03- The Apostles of Doom Read online

  Tizzy put his cards down. “Miss me?”

  “Yeah, you know, notice that you are gone? You are not exactly inconspicuous.”

  Suddenly there was a loud clattering as Tizzy’s chair tilted over and the octopod came running at Tom. Tom was too shocked to do more than stare as the demon slammed into him and hugged him.

  “You missed me! You really missed me?” Tizzy was hugging Tom tightly, burying his face in Tom’s chest. “I can’t believe this! No one has ever missed me before!” The demon suddenly let go and started spinning around, waving his arms. “Tom missed me! He missed me! Someone missed me! Happy day! Happy day!” he shouted.

  Tom looked over to Boggy and Estrebrius. Estrebrius, at least, looked as surprised as Tom felt. Boggy just shrugged, shook his head and leaned in to try and peek at Tizzy’s cards.

  Tom sighed, watching the demon dancing with joy. Tizzy seemed genuinely happy and joyous, yet Tom could not help but suspect that it was also sarcastic on some level. It had to be. One had to believe that a demon that was tens, if not hundreds of thousands of years old would be a bit more composed. But as everyone was quick to point out, Tizzy was not a typical demon.

  “So where were you?” Tom asked.

  Tizzy stopped spinning and grinned at Tom. “Gardening.”

  That was not what he’d expected to hear. He had no idea what he had expected, but that was not it.

  “Gardening?” Estrebrius asked. At least Tom wasn’t the only one confused.

  “Yeah. Had a problem with some vermin burrowing into my garden.” Tizzy nodded enthusiastically.

  “Where do you have a garden in the Abyss?” Estrebrius asked.

  “Oh, the garden is not in the Abyss. Here everything is hydroponics,” Tizzy said.

  “Hydroponics? Water farming? You know that’s almost as odd,” Tom said.

  Tizzy tilted his head right to left and back a couple times. “Not if you have professional-grade equipment, climate control and enclosed grow chambers.”

  “How did you get all that?” Estrebrius asked.

  “Ahem.” Boggy cleared his throat and grinned. “I have connections—or rather, I had connections. Money talks.”

  “Where did you get money?” Estrebrius asked looking back and forth between Tizzy and Boggy.

  “Trading, of course. We are business partners after all,” Boggy stated as if it was obvious.

  Tom just shook his head. True, Boggy had told him they were partners. At first he had thought Boggy had meant they were domestic partners; however, they had quickly clarified that they were, in fact, business partners. Tom had never thought to ask them what business they were in. As he was thinking this, something suddenly clicked.

  “Wait. You said you were gardening, and you had to deal with pests?” Tom asked Tizzy.

  “Uhm, yes, I just said that a couple sentences ago. You need to pay more attention,” Tizzy said, shaking his head.

  “Yes, and it was not in the Abyss,” Tom said.

  Tizzy nodded, not seeing Tom’s point.

  “How did you get to Midgard? I thought you had to have someone summon you?” Tom asked suspiciously.

  Tizzy grinned and made a gesture in front of his chest, as if tracing a cord. “I have an accursed master who owes me a favor!”

  “Hey!” Boggy exclaimed, looking at Estrebrius, “he owes us a favor too! We too kicked lichy butt for him!”

  Tom frowned. They were clearly talking about Gastropé and the whole cloudship thing. He really should get more details on that. That had happened at Hell Springs Eternal, just shortly before their trip to Doom, so he really hadn’t heard the whole story. He knew there had been liches on ice dragons; was there any correlation to the Storm Lords of Nysegard? That was probably something he should explore.

  Appendix V: Hilda’s Saint School Notes on the Undead and the Unlife

  Chapter 135

  Isle of Doom: DOA + 12, Dawn

  Tom watched the sun, or rather Atun, rise above the horizon from Doom’s Watch, the extremely high watchtower on a peak near the main volcano. This tower was used by the shamans, Valg in particular, to scan for potential threats. For the last few centuries it had not been continuously manned; rather, the shamans took turns coming up every few hours at semi-random intervals to do scans.

