*******
About the same time Moon and Elphemina were entering Surgat's tower, Liang, Pagan and Casca stood in the lower chamber of the other tower, trying to solve the puzzle of the swirling liquid gateway ahead of them. Upon divining its purpose, they found themselves in an upper chamber identical to the one Moon and Elphemina discovered in Surgat's monolith.
They emerged into the dimly-lit room, to be greeted by a tall powerfully built man clad in a deep green robe girded at the waist with a golden belt. He had jet-black hair swept back from his forehead like a raven's wing, black eyes that seemed to suck what little light there was from the room, and thin cruel lips. The lips didn't move as his sonorous voice reverberated within their skulls. “Welcome humans, we have been expecting you. I expect your friends are currently being entertained by my brother, Surgat.”
Liang and Pagan drew their swords and stepped forward while Casca hung back, his forehead creased in concentration and sweat beading his brow. He could feel a tremendous force pushing against the shield he had erected to protect them against the Gualich's malign minds, and he wasn't sure how long he could hold it.
Casca’s uncertainty was well-founded. He cried out, raising both hands to his head as pain roared through his skull. His vision swam, and he fell to the floor, unconscious.
Liang and Pagan turned around anxiously at their friend's distress, but the nightmare was just beginning as both reeled drunkenly and also slumped to the floor.
Liang was once again the little girl at the Jade Castle running about with gay abandon in the thunderstorm, eyes alight with joy. But this time she wasn't alone. Another little girl ran alongside, keeping pace with her. Turning to look at her new playmate, Liang’s blood froze with horror. She saw a bone-white face set with blood-red eyes, two gaping holes where the nose should be, and a thin-lipped mouth spread in a mocking smile, revealing black, pointed teeth. Appallingly, she recognized her twin in that horrific face crooning a little ditty as she ran along:
“Poor little Liang, doesn't know who named her,
never knew her mother or father,
doesn't know where she came from.
Was her father a black devil,
a yellow imp, or a white dwarf,
and her mother a demon?
Poor lost Liang
yearns to carry the Storm Blades and ride the lightning.
But the Storm Blades and your body belong to me
and I will reclaim them...”
A serpent's tongue darted between her lips, and Liang recognized Kyung-Su, whom she had encountered on the hill of skulls in what she thought had been a dream. Anger welled up in her. She reached out, and wrapped her small hands around her tormentor's throat, glaring into those crimson eyes. “I know who I am!” she shouted. “I am Liang, the Storm Blades are mine and you will never claim my body. Now, leave me alone, you red-eyed witch!” She tightened her grip, wrenching violently. Small bones cracked, and Kyung-Su's head lolled to one side.
Liang opened her eyes and momentarily wished she hadn't, for the black eyes of the Gualich floated before her. Screaming in revulsion, she rolled away, the Storm Blades sliding from their sheaths as she regained her feet. She could see Pagan sitting on the floor, knees clasped to his chest, and tears rolling down his cheeks. She wondered what horrors he was going through. Casca was lying unmoving, face down.
Jakut stepped back, and reached for a red-bladed serrated broadsword lying on a low table. He smiled at Liang – an open friendly smile such as one would exchange with a friend, or a lover, perhaps. Liang shuddered in revulsion, then a soft voice whispered in her head, compounding her feeling of violation. “Come sweet girl, let's dance, for there is nothing more intimate than the dance of the blades.”
As Jakut spoke, his body expanded and elongated, great bands of muscle rippled across his chest, shoulders and arms, and a long tail tipped with a scorpion's sting hovered over his shoulders.
Casca sat back against the wall in the courtyard of the Philosopher's Folly. He took a long drag on his pipe, sucked the aromatic hagash smoke deep into his lungs, and exhaled noisily. His pupils dilated and he smiled dreamily as he watched Aeneas and Ripper roll about in mock-fight. He was content, the sun shone down from a cloudless sky, and life was good. Then, a loud voice intruded on his idyll. Irritated, he looked around, but couldn't find its source. He took another drag on his pipe. “Wake up, kinsman!” the voice shouted. “Your friends are dying, and your world goes to its doom while you sit around with your head up your backside. Wake up, damn your eyes!” Recognizing Castillan's voice, Casca's head jerked up and the pipe fell from his hand...
