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FG: Chapter 82
🕑 Added 2024-07-15 14:30:02 +0000 UTCSilas licked his lips in the face of Marcus’s pain and the urgency of his question.
His answer was no less urgent: “In exchange for your transportation, I will require some small payment.”
Marcus’s raised brows asked his next question for him.
“That,” Silas said, nodding hungrily at the tatty notebook lying at his feet.
“My journal?” Marcus queried, fighting through the increasing pain throbbing up his arm, wracking his whole body with shudders as though he were experiencing a death-spasm. “Why – “
His words were swallowed by the next surge of lightning, and he doubled over in agony, seeing the ratman watch his every move with sharper eyes than any he’d seen before.
Just give it to him, Marcus! his inner voice yelped. It’s your life or your damned book. What would Mari say? Let the little beast satisfy his curiosity.
“I – alright!” Marcus yelped. “Once I’m out of here, you can have it. Take it and the shirt off my back too if you want.”
The ratman’s eyes pulsed with delight – even though the little creature tried his best to hide it.
“The journal shall suffice, Shai-Alud.”
“Fine,” Marcus barked back. “But you’re not going to be sending me back to the ‘Place Beyond’. Instead, I want you to – ngh! – take…take me to Piper’s…Hill…Piper’s Hill!”
He said the words as though he were a real wizard intoning a spell that would vaporize an entire continent. Maybe he was at this point – the pain that sent whole tremors through his veins right now certainly made his body feel like a ticking time-bomb. But even through his agony he could remember the name of that place – where the Yokun assassin had told him he would find Maria.
He’d come this far. He wasn’t going home without her.
“Piper’s Hill…” the ratman mused. “Yes…yes, I believe I can do that.”
Marcus saw the smile that stretched across Silas’ face. He wasn’t making any attempt to hide his emotions, now.
“Yes,” he said again with a lick of his rotted fangs. “That should be eminently agreeable.”
“I – I have a condition of my own,” Marcus then grimaced, clamping his hand down on the metal bars of his cell.
Silas eyed him curiously. It seemed he was quite entertained by the question.
“Name it, Marcus,” he said. “Though I must urge haste. The energies of the Gloomraav do not often wait upon the commands of their host. Especially not one so unused to it.”
“If belief is all it takes…to bring it under control…then it’ll have to listen to me. I’m it’s master now.”
As he said those words he looked with newfound determination on his pulsing hand, and watched the sparks travel towards his fingertips as they dug into the iron bars.
“Yes,” Silas whispered. “Perhaps you are at that.”
Marcus all but whirled on the rat. “I have…someone,” he said through a snarl. “Someone that I have to find up there. Someone I can’t go back without. Silas…as Prime Putrefact of Clan Red-Eye, when I find her and return here, you’ll send us both home.”
He watched the Ratman grimace, his beady eyes flitting between Marcus’s face and his closed fist.
“A journey to the surface,” Silas mused. “And then a return. It is a pilgrimage legends are made of. But…are you sure you shall survive the trip? The surface of our world is unforgiving to even a seasoned General.”
“Except, as you so eloquently put it yourself, I’m not a regular General anymore.”
Both Rat and man watched the cell bar Marcus was gripping begin to melt away at his touch – the sparks of green lightning traveling from his fingers up its surface and causing the very foundations of his cell door to bubble like a corrupted broth.
“Miraculous…” the Ratman murmured. “To think a human could command the Power so quickly…But you are asking for my trust, Sire? This is surprising, considering your…track record.”
“Oh no,” Marcus said, a grim smile breaking under his duress. “I’m through trusting rats. You will do this for me, Silas, or I when I return here, I will destroy you.”
Marcus watched the ratman’s smile drop for only a fraction of a second. A snarl had formed there – a snarl betraying something that ran far deeper than his surface-level eloquence.
Then, just as quickly, the moment passed, and he was back to his rather jovial self.
“That’s it, Sire,” he said quietly. “That’s the way. If there is a lesson you have learned here, it is how the races of this world can be coerced. Sometimes the carrot must be used, yes? And sometimes…the stick is preferable.”
Marcus said nothing as he stared back at the devious little Ratman. For his part, Silas understood the urgency in his demand. It seemed the well-spoken rat now needed no more persuading. The time for pretty speech was evidently over.
“I give you my word, on my honor as Prime Putrefact,” he said. “Upon your return to the Underkingdom, you shall have your final wish granted.”
