03- The Apostles of Doom Read online

  Halferth shrugged. “Very hard to tell; either a very large army or some very large demons. Or both.”

  “Great.” Cranshall shook his head. “Full power to the defensive shields; take us to battle stations.”

  XO Stevensword activated the battle station alert and the bridge went red even as alarms sounded through the ship.

  “We should be seeing it just… about… now!” Mister Cerenkov, the helmsman, reported.

  Even as he said “now,” they rounded the pillar, revealing that there was definitely something there.

  “Where the Abyss did that come from?” Sir Samwell cursed, sounding genuinely shocked and surprised. “That wasn’t there last month!”

  Gadius looked over at the knight. “How do you track months without a moon, or day and night?”

  Samwell smiled and pulled a small ornate disk on a chain from under his armor. “Pocket watch. There may be no night and day, but time still works.” He clicked on the side and a small metal door popped open to reveal a glass plate covering the hands of a small clock.

  Chancellor Alighieri’s eyes widened. “Is that one of Gyr D’Loon’s creations?”

  “Indeed.” Sir Samwell smiled. “If you wish to examine it, after we finish taking stock of this—impossibility…”

  “Oh!” Dante shook his head to clear it, having completely forgotten the task at hand. “Of course.” He looked back at the viewing screen. “What is that?”

  “It looks like a melted castle,” Sir Lady Serah replied.

  “Or a stalagmite castle?” Gadius countered.

  “Yes, but where did it drip from?” Gaius asked.

  “It is colorful,” Heron said.

  “Particularly for the Abyss,” Sir Samwell agreed.

  “Maybe it’s a wax castle? It looks like it sort of melted into that form,” Dante suggested.

  “I have never seen a fortress that looked like that,” Barabus said, shaking his head. It was clearly a fortress of some sort. It had walls with towers, or spikes at least, and windows. There was a moat of lava flowing around the walls, although no sign of a nearby volcano. The inner fortress had multiple towers as well, including several that seemed to bend, or rather droop sideways, and one that appeared to be a full arch. It was as if the tower had once been very tall and had slowly bent over until its top had come to rest on the ground. It was not actually possible to see the base due to the outer walls, but that was the impression Barabus got.

  The aspect of this weird fortification that gave everyone the thought of stalagmites and candles was the striation of every building. The walls were not made of normal stone, or if they were, they were grown stone or melted stone or something, all quite smooth and striated with different colors. Near the base were darker colors; near the heights brighter colors. The colors ranged pretty much the entire visible spectrum.

  The fortress, was also rather obviously occupied. The inner buildings seemed to have holes, or openings at random heights and locations, out of which and into which demons and other creatures were flying. Now, the very odd thing was the other creatures. The demons were what one would expect for demons, familiar to anyone who had fought one, but the other creatures were highly misshapen and quite frankly disturbing, even by demonic standards. They had tentacles, smooth and suckered, random sets of mouths, and odd numbers of limbs protruding in random directions. Barabus had never even imagined such horrors existing. He was fairly certain he would be having nightmares for some time; assuming he was ever going to be able to sleep again.

  “What in the name of creation are those things?” Heron asked out loud what they had all been thinking.

  “Denubian DemonsTM,” Sir Samwell said with a grim expression.

  “Denubian Demons?” Barabus asked. “I have never heard mention of them in any church lore I am familiar with.”

  “Denubian DemonsTM. You really do not want to leave out the trademark.” Sir Samwell grimaced and shook his head. “I would not expect you to have heard of them. They rarely get to Astlan,” the knight explained. “For one thing, no one native to Astlan could properly pronounce their true names to summon them. You need a minimum of two mouths to get the names even remotely close to being accurate. Most greater and higher demons would require at least three or four mouths.”

  “And you know all of this because...?” Chancellor Alighieri asked the knight, who shrugged.

  “The same way I know much about anything here; at some point, or rather points, I have been the ‘guest’ of various Denubian DemonsTM.” He shook his head. “As you might image, their questioning can be quite disconcerting. They neither speak nor think linearly, so you get all sorts of odd questions hammered at you at the same time, even from a single torturer.”

