Then, through the power vested in me by the Craven Lord Grimnir, I now pronounce you— Wait! Is there any one amongst us here today who feels emphatically that these two should not be allowed to … to breed?” She looked around. “Anyone … anyone at all?” Please…?
Echoes…
Stares…
Glares…
The best man glanced away, gumming a knuckle…
“Perhaps emphatic is too big a word,” Madam Spew said. “Does anyone feel … strongly?”
Nothing…
“Mayhap someone has a slight misgiving?”
Still nothing.
“Perhaps someone wants to comment on the weather? Or the structural integrity of this church? Anything…?”
A grumbling rose now in the pews.
Cornmelia wept openly.
Grumbling devolved to rumbling.
“Why ain’t we got us a real Wrackolyte?!” someone yelled.
“Cause he sawed his own head off rather than go on living here!” Madam Spew hollered. “And after a half day here, I wholly condone his decision!”
A rotten wool blanket of dead silence fell upon the church. But the grumbling soon persisted. But not from the crowd. Huh? From outside? The altar vibrated beneath Madam Spew’s feet. A candle danced. An act of the Dark Lord…?
Cornmelia bawled into her bouquet.
Madam Spew glanced up at the chandeliers rocking. “Right.” She drew her ceremonial bone knife and a wooden chalice. “Place your hands over the altar.” Madam Spew positioned the chalice underneath their hands and placed the knife upon their pink wrists.
“So, then … by the power vested in me by the Craven Lord Grimnir, I now condemn you, man and—”
The front doors burst open and a scarecrow of a man rattled in.
“WHAT NOW?” Madam Spew stamped her foot.
“Lord Slaughterhand’s a coming!” the scarecrow screamed. “Killing everybody! We gots to hide! We gots to run!”
Hoof beats pounded outside the church. Armor flashed past the windows. Riders stampeded innocents.
“Oh thank you, Craven Lord,” Cornmelia whispered.
December 27, 2017
Exodus - Final Chapter. - The Chronicles of Swamp Lords
Part 5. The Broken Wagon
THE GREEN LIGHTNING EXPLODED wherever it struck, blasting Madam Spew and company tumbling to the muck. The horse and its rider tore off through, dragging the wrackolyte traitor behind, hooves thudding, fading off into darkness. Heavy smoke hung in asphyxiating tentacles, the stench of singed flesh and burnt wood penetrating, entwining, permeating the fetid swamp air.
“Izula…?” Madam Spew groaned, cracked an eye, puked off to the side. That was … impressive. The others groaned on the ground. Yet… No one had been hit. No one killed. No one even a little maimed. “Urgh…”
Something trudged off in the sizzling mist.
“Gimpy…?” Madam Spew sniffed, taking in the intoxicating aroma of residual dark magic. Of necromancy. Of raw power. “Izula…?”
The something unseen trudged closer. Thick, heavy footsteps.
“Izula!” Madam Spew clambered to her feet. “Donvannos! Mindel! Gimpy!” A thought struck her numb. They had not been the targets. “On your feet!” The lightning had struck what it was supposed to strike. It had struck everyone in the town. Everyone not living. “Run!”
A thick-bodied monstrosity trudged suddenly out from the smoke — a flensed troll, its musculature still sizzling, cracking with each movement. The rope round his neck was cooked into its flesh. Other figures approached from behind, shambling zombies stutter-shuffling through the muck and mist.
“The whole town…” Madam Spew stepped back in awe.
“Help…” Donvannos gasped from the ground. His leg was caught beneath a fallen corpse-pole. “M-My leg. Madam, please!”
Madam Spew shook off the awe. “Is it broken?” Because if it was…
The zombie-troll lurched their way, long taloned arms reaching.
“No… Rrrg… Just stuck,” Donvannos grunted. The muck underneath was soft and though Donvannos looked contorted, it was possible the leg was intact.
But if it wasn’t…
Izula raised her saw-sword again, stricken with gore, and stepped in the path of the zombie-troll.
THUD… THUD… THUD…
The zombie troll stomped loomed above Izula, the undead horde at its back.
“Back. Into the barn!” Madam Spew pointed up the hill. “It’s the only way!”
“Croak…?” Izula eyed back at Donvannos.
“Leave him!” Madam Spew commanded.
“Damn you, Spew!” Donvannos ripped a steak knife from its sheathe and placed it between his yellow teeth. He struggled, trying to free his leg, his mullet shivering like a spastic porcupine. But it was no use. The corpse-pole was too massive. “Izula, Kill me!” he begged. “Please.”
Izula flinched for a second then looked to Madam Spew.
“Damn you!” Madam Spew spat. “Go! I shall see to Donvannos. Get inside. Secure that door and be ready when we come. Do it!”
“Croaaaak…” Izula croaked, but she obeyed, ducking a swipe of the zombie-troll that would have split her in twain.
Mindel was already halfway up the hill.
“GLAAH…!” The zombie-troll loomed gigantic, the stench of undeath, the perfume of some cyanotic flower, preceding it.
Madam Spew gulped.
Donvannos tore open his collar and wrenched the steak knife from his teeth. “See you in Hades, Spew!” he growled, holding the knife to his own throat. He closed his eyes, tensing.
“GLAAAAHHHH!”
“Put the knife down, you fool.” Madam Spew didn’t even offer a sneer, she just pushed her sleeves back, cracked her knuckles, and stepped into the path of the zombie-troll. “And it’s Madam Spew.”
As the undead troll reached for her, Madam Spew raised her hands before her and grasped the zombie-troll’s head in effigy, “*@!THE CRAVEN LORD COMMANDS YOU!@* ”
A spasm wrenched the troll-zombie from head to toe — Madam Spew as well — a battle of wills ensuing. The other zombies closed in all the while, stumbling, clambering, clawing onward.
“*@!DAMN IT, I COMMAND YOU!@* ”
The air froze, cracking, fissuring, as the zombie-troll’s will crumbled and it succumbed to her.
Madam Spew pointed at the corpse-pole — “*@!LIFT!@*” — she croaked as she turned, stumbling up the hill for the barn.
“GLAAAH!” The massive troll-zombie grasped the corpse pole and lifted it slowly, inexorably, like some machine, until it was tipped higher than its head. “GLAH!”
“Ha!” Teeth gleaming like a wolf, Donvannos was on his feet sprinting the instant the weight lifted. He weaved up the hill through the closing snare of dead flesh. As the barn door closed, he dove through the barn door — smashing Madam Spew aside — the instant before it clogged open with the limbs and biting heads of the walking dead.
Izula fought to close the door. “Croak?!” She ducked as an arcane beam shot past her.
From within the recessed darkness, Mindel stood, his enraptured face illuminated by his glowing hands, the yellow sizzle of arcane powers. He opened his clenched fists and shot the yellow light at the zombie horde. The light seared into flesh, sizzling like cooked bacon but the door was still open. Chipped nails and crooked teeth bit and chewed and pulled ever closer through the jam-packed door.
“GLAAAAAAH!”
Unconscious, Madam Spew lay upon the floor, blood seeping from the corners of her crimson eyes, mere inches from the reach of the zombies.
Izula stepped back, grunting as she hacked her massive saw-sword down into the tangled mass of arms and legs. The wall of the barn groaned, bowing inward under the press. Timbers sagged. Squealed. Shuddered. Izula’s massive fists pulled the saw-sword halfway to the ground as it cut through flesh and bone but then halted, grasped by dozens of fleshless hands.
“GLAAAAH!”
Foam started pouring from Izula’s mouth, her huge eyes constricting to pinpricks. She grunted like a musk-ape as she lumber-jacked her sword back and forth, sawing back and forth, limbs and heads and hands raining down in thuds and chunks. But it served only to dislodge some, and on they came pouring in an avalanche of grasping, pulling, gnawing, and drawing her bodily into the amoeba of undeath.
“Let go the sword!” Donvannos danced back as a zombie crashed forward.
Another arcane flare sizzled into the zombies.
“GLAAAHHH!”
“CRRROOOAAK!” Izula roared as black teeth tore into her arms and legs. But then she bit back! Dead muscle sloughed off between her needled jaws. Her huge fists still grasped the massive saw-sword in the tug-of-war between her and the horde. Her doughty form fast disappeared beneath the crushing of wave.
“CROOaak…!”
And then she was gone.
“Let go the sword!” Donvannos slashed with his knife.
“Donvannos!” Madam Spew clambered to her feet. “Get back!” She wiped blood from her lip. “!@*GRAB IZULA*@!” Madam Spew pointed, black energies pouring off her hellfire.
The mound of scrambling dead exploded instantly as though a giant mole had burrowed beneath its midst. Bodies flew, scattered, broke. The dead wailed.
The zombie-troll tore through the surface of lesser dead. In its massive arms lay Izula.
“!@*NOW GO*@!” Madam Spew commanded, and the very air warped with power as the zombie-troll disappeared beneath the dead press.
Corpses rained down. Through. Clambering across the floor. Scattering like pins.
The three retreated.
“Grab a lantern!” Madam Spew croaked as she climbed the lone high point in the midst of the barn, the broken wagon. “Donvannos! Mindel! Up here!”
“Arrgh!” Donvannos lost his cape as he tore back against the grasping dead and pulled himself up the wagon’s side.
Atop the wagon bed, Mindel blasted another zombie, but he was worn, near finished, his arms and fingers cooked to a quivering black.
“The lantern!” Madam Spew screamed from her perch atop of the wagon, an oasis in a desert of flensed dead, an island amidst a sea of striated meat. Arms reached from all around, cracked nails scraping runnels in the wood as the dead hauled themselves up.
“GLAAAHHHH!”
“I have it!” Donvannos snatched a lantern from a hook.
The wagon rocked, threatening to tip. Donvannos nearly fell. And the sea of dead clawed their way up.
“GLAAAH!”
“Break it!” Madam Spew tore her whip free. Amidst the sea of grasping arms, she sidestepped, ducked, tore a leg free then slung her whip straight upwards with a CRACK! It wrapped snug round a beam. Then, despite her soft hands, her skinny arms, and her blobulous frame, she began to climb.
Mindel scrambled up after, practically on her back.
“GLAAAAHHH!”
Glass shattered below as Madam Spew reached the beam.
Mindel hauled himself up and collapsed across next to Madam Spew. He was as pale as a corpse, hanging across the beam limp as a dishrag.
“I’ll get Donvannos!” she croaked. “Then you light the oil!”
Then she was scrambling across the beam, holding onto supports as she made her way towards the door. She tied off the whip and dangled it down. Below, Donvannos leapt from the wagon, grabbing it, dangling inches above the sea of grasping claws.
“Mindel!” Madam Spew bellowed.
A sickly yellow flash illuminated the air below, exploding shadowed light across the roiling rage of meat and teeth beneath. The flash lasted an instant, replaced a moment later by a roaring inferno that swept out in all directions.
The wagon was on fire. So were the zombies. So was the barn.
“GLLLLAAAAAHHHH!”
“Ahhhhh!” The three yelled.
Donvannos clawed his way up the whip, to the beam, half of his mulleted mane torn free of his blistered skull.
Behind, Mindel swayed, his eyes closing—
“Mindel!” Donvannos nearly fell grabbing him, steadying him through force of will alone. “Madam?!”
“Wait!” Madam Spew screeched through black smoke.
“What?!” Donvannos clutched onto the comatose sorcerer.
Below, some vestigial mechanism of the fear of fire had instilled a vigorous madness into the dead. They began tearing into one another in some attempt to escape the conflagration. Smoke billowed up in gouts. Flames roared up the posts, across their beam. Black soot stained the ceiling, choked the air.
“GLLLLAAAAAH!”
“Madam—”
“Get ready !” Madam Spew tore her wig off her head and tucked it into her cloak.
“For what?” Donvannos gagged.
“!@*COME*@!” Madam Spew bellowed above the cacophony of death.
Nothing happened.
“Madam!” Donvannos could barely hold Mindel up.
A massive troll-like blur smashed in through the doorway, bowling aside zombies and driving a wedge of trampled dead ten feet into the barn. A momentary wedge. Right below them.
“NOW!” Madam Spew gulped.
Madam Spew fell like a stone and crashed into the clearing below. Two thuds landed beside.
“GLAAAAAHHH!” The horde of conflagrated dead stampeded toward them.
“Hurry!” Madam Spew hacked and coughed and spat black ash as she scrabbled blind over twitching corpses and pulled herself out through the door. She sputtered and tripped and rolled herself out into the cool night air. She couldn’t move. She was done for.
“GLLLLAAAAHHHH!” The conflagrated horde struggled out the doorway.
Donvannos and Mindel lay beside her, dead to the world.
Madam Spew closed her eyes as she collapsed, spent, giving herself to infinity.
“CROAK!”
Madam Spew’s heart leapt!
Between her and the burning horde, Izula stood waiting, bent, busted, covered in bite marks but the massive two-handed bone saw-sword poised yet in her gnarled fists.
Huffing and puffing and puking, Madam Spew crawled on hands and knees away.
Izula’s grunting and croaking coupled with the SWISH and the THUNK of her saw-sword, followed by the THUD of zombie limbs raining into the muck, was a medicinal balm.
Mindel lay upon the ground, smoking like a dying ember. Whether he was dead or not, Madam Spew did not care. Donvannos lay … somewhere. There. His chest rose and fell as Izula killed the dead.
Madam Spew hacked and spat char and smoke. As she drooled precious clear fluid into the muck, she fished her purple wig out from her cloak. It was stained. Singed. Smoking. But still whole. Madam Spew clutching the ragged scrap to her breast, weeping thanks to the Dark Lord for another chance.
THE GREEN LIGHTNING EXPLODED wherever it struck, blasting Madam Spew and company tumbling to the muck. The horse and its rider tore off through, dragging the wrackolyte traitor behind, hooves thudding, fading off into darkness. Heavy smoke hung in asphyxiating tentacles, the stench of singed flesh and burnt wood penetrating, entwining, permeating the fetid swamp air.
