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Lo, I saw the second seal break, and a great stench issued forth. The pale king called unto me in a voice of corruption, “Come.†I looked, and behold, a jade horse, and he who sat on it bore a crown of flies, and in his hand he had been given a bent rod, that he may issue forth and collect a third of the land unto his breast.
From the Holy Scripture of the Knights of the Apocalypse 6:12-13
Dragon’s Folly was not often a destination sought by travelers. It was a more deadly than rewarding place, even for curious and foolhardy adventurers. Many pilgrims had travelled to the valley immediately following the Alerarian Navy’s defeat of Arztschlange the Eternal, hardy explorers, craftsmen and everything in between. All lured deep into the Mountains of Dawn by the promise of ancient dragon’s bones.
Instead of fortune, far too many found nothing but death. The rumors spread even more quickly that the news of Arztschlange’s demise. Even in death, it was said, the plague dragon’s wrath was both potent and terrible. Travel to Dragon’s Folly dropped off as quickly as it had started, leaving the plague dragon peacefully to his eternal slumber.
Even so, there was nothing to deter a determined explorer from travelling to the valley, as William had discovered. Half a dozen Alerarian merchants had given him the same advice, that it was would be his own folly to pursue his quest. But William had remained steadfast in his determination and the merchants had gladly accepted coin from someone they already considered a dead man.
It had taken time to put this excursion together. Two months simply scouring the Keeper’s library for the necessary components to the ritual, another two to find suitable companions for the endeavor, then another two to gather what he needed and to make the trek to his destination. But time and effort meant nothing to William as long as it brought his goals closer to hand. Now, finally, after half a year, the revenant sat atop the final ridge, looking down into Dragon’s Folly with a studious eye and a palpable air of excitement.
Foul winds rose from the valley to carry the scent of corruption all the way up to William’s refuge. Even this far from the basin, the corruption lingered around him, subtly pressing in from all sides, seeking to draw him down into its unwholesome embrace. A thick, sulfurous haze coated everything down in the valley, not quite thick enough to be mist, but still thick enough to flow around the stony terrain within it.
It wouldn’t be pleasant dipping himself into that sea of pestilence, but the shadow of great Arztschlange beckoned him, even now, from deep within the valley. The beast was barely more than a skeletal frame at this point, but William had firsthand knowledge of how truly ferocious an elder dragon could be and he had no doubt that Arztschlange had been a true nightmare. But it wasn’t the ancient bones that drew William here with such determination. It was the haze, and Arztschlange’s function as the source of it, that truly called to him.
Though it was cloying an unpleasant, William didn’t fear the dragon’s corruption. Any infection that got into him would quickly be burned clean by his regenerative capabilities, a function of the essence of creation within him reverting him to his basic state. Staying alive in that mire wasn’t William’s problem, it was keeping the other two members of his party alive long enough to enact the ritual that worried him.
William couldn’t use magic himself, perk of another of the major essences which had been wound into the fabric of his being. Unfortunately, his current prey could only be accessed through a portal generated in a place with a sympathetic link. Since he was currently in pursuit of the so-called Horseman of Pestilence, William had found no better place that Dragon’s Folly in which to conduct the opening of ways.
Note: Originally posted by Ioder pre-4.0
“Go forth and do my bidding…” a disembodied voice echoed through the recesses of Ioder’s mind. “Retrieve my heart, make me whole again…”
A letter wrapped in worn linens, the typical parcel. Yet this was anything but typical, never did Ioder imagine to be contacted the Revenant. It had been near a year since the angel made his way to the Tular Planes, and longer since he'd been in exile. He left behind the world it took years to built, the Monarchy and the Risen both left their own devices and under the rule of Alfe. He was a confident leader and more than strong enough to command their loyalties, even if through fear and blood.
Ioder's life now belonged to the Queen of Exiles.
In less than a fortnight Ioder had made way to Dragon’s Folly and made contact with William. It took him by surprise to be contacted by the Hellspawn, not since Moonwing had they spoke. But bound by his word Ioder had no choice but to lend his aid to the efforts. It wouldn't be easy, but killing a legend never was. He was as Ioder remembered stoic, intense and to the point. William was excited to bring an end to the Horseman Pestilence and Ioder in turn to be invited along.
He must have known of Ioder’s business and also that the soul of a Horsemen would fetch a lofty sum. If Ioder didn't know better he'd have thought that the Revenant was issuing a challenge. A wager even, who can slaughter and maim to claim the prize at the end. Though the masses were mostly soulless husks of wandering flesh and meat Ioder figured he could give William a challenge.
He soared high above in the Troposphere watching with hawk's eyes the valley below. Not yet had the action begun. Still he waited patiently on patrol, ready to act on William's signal. His job was to keep an eye over the valley and relay enemy positions and movement to the others. Needing to remain unidentified while on reconnaissance Ioder assumed the form of a Aleran Buzzbird, the native bird of prey to the region.
With a wingspan of fifteen feet, a long jagged beak made for tearing and ripping, and two powerful sets of talons Ioder was swift and deadly. As he rode the valley’s winds his long sleek black feathers danced with his every arc. Below he could see straggling thralls along the sloping rises and falls. Whatever may come to pass the others better be ready for a fight.
Arztschlange inspired awe even in repose.
Vast and foreboding, the lonely bones of the ancient dragon held their eternal vigil in the depths of the foul valley. A noxious miasma emanated from the remains of the great beast, swirling and eddying in sickly, scarcely-visible tendrils. Atzar Kellon suppressed a gag, the fell stench overpowering even outside the vale. He stood near William peering into the gloom, their goal. He had learned quickly that idle conversation was neither a strength nor an interest for the revenant. So he looked on in silence, fingertips correcting a wind-blown strand of long black hair as it strayed across his face.
Their mission was simple in scope: create a way into the realm of the Horseman of Pestilence and kill him. Atzar would use his magic to establish a link from Dragon’s Folly into the fell land. Once he completed that task?
Withstand the corruption and survive.
When William had approached him, the wizard accepted the undertaking with little hesitation. There was danger, but he trusted his strength; he could take care of himself, and perhaps others if need be. And the potential reward matched the risk. He knew, as did the world, that the domains of dragons bowed under the weight of the riches they held; if not gold and jewels, then the scales and bones of the beast itself. And if he earned fame and goodwill for cleansing the world of a danger? So much the better.
He fought back another gag, this one accompanied by a brief feeling of nausea. He needed to do something about the rancid aura surrounding him. Already it threatened to overturn his stomach, and they hadn’t even entered the haze yet. Fortunately, the capabilities of magic were varied, and the mage had an idea.
A pocket of fresh air coalesced around his face, and greedily he sampled its sweetness. It didn’t completely block the pestilence, of course. Faint traces still assaulted his senses, and the foul embrace of the fumes made his flesh crawl. And it required focus. It drained only minimal energy, but he would not be able to defend himself and maintain his bubble at the same time. Sooner or later, he would be forced to face the full brunt of the miasma.
But for now, it made life just a little easier, and it was with a higher spirit that he waited for William’s signal to advance.
Shadowy fingers grew long and thick across the valley as the day wore on. Patience wasn’t one of William’s strengths, but neither was foolishness. He sensed as much impatience in his companions as he himself felt, but knew that it would be their own folly to enter the valley too soon. All three of them knew what the plan was, and what needed to be done to bring this plan to fruition.
