The Undying God (14 page)

“Damnation!” he cursed. Two Zziriths
regarded the newcomer and circled him menacingly. One uttered
several insectoid clicks from its head, possibly conveying commands
to the other hunter or merely cleaning its teeth before a
meal.

Hrioshango hoped for the
former.

He looked down at the long sword in his
hand and took comfort that he still possessed his weapon. A hoof
slammed into Hrioshango and the world passed him by. He landed on
his back and tumbled over the lip of the jawless mouth. He grasped
its slimy edge, careful to avoid impaling his hands on the
protruding fangs.

“No!” he cried. “Hrioshango cannot be
eaten!”

To his surprise, the slave came into
view and his arm lunged forward. He yanked Hrioshango out of reach
of the cavernous mouth, and it gurgled in displeasure.

Battlemaster Venexa bolted from her
seat at the spectacle. The slave renowned as Sitzol had rescued a
helpless creature from death. Nothing could surpass her anger in
that moment.

Hrioshango ogled the man with shock,
utterly speechless.

The man looked into his eyes with pity,
as if in sorrow to see the darkling enslaved. Hrioshango, too,
could not believe that he felt sympathy for the
prisoner.

The abyss of teeth gurgled again, a
sound so unbearable that it briefly robbed Sitzol of his hearing.
He almost preferred the permanent loss, deaf to the screams of the
dying. Slowly, he began to approach the mouth to the wild roars of
the crowd. They hungered for his death. With a cursory glance, he
looked at the spectators. He was only a pawn in this
debauchery.

Again he approached the grotesque
chasm, treading lightly over the bloodstained sand. Gripping a
serrated fang with two hands, Sitzol looked over his shoulder at
Venexa. It snapped from the membrane with a sickly sound and Sitzol
staggered backward. The creature to which the fang belonged
thrashed beneath the sands. To Sitzol’s credit, he didn’t fall flat
on his back or keel forward into its stomach.

He swerved to his right just as the
tiers of seats quaked. Fissures branched through the marble tiers
seating the savage spectators. His eyes widened as he followed the
path of the widening fissure. He darted toward the edge of the
living abyss again and seized another fang. Spectators cried out as
they felt the shudder of the behemoth.

“Stop him!” Venexa screamed, seizing
her warhammer. A guard frantically turned a winch to raise a
portcullis to the arena. “That bastard! Kill him!”

Sitzol extracted another fang from the
edge of the mouth. The behemoth groaned and writhed again. A tremor
pulsed through the arena and several tiers of seats collapsed in a
cloud of debris. Spectators screamed as they fell among the ruins.
The guard worked furiously to open the passage. At last, the
portcullis rose and guards filtered into the
battlegrounds.

To Hrioshango’s astonishment, dozens of
spectators disappeared among the collapsing seats. He couldn’t help
but admire the slave’s potential for mayhem.

The sands shifted and a wave of earth
spewed forth. Hrioshango almost thought he saw a tentacle slither
among the sand, retreating to a hidden source.

Sitzol watched as a dozen guards
invaded the arena. Neither he nor Hrioshango could afford the
guards to take them alive. They would face more than slavery for
their insubordination.

Sitzol turned on a nearby Zzirith
without hesitation. The monster reared up and lashed out with its
hooves. To Hrioshango’s surprise, Sitzol scrambled on top of its
back as if embarking on a suicide mission. The Zzirith pounced to
its feet and thrashed angrily.

Sitzol reached behind his head and
seized the tail as it thrust, crushing it firmly in his grip. He
twisted it to the right, exaggerating the motion. His instincts
paid off and the Zzirith darted in that direction. Hrioshango
watched in awe as Sitzol maneuvered the beast by its
tail.

He steered the creature toward the
slavers assembled at the perimeter of the arena. The guards
scrambled to form a defensive barrier, adjusting their polearms to
repel him. Sitzol gripped its tail like a vice. The animal swerved
under the pain inflicted, slamming into the guards.