“Izula…?” Madam Spew groaned, cracked an eye, puked off to the side. That was … impressive. The others groaned on the ground. Yet… No one had been hit. No one killed. No one even a little maimed. “Urgh…”
Something trudged off in the sizzling mist.
“Gimpy…?” Madam Spew sniffed, taking in the intoxicating aroma of residual dark magic. Of necromancy. Of raw power. “Izula…?”
The something unseen trudged closer. Thick, heavy footsteps.
“Izula!” Madam Spew clambered to her feet. “Donvannos! Mindel! Gimpy!” A thought struck her numb. They had not been the targets. “On your feet!” The lightning had struck what it was supposed to strike. It had struck everyone in the town. Everyone not living. “Run!”
A thick-bodied monstrosity trudged suddenly out from the smoke — a flensed troll, its musculature still sizzling, cracking with each movement. The rope round his neck was cooked into its flesh. Other figures approached from behind, shambling zombies stutter-shuffling through the muck and mist.
“The whole town…” Madam Spew stepped back in awe.
“Help…” Donvannos gasped from the ground. His leg was caught beneath a fallen corpse-pole. “M-My leg. Madam, please!”
Madam Spew shook off the awe. “Is it broken?” Because if it was…
The zombie-troll lurched their way, long taloned arms reaching.
“No… Rrrg… Just stuck,” Donvannos grunted. The muck underneath was soft and though Donvannos looked contorted, it was possible the leg was intact.
But if it wasn’t…
Izula raised her saw-sword again, stricken with gore, and stepped in the path of the zombie-troll.
THUD… THUD… THUD…
The zombie troll stomped loomed above Izula, the undead horde at its back.
“Back. Into the barn!” Madam Spew pointed up the hill. “It’s the only way!”
“Croak…?” Izula eyed back at Donvannos.
“Leave him!” Madam Spew commanded.
“Damn you, Spew!” Donvannos ripped a steak knife from its sheathe and placed it between his yellow teeth. He struggled, trying to free his leg, his mullet shivering like a spastic porcupine. But it was no use. The corpse-pole was too massive. “Izula, Kill me!” he begged. “Please.”
Izula flinched for a second then looked to Madam Spew.
“Damn you!” Madam Spew spat. “Go! I shall see to Donvannos. Get inside. Secure that door and be ready when we come. Do it!”
“Croaaaak…” Izula croaked, but she obeyed, ducking a swipe of the zombie-troll that would have split her in twain.
Mindel was already halfway up the hill.
“GLAAH…!” The zombie-troll loomed gigantic, the stench of undeath, the perfume of some cyanotic flower, preceding it.
Madam Spew gulped.
Donvannos tore open his collar and wrenched the steak knife from his teeth. “See you in Hades, Spew!” he growled, holding the knife to his own throat. He closed his eyes, tensing.
“GLAAAAHHHH!”
“Put the knife down, you fool.” Madam Spew didn’t even offer a sneer, she just pushed her sleeves back, cracked her knuckles, and stepped into the path of the zombie-troll. “And it’s Madam Spew.”
As the undead troll reached for her, Madam Spew raised her hands before her and grasped the zombie-troll’s head in effigy, “*@!THE CRAVEN LORD COMMANDS YOU!@* ”
A spasm wrenched the troll-zombie from head to toe — Madam Spew as well — a battle of wills ensuing. The other zombies closed in all the while, stumbling, clambering, clawing onward.
“*@!DAMN IT, I COMMAND YOU!@* ”
The air froze, cracking, fissuring, as the zombie-troll’s will crumbled and it succumbed to her.
Madam Spew pointed at the corpse-pole — “*@!LIFT!@*” — she croaked as she turned, stumbling up the hill for the barn.
“GLAAAH!” The massive troll-zombie grasped the corpse pole and lifted it slowly, inexorably, like some machine, until it was tipped higher than its head. “GLAH!”
“Ha!” Teeth gleaming like a wolf, Donvannos was on his feet sprinting the instant the weight lifted. He weaved up the hill through the closing snare of dead flesh. As the barn door closed, he dove through the barn door — smashing Madam Spew aside — the instant before it clogged open with the limbs and biting heads of the walking dead.
Izula fought to close the door. “Croak?!” She ducked as an arcane beam shot past her.
From within the recessed darkness, Mindel stood, his enraptured face illuminated by his glowing hands, the yellow sizzle of arcane powers. He opened his clenched fists and shot the yellow light at the zombie horde. The light seared into flesh, sizzling like cooked bacon but the door was still open. Chipped nails and crooked teeth bit and chewed and pulled ever closer through the jam-packed door.
“GLAAAAAAH!”
Unconscious, Madam Spew lay upon the floor, blood seeping from the corners of her crimson eyes, mere inches from the reach of the zombies.
Izula stepped back, grunting as she hacked her massive saw-sword down into the tangled mass of arms and legs. The wall of the barn groaned, bowing inward under the press. Timbers sagged. Squealed. Shuddered. Izula’s massive fists pulled the saw-sword halfway to the ground as it cut through flesh and bone but then halted, grasped by dozens of fleshless hands.
“GLAAAAH!”
Foam started pouring from Izula’s mouth, her huge eyes constricting to pinpricks. She grunted like a musk-ape as she lumber-jacked her sword back and forth, sawing back and forth, limbs and heads and hands raining down in thuds and chunks. But it served only to dislodge some, and on they came pouring in an avalanche of grasping, pulling, gnawing, and drawing her bodily into the amoeba of undeath.
“Let go the sword!” Donvannos danced back as a zombie crashed forward.
Another arcane flare sizzled into the zombies.
“GLAAAHHH!”
“CRRROOOAAK!” Izula roared as black teeth tore into her arms and legs. But then she bit back! Dead muscle sloughed off between her needled jaws. Her huge fists still grasped the massive saw-sword in the tug-of-war between her and the horde. Her doughty form fast disappeared beneath the crushing of wave.
“CROOaak…!”
And then she was gone.
“Let go the sword!” Donvannos slashed with his knife.
“Donvannos!” Madam Spew clambered to her feet. “Get back!” She wiped blood from her lip. “!@*GRAB IZULA*@!” Madam Spew pointed, black energies pouring off her hellfire.
The mound of scrambling dead exploded instantly as though a giant mole had burrowed beneath its midst. Bodies flew, scattered, broke. The dead wailed.
The zombie-troll tore through the surface of lesser dead. In its massive arms lay Izula.
“!@*NOW GO*@!” Madam Spew commanded, and the very air warped with power as the zombie-troll disappeared beneath the dead press.
Corpses rained down. Through. Clambering across the floor. Scattering like pins.
The three retreated.
“Grab a lantern!” Madam Spew croaked as she climbed the lone high point in the midst of the barn, the broken wagon. “Donvannos! Mindel! Up here!”
“Arrgh!” Donvannos lost his cape as he tore back against the grasping dead and pulled himself up the wagon’s side.
Atop the wagon bed, Mindel blasted another zombie, but he was worn, near finished, his arms and fingers cooked to a quivering black.
“The lantern!” Madam Spew screamed from her perch atop of the wagon, an oasis in a desert of flensed dead, an island amidst a sea of striated meat. Arms reached from all around, cracked nails scraping runnels in the wood as the dead hauled themselves up.
“GLAAAHHHH!”
“I have it!” Donvannos snatched a lantern from a hook.
The wagon rocked, threatening to tip. Donvannos nearly fell. And the sea of dead clawed their way up.
“GLAAAH!”
“Break it!” Madam Spew tore her whip free. Amidst the sea of grasping arms, she sidestepped, ducked, tore a leg free then slung her whip straight upwards with a CRACK! It wrapped snug round a beam. Then, despite her soft hands, her skinny arms, and her blobulous frame, she began to climb.
Mindel scrambled up after, practically on her back.
“GLAAAAHHH!”
Glass shattered below as Madam Spew reached the beam.
Mindel hauled himself up and collapsed across next to Madam Spew. He was as pale as a corpse, hanging across the beam limp as a dishrag.
“I’ll get Donvannos!” she croaked. “Then you light the oil!”
Then she was scrambling across the beam, holding onto supports as she made her way towards the door. She tied off the whip and dangled it down. Below, Donvannos leapt from the wagon, grabbing it, dangling inches above the sea of grasping claws.
“Mindel!” Madam Spew bellowed.
A sickly yellow flash illuminated the air below, exploding shadowed light across the roiling rage of meat and teeth beneath. The flash lasted an instant, replaced a moment later by a roaring inferno that swept out in all directions.
The wagon was on fire. So were the zombies. So was the barn.
“GLLLLAAAAAHHHH!”
“Ahhhhh!” The three yelled.
Donvannos clawed his way up the whip, to the beam, half of his mulleted mane torn free of his blistered skull.
Behind, Mindel swayed, his eyes closing—
“Mindel!” Donvannos nearly fell grabbing him, steadying him through force of will alone. “Madam?!”
“Wait!” Madam Spew screeched through black smoke.
“What?!” Donvannos clutched onto the comatose sorcerer.
Below, some vestigial mechanism of the fear of fire had instilled a vigorous madness into the dead. They began tearing into one another in some attempt to escape the conflagration. Smoke billowed up in gouts. Flames roared up the posts, across their beam. Black soot stained the ceiling, choked the air.
“GLLLLAAAAAH!”
“Madam—”
“Get ready !” Madam Spew tore her wig off her head and tucked it into her cloak.
“For what?” Donvannos gagged.
“!@*COME*@!” Madam Spew bellowed above the cacophony of death.
Nothing happened.
“Madam!” Donvannos could barely hold Mindel up.
A massive troll-like blur smashed in through the doorway, bowling aside zombies and driving a wedge of trampled dead ten feet into the barn. A momentary wedge. Right below them.
“NOW!” Madam Spew gulped.
Madam Spew fell like a stone and crashed into the clearing below. Two thuds landed beside.
“GLAAAAAHHH!” The horde of conflagrated dead stampeded toward them.
“Hurry!” Madam Spew hacked and coughed and spat black ash as she scrabbled blind over twitching corpses and pulled herself out through the door. She sputtered and tripped and rolled herself out into the cool night air. She couldn’t move. She was done for.
“GLLLLAAAAHHHH!” The conflagrated horde struggled out the doorway.
Donvannos and Mindel lay beside her, dead to the world.
Madam Spew closed her eyes as she collapsed, spent, giving herself to infinity.
“CROAK!”
Madam Spew’s heart leapt!
Between her and the burning horde, Izula stood waiting, bent, busted, covered in bite marks but the massive two-handed bone saw-sword poised yet in her gnarled fists.
Huffing and puffing and puking, Madam Spew crawled on hands and knees away.
Izula’s grunting and croaking coupled with the SWISH and the THUNK of her saw-sword, followed by the THUD of zombie limbs raining into the muck, was a medicinal balm.
Mindel lay upon the ground, smoking like a dying ember. Whether he was dead or not, Madam Spew did not care. Donvannos lay … somewhere. There. His chest rose and fell as Izula killed the dead.
Madam Spew hacked and spat char and smoke. As she drooled precious clear fluid into the muck, she fished her purple wig out from her cloak. It was stained. Singed. Smoking. But still whole. Madam Spew clutching the ragged scrap to her breast, weeping thanks to the Dark Lord for another chance.
December 18, 2017
Exodus - Chapter 4. - The Chronicles of Swamp Lords
Part 4. A Regrettable Relapse into Immorality
“… FATHER SAMHARM, WAKE UP! Father, stay with me!”
It was Garmon Hawke. He shouldn’t be here. He should be … somewhere. On the Old Ways west … leading them … somewhere. His garron stood by whickering softly in the failing moonlight. It came to him. “You should be leading them to the Down Chapel.” Father Samharm struggled to sit up. “Urhh…”
“Don’t move, Father.” Garmon Hawke adjusted a lantern on the ground. “Nurk and Nergril are leading them. They’re able. Hold still.”
“They are that.” Father Samharm’s head lolled to the side. “Where is she? Spew? Her minions? I feel suddenly…”
“Still in the barn.” Garmon Hawke glanced up the hill at the barn. Someone was hammering away inside.
“No,” Father Samharm wrenched himself up, but a splitting pain felled him boneless back to slime, “they’ll escape.”
“You’re hurt.” Garmon Hawke pulled his hat on. “I stitched you up best I could, but… Only you can heal you. It’s bad, Father. Real bad.”
Father Samharm glanced down at his chest. A long stitched twine line ran from his sternum to lower belly. Ichor leaked from between the sewn halves. “Gruesome…”
“Shoulda seen it when I had to shove your guts back in.” Garmon Hawke dragged a hovel door over and tossed a coiled length of rope down beside. “Now don’t — don’t move. I’m gonna to tie you to this door and drag you to…” He swallowed. “We’ll catch up to the others.”
Father Samharm nodded twice even though he knew it wasn’t true.
“You hear me? You gotta heal yourself, Father,” Garron Hawke said, forming a knot expertly between deft hands. “Get to it.” He looped it over Father Samharm’s massive shoulders and then worked it under his arms. He snugged it firm.
“I have not the strength, Garmon.” Father Samharm placed a heavy hand upon his friend’s shoulder. “Go. Leave me here. I’m too damned heavy. Too damned…”
“Sorry, father.” Garmon Hawke looped the rope round Father Samharm’s waist. “This is going to hurt—” He cinched it tight.
“Uhhhh!” Father Samharm groaned. “It was the she-croaker. Not Spew. The other one, the one with the saw-sword.” He licked his pallid lips. “She nicked me…”
“Nicked you, huh?” Garmon Hawke raised an eyebrow. He pulled a knot tight with his teeth then spat it out the loose end. “Good thing she didn’t cut you square, eh?”
Father Samharm laughed, his body convulsing slightly. “Sanctos damn you, don’t make me laugh.” His stitches drew tight, biting, threatening to burst. “Why’d you come back?”