As he’d explained when he’d recruited Atzar and Ioder, William’s homeland was a nation that revered the spiritual essence. Fundamental conceptual forces, it was taught, each had an essence. Through deification these essences could be given form, features, and will. Offerings made to nature, for example, resulted in the spiritual personification of forests, rivers, and vineyards in the form of protector spirits or elemental guardians. In Amra, William’s homeland, deification of the essence of nobility had given rise to the church of the Lion, the spiritual figurehead for the entire nation.
These personified spirits, he’d gone on to explain, were linked to the essence from which they were formed and could draw power from it. Spirits of nature could control and protect their lands, while the noble Lion of Amra could give strength and fortitude to his worthy chosen. Because the spirits were created from symbolic deification, the more symbolically defined a spirit was, the more closely they were tied to their essence and the more power they had available to them. Symbolism meant everything.
William had made the determination that the being known as the Horseman of Pestilence existed as a personification from the essence of corruption. He’d learned of the Horseman during the time he spent with the contingent of the Knights of the Apocalypse that’d been assigned to the Ixian Knights. Though the faction had ultimately failed in its duties and had faded from Althanas, they had planted a seen in William’s mind. Pestilence was a being who’d had an entire army of worshippers sacrificing themselves in its name, believing the Horseman would assist them in bringing about the end of the world.
“So very noble of them,” William thought, “but all that useless faith will only serves make me stronger.”
That would have been the end of William’s supposition had he not found a passage in the Tome of Kal’Necroth during its translation. The sorcerer had put a great deal of effort into studying spirits and had discovered that the duality of the beings meant that they existed on both a spiritual and a physical level. Their physical bodies could be slain, just as any other creature could, and the power they drew from their essence could then be manipulated. One couldn’t kill the corruption itself, but they could kill a symbolically powerful representation of it.
William hadn’t enjoyed having to explain so much of his origins to his companions, yet he had begrudgingly realized there was no other option. Even as strong as he was, William knew that he couldn’t kill Pestilence by himself. And as intrigued by the prospect of power as Atzar and Ioder both were, neither was foolish enough to blindly accompany William.
“It should be happening any moment now,” William thought as he eyed the lengthening shadows. As if on cue, William felt a faint trace of the evening’s wind stirring around him. The trace turned into a stream as the cold night air rose behind the Mountains of Dawn and chased the sun towards the horizon. Soon enough it had built enough that it poured off the ridge and into Dragon’s Folly, stirring the mixture with building intensity.
“A living sea of corruption, the first symbolic link,” William said, breaking the long silence. “Ready yourself, mage. It’s time.”
William took a last breath of fresh air and plunged into Dragon’s Folly.
It was the stillness, Atzar decided. Aside from the freezing cold and the poisonous haze and the fact that he could only see roughly a stone’s throw in any direction, it was the stillness that unnerved him most. Up on that ridge looking down into the valley, there had been wind; frigid, but wholesome. It spoke of movement and life. Dragon’s Folly harbored nothing but death and decay, and the surrounding mountains blocked out even the tiniest breeze. His personal air pocket allowed him to breathe, but tendrils of toxic fog still caressed every inch of exposed skin. Chills of revulsion shot up his spine, and he jammed his hands deeper into the folds of his thick gray cloak. He questioned the revenant’s plan. He was a wizard, and with the title came myriad useful tricks. But if the stories were correct, and the mist really did turn the afflicted into zombies… he didn’t have a solution for that one. He could only hope that his bubble was barrier enough to keep him human.
Doubt and regret grew in his mind with every step. Perhaps William never intended for him to make it out of the valley alive. The mage served a purpose: getting him into the Realm of Pestilence. Perhaps the mutant knew that Atzar would fall somewhere in this abyss. Most likely, he didn’t even care. William didn’t have a reputation as a sweetheart, after all.
The slope gradually leveled out as they reached the bottom of the valley, but the dragon’s corpse was still a considerable distance away. They passed a pool of viscous, green liquid. He had heard of the substance; Green Sap, it was called. It emanated from the rotting remains of Arztschlange; whether flesh, blood, entrails or some combination thereof, the mage did not know. It didn’t look precisely as he had expected. The mention of ‘green acid’ had brought to mind brightly-colored, bubbling goo, but this stuff was just sludge, pungent and inert; more like pond scum than the science experiment he had envisioned.
Useful in the right hands, but Atzar was no chemist. He walked on, giving it a wide berth.
William held up a hand, signaling a halt. The wizard took a long, grateful breath from his air bubble to calm his nerves. Then he listened, and after a moment his ears picked up the reason for their pause. A faint, rhythmic shuffling noise broke the stillness. The wizard knew the reputation of this place, of the guardians of the great dragon’s final rest. They had no friends here; he grimaced and steeled himself for battle.
He peered into the gloom, a whiwlwind of thoughts raging in his mind. Part of him observed clinically, waiting to discern ‘what’ and ‘how many’ so he could work out a plan of attack. But the other part, the more human part, watched with only dread, knowing that whatever emerged from that mist could very well be his future.
“We’re surrounded, mage. Be ready,” William grunted. He moved cautiously, trying to remain silent enough not to draw too much attention from the shadowy figures surrounding them. Though most wrote William off as an uneducated brute thanks to his vicious nature, he had spent a lot of time in quiet study over the years. During his intensive research into the reports that the few survivors of Dragon’s Folly had made, William had discovered that the undead creatures in the valley were sensitive to sound, as their dragon progenitor had been.
William moved around to put his back to a cracked boulder, making it harder for the fungal zombies to reach him en masse. He blinked tears from his stinging eyes and gauged the distance from their position to the silhouette of Arztschlange’s corpse. Judging from the scale of the great beast’s remains, there was still at least half a league between it and them.
William cursed silently and looked skyward as he heard the cry of a hunting bird. Ioder was circling overhead, though William couldn’t see him through the thick rolling fog. The creature was supposed to be scouting ahead and using its piercing cry to herd the zombies away from their position. But he and Atzar had been forced on a wide detour to get around a particularly large puddle of Green Sap and even with a buzzbird’s eyes it was likely that he’d lose them. Now, instead of leading them away, it seemed the creature was leading the zombie horde in their direction.
“Damn that fool,” William hissed, then cursed again as a particularly foul patch of air filled his lungs and bit into him, forcing a barking cough. He bit down hard on his lip to stifle the rest of the noise, hard enough to draw a line of glowing blood, but the damage had been done. Several fungal zombies turned towards them, drawn buy the noise.
William barely had time to react as the first of the zombies stumbled out into view from behind the sheltering boulder. This particular specimen was unfortunately enough to still resemble a human, though only barely. Patches of sickly fungus sprouted in patches all across the length of its body, and one side of its head, most of the neck, and a single shoulder had all been subsumed by a single bulbous gray fungus. Sickly tendrils spilled out the remaining side of its mouth, twitching as the creature emitted a high pitched whistling shriek upon seeing William and Atzar.
“So much for the stealth approach,” William spat and lashed out with the razor edge of his warscythe. The obsidian blade sliced cleanly through the zombie’s chest, but instead of falling into two pieces, as a creature of meat and bone would have, the creature’s body stumbled and slammed into the boulder before falling over. Roots and veins of twitching vegetation burst from the wound, spurting a thick brackish liquid across William and Atzar. It was one of the worst smelling things William had ever had the misfortune to be doused in, with a reek of rotten flesh mixed with fecal compost which had been left to ferment in the sun on a sweltering day.
