Book 3: Sound And Fury

  Ch 17 Negative, Ghost Rider

  Marshal Benedict Quaulis had no illusions about his little frontier trade town… Few citizens of the empire’s heartland would believe that there existed an imperial city directly on the border of the barbarian northern lands. Wherever they believed their trade goods and northern luxuries came from, the exhausted and increasingly desperate imperial functionary had no clue and currently, couldn’t care any less.

  He held fewer illusions with regard to the increasingly confusing and impossible events unfolding in the ruins of his dock ward. However this played out, his town was at the mercy of inscrutable forces and not even the blessed empress would be able to pull their fat from this sudden and inexplicable fire.

  From his battlements, the governor of Numbley town looked out on his humble domain. Mangroves dominated the shore, with paddy farms spreading out behind that impenetrable wall of swamp, trees and vines. Behind the wetland crops, rich farmlands spread out in a patchy quilt, with young orchards running up the hillsides.

  Benedict watched the sun sink behind the coastal mountain range, dragging purple shadows from the foothills and forests of his homey little slice of her imperial majesty’s domain.

  The small harbor was now a mess of charred flotsam and sunken ships, their blackened masts and rigging swayed gently in the waves. No seabirds flew over the silent outer town, though many human forms could be glimpsed, milling about in the gathering sunset… no doubt plotting another attack.

  Several small boats had flown over the waves, carrying his pleas to the empress, as had pigeons, runners and riders… but no force was near enough to save the isolated little port town, not by a hundred miles and more.

  /

  Fletcher gazed out over the ruins of the unknown little town’s dock ward; fires still smoldered among the gutted hovels and wrecked shops, even as they swarmed with his undirected minions.

  He’d come sailing in with hundreds of salted, preserved corpses, freshly reanimated with a bit of ritual human sacrifice. Most had bands of iron riveted or sewn onto their jerky-like, salted and smoked flesh; serving as crude armor, further enhancing their durability.

  Unable to wield weapons properly, or follow complex commands, the preserved zeds made excellent shock troops. They were a perfect means of collecting living materials and fresh corpses… usually.

  The local garrison had been stubborn and fanatically dedicated, bogging down his invading zombies in the tangle of muddy alleys and waterways of the shitty slum for entirely too long. They had fought to the last, allowing nearly all of the living to escape into the town walls and held out long enough for the massive gates to slam closed behind them.

  He spat a gobbet of decaying tissue onto the sandy soil and gurgled deep in his mount’s festering bowels. Instead of a quick raid for fresh corpses, this was becoming a complete boondoggle.

  The idiotic zombies stumbled about aimlessly, when not under his direct guidance; foolishly aping the activities of the living with untiring hands and mindless dedication.

  One was even trying to paint a seaside hovel, with a dry brush and empty pail; despite the hut being half collapsed by the heedless zombie army’s invasion. Others pushed empty barrows, selling no wares to their mindless and destitute ‘customers’, simply going through the motions out of habit. Their brains had been removed and the cavities stuffed with sawdust and straw in the manufacturing process, now they were simpletons stumbling around helplessly.

  While his unguided troops gave the town a mocking semblance of life, all of the living had escaped into the walled city, leaving him with few resources…

  Fletcher had been counting on securing at least a few dozen living mortals to work some more advanced examples of his art.

  He at least needed a fresh vessel! His current ride was battered and rapidly decaying in the swampy heat.

  Silence ruled the outer boroughs, rather than the sweet, musical screams of living souls in torment. That was going to be a problem…

  The filthy, cursed locals had burned his ships and their own, trapping him outside the town gates, locked into a pointless siege, when he should be doing his duty to pontiff Lumos. The lich sighed through a dead man’s ragged throat and gabbled an incoherent order at a nearby zombie. It obeyed, of course… The lich lord commanded his undead horde by Will alone, but he’d felt like shouting at someone. It was deeply unsatisfying, of course.

  /

  Far to the northeast, on a spit of land between a high mountain cascade that fell in a surging rush to join a crystalline mountain lake and the slow, tranquil river flowing in from up valley, a tall inn stood among many outbuildings and a sprawling garden.

  Festively decorated from roof to foundation in flowering vines and gaily waving pennants in a myriad of colors, people swirled and chattered in a carnival atmosphere, all over the extensive grounds.

