Chapter 2

Sari clung to the reigns of her mare as she thundered forward through the pitch black night – her path only illuminated by the glittering red glow of flaming hoofprints left behind by her master. Trees and shrubs whipped past to the left and right, while a smattering of stars wheeled overhead as the forest tore around her. Wind whipped at her face and she ducked her head lower, as if she might make her horse gallop faster and more surly. It was the kind of ride that most would call madness – a gallop at midnight, through such an unpeople’d stretch of the world, with roads surely left to rot and molder.

But Master Phenrig did not ride a normal horse – and so long as Sari kept whispering soft words of magic and command into her mare, she could at the very least make sure each hoof matched every step of the bound nightmare that her master had claimed for himself.

Before she thought it was even slightly possible, the world swept open and clear around her, and Sari beheld the most welcome sight of Master Phenrig’s tower, situated at a nexus of dragon-lines, far from any meddling city or wandering army. She pulled back on the reigns and her mare slowed, kicked up her forelegs, and then came to a stop with a wheezing whinny. Her sides belled out around Sari’s thighs as she drew in air – while Phenrig’s nightmare stood placidly, untroubled, her flickering mane and flaming hooves bright sparks in the night.

“You have done well, my apprentice. Rest now.”

Sari felt the warm glow of his approval. But her hand fell to where the parcel had been – before she had handed it over to her master. In the faint light of his own mane, Phenrig’s lips quirked upwards.

“Rest. You will need it for tomorrow.”

His palm lifted.

And Sari felt fatigue settling along her head. A sleep spell – but she wasn’t about to complain. She let her master’s magic carry her away into a deep and dreamless sleep...

Sari woke with a groan and a squirm and a stretch. Her body felt every last fading ache of her exertions yesterday, and for a moment, she wanted nothing more than to burrow ever deeper into her blankets. Her eyes opened to slits and then she sprang upright as she saw the brightness of the noonday sun, sweeping through her own small, neatly appointed chambers. “Oh void!” she whispered, softly, then scrambled out of her bed.

Master’s servitors had done their best to undress her and tuck her in, but the faint residue of their tentacles and their claws were everywhere. Sari started by yanking off her tousled under clothing, then springing into the bathroom. She started to draw water with the wall pump, whispering under her breath. “It’s okay. It’s okay. If Master wanted you awake, he’d have sent for you.” Despite that, guilt and nerves gnawed at her guts. She had proved herself – she had acquired the Chanti crystal for her master. But just two days before, if she had slept in this badly, her master would have ... have...

Well.

He had always threatened to turn her into a newt. But her studies in the arcane arts made it fairly clear to her that while that kind of transfiguration was possible, it was also extremely difficult. Easier by far to simply obliterate someone and wring their soul into a million fragments. But that did seem to be a bit of an overkill for a sleepy teenager missing her morning lessons.

Sari shook her head as the bathwater filled, then tossed in a firestone from the cupboard, before slinging herself in. She scrubbed under her arms, her face, her back, her hair. Once she had doused it all and gotten herself at least slightly clean, she scrambled from the bath and washed herself clean. She dressed herself: Underclothes, simple leather pants, cotton tunic dyed in Phenrig’s house colors of red and black, black leather gambeson over it, with...

Sari froze.

The small pendent that she normally wore, of the Magus Eye, had been replaced. Instead of the stylized representation of magical learning, worn by many an independent mage or magical student, the pendent in her dresser was the now interlocking coils of the Nine Dragons, in the form of a stylized cross. She held it up, and felt the faint magic spark of it flowing through her fingers. The Nine were always the symbol of magic in its purest form, and this felt as if it had been enchanted somehow. She pinned it to her breast, then took a step back and looked at herself in the mirror.

Sari was tall for a girl, average for a rebis girl, with hair she cut short and boyish. Her features were slender and feminine, with bright purple eyes that were common as dirt in the Cities. Her hair was raven black and matched her olive-brown complexion, but thanks to an accident during her early potions training, there were red streaks along the outer edges that made it look as if she was smoldering coals. She brushed her fingers through her hair, stood up a bit straighter, shifting her stance, to make the pin more prominent.