William retched involuntarily, then fought the urge back and struck out at the creature a second time. Others were coming in fast, angling on the noise that they were making. William grimaced as more fluid sprayed across him. At his back, Atzar was muttering something, doubtless using his magic against one of the creatures that had come up from the other side. William hoped the mage could handle himself, because he had more than enough to worry about on his side.
“Damned undead,” William swore as he knocked an approaching trio of zombies a step back into the fog with a back swipe of his scythe. He had to remember that wounds which could incapacitate a mortal were nothing more than an inconvenience to these plant creatures. In evidence, the first zombie continued to try to stand, through William had split both its head and guts open. William frowned and slashed at the creature a third time, the angry strength of the blow finally parting the zombie from its unlife.
“Ioder, down here” William roared, hoping that the creature could hear him overhead. These things were tough, and if there were as many of them as it sounded, then William and Atzar would need all the help that they could get.
Unease threatened to swell into true fear. William called for Ioder, but received no reply. The shapeshifter had failed in his assignment, and the two down below bore the consequences. "More chicken than buzzbird, it appears," the mage muttered darkly.
Dragon’s Folly was as close to Hell on Althanas as Atzar had ever experienced. His eyes watered and stung, no longer protected by his life-saving clean air. Williams’ brutal butchery released a gut-wrenching stench of concentrated death, yet that was only the secondary reason for the mage to hold his breath. Teeth clamped resolutely shut, lungs already starting to ache, he wondered vainly how potent the toxic mist was. The revenant had researched the valley beforehand. He had told him that exposure to the mist wasn’t immediately lethal - only prolonged inhalation would cause irreparable harm. Still, the wizard was unwilling to gamble any more than he already had.
A hideous horror emerged from around the boulder. Atzar took an involuntary step back. A human and a dark elf had been intertwined, a terrible mash of foul fungus and fetid flesh. A few limbs had been lost or devoured during assembly; it advanced with an awkward, three-legged shamble. Arms reached, fingers clawed, faces gaped soullessly.
The ice Atzar launched was not an attack so much as a reflex of revulsion. Several jagged projectiles shot from outstretched palms. Noxious mist eddied in their wake as they slammed into their target’s chest; muted notes of crystal signaled impact. The monstrosity staggered and fell, liquid decay bursting from new wounds. Slowly, mechanically it rose to its feet, showing no awareness of the damage inflicted upon it. Another zombie emerged behind the first. Human in shape from the torso down, pallid grey vines erupted from its neck, its severed head suspended above amidst gnarls and fungal blooms. Both monsters advanced.
Unsatisfied with the results of ice, the wizard turned to flames. Three sharp cracks echoed through the valley as incandescent orbs of fire blasted ghouls backward. Smoking holes marked fungus-rotted chests, and Atzar had blown one of the heads off of the double zombie for good measure.
The attack bought the wizard a slight reprieve, and he used it to momentarily recreate his pocket of fresh air. He inhaled great gulps, relishing the relief they brought to his lungs. The wizard chanced a glance back toward William, noting his companion in similar peril. He had felled some of his adversaries, and that inspired some hope in Atzar. The zombies weren't indestructible, after all. "Any tips?" he asked tersely. "I can't keep these bastards on the ground."
He turned back to see his two playmates rising again, illustrating his point. And sounds from the mist indicated that more lurked ever closer. Atzar set his teeth. He couldn't kill them, but he could keep them at bay. Inhaling deeply, he savored one more fresh breath before once again discarding air for ice and fire.
“That cowardly boil on a hag’s ass,” William spat an invective towards the departed member of their crew. He had expected a certain level of treachery from Ioder. The creature’s nature demanded it. But he’d expected the betrayal to come later, when there was more at stake. Ioder has either been overestimated, or else vastly underestimated. Either way, William and Atzar needed a moment of reprieve from the press of rotting fungus creatures to form a new battle plan.
“Push them back, mage,” William barked and switched his grip on his scythe. Instead of slashing at the creatures, which was proving frustratingly ineffective, William slammed the body length haft of the weapon straight into a group of them. Even the zombie’s constitution meant little against the revenant’s strength, and zombies flew back from William one after another. He knew he was only buying a few moments, as the creatures were merely being added back into the ranks of the advancing horde, but it was something.
And then William’s hand plunged straight into a melon sized mushroom growing out of one zombie’s bloated chest cavity. The swollen flesh swallowed his hand past the wrist, encasing him in a semi-liquid rancid coolness. William’s hand plunged further into the creature, carried by the force of William’s attack, and he panicked at the thought that his whole arm would simply plunge straight through the creature’s chest. Then the obsidian haft of the scythe hooked a splintered rib and the creature forcefully spun away from William.
William had been in enough fights to know how to recover from such an error, but the stumble had carried him away from the safety of the boulder that was keeping the zombies off Atzar and William’s backs. All too quickly, William found himself mired in a sea of putrid flesh. He was tough. But he doubted that even his supernatural physique could survive being torn apart by a horde of mindless dead. Not that it would come down to that.
The moment William was buried in undead flesh he’d unleash the force of his wrath in an explosion of liquid fire. Doing so would destroy the creatures, but this close to Atzar it would almost assuredly kill the mage. And even if the man somehow survived he and William would be in no position to continue pushing towards the Sickly Horseman. William would survive, but he’d be a failure.
That was something he couldn’t allow.
“Atzar, aid me,” William snarled, his voice easily carrying over the shuffling but silent press of zombie bodies. Though his magic was ill suited to destroying the creatures outright, Atzar seemed to be able to throw them aside with some manner of ease. William could only hope that the mage could keep it up.
The two of them fought together, combining lashing blunt spell strikes with bludgeoning force to bring William back to the relative safety of their defensive position.
“This isn’t working,” William growled as he joined his companion. “We can’t keep this up forever.” Aztar nodded, his concentration too focused at the moment to reply. “I’ve got an idea, but it’s risky. I think I can clear the area but you’ll need to get as close to me as possible. If it doesn’t work I think it’ll be too late to fight back against all of them.”
“Do it,” Atzar said.
William dropped his scythe and grabbed the mage, crushing him into a tight embrace. With his other hand William reached up and gripped the handle of a massive cleaver of forged dragon bone. The cleaver was enormous, almost as large as William himself. It would have been a ridiculous sight to see on any other warrior, but William hefted the weapon as easily as he had his obsidian scythe.
There was pent up power in the raw bone cleaver, an echo of rage that the ancient dragon mother had itself possessed. William felt that power coursing throughout the bone and, crushing Atzar against the boulder as tightly as he could, released it.
A torrent of phantom blades surged from the weapon, wildly spinning and slashing at everything that was more than a hands breadth from William and extending twenty feet away from him. The effect was devastating to the zombie horde.
Nothing larger than a fist remained of anything within five feet of William, and even the stone of the boulder was slashed and scored in hundreds of places. William himself was covered in a wave of vile spray which had burst from the slaughtered zombies. Even so, the zombies furthest away were already beginning to stir back to life, and there were even more of them approaching from the mist.
“Let’s get out of here before they surround us again,” William said, spitting out a gobbet of stringy puss. He bent and retrieved his scythe out from under a mound of dead slurry.
“We can make a more effective defense at the dragon’s corpse.”