  Separated from the lakeside town and the castle on the hills by a short, wide bridge of ancient stone and new cut timber, surrounded by a whimsical garden and a collection of lesser buildings, the place teemed with life and music.

  From the foot of the stone and timber bridge, a strand of rope, knotted with colorful rags and scraps of cloth fluttered in the gentle, midsummer breeze. The flimsy, fluttering textile barred entry as securely as any iron gate. No one was willing to approach the strangers unbidden, lest the darker rumors of madmen, haunts and wicked sorcery be proven true.

  In the village square, townsfolk gathered in small clusters to listen, speculate and gossip about the clan of weirdos, Adventurers and crafters that had taken up residence on the crappy gravel spit across the river.

  /

  Gary and Shai staggered back downstairs just before third bell, looking well ‘rested’ and prepared to face a day of utter madness in the crowded inn compound.

  “Fie… I did almost forget how odd it is… seeing so many of thee all together, my lad.” Shai muttered softly, as several Garies dueled on the lawn with wooden weapons, under the guidance of Wilf and Rio.

  “We just needed to shift the center of balance back and change the profile and diameter of the grip…” Wilf clapped Seven of Cups on his muscular shoulder and grinned. “You should have consulted a real sword-fitter and bladesmith years ago… Off the rack gear is fine for short term use; but lousy ergonomics and a shitty fit encourage bad habits and inferior swordsmanship! We should have the prototype ready by tomorrow morning.”

  The younger Wards were also busily hustling their crafts and making sales, surrounded by racks of training weapons fitted with odd slots, holes and fixtures. The kids worked among bins of interchangeable parts, allowing each customer to choose the weight, balance, grip profiles and handguards on their chosen blade forms.

  The simple, dummy parts were quickly and easily attached with bolts and clips, allowing them to be swapped out and experimented with freely, on a wide assortment of bare, unsharpened blades.

  Lindsey held a fat ledger, quickly noting down the orders in her neat, precise hand. One of the brothers would call out a short string of nonsense words and numbers for her to jot down, followed by a list of components, coded in letters and numbers. Business seemed brisk on a sunny and peaceful morning in the garden.

  Garies swarmed around Amy’s armor racks as well, eyeballing the innovative and highly affordable offerings on display.

  “Most of you guys are exactly the same size… you put this on easy mode!” She jeered at her swarming uncles. “No additional discounts, these are already rock bottom prices!”

  The noise and riotous clamor grew even stronger as they neared the jam sesh in the rose garden, shaking the earth and making the leaves tremble to the strains of music from another world and time.

  The music dance and sing,

  They make the children really ring…

  I spend the day your way!

  “Sweet tune…” Gary sighed as Roundabout built in intensity. “Yes really nailed it with that one.”

  He took Shai for a twirl, savoring the freedom and lightness of his freshly uncursed body. They spun and stepped for a few timeless moments, enjoying the bustle and energy all around, while locked together in a shared moment of intimate peace.

  Alone together in a crowd of rowdy knuckleheads, they both sighed when the familiar strains of ‘Mister Postman’ whistled urgently from the clay beak of a plump little ocarina bird, perched atop Gary’s head.

  “That’s Gabbie’s bird, lad. She would nae have sent it rushing back so soon, were it nae a vital matter. Let us hear what be so damnably important.” Shai grumbled, as they strode off together, headed for a quiet corner of the garden for a listening sesh.

  /

  Gary and Shai returned to the swirling melee shortly, both were grim faced and angry. “Anybody seen Necro around?” Gary asked the large gathering of himselves.

  An impossibly large flight of gigantic, colorful butterflies scattered from the rosebush he was standing beside, when their many, many nearly identical eyes focused in his direction, as though directed by a single, unified will.

  At the edge of the property, the cloud of flittering, colorful insects exploded into sweet smelling pink smoke and blew away into the summer sky.

  “Focus up gang… We’re getting some imaginary overflow; dreams don’t belong in the mortal world.” He sighed, while Shai clapped in delight, her fury forgotten momentarily.

  “I just got a message from my sister, Gabbie… She’s the empress of a local nation to the south, nice girl… Anyway, I guess a fleet of zombie marines are attacking one of her cities, led by a lich of some kind. It sounds like your light cult is making a move on my sister’s people.” He grumbled at the crowd. “It’s a city about eight hundred miles south, on the shore of the inland sea.”