Garmon Hawke turned from his garron, a knot now neatly tied to the saddle horn. “Damned chitterling came bolting at the wagon column clear out of the dark,” he said. “Damned thing come on charging us. I feathered him twice through the eye and still, he kept on coming. Nurk bashed him in the leg and sent him packing — what passes for brains leaking out the side of his head. Didn’t slow him a stitch, though. Tracked him back here. Lost him up in the muck. Yonder. Crafty little thing.” He spat chaw into the muck. “Reckoned I’d come check on you while I was in town, make sure you was alright.”
“Was I?”
“Naw. Looked worse than my ole grandpappy.”
“Elson?”
“No. The dead one.”
“You must leave me,” Father Samharm pleaded.
Garmon Hawke guided his garron forward, dragging the cyclops onto the door. “Easy, girl. Easy.”
Something within the barn cracked.
“Rrrrrrrg!” Father Samharm grunted. “They’re almost free. Please.”
“Just got to secure you to the door,” Garmon Hawke said. “Just hope no one opens it.” He glanced up at the barn. His eyes were wide for an instant; then they narrowed. More wood shattered. Someone was shouting. Pointing. He reached for his crossbow.
“No.” Father Samharm laid a hand atop Garmon’s. A sharp hiss of pain escaped his lips as he reached into his robes and rifled around. “They would kill you.”
“Maybe,” he sniffed, “maybe not.”
“Will you not leave me?”
“No dice.”
Father Samharm sighed. “Very well.” He withdrew a small roll of parchment from his robes. “I shall be dead by morning, Garmon.”
“Then I’ll bury you in clean soil.” Garmon Hawke worked back on the ropes. Looping. Tying. Tightening.
“Across the river?”
“Aye. Across the river.”
“This is folly,” Father Samharm said.
“Maybe.” Garmon Hawke was nearly finished securing him to the door. “Don’t believe in miracles, Father? Crisis of faith? Sanctos wouldn’t be pleased.”
An arm poked out of the barn door. “I see you!” A head poked out. Madam Spew. “I’m gonna whip the skin off your bones!”
“Sanctos owes me no miracles, Garmon.” Father Samharm’s hands trembled as he unrolled the scroll before his eyes. “My soul has been thrice-damned for the horrors I’ve committed. These past five years, though… All the good work,” he shrugged awkwardly, “been hedging my bets.”
“You and me both, Father, you and me both.” Garmon Hawke pulled another rope tight. “Now you shouldn’t fall off. If Sanctos don’t owe you nothing, how about somebody else?”
“I was hoping you could call in a favor,” Father Samharm said.
“A vicious old criminal like me?” Garmon Hawke chuffed a laugh.
Father Samharm glanced up at the small garron. She whinnied in fear as Madam Spew and her horde burst free from the barn. “Does Swifty have wings?” Father Samharm glanced down at the parchment. He shuddered. It should have been burned it long ago.
“Even if she did, she couldn’t carry your lead carcass.” Garmon Hawke swung up into his saddle. War cries followed as Garmon Hawke cried, “Yaaaah!” to his garron and the little horse pulled forward, dragging the cyclops along quickly, evenly. Just not quickly enough. For the horde gained.
Father Samharm clutched the parchment close to his great eye and despite the pain, despite the jostling and the blood loss and horde gaining, he read it, mouthing out the words, gurgling out the sounds, blood bubbling from his lips. The ground began to shake beneath him, the moonlight snuffing out like a candle flame. A dark foulness emanated from his contorted speech as a static charge filled the air, crackling, thunder rolling within the earth itself. The garron neighed in terror, squealing forth madly as lightning ripped down from the heavens, forking infinitesimally, exploding, showering the village in a deluge green sparks.
Swifty’s hooves pounded.
Smoke cleared.
“Gods damn it,” Garmon Hawke turned in his saddle as he rode on, “you missed them all, father!”
Father Samharm did not answer.
“… FATHER SAMHARM, WAKE UP! Father, stay with me!”
It was Garmon Hawke. He shouldn’t be here. He should be … somewhere. On the Old Ways west … leading them … somewhere. His garron stood by whickering softly in the failing moonlight. It came to him. “You should be leading them to the Down Chapel.” Father Samharm struggled to sit up. “Urhh…”
“Don’t move, Father.” Garmon Hawke adjusted a lantern on the ground. “Nurk and Nergril are leading them. They’re able. Hold still.”
“They are that.” Father Samharm’s head lolled to the side. “Where is she? Spew? Her minions? I feel suddenly…”
“Still in the barn.” Garmon Hawke glanced up the hill at the barn. Someone was hammering away inside.
“No,” Father Samharm wrenched himself up, but a splitting pain felled him boneless back to slime, “they’ll escape.”
“You’re hurt.” Garmon Hawke pulled his hat on. “I stitched you up best I could, but… Only you can heal you. It’s bad, Father. Real bad.”
Father Samharm glanced down at his chest. A long stitched twine line ran from his sternum to lower belly. Ichor leaked from between the sewn halves. “Gruesome…”
“Shoulda seen it when I had to shove your guts back in.” Garmon Hawke dragged a hovel door over and tossed a coiled length of rope down beside. “Now don’t — don’t move. I’m gonna to tie you to this door and drag you to…” He swallowed. “We’ll catch up to the others.”
Father Samharm nodded twice even though he knew it wasn’t true.
“You hear me? You gotta heal yourself, Father,” Garron Hawke said, forming a knot expertly between deft hands. “Get to it.” He looped it over Father Samharm’s massive shoulders and then worked it under his arms. He snugged it firm.
“I have not the strength, Garmon.” Father Samharm placed a heavy hand upon his friend’s shoulder. “Go. Leave me here. I’m too damned heavy. Too damned…”
“Sorry, father.” Garmon Hawke looped the rope round Father Samharm’s waist. “This is going to hurt—” He cinched it tight.
“Uhhhh!” Father Samharm groaned. “It was the she-croaker. Not Spew. The other one, the one with the saw-sword.” He licked his pallid lips. “She nicked me…”
“Nicked you, huh?” Garmon Hawke raised an eyebrow. He pulled a knot tight with his teeth then spat it out the loose end. “Good thing she didn’t cut you square, eh?”
Father Samharm laughed, his body convulsing slightly. “Sanctos damn you, don’t make me laugh.” His stitches drew tight, biting, threatening to burst. “Why’d you come back?”
Garmon Hawke turned from his garron, a knot now neatly tied to the saddle horn. “Damned chitterling came bolting at the wagon column clear out of the dark,” he said. “Damned thing come on charging us. I feathered him twice through the eye and still, he kept on coming. Nurk bashed him in the leg and sent him packing — what passes for brains leaking out the side of his head. Didn’t slow him a stitch, though. Tracked him back here. Lost him up in the muck. Yonder. Crafty little thing.” He spat chaw into the muck. “Reckoned I’d come check on you while I was in town, make sure you was alright.”
“Was I?”
“Naw. Looked worse than my ole grandpappy.”
“Elson?”
“No. The dead one.”
“You must leave me,” Father Samharm pleaded.
Garmon Hawke guided his garron forward, dragging the cyclops onto the door. “Easy, girl. Easy.”
Something within the barn cracked.
“Rrrrrrrg!” Father Samharm grunted. “They’re almost free. Please.”
“Just got to secure you to the door,” Garmon Hawke said. “Just hope no one opens it.” He glanced up at the barn. His eyes were wide for an instant; then they narrowed. More wood shattered. Someone was shouting. Pointing. He reached for his crossbow.
“No.” Father Samharm laid a hand atop Garmon’s. A sharp hiss of pain escaped his lips as he reached into his robes and rifled around. “They would kill you.”
“Maybe,” he sniffed, “maybe not.”
“Will you not leave me?”
“No dice.”
Father Samharm sighed. “Very well.” He withdrew a small roll of parchment from his robes. “I shall be dead by morning, Garmon.”
“Then I’ll bury you in clean soil.” Garmon Hawke worked back on the ropes. Looping. Tying. Tightening.
“Across the river?”
“Aye. Across the river.”
“This is folly,” Father Samharm said.
“Maybe.” Garmon Hawke was nearly finished securing him to the door. “Don’t believe in miracles, Father? Crisis of faith? Sanctos wouldn’t be pleased.”
An arm poked out of the barn door. “I see you!” A head poked out. Madam Spew. “I’m gonna whip the skin off your bones!”
“Sanctos owes me no miracles, Garmon.” Father Samharm’s hands trembled as he unrolled the scroll before his eyes. “My soul has been thrice-damned for the horrors I’ve committed. These past five years, though… All the good work,” he shrugged awkwardly, “been hedging my bets.”
“You and me both, Father, you and me both.” Garmon Hawke pulled another rope tight. “Now you shouldn’t fall off. If Sanctos don’t owe you nothing, how about somebody else?”
“I was hoping you could call in a favor,” Father Samharm said.
“A vicious old criminal like me?” Garmon Hawke chuffed a laugh.
Father Samharm glanced up at the small garron. She whinnied in fear as Madam Spew and her horde burst free from the barn. “Does Swifty have wings?” Father Samharm glanced down at the parchment. He shuddered. It should have been burned it long ago.
“Even if she did, she couldn’t carry your lead carcass.” Garmon Hawke swung up into his saddle. War cries followed as Garmon Hawke cried, “Yaaaah!” to his garron and the little horse pulled forward, dragging the cyclops along quickly, evenly. Just not quickly enough. For the horde gained.
Father Samharm clutched the parchment close to his great eye and despite the pain, despite the jostling and the blood loss and horde gaining, he read it, mouthing out the words, gurgling out the sounds, blood bubbling from his lips. The ground began to shake beneath him, the moonlight snuffing out like a candle flame. A dark foulness emanated from his contorted speech as a static charge filled the air, crackling, thunder rolling within the earth itself. The garron neighed in terror, squealing forth madly as lightning ripped down from the heavens, forking infinitesimally, exploding, showering the village in a deluge green sparks.
Swifty’s hooves pounded.
Smoke cleared.
“Gods damn it,” Garmon Hawke turned in his saddle as he rode on, “you missed them all, father!”
Father Samharm did not answer.
November 29, 2017
Exodus - Chapter 3. - The Chronicles of Swamp Lords
Part 3. The Hanging Gardens of Festerfern Gorse
THE CORPSES DANGLED, dozens twirling slow in a synchronous sway throughout the various stages of decay. The corpse posts driven into the soft muck had mostly tilted, sagged, bent. A few had fallen. Black hollow eyes regarded Madam Spew from the flickering dark. An albino crow tore a strip of flesh from the toothless maw of a gnoll corpse and then tore off squawking into the night, flapping off on ragged wing.
Was there anyone still here?
Madam Spew and her party slunk warily through the shamble of hovels and corpse posts, nearing the crooked heart of Festerfern Gorse. The village well. It sat crooked and wretched and old, bathed in waning moonlight. Mulleted Donvannos strode on point, his twin bone steak knives crossed silent and maybe, just maybe, deadly. The Butcher of Cypress Street, Izula, limped along by Madam Spew’s side. Her great saw-sword scraped along behind, cutting a line through the muck. Keep the most dangerous closest. The arcanist, Mindel Pfilsh, crept along off to the right while Gimpy roved off to the left, sniffing for enemies and reeking piles of dung alike.
Not snore nor fart was to be heard reverberating from within the ramshackle hovels. The occasional swamp owl hoot or the buzz of insects was the sole respite from claustrophobic silence. Some of the citizens were no doubt nocterns, out and about, which in a backwater dung heap like this generally meant molesting the local farm animals. Others, however, no doubt would be sleeping. Yet, evidence of neither sleep nor goat molestation lay present. Curiouser and curiouser…
Festerfern Gorse was notable not only for its high death rate due to its namesake but also that it was a melting pot of races. The poor, the hungry, the downtrodden, the drunk, the indigent, the even more poor… Pretty much the lowest, most misshapen, and horribly inbred amongst all the races eventually sought refuge in Festerfern Gorse. It was the only place in the Craw that would take them in, and instead of the customary species of outright-bloody-backstabbing-murder that most of the Craw offered, Festerfern Gorse offered them the warm, soft, stultifying embrace of passive suicide that even the most cowardly of goblins could commit, fester-scorn fever.
Gimpy tore off suddenly into the dark, chittering incoherently.
Madam Spew froze. “What is it?”
“Has he caught a scent?” Donvannos asked.
“How in the Shades should I know?” Madam Spew shrugged. “Maybe he caught fester-scorn fever.” She shrugged past the corpse of something that might have once been human. “Keep moving.”
They slid deeper into the forest of the hanging damned.
“Who would do such a thing?” Donvannos gawped around him.
“Exquisite…” Madam Spew murmured as she inspected the work. She grabbed a foot. The knife work had been delicate. Precise. “Extraordinary.” The work of a master. Far beyond her own ability though she would scarce admit it. And there were so many. An impressive blood tithe, but where was the gold tithe? It had been less and less the past four years. Was Samharm skimming more than was generally accepted? Or was he trying to make up the lack of a gold tithe with blood? Nay. Something was amiss here… But what?
“Hsssst!” Donvannos dropped to a knee behind a corpse post. He made hand signals in the moonlight to Madam Spew indicating that—
“Huh?” Madam Spew croaked. “What?” She flashed a series of mocking gestures. “I don’t speak moron.”
“I believe the human was indicating my presence,” a tall cyclops announced, appearing from the shadows beyond the well. Long dark Wrackolyte robes hung from his massive shoulders. A trimmed beard graced his chin; otherwise, he was bald. “I am Wrackolyte Samharm. I have come to greet you.”
“What atrocities have you committed here, cyclops!?” Donvannos pointed with a quavering steak knife.
“Silence, maggot!” Madam Spew snapped her whip —CRACK — mere inches from Donvannos’s face. “It’s not your place to question a Wrackolyte!” She whipped again — but Donvannos caught the end. Somehow. Within clenched fist, he gripped it tight.
Izula’s saw-sword angled up to the ready, clutched between her massive gnarled fists.