  “What would Talarius be doing here?” Gadius asked. “The demon who took him was certainly not a Denubian DemonTM.”

  “Indeed,” Sir Samwell replied with a frown. “That would be a very interesting turn of events.”

  Chapter 137

  Mount Doom, Tizzy’s Kitchen: Late Fourth Period

  “Here,” Tizzy told Reggie, handing him a stone bowl and pestle. “I need you to grind up those dried mushrooms.” He pointed towards five bushel-sized baskets of dried mushrooms on a nearby counter. “There’s a second bowl and pestle under the counter. You should be able to do two bowls at once.”

  “Why am I grinding mushrooms?” Reggie asked. Estrebrius had come and dragged him down to the kitchen, telling him that Tom needed his help. “And where is Tom?”

  “No idea; probably in Krallnomton,” Tizzy said. “Get busy. It took me forever to get these ingredients; we have to grind them all and then mix them just exactly right!” He waved towards the others in the kitchen: Boggy, Estrebrius and Antefalken. Each had large baskets of different dried plants.

  “You told me Tom needed my help!” Reggie said to Estrebrius.

  “He does. He needs you to help us grind the ingredients for the mortal stash! We don’t have a lot of time before the ceremony starts,” Tizzy replied over whatever Estrebrius had started to say, hurrying over to check on Boggy’s work. “And we gotta get everyone’s pipes stocked.”

  “Mortal stash?” Reggie asked, not having a clue what the octopod was talking about.

  Tizzy sighed, his top shoulders sinking in exasperation. “For the D’Orcing!”

  “Okay, but what do you mean, ‘mortal stash’?” Reggie asked.

  Tizzy shook his head in bemusement. “You really are a lousy stoner! All those participating in the ceremony need some enhancement to ensure everything goes smoothly, that non-mana wielders are able to share their mana easily with Tom and the shamans. Standard religious-slash-shamanistic practice for mana harvesting. Did you never go to church?”

  “We didn’t take drugs in my church!” Reggie objected.

  “I think you have to be on drugs to believe in the gods,” Boggy said.

  “So you don’t think Phaestus is real?” Antefalken spoke up.

  Boggy shook his head. “Obviously, having met the geezer, I know he exists; I simply refuse to believe that the gods are all-knowing, all-powerful solutions to life’s problems.”

  “In my experience, they are not the solutions, so much as the problems,” Tizzy quipped. “However, that is beside my point. We need to stay focused on our project!”

  Boggy stared in shock at Tizzy. “Who are you and what did you do with my partner? Are you possessed? I’ve heard rumors of humanic possession, but never thought I’d see it.”

  “You are very funny. But as the official Stash Master of Doom, I have responsibilities!” Tizzy moved around the kitchen, waving his upper two hands and then looking over Antefalken’s shoulder. “Anyway, as I was saying, the D’Orc and demon participants will be smoking pipes with demon weed. We can’t give mortals pure demon weed, except for our victim—er, patient.” Tizzy shook his head at his slip of tongue. “If we gave them all demon weed, who knows where they’d end up on the Astral Plane? Probably somewhere nea
r the Knights of Chaos, or worse, the Lords of Law! Talk about a boring group—makes the Oorstemothians seem like drunken frat brothers.”

  “How do you know about fraternities?” Reggie asked, shaking his head in puzzlement.

  “That’s not important! What’s important is that we need to have a mixture of ingredients for the mortals to smoke! We’ve got trace amounts of demon weed, normal marijuana, tobacco, the wax off these poppy seed pods, and of course those mushrooms.” He pointed to Reggie’s mushrooms.

  Reggie raised an eyebrow and leaned over the bowl to sniff the mushrooms. “Ugh!” He shook his head, pulling his face back; they smelled like cow shit. “These are psychedelic mushrooms!”

  “Psycho what?” Estrebrius asked.

  “You know, stuff that makes you hallucinate,” Reggie said.