The floor was hard and cold under Casca's face, and his nose and forehead hurt from his face-down fall. The blood pouring from his nose, and pooling under his face, suggested he might have broken it. Sitting up with a groan, he was shocked to see Pagan sitting on the floor, sobbing loudly as he rocked to-and-fro.
The crash of weapons and sound of feet scuffling and sliding on the floor drew Casca’s eyes to Liang locked in combat with a huge muscular man bearing a massive red broadsword. He blinked in incredulity at the long tail whipping about the man's shoulders, seeking to impale the slender woman with its venom-dripping sting. He rubbed at his nose, and the sharp pain of his broken member spearing through his skull snapped his foggy mind back into focus.
That was no man facing Liang, but one of the Gualich, and he had to help. Closing his eyes, his concentration deepened and he sought the pathways in his mind Elphemina had helped open. He found the right one and focused.
Groggy, Pagan sat up in the meadow at Amadou-Zongai where he and his childhood sweetheart Amla, had just shared the joys of ultimate intimacy. His head hurt and he could feel blood running down his face. He heard a piercing scream, sounds of a struggle and bestial grunting. As his vision cleared, he saw Amla struggling with several Crocodile men. They ripped her clothes off and threw her to the ground. One of them loosened his breech-clout.
Pagan struggled to rise to go to her aid, but he couldn't move. There was no one holding him down, nor any visible force impairing him. But he couldn't move, no matter how hard he tried. Amla screamed, and screamed again, the sound like a red-hot dagger through his heart. He opened his mouth and bellowed his rage and hatred at the defilers. One of them glanced over his shoulder at him and grinned, horrific lust shinning in his eyes.
Pagan tried to close his eyes and turn away from the scene in front of him, but even that small mercy was denied him. Finally, after what seemed an eternity, the beasts sated their lusts, then one raised his club...
Casca could see a faint light envelop Pagan as he managed to raise the mind-shield, but his efforts were clearly not strong enough for his friend still sat there sobbing piteously. The light deepened, an orange glow overlying the faint luminance, and Casca knew Elphemina was aiding him. He saw his friend's tears cease...
Pagan took a deep shuddering breath, shook his head and looked around. Amla...no, Liang was locked in a fierce struggle with a hideously muscled man, and she didn't appear to be faring too well.
Liang reeled backward and dropped to one knee as her crossed swords blocked and deflected a downward strike of prodigious power from Jakut. The strength and power of the Gualich, together with the brutal weight of his double-handed broadsword were wearing her down.
Added to that, the darting scorpion-sting meant her concentration had to be absolute. The thing had almost impaled her a couple of times. Once, it had missed her eye by a fraction as she barely moved her head swiftly enough, almost to present her neck to the slashing red-bladed broadsword.
Twisting on her heel, Liang came in low, cutting at the giant monstrosity's legs. She heard Jakut's mocking laughter echo in her head as he casually lowered his sword to block her strike.
The Storm Blade bounced off the red blade, the recoil sending ripples of pain up Liang's arm and shoulder. The huge blade swept down at her head and she roll
ed away, regaining her feet at a safe distance.
Both combatants paused, regarding each other. Liang's chest heaved as she sucked in air, while Jakut's mouth spread in a malevolent grin. It galled Liang that the Gualich seemed to be toying with her. The scorpion-sting lashed forward like a striking serpent, but Liang side-stepped, her left-hand blade sweeping out in a tight arc, slicing clean through the tail. The sting clattered to the floor as the tail swiftly retracted in a spray of dark blood.