“Toss it all,” Atzar mumbled as he stumbled away from the rock. Watery tears ran from his puffy, reddened eyes and he blinked furiously to clear them away as his eyes locked onto William. The world swam around the creature’s blackened form, but Atzar couldn’t tell if it was the shimmering mists moving or if it was simply something to do with the pounding in his own head. He’d been careful to keep his air veil up throughout the skirmish, but even still the valley’s poison might be affecting him. He forced his mind to still its spinning and reinforced the pocket of air around his nose and mouth, hoping that it would do a better job of keeping the pestilence out.
With that out of the way, Atzar finally took a moment to take in the effects of William’s rampage. He studied the layer of gore covering the revenant nearly from head to foot. The fluids that the fungal zombies had secreted looked none too healthy and he was glad that William had taken the brunt of it and not him. There had been a small army threatening to tear them apart only moments ago, and now there was nothing but bloody mud and sticky corruption stretching as far back as he could see into the toxic soup. It seemed surreal to him that so much damage could be done in the short amount of time that they’d been in the valley.
A sharp stinging pain pierced the foggy haze in his mind and Atzar realized that he was injured. A quick glance told him that it was nothing significant, only a few wet ribbons of blood seeping from half a dozen places where William’s spectral blades had nicked him. The demon’s tight embrace had spared him the worst of the assault, but here and there a razor line of force had sliced through his flesh.
“We need to go now, mage,” William barked impatiently. He reached out to shake Atzar from his reverie, but the mage instinctively drew back and snapped a magical whip of water at the demon’s outstretched claws. William scowled at him in annoyance but Atzar simply returned the look defiantly.
“Toss it all,” Atzar said again. He moved around away from William, being careful to avoid the larger chunks of still-twitching meat as he made his way to the clear ground on the other side of the slashed boulder. Once more on solid earth, Atzar took a moment to straighten himself out, calling on a stitch of his power to seal his wounds against the valley’s toxic atmosphere. Eyes drifted back towards the valley’s entrance as he worked. He strained to get a look at the escape, but try as he might there was no way that he was going to visually be able to pierce that much of the fog. Instead he focused on the sounds coming back from the way they’d come. Silence was all that greeted him.
It would be so easy to cut and run as Ioder had. Sure he’d taken William’s money, but that was an easy enough action to remedy. But even as he thought about escaping, Atzar knew that it was something that he wouldn’t be able to bring himself to do.
William stepped up beside him as he finished binding his wounds, a grim look on his face. “Last chance,” he said, his voice all steel and resolve. “They’ll be back to surrounding us if we don’t move, and I’m telling you now that the only other method I have of clearing that many of them out isn’t going to go as well for you as the last one.”
Atzar grinned at him, sharp white teeth glowing through the air veil. It wasn’t some fanciful notion of honor that kept him at William’s side, or holding to the bargain that he and the demon had come to. It wasn’t even the potency that their little endeavor promised to give him. No, Atzar decided, it was something fiercer and more primal, something about the life-or-death struggle that he built a fire in his blood that nothing else could. Despite the choking air and the frenzy of the last several minutes Atzar couldn’t remember the last time he had felt this alive and excited.
Atzar turned back to William and pulled his magic tightly to him with a gesture. “Alright demon, lead the way.”
The pair of them moved with as much speed and stealth as they could muster. Navigating the rivers of a green ooze and the larger knots of shambling corpses wasn’t difficult, especially with the massive front wave of the creatures left behind. They didn’t even bother going around individual zombies, or groups of one and two that they ran across. Those creatures William simply hammered with his dragon bone cleaver, the massive weapon bursting the rotting things apart or Atzar’s magic slamming them carelessly aside like unwanted toys. Nothing stopped them until they’d crossed nearly a two miles of rugged, hazy terrain.
“Let’s stop here,” William said after a time, gesturing towards a stream of acidic bile nearly a dozen meters wide. Though he couldn’t hear many of the creatures around, they were still out there, driven towards the pair with a purpose as if there was a malign sentience maneuvering the zombies like pieces on a game board.
Atzar nodded and slumped down onto a nearby rock, straining to pull clean air through his spell. William had to admit that he was impressed by the mage’s fortitude. There weren’t many magic users that William had met who could keep up with him in a run across such a distance without being completely spent, but Atzar had managed it with little more sign of weariness than being a little winded. And that was also taking into account that he was doing so in a poisonous fog without William’s own innate regenerative capabilities.
“Looks like I picked the right one,” William thought as he turned his attention from Atzar back to the mists, watching for any sign of movement from their pursuers. There had been a lot fewer zombies on the interior of the valley after the two of them had moved past the initial horde. William assumed that it was because more of the explorers who came to Dragon’s Folly didn’t make it very far before succumbing to the toxic atmosphere or the clawing zombies before reanimating as zombies themselves. Every person who fell to the valley’s perils added another soldier to its defense.
But the zombie’s attacks weren’t the only threats that the creatures possessed. It was well knows that, even in death, Arztschlange’s power continued its insidious work. But the exact method of resurrection for these creatures was unknown to scholars of Dragon’s Folly. But William knew, he’d been feeling it since the corpses burst over him back at the boulder.
Even in death the fungal zombies were dangerous. There was an unnatural burning covering every inch of William’s exposed flesh where the zombies’ rotting fluids had splashed on him. It was an experience quite unlike the normal blazing fires which burned within him and it had taken William some time to puzzle it out. But now that he knew what to look for, William understood that his regenerative capabilities were the only thing that had kept him from becoming one of Arztschlange’s minions so far.
Tendrils japed into his flesh from within the fluids, desperately stabbing into him and trying to find purchase within his skin. Fortunately for William his molten core seared the fungal roots the moment they pierced him and his regeneration sealed the microscopic wounds back up before another root could take the first one’s place. It seemed that the zombie’s own blood was itself a living entity that sought to kill and convert its prey. It was a fascinating topic, and one that William wanted to look more into once he finished his purpose here, especially if things went as he wanted. But that was a matter for another time.
“Sounds like they’ve found us again.” William said. The sounds of the multiple groups that they’d bypassed had solidified into another horde behind them. This one was smaller than the original, but no less deadly. “Are you ready?” he asked, turning back to Atzar.
“Would it matter if I said no?” Atzar asked. The mage hopping off his rocky perch and stretched, making sure that the few minutes of rest hadn’t tightened his muscles. “Which way now? We’ve spun ourselves all around this valley making it this far, and without Ioder overhead guiding us I want to make sure we’re not going to get lost in this forsaken place.”
“Don’t worry, I know where it is,” William said. He could feel the dragon’s resting place throbbing in his chest, a connection that he’d felt since the moment he’d laid eyes on the great beast. Months of preparation had been as important an element of the ritual’s symbolism as the location. The only way for William to get lost was for him to give up on his quest, and that just wasn’t going to happen.
“We should have a relatively straight run at it from here. Though it’s still pretty far away. A lot farther than it seemed from up on the ridge.”
“Three cheers for magical, space distorting gas,” Atzar said, almost too low for William to hear. The pair set off again as a slow trot, only for William to stop them half a minute later.
“What is it?” Atzar asked.
“Up ahead,” William nodded along the acid streams trail, off into the mist in front of them. “It sounds like there’s another group of those shambling bastards ahead of us. Not huge, but sizeable enough to slow us down. We can’t be sure that there’ll be a defensible position like last time, and it might be enough for the ones behind us to catch up.”
“Getting surrounded the mushroom undead doesn’t sound like fun to you?” Atzar chuckled, though there was no mirth in the sound.