Mindel merely watched, cracking his knuckles, muttering to himself.
“As you say,” Donvannos relinquished the trapped whip, “Madam.”
Madam Spew coiled her whip length by length, disgust unrelenting in her venomous glare.
“You have come to collect the tithe,” Wrackolyte Samharm announced, breaking the homicidal tension.
“Yes, but we have come to investigate why no gold tithes have been sent in months,” Madam Spew croaked. “Which is your job, is it not Wrackolyte Samharm?”
“Aye, that it is,” Wrackolyte Samharm answered.
“You are aware of the price of failure?” Madam Spew’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. Something… But what?
“I am.”
“You were a somebody back in Cesstern a decade ago.” This Wrackolyte was no buffoon. “A big somebody, they all say.” And with plans to become even bigger. “And now you’re a nobody in charge of nowhere. Sting much?”
The big cyclops just stared with that lone eye.
“So what’s the story?” Madam Spew waddled closer.
“There was, regrettably, no more tithes available to send.” Wrackolyte Samharm glanced around at all the bodies hanging from all the posts. The silent majority.
“You, tithed the entire village?” Madam Spew gasped awe and regret. Awe that it’d been done. Regret that she’d not been the one to do it. But he was lying. Somehow. Somewhere. “Err… Most commendable work.”
“You sick bastard!” Donvannos hissed. “Some were children, Madam Spew. We must dispatch this monstrosity!”
“By Grimnir, where are you from?” Madam Spew glanced at Wrackolyte Samharm and shrugged in obvious embarrassment. “Forgive me. Hirelings.” The heart slung around her neck beat slowly. “I need some good slaves. Mute ones.” There was a trap here.
“And what happened to Tricorn?” Donvannos demanded. “Where is he? If you—”
Madam Spew cut Donvannos off with a raised hand. “And while your blood tithe is admittedly impressive, Wrackolyte Samharm, I must again inquire—”
“Where the gold tithe is?” Wrackolyte Samharm finished her question. He strode over to a large sturdy barn and laid a hand upon the massive doors. “It lies within. I loaded it into the wagon, but the axel has broken, and the wainwright is … hanging over there.” He nodded at a large troll corpse rocking gently in the breeze. “If you could help me lift it, and then brace it, I might be able to detach the axel and replace it.
Fortunately, the wainwright made one before I … tithed him.”
“Fortunately,” echoed Madam Spew.
“In here.” Wrackolyte Samharm grasped a massive wooden door handle. “Towards the back.”
Yes. Here we go…
Wrackolyte Samharm drew open the massive doors. They creaked and groaned and resisted, but the Wrackolyte proved the stronger and wrestled the thick doors ajar. Dark silence poured out from within. “Allow me to light a lantern. For the humans.” He stepped into darkness. Disappearing. The sound of rummaging from the liquid dark and then, “Ah. Here it is.” A soft orange glow appeared from within. “Please, it won’t take long.”
“Then, by all means, we shall help…” Madam Spew shoved Donvannos ahead of her into the barn. And then Mindel. Finally, Izula. She paused before entering. How would it all play out? Would he smash their skulls with a wrench? Throttle them? Skewer them with arcane words? Madam Spew tightened her grip upon her whip. The wagon was indeed broken. She could see the axel had split at the juncture of one great spoked wheel. Moonlight poured in through the door in the far wall. Wrackolyte Samharm stood bathed saintly in the light. Bending then, grasping the corner of the wagon with his great hands, he lifted.
Madam Spew watched. He gambles now, showing us his neck to gain our trust.
“Rrrrg… I need you to,” Wrackolyte Samharm grunted, “Rrrrrg … hold this up for but an instant whilst I slide the block beneath it.” The block was a round cut of oak tree trunk five-feet tall and seven in diameter, leaning against the wall by the far door. “Ready yourselves. It is … heavy.”
Madam Spew noticed a rope tied to a massive eyehook screwed into the tree trunk. “Well, get to it, morons!” The eyehook-rope disappeared into the dark of the triangle trusses crisscrossing above. “Get to it. Hold it up for him!”
Donvannos whispered hate with his eyes as he, Mindel, and Izula gathered at the edge of the wagon, finding their grips. Madam Spew uncoiled her whip. Where did the rope go? She peered up, deciphering shadows. Something heavy, a bloated swamp-cow perhaps, suspended above?
“Ready?” Wrackolyte Samharm grunted.
“Ready.” Donvannos dug his heels in.
“Ready.” Mindel drew back his sleeves.
“Croooooak.” Izula reached behind her.
“Now!” Madam Spew yelled.
A few things happened instantaneously then. Wrackolyte Samharm let go of the wagon, and it dropped crashing to the floor. Wood cracked and shattered, splinters flying as Mindel screamed and Donvannos dove back, ducking, rolling as the Butcher of Cypress Street’s saw-sword arced past him, ripping ragged through the Wrackolyte as he bolted past. Madam Spew’s whip cracked in the darkness—“!@#STOP#@!” she spat.
Wrackolyte Samharm shrugged off her warped command and roared out the door, knocking the huge tree trunk over with a THUD! The eyehook-rope zipped hot and fast through unseen eyehooks and the two huge barn doors slammed shut, trapping them inside.
THE CORPSES DANGLED, dozens twirling slow in a synchronous sway throughout the various stages of decay. The corpse posts driven into the soft muck had mostly tilted, sagged, bent. A few had fallen. Black hollow eyes regarded Madam Spew from the flickering dark. An albino crow tore a strip of flesh from the toothless maw of a gnoll corpse and then tore off squawking into the night, flapping off on ragged wing.
Was there anyone still here?
Madam Spew and her party slunk warily through the shamble of hovels and corpse posts, nearing the crooked heart of Festerfern Gorse. The village well. It sat crooked and wretched and old, bathed in waning moonlight. Mulleted Donvannos strode on point, his twin bone steak knives crossed silent and maybe, just maybe, deadly. The Butcher of Cypress Street, Izula, limped along by Madam Spew’s side. Her great saw-sword scraped along behind, cutting a line through the muck. Keep the most dangerous closest. The arcanist, Mindel Pfilsh, crept along off to the right while Gimpy roved off to the left, sniffing for enemies and reeking piles of dung alike.
Not snore nor fart was to be heard reverberating from within the ramshackle hovels. The occasional swamp owl hoot or the buzz of insects was the sole respite from claustrophobic silence. Some of the citizens were no doubt nocterns, out and about, which in a backwater dung heap like this generally meant molesting the local farm animals. Others, however, no doubt would be sleeping. Yet, evidence of neither sleep nor goat molestation lay present. Curiouser and curiouser…
Festerfern Gorse was notable not only for its high death rate due to its namesake but also that it was a melting pot of races. The poor, the hungry, the downtrodden, the drunk, the indigent, the even more poor… Pretty much the lowest, most misshapen, and horribly inbred amongst all the races eventually sought refuge in Festerfern Gorse. It was the only place in the Craw that would take them in, and instead of the customary species of outright-bloody-backstabbing-murder that most of the Craw offered, Festerfern Gorse offered them the warm, soft, stultifying embrace of passive suicide that even the most cowardly of goblins could commit, fester-scorn fever.
Gimpy tore off suddenly into the dark, chittering incoherently.
Madam Spew froze. “What is it?”
“Has he caught a scent?” Donvannos asked.
“How in the Shades should I know?” Madam Spew shrugged. “Maybe he caught fester-scorn fever.” She shrugged past the corpse of something that might have once been human. “Keep moving.”
They slid deeper into the forest of the hanging damned.
“Who would do such a thing?” Donvannos gawped around him.
“Exquisite…” Madam Spew murmured as she inspected the work. She grabbed a foot. The knife work had been delicate. Precise. “Extraordinary.” The work of a master. Far beyond her own ability though she would scarce admit it. And there were so many. An impressive blood tithe, but where was the gold tithe? It had been less and less the past four years. Was Samharm skimming more than was generally accepted? Or was he trying to make up the lack of a gold tithe with blood? Nay. Something was amiss here… But what?
“Hsssst!” Donvannos dropped to a knee behind a corpse post. He made hand signals in the moonlight to Madam Spew indicating that—
“Huh?” Madam Spew croaked. “What?” She flashed a series of mocking gestures. “I don’t speak moron.”
“I believe the human was indicating my presence,” a tall cyclops announced, appearing from the shadows beyond the well. Long dark Wrackolyte robes hung from his massive shoulders. A trimmed beard graced his chin; otherwise, he was bald. “I am Wrackolyte Samharm. I have come to greet you.”
“What atrocities have you committed here, cyclops!?” Donvannos pointed with a quavering steak knife.
“Silence, maggot!” Madam Spew snapped her whip —CRACK — mere inches from Donvannos’s face. “It’s not your place to question a Wrackolyte!” She whipped again — but Donvannos caught the end. Somehow. Within clenched fist, he gripped it tight.
Izula’s saw-sword angled up to the ready, clutched between her massive gnarled fists.
Mindel merely watched, cracking his knuckles, muttering to himself.
“As you say,” Donvannos relinquished the trapped whip, “Madam.”
Madam Spew coiled her whip length by length, disgust unrelenting in her venomous glare.
“You have come to collect the tithe,” Wrackolyte Samharm announced, breaking the homicidal tension.
“Yes, but we have come to investigate why no gold tithes have been sent in months,” Madam Spew croaked. “Which is your job, is it not Wrackolyte Samharm?”
“Aye, that it is,” Wrackolyte Samharm answered.
“You are aware of the price of failure?” Madam Spew’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. Something… But what?
“I am.”
“You were a somebody back in Cesstern a decade ago.” This Wrackolyte was no buffoon. “A big somebody, they all say.” And with plans to become even bigger. “And now you’re a nobody in charge of nowhere. Sting much?”
The big cyclops just stared with that lone eye.
“So what’s the story?” Madam Spew waddled closer.
“There was, regrettably, no more tithes available to send.” Wrackolyte Samharm glanced around at all the bodies hanging from all the posts. The silent majority.
“You, tithed the entire village?” Madam Spew gasped awe and regret. Awe that it’d been done. Regret that she’d not been the one to do it. But he was lying. Somehow. Somewhere. “Err… Most commendable work.”
“You sick bastard!” Donvannos hissed. “Some were children, Madam Spew. We must dispatch this monstrosity!”
“By Grimnir, where are you from?” Madam Spew glanced at Wrackolyte Samharm and shrugged in obvious embarrassment. “Forgive me. Hirelings.” The heart slung around her neck beat slowly. “I need some good slaves. Mute ones.” There was a trap here.
“And what happened to Tricorn?” Donvannos demanded. “Where is he? If you—”
Madam Spew cut Donvannos off with a raised hand. “And while your blood tithe is admittedly impressive, Wrackolyte Samharm, I must again inquire—”
“Where the gold tithe is?” Wrackolyte Samharm finished her question. He strode over to a large sturdy barn and laid a hand upon the massive doors. “It lies within. I loaded it into the wagon, but the axel has broken, and the wainwright is … hanging over there.” He nodded at a large troll corpse rocking gently in the breeze. “If you could help me lift it, and then brace it, I might be able to detach the axel and replace it.
Fortunately, the wainwright made one before I … tithed him.”
“Fortunately,” echoed Madam Spew.
“In here.” Wrackolyte Samharm grasped a massive wooden door handle. “Towards the back.”
Yes. Here we go…
Wrackolyte Samharm drew open the massive doors. They creaked and groaned and resisted, but the Wrackolyte proved the stronger and wrestled the thick doors ajar. Dark silence poured out from within. “Allow me to light a lantern. For the humans.” He stepped into darkness. Disappearing. The sound of rummaging from the liquid dark and then, “Ah. Here it is.” A soft orange glow appeared from within. “Please, it won’t take long.”
“Then, by all means, we shall help…” Madam Spew shoved Donvannos ahead of her into the barn. And then Mindel. Finally, Izula. She paused before entering. How would it all play out? Would he smash their skulls with a wrench? Throttle them? Skewer them with arcane words? Madam Spew tightened her grip upon her whip. The wagon was indeed broken. She could see the axel had split at the juncture of one great spoked wheel. Moonlight poured in through the door in the far wall. Wrackolyte Samharm stood bathed saintly in the light. Bending then, grasping the corner of the wagon with his great hands, he lifted.
Madam Spew watched. He gambles now, showing us his neck to gain our trust.
“Rrrrg… I need you to,” Wrackolyte Samharm grunted, “Rrrrrg … hold this up for but an instant whilst I slide the block beneath it.” The block was a round cut of oak tree trunk five-feet tall and seven in diameter, leaning against the wall by the far door. “Ready yourselves. It is … heavy.”
Madam Spew noticed a rope tied to a massive eyehook screwed into the tree trunk. “Well, get to it, morons!” The eyehook-rope disappeared into the dark of the triangle trusses crisscrossing above. “Get to it. Hold it up for him!”
Donvannos whispered hate with his eyes as he, Mindel, and Izula gathered at the edge of the wagon, finding their grips. Madam Spew uncoiled her whip. Where did the rope go? She peered up, deciphering shadows. Something heavy, a bloated swamp-cow perhaps, suspended above?
“Ready?” Wrackolyte Samharm grunted.
“Ready.” Donvannos dug his heels in.
“Ready.” Mindel drew back his sleeves.
“Croooooak.” Izula reached behind her.
“Now!” Madam Spew yelled.
A few things happened instantaneously then. Wrackolyte Samharm let go of the wagon, and it dropped crashing to the floor. Wood cracked and shattered, splinters flying as Mindel screamed and Donvannos dove back, ducking, rolling as the Butcher of Cypress Street’s saw-sword arced past him, ripping ragged through the Wrackolyte as he bolted past. Madam Spew’s whip cracked in the darkness—“!@#STOP#@!” she spat.
Wrackolyte Samharm shrugged off her warped command and roared out the door, knocking the huge tree trunk over with a THUD! The eyehook-rope zipped hot and fast through unseen eyehooks and the two huge barn doors slammed shut, trapping them inside.