Sitzol leaped from the beast and landed
on his feet. He crossed his forearms in front of him as a spear
thrust toward his neck. He barely trapped the polearm between the
blades on his wrists. Something hard slammed against the side of
his face, stunning him. A hot and wet feeling accompanied the
scarlet that suddenly blurred his vision, and he registered the
vicious wound to his temple.

He slumped to his knees and a spear’s
shaft pounded his abdominals. Several guards overwhelmed him as
Hrioshango helplessly watched. Sitzol lifted his head and looked at
the darkling, blood mingled with his defeated
expression.

Hrioshango felt an impulse to help the
warrior, and he almost did so. He could defeat the guards with his
chaos powers, but they would potentially destroy himself, assuming
they responded at all. And if he failed, the slave’s sacrifice
would be in vain and they would both perish. Hrioshango backed away
like a stray dog. He ran far across the arena but he looked back
again, startled to see the battlemaster approach the vulnerable
man. In her hands, she bore a warhammer. The spectacle brought wild
cheers to the audience.

Hrioshango escaped into the underground
cells so he could not witness the execution.

Gratitude was an alien concept to
Hrioshango, one he had never experienced before. He would not
forget the slave’s sacrifice, sparing him from a public death.
Again, he felt an impulse to return to the battlegrounds and
somehow help, but despair wouldn’t let him budge. Instead, he
searched for an escape route, anything to be rid of this
place.

He hoped the cells were carefully
secured. Criminals sentenced to death were bound to be somewhere
within these winding corridors. Yet, he could hear no voices, only
the sounds of restless beasts.

Suddenly, Hrioshango came to a stop. He
peered through the bars of an immense prison cell where hundreds of
darklings looked back at him. They fit the stereotype of wild
darklings that the community was so accustomed to. The majority
would never accept the fact that a darkling could be intelligent,
nonetheless, integrate into society.

They were specifically enslaved for the
purpose of fighting in gambling arenas. Roguish men who craved a
good show and gold hunted darklings and bred them among different
tribes to combine the best attributes. In fact, they often
described the breeding process as a “practiced art.”

One of them looked entreatingly at
Hrioshango, sensing his pity. The chaos magician felt drawn toward
the darkling as though a racial bond called out to him.

He reached through the bars toward the
pit darkling, extending his hand. It shrieked and slashed at his
fingers. Hrioshango quickly withdrew and observed the blood that
seeped from his hand. His head bowed in sorrow and he slinked away
from the cell.

To see members of his race crossbred
like animals evoked feelings that were foreign to him. He began to
deny that he felt sadness, that he experienced sorrow of any kind.
He walked blindly, not knowing whether he was escaping from the
terrible beasts in the arena or the feelings he just
experienced.

He stepped into a vaulted room where
several torches burned. It would seem he happened upon a horrendous
tomb, in the center of which was interred the siege machine. The
darkling hesitated at the imposing sight. Hrioshango examined it
with wonder, praising its ingenious design.

Its black surface appeared as dark as
any void or night he ever imagined, making it all the more mystic
and terrifying. He should have felt fear looking upon this device,
but he felt only awe.

Hrioshango approached the spider golem
by several steps, each one weaker than the last, subdued by its
inanimate presence. A noise registered behind him, and he spun
around to see a woman clad in armor.

Venexa scowled in the dark, her
warhammer clasped in her hand. Blood glistened on the deadly
instrument.

Hrioshango couldn’t tear his gaze away
from the crimson on the blunt steel. She had ruined countless lives
for the sake of entertainment, profit, and sadism, and she almost
added him to a long list of casualties. She would never stop
dragging more victims to her arena, only to degrade them and feed
the masses with blood.

Recalling the pained images of his
brethren and the slave’s sacrifice, Hrioshango laid his hand
against the golem. His unstable energy flowed into the
machine.