“What do you think? We can try to circle around them, but that’s just going to give them more time to link up into a bigger horde. I’d like to not have half the valley behind us when we get to the dragon.”
“Over the acid?” Atzar said, looking at the broad stream. It was viscous, and mostly still, but every now and then there was a slight rippling effect which marred its otherwise smooth surface. And the haze that hovered above the acid was thicker, keeping the two men from seeing anything farther than the opposite bank, which had widened to nearly twenty meters.
“Can you make it across?” William asked, eyeing the magically bound air and water swirling about the mage.
“I think I can manage it,” Atzar nodded.
“Ready?” William asked, more as a courtesy than as a question. Atzar didn’t reply, a look of focused concentration playing out across his shrouded face. William stepped up to Atzar and grabbed the man by the waist, making sure not to slash him with his bony claws. Then, with a savage snarling roar, William heaved and hurled Atzar bodily into the air over the acid with all the force his inhuman strength could muster.
William was strong enough to crush stone and shear metal with his bare hands, but even so it was readily apparent that he hadn’t been strong enough to get Atzar all the way across the river. He needn’t have worried. Midway through his arc Atzar made a sharp, slashing arcane gesture and a torrent of winds sprung to life around the mage. The winds weren’t enough to lift him, but the buffer that they gave him slowed Atzar’s descent enough that the momentum of William’s throw carried him over to the opposite shore.
“I’m going to check it out over here,” Atzar called back and then disappeared into the fog. William was once again forced to admire the Atzar’s skill. It was a graceful, delicate maneuver, something far different from what William could muster. Still, William was determined not to be outdone.
A moment’s concentration drew the energy of the heat surrounding William back into his molten core. From there he eased it back out into the air around him, but instead of radiating from him, the heat grabbed at the air and pulled it into a tight, swirling mass around him. Atzar’s graceful magic has coerced the air, but William’s bludgeoned it into submission, lifting his charred flesh off the earth and out into the air over the acid.
William was only a third of the way across the steam when a loudly cursing Atzar plunged back out of the mists in front of him. Out over the acid, William could see through the fog on the opposite shore a little better, and now he saw Atzar squaring off against a trio of fungal zombies who came lunging out of the fog on Atzar’s heels.
Instinct caused William to grab at the power of his molten core in order to focus it into an explosive magma shot. It was a deadly attack which would easily detonate the creatures. But just before pulling his power loose, William stopped himself and left the energy surge between his fingers. Drawing out his energy like that would release the winds that were carrying him aloft. That, in turn, would drop him into the deadly fluid below. There was also that fact that there was no way to tell if the explosion would leave Atzar unscathed, but that was a distant secondary concern at the moment.
That was when Atzar tripped. A jut of rock caught the mage’s foot as he backed away from his attackers. Still, he might have recovered if one of his forearms hadn’t splashed into the acid. Atzar shrieked as the vile substance quickly dissolved the robes and leather bracers over his forearm and then dug into his skin with equal fervor. William could only assume that this shock of pain had been enough to interrupt the mage’s concentration as he watched the stream of Atzar’s magically controlled water and the air veil over the mage’s face come apart.
Cursing, William urged himself to move faster, but he was still two arms lengths out of reach to defend his fallen comrade. He could only watch in frustration as the zombie trio righted themselves and bore down on Atzar.
To his credit, Atzar once again showed his expertise as he clamped down on his screams and then muttered the words of a spell to draw the acid away from his arm. He paused for a moment, marveling at the way that the acid flowed in the same manner as his water whip had. A wicked grin spread across the mages face as he reached out and pulled another handful of acid from the stream with his magic, and then another. Each of these he shaped into curving lines that then lashed out, slapping into the zombies with a sizzling pop. As with his water whip, the zombies staggered a step, giving Atzar enough room to regain his feet. But this time, instead of simply righting themselves and continuing forward the zombies sloughed apart as the acid tore greedily into their putrescent flesh. Three more lashes left nothing but a flopping mass of fluids five feet from the mage.
“That’s damned impressive,” William said and he finally touched down next to the mage, who was busy reestablishing and reinforcing the air veil over his face. “For a moment it looked like you were in some serious trouble there.”
“Nothing I couldn’t handle,” Atzar said, though his words were tinged with pain. Atzar had reacted quickly to the acid, but not quickly enough to completely save himself from harm. The back half of his right forearm was a wet, red mass, blood and serum oozing angrily from the wound. William grabbed at his pack, pulling out a jar of poultice that he’d picked up and offering it to Atzar. It was a simple mixture, likely not enough to do more for the wound than numb it and fight off some of the bacteria that swarmed around them in the toxic air. Both Atzar and William knew that the wound was likely infected with spores, but at least this would give the mage a fighting chance of keeping the limb and from being converted into another fungal abomination.
“Let’s go,” Atzar panted, tossing the empty poultice container into the acid with a hissing splash. He gestured and the trio of acid whips snaked back to his side, condensing into bobbing spheres which drifted far enough away from the mage to make him comfortable with their presence. William and Atzar once again started jogging out through the mists.
Neither William nor Atzar stopped again for the hour that it took to reach the dragon. Less and less of the fungal creatures appeared as they got closer to Arztschlange, more evidence that it was rare for anyone to reach this far into the miasma. And then, seeming to pounce upon them from out of nowhere, Arztschlange’s corpse was suddenly looming over them.
“Take a moment while I make sure the way is clear,” William said and Atzar nodded, visibly relieved. Though the mage hadn’t complained once during their run, William had had to slow his pace more than once during the final stretch.
William quietly made his way towards the dragon, carefully avoiding the ever increasing acid which seemed to seep directly from the fallen creature’s remains. As ravaged as the corpse was from the violence of its death, there were clear areas of it which had been ravaged by outside hands. The closest arm and one entire wing had been stripped clean by previous adventurers, the potent scales and bone making a fortune out in the open markets of Alerar and beyond. But even with all the materials that had been taken from the dragon’s corpse, enough remained to make someone wealthy beyond all belief.
But William wasn’t concerned with the material wealth to be found on Arztschlange. He could feel the link between the dragon and the miasma swirling around him, could feel it in the fungal rot animating the corpses littering the valley, and could feel it reaching out beyond, on a level entirely non-physical. That was what William was yearning for, the spiritual symbolism of living pestilence that would bring him to the domain of the Horseman. He just needed to make sure that Atzar was alive enough to open the way.
William returned to Atzar and as he caught sight of the mage, that notion concerned him more than ever. Atzar’s clothing was plastered to his body, completely soaked through from the torrent of sweat pouring out of him. His eyes were sunken and bloodshot, but the rest of his face and lips were bloodlessly pale behind the mask of his air veil. Worst of all, perhaps, was the black angry lines that wormed through his skin out from under the crusted poultice which continued to cover his acid wound. There was no doubt about it, Atzar was deathly ill, and William wouldn’t bet on the man making a successful trip out of Dragon’s Folly, let alone back to a medical clinic where they could treat him.
“If treatment was even possible,” William thought, calling out to Atzar. The mage’s head pivoted a fraction of a moment too slow, a languorous motion that only furthered William’s fear that Atzar might not be able to survive long enough to enact the ritual.
“Well?” Atzar asked through dry lips.
“The dragon’s head came down not far from here,” William said. He reached out and helped Atzar to his feet then steadied the man as he swayed. “We need to get to the heart of the beast for the link to work right, but there’s more of that acid pooled up in places.”
