The broken-down wooden façade of the Stonesthrow Inn never looked so inviting to Rashad, given the evening’s content. It was so beautiful, yet it ended too soon.
“Freakin’ auntie…” Rashad mumbled as he walked into the lobby of the inn. There were two people in the lobby that night, not counting the innkeeper. One of the two was a large man dressed in a blue cape and hood. Rashad walked past the main counter and said nothing to the innkeeper, hauled himself to his room and plunked down into the bed. He lay there thinking of the night, and lulled himself to sleep thinking of his night at the Egress Bar.
Rashad slipped into a dream of a sweeping palace in a field of mist and clouds. There was a doorman holding back a bunch of kings and lords. Rashad pushed his way in and past the doorman who gave him a pat on the back as he passed into the palace gates. The columns of the palace held up a vaulting roof with paintings of birds and winds. Each of the birds looked down on the large open space below it, swathed in earthy tones and animal furs. There were many beautiful women there of all races; slight elves, strong Enigman females, sexy humans and sultry Halflings all occupied the open room and had their eyes on the dark-skinned human’s every move. They beckoned him closer and bade him sit on cushions made of bearskin and soft hide. Rashad, bewildered at the number of beautiful women about him, relaxed and let the women point him in the direction of a nearby stage.
Music played as if from nowhere and the curtains moved aside, showing a beautiful elven body dancing enthralled in the melody. The brown leather fringes of the dancer’s outfit snapped to and fro as she tossed about her pink hair and flashed blue-green eyes above a distinct scar on her left cheek. She crawled as a great cat would from the stage, though the throng of beautiful maidens to where Rashad sat. The dancer ran her fingers through his hair and breathed sweet breath onto his face. She arched her back, pointing skyward twice without hands and fell back onto the pillows in wait. As the pink-haired elf lay there, coated in a light sheen of lust and surrounded by all manner of carnal beauty, Rashad could no longer hold back and took initiative.
When he reached for the lacings on her outfit, the high ceiling of the palace darkened to a dull gray stone and the pillows disappeared into the floor as stone tiles. The beautiful women had turned into large chunks of broken stone and Rashad was across the room from the pink-haired dancer. He was armed with his Rock Sword and she held the Grand Trident--but most truthfully, the Trident held her. She screamed for help, but the shaking of the temple walls about them was so loud that Rashad could not hear her. He understood that his wife was in danger of dying again and ran to her rescue to prevent history from repeating itself. He tried to run to her, but his entire body moved slowly as if he were in mud. The Trident grew brighter with each second he wasn’t saving her and ultimately the Trident burst open in a flash of magical energy so powerful, that it melted the flesh from the elven mage’s bones.
The scream she let out was so terrible that it launched the sleeping Rashad up from the bed in a cold sweat. Panting and in shock, he looked around and saw nothing. The moon R'zandol was on its way down past the western Tolym Mountains. Its light broke through the night clouds and into his window, playing shadows on the foot of his bed. Rashad regarded the shadows once more and carefully went to sleep.
As soon as he closed his eyes, he saw Sa-ren’s face melting off of her skull, jarring him from sleep. He propped himself up on the heels of his hands and tried to get these thoughts out of his head. He had to remind himself that it wasn’t his fault that Sa-ren was dead. No matter how he tried, the doubt lingered in the back of his head. Rashad thought that he had gotten over dwelling on who was at fault in her dying, yet he kept thinking: What if it was different? What if he was dead in there? Would Sa-ren mourn for me all her days? Would she dream of me all her nights?
Worst of all, would she try to forget as I have done with her?
Rashad let the subject fly through his mind over and over in an endless loop, pushing him closer towards the idea that he was responsible. The loop was eventually broken by a scratching noise below his window. He reached for the Rock Sword in defense, thinking the noise a burglar. Then he caught himself before he did something silly. He thought no burglar go through all the trouble to scale up to a second-floor room to rob him. All I’ve got, he thought, is my Rock Sword and the clothes on my back. He put the sword down and went over to the window to investigate what the noise was. Looking down through the windowpane, he had to make sure that what he was seeing wasn’t a nightmare.
A black-hooded man was slowly clawing his way to Rashad’s window. It looked like one of the black-hooded men that he had seen from his first day in Karmor’s Bend, Rashad thought. The hood had fallen back and the man’s face was revealed to show what was left of it. The flesh on its face was sagging and gray, with bits of mold and fungus coming from the hole where its nose used to be. The nails of this thing were jagged and yellow, much like the mockeries of teeth that sat in a black pit located smack center in its head. The least strange thing about this creature was that it was climbing the wall using its claws. All this Rashad could see in R'zandol’s light, and he was too horrified to look away.
