“Katim, left flank,” Cræosh barked. “Gork, right. I'll check the center. Belrotha, Jhurpess, and Gimmol will fill in the gaps and provide reinforcement should any of the three of us find anything.”
“Are we giving orders…again, Cræosh?” Katim asked him. “I thought we'd broken you…of that particular habit.”
“Do you have a better idea?” Cræosh challenged.
“As a matter of fact, I…don't.”
“Then get the fuck moving, and save the arguments for some other time when I might give a shit what you think.”
Katim flared her nostrils at that, but said nothing more.
Slowly, the squad spread out, moving carefully ahead. Most of the cavern looked just like what they'd already seen, but the far left portion…flowed.
“Ancestors,” Cræosh exclaimed. The others could only nod in agreement.
If the hallway had contained a river of worms, this was the ocean to which it ran. Cræosh would not have believed that all the worms and all the maggots in all the world could have formed so large a mass. It possessed its own tides, that sea, caused by the individual writhing of millions of component creatures. It ebbed and fell, sometimes subsuming this rock here, other times disgorging that stalagmite there.
No, not the rising and falling of a tide, Cræosh decided reluctantly. The beating of some vast heart.
“So,” Gork said, grinning through clenched teeth, “which one of them do you suppose is Sabryen?”
“NONE! I AM THY RIGHTFUL KING! I AM SABRYEN!”
The expanse surged again, the first half of that horrid heartbeat, but this time, when it contracted, it left a figure standing in its wake. Arms spread wide, King Sabryen emerged from the embrace of his loving subjects.
The Charnel King certainly hadn't stinted on his curse. From the waist up, Sabryen's flesh was pale, tinged with the faint blue of death, decorated with ragged tears that flapped like ghastly lips when he moved. A few strands of thick, stringy hair clung to his skull, and a thin film of maggots roiled in his empty eye sockets.
And this was his better half. His flesh was torn at the waist, jagged and uneven. The tip of a spine dangled obscenely from within, tracing random patterns in the dust. From beneath his dead flesh his innards drooped, intestines and strings of muscle and meat—only they were no longer organs at all, but unthinkably long worms that tensed and clenched and pushed his body across the floor.
Gimmol retched. Jhurpess whined and covered his head. Even Cræosh looked somewhat greener than usual. “I thought King Morthûl was bad,” he whispered hoarsely.
Katim licked her chops, a thin string of drool splattering the toes of her boots. “No troll alive has anything…like that waiting on them…in the next world,” she cooed.
“Is that all you can think about?!” It was as near to panic as Cræosh had ever heard his own voice, but he couldn't help it.
“What else is…there?”
“PUT THY WEAPONS ASIDE!” Sabryen boomed at them, the profane thing that was his body sliding ever nearer. “THOU CANNOT HARM ME! AND I NEED NOT HARM THEE. THOU SERVE THE USURPER, BUT THOU ART NOT MY FOE.” He spread his arms even wider and smiled, making his face even more obscene. “I AM A BENEVOLENT KING, AND I GRANT THEE THIS OPTION. TURN THY BACKS UPON THE FOUL USURPER OF MY THRONE! SWEAR TO ME THY ALLEGIANCE, THY FEALTY! THOU SHALL BE THE HIGHEST OF MY SUBJECTS. LAY LOW THINE ARMS, AND THOU SHALL BE EXALTED BEFORE ALL MEN. WOULD THY CURRENT MASTER, THY CHARNEL KING, PROVE SO GENEROUS?”
“He'd prove even less generous once he found out we'd turned traitor on him,” Gimmol mouthed quietly.
“You know,” Cræosh called more loudly, “you're the second, um, person to ask us to betray Morthûl.”
“INDEED.” Sabryen sounded less than impressed. “AND WHAT REPLY DID THOU MAKE TO THE FIRST?”
“We told him to pull his ass cheeks over his face and sing hymns.”
“I don't remember anyone saying that,” Gork said.
“Shut up!” Katim rasped.
“I SEE.” The maggots contorting in Sabryen's sockets seemed to grow agitated. “AND WOULD THOU MAKE SO RUDE A RESPONSE TO MY OFFER AS WELL?”
Cræosh made a show of pondering for a moment. “We don't have to,” he finally said. “Can you suggest a more polite way of saying ‘Fuck off sideways’?”