“Sari the Sorcerer,” she whispered.

It did sound a lot better than Sari the Apprentice...

When Sari emerged from her room, her stomach was growling. She ignored it and instead strode through the inner corridors of Phenrig’s tower. She passed the workshops where his servitors tireless labored on things of copper and gold and whitestone, then passed the libraries where there were what seemed to be a numberless collection of tomes, scrolls, lexicons and stranger ways of recording information – slabs of carved slate, crystal balls imprinted with magical memories, even dust that caused vivid and true dreams of the past. At last, she came to Phenrig’s laboratory and found that her Master had been quietly working on what appeared to be a vast and intricate summoning circle.

“Ah, you’re here,” he said, without turning to face her as he carefully dribbled glowing powder between long fingers. The arcs and swirls of the circle made Sari’s head hurt – she had no idea what could be summoned that would require this level of intricacy ... and more, she had no idea why her master hadn’t woken her. This was exactly why she was here as an apprentice, to help with things like this. “Good. Stand in the center. Do not disturb the lines.”

Sari felt a faint chill run down her back. “W-What’s this all about, Master?”

“You will be going out in the world as my agent,” Master Phenrig said. “But there is no easy way for me to ensure you are not misled by the dangers out there.” He looked at her, then stepped aside, effortlessly clearing the powder with the movement of his feet. His fingers spread and he gestured to the center of the summoning circle. “Thanks to the Chanti crystal you recovered, I will be able to bind for you a companion. A guide. A...” He smiled. “Servitor.”

Sari frowned. She stepped over the lines, carefully. Carefully. “But these lines draw from the Void,” she said, quietly.

“Very good, my sorcerer,” Phenrig said, a pronouncement that made Sari’s heart skip an excited beat. “The most potent servitors come from the Void – be they necromancer puppets ... or demons.”

“D-Demons?” Sari jerked her head up. “You’re going to summon a demon?”

“Of course,” Phenrig said as Sari realized she was now standing in the center of a demonic summoning circle. “Take heart, my sorcerer. I have not lost all of my senses.” His hand gestured and she followed the pointing of his finger. She could trace the lines, see the patterns. Understanding dawned and she breathed a slow sigh of relief: The outer circle was so complex because it was made almost entirely out of binding and limiting spells.

“A demon is unbound by time and space,” Phenrig explained as he began to light braziers around the room with a wave of his hand, pausing by each to adjust some minute complexity of their flickering flames. “They dwell beyond and around the world, in the Void from whence the world came and whence the world shall return. They are neither good nor evil, as such things are understood. What they are ... are powerful.”

Sari bit her lip. She had never heard demons described that way before. In most of the textbooks she had read, they had mostly dwelled on the Master Beyond and his wickedness. Because, like all things, demons had to have a king...

Phenrig swept his robes aside, revealing his other hand – which grasped the glowing form of the Chanti crystal - and began to intone words of power. Each one rang through the chamber and buzzed into Sari’s bones as she saw the summoning circle swell and flicker around her feet. The Chanti crystal throbbed like Sari’s heart, pulsing bright, then dim, then bright once more. She tensed, clenching her teeth as Phenrig spoke booming words, pronouncing them again and again – and tried to follow the spell. It was more complex than anything she had ever cast, and more verbal than she expected until...

“I call you, creature of the unspoken word,” Phenrig boomed out in Lystang, the common tongue of the Silver Cities. “I call you and by this name, I bind you!”

He threw his hands wide. Despite the fact he no longer held it, the Chanti crystal hovered in the space before his chest, twirling like a top. It sparkled and flashed with black lightning bolts, crawling along the walls of the chamber, buzzing and hissing.

“Ranach Koiren Zinovian Thule!” Phenrig spoke.

Then he clapped his hands forward and the air before Sari exploded. She yelped as it felt as if she had been knocked straight backwards, smashing onto her rump and skidding a few inches along the floor. Her palms slapped at the ground as she gaped up at the figure that had appeared before her.