The short bark of triumph, which escaped Liang's lips at her small success, turned into a gasp of horror as a large serpent's head, mouth rimmed with curved fangs dripping venom grew out from the stump. Jakut's laughter echoed again as she hurriedly hurled herself back as the fangs snapped at her, a splatter of venom searing the side of her face, making her cry in pain.
Jakut moved forward ponderously, his sword whistling through the air. Liang ducked under the blade, her right-hand sword flashing out in a reverse cut. It sheared right through the huge monstrosity’s leg. Carrying on with her momentum, she spun and slashed her other sword clean through its other leg. Spinning away, she expected to hear the abomination crash to the floor, but what she saw made her gasp in shock and lose all hope.
Inconceivably, Jakut was balanced on the stumps of his severed legs in a growing pool of dark blood. As she watched in horror, the legs regenerated, growing from the stumps longer than before so the demon towered over her. To compound matters, the freshly grown limbs ended in the huge taloned paws of a great cat. The talons, as long as her swords, retracted and extended, tapping and clicking on the floor in a mocking symphony.
Horrified, Pagan rolled to his feet, and drew his sword. Springing forward, he plunged it deep into Jakut's back, and had to hurriedly duck out of the way as the snake-head reared and snapped at him.
Casca, standing by the far wall out of the way of the lashing snake-head tail, and swinging swords, concentrated deeply to maintain his mind-shield, for he knew they were all doomed should he falter.
But a curiously detached part of him had time to marvel at the surreal, horrific absurdity of it all, as he watched his friends battle a seemingly indestructible shape-shifting monstrosity from the blackest of drug-induced nightmares. His mind flashed back to Zucross's illustrations he had seen in what seemed a lifetime ago in the great library. Those had brought him out in a cold sweat, but here he was, face-to-face with such, with his very soul at stake.
Pagan and Liang moved nimbly around the grotesquely muscled behemoth that was Jakut, avoiding the sweeping broadsword, lashing venomous tail and razor-sharp talons. All the while, the Storm Blades slashed and cut, inflicting terrible wounds, which promptly sealed themselves.
It appeared to Pagan, the wounds were taking more time to heal, but he couldn't be sure. The tail reared before his face, the serpent’s mouth opened and a trail of venom shot out. Pagan screamed in pain as it seared his ducking head, and the smell of his burning flesh assailed his nostrils.
The snake-head darted at his face again with blinding speed, but Pagan, fired by his anger, disgust, and the enhancement of his Storm Blade, was faster. Swaying to one side, his sword flashed out, shearing through the serpent's jaw and skull. It didn't regenerate.
“I think its tiring!” Pagan yelled. Both redoubled their efforts, the three Storm Blades cutting and rending in blurs of silver-blue light. Jakut fell back, the awful wounds on his gross body no longer healing. Splashes of yellow blood – dark in the gloomy sickly light, covered Liang and Pagan, and great big pools lay on the floor. Liang was bleeding from a cut high on the thigh which impaired her movement, and her right arm was covered in blood from a deep puncture wound high on her shoulder.
As the two pressed forward, Jakut's body shimmered, his limbs retracted into his torso and numerous tentacles as thick as a man's trunk sprung out, lashing and questing. Pagan and Liang sprang back out of reach, and watched as Jakut's torso changed into a dark insubstantial roiling mass with a huge black lidless eye in the centre.
Casca pushed back against the wall, eyes wide in the face of this new horror. Feeling a throbbing pain begin at the base of his neck, and spreading into his skull, he knew the Gualich was attempting a new mental attack. He groaned and squeezed his eyes shut as the pain intensified. The pressure built, but Casca gritted his teeth and fought with all he had.
This wasn't a battle involving skill with weapons, or muscle and sinew, but an unseen one of the mind and spirit. Casca had always believed in the power of his mind – of his intellect. But there was much more than intellect involved here. This was about who he was, and his determination to hold fast against this abomination, not to let his friends down, not to let his children and his loved ones down. And yes, not to let the world down. It was a crushing responsibility, but one he knew he had been born to bear.