  It had originally been built in the earliest days of the Doomalogue, before the full monitoring network had been deployed, and then again after the fall of Doom, when the monitoring network was down. The Storm Lords had been relatively quiescent for several centuries, at least by comparison, so they had gone to random watches. The Doomalogue was so far inland that Targh and the other elders felt that the outer watch towers and patrols would give them enough advanced information that they could be confident of the reduced schedule.

  Tom really had no opinion on that. He knew very little about combat, tactics or strategy other than what he had read in fantasy novels. He was quite fortunate to be surrounded by commanders with thousands—tens of thousands, in fact—years of experience. That is just still too surreal, Tom thought to himself, thinking about being around people with tens of thousands of years of experience.

  He stared intently at the atunrise, his demon eyes automatically polarizing to shield themselves. He wanted to concentrate on the beauty of the atunrise in order to suppress his own uncertainties. As he seemed to be always observing, he was in way over his head trying to lead others that were thousands upon thousands of years his elders, and soon he would be tested.

  They were about to try and ascend the first orc, create the first new D’Orc in over four thousand years. If they failed, if he failed, it would be a bad omen to everyone. A sign that he was not fit to lead them. Technically, of course, no sign was needed; he was unfit, unworthy to lead them. However, he was trapped by their hope, their expectations; he had to succeed and validate their misplaced faith in him.

  Tom found it more than ironic that a month or two ago, he had been wallowing in self-indulgent pity about how everyone expected him to be a horrible monster, and how their expectations were driving him to be a horrible monster. Memories of that soldier in the woods that he had “popped” suddenly raced through his mind. Today, however, he was wallowing in self-indulgent pity about everyone expecting him to be a great hero, a savior.

  He shook his head. When the pendulum of expectations swung, it certainly swung far and hard. Whatever happened to just being a normal seventeen-year-old, looking forward to his junior and senior year of high school and then college?

  Tom laughed, thinking about college and also thinking about the party after the oath taking at Mount Doom; at least he was getting a more intense party experience then most kids got in college. Orcs partied hard, and so did D’Orcs. There had been drinking and celebration after every oath taking in Nysegard. He had been at parties almost every night since coming here.

  If anything, if felt as if those in Nysegard drank more heavily, or perhaps more seriously than those in Doom. In Doom, it has been a truly joyous celebration, they were coming out of a very despondent time. That had been hard and heavy drinking, but with a very light-hearted nature. At least until the morning after; now that battle had been a hangover.

  Here, though, in Nysegard, Tom sensed a more cautious, somber and yes, even sober nature to their drinking. He suspected it had to do with knowing that you could literally die the next day, or worse, become undead, cursed with a hunger for animus to appease one’s undying hunger.

  Memories of battlefields with ravenous ghouls and ghasts, led by vampires with brilliantly glowing red eyes suddenly swirled across Tom’s mind. A vampyr’s maw wrapped around his forearm, trying to gnaw it off. Tom shook his head. Damn it!

  He had come into Nysegard to avoid dreams of such things. He had lain down on his bed after shooing his friends off to their own rooms, and then tossed and turned, kept awake by both the coming ascension and his fear of sleeping and the insidious dreams of Orcus. He had decided to head to Nysegard, where he need not sle
ep and could review the preparations that were underway for this evening’s ceremony. And yet, the dreams—or at least, the memories represented within the dreams—had followed him.

  He had never even heard of a vampyr before, yet he had known with certainty that the ultra-toothy ravenous beast gnawing on his forearm was a vampyr, an alternate strain of vampirism. He shook his head. Vampyrs looked very much like the Fright Night vampires, except they were even more toothy, with two rows of teeth on top and bottom in their unbelievably wide mouths. Far more frightening in appearance and far more unreasonable than normal vampires.

  Normal vampires were people, or perhaps un-people? They were intelligent; at least as intelligent as whoever they had been when alive. Vampyrs, however, had far greater, far less controllable hunger; one could only reason with them when they were satiated and in their human form. Tom blinked and thought, How did I know this? This is not standard Bram Stoker sort of knowledge.

  “Shit!” he cursed. Enough of this. He could not be allowed to be alone with his thoughts. He leaped into the air and dove towards the side entrance of Mount Doom. It was time to get busy with the day.