  “Why send here for help?” Ace demanded, his blue, wooden doll body standing out in the group of very similar men.

  “Necromancers and liches are problematic here, cause our pantheon sucks ass!” Harry opined, from his little shop of alchemical horrors on the lawn. “There’s a lot of latent death energy floating around the world… We have a number of answers to those kinds of problems, especially since they tried that same play on us not too long ago.” The youngest Ward boy shook his head sadly. “Uncle Ward is our world’s only functional death god and he’s useless with the undead.”

  “Hey!” Ward complained. “That’s a little mean, kiddo! I don’t have any worshipers to speak of in the empire, so an undead army is news to me…” The too handsome Gary in black drifted out of the crowd, seeming otherworldly and strange, even among the bizzare tribe.

  He stepped into the open space and nodded to his crazy hosts, before vanishing away into the shadows of a fig tree that hadn’t been there a moment before.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “If Gabbie’s in trouble, I’ll go do what I can.” The leaves softly rustled as he vanished back into his tree. A few seconds after Ward evaporated into shadows and disappeared, Necro stepped out of the shade of a rose arbor with a long-suffering sigh. “That guy creeps me out!” He complained weakly.

  “Nevermind him…” Ghnash grunted eagerly at the ominous, slender Gary in a cloak of unrelieved black. “We have work, you and I!” The goblin jeered at the lean, pale man towering over him.

  “I would rather avoid interacting with that fellow any more than needful…” Necro grumbled quietly.

  “Bahh! You just can’t bear the thought of there being a bigger chuuni than you, somewhere out there. Buckle up brother, we are flying a few hundred miles, to mess up a lich and take back your jagged, edgelord crown.”

  The goblin king kissed Sabrina and gave her flat green tummy a gentle rub for good luck, before taking the much larger man’s hand and leading him off to a suitable stretch of beach for takeoff. “I was feeling like seeing more of this world, anyway.”

  /

  Sunset seemed to take a thousand years to come, bringing sweet relief from the blazing sun at last. None of the dead were at their best in daylight, now he was ready to harvest a rich crop of shades and haunts from the wreckage and bloodshed he’d sailed into the nameless harbor town to create.

  Under his milky, dead gaze, shadows and spectres stirred all around, pooling in the deeper shadows and rising like mist from blood-stained sand and soil.

  Perhaps fifty mortals had perished in his attack, but there were always plenty of shades around any living town. He summoned them forth from the ossuaries and crypts, or from the lightless depths, where generations of drowned sailors waited in the cold for someone to call.

  He cackled with glee as they answered in uncounted legions, rising from the land and sea by the score at his first demand. “So many…” He croaked merrily, as he danced a ghastly little jig of delight.

  Slowly they gathered, deeper darkness churning and swirling wherever mortal eyes feared to gaze. Dimmer corners and obscure angles allowed them to slip through into the world more fully, manifesting as shadowy figures that flitted and drifted just out of sight of the human watchers on the town walls.

  Fletcher relished the stirrings of fear and despair from those humans, as their doom gathered in the murky darkness of sunset. Countless spectres awaited full night to stream out and join his host, the faint glimmers of former lives suppressed and subsumed by his Will and arts…

  The lich lord could almost taste the delicious irony of it; all those stubborn, filthy meatbags falling to his incorporeal legion, their souls torn from their flesh by the shades of their own dead!

  More delightful yet, what remained of the living minds of his ghostly army would experience all the helpless terror of rending their kin into blood soaked rags, as slaves to the necromancer lord’s Will.

  Late into the evening he called out to the lost, forgotten dead; drawing them up from ever greater depths in an almost uncontrollable torrent of raw, untapped death energy. Still the dead rose all around, flickering shadows forgotten for untold centuries, lingering in the soil and ocean depths. It was as if they were waiting for his call to pour out in a torrential flood of dark, quiet energy and the cool, rushing sensation of unseen things passing in the night.

  On and on they continued, eagerly pushing forward to join in the vast pool of eldritch darkness that spread from the lich lord’s feet, awaiting his command. Fletcher swayed a little drunkenly at the intensity and depth of the cold, silent wellspring bursting from his very feet, in an unstoppable geyser of forgotten lives and mortal regrets.