October 29, 2017
Exodus - Chapter 2. - The Chronicles of Swamp Lords
Part 2. Corpse Conduct
“B-BUT, WE MUST give them a proper burial,” Criptchinn implored.
“Nay, Criptchinn, my goblin-lad, we must display them for all to see.” Wrackolyte Samharm laid a callused hand upon the altar goblin’s shoulder. “Nothing must seem amiss whence they arrive. I know it is a hard thing.” It seemed the empty black sockets of all the hanging dead were staring at him, loathing him, judging him. He averted his gaze and focused upon the remaining inhabitants of Festerfern Gorse. “We must not be ashamed of the unspeakable atrocities we as a community have committed upon our fallen brethren.” The stink was nearly unbearable. “It is a necessitude.”
“But it won’t work,” Criptchinn hissed. “They will know. If there is one thing they know, it is death! Death in all its forms. They will know it was fever killed them, not sacrifice!”
The assembled Gorsers began to mutter amongst themselves. Perhaps fifty strong they were. All those still hale enough to stand, to walk, to assemble. All those who hadn’t succumbed, hadn’t fallen, hadn’t hacked their own bloody lungs up. They were the lucky ones, perhaps…
“Our tithe’s a month late.” Criptchinn’s tiny hands balled into fists. “We should flee now—”
“Allay your fears, lad,” Wrackolyte Samharm said, though more to the Gorsers than the altar goblin. The Wrackolyte stood heads taller than the tallest, his one great cyclops eye surfing the crowd with an even gaze. “Yes, they come. Yes, they will be here on the morrow. Yet, we shall be long gone by then.” He crossed his arms. “Garmon Hawke and the Urzgareg brothers have watched the Old Ways this past week and watch them even now. They report back at every dawn and every dusk.” He glanced at the setting sun. “I expect Garmon within the hour. We require but another night for the final wagon to be complete.” He turned to a troll. “Is that a fair estimate, Moobruc?”
“Yes, Wrackolyte.” Moobruc twitched a dozen rapid-fire nods, his hat clutched between his two massive troll paws. “Is ready tomorrow. By sunrise tomorrow.”
“By sunrise,” Wrackolyte Samharm repeated, his clarion voice carrying. “Oberin, would you abandon your wife? Or you, Quaghain? Would you abandon your three children to the ravages of the fester-scorn fever? For a matter of a few hours?” He shook his head slowly. “Of course not. We all have loved ones who are ill, who are suffering, who are dying. We all have those we care about. I would not abandon a single one. Tomorrow,” he clasped his hands together, “it shall be the Craw we abandon forever. To Allbridge Tower in the west, the abode of the Healer. She shall cure our loved ones of this scourge.”
The crowd quelled. Hope, too, perhaps was infectious. Mayhap even more so than fester-scorn fever.
“Fertile soil awaits us across the river.” Wrackolyte Samharm nodded his bearded head as he gazed out with satisfaction over the crowd. “Good lives.” These were good peoples. And they had found the true path. They deserved better than muck-farming till the end of their miserable days. The festerfern that grew in the marshes often proved deadly with prolonged exposure. Outsiders feared it, avoided it, which was its sole boon. But its toll had been taken upon the populace, who swung lazily in the breeze, and it was time to move on.
“Lustrous crops and clean air await us.” Wrackolyte Samharm strode into the crowd. It parted before him and closed behind, embracing him. They had accepted him in the five short years the Black Temple been assigned him here. They had listened to him, grown with him, made him one of their own. All different races, all bound by propinquity and love of family, of farming, of peace.
“Salvation, brothers, sisters, harkens nigh but hours away.” He fixed his gaze upon one set of eyes and then another. “We have all committed sins.” He strode through the forest of bodies recognizing croakers and humans and goblins. All friends, all brothers, all sisters, all Travellers upon the Shining Path.
All…except one.
“We must align and hang the final bodies within the square.” Wrackolyte Samharm glanced past the stranger as he moved toward him. “We must apply the tithing rites to them though it sickens us to do so. I shall bear this gruesome burden, for it will take an expert hand, else all might be lost.”
The stranger was a male, a young human male.
Wrackolyte Samharm edged through the crowd, greeting folk, reassuring them. “Seamus, good to see you.” His eyesight was not strong at distance. “Clarista, you look well.” He moved closer to the man, a mere boy, really. “Marius, fear not.” A tricorn hat sat upon the boy’s head. A rapier at his hip. A most unmanly weapon.
“We take solace that our dead shall offer us life. We take solace that those who have passed on begged with dying breath that we do this. So that their loved ones might carry on.”
During the speech, the boy had remained upon the crowd’s outskirts. Now the boy shied away as Wrackolyte Samharm neared. He melted back into the shadows, but the sunlight was yet strong and Wrackolyte Samharm was close.
“You are new to Festerfern Gorse, lad,” Wrackolyte Samharm announced.
“Eh, who?” The boy turned, mumbling something unintelligible, and then turned back, flustered, stumbling.
“He’s a spy!” The crowd had oozed out from the hovels and lean-tos and hanging corpses to engulf the boy like an oozed. “A spy for them!”
The boy twitched from left to right, back and forth on the balls of his feet.
The crowd closed in on him slowly, edging nearer, hands flexing open and closed, heavy rusted farm tools borne by many.
“I would know your name and purpose, lad.” Wrackolyte Samharm towered over the boy. “You shan’t be harmed.” With the raise of his hand, the crowd hung back. “You have my word.”
“P-Please don’t hurt me.” The boy licked his lips. “Just let me go. Please. Madam Spew said—”
Someone in the crowd coughed behind him, and the boy grabbed at the rapier at his hip. “Stay back!”
“!@*HOLD*@!” Wrackolyte Samharm thrust an illuminated hand out.
The boy froze in place just as his blade whisked free of its scabbard.
At the sight of the bared steel, Criptchinn, all needles and teeth, pounced upon the frozen lad’s back, sending them both to the ground in a ragged heap.
“I am Father Samharm, Litigate of Sanctos, He of Justice, He of Right, He of the Sun and the Swamp, and all betwixt. I walk the True Path, my apostasy nigh-complete.” Father Samharm peered down at the twisted heap. Neither one moved. “Up, Criptchinn. Do no harm. Criptchinn…?”
Father Samharm dropped to a knee in the muck and rolled Criptchinn off the spell-frozen boy.
“UUUUrrggh…” A black rose was blossoming fast upon Criptchinn’s chest and likewise upon the back of the fallen boy. The boy’s rapier blade protruded between the two, connecting them. Criptchinn crumpled grey into the muck, sliding from Father Samharm’s arms limp as a dead eel.
“Criptchinn!” Father Samharm roared. “NO!” He raised his open hand and grasped the red setting sun, drawing it down in effigy, glowing live and vermilion within his thick fist as he pressed the energy to Criptchinn’s chest. “!@*LIVE*@!” Father Samharm commanded, his voice echoing as he forced shimmering brilliance inside the wound. A chorus of seraphim filled the air as the wind blew warm and strong, and as it blew, color and life returned to Criptchinn’s small green form.
“Another corpse.” Garmon Hawke knelt, placing a hand upon the boy’s throat. He had returned suddenly and unawares, which was one of his gifts. “Gotta hide him, Father.”
“Please—” Father Samharm was at the boy’s body, rolling him over. The rapier had skewered him through and through, just below his sternum. “This,” his hands fell, weak, shaking, “is beyond me.” A great tear rolled from his single orb. “Why?”
“Cause he was a stupid kid, Father,” Garmon Hawke spat into the muck, “and nothin’ more.”
Father Samharm shook his head as he began the Prayer of the Sanctified Fallen. Hats amongst the crowd were doffed and gazes aimed low. When Father Samharm had finished, he closed the boy’s eyes and drew the rapier free, wiping the blade clean on his own robes.
“Will Criptchinn live?” Garmon Hawke asked.
“Yea, though it shall pain him the rest of his days.” Father Samharm took the boy’s tricorn hat and placed it over the boy’s face. “Moobruc, bear Criptchinn to my home, please. Watch over him until I return.”
The big troll obeyed, lifting Criptchinn with ease.
Father Samharm looked to Garmon Hawke. “How close are they?”
“Too close.” Garmon Hawke adjusted his brimmed hat and glanced at the horizon. “They’ll be here tonight. Two, maybe three hours.”
“Too soon by far.” Father Samharm clenched a fist. “The boy mentioned a name. Madam Spew? A Wrackolyte, no doubt. Have you gleaned anything of her in your forays?”
“Yup. She’s the one leads them.” Garmon Hawke knelt and wrapped the boy in his cloak. “Vicious little turd. A croaker. Wears a still-beating heart slung round her neck. Real pretty. Craven Lord’s sigil’s on it. Dresses like a whore — excuse me, father.” He sat the dead boy up then lifted him across his shoulders. “Was six all together. Five now. Two men. Two croakers. One chitterling. They got weapons. One or two might know how to use them. And they never seen us. Hmmph… City folk.” He adjusted a notched blade-breaker at his belt. “Spew sent the boy on ahead to spy. I let him through. Followed him.” A crossbow was slung across his back. “I’m going back to rendezvous with Nergril and Nurk after I take care of this. Father, we could take them in the swamps. They’d never know we was a coming…” He left it hanging as though hoping for no protest.
“I would risk neither Nergril nor Nurk, nor you, Garmon,” Father Samharm said. “Nay, let them come. We’ll evacuate who we can. Let it be me who deals with them.”
“Sure you’re up to it?” Garmon Hawke fixed him through one eye.
“I…I shall manage.”
“Me and the boys could do it.” He glanced up at the corpse borne across his shoulders. “You could take him.”
“Nay, brother.” He gazed at the horizon as the sun disappeared. “Enough death has been dealt on this day. The people of Festerfern Gorse shall need you to guide them to safety. To watch them. To protect them. And, Garmon,” he placed a hand upon Garmon Hawke’s shoulder, “do no harm.”
“Sure thing.” Garmon Hawke slung the corpse across the back of his shaggy garron’s back. “Old habits die easy, Father, just like everything else.” He stepped up into the saddle. “Trouble is keepin’ em that way.”
“B-BUT, WE MUST give them a proper burial,” Criptchinn implored.
“Nay, Criptchinn, my goblin-lad, we must display them for all to see.” Wrackolyte Samharm laid a callused hand upon the altar goblin’s shoulder. “Nothing must seem amiss whence they arrive. I know it is a hard thing.” It seemed the empty black sockets of all the hanging dead were staring at him, loathing him, judging him. He averted his gaze and focused upon the remaining inhabitants of Festerfern Gorse. “We must not be ashamed of the unspeakable atrocities we as a community have committed upon our fallen brethren.” The stink was nearly unbearable. “It is a necessitude.”
“But it won’t work,” Criptchinn hissed. “They will know. If there is one thing they know, it is death! Death in all its forms. They will know it was fever killed them, not sacrifice!”
The assembled Gorsers began to mutter amongst themselves. Perhaps fifty strong they were. All those still hale enough to stand, to walk, to assemble. All those who hadn’t succumbed, hadn’t fallen, hadn’t hacked their own bloody lungs up. They were the lucky ones, perhaps…
“Our tithe’s a month late.” Criptchinn’s tiny hands balled into fists. “We should flee now—”
“Allay your fears, lad,” Wrackolyte Samharm said, though more to the Gorsers than the altar goblin. The Wrackolyte stood heads taller than the tallest, his one great cyclops eye surfing the crowd with an even gaze. “Yes, they come. Yes, they will be here on the morrow. Yet, we shall be long gone by then.” He crossed his arms. “Garmon Hawke and the Urzgareg brothers have watched the Old Ways this past week and watch them even now. They report back at every dawn and every dusk.” He glanced at the setting sun. “I expect Garmon within the hour. We require but another night for the final wagon to be complete.” He turned to a troll. “Is that a fair estimate, Moobruc?”
“Yes, Wrackolyte.” Moobruc twitched a dozen rapid-fire nods, his hat clutched between his two massive troll paws. “Is ready tomorrow. By sunrise tomorrow.”
“By sunrise,” Wrackolyte Samharm repeated, his clarion voice carrying. “Oberin, would you abandon your wife? Or you, Quaghain? Would you abandon your three children to the ravages of the fester-scorn fever? For a matter of a few hours?” He shook his head slowly. “Of course not. We all have loved ones who are ill, who are suffering, who are dying. We all have those we care about. I would not abandon a single one. Tomorrow,” he clasped his hands together, “it shall be the Craw we abandon forever. To Allbridge Tower in the west, the abode of the Healer. She shall cure our loved ones of this scourge.”
The crowd quelled. Hope, too, perhaps was infectious. Mayhap even more so than fester-scorn fever.
“Fertile soil awaits us across the river.” Wrackolyte Samharm nodded his bearded head as he gazed out with satisfaction over the crowd. “Good lives.” These were good peoples. And they had found the true path. They deserved better than muck-farming till the end of their miserable days. The festerfern that grew in the marshes often proved deadly with prolonged exposure. Outsiders feared it, avoided it, which was its sole boon. But its toll had been taken upon the populace, who swung lazily in the breeze, and it was time to move on.
“Lustrous crops and clean air await us.” Wrackolyte Samharm strode into the crowd. It parted before him and closed behind, embracing him. They had accepted him in the five short years the Black Temple been assigned him here. They had listened to him, grown with him, made him one of their own. All different races, all bound by propinquity and love of family, of farming, of peace.
“Salvation, brothers, sisters, harkens nigh but hours away.” He fixed his gaze upon one set of eyes and then another. “We have all committed sins.” He strode through the forest of bodies recognizing croakers and humans and goblins. All friends, all brothers, all sisters, all Travellers upon the Shining Path.
All…except one.
“We must align and hang the final bodies within the square.” Wrackolyte Samharm glanced past the stranger as he moved toward him. “We must apply the tithing rites to them though it sickens us to do so. I shall bear this gruesome burden, for it will take an expert hand, else all might be lost.”