His mouth opened wide in a scream, as he sought to relieve the immense pressure in his brain-his head-his mind. His eyes bulged near-out of their sockets, and blood streamed from his nostrils. His breath came in short shallow gasps, and he felt his head swimming through the lack of air. He couldn't feel Elphemina's presence and guessed the Gualich had somehow locked her out.
A momentary panic hit him, but he savagely quelled it. Breathe, breathe, maintain your focus, don't fall apart... The soft velvet cushion of darkness beckoned – so seductive, there would be no more pain, it would all be over...let it go Casca… let it go... lower yourself into its alluring softness. So welcoming...
Not quite knowing why, for he had no prior training in the matter, he slowed down his breathing and began taking deep lower-abdominal breaths. His vision cleared and his heart stopped hammering in his chest. The intolerable pressure in his head remained, but regardless, he maintained his concentration. Power from a previously untapped source surged through him, and his shield held firm. It grew stronger. A luminescence spread from him, enveloping Liang and Pagan, deepening into a roseate glow. The pressure eased and dissipated.
Pagan and Liang were unaware of the silent battle being fought by Casca, but as one they sensed it was the right time to strike. Liang's arms flashed forward, the Storm Blades spun through the air, sinking deep into Jakut's eye, Pagan's sword only a heartbeat behind.
All three reeled backward as Jakut's scream of agony reverberated in their heads. When they looked again, the soul stealer had disappeared. All that remained were the three Storm Blades on the floor, and noxious pools of Gualich blood.
Sacrifice
Upon leaving Jakut's tower, Pagan, Liang and Casca were relieved to see Moon and Elphemina had also survived their ordeal in Surgat's monolith. Now, all five stood on the piece of clear ground a few paces in front of the twin pillars of the portal to the Gualich home world.
Elphemina had healed what wounds each carried. But she could do little about the haunted staring eyes– the legacy of having faced their deepest darkest fears, drawn forth by the mind-sorcery of the Gualich.
Moon's mood wasn't lifted when Elphemina announced only Pagan and Liang would accompany her to the Gualich home world. “We started this pigging thing together, so it’s only proper we finish it together,” he said angrily.
“There is sense in what you say, Axeman,” the High Priestess told him, “but needs must. The world of the demons is a perilous place. We didn't truly kill Surgat and Jakut, but only forced them to flee the bite of our weapons. Joined with their five brothers – Beleth, Narok, Kalor, Taron and Kbari, their power will be magnified, and their wrath, terrible. The Terrene – the globe we travel in, will offer us some protection, but I will have to supplement it. The drain may be such, that if we had to protect five, the Gualich might destroy us, or I might not have enough strength to destroy the portal. She glanced over her shoulder at the pillars. “But first...”
Elphemina moved to the gateway and asked her companions to stand back. Lifting her right arm, she pointed at the pillars and whispere
d a few words. A golden light lanced from her fingers and played over the sigils carved into the pillars, gouging and erasing them. Satisfied with her efforts, she turned to Moon. “Axeman, when we are gone, take your axe and reduce this...gateway to the pit into rubble. Leave no stone standing.”
Moon nodded grimly. “Aye Priestess, old Ausak here will make a fine job of it.”
“The only way to make certain the Gualich never return is by destroying both portals – this, and the one on the Gualich home world. This gateway...” Elphemina pointed at the gouged pillars, “...acts as a signpost, and the sigils I just destroyed, were the keys. Even if the Gualich manage to rebuild the gateway on their home world, they will be unable to access our world again unless someone else is foolish enough to construct another gateway here.” As she spoke, her eyes flitted briefly to Casca, who caught her look, and an unspoken understanding passed between them.
Elphemina then addressed Casca directly. “With this gateway destroyed there will be no need for you to call upon Castillan to work his magick through you. I know you were never happy at the thought of being used as a conduit.”