“I SUSPECTED THOU WERE FOOLS, TO SERVE THY TREACHEROUS LORD SO WILLINGLY.” The last traces of affability had dripped from his voice like the roaches cascading from the Dark Lord he so hated. “STILL DID I GRANT THEE THE OPPORTUNITY TO SERVE ME VOLUNTARILY, THAT NONE MIGHT CALL ME AN UNREASONABLE MAN.”
“None might call you a man at all,” Cræosh observed. “Spread out!” he hissed at the others, who were already doing just that.
“BUT WILLINGLY OR NOT, THOU WILL SERVE! ALL OF KIROL SYRRETH SHALL BE MINE AGAIN!”
“I think that's our cue,” Gork said.
“FEAST, MY CHILDREN!” Sabryen cried, his horrific innards thrusting him across the ground at astounding speeds.
“Cræosh!” Gimmol shouted as the entire quivering mass of worms began to flow toward them, “we're going to have a hard time getting to Sabryen if we're covered in that!”
The orc glanced aside from the oncoming king long enough to curse. “Can you slow it down?” he called back.
The gremlin shook his head. “Even at full strength, I couldn't hope to affect that! I—”
“Gimmol, go help kill man with worm-guts,” Belrotha said. “Me can stop worms.”
“Belrotha, no! You can't—”
“Gimmol not argue, or me get mad!” she screamed at him. “Gimmol not want me to get mad at him! Me be very sorry after, but Gimmol still be squished into very small lump, and me not be able to undo!”
“I'll just go help with Sabryen,” the gremlin agreed uneasily. Almost unwillingly, he turned away.
Belrotha offered a single grunt of approval and then calmly surveyed the onrushing tide of worms, maggots, millipedes, and other things for which she had no names. Even she was smart enough to realize that her fists and her sword would prove useless against such a foe. But not once in the entire history of her race had futility ever prevented an ogre from acting—and besides, Belrotha had a plan.
It was a new experience for her, having a plan; but she'd watched the others do it, and it didn't seem that tricky. What she had learned in her months of traveling with this motley group was that “having a plan” basically meant “finding a new way to kill whatever it was that had caused the need for the plan in the first place.”
Belrotha took a step backward, bent down, and smoothly lifted one of the massive slabs that lay strewn about the cavern like the toys of a messy (not to mention exceedingly large) child. Fist squish only a few. Sword squish only a few. Big rock squish many.
The stone, taller than she was and equally as wide, crashed into the oncoming tide. Ichor and sludge spurted from beneath, and the ogre imagined she could hear the death screams of a thousand thousand worms. Grinning wildly, she reached for the next rock.
The others were faring somewhat less well. The instant Sabryen had shuffled into range, Cræosh leapt forward, sword raised high. With a vicious cry he brought it down, determined to cleave Sabryen's head completely in half.
It didn't happen that way. With a contemptuous twist of his arm, the hideous thing caught the blade in an open palm. Sword broke skin, but only a trickle of a thick, brackish sludge oozed from the wound. The shock of impact ran up the blade and through the orc's arms, very nearly enough to make him drop the weapon. Sabryen's other hand slammed into Cræosh's chest, and the orc found himself on his back a dozen feet away. Groggily, his chest screaming in agony, he staggered back to his feet. A massive palm print had been dented into his breastplate, and only the steel's protection, feeble as it had proved, had saved him from a new array of broken ribs.
Katim's chirrusk whistled, its razor-tipped barbs sinking into the flesh of Sabryen's extended arm. She twisted and yanked, the chain snapping
taut. It was a traditional trollish maneuver, supposedly capable of toppling any opponent through a combination of agony and main strength. Katim had once seen it used to pull down an ogre even larger than Belrotha.
But here and now, she might as well have been trying to topple the Iron Keep with a skein of yarn. The chain reached the end of its slack and just stopped. Her mightiest tug couldn't so much as move the creature's arm, and he appeared perfectly content to ignore a degree of pain that should have sent any living thing into shock.
Sabryen flexed that arm in the opposite direction. Katim, snarling like a rabid dog, allowed the chirrusk to slide from her fist rather than find herself slamming into the floor at the worm-thing's “feet.” The former king glanced curiously at the chain dangling from his skin and then, without so much as a flinch, tore the barbs loose from his flesh and dropped it behind him. Grinding her teeth so loud the others could hear it, Katim drew her axe.