  “Pfff!” Tizzy dismissed Reggie’s accusation. “What, are you asking if they are going to smoke the mushrooms and then look up and see a bunch of giant, multi-colored, bat-winged, vaguely porcine hooved creatures with giant tusks and a ten-foot-tall, four-armed purple dude with wings, a sinuous tail, two sets of massive pectorals, twelve pack abs and a perpetually erect penis? All of whom are chanting, dancing and flying around in circles to the beat of drums and a bunch of horns? Well then, yes, they will be hallucinating, but they would be seeing the same thing whether or not they smoked the mushrooms!”

  Reggie paused in thought. “Okay, good point. Can I keep some mushrooms for myself?”

  Tizzy chuckled. “Much better, but no! But if you are a good demon, I will get you some more later.”

  “This is going to make an enormous stash,” Reggie noted, looking at all the ingredients.

  Tizzy nodded. “We are going to need a lot, enough for several hundred mortals to share in their pipes.”

  “How many people are going to be in this ritual?” Antefalken asked with a skeptical expression.

  “Well, it varies depending on which version you do. But it looks like they are planning on using the full henge and everyone nearby. I mean, naturally, everyone who can come will want to be here. First new D’Orc in over four thousand years; even longer since we invested a shaman. We need stuff for them so we can harvest their mana.”

  “That’s an incredible number of people and mana. My summoning was just a few wizards,” Reggie said.

  Tizzy twisted his head. “Not just a few wizards. No, you said your accursed mistress is Merit-Ptah, beloved of Ptah. I’ve met her and her consort in several of their previous lifetimes. They are not only powerful ancient wizards, but animages and priests as well. Given what you’ve said about their repopulation project, you can bet they had some divine intervention to boost their mana supply.”

  He paused. “But the thing is, I give the wizards this: their ability to safely package up tons of mana in their spells, runes and gadgets gives them a serious edge in terms of efficiency and safety compared to how an animage or shaman has to do it. Shamans need a lot more raw mana to do the same thing the wizards do with their nifty little spells. Plus, orcs are a lot harder to transform than humans. Who’d have thought? They do not go gently to their Doom!” The octopod shook his head in what seemed to be amazement.

  “You really know a lot about this stuff!” Estrebrius marveled, looking at Tizzy with awe.

  Tizzy grinned back.

  “You were gone until last night; you seem to have gotten up to speed really fast on what needs to be done. Did Tamarin brain zap you?” Antefalken asked.

  Tizzy looked at the bard as if Antefalken was the crazy one. “Why would I need to get up to speed? I’ve been to at least half of all D’Orcings that have ever occurred.”

  Reggie did a double take. “What? You’ve been through a lot of ascensions?”

  Tizzy shrugged. “Of course, all the early ones! Eventually it got boring and I just kept the supply chain stocked.”

  “All the early ones?” Boggy asked.

  “Sure. Who do you think helped Orcus develop the process?” Tizzy asked as if this were common knowledge. “He, I and Vosh An-Non, the great shaman, also the first D’Orc we ever did. Well, first one we did who lived through the process. It was a mite touch and go for a while. By the time we got to Arg-nargoloth and Darg-Krallnom, we pretty much had the bugs worked out.”

  “So why aren’t you up there advising them on the ritual?” Reggie asked incredulously. “I am sure they could have used your help.”

  Tizzy gave a small head shake as if he did not understand what Reggie was saying. “Hello! Who would be taking care of the stash? Do you know how hard it is to round up all this stuff and prepare it on short notice?” He threw his arms up in the air and exclaimed, “Enough questions! We need to get to work. I am probably going to have to help with the poppy seed pods; scoring them is a real pain. Besides, Tom will do just fine. Making D’Orcs is like making babies. You never forget how. Trust me!” Tizzy waved away Reggie’s concerns.

  “Uhm... except that Tom has never made a D’Orc?” Reggie noted.

  That stopped Tizzy. “Hmm, yes. Forgot that, my bad. Well, no worries; he’s obviously made babies! Where else would Rupert have come from?”

  Nysegard, Krallnomton Henge: Mid Fifth Period

  Tom closed the gateway behind the party going to Etterdam with Karth Death Cheater. For the version of the ritual they had come up with, the anointed one, Karth, needed to be on a different plane from the one to which he was summoned; it could not be the Abyss because that was the third plane in the so-called Dimensional Triad.