The stranger was a male, a young human male.
Wrackolyte Samharm edged through the crowd, greeting folk, reassuring them. “Seamus, good to see you.” His eyesight was not strong at distance. “Clarista, you look well.” He moved closer to the man, a mere boy, really. “Marius, fear not.” A tricorn hat sat upon the boy’s head. A rapier at his hip. A most unmanly weapon.
“We take solace that our dead shall offer us life. We take solace that those who have passed on begged with dying breath that we do this. So that their loved ones might carry on.”
During the speech, the boy had remained upon the crowd’s outskirts. Now the boy shied away as Wrackolyte Samharm neared. He melted back into the shadows, but the sunlight was yet strong and Wrackolyte Samharm was close.
“You are new to Festerfern Gorse, lad,” Wrackolyte Samharm announced.
“Eh, who?” The boy turned, mumbling something unintelligible, and then turned back, flustered, stumbling.
“He’s a spy!” The crowd had oozed out from the hovels and lean-tos and hanging corpses to engulf the boy like an oozed. “A spy for them!”
The boy twitched from left to right, back and forth on the balls of his feet.
The crowd closed in on him slowly, edging nearer, hands flexing open and closed, heavy rusted farm tools borne by many.
“I would know your name and purpose, lad.” Wrackolyte Samharm towered over the boy. “You shan’t be harmed.” With the raise of his hand, the crowd hung back. “You have my word.”
“P-Please don’t hurt me.” The boy licked his lips. “Just let me go. Please. Madam Spew said—”
Someone in the crowd coughed behind him, and the boy grabbed at the rapier at his hip. “Stay back!”
“!@*HOLD*@!” Wrackolyte Samharm thrust an illuminated hand out.
The boy froze in place just as his blade whisked free of its scabbard.
At the sight of the bared steel, Criptchinn, all needles and teeth, pounced upon the frozen lad’s back, sending them both to the ground in a ragged heap.
“I am Father Samharm, Litigate of Sanctos, He of Justice, He of Right, He of the Sun and the Swamp, and all betwixt. I walk the True Path, my apostasy nigh-complete.” Father Samharm peered down at the twisted heap. Neither one moved. “Up, Criptchinn. Do no harm. Criptchinn…?”
Father Samharm dropped to a knee in the muck and rolled Criptchinn off the spell-frozen boy.
“UUUUrrggh…” A black rose was blossoming fast upon Criptchinn’s chest and likewise upon the back of the fallen boy. The boy’s rapier blade protruded between the two, connecting them. Criptchinn crumpled grey into the muck, sliding from Father Samharm’s arms limp as a dead eel.
“Criptchinn!” Father Samharm roared. “NO!” He raised his open hand and grasped the red setting sun, drawing it down in effigy, glowing live and vermilion within his thick fist as he pressed the energy to Criptchinn’s chest. “!@*LIVE*@!” Father Samharm commanded, his voice echoing as he forced shimmering brilliance inside the wound. A chorus of seraphim filled the air as the wind blew warm and strong, and as it blew, color and life returned to Criptchinn’s small green form.
“Another corpse.” Garmon Hawke knelt, placing a hand upon the boy’s throat. He had returned suddenly and unawares, which was one of his gifts. “Gotta hide him, Father.”
“Please—” Father Samharm was at the boy’s body, rolling him over. The rapier had skewered him through and through, just below his sternum. “This,” his hands fell, weak, shaking, “is beyond me.” A great tear rolled from his single orb. “Why?”
“Cause he was a stupid kid, Father,” Garmon Hawke spat into the muck, “and nothin’ more.”
Father Samharm shook his head as he began the Prayer of the Sanctified Fallen. Hats amongst the crowd were doffed and gazes aimed low. When Father Samharm had finished, he closed the boy’s eyes and drew the rapier free, wiping the blade clean on his own robes.
“Will Criptchinn live?” Garmon Hawke asked.
“Yea, though it shall pain him the rest of his days.” Father Samharm took the boy’s tricorn hat and placed it over the boy’s face. “Moobruc, bear Criptchinn to my home, please. Watch over him until I return.”
The big troll obeyed, lifting Criptchinn with ease.
Father Samharm looked to Garmon Hawke. “How close are they?”
“Too close.” Garmon Hawke adjusted his brimmed hat and glanced at the horizon. “They’ll be here tonight. Two, maybe three hours.”
“Too soon by far.” Father Samharm clenched a fist. “The boy mentioned a name. Madam Spew? A Wrackolyte, no doubt. Have you gleaned anything of her in your forays?”
“Yup. She’s the one leads them.” Garmon Hawke knelt and wrapped the boy in his cloak. “Vicious little turd. A croaker. Wears a still-beating heart slung round her neck. Real pretty. Craven Lord’s sigil’s on it. Dresses like a whore — excuse me, father.” He sat the dead boy up then lifted him across his shoulders. “Was six all together. Five now. Two men. Two croakers. One chitterling. They got weapons. One or two might know how to use them. And they never seen us. Hmmph… City folk.” He adjusted a notched blade-breaker at his belt. “Spew sent the boy on ahead to spy. I let him through. Followed him.” A crossbow was slung across his back. “I’m going back to rendezvous with Nergril and Nurk after I take care of this. Father, we could take them in the swamps. They’d never know we was a coming…” He left it hanging as though hoping for no protest.
“I would risk neither Nergril nor Nurk, nor you, Garmon,” Father Samharm said. “Nay, let them come. We’ll evacuate who we can. Let it be me who deals with them.”
“Sure you’re up to it?” Garmon Hawke fixed him through one eye.
“I…I shall manage.”
“Me and the boys could do it.” He glanced up at the corpse borne across his shoulders. “You could take him.”
“Nay, brother.” He gazed at the horizon as the sun disappeared. “Enough death has been dealt on this day. The people of Festerfern Gorse shall need you to guide them to safety. To watch them. To protect them. And, Garmon,” he placed a hand upon Garmon Hawke’s shoulder, “do no harm.”
“Sure thing.” Garmon Hawke slung the corpse across the back of his shaggy garron’s back. “Old habits die easy, Father, just like everything else.” He stepped up into the saddle. “Trouble is keepin’ em that way.”
October 18, 2017
Exodus - Chapter 1. - The Chronicles of Swamp Lords
Chapter 1. A Bargain on Champions
THE TWO COMBATANTS circled each another amidst the raucous Swamp Rat Tavern crowd.
“FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!” the crowd tossed chairs and tables and goblins out of the way to form a circle.
“I piss on first-blood duels.” Madam Spew hopped atop a table. “Just ain’t proper. So, whoever survives gets the job!”
The crowd roared its approval.
Really, though, Madam Spew could only afford to hire one thug. And only one from the bottom of the barrel, which just so happened to be exactly where the Swamp Rat Tavern was situated.
“Two grunts on the Mullet!”
“I got one on the Tricorn!”
The first combatant was a straw-headed youngster wearing a tricorn hat, a rapier jutting from his quivering fist.
“A most unmanly weapon!” shouted his opponent, a tall mulleted man with a dashing patchwork cape cast across his shoulder. Within each fist, he wielded a bone steak knife.
“Kill him!” Madam Spew spat nut fragments as she screamed, entranced by the intoxicating promise of impending barbarity. Gimpy, her new chitterling pet, gnashed his rat teeth from the bottom of the bar stool.
“Stab him, mullet man!”
“FILLET HIM!”
The Mullet acted first, hurling a knife end over end at young Tricorne who tripped, serendipitously avoiding the flying blade.
“Ahhhhhhh!” cried a goblin in the crowd, clutching the knife buried in his skull.
Tricorn recovered wide-eyed, breathless, and lunged forward. Awkwardly. At best. The Mullet lurched aside as the rapier stabbed harmlessly past and into the crowd—
“Ahhhhhh!” screamed the same goblin.
“A fair thrust, boy!” The Mullet tore his cape from his neck and whipped it around his forearm. “But no man is Donvannos’s equal!” He slashed wildly, missing, recovered, and slashed again, missing even more. “Have at thee!”
Tricorn circled silently, eyes tearing up bloodshot in near panic, jabbing noncommittally here and there, using the rapier’s superior length, where his skill was obviously deficient, to his advantage. He spasmed forward suddenly, slamming his rapier to the hilt through the mulleted Donvannos — but wait — NO! Donvannos had deftly dodged the thrust and ensnared the rapier within his wrapped cloak which he whipped into Tricorn’s face.
The rapier clattered to the floor!
The crowd roared.
“Yield!” Donvannos bellowed.
Limbs locked together, they devolved to hand fighting, slapping at each other as they danced for supremacy. Donvannos was the bigger of the two, and he muscled Tricorn awkwardly to and fro, punching him in the kidney and spine until he tripped and both collapsed in a lanky heap. Donvannos landed on top. He pressed the point of his steak knife into Tricorn’s throat, a dot of red growing. “Yield!”
Tricorn still struggled.
“Enough, boy. Donvannos may kill by necessity, but he does no murder!”
“WHAT—!? BOOO!” roared the crowd, Madam Spew spearheading the jeer.
Tricorn’s eyes bulged from his skull, unaware even that Donvannos was talking.
“Cease this!” Madam Spew appeared suddenly amongst the legs of the bristling mob. An idea had metastasized in her warped brain. “You, Tricorn, are the vanquished! You, Donvannos, are the victor. Yet,” she raised her hands to either side, “I see no need for death this day!”
“WHAT—?!”
“KILL HIM, YOU PANSY!”
Whimpering, Tricorn closed his glistening eyes.
“There, there,” Madam Spew managed as she edged closer, disgusted but also impressed somehow by Tricorn’s complete and total lack of manliness. “There…” she added for good measure. “Ahem. How could I hire but one warrior, when two have so proven their mettle.” Madam Spew managed to croak it out without choking into laughter. But here it was: the victor hadn’t killed the loser, thus breaking the rules of the duel. So… She could shave his fee! And the loser, the very embodiment of the word, she could chisel down his fee to a quarter plog. She glanced at Tricorn’s puddle of saffron desperation growing beneath him. Possibly a eighth.
“Up, my boon comrade.” Donvannos grasped Tricorn by the forearm and yanked him up. “T’is time we met our generous employer.” He dusted off Tricorn’s shoulder then turned and bowed low. “Madam.”
“I believe this is yours.” Madam Spew handed Tricorn his rapier. “And this, I believe is yours,” she said as she stepped over and yanked Donvannos’s steak knife from the stupefied goblin’s head. He fainted. Possibly.
“Uh,” Donvannos winced, “perhaps someone should see to that fellow?”
Unsurprisingly, there were no takers. Except for Gimpy.
Madam Spew took a seat that the bar and ordered some swill.
“Uh, that chitterling…” Tricorn pointed surreptitiously with one finger.
“Ahem, what exactly shall be the nature of our work?” Donvannos nodded thanks to the bartender and took a sip of swill. He shuddered.
Madam Spew shoved a fistful of nuts into her maw and commenced chewing and speaking and spitting nut fragments as she did so. “The purpose of our quest is confidential. Know only that we’re trudging west to Festerfern Gorse come nightfall. And you are both to be my personal meat shields—ah, bodyguards.”
“Uh, Madam,” Tricorn whispered, “your rat-thingy-guy. He’s, uh, gnawing on that goblin’s head.”
“Yes well,” Madam Spew nodded her head in approval, “he’ll do that.”
THE TWO COMBATANTS circled each another amidst the raucous Swamp Rat Tavern crowd.
“FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!” the crowd tossed chairs and tables and goblins out of the way to form a circle.
“I piss on first-blood duels.” Madam Spew hopped atop a table. “Just ain’t proper. So, whoever survives gets the job!”
The crowd roared its approval.
Really, though, Madam Spew could only afford to hire one thug. And only one from the bottom of the barrel, which just so happened to be exactly where the Swamp Rat Tavern was situated.
“Two grunts on the Mullet!”
“I got one on the Tricorn!”
The first combatant was a straw-headed youngster wearing a tricorn hat, a rapier jutting from his quivering fist.
“A most unmanly weapon!” shouted his opponent, a tall mulleted man with a dashing patchwork cape cast across his shoulder. Within each fist, he wielded a bone steak knife.
“Kill him!” Madam Spew spat nut fragments as she screamed, entranced by the intoxicating promise of impending barbarity. Gimpy, her new chitterling pet, gnashed his rat teeth from the bottom of the bar stool.
“Stab him, mullet man!”
“FILLET HIM!”
The Mullet acted first, hurling a knife end over end at young Tricorne who tripped, serendipitously avoiding the flying blade.
“Ahhhhhhh!” cried a goblin in the crowd, clutching the knife buried in his skull.
Tricorn recovered wide-eyed, breathless, and lunged forward. Awkwardly. At best. The Mullet lurched aside as the rapier stabbed harmlessly past and into the crowd—
“Ahhhhhh!” screamed the same goblin.
“A fair thrust, boy!” The Mullet tore his cape from his neck and whipped it around his forearm. “But no man is Donvannos’s equal!” He slashed wildly, missing, recovered, and slashed again, missing even more. “Have at thee!”
Tricorn circled silently, eyes tearing up bloodshot in near panic, jabbing noncommittally here and there, using the rapier’s superior length, where his skill was obviously deficient, to his advantage. He spasmed forward suddenly, slamming his rapier to the hilt through the mulleted Donvannos — but wait — NO! Donvannos had deftly dodged the thrust and ensnared the rapier within his wrapped cloak which he whipped into Tricorn’s face.
The rapier clattered to the floor!
The crowd roared.
“Yield!” Donvannos bellowed.
Limbs locked together, they devolved to hand fighting, slapping at each other as they danced for supremacy. Donvannos was the bigger of the two, and he muscled Tricorn awkwardly to and fro, punching him in the kidney and spine until he tripped and both collapsed in a lanky heap. Donvannos landed on top. He pressed the point of his steak knife into Tricorn’s throat, a dot of red growing. “Yield!”