The creature broke into the room as Rashad watched, crawling through the window on its belly. The broken glass cut into its abdomen as it crawled and it dragged entrails across the floor in complete ignorance of the fact. It stood aright and raised its arms as if to embrace Rashad, but the stench that pealed from this creature surely smelled of rot and death. As Rashad backed away, the creature moved towards him in a shuffling gait and began to move its arms in a swiping motion. The young man realized he was backing away to his sword and warned the creature, “By Toren, you better stay back!”
Undaunted, the creature shuffled forward and exhaled. The funk of month-old fish left in the sun sprung to mind as Rashad gagged, then grabbed the Rock Sword in fear. He swung the sword and hacked off the creature’s limb. A blow like that would repel any living thing; the amount of blood that would gush from a major wound would scare anything. The problem in this situation was that the wound was merely a black hole in the side of the monster: no blood shot forth and no running away for the monster, let alone slowing down. Rashad hefted the Rock Sword again and used the flat of it to bash the monster’s head in. The monster crumpled to the floor in a heap, with its head split open and empty.
Well, Rashad thought, that stopped it…but what was it?Rashad wanted to get away from the creature as far as he could and walked onto the bed to get to the door to the hall. He backed out of the room until he hit the banister and bolted downstairs. Getting the innkeeper’s attention, he said, “Innkeeper! Something broke into my room while I slept! I woke up and a-a-a thing tried to kill me.”
“Yeah,” the innkeeper said. “You kick its ass?”
“Uh, yeah,” Rashad replied. “I think I killed it…”
“Boy, you ain’t killed a darn thing,” the innkeeper said with a laugh. “That thing you just beat up in your room has been dead for some time now. You’re lucky you got away with your life.”
“Wh-WHAT? Already dead?”
“Yep,” the innkeep said nonchalantly. “The whole lot o’ them types ain’t men no more.”
Still in a state of shock from almost dying and trying to take in this new information, Rashad cautiously asked, “Then what are they?”
“The undead,” a voice spoke from the shadowed tables.
He looked over and saw no one but the blue-robed man. The frightened Rashad walked over and asked in a hushed tone, “What do you know about these…things?”
“I know plenty,” the voice came from the hood. “When I tell you what I know, you will also have to accept everything. You must suspend your disbelief, for failure to do so is to risk your life and my own.”
“Then tell me,” Rashad whispered in fear, “what you know. Please.”
“Very well,” the blue-hooded man said. “First things first: we must go to your room and destroy the creature. It shall rise again within the hour if not properly dealt with.”
The two men walked back upstairs and into Rashad’s room. The room was as he left it, but the black ichor from the creature’s head wound had spread so far, it began to creep from beneath the bed. They both waked over to where the creature lay. The creature was a mass of filthy cloth and bloated flesh, unrecognizable as what was once a person, but the voice issuing from the blue hood was quite sure of what it was.
“A ghoul; one of the Black Hoods,” the voice said. He reached inside his cloak and pulled out a vial. As he did that, he turned the mangled creature over with his boot. The flesh of the ghoul may have been corrupted by the dark magic that spawned the beast, but the hooded man was able to make out the name and face of the former: “Gods, it’s Orcheon.”
“Orcheon?” I’ve heard that name, Rashad thought.
The hooded man poured a quantity of the stuff out of the vial onto the ghoul’s corpse. In an instant, the beast was awash in bright blue flame. The flame licked at everything on the floor, but only the ghoul was turned to ashes. As he finished, the hooded man said, “Orcheon no longer, may the gods of Light have you.”
The night had just gotten too crazy for Rashad: crazy dreams, dead men coming to kill him and now this guy has blue fire that doesn’t burn–except when the dead walk. Gripping the Rock Sword in his hand, he asked in a trembling voice, “Who are you, why’d this thing try to kill me…and what in the Hells is going on in this town?”
Sitting in the lit study of Blackheart Manor, the necromancer clenched and unclenched her hands in anger. She hated males with a passion, with one surpassing exception: failure. With the information that a ghoul soldier monitoring the construction yard had passed on to her, she sent that ghoul—a male—to go and kill that other male. He dared to defy her a second time, this time through her niece…and he should pay. The ghoul that was sent, she knew, failed. With the blood sacrifice coming on the next night, the necromancer dared not take any chances with errant mercenaries. Blackheart would have to send out the most powerful minion she had in her undead army.