* * *

Margzor walked through the streets of
Azia-Nocti. So many humans passed him by, a vast sea of faces with
unique characteristics. The situation was disturbing to him and he
felt exposed in this social setting. So many eyes looking and
judging, so many voices murmuring and crying out. They all looked
the same, no matter the size, shape, or color. They were merely
human.

How strange it seemed that none of
their kind acknowledged him. The people of Azia-Nocti seemed too
busy and distracted to regard Margzor—or perhaps they ignored
him.

He noticed a woman staring intensely at
him, and as soon as their eyes met, she turned away in fear. The
beautiful woman disappeared, and anger entered his mind like a
plague on his emotions. He sternly tightened his weapon hand into a
fist as if he could crush the feelings of turmoil inside. He stared
through the crowd of people as if they ceased to exist, as if they
weren’t significant enough to merit his attention.

He bore down on the temple that had
come to represent everything he loathed. His passing sent ripples
through the crowd, causing women to bristle with disgust. He could
acutely sense their fear and hostility.

He was ugly in their eyes, the voice in
his head suggested. He breathed deeply and shut his eyes. He did
not allow his emotions to control him there, instead focusing on
the task at hand.

Margzor approached the temple as his
anger became a symphony of bestial rage drowning out the voice in
his brain.

Inside the temple, a guard leaned
comfortably against the double doors. The disciples didn’t leave
this structure because they lived here, as did the guards. He had
no desire to leave this place for he had food and a pleasant
bedchamber. He rarely smuggled a bottle of wine into the temple on
those lonely nights. Perhaps his greatest motivation for staying
was the view.

He had spent the day roaming the temple
corridors with the pretense of a civilized guard. In truth, he
often strayed near the bathing chambers. There, he observed the
female worshippers cleansing, talking excitedly to each other. The
guard reminisced of the women wading in the warm waters, imagining
what pleasures he could experience with them.

His thoughts wandered to the woman who
smiled at him earlier, not because she viewed him in any way as a
potential lover, but merely to acknowledge him. She was a paragon
of beauty, a woman of flawless form and rich, chestnut brown hair.
These thoughts turned to fantasies that he was not married, that he
could indulge his desire with her.

He longed to corrupt her heart, so
innocent and beautiful, to unleash his lust and—the door flung open
and he sprawled to the floor.

The horrified guard looked over his
shoulder at the intruder. He tried to cry out in alarm but Margzor
was faster.

Chapter 14

Crumbling buildings flanked Arxu on
both sides, having fallen into disuse decades ago. The peculiar
scent of ash whispered up from the stones.

The architecture told a story all its
own, sometimes catching Arxu’s attention with vivid hieroglyphics
and mosaics. He knelt down to investigate a mural on the street,
partially obscured by dust. His eyes swept across sacred carvings
of humans, angels, and the offspring from different tribes. Even as
he inspected the public artwork, a silhouette turned the corner and
paused when she saw the man. She approached him from behind, her
footsteps barely audible against the stone.

“Arxu, what are you doing here?” He
turned around as Nishka caught up to him. “You should be more
careful in Azia-Nocti. You could easily lose your way.”

“My chances of encountering danger in
the city are highly unlikely.”

“I didn’t say you would be in danger,
Arxu. Obviously, you aren’t accustomed to large cities. How am I to
find you if you’re running halfway across Azia-Nocti?”

“I would eventually find you. Your
route is predictable.”

“Excuse me?
”

“You depart from the inn and linger
around the market. When you finish conducting business there, you
travel to the southwest to sit on the docks and watch the merchant
ships.”

“If you weren’t my bodyguard, I would
say that’s really creepy. Actually,
it is
creepy
.”

“I thought only Hrioshango was creepy.
You are comparing me to Hrioshango?”

“Well, no. He’s on a totally different
scale of creepy. In fact, he’s—” For the first time, Nishka noticed
her voice was echoing through the vacant district. The wind howled
to fill the uncomfortable silence. “Anyway, what are you doing
here?”