With their compact thus formed, Marcus closed his eyes and grit his teeth, focusing on the energy slowly building up through his whole body. His thoughts, once tinged only with the devastation of his impending demise, were now filled with thoughts of freedom. He still had a chance to save at least one soul trapped in this world. He wasn’t beaten yet.
Maybe it was infernal luck that was on his side – the same luck that had put him in the same dungeon as the very rat he had quested for since first he’d heard his name. Or maybe the machinations of the sinister intelligence these beasts called ‘The Unclean’ had set him on this path. It has called him its ‘champion’, had it not?
Regardless, he refused to be a puppet to anyone else in this blasted realm. Right now, his own will was his guide. And his thoughts finally fixed on one primal desire at the very core of the maelstrom of agony that was dominating the root of his being:
Freedom.
Almost as quickly as the thought formed in his mind, the bars of his cell collapsed, and Marcus Graham walked free.
…
“Are you smelling that?”
“I am smelling nothing but your eggy breath.”
FimianScabpaw stood watch over the Southern exit of Grindlefecht dungeon, taking in the strange, yet distinct scents that he could sense emanating from behind the wrought iron door that led to the cells.
“It is smelling like…burning,” he told his compatriot – the grey-brown form belonging to ratguard SkevusSkampper, who was just getting ready for his shift change.
“Of course it is smelling like burning, idiot,” Skevus told his junior as he straightened up his chainmail and corrected his guard-stance. “Are you forgetting what we are all going through to take this place?”
Fimian nodded once, dumbly, and with embarrassment. This was to be the greatest triumph of his short career – not only surviving the great battle that had won the ratguard of Red-Eye Grindlefect, but being here to meet with King Shrykul and hand him the Shai-Alud himself! His name would pass into the annals of legend with great Greyfax and Talon-Commander SkeeverSteelclaw for sure.
“Alright,” Skevus told him. “Be waiting here until I am returning. Be standing just like that – like a good ratguard – and do not be whispering any more of strange smells!”
Even at his superior’s ire, Fimian bristled.
“But – what if the Shai-Alud…”
A stout clap round his ears silenced Fimian before he could say more.
“Bah!” Skevus growled. “The Shai-Alud is gone. He is forgotten, now. You are seeing him when they are draggin him down here. There is no way he can be escaping – not even a miracle of the Unclean could be saving him now! And even then – are you knowing He-Who-Festers to be granting miracles to soap-sniffing humans?”
Fimian shook his head sadly, ashamed of his own stupidity. He didn’t even look up to see his Brother march up the long, angular stairs up to the tower that still stood above – perhaps one of the only structures that still remained of Grindlefecht in the wake of the great, and terrible, battle.
But fortune often came out of terror, Fimian reminded himself. From the ashes of war, the greatest champions rose. Hadn’t the Shai-Alud himself once been nothing more than just a naked man summoned in a war-locked cave? If even a human could rise in their ranks, then Fimian would have his chance. He would have his day, no matter what strange sounds he was hearing approach him from behind, or the increasing smell of burning flesh assailing his nostrils, or the growing pressure being applied round his ne-
…
Marcus tightened his grip round the ratguard’s neck and grunted as he felt the green lightning of the Gloomraav travel down his arm and leap into the creature’s every pore before the little critter even had a chance to scream. The beast kicked out, tried to grab his assailant’s arms, and his blooddhot eyeballs twisted as they lighted on the man who was quietly electrocuting him – sending volts of searing, killing light into the ratman’s organs until each one blackened and failed, ending finally in the rupturing and burning of his heart’s valves and the blackening of those same eyes that would dream of glory no more.
Marcus let the charred body drop and turned his attention to the thin strips of light emanating from the staircase before him.
“Where…” he panted, his hand still buzzing with the evil light that was now his weapon. “Where did you say we needed to go?”
Silas came creeping out of the melted dungeon door and inspected the corpse with his toe, prodding at it like a child would a legless spider.
“The Summoning Chamber,” he said. “Or, at least, what remains of it. Boss Skegga constructed it as a means to force me to summon a Shai-Alud to our cause. He did not expect my Brothers would accomplish it before me. But then,” the ratman added with a mischievous grin. “The Path of the Unclean often takes strange turns.”
“That’s something I’ve been hearing a lot, lately,” he said as he looked down at the inert piece of chargrilled rat lying at his feet. “Come on.”
Comments
Iron Lung
No trouble. I posted in the Discord that I'm on a M-W-F-Sun schedule now to avoid burnout. Sorry, sometimes I forget that not all Patrons have Discord. It's just a platform that's much easier to communicate on.
Noon
Don't mean to be a bother, but isn't this yesterdays chapter? Has the release schedule changed?