Tricorn still struggled.
“Enough, boy. Donvannos may kill by necessity, but he does no murder!”
“WHAT—!? BOOO!” roared the crowd, Madam Spew spearheading the jeer.
Tricorn’s eyes bulged from his skull, unaware even that Donvannos was talking.
“Cease this!” Madam Spew appeared suddenly amongst the legs of the bristling mob. An idea had metastasized in her warped brain. “You, Tricorn, are the vanquished! You, Donvannos, are the victor. Yet,” she raised her hands to either side, “I see no need for death this day!”
“WHAT—?!”
“KILL HIM, YOU PANSY!”
Whimpering, Tricorn closed his glistening eyes.
“There, there,” Madam Spew managed as she edged closer, disgusted but also impressed somehow by Tricorn’s complete and total lack of manliness. “There…” she added for good measure. “Ahem. How could I hire but one warrior, when two have so proven their mettle.” Madam Spew managed to croak it out without choking into laughter. But here it was: the victor hadn’t killed the loser, thus breaking the rules of the duel. So… She could shave his fee! And the loser, the very embodiment of the word, she could chisel down his fee to a quarter plog. She glanced at Tricorn’s puddle of saffron desperation growing beneath him. Possibly a eighth.
“Up, my boon comrade.” Donvannos grasped Tricorn by the forearm and yanked him up. “T’is time we met our generous employer.” He dusted off Tricorn’s shoulder then turned and bowed low. “Madam.”
“I believe this is yours.” Madam Spew handed Tricorn his rapier. “And this, I believe is yours,” she said as she stepped over and yanked Donvannos’s steak knife from the stupefied goblin’s head. He fainted. Possibly.
“Uh,” Donvannos winced, “perhaps someone should see to that fellow?”
Unsurprisingly, there were no takers. Except for Gimpy.
Madam Spew took a seat that the bar and ordered some swill.
“Uh, that chitterling…” Tricorn pointed surreptitiously with one finger.
“Ahem, what exactly shall be the nature of our work?” Donvannos nodded thanks to the bartender and took a sip of swill. He shuddered.
Madam Spew shoved a fistful of nuts into her maw and commenced chewing and speaking and spitting nut fragments as she did so. “The purpose of our quest is confidential. Know only that we’re trudging west to Festerfern Gorse come nightfall. And you are both to be my personal meat shields—ah, bodyguards.”
“Uh, Madam,” Tricorn whispered, “your rat-thingy-guy. He’s, uh, gnawing on that goblin’s head.”
“Yes well,” Madam Spew nodded her head in approval, “he’ll do that.”
October 4, 2017
Madam Spew - Final Chapter - The Chronicles of Swamp Lords
Part 5. The Blind
“Good boy, Gimpy, good boy.” Lorgex tussled the sweaty fur behind Gimpy’s third ear and stood proud as a papa over his newborn babe, personified in this instance either by a four-foot-tall mutant rat with a severe leprosy problem or an adolescent boy who lay shackled, muzzled, and pilloried on the ground.
“Alms Acolyte Spew, you may enter.” The High Wrackolyte Diathama Sneering. Beautiful in a demanding way. A cold, stern, sadistic, horribly demanding way that bespoke of an evil not only that came natural to her, but was also worked on, honed, trained relentlessly in conjunction with endless hours of mechaniacal machines specifically designed to heighten and intensify one’s own innate cruelty. “Abzgorn. The door, please.”
“As my lady wishes.” Abzgorn’s hooded head bowed low before he drew upon a great onyx chain. The door shuddered as it opened sidewise and up like the maw of some great insect about to take a bite, the black rune-hardened steel screeching in protest.
Spew inched through, careful not to impale herself upon one of the many barbs or hooks. The gallery of skeletons and eyeless steel masks adorning the walls watched her.
Lorgex stifled a guffaw, and Gimpy immediately started thrashing his naked tail. “Bitebite, froggy frog,” Gimpy growled low in his throat. Good. Spew would bear witness to his accolades. Or perhaps the granting of a slave? Perhaps even multiple slaves! Or, dare he dream, a promotion? No, no. That was too much to hope for. But then, he glanced down at the boy, was this not the Chosen One? What award commensurate to the bearer of such a prize? Mayhap the High Wrackolyte would deign to let him caress her? Just once… Lorgex dabbed at the pink foam congealing at the corners of his maw.
In any instance, it would break Spew, crush her spirit to know he had won. Stolen her thunder. For her to see him raised while she — Ha! — she would be condemned to a life of alms collection, an indentured pauper forever spelunking through goblin trousers for subsistence.
“And so this is the reason thou saw fit to disturb me within my private chambers?” The High Wrackolyte’s voice cut the ether like an obsidian knife. “And during the very zenith of the hedonistic hours?” Pebbles upon the crypt floor vibrated as she spoke. “A pig boy…?”
Lorgex’s smile died right there. Wilting. Wasted. Withered.
“Explain thyself,” the High Wrackolyte demanded.
“I … ahem. The b-boy, my Lady, is q-quite special. I assure you.” Lorgex dabbed at his suddenly dewy forehead and glanced at Abzgorn for affirmation. The torture crypt was suddenly unseasonably warm. He tried to swallow but couldn’t. He glanced at the door, gaping wide open, then at Spew, whose face was now a shivering rictus of barely suppressed impish glee, then back at Abzgorn who raised a bored eyebrow.
“Hastily, decrepit one.” The nail of the High Wrackolyte’s forefinger gouged a curl of mahogany from the arm of her throne. “Explain thyself. Thy answers are not etched upon the Ribspreader’s succulent flesh or I would know them intimately already. Is that not so, Abzgorn?”
“It is, my Lady.”
“The boy,” Lorgex blurted, “he is the Chosen One of Grimnir. The one who shall marshal forth Grimnir’s horde—”
“Every babe festering in the Craw knows the story of the Chosen One.” The High Wrackolyte chopped him silent with a hand. “I see a pig boy. A pig boy and nothing more…” Her voice rang through the crypt. “Abzgorn, my lust-muffin, perhaps mine eyes hath deceived me? What is it thou sees?”
Lorgex’s stomach nearly dropped out his backside. It all rested on Abzgorn now. Lorgex stared at him, pleading with bloodshot eyes, begging silently for mercy, understanding, salvation, from the Black Temple’s head torturer.
“Your assessment appears correct, my lady,” Abzgorn said with the finality of a headsman’s axe falling.
“Gulp…” It would be a death sentence. And not a good one. His bald head reeled. His gaze fell to Spew who, grinning, surreptitiously drew a thumb across her neck.
“And Acolyte Spew,” the High Wrackolyte turned, “what doth thou see?”
“Ahem, my lady, I see a palsied old relic fit only to finger-dig plogs wrist-deep from the tightest of goblin arses.” Spew adjusted her bone tiara. “Lying on the floor next to him, I see an overgrown rat and a pig boy.”
“Your tiara, Acolyte Spew, I simply adore it.” The High Wrackolyte’s lip twitched a smile at the corners for the briefest of moments and was then cold hateful alabaster once more.
“My lady.” Spew curtsied low.
“M-my Lady, I was told that the b-boy was the Chosen One,” Lorgex pleaded, the last vestiges of his dignity fleeing into a girlish whine. “It was said—”
“Said by whom?” the High Wrackolyte’s voice cracked like thunder. Chunks of ceiling rained down. All in the crypt ducked except the High Wrackolyte herself. She merely stood, pursing her lips, eldritch energies emanating in dark tendrils from her voluptuous form. “Said by WHOM!?”
The very floor quaked—
“By Abzgorn the Ribspreader, my Lady!” Lorgex pointed with one hand, covering his head with the other. “He told me, my Lady. Him!” He stared at Abzgorn. Accusing. “Do you deny it?”
“I deny nothing.” Abzgorn shrugged. “Nothing more than an entertaining jest, my Lady. Lorgex had come unprepared to torture times too numerous to count. And his skills? The Eyes?” He shook his head. “The Palsied Hand might be a more apt name. Or the Tepid Constitution. At any length, my patience with him met its end. Long ago. And the dotard obviously thought my ridiculous story true.”
Lorgex’s acid glare at Spew confirmed Abzgorn’s assessment.
“Whose dark eye watches over Acolyte Spew, I must wonder?” Abzgorn started forward. “I’ll have my boy, then, Lorgex.”
“No, thou shan’t.” The High Wrackolyte picked Malving up and broke the pillory from his neck with a Word. “I have spoken with him this past hour while we waited for Acolyte Spew. He proves a vile, wretched young thing. Evil courses through his very bones. It was through your own machinations that you lost him, Abzgorn. The Temple shall appropriate him. Raise him. Thou shall need abscond with another human for your delvings.”
“As my lady wishes.” Abzgorn bowed.
Lorgex started edging his way toward the door…
“A thought just occurred to me, my Lady.” Abzgorn nonchalantly pulled on the door chain — the doors fell like two axes, screeching shut together, slamming just before Lorgex could escape. Whimpering, he clawed haplessly at the seam between the twin mandible slabs of black iron. “Mayhap Lorgex might fill that position?” Abzgorn offered. “He has proven inadequate at all else. It is doubtful, but might he not in pieces prove the use that as a whole he could not?”
Lorgex oozed down the wall, expanding puddle-like across the cold stone floor…
“Abzgorn, you naughty scamp.” The High Wrackolyte waggled a scolding finger. “Thou knows it is most unseemly to dissect fellow Wrackolytes.” She shook her head in droll mirth, “I could never allow such an abhoration to occur … in normal circumstances, of course … why, only under the most dire of transgressions would I even entertain it … a transgression most difficult at best to incur … a transgression whose level has admittedly been met by Lorgex’s brash intrusion to my chambers … which hath forced me to consider and now reconsider … and, finally, yes, to acquiesce to thy most reasonable request. Thou may have him to whatever be your design, Ribspreader. May you achieve in his death, what he failed to achieve in his life.” Darkness spewed in writhing tendrils from her mouth as she spoke, “%!@#LORGEX, LAY UPON THE SLAB#@!%”
“Eeeeeeeee—” Lorgex’s screech stifled as the High Wrackolyte’s clarion power-call took hold, seizing him. Herky-jerky, golem-like, Lorgex jittered, fighting fruitlessly, and stutter-shuffled his way zombiefied to the torture slab. He flopped his frail body down — SLAP! — upon its cool smooth expanse.
“Acolyte Spew, restrain him,” commanded the High Wrackolyte.
“As my lady wishes.” Spew waddled to the slab, clomb up, and plopped her torture bag down at Lorgex’s head. She ran her slimy fingers through his sparse wisps of hair. “There, there, sweet Lorgex. Hush…”
Fifteen various straps she drew, fastened, then cinched down across Lorgex’s torso. His head. His neck. Finally, his arms and legs.
“Spew! No! Have mercy!” Lorgex’s limbs were his once more, and he strained against his bonds. “Please. I’ll do anything.”
“Acolyte Spew,” the High Wrackolyte said, “it seems a position in the Wrackolation of the Craven Lord shall soon open. Imminently. Dost thou wish to fulfill that position and become a full Wrackolyte? Or dost thou wish to maintain thy present station at the Obsidian Gate accosting drunken thugs?”
“I accept the appointment, my Lady,” Acolyte Spew said without missing a beat. “I shall serve none other than He. I shall live for He, shall kill for He, shall die for He, shall rise for He. I shall crawl back up through the earth in death and shall die once again for He.”
“Excellent,” the High Wrackolyte beamed. “As of now, I rename thee, Madam Spew, the Misery Whip.”
“Please, Madam—” Lorgex hissed. “Save me. Ask a boon of her. It is ritual. She shan’t refuse you on your naming day. Please, I’d owe you my body. My life. My very soul.”
“And what use could any prove?” Madam Spew sneered.
“PLEASE!”
“Heh. Perhaps,” Madam Spew considered. “Ahem, my lady, might I spare Lorgex the Eyes?”
The High Wrackolyte fixed Madam Spew with a numbing glare. “Do what thou will with him, Madam, so long as Abzgorn the Ribspreader agrees,” the High Wrackolyte said. “Lorgex and all of his innards are his property now. Though I might rethink thy appointment should thy first act as Wrackolyte be one of mercy.”
Madam Spew nodded, then, expectantly, looked to Abzgorn.
Lorgex strained his eyes to see.
Abzgorn studied Madam Spew intently. “What is it you intend?”
“I wish simply to rename him,” Madam Spew said.
“And to let him live?” Abzgorn asked.
“Yes.” Madam Spew looked down. “Would those terms be agreeable, Lorgex?”
“Yes! Those terms — I would be grateful, M-Madam Spew,” Lorgex blurted. “Eternally. A chorus of demons shall sing your praises, echoing within the cavern of my soul!”
“And I accept the debt I will incur for your loss, Ribspreader,” Madam Spew said, “in addition to that of the absconded boy.”
“No matter.” Abzgorn dismissed it with a hand. “They are nothing to me. Uninspired specimens at best.” He raised an eyebrow. “But … what is it you intend to rename the Eyes?”
“I intend to give him back his old position as Alms Acolyte.” Madam Spew petted Lorgex.
“W-What?!” Lorgex gagged on rage. “No!”
“You would grant him two acts of kindness?” Abzgorn glanced down at the struggling Lorgex as though he were a bug he might consider pulling the legs off of. “You would grant him life, and some modicum of status? However slight an alms collector’s might be? Think wisely.” Abzgorn studied Madam Spew. “They will call you soft. Such a white mark might follow you all your days. It might prove the end of you.” Abzgorn looked down at Lorgex. “Is he worth it? He was a failure at even this one position suited to cripples and dotards.” Abzgorn raised a finger. “And alms collecting is a repositioning, Madam, not a renaming.”
“Release me, she-demon!” Lorgex railed.