“Leave the acid to me,” Atzar said, waving at the three orbs still floating nearby. William’s expression apparently gave away his thoughts on the matter because Atzar pushed him away and barked, “What about the zombies?”
“None that I could see,” William replied. He started towards the dragon’s mouth, carefully picking his way across the broken ground to make the going as easy as possible for Atzar.
Breaths came in labored gasps. His gait had slipped from spirited jog to dogged shamble, and knives twisted in his acid-burned arm through the poultice that sought to numb it. Atzar fixed his gaze on William’s back. The demon had slowed his pace in consideration for the mage’s condition, but even so, it was all he could do to keep up now. He tried not to think about the sickly veins that spidered out from his wound, but he knew what they meant.
Their path threaded along a narrow string of land that rose out of a lake of sap. The foul fog swirled around them, oppressive as ever; beyond it, silence. Arztschlange’s plagued remains loomed larger with every step. Despite his physical condition, Atzar’s magic was still strong. His globs of acid spun and bobbed alongside, and the bubble of air floated steadily around his sweat-drenched head. He could use a rest, to be sure, but his magical fatigue was of little concern considering the circumstances.
They arrived before the elder dragon’s head. It rested on its side, lower jaw to their left, upper to the right. Patches of scaly hide had been cut away by the hardiest of adventurers, exposing the bone beneath. The wizard had designs on staking his own claim, if he didn’t… well. Involuntarily he glanced at his arm. The lines had already snaked halfway up his forearm, and the flesh closest to the wound was gray and crackled. Atzar suspected that it was no longer a question of 'if.' He felt the strength leaving him; every step was a labor now. Stubborn, angry pride was all that fueled him now. This hellish place might kill him, but it would not defeat him. He would do what he set out to do if it took his last breath.
“In we go,” William rasped without breaking stride. The great beast’s throat was large enough to allow them comfortable passage even standing at full height. Atzar wondered at the titanic power it must have taken to kill this thing.
The pestilent fog was even thicker inside the dragon’s corpse, and a faint slithering sound made the mage uneasy. The pair picked their way along the bones toward the chest cavity. One side of the throat had been stripped and exposed to the elements. A blanket of interlocked scales draped over the other side. The flesh inside the maw had long since rotted away, but time alone could not erode Arztschlange’s armor.
They reached the dragon’s vast ribcage. It rested in a pool of acid, ribs curved up into the mist at intervals; Atzar and William stood upon a breastbone as wide as a highway. The miasma hovered as thick as ever, and the shelter provided by the remaining scaly armor rendered the cavity quite dark. Again something slithered in the gloom.
“You’re up, mage,” William growled. “You know what you need to do?”
“Yeah,” he croaked. Kind of. In truth, Atzar had never opened a portal to another plane before, but William had explained the process. The mage had to draw two glyphs in an alternating series until they formed a circle. The first allowed the wizard to reach into the Realm of Pestilence and grasp the magic there; the second gave it a place to stabilize once summoned.
“Then get on it.” More noises pierced the veil of mist, closer this time. The demon turned toward the noise and drew his scythe. “I’ll stand guard.”
The mage took a deep, ragged breath. “If I die, demon, let it be by your hand,” he told William. “I have no interest in joining a horde of fungus men.” Then on shaky legs he knelt and began the ritual. He tossed two of his acid spheres into the muck with a splat and a hiss; with the third, he began to paint on Arztschlange’s breastbone the symbols that would open the portal.
William nodded and left Atzar to his magic. He’d do as the mage asked, just as he’d expect the mage to do the same for him if their roles were reversed. Here in the heart of the blight the dragon’s power was at its height, and even his own regenerative powers were straining to keep William whole. It was so rare to find himself on the brink of exhaustion that it was almost a novel experience. Almost.
The dragon’s mortal wound made an excellent place for William to keep watch. From the look of the ragged wound, the dragon had made the unwise decision to swallow something large and incredibly explosive. It was humbling to think that even a creature as ancient and powerful as this could lose everything to one simple miscalculation. Idly, William reached out and ran the rough bone of his claws over the torn scales at the wound’s edge. He stared at the image until it was burned into his mind. He’d need to remember Arztshlange when and if he ever started thinking himself untouchable.
The green sea beyond the wound rolled with the same manic intensity that it had for the last hours. He focused, trying to see through the fog. The fungal undead were converging on the dragon’s corpse, William knew, and he hoped that that he’d have a little more warning than a surge of the bloated faces suddenly appearing right in front of him. There had to have been something more they could have done to keep the zombies off their trail, but with the loss of Ioder, Atzar and he had simply done the best they could.
Besides, who was to say that there wasn’t some malevolent entity that were directing the zombies towards their position? The fresh acid that filled the pools in the valley seemed to ooze constantly from Arztschlange’s corpse and William had a feeling that though the dragon was long dead and given over to decay, there was still a tremendous amount of power held within it. Wasn’t that why he’d chosen it as the site of his ritual, after all?
Something moved in the acid, causing a shimmering ripple to spread across the liquid’s bright green surface. There was a horrendous blooping sound as a bubble the size of William’s head broke the surface. William shook his head and eyed the pool warily. He was more tired than he’d thought, getting lost in dreamy suppositions instead of keeping a vigilant watch. He’d suspected that there was something inside the acid since he and Atzar had crossed the river hours back but couldn’t pin his suspicions down on exactly what.
Zombies poured from the mist in a wave. They moved so quietly that William barely had time to react before they were on him. Fortunately the dragon had been massive enough that even though he was in the creature’s throat, William had the space to swing his weapons. He held the bone cleaver in one hand and a short-grip on the haft of his warscythe in the other. Gobs of puffy white flesh and rotting brown fluid spilled over the threshold as William hacked and sliced. His initial attacks held the wave of creatures at bay, but their numbers seemed endless, stretching back indefinitely into the mists.
He yelled a warning back to Atzar when he was forced to take his first step backwards, and then again when the press of bodies started spilling over the edges of the wound. He was quickly reduced to simply swatting at the zombies with the flats of his blades instead of slicing or chopping. An arm or torso that was severed continued to wriggle and writhe towards William, seeking to simply swamp him and drag him down. But the acid pool had proven especially effective as a way to keep one flank clear.
Until it wasn’t.
William knew that he had to flee the moment the first tentacle shot at him from the acid. It had seemed that the fungus bloated bodies of the zombies simply came apart when they were knocked into the acid, but the macabre sight of the twisted flesh tentacles rising from the acid told a different story. He’d been correct, there was something waiting below the acid, and it was flesh-crafting the fungal zombies that fell into it into living, writhing creations of nightmarish horror. Streams of acid poured from warped mouths and nostrils where zombie faced had been stitched together, siphoned up from the stream itself. Those faces twisted towards William, intending to simply pour acid over him in order to add him to the central mass. Limbs twitched and reached for him, broken stumps and fingers alike spasming in time with some internal heartbeat.
A sense of terror welled up inside William as more and more tentacles broke the surface and twisted in his direction. He gripped the handles of his weapons tightly and gritted his teeth, preparing to fight the abomination. Then he remembered where he was and his promise to himself not overestimate his own prowess. William turned and fled, while the tentacles continued to stretch and grow behind him.
The finger of acid traced another symbol onto bone; numerous others glistened around him in a three-quarter circle. Languid eyes crawled to the next location, and his volatile paintbrush dutifully followed. Not far behind him, the mage heard William’s battle. He didn’t turn. That was the revenant’s business right now; the portal was his.