  “I like this world…” He croaked through what remained of his rapidly decaying host. “Fuck the light cult… With power like this, I could scour all life from this world and make a silent, perfect realm of my own…”

  A ragged and half rotten smile spread over his stolen face as the moon rose over the mountains, drenching the seaside carnage in warm, golden glow that cast hazy shadows and scattered from the harbor’s waves in tiny motes of light.

  Fletcher drew a deep breath into the slowly withering lungs of his meatbag and sighed happily. “I’ll rule this world… Both Luxor and Lumos can suck it!” He gasped raggedly.

  “Sorry, but your ambitions end here… haunt.” A soft voice murmured from the shadow of a creeping strangler fig. A tall, lean, muscular man stepped from beneath the creepers and smiled, his teeth gleaming with an impossible light of their own in the darkness… Teeth that seemed far too sharp to be truly human.

  Without a moment of hesitation, the rotting shell hiding the lich croaked out a command. “Don’t slay him, bring him to me alive and screaming.” Fletcher gurgled to his legion of shadows and zombies.

  Long seconds passed, as the tall, smiling man in black stepped out of his low bower of creepers and dusted imaginary specks from his immaculate clothing. None of the dead moved to obey, or reacted to the man’s presence in any way; despite Fletcher’s silent, but furious mental and audible commands that they fall on the idiot and destroy him immediately.

  “Your slaves can’t perceive or interact with me. I exist for the living, not the dead.” He remarked casually to the ragged cadaver standing among the lesser undead. “Just as I can’t destroy you, no matter how desperately I want to.” He sighed and gazed off into the rising moon. “My brothers will be taking care of that, in a few short minutes.”

  As the clown nattered on idly, bolts of ice, electricity and something green, vaporous and nasty looking flew from the lich lord’s battered fingers, dousing the black clad man in several flavors of death and agony at once.

  “Yeah, buddy… that was really scary. You’re not a great listener, are you…?” The stranger sighed dramatically and waited for the magical maelstrom of withering blasting and searing spells and forces to dwindle away, leaving a ring of blackened, corrupted and cracked earth all around the man.

  The creature took a low, theatrical bow when Fletcher let his barrage of spells collapse around his visitor, once the utter futility of it became clear.

  “I am Ward, the local god of Death and Vengeance… I’m also the eternal dryad of the Golden Fig as well, but nobody ever cares about that…” His tone suggested that this was a regular complaint and a sore spot for the strange being.

  “You, my new friend… are a lich, haunting a rather grisly corpse in a very unpleasant manner. That kind of behavior is generally considered quite rude, in civilized company. While I am the god of Death, I’m not involved with Undeath at all. I don’t work that angle, it’s outside my purview.” He shrugged and smiled again.

  “Now, to be clear… it’s none of my business, what a self willed undead gets up to on the mortal plane. I don’t have the power to stop you from killing my mortals, making their corpses get up and murder more people, so that you can animate their corpses in turn.” The man glared at him and shook his head in disgust. “Distasteful and horrid as you are, I don’t get to mess you up. There are strict rules about that sort of thing, here.”

  He scowled at the lich with an unbridled and burning fury hidden behind his mask of polite indifference. “Souls, however… Are my business. All these shades are Mine, not yours; so I’ll be taking them away now.”

  While he was speaking, a tiny green moon began drifting up from behind the mountains, following the larger celestial body into the sky. At the first rays from that tiny wandering moon, his legion of shadows began to ripple and flutter in some very odd ways.

  Once the entire little lunar orb finished clambering up from behind the horizon, black shadows began taking flight from the horde. Butterflies, moths, bats, hummingbirds, owls, all manner of flying creatures took wing or spun silken sails to flutter off into the embrace of that small green moon.

  For an hour and more, that dense, swirling cone of blacker shadows danced in a twisting ropey column of darkling motes, leading off into the endless sky and the moons high above.

  For that entire hour and then some, Fletcher stood in absolute silence and stillness; held in place by the irresistible Will and supernatural presence of Ward, god of Death, Vengeance and Golden Figs.

  The mad deity did not remain silent, not at all. He spun an irrational, impossible, rambling tale of immortals destroyed and gods thwarted by the power of a single foolish mortal man.

  “...so, my brother, Gary… You’ll not be meeting him… He tore pontiff Luxor