  Citadel of Light: Early Third Period

  Teragdor stood upon the outer rampart of the Citadel’s eastern wall. It was a very impressive stone wall, nearly one hundred and fifty feet high. He had never seen such a massive fortification. The Citadel truly lived up to its name; it was a mighty fortress and city surrounded by concentric walls on three sides, and a formidable wall and incredibly steep cliff to the west that dropped two hundred feet into the rocky sea.

  The Citadel’s harbor was a one-hundred-foot wide inlet in the cliff; a giant wall and sea gate blockaded it. The docks were all at sea level and access was through lifts and easily defended passageways within the cliff. Teragdor had not traveled that widely in Astlan, but he had never heard of anything like this there.

  He supposed this was what happened when one had over fifteen thousand years to build a fortress. That was when the construction of the Citadel had begun: fifteen thousand years ago. Teragdor was not even certain if any kingdom, nation, or civilization on Astlan, outside the alfar, had even survived that long. Obviously, the alfar had royal lineage on that timescale and longer. Perhaps, on Nysegard, it was the close work of the alfar, dwarves, humans, orcs and others that had allowed this civilization, this society, to survive so long, particularly in the face of such adversity.

  He shook his head, once again marveling at the strangeness of his own thoughts. Alfar and orcs working together? To say these were interesting times was so far beyond an understatement. He sighed and then peered down to the giant moat below them. He suddenly realized that something odd was going on. He had not been paying much attention to all the activity along the extremely wide and long moat that wrapped the giant fortress, but he now realized that the activity was quite strange. Or at least he thought it was; he was not that familiar with moats. Only the largest fortifications in Murgandy had true moats.

  This moat was not a dirt channel filled with muck; no, it was a solid stone-lined channel with gigantic, shaped stones on par with those of the walls. What was odd was that the water level in the moat seemed noticeably lower than it had been when he had arrived. Further, there were boats cruising along the sides of the moat, with workers doing something.

  “What in Tiernon’s name are they are doing?” Teragdor asked out loud to no one.

  “Apt, I suppose, in that Vicar General Darkness Slayer has ordered it in the name of Tiernon and his siblings,” a voice replied a short distance away.

  Teragdor jumped. While he knew there were a number of other people along this section of the rampart, he had not realized that anyone was so close. To his right, about ten feet away, was a middle-aged human in the robes of a priest of Krinna, Goddess of the Wind and Sky.

  Teragdor chuckled at the priest’s response and nodded at him.

  The priest took this as an invitation to approach and came closer, nodding in respect at Teragdor. “I am Leighton, priest of Krinna,” he said with a smile.

  Teragdor nodded in return. “Teragdor, prie—apostle of Tiernon.” He grinned at his inadvertent slip of the tongue. He was not yet accustomed to his new title. It sounded so presumptuous.

  “I must admit, I had assumed as much.” Leighton smiled back at him. “We do not see a lot of apostles in Nysegard of any god, let alone Tiernon.”

  Teragdor nodded and tilted his head in wry response. “Nor in Astlan. It has been at least a thousand years since there have been any apostles of the Five Siblings in Astlan.”

  “And now there are two. Are things that bad there?” Leighton asked in concern.

  Teragdor frowned. “That is a complicated question to answer.”

  “Complicated? An apostle of Torean and an apostle of Tiernon at the same time,” Leighton said, raising an eyebrow. “Seems rather obviously dire.”

  Teragdor grimaced. “In the grand scheme of things, yes. In the immediate term, I should think less dire than here.” He gestured to all the activity going on down below.

  Leighton chuckled. “Indeed. Yet every day here is dire, a never-ending struggle for Life against Unlife; and yes, things are starting to appear direr than in centuries.”

  Teragdor nodded. “So what is it that they are doing in the moat? If war or a siege is coming, then draining the moat does not seem like the most obvious course of action.”

  Leighton grinned widely and nodded. “They are not exactly draining it.” Teragdor raised an eyebrow. Leighton continued, “Yes, they are draining the current water from the moat and are about to cleanse the entire system and then purify and sanctify it. After that, it will be refilled with Holy Water.”