Thinking about how she reached this extreme, she recalled the creaking of the front door as Inia tried to sneak in. In the instant she heard it, she cast a spell and leapt over to Inia’s room where she lay in wait.
Blackheart heard her charge's voice calling in the emptiness, “Auntie” and waited. The child came into the room on tiptoes, thinking she had outsmarted her Auntie. She crept into bed wearing the clothes of the night’s rendezvous, bearing the stink of that male with her to the dream realm. The necromancer shuddered to think that all this time, the small child she raised to womanhood was lying to her about so much. She had forsaken her auntie for a man––no, a male. The very thought that another man tried again to take what was hers filled her with such rage. It screamed to be released, yet she dared not hurt the sleeping babe she watched in the bed. Too many happy memories still clouded her mind, enough to stay her hand.
But she had to know if the child was truly lying; if her mind, body or soul had been “corrupted.” She hoped that the ghoul who told her what she knew—all about her little Inia—was lying, as males are wont to do. “Did you know that the dead have a sense of humor?”
“Auntie?” Inia rasped in the shadows. She looked about the room with sleep-clouded eyes, but no one was there. She was proven wrong as the statuesque Benefactor emerged from the shadows.
“Yes child,” Blackheart said with a scowl on her ivory visage. “I am here.”
“Hey…listen, I’m sorry,” Inia began, “for coming in late tonight. I was working real late with Moira, and we got carried away—“
“I am sorry as well. I’m sorry I believed you would obey me,” Blackheart said as she approached the foot of the bed, “when I told you NOT to be with any men, especially the one you were with tonight.”
Inia sat up in fear and attention as she asked, “What do you mean?”
“Do not tell lies to me, child. I know you better that you know yourself.”
Hoping to stall for time, Inia said, “But I’m not lying, Auntie, I swear!”
“Again you tell me lies. How long have you been telling me lies, child? Was it this male that has taught you to lie? Or was it another who taught you to lie about everything…even your job of choice?”
SHE KNOWS, Inia thought. “Another job? B-but I’ve been working at Moira’s place—“
“In addition to working at that Egress Bar,” Blackheart finished. “What do you do there, Inia? Do you serve drinks to males? Or do you serve some other treat, like some common gutter whore?”
“W-what?” Inia said as she linked back tears. “Auntie, I would never do that! I love you!”
Blackheart sat down on the edge of the bed at Inia’s left with a sad look. She regretted calling her a whore and said, “But you did…and you never would have if you loved me. Child, it is I who love you. I love you like air; like food and drink. I would never hurt you.”
“You hit me last night.” Inia stared accusingly at her aunt. “Do you strike the people you love in anger, Auntie?”
The accusation stung, but not for long. “I struck you because you disobeyed me. You have only disobeyed me a few times in your life, and I hit you then. Remember when you were little, and you danced in the house and knocked down that painting after I told you not to dance in the house?”
“Yeah, but—“
“Then why do you question my actions?” Blackheart spoke to the teenager. “Why do you disobey me? Is it the male?”
“No, no” Inia said, “He’s not the reason why I do what I do.”
“Then why, child? Tell me so I may know what to do to have you in my bosom again.”
“Auntie…I’m growing up. I want to know what the other people know, do what others do and see the world. I want to see the men and the women in their lands and cities, just like you told me. I want to know what it is to have a life. I love you, Auntie,” Inia said in a voice full of tears, “but I can’t be your little girl forever.”
The very notion of what Inia said to her froze Blackheart in her place. Growing up? No more little girl ever? These were foul words from a mere child who knew not the full meaning of the implications of what she said. Deep in her mind, Blackheart laughed long and hard at how innocent this child was. Inia’s ignorance of the situation was proof enough. She smiled and stroked the teenager’s curly hair saying, “You’ll always be my little girl, no matter what you say or do.”
“Auntie…” the girl said, suddenly tired.
“Just you rest, and we’ll talk about this male you’ve been with in the morning.” The Benefactor kissed Inia’s forehead, leaving a quickly-fading print of lip rouge behind. Blackheart rose from the bed to leave, saying, “May the night keep you, child.”
“Auntie…”
“Yes child?”
“Why do you hate males so much?”
She has always asked the same question for so many years, Blackheart thought as she recalled the minutes. Walking down to the stairs and past her old portrait, she reviewed the answer she had given for so long to hide the truth: “Pray you never learn, child.”