Another symbol; a small wisp of steam hissed from the new marking. His pulse pounded in his heart, his head, his wounded arm. His hands trembled violently. Sweat dripped from his face despite the chilly air. His lungs ached, but each breath brought less relief than the last. Atzar had done business with Death in the past, but always as the seller. This was a new experience for him.
He had faced danger many times. And in those situations, he had usually carried with him a prudent sense of self-preservation. But he had passed that crossroad several miles back. Here he knelt on the corpse of an ancient dragon in a valley of poison, fending off zombies and mortal infection while attempting to cross into the realm of a malicious minor deity. Yet despite Death’s inexorable stare, Atzar found himself unafraid. Perhaps it was logic. Panic did nothing for him now. He knew he was already fucked; might as well do as much as he could before his body gave in.
Or perhaps his brain was simply too wracked with weariness and fever to comprehend the idea of fear.
He painted the next glyph; two to go. A new sound intruded on his senses. Slithering, roiling, splattering… Then he heard William yell.
You’d better be done, mage!” the demon roared, and Atzar glanced back. William sprinted toward him from the beast’s neck, tailed by a vast, hideous mass of tentacles and acid that made the wizard’s flesh crawl. Nope. His brain still understood fear just fine.
With as much urgency as his condition allowed, he finished the last two symbols. A new energy, sick and vile, surfaced at the edge of his consciousness. That was a small relief, but here, the demon’s instructions ended. William expected Atzar to instinctually know how to activate the portal. And now, the wizard had to do it with the spawn of the underworld gnashing at his back.
He took a deep breath and snaked a tendril of his magic out to meet this new power. He heard footsteps behind him… another yell, directly into his ear this time… Atzar grasped, and yanked with all the might he had left.
The symbols burst aflame, then the world exploded.
His head spun violently. He clenched his teeth to keep from vomiting. The ground suddenly tilted; he pitched onto his back. The world was blurry and out-of-focus. Atzar could see no details; only colors. Green, black, purple. He was vaguely aware of another presence beside him. He hoped it was William.
Yet as he lay there, struggling to make sense of the world around him, other information intruded on his confusion. The first was that his heart beat calm and even, no longer a frenzied staccato. He felt the strength return to his muscles and the wind to his lungs.
The second was that the familiar touch of his magic, so central to his existence, was gone.
William had once met an alchemist who’d showed him a special metal that the alchemist claimed would burn like wood. He’d scoffed at the notion, thinking only of the way metal heated to a glowing red when thrust into a forge’s coals. But true to the alchemist’s word, the metal had lit up brilliantly when the alchemist had cut away a small piece and held it over an open flame. William couldn’t remember what the metal was called, but he would never forget the brilliant white light that the metal gave off as the flames consumed it. It was one of the most powerfully intense things that the revenant had ever seen and the afterimage of the burning metal had left spots in William’s vision for a half a day after he’d stopped watching it. The terror that welled up in William’s chest as he ran from the flesh-crafted acid beast felt just as bright as the burning metal had been.
A circle of runes blazed around Atzar, casting the hollow remains of Arztschlange’s chest in eldritch light. William didn’t really know anything about magic but it looked incredibly complex. To have conducted such an elaborate ritual while dead on his feet was an impressive feat. It was too bad that he wouldn’t make it out of the plague valley, William thought. He had had potential.
Atzar glanced up as William ran back to him. The mage’s sunken, red-rimmed eyes widened as the mutated fungal zombie mass swelled to fill the dragon’s throat behind William. His shaking hand moved down to continue the ritual and William noticed that there was a bit more urgency behind the movement. The circle was nearly complete, but there was no way for William to tell how much more there was to the ritual after that.
“Keep it up,” he urged. “I’ll do what I can to hold it off.”
William stopped just short of the shaky mage and turned to face the first of the reaching tendrils. He slashed at the dripping mess but the creature seemed to take as little notice of the wound as the zombies that made up its form had. The pulpy flesh twisted to show a stretched face to William, the ragged mouth gaping wide in an eternal scream. Acidic bile spewed from the open mouth in Atzar’s direction, as if the beast somehow understood that the mage had the ability to pull the two seekers out from under its grasp. William acted without thought and leapt in the acid’s arc, only to find himself falling through a gap in space in a way that he hadn’t expected to encounter.
What little rational thought he still had fled as the world dropped out from under him and William, in turn, flailed around in blind panic. Something slammed into William’s back and the air was driven from his lungs. The world above him spun around, gross and unfamiliar. Arztschlange’s arcing ribcage and mummified bits of flesh were gone, replaced with a roiling green ocean shot through with streaks of yellow and brown. It looked more like liquid than air and the sight of it left William feeling somewhat nauseated.
“You did it,” he puffed in disbelief, working his burning lungs hard to draw breath back into them. He paused for a moment, savoring the feeling of not having to stand face-to-face against the twisted flesh creature, only to realize that if Atzar had in fact succeeded then they were now in a far more precarious position. They had made their way to the domain of Pestilence.
“Are you still with me?” he asked, rolling unsteadily to his feet. He eyed the quiet mage, completely expecting to see nothing more than a lifeless corpse. To his surprise, Atzar was not only alive, but the mage somehow seemed to have recovered in the last few moments. Though there were signs of sickness still apparent on his face, he was far better looking than he had been. William opened his mouth to say something, then caught the look on Atzar’s face and thought better of it. The man wasn’t on death’s door but that didn’t mean that the sickness hadn’t affected him. William retrieved his weapons and moved away to give the mage some time to himself.
Nearby a bird shrieked, a cross between crow and banshee.
Life waged an eternal war against death. The air hung hot and wet, a sharp contrast from the chill that filled the valley they had just left. Huge trees reached ever upwards, their foliage outstretched greedily to claim as much light as possible. But the sun wasn’t enough to satiate their hunger; Atzar could see the remains of beasts, suspended from the canopy by ensnaring vines and gnarled branches. Scabrous, fervent fungi splattered the ground and snaked up trunks, eating through bark to feed on the nutritious flesh within. Some trees had succumbed to the assault, standing dark and bare. Insects had burrowed into the dead wood, emerging to cut up and carry home creature, plant and mushroom alike with machinelike efficiency.
A river, brown and murky, filled his ears with its roar. He could barely make out the dark shapes as they flitted just beneath the surface. He thought of vicious piranha and venomous snakes; probably best to stay out of the water. Again the bird let out its harrowing call.
Here Atzar was in the most hostile of realms, unable to muster a spark.
He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt truly helpless. Childhood, perhaps? He had discovered his gift early in life, and it had been there for him ever since. When he had a problem, it provided the solution. When he was hungry, it was the means to hunt; it slaked his thirst, lit the darkness, sheltered him against the elements and protected him from man and beast. It was his sense of a belonging in the world, a resource that others like William bartered to employ. It was a cavern to explore, its unfathomable depths teeming with endless danger and unimaginable riches.
Atzar lifted his arm to examine his wound. The creeping lines of death had vanished entirely. He wiped aside the dried blood and unguent to expose new flesh, pink and tender, but healthy. The mage had not a clue what force had saved his life, but he was grateful. He’d have happily traded the arm for his magic, but at least it was something. The bird shrieked for a third time.