The darkness cooked away, sizzling beneath bolts of flame that Gimmol, face squeezed tight with effort, hurled from his trembling fists. They were feeble indeed, thanks to the gremlin's fatigue, but Sabryen flinched, if only a little. Behind him, waiting for just such an opening, Gork struck. The kah-rahahk tore through the limp flesh of the worm-thing's back, just above the ragged edge.
It proved about as useful as the chirrusk. Looking more irritated than pained, Sabryen pulled away from the barbed weapon, leaving reeking gobbets of flesh stuck to the blade. The creature twisted, reaching a hand toward the kobold, yet Gork refused to run.
Had Sabryen actually known Gork, he'd have recognized that for the suspicious gesture that it was.
From the shadows to the left, Jhurpess lunged at his distracted foe. With every muscle in his simian body, the bugbear swung his heavy club into the side of Sabryen's skull.
The crack of impact reverberated throughout the chasm; Sabryen shuddered and fell, flopping limply on the stone. Jhurpess and Gork grinned at one another, perhaps pleased at having defeated their enemy, perhaps at having shown up Cræosh and Katim both.
Those grins dropped away swiftly enough when the cursed king, looking none the worse for wear save for a new flap of skin hanging loose from his scalp, rose smoothly to his full height.
“I GROW TIRED OF THEE.” His lips quivered, his fingers twitched, and Gimmol hurled himself to the floor, shrieking “Spell!”
A wave of force, unseen but for a brief shimmer as it passed and the swirling dust in its wake, burst from the old king. Blood fountained from Jhurpess's nose and mouth; he was thrown back by a blow Belrotha could scarcely have matched, sliding across the stone until he fetched up against the base of a great stalagmite. One hand clasping his club, the other scrabbling at the stone, he struggled to rise—and for a few moments he failed, weighed down by muscles that refused to obey and a pounding ache that refused to fade.
Cræosh was slashing away at Sabryen once more, screaming at his allies not to let up for an instant. For long minutes, the battle raged. Cræosh and Katim and Gork slashed and stabbed, delivering wound after wound that should have slain any living thing. And Sabryen ignored each wound as he had the first, immune to pain, too mighty to fall. The goblins’ only victory, if victory you could call it, was that they had so far prevented him from casting any further magics.
It was a losing strategy, and the orc knew it. Sooner or later, one of goblins would tire; not much, perhaps, but enough. Sabryen would cast another spell, or land a blow solid enough to put one of them down for good. And then the others would follow within seconds. So they continued to fight a battle they could not win—their efforts punctuated occasionally by the sudden report of one of Belrotha's stones landing across the chamber—because every other option was even worse.
Cræosh retreated a few steps, allowing Katim to dart across and open another rent in Sabryen's torso. The creature lashed out, not at the troll passing before him, but at the more distant orc. Worms, hurled by Sabryen as they'd been by his servitors in the tundra, pattered across Cræosh's chest in a stinking rain. He fell back, screaming, beating at the skin exposed above the steel of his breastplate, muscles already burning as the first of the parasites burrowed into his flesh.
And then Gimmol was beside him, thrusting a ceramic vial at the flailing orc. “Drink! Drink, dammit!”
The orc was already too far gone to recognize why he was being given such an order; clearly, it hadn't penetrated his gibbering mind that he should just have grabbed one of his own elixirs. Nevertheless, he obeyed. The bitter fluid sluiced down his throat, choking him, but the worms ceased their digging the instant the stuff reached his gut. One last instant of agony, as the dying creatures spasmed within his body, and then they were still. With a heartfelt nod to the gremlin, bulling through his lingering pain and a growing pall of despair, Cræosh struggled upright once more.
If dying on his feet was the last victory he could hope for, then by all his ancestors, die on his feet he would.
Clinging to the base of the stalagmite for balance, Jhurpess watched as his friend nearly fell to the terrible worms, as the tiny gremlin saved him in the nick of time. He gasped in grateful relief—he'd already put so much work into the orc, he'd hate to have to start over—and then froze. He watched, not as Cræosh hurled himself back into the fray, but as Gimmol's hand dropped to his pouch, fingering the last of his elixirs. And the bugbear's entire face lit up with inspiration.