  The biggest problem Tom had was that all of his current shamans, other than Trig Bioblast, were from the same localverse. Tom had briefly discussed sending Karth and the party to Trig, but Trig was not on a planet, he was on a spaceship in deep space, in rather cramped quarters. If a party of D’Orcs suddenly appeared on a military spacecraft, there would be lots of questions needing to be answered. Questions Tom was not quite ready to deal with. He had previously decided to focus on only one genre at a time. Once he mastered fantasy worlds, he’d move on to science fiction worlds. Or, he supposed, in this case, science-fantasy worlds as some magic apparently did work on Trig’s plane.

  Thus Karth, along with the D’Orc shaman Kroth-bitor, Karth’s wife Eldebra, two other orc shamans, Nod Rock Bender and Luga Strength Sapper and Arg-nargoloth had all gone to Ragala-nargoloth’s campsite as a waypoint. They had contacted her yesterday and she had taken her party slightly off course to a nearby henge, which being on a ley line intersection would help provide the power for her to open a second gateway to Excelsion, which was not in the localverse.

  She knew some shamans about one hundred leagues from some city named Ged. Apparently, the ruler of this city, an immortal archimage referred to as the Mobius Magi, had a propensity for interfering on many planes of existence, including Etterdam.

  They’d had to carry Karth on a stretcher, as the shaman needed to conserve all the energy he had left for the ascension. Tamarin’s magic was currently keeping his body intact; at this point a very loose tethering point for his animus and mana. Tamarin did not think it would take much demon weed to get him, an experienced shaman, out onto the Astral Plane where Tom and the shamans could “capture” him.

  The shamans would act as spiritual guards and escorts on the Astral Plane, while the D’Orcs, D’Wargs and orc warriors there would provide physical security for the henge. It was critical that nothing intrude on or interfere with Karth either in Excelsion or the Astral Plane before Tom summoned him.

  Tom was feeling more than a little queasy about this whole D’Orcing thing. Having gotten brain dumped on by Tamarin and spending the last day or so planning the ritual, there was no way he could avoid noticing the similarities to his own summoning. Vaselle had even confirmed that the D’Orcanization ritual was basically a shamanistic version of the wizard spells of demon summoning and binding.

  Which meant, logically, that the stuff that Reggie had brought to the party had not actually been pot, but rather demon weed. Somet
hing he’d been suspecting since he learned of the plant. Given that both of them had smoked the stuff and both ended up demons, it was rather irrefutable evidence.

  The only question was, where had their demon weed come from? According to his orc shamans, demon weed did grow on the material planes; they were, when lucky, able to get small amounts from traders. It was extremely expensive due to its scarcity and because shamans, wizards, animages and priests all used it in very small doses for magical rituals.

  If it was completely naturally occurring, then he supposed it could grow on Earth; but given there were no mana wielders on Earth, or at least not many powerful ones, it might not be cultivated. However, given that it looked like pot, one would think more people would have tried it, been summoned and died. This would have had to raise some red flags with authorities over the years, yet it had not. As far as he knew, he and Reggie were the only people on Earth to die of a pot overdose. One would think with modern legal medicinal, and in some places even recreational pot, more people would have found the stuff and overdosed to the far ends of the Astral Plane.

  Although, to be fair, Boggy had said that a large number of demons did come from Earth or alternate Earths, so apparently there had been a lot more people smoking demon weed and exiting stage left, so to speak; it just did not rise to a high enough threshold to garner significant notice.

  He shook his head. There was no time to debate this with himself; the ritual was about to commence. While it would take time for those in Etterdam to get set up and secure, the Nysegard side also had a lot of work to do. They needed to link everyone and bring up the necessary wards and protective circles around the henge and those clustered around it, providing mana.

  Tom took his place on a small backless throne that someone had dug up. Vaselle and Tamarin stood to either side of him—experienced observers, tightly linked to him, who could advise or assist him as needed. He nodded to Muzga Death Tusk, the oldest and most experienced D’Orc shaman they had. She would lead the initial rituals; Tom would be doing the actual summoning and binding. He hoped he could remember the words.