He turned to find the bird… and stared. The creature was monstrous, adorned in black feathers tarnished with sickly purple fungus, and its face sported neither eyes nor beak. Talons gripped the stem of a red flytrap-like plant whose mouths were big enough to envelop a human. Then the bird-thing vomited. The fluid sprayed all over Atzar’s tunic; he huffed in revulsion at the disgusting act, and then at the pungent, sour odor.
Something rustled. The mage looked, and then dove.
Thorny flytrap jaws slammed shut on the space he had just occupied. Atzar rolled to a crouch and instinctively responded with fire... but the slash of his hand brought none forth.
“William!” Atzar hissed urgently. “Wherever your quarry is, find it quickly. This place sucks.” He gritted his teeth. “…And I’m not sure how much help I’m going to be. My magic is kaput.” The rustling began again as the man-eating plant keyed on the smell produced by its symbiotic bird-friend. Unable to fight back, the magicless mage prepared to dive once more.
“Spirits’ damnation,†I snarled as the blank-faced not-bird leaned out to spray another gout of sour liquid at Atzar. The carnivorous plant reacted to the fluid, snapping in the direction that the fluid sprayed. I pushed Atzar aside before the next gout could splash onto him and slapped at the bird’s spewing orifice with the flat of my scythe.
A sharp, metallic tang filled my nostrils as the vomit gushed against the flat of my blade, spraying in half a dozen directions. The man-eater quivered for heartbeat as it tried to figure out where it was being directed to attack. Uncertain, it fell back on its instinct and went for the largest concentration of the vile liquid, the drenched not-bird itself. The not-bird only had time to give a single high-pitched hoot before the plant’s thorny jaws clamped down upon it.
“Come on,†I said, hauling Atzar bodily from the blanket of moldy lichen he’d fallen on when I knocked him aside. We moved as quickly and quietly away from the thrashing of blood and feathers as we could, not bothering to look back. A minute later we pushed through the undergrowth and emerged in what looked to be an open field populated only by shirt stalked weeds with massive puffy tops. Atzar and I looked at each other and shrugged. We’d keep our eyes open for new signs of danger but this was as close to a place of safety as we’d found yet in this bloated realm.
Bloated was a term that they could only use in the loosest sense. Truth be told, William was completely unexpected to find the sheer overwhelming mass of rampant life growing in the realm of Pestilence. He’d expected blasted rock and pools of stagnant, swampy water akin to Dragon’s Folly. In his mind he’d arrive to find Pestilence seated on a throne amidst a barren wasteland that was too blighted for anything to properly grow. Instead he found that the Horseman’s home was more akin to the jungles of Dheathain than the deserts of Fallien.
It made a twisted sort of sense, he supposed. Pestilence was elementally represented by water, which was not entirely unknown to house all manner of things lurking within it. And when a plague struck, didn’t it often take deepest root in the over-crowded slums? And since Death was elementally represented by earth, the opposite of water, then it made a twisted sense that Pestilence would be a life-analog. The portion of William that had spent too long scouring libraries and ancient textbooks was fascinated by the implication but now was not the time to dwell on matters of philosophy, he reminded himself. There were far greater things at risk.
“Did you say your magic was gone?†William asked Atzar once the two of them had taken a moment to catch their breaths. “What in all the levels of Haida does that mean?†Atzar shrugged in reply and William grimaced. The man moved with the strength and surety that he’d shown before entering Dragon’s Folly, but he still looked as pale and sickly as when in the throes of the fungal plague. But the worst of it was the haunted look of loss in the back of the mage’s eyes. It was one of the most tormented things William could remember seeing, which was saying a lot. Without magic Atzar was more of a dead-weight than an asset in this strange, hostile place. And yet as heartless as William was often accused of being, he’d come to respect the man who’d till minutes ago knowingly and stubbornly faced his own demise with an almost inhuman level of stoicism.
Before he could make a decision, something moved near to them at the edge of the glade. Both men froze and locked eyes on the disturbance, muscles tense and ready to react. Neither of them expected to see a shimmering, pearly white horse enter the glade. The creature shone so brightly, and its edges were so sharp that it hurt to look at it, and yet William found that it was almost impossible to look away.
The horse strode fearlessly into the glade, puffs of crimson and violet kicking up as the horse’s hooves burst the puffed stalks apart. It settled up just outside the reach of William’s weapon, a fact William noted was done deliberately. It was obvious to him that the creature was no normal horse from the intelligent, appraising way that it looked at the two of them. It appeared that there was a definite reason that Pestilence was known as a Horseman of the Apocalypse. William turned to say something to Atzar but the horse spoke before he could.
“The Lord of Hosts wishes to extend his greeting to both his brother and the supplicant. It is my lord’s wish to know if you wish to accompany me back to the Presence or if you wish to slay me and be left to drift in the endless wastes of the master’s garden?â€
“We’ll follow, horse,” William answered curtly.
The gleaming horse bowed its head in acknowledgement. “A wise decision. The master will be pleased that his guests are beings of reason. This way. It’s not far.” With that, it turned and walked back the way it had come.
The creature set a leisurely pace, and clouds of pollen puffed and swirled about their knees as they crossed the glade. Atzar was reminded of the oppressive miasma that engulfed the valley from which they had come. In a way, he found the realm to be more hospitable than he had expected; he had nearly been eaten immediately upon arrival, but at least he could breathe comfortably here.
“My lord has watched your worldly deeds with interest,” the horse said to William. “He has awaited this day with great anticipation.” The mage recognized the tone of small talk, spoken to bridge the silence as they walked. It was strange hearing it from a horse, though.
“I’m glad to be welcomed,” the revenant said curtly.
“And have you greeted your other kin as of yet?”
“They’re next.”
“I see. I wish you good fortune in your pursuits.” The horse chuckled, and Atzar was again reminded of the strangeness of this encounter. “At least insofar as they don’t conflict with my lord’s.”
He swung his shining head toward the mage. “My master has no such familiarity with you, I am afraid. I hope you’ll pardon our ignorance.” A gentle hill rose in front of them, and they made their way up. The powder-filled pods gave way to short, tough grass interspersed with wide-brimmed mushrooms of deep violet.
What does one say to a talking servile horse expressing contrition? Atzar didn’t know, so he didn’t answer.
“I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation as I approached. Your power has been absent since you entered my lord’s domain, as I understand it?”
Atzar simply nodded. Revealing his uselessness to an enemy was daft, but it was too late to lie.
“An unfortunate happenstance. Fear not, however. I have confidence that my lord will know more about your plight, for he is the master of all things in this world.”
The mage stared at him until the bright light forced him to avert his gaze. “Not to look a gift horse in the mouth,” Atzar began bluntly, “but you’re aware of why we came here. Why so… polite?”
The horse gave another of its unnervingly out-of-place chuckles. “I was instructed to deliver the liege’s greeting and to escort you to his presence. In the meantime, civility is in my nature. Regardless of what may loom on the horizon, it would not do for me to behave like an animal.”
Here was a sparkling horse that understood wordplay. The mage wondered if he was hallucinating.
They crested the hill and looked over a wide valley. An orchard grew on the easy slopes in orderly lines, a marked contrast from the wild and untamed lands all around. Amidst the fruit trees and adjacent to a small pond rose a cottage, smoke puffing from its chimney. Atzar lifted an eyebrow in perplexity at the peaceful, domestic scene that stretched out before them. Pestilence was a demigod, or so William had suggested. This looked like the last place such a being would dwell.
“The master’s abode,” the luminous horse confirmed. “He is expecting us; we shouldn’t keep him waiting.”