Not, despite what his companions thought of him, as foreign a sensation to Jhurpess as it was to Belrotha. Sure, he was a creature of instinct, not intellect; his options were primarily drawn from the rather limited selection of “eat it, kill it, fuck it, or flee.” A bugbear's life was, on the whole, not a complex one.
But while Jhurpess might not know much, what he knew, he knew well. And Jhurpess knew nature. He knew its ins and outs, its patterns, and—as Gimmol had learned to his chagrin the day they first met—he knew its hazards.
Slowly Jhurpess stood, shifting his balance from the stone to his own two feet. He forced himself to be patient, methodical, despite the raging battle; to ensure that each limb was pulling its own weight, that Sabryen's magic had caused no crippling wound. Only then, satisfied that everything worked despite the lingering pain, did he begin a wide circle around the fray.
Careful step after careful step; between one and the next, Jhurpess reached into the tiny pouch he wore slung on the same harness that bound his bow to his leather armor. From it, he removed the first of his own ceramic vials.
Sabryen struck, sending Katim staggering. Only her phenomenal dexterity kept her on her feet, and even then it was a near thing. Cræosh stepped in to fill the gap, offering Katim a few precious seconds to recover—and Jhurpess the instant he needed.
He was beside her in a flash, reaching out with a hairy hand. “Mouth,” he grunted, placing the vial in Katim's palm.
“I've got my own, Jhurpess, I…do not need—”
“Not Katim's mouth. King's mouth! If gunk poisons little worms…”
Katim's eyes grew wide and her jaw actually gaped. “Then maybe it poisons the…big worm,” she breathed. “I’m an idiot!
Jhurpess shrugged. “That okay. Katim has other redeeming qualities.”
The troll nodded and flowed fluidly back into the fray. Jhurpess wrapped both hands around his club and waited.
“Cræosh!”
The orc spared a millisecond to glance at the approaching troll. “You alive?”
“Back off!” she commanded. “Take a moment to…catch your breath.”
“That'll give him time to cast something, you idiot!” he shouted, barely interposing his sword in time to catch a dreadful overhand blow that threatened to cave in his skull.
“That's the point!”
“What? I—”
One of Sabryen's wormy innards swept low, nearly taking the orc's feet out from under him and leaving a swath of slime across his ankles. Cræosh staggered, and the cursed king smacked him aside with a casual backhand.
Come on—come on…
Sabryen raised his hands as she'd hoped he would and opened his mouth to begin the incantation that would have rained fire down upon his foes, or swept them aside in an eldritch wave, or dissolved the flesh from their bones.
Katim almost, almost wished she had someone to pray to as she cocked back an arm and threw.
The whiplike snap of Sabryen's jawbone dislocating was lost in the tinkling, musical sound of teeth raining in pieces onto the floor. He staggered, gagging, reaching up to tug the strange obstruction from between his jaws. His cheeks spasmed as muscles strained against one another, and it was only the vial itself—cracked but not shattered—that kept his unattached jawbone from flopping loosely this way and that.
And then Jhurpess stepped in and swung a devastating underhand blow, bringing the tip of his club up into Sabryen's chin.
The creature's head snapped back, the shattering ceramic audible despite the layer of muffling flesh around it. Shards of vial—and indeed, of bone—imbedded themselves in the roof of Sabryen's mouth, severing his tongue at the roots. Jets of Havarren's elixir spurted from between his lips, tinged black with Sabryen's tarlike blood.
Limbs flailing, broken visage tilted impossibly back, the ancient king of Kirol Syrreth screamed to shake the foundations of the earth in which they stood.
“You think one vial's enough?” Cræosh shouted dubiously, wincing away from the unending sound.
Gork popped up from the rocks behind Sabryen like some mad gopher. “Let's find out!” The kobold jumped, latching onto the fleshy torso. Claws clinging despite the creature's violent spasms, he scampered up until he could get a solid grasp around the king's head. He yanked back and down, clinging to Sabryen's forehead, forcing wide the bloodfilled maw. “Who's first?” the kobold yelled, his legs dangling beneath him in mockery of Sabryen's own thrashing limbs.
Cræosh and Katim grinned, already reaching for their packs.
By the time they'd forced the fourth elixir down the creature's throat, the spasms had grown too strong for Gork to hang on any longer. The squad now stood and watched as the great King Sabryen lay twitching and frothing on the stone. Something about the wormy tendrils grasping at nothing in particular made the sight particularly revolting.