The carriage rattled down the pitted road, axles screeching, suspension groaning under the strain. A handful of ghouls in the livery of Necron rode alongside the bouncing landau, their steeds thin horse-corpses with bared teeth and glowing eyes. One of the escort ghouls held aloft a banner as he rode, a black flag emblazoned with the Standard of Rutile: a black tower imposed over a green streak of lightning.
The company was riding through a forest of bent and twisted pines that loomed over the road like mourners over an open grave. Most woodlands in Leria had died in the many twilit years since Eagoth's victory, but the Hag Wood clung ferociously to life, infested with great spiders and corpse-eaters, pig-men and nosferatu, heretic liches and outcast revenants, among other menaces elsewhere eradicated by Eagoth's legions.
The dangers of the wood, however, did not concern the Thing within the carriage, sitting curled and silent and still in the shadows. It, after all, was far more terrible than anything the Hag Wood could hide. Indeed, It rather relished the prospect of battle with one of the truly great monstrosities said to lurk in the depths of the forest: a spider's corpse would serve as a fitting gift to the Necromancer.
Alac, there was no time to go hunting just now, and a spider was unlikely to attack a caravan of the undead. It was the Thing's understanding that they mostly cannibalized each other in these famine-times. The Thing's lipless mouth curled into an approximation of a smile at the thought. At least It was not alone in its constant hunger.
It felt the carriage slow, then jolt to a hard stop.
It hissed. Delay was unacceptable. It needed to be back at the Spire in time for the Feast of Withered Hearts, merely eight nights hence. The Necromancer himself was due to award It for bringing the Bile Spewer to heel, avoiding a potentially costly revolt in the East.
One of Its many thin hands wrapped around the dark metal of its stave and another reached for the door of the carriage. Perhaps the Great Worm would have mercy on these idiot ghouls in the Ashpits Beyond...but It would not. After all, was it not a Finger of Eagoth, most favored of the Six?
To be failed even slightly was intolerable.
It pulled its shrouded, serpentine form from the carriage, like a great centipede uncurling itself from beneath a rock.
Outside, the ghouls and their mounts were gone, and the horse-corpses that pulled Its carriage. Cinders burned in the mud of the road. Bits of charred bone smoked. It sniffed the air, flat nostrils flaring. The air stunk of spent magic, spicy and sour. Delicious. The Thing breathed in, Its first breath in many years. What remained of ancient lungs cracked and crumbled within Its slender chest. It hardly noticed.
Thu-dum
It cocked its head, snaggle-fanged mouth falling open, tongue uncurling.
Was that....
Thu-dum
...a heartbeat?
It turned toward the sound, eyes on its face and forehead narrowed to slits.
In the middle of the road stood a man in a mudspattered traveling cloak and heavy boots. He was shaved-bald, with a weather worn face, dark skin turned ashen from too many days in Lerian gloom. His eyes were closed.
He held a one-sided blade of dark metal in one hand.
The Thing hissed, several hands wrapping around the twisted metal of its stave.
"A long time since a living challenger has-"
"No more words," said the man, and he charged at It. The Thing drew itself to its full considerable height, its multitude of corpse-hands producing daggers and swords from within Its ragged robes. It leveled its stave at its attacker, firing a bolt of green lightning. The spell arced almost lazily from the black gem atop the staff, unhurriedly cutting through the air. The man caught it on his blade, uttered something in a tongue long dead, and the spell fizzled, emerald gobs of ectoplasm collapsing into the mud of the road.
Fire ran down the length of the man's blade, while the Thing's many weapons ignited with green corpse-light. The man closed the distance and leapt at the monster in a whirl of red flame.
The battle was brief but intense, both combatants a blur of blades and spell-craft. The air around them shimmered, over-saturated with magic. Small rifts in reality opened, unstable doorways into realms of utter madness.
In the end, the Thing's raw power overcame the man's considerable finesse and skill, and he lay in the mud, gasping, bleeding from a dozen wounds all over, crimson streams winding and pooling in the churned mud of the road.
The Thing brooded over him, yellowed drool leaking from its fanged maw, like a great snake considering a mouse before it strikes.
"Where did you come from, little wizard?" It hissed, "Were you sent? By whom? Answer me, and I will raise you again, present you to the Great Necromancer. Perhaps he will, in time, grant you freedom in undeath. He values skill such as you have shown..."
Blood burbled from the man's mouth. He spat it into the mud of the road.
"Eagoth's Art is strong, lich," gasped the man.
"Our Power is unrivaled," agreed the Thing.
"But there is much you have forgotten in your long half-life."
"Oh?"
The man sat up, grinning, teeth scarlet with his own blood, and...the road sat up with him. Rather, a towering figure composed of mud pulled itself up behind him, resolving into the rough shape of a huge man. Little streams of the wizard's spilled blood crawled across the golem's dripping flesh like crimson worms, animating it.
The Thing hissed and struck at the golem with its many corpse-blades, sent bolts of bright and angry green at the lumbering monster from its stave. Little good it did. It hit only mud, while the ribbons of wizard-blood slid easily away from the lich's weapons and spells.
The golem embraced the Thing, bringing its huge weight down on it as it struggled and screamed and sank into the road. Mud churned, boiled, geysers of steam erupted from the road.
Then all was still.
The wizard picked himself up calmly, and with a gesture the little ribbons of his blood returned to him from the mound of caked mud that had been the golem. They slid back into his wounds, which clotted immediately at their return.
He picked up his sword and sauntered over to where the Thing had been crushed. He picked up the Thing's stave and, with a little effort wrested the black gem from its tip, sliding it into a satchel at his waist.
"Two more to go," he said to no one in particular, "and such complacent prey."
He laughed. It was the only laughter in all of Leria.
Marrone
josephb