Blackheart approved of it in hindsight and went into the kitchen. She found the drinking glasses where Inia and Rashad sat the night before, taking Rashad’s glass with her as she headed for the pantry.
The pantry was a normal pantry by any measure, filled with necessary culinary ingredients to make great dishes. Of note was a trapdoor in the floorboards of the pantry with a pull ring attached to it. Blackheart pulled the trapdoor up and over to reveal a patch of turned earth. She only had to use this minion every now and then, because he was powerful enough to take on any so-called “adventurers” or “heroes” that she came across. The necromancer need only whisper the name of her creation, which she did: “Doyle, I have need of you.”
Moments later a bony arm of pristine white broke the earth and pulled its attached body to the surface. When it finished, the arm came to rest at the side of a six-foot tall skeleton. The undead creature was clothed in a filthy wool poncho, a tattered scarf covering its mandibles and rotting pants. The skeletal beast did not have eyes, but bright pinpricks of red light that served to frighten the enemy. The ivory digits of this creature ended in sharp claws, capable of ripping through wood. The red lights regarded Blackheart as she spoke: “Bring me the townsfolk.” Blackheart waved the glass she held at Doyle’s bony face. The red lights followed the lip of the glass, and looked back at the necromancer when she commanded, “You will find this male and kill him before the sun is high. Bring his head to me.”
......................................
“Welcome” the bartender said, “to my humble abode.”
Looking around at the various tubes and vials on shelves, jars containing anything from fruit to frog’s legs, Rashad had no idea what he was getting into that night. He looked at the familiar faces about him and guessed that these folks didn’t either.
“Cyan here tells me you were visited by the authorities this night.” Shuya paced with her hands behind her back, looking at Rashad all the while. “I wonder why that happened. Do you have any ideas as to why that happened, master Rashad?”
“It’s that damned Benefactor of yours, isn’t it?” Rashad spat.
“Actually, my question was rhetorical. You were attacked because you didn’t heed the warnings.” Shuya paced over the rug to the fireplace where two of three present construction workers sat. “Wyle here has been warning you from day one to stay away from her.”
“Yeah,” the carpenter piped up. “Why’d you had to go for that, man? I told you not to mess with that girl.”
Shuya got close to Rashad as he sat on a borrowed barstool. “Why did you have to go and mess with her? Is it because she was pretty? Sexy? Wanton?” She got even closer and asked, “Did she remind you of something…or someone?”
Rashad denied himself and said, “No, no. I’m not even sure what you mean.”
Staring deep into his eyes, Shuya smirked and said, “Yeah. He’s lost someone; I can tell.”
“Look, human,” Kitty said from the kitchen, “If you’re lonely, then you just need some Kitty. I’ll be glad to help you out.”
“Oh, leave him be, Kitty,” Donovan said. He sat twirling the head of his axe on the uncovered wooden floor. “If he’s lost someone, trying to throw yourself at them won’t work.”
“It works at the Egress Bar.”
“Indeed it does,” Donovan agreed. “Touché.”
“Alright. If you are missing someone, then you will agree with me on the subject of loss. I want to show you something.” Shuya walked into her bedroom, ducking under Barcrab’s red arm as he leaned against the doorjamb. Moments later, she emerged with a paper scroll and unfurled it.
The charcoal drawing before him was of a family of four. A mother, father, a boy and a little girl dressed as a tomboy. “That girl is me, next to my brother Jack. This was drawn at a carnival that passed through my old home of Sumptor. Everyone else in the picture is dead, ‘cept for me.” The look on Rashad’s face begged for more information, so Shuya volunteered the rest.
“My father died defending the walls of Sumptor when Blackheart the Benefactor came to town looking for someone. She found them and did what she wished, but wasn’t content with that. She decided she would destroy the entire city with her army of undead things and take us survivors as prisoner. For what and from whom for what ransom, I don’t know. What I do know is that she treated us very nicely on the southern travel to this site, called Karmor’s Bend.
“Tell me, Rashad,” Shuya asked, “Where did you hail from last?”
“From the north, out of Erdushan. Why?”
“You must have passed through the ruins of my old town. It’s probably fallen to pieces and taken by vegetation. The last I heard of Sumptor was when my brother Jack went to see the ruins. He never got over losing his home and told me of what happened to the town. All the places where we used to play claimed by weeds and the homes dominated by mold. He told me never to go there, because it would break my heart to see the old house.”