Casca nodded. “Yes, Priestess, the thought filled me with some dread, and I thank you for sparing me it.” Then a thought occurred to him, furrowing his brow. “But how will you return once...both gateways are destroyed?”
“A good question, Casca,” Elphemina said. “The Terrene is attuned to the temple at Kandros and should return us there once we complete our task.”
Seeing the bemused looks on her companions’ faces, Elphemina paused before continuing. “Forgive me, my friends, I should have told you more about our means of travel. Light moves at a speed beyond comprehension. The Terrene is formed of the greatest light source of all – the sun, and travels the old pathways, which are the echoes of all reality – our world and... others, if you will. It's much simpler to travel within our reality. Under normal circumstances, we couldn't travel to the Gualich home world, for the Terrene isn't tuned to its vibrations, nor do I know its location. But we can move through the portal to the demons’ world – along the path they opened – within the protection of the Terrene. Returning should be straightforward – for it’s attuned to our world…but isn't certain.”
Elphemina took a deep breath, then fixed her gaze on Liang and Pagan. “The Gualich will become aware of our presence once we breach the portal and we may not survive their onslaught or be able to return.” Liang reached out, gripped Pagan's hand, and he turned to look at her. No words were needed.
Elphemina stepped back a few paces, closed her eyes and raised her arms above her head, fingers touching. Whispering a few words, she lowered her arms, prescribing a circle. A golden globe formed, enlarging into a Terrene. She turned to Moon and Casca. “This is attuned to the tavern and will return you there.”
Moon stood, uncertain what to do next, glancing at each of his companions in turn. Then he stepped forward and placed a huge hand on Pagan's shoulder. “I knew I would see some rare sights when I came south, but never a black man or pigging demons! It was...good fighting with you my friend.” His voice caught, and he cleared his throat. “All this fighting in the foul air of this demon-cursed place dries a man's throat...with nothing to drink in sight.” He grinned and squeezed Pagan's shoulder. “I know no Sutr-cursed demons will best you. You and I will drink Casca's tavern dry on your return, and I'll even share a pipe of that foul-smelling stuff with you!”
Turning to Liang, he shook his head, wonder in his eyes. “When I first saw you, I knew you were a warrior not to be trifled with, but Sutr’s teeth, lass, even the Valkcries and aye, the Thunderer himself, would be honoured to stand with you. Leaning forward, he kissed her on top of the head.
Moving to Elphemina, Moon inclined his head, gently grasped and lifted her arm and kissed her palm. “We couldn't have done this without you, Lady. You have a harsh tongue atimes, but a man needs to be put in his place every now and again. I owe you my life and will never forget you.”
He turned and walked away. His back to his companions, he stood looking at the twin towers of the Gualich, barely visible in the gloom as they rose into the moonless sky. Silhouetted in the night, his massive axe hanging loosely in his hand, and the light of the Terrene illuminating the shattered landscape, Moon looked like some fearsome god of war surveying the aftermath of an earth-shattering battle.
Casca walked over to Pagan and both men gripped forearms. Pagan smiled at his friend. “We will return, have no fear, my friend. Tell Aeneas I will see him soon.”
Casca nodded, trying hard to control his emotions, then turned to Liang. He reached out and clasped her hand. “Pagan is a lucky man to have found you. I look forward to spending more time with you when you return.”
Liang nodded and smiled. “I too look forward to that, Casca.”
Turning to Elphemina, Casca bowed deeply. “I thank you Lady, for helping me carry this burden, and for showing me everything you have. And I know you will do all you can to ensure my friends return safely.”
Elphemina nodded, her eyes grave. “We all hope to return safely Casca.”
Elphemina, the High Priestess and guardian of the old ways of Mithros, turned to Liang and Pagan. “Come, let’s go finish this.” Raising her arms, she formed another Terrene. The three moved to it and disappeared into its interior.
The golden sphere glowed so brightly, Moon and Casca had to shade their eyes and look away. It floated off the ground and disappeared into the gateway leading to the Gualich home- world.