  Teragdor blinked, nonplussed. He looked back down at the giant moat, it had to be over fifty feet wide, thirty or forty feet deep and encircled the citadel—thousands of feet long. “Holy Water?”

  Leighton nodded. “The Sacred Water of the Five.”

  Teragdor’s mouth dropped open for a moment. The Sacred Water of the Five was something he had, of course, heard about, but never encountered. It was Holy Water that was jointly blessed and sanctified by all five of the Siblings. It was thus rare outside of New Etonia and the Holy Etonian Empire, and in general only used for imperial functions such as blessing heirs and nobles of the empire.

  “That is a lot of Holy Water.” Teragdor shook his head.

  “Indeed. We have very large vats within the citadel where we prepare it and then, when times require, we fill the moat and catapult bombs with it,” Leighton replied.

  Catapult bombs? Teragdor suddenly understood the purpose of the platforms hanging below the wall. He had noticed them earlier. On the inside of the wall he was currently on, there were platforms on rails stationed about thirty feet down, at inserts. Inside the inserts were wheeled carts, obviously intended to roll out onto the platforms and be raised to the top of the wall as needed.

  “The Holy Water in the moat is continuously cycled through the vat system to be re-consecrated, as well as to ensure that the water is continuously running in the moats. Thus, not only do we have a ground deterrent, but also an aerial deterrent for those Unlife that cannot cross running water,” Leighton explained.

  “Incredible,” Teragdor breathed in awe.

  Leighton shrugged. “We do what we can. Thirty thousand-plus years of never-ending war tends to spur advancements.”

  Isle of Doom: Early Fourth Period

  Tom, Boggy, Tizzy and Estrebrius wandered down the path from the volcano to Krallnomton, or more precisely, the henge there. Reggie, Völund and Targh, along with Valg and Kroth-bitor, one of the three first generation D’Orc shamans, were examining a leather bag that Reggie was holding.

  “How is it going?” Tom asked.

  “We have rounded up all the cookies we could find,” Völund replied.

  “Why are you rounding up cookies?” Tizzy asked. “They aren’t horses or D’Wargs; I hope you aren’t planning on riding the
m.”

  Targh rolled his eyes and replied, “We are preparing to ascend Karth Death Cheater.”

  “Ascend? As in D’Orcination?” Tizzy asked, sounding surprised.

  “Exactly,” Völund said.

  “I know that I’ve said this before, but you’re sending him to the Abyss. Isn’t that more of a descension?” Tizzy asked.

  Tom glanced at the octopod. He was suddenly disturbed that Tizzy was speaking aloud the very same thoughts he had had. Almost verbatim. That was rather frightening.

  Völund sighed and turned to Kroth-bitor, ignoring Tizzy. “Do you want to grind the cookies up?”

  “Ack! What? What? Grind up my cookies! My epicurean delights? My babies of buttah!” Tizzy suddenly shifted to his yenta voice on the word “butter.” “How dare you, sirs! Have you no respect for high-end gourmet edibles! These cookies have won Best Cookie of the Year, every year, from High Times magazine. And with different judges every year—apparently each year’s judges have mysteriously disappeared shortly after the contest,” Tizzy said, his voice descending to an almost conspiratorial whisper with the last phrase. “No idea why,” he continued his rambling subtext, scratching his chin. “I suspect they feel they have reached edible nirvana and so no longer wish to tempt fate with potentially lesser consumables in subsequent years.”

  Targh grunted. “As you know, we need demon weed, and this was what we had in your absence. We had no idea where you were, you just up and vanished on us.”

  Tizzy grinned mischievously. “So you are saying that you missed me?”

  “We could not find you. I think the phrase ‘misplaced you’ is more accurate,” Völund said quickly before Targh could respond.

  Tizzy glared at him. “You aren’t being very nice to someone who has something you want!” he said, sounding quite miffed.

  “Do you have demon weed on you?” Tom asked, trying to cut this off.

  “Is my name Tiss-asteratorh-atora-Dale Forgenzatola-makafolah?” Tizzy asked.