Shuya shook off the dream of her old home and continued. “So anyway, she herded us all here and she made all the men work to rebuild a city in her image. She wanted us to start out small, businesses here and there to bring in funds for her. That didn’t work, because people hoarded chains and began to buy their way out of Karmor’s Bend on the wagons. To stop that, the Benefactor outlawed chain currency.”
“Some people wanted the chains back and started a riot. My brother Jack was one of them, and he went against my mother’s wishes to protest such oppression. The Black Hoods on the street didn’t take to the actions of the riot and fought back.” Shuya said with a tremble in her voice, “Jack was bitten, he caught ghoul fever and died a day later.”
“The Benefactor offered to bury him in her graveyard—I’m sure you’ve seen it from your ‘visit’” the bartender said with a hint of venom. “We gave him to her for interment and we thought that was that. It was not 'that'. Jack came calling for our mother one night while I was out working for Donovan tending bar at Egress. I came home to find him feasting on her torn corpse, her entrails strung across his rotting torso like a bandolier. I remember screaming, him coming at me with milky eyes and barely making it to the kitchen, where I reached for a knife and cut off his hand. He knocked the knife away with his bloody stump and lunged for me. I dodged and he knocked over some ingredients. They fell on him and he was covered in some of my mother’s secret spices. I had backed up to a half-empty bottle of wine on the counter and threw the bottle at that thing.
“The thing that was Jack caught blue fire and he screamed bloody murder until he fell to ashes. I remembered what happened to my mother and tried the mixture again. She too caught fire and disintegrated. From that moment on, I knew the score and what our Benefactor was up to. I swore that she would pay for the deaths of my family AND my townspeople, come high water or Harmageddon.”
Shuya stopped to catch her breath. Cyan noticed the dumbfounded look on Rashad’s face and said, “You look like you could use a breather yourself.”
Rashad looked at the Halfling, saying “How could you—any of you—be so calm after hearing a story like that?”
“We’ve heard it a hundred times,” Wyle answered. “All of us.”
“Hells, I’ve heard worse,” Cyan offered.
Rashad asked, “How could you have heard anything worse than what she just told us?”
“When you’re a part of the Brotherhood of Brash,” the Halfling added with pride, “you not only hear the worst, you see the worst. Then you fix it.”
“Hold on: the Brotherhood of Brash?” Rashad recalled his run-in with a Brash member back on Jankenpon when he said; “I ended up fighting one of you guys previously.”
“Did you? What was his name? He must have told you, for it is our custom to announce ourselves before a battle.”
“Stennis.”
At the name, Cyan had a chuckle. “Stennis? That right bastard was a member of the Brotherhood of Brash, but he’s been rogue five years now.” Laughing again, he said, “So he’s still wearing the old standard, eh?”
“Yeah, I suppose.” Rashad asked, “But what ‘s a Brash Brother doing here at the World’s Edge?”
“Got sent out here on a recon mission to find out the truth of reports about a necromancer in these parts. A rumor about the dead walking at night spooked a merchant, and he had the courtesy to tell the Brotherhood about it when he reached Swordhome. I took the job, thinking it nothing more than scavengers or lost drunks and easy pay. The longer I stay, the more I regret taking this job.”
Rashad looked at Cyan with a skeptical eye. “You’re really here as a member of the Brash Brotherhood to stop the undead and the town matron, who’s really a necromancer.” He turned to Shuya and asked, “What about you? Are you some sort of secret agent? Is this the headquarters of some sort of secret organization bent on saving the world from darkness?” Looking at the others he asked, “What about the rest of you? What part do you guys play in all this?”
Shuya looked at Rashad with a steely gaze and said, “These are all the people who’ve become involved with my plan to take out Blackheart and clear this land of the undead. I’m just a bartender—not a secret agent––so I couldn’t do it alone.
“Donovan understood my plight, so he’s with me. Kitty is also with me, mainly because I put in a good word for her at the Egress Bar. I’ve known Wyle since I was a child and he was friends with Jack, so he’s with me too.”
Wyle took over and said, “Barcrab came in on this when I joined the Black Spade Construction Company. Cyan didn’t even know about what Shuya was doing…until I told him about the movement. Luck was with us when he turned out to be a member of Brash.”
“And speaking of luck,” the Halfling cut in, “it’s funny you should ask if we’re an organization out to save the world from the forces of darkness, because that’s exactly what we are.”
With a smile, he added, “And you’re our newest member, twerp.”
CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 8
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