Chapter 78

The man who inspired fear amongst Leveler and Monster alike strode down the road to his town.

He narrowed his one eye as he approached, he could already sense something was amiss. The town gates were open, no guards, no people, discarded personal effects lying on the road as though the owners had fled in a hurry.

His suspicions were reflected in the hound trotting at his side, an enormous Hellhound, a brutal looking thing similar in appearance to a doberman but more violent, more savage, its teeth larger, serrated, its eyes red, its fur red. The Hellhound radiated an abyssal hellishness, a sulfuric cruelty that made it clear it was not of this world. It scented the air, watching their surroundings carefully, waiting for an attack.

But none came, they were alone.

“Erin.” he gravelled, rolling the last of a black cigar between his teeth. “What has my little pet been doing?”

He drew in and then blew out a rolling plume of black smoke. An outside observer looking at that smoke carefully might have noticed the subtle suggestion of shapes in it. Unsettling demonic shapes.

After a moment he finished the cigar and flicked it aside. He continued forward and passed beneath the gates and into the town proper. Above the rooftops something caught his attention, a thin column of smoke coming from the direction of the town hall. Curious. Very curious.

Lyra scrunched up her nose and tried not to breathe. The place she was standing in was dark and damp and muddy and smelled awful, in fact it smelled so bad that she was starting to feel woozy. Her hooves shifted and she nearly slipped off the chair she was standing upon. She desperately wobbled before regaining her balance, the skinny rickety thing squeaking under her weight.

This was decidedly not an ideal position to find herself in. She looked down at the sloppy wet brown stuff below. And she especially did not want to fall in that, she’d never get it out of her wool!

As she watched a spot on the mud began to shift, the surface bubbling before bulging upwards. She stared at it in alarm as the bulge grew higher, taking on a cubic shape then lengthening, the mud seemingly drawing up into it to create new solid form. A mud coloured post was slowly rising out of the mud.

“Oh gods, please stop!”

Not knowing what else to do she kicked out at it, desperately balancing on one hoof as the chair rocked side to side. Once, twice, she managed to catch it on the third attempt and her hoof struck it up the side. The post wasn’t weak, but it still was hit at such an angle that it broke, the top half falling to the mud below with a splat followed by the toppling bottom half.

Lyra let out a sigh of relief.

Then a dozen more posts began to rise.

Bane the Ranker, in effect town dictator, strode through his streets, his empty lifeless streets,

Not that he cared. If the levelers under his thumb were afraid of Erin then that was their own personal failing.

As he paced his one eye roamed from building to building watching for an attack. Orcs, a Succubus, levelers furious with him for summoning said succubus, it didn’t matter, he was prepared to crush them all and force them to bow to his will. He was the Ranker by dint of power, all else was lesser for strength was the first truth, all other truths were flawed, meaningless in the face of unyielding might.

But then he paused as something unusual came into view, something unexpected, something that wouldn’t have fit in even if the town been as he had left it.

It was a monster, a monster sitting on a chair in the middle of the street. Some kind of large wolf monster, just sitting there, its intense yellow eyes staring straight at him, unmoving.

Bane studied this new oddity. Beside him the Hellhound let out a low growl, its hackles rising.

The monster shifted, its arms folded across the back of the chair where it straddled it.

“There never was any Orc clan, they never came here, to my town,” said Bane. “You are the one the Inquisitor is after, the one who took her arm, I recognise you from her description. And more, you left the dungeon through the same improbable exit I did, trapping your enemy inside and allowing you to do as you willed.”

It continued to stare at him silently.

“Interesting, very interesting. A ‘sub-sapient’ monster doing all this. Of course, I know better about your kind because I have been more closely involved with monsters than most. I know what is said about monster sub-sapience is a lie, you are capable of higher thought. Outsmarting an Inquisitor is indicative enough of that. Hmm, but why call me from the dungeon in the guise of my councillor? Surely you know what will come of this.”

“Don’t you wonder what that column of smoke behind me is Ranker?”

Bane’s gaze drifted upward to the smoke. If he was in the least bit surprised the monster was capable of speech he didn’t show it. He narrowed his eyes, was the smoke coming from out of town and not the town hall as he had suspected?