“I am aware of all of those things, Ribspreader.” Madam Spew reached into her torture bag. “I understand that those with physical ailments are more adept at chiseling alms from the weak of heart and loose of pocket.” She pulled out a padlock.
“What?! What do you intend?!” Lorgex screamed, trying to see.
“Perhaps his physical ailments at present are inadequate to the task?” Madam Spew offered. “Perhaps he needs aid. Grimnir’s aid. My aid. Perhaps … a modification to the Eyes?”
She placed the lock down next to Lorgex then reached for an iron mask on the wall.
“What is it?!” Lorgex struggled. “Release me, Spew! I don’t want your help — you stunted wartback! Fly-eater. We had a deal!”
“It’s Madam Spew,” Madam Spew unstrapped just his head and neck, “and our deal is I get to rename you.”
Lorgex craned his head up, biting at her fingers with broken teeth.
“Tsk… Tsk… Lorgex the Eyes. Hmmm…?” From within the claustrophobic confines of her torture bag she retrieved a jar full of goblin eyes. “What ever shall we rename you?”
“YOU!” Lorgex’s eyes bulged near to bursting on seeing the jar.
“Were you looking for these?” She set the jar down and took up the eyeless iron mask.
“Why!? Why?”
“For Matilda,” Madam Spew slid the pitted eyeless mask over his bald head and locked it with the padlock, whispering softly into his earhole, “Lorgex the Blind.”
The End.
“Good boy, Gimpy, good boy.” Lorgex tussled the sweaty fur behind Gimpy’s third ear and stood proud as a papa over his newborn babe, personified in this instance either by a four-foot-tall mutant rat with a severe leprosy problem or an adolescent boy who lay shackled, muzzled, and pilloried on the ground.
“Alms Acolyte Spew, you may enter.” The High Wrackolyte Diathama Sneering. Beautiful in a demanding way. A cold, stern, sadistic, horribly demanding way that bespoke of an evil not only that came natural to her, but was also worked on, honed, trained relentlessly in conjunction with endless hours of mechaniacal machines specifically designed to heighten and intensify one’s own innate cruelty. “Abzgorn. The door, please.”
“As my lady wishes.” Abzgorn’s hooded head bowed low before he drew upon a great onyx chain. The door shuddered as it opened sidewise and up like the maw of some great insect about to take a bite, the black rune-hardened steel screeching in protest.
Spew inched through, careful not to impale herself upon one of the many barbs or hooks. The gallery of skeletons and eyeless steel masks adorning the walls watched her.
Lorgex stifled a guffaw, and Gimpy immediately started thrashing his naked tail. “Bitebite, froggy frog,” Gimpy growled low in his throat. Good. Spew would bear witness to his accolades. Or perhaps the granting of a slave? Perhaps even multiple slaves! Or, dare he dream, a promotion? No, no. That was too much to hope for. But then, he glanced down at the boy, was this not the Chosen One? What award commensurate to the bearer of such a prize? Mayhap the High Wrackolyte would deign to let him caress her? Just once… Lorgex dabbed at the pink foam congealing at the corners of his maw.
In any instance, it would break Spew, crush her spirit to know he had won. Stolen her thunder. For her to see him raised while she — Ha! — she would be condemned to a life of alms collection, an indentured pauper forever spelunking through goblin trousers for subsistence.
“And so this is the reason thou saw fit to disturb me within my private chambers?” The High Wrackolyte’s voice cut the ether like an obsidian knife. “And during the very zenith of the hedonistic hours?” Pebbles upon the crypt floor vibrated as she spoke. “A pig boy…?”
Lorgex’s smile died right there. Wilting. Wasted. Withered.
“Explain thyself,” the High Wrackolyte demanded.
“I … ahem. The b-boy, my Lady, is q-quite special. I assure you.” Lorgex dabbed at his suddenly dewy forehead and glanced at Abzgorn for affirmation. The torture crypt was suddenly unseasonably warm. He tried to swallow but couldn’t. He glanced at the door, gaping wide open, then at Spew, whose face was now a shivering rictus of barely suppressed impish glee, then back at Abzgorn who raised a bored eyebrow.
“Hastily, decrepit one.” The nail of the High Wrackolyte’s forefinger gouged a curl of mahogany from the arm of her throne. “Explain thyself. Thy answers are not etched upon the Ribspreader’s succulent flesh or I would know them intimately already. Is that not so, Abzgorn?”
“It is, my Lady.”
“The boy,” Lorgex blurted, “he is the Chosen One of Grimnir. The one who shall marshal forth Grimnir’s horde—”
“Every babe festering in the Craw knows the story of the Chosen One.” The High Wrackolyte chopped him silent with a hand. “I see a pig boy. A pig boy and nothing more…” Her voice rang through the crypt. “Abzgorn, my lust-muffin, perhaps mine eyes hath deceived me? What is it thou sees?”
Lorgex’s stomach nearly dropped out his backside. It all rested on Abzgorn now. Lorgex stared at him, pleading with bloodshot eyes, begging silently for mercy, understanding, salvation, from the Black Temple’s head torturer.
“Your assessment appears correct, my lady,” Abzgorn said with the finality of a headsman’s axe falling.
“Gulp…” It would be a death sentence. And not a good one. His bald head reeled. His gaze fell to Spew who, grinning, surreptitiously drew a thumb across her neck.
“And Acolyte Spew,” the High Wrackolyte turned, “what doth thou see?”
“Ahem, my lady, I see a palsied old relic fit only to finger-dig plogs wrist-deep from the tightest of goblin arses.” Spew adjusted her bone tiara. “Lying on the floor next to him, I see an overgrown rat and a pig boy.”
“Your tiara, Acolyte Spew, I simply adore it.” The High Wrackolyte’s lip twitched a smile at the corners for the briefest of moments and was then cold hateful alabaster once more.
“My lady.” Spew curtsied low.
“M-my Lady, I was told that the b-boy was the Chosen One,” Lorgex pleaded, the last vestiges of his dignity fleeing into a girlish whine. “It was said—”
“Said by whom?” the High Wrackolyte’s voice cracked like thunder. Chunks of ceiling rained down. All in the crypt ducked except the High Wrackolyte herself. She merely stood, pursing her lips, eldritch energies emanating in dark tendrils from her voluptuous form. “Said by WHOM!?”
The very floor quaked—
“By Abzgorn the Ribspreader, my Lady!” Lorgex pointed with one hand, covering his head with the other. “He told me, my Lady. Him!” He stared at Abzgorn. Accusing. “Do you deny it?”
“I deny nothing.” Abzgorn shrugged. “Nothing more than an entertaining jest, my Lady. Lorgex had come unprepared to torture times too numerous to count. And his skills? The Eyes?” He shook his head. “The Palsied Hand might be a more apt name. Or the Tepid Constitution. At any length, my patience with him met its end. Long ago. And the dotard obviously thought my ridiculous story true.”
Lorgex’s acid glare at Spew confirmed Abzgorn’s assessment.
“Whose dark eye watches over Acolyte Spew, I must wonder?” Abzgorn started forward. “I’ll have my boy, then, Lorgex.”
“No, thou shan’t.” The High Wrackolyte picked Malving up and broke the pillory from his neck with a Word. “I have spoken with him this past hour while we waited for Acolyte Spew. He proves a vile, wretched young thing. Evil courses through his very bones. It was through your own machinations that you lost him, Abzgorn. The Temple shall appropriate him. Raise him. Thou shall need abscond with another human for your delvings.”
“As my lady wishes.” Abzgorn bowed.
Lorgex started edging his way toward the door…
“A thought just occurred to me, my Lady.” Abzgorn nonchalantly pulled on the door chain — the doors fell like two axes, screeching shut together, slamming just before Lorgex could escape. Whimpering, he clawed haplessly at the seam between the twin mandible slabs of black iron. “Mayhap Lorgex might fill that position?” Abzgorn offered. “He has proven inadequate at all else. It is doubtful, but might he not in pieces prove the use that as a whole he could not?”
Lorgex oozed down the wall, expanding puddle-like across the cold stone floor…
“Abzgorn, you naughty scamp.” The High Wrackolyte waggled a scolding finger. “Thou knows it is most unseemly to dissect fellow Wrackolytes.” She shook her head in droll mirth, “I could never allow such an abhoration to occur … in normal circumstances, of course … why, only under the most dire of transgressions would I even entertain it … a transgression most difficult at best to incur … a transgression whose level has admittedly been met by Lorgex’s brash intrusion to my chambers … which hath forced me to consider and now reconsider … and, finally, yes, to acquiesce to thy most reasonable request. Thou may have him to whatever be your design, Ribspreader. May you achieve in his death, what he failed to achieve in his life.” Darkness spewed in writhing tendrils from her mouth as she spoke, “%!@#LORGEX, LAY UPON THE SLAB#@!%”
“Eeeeeeeee—” Lorgex’s screech stifled as the High Wrackolyte’s clarion power-call took hold, seizing him. Herky-jerky, golem-like, Lorgex jittered, fighting fruitlessly, and stutter-shuffled his way zombiefied to the torture slab. He flopped his frail body down — SLAP! — upon its cool smooth expanse.
“Acolyte Spew, restrain him,” commanded the High Wrackolyte.
“As my lady wishes.” Spew waddled to the slab, clomb up, and plopped her torture bag down at Lorgex’s head. She ran her slimy fingers through his sparse wisps of hair. “There, there, sweet Lorgex. Hush…”
Fifteen various straps she drew, fastened, then cinched down across Lorgex’s torso. His head. His neck. Finally, his arms and legs.
“Spew! No! Have mercy!” Lorgex’s limbs were his once more, and he strained against his bonds. “Please. I’ll do anything.”
“Acolyte Spew,” the High Wrackolyte said, “it seems a position in the Wrackolation of the Craven Lord shall soon open. Imminently. Dost thou wish to fulfill that position and become a full Wrackolyte? Or dost thou wish to maintain thy present station at the Obsidian Gate accosting drunken thugs?”
“I accept the appointment, my Lady,” Acolyte Spew said without missing a beat. “I shall serve none other than He. I shall live for He, shall kill for He, shall die for He, shall rise for He. I shall crawl back up through the earth in death and shall die once again for He.”
“Excellent,” the High Wrackolyte beamed. “As of now, I rename thee, Madam Spew, the Misery Whip.”
“Please, Madam—” Lorgex hissed. “Save me. Ask a boon of her. It is ritual. She shan’t refuse you on your naming day. Please, I’d owe you my body. My life. My very soul.”
“And what use could any prove?” Madam Spew sneered.
“PLEASE!”
“Heh. Perhaps,” Madam Spew considered. “Ahem, my lady, might I spare Lorgex the Eyes?”
The High Wrackolyte fixed Madam Spew with a numbing glare. “Do what thou will with him, Madam, so long as Abzgorn the Ribspreader agrees,” the High Wrackolyte said. “Lorgex and all of his innards are his property now. Though I might rethink thy appointment should thy first act as Wrackolyte be one of mercy.”
Madam Spew nodded, then, expectantly, looked to Abzgorn.
Lorgex strained his eyes to see.
Abzgorn studied Madam Spew intently. “What is it you intend?”
“I wish simply to rename him,” Madam Spew said.
“And to let him live?” Abzgorn asked.
“Yes.” Madam Spew looked down. “Would those terms be agreeable, Lorgex?”
“Yes! Those terms — I would be grateful, M-Madam Spew,” Lorgex blurted. “Eternally. A chorus of demons shall sing your praises, echoing within the cavern of my soul!”
“And I accept the debt I will incur for your loss, Ribspreader,” Madam Spew said, “in addition to that of the absconded boy.”
“No matter.” Abzgorn dismissed it with a hand. “They are nothing to me. Uninspired specimens at best.” He raised an eyebrow. “But … what is it you intend to rename the Eyes?”
“I intend to give him back his old position as Alms Acolyte.” Madam Spew petted Lorgex.
“W-What?!” Lorgex gagged on rage. “No!”
“You would grant him two acts of kindness?” Abzgorn glanced down at the struggling Lorgex as though he were a bug he might consider pulling the legs off of. “You would grant him life, and some modicum of status? However slight an alms collector’s might be? Think wisely.” Abzgorn studied Madam Spew. “They will call you soft. Such a white mark might follow you all your days. It might prove the end of you.” Abzgorn looked down at Lorgex. “Is he worth it? He was a failure at even this one position suited to cripples and dotards.” Abzgorn raised a finger. “And alms collecting is a repositioning, Madam, not a renaming.”
“Release me, she-demon!” Lorgex railed.
“I am aware of all of those things, Ribspreader.” Madam Spew reached into her torture bag. “I understand that those with physical ailments are more adept at chiseling alms from the weak of heart and loose of pocket.” She pulled out a padlock.
“What?! What do you intend?!” Lorgex screamed, trying to see.
“Perhaps his physical ailments at present are inadequate to the task?” Madam Spew offered. “Perhaps he needs aid. Grimnir’s aid. My aid. Perhaps … a modification to the Eyes?”
She placed the lock down next to Lorgex then reached for an iron mask on the wall.
“What is it?!” Lorgex struggled. “Release me, Spew! I don’t want your help — you stunted wartback! Fly-eater. We had a deal!”
“It’s Madam Spew,” Madam Spew unstrapped just his head and neck, “and our deal is I get to rename you.”
Lorgex craned his head up, biting at her fingers with broken teeth.
“Tsk… Tsk… Lorgex the Eyes. Hmmm…?” From within the claustrophobic confines of her torture bag she retrieved a jar full of goblin eyes. “What ever shall we rename you?”
“YOU!” Lorgex’s eyes bulged near to bursting on seeing the jar.
“Were you looking for these?” She set the jar down and took up the eyeless iron mask.
“Why!? Why?”
“For Matilda,” Madam Spew slid the pitted eyeless mask over his bald head and locked it with the padlock, whispering softly into his earhole, “Lorgex the Blind.”
The End.
SaberPunk
My favorite genres are fantasy, science fiction, and horror. I'll be reviewing fiction books and roleplaying games from those genres.
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