“Please...”

The woman was tall and more pale than anyone that Sari had seen in a long, long time. Her skin was flawless alabaster, and her eyes were ... black. All black. As black as her hair, which fanned around her shoulders and swept down. She was either dressed or not dressed at all – it was hard to tell, for between the expanses of pure white skin were sleek, form fitting carapaces of interlocking armor pieces ... or maybe they were chitin, like the armor on large beetles. They cupped her breasts, her hips, covered her sex ... if only barely ... and formed into high heeled shoes that were as elegant as they were deadly. Blade-wings spread behind her, and a tail of interlocked metal segments dragged along the ground behind her as she took a step forward, planting her heel on Sari’s chest, the point of it easily felt through her gambeson.

“Call me Rana,” she said, brightly.

Her midnight black eyes flared and Sari found she was unable to look away...

Unable to...

Look...

Away.

“We’ll get along famously ... now don’t worry.”

Rana was leaning forward. Her palms tangled into Sari’s hair. Sari felt the cold heat of them, blazing against her scalp. She noticed that Rana’s lips were as black as her eyes – but her teeth were silver.

“It won’t hurt a bit.”

She leaned in and Sari moaned into her mouth as she felt Rana’s tongue flood into hers – and the weight of the other woman pinned her down as her head began to spin and, for a time, the whole world was Rana – the taste of her mouth, the ozone smell of her body, and the rough rasp of her claws on Sari’s cheeks.

Sari closed her eyes and was lost to the demon.

They say it’s like going to sleep.

It’s not like going to sleep at all.

They say that you can make peace, right before the end.

They’re wrong.

There’s fear and there’s blood and there’s desperate thrashing and a horrid cold. It’s not like falling asleep at all, when they march you up to the gallows. The biting stone against your bare knees, the rough ropes around your wrists, the faces of impassive men and women, watching you, eagerly.

It’s not like falling asleep.

It’s not.

Dying is like dying. And there’s nothing else even remotely like it.

They’re wrong about death too. They say it will be an eternal bliss. What they don’t tell you about being dead is how very cold it is.

Cold...

But peaceful.

The peace may be worth it, actually. Now that you’re here. Now that it has you. Now that the biting stone and the rough ropes and the watching faces are gone. Now that the last sensation has left you. No worries. No wants. No fears. Just cold and quiet, echoing outwards forever. And you begin to think that you might be happy like this.

But here’s the greatest lie of all.

They say death...

Is forever.

The first sensation was pain. Followed by agony. Followed, lastly, by the ecstasy of mere discomfort. Her eyes flashed open and she rasped and gasped and then was dumped off the stone slab that she had been on. Robed figures surround her – stepping aside. Masked faces leer down at her, and one of them immediately points to the right. “Off, go, now. Now.”

She scrambles away, like a dog, on her hands and knees. She risks a glance back as her palms sink into cold muck and she bumps out past leather and rough burlap. The tent she had been in was lit by braziers that flicker with purple flames – and heaped in the back are...

Food. Delicious food, piled up, naked and glistening, arms jutting, faces locked in the eternal rigor mortis screams. Her tongue flicks along her lips and jagged teeth as she hungers, as she wants the food like she’s never wanted anything in her...

Life?

Then she’s out of the tent, just before the necromancers heap another body on the slab and begin their work.

She pauses outside of the tent and swings her head around. The camp feels so familiar to her, but she can’t say why. It’s orderly. Girdlike. Tent on tent on tent, with bustling laborers at work. They’re hacking at trees, hammering on smiths, working on gears and levers and other, more complex devices. A few of them are already finished and within an easy sight of the tent she had crawled from. Rising from the gloom and darkness, lit by firelight from below and moonlight from above, are the war machines.

Siege towers to bring archers above a wall. Heavy wagons covered in slabs of hexogramatically warded armor to bear war-wizards within range for line of sight casting without risking their hides to arrows and spears. Ballistae, catapults, ladders and rams. They were all being built by a sprawling army ... an outpouring of industry that made her feel a quiver of impressed fear, even as confusion wracked her.

Who was she?

Where was she?

“Ghoul!”

The voice was not just a voice. It sang through her brains and her nerves and she snaps her head around – and sees a stern figure in black plate. His eyes were blood red, his hair was white. His ears were pointed, but he was no elf. His fangs were prominent and jutting above his lips. She wanted to grovel. She wanted to back up, arch her spine, hiss at him. Glare at him. Predator. Apex predator, a snarling part of her mind babbles at her. Flee. Run. Get friends. Rip to pieces. Rip him apart.

The man let out a soft ‘tsch’ noise with his tongue, then stepped over to her side, his leather boots squelching in the mud of the camp. “Dumped out and didn’t even get sent along, they’re running ragged aren’t they,” he said, before pointing. “There. Go there. Present yourself to the armorer, One Eye.”

One Eye?

She puts a hand on her face. Her fingers sink into a socket. Her eye is missing. But she can still see from it – see the fingers prodding at where her eye should be. Her palms slide along her face, down to her throat, were a ragged series of staples keep her head attached. She risks a look down and sees that her body is all rangy muscle and long limbs, distorted in death. She’s gray skinned and muscular and glistens faintly – but despite her ... changes ... she is still a woman. Muddy, covered in gore and flickering with eldrich light from the spells wrought on her ... but a woman.

She looks up and the vampire is actually smirking at her. “Yes, you have only one. Heh.” His gauntleted finger slides to her mouth, forcing it open. He examines her teeth. “Recently dead too. I almost wouldn’t throw you out of my tent, One Eye. Now go. Get armored. The attack’s coming soon. I can smell it.”

His hand shoved her and, off balance, she sprawled onto her back, squelching onto the mud. She choked on her anger, hissed. Tried for ... for something, but the only thing that comes out of her mouth is a heavy, desperate panting. She squirms on the mud, feeling the cold of it, but not feeling the bite of the cold. Her body is long past that bite. She turned and started to lope along the mud. She can’t quite stand. Her body doesn’t have the knack for it.

She ran along with her palms and her feet until she came to the armory tent. There, men were working on a dizzying array of the undead. Skeletons stood in rows and were handed over spears and swords, shields and helmets. Zombies were sewn back together after having suffered grievous wounds by harried looking, blood splattered surgeons. But the ones who were getting the most attention ... were the ghouls. They were not cleansed of flesh like skeletons. They did not shamble mindlessly like the zombies. Instead, the ghouls ranged around the tent like kicked dogs – panting, hissing, snarling, snapping.

As she watched, one was strapped into a T-shaped table that could be rotated up to a standing position. Then the armorers began to affix leather straps and metal plate and sharpened claws to the ghoul, using nails and sewing needles and a great deal of curse words. The ghoul snarled and snapped his teeth at the worker, who ignored him utterly.

The other ghouls started to look restive as she came near them. One snarled at her as she came close and slashed at her with fingers that looked as if they barely needed augmentation. She jerked backwards, then slammed her head into his side, knocking the ghoul over. Another ghoul – a female – sprang on the sprawled male and started clawing at his hips, his sides, biting at his elbow in a wild fury. She felt like she should do something, but ... but ... what!? She pushed her palms against the two ghouls, trying to separate them, hissing and croaking wordlessly.

The two ghouls reacted by snarling and biting at her. The male bit down on her palm, drawing black blood. The female clawed at her, hooking two fingers on her eye socket. She hissed and wailed – and was saved when an armored human came hurrying by, shouting. “Food! Food!”

The food rained among them: Hands. Arms. Heads. They were all delicious and rotting.

The two ghouls who had been clawing and biting at her scampered away and she was able to curl up around a burly, dark black arm. She started to bite down on it, tearing delicious food off, tasting the flesh. The blood. She cracked marrow. She barely noticed when hands grabbed onto her and started to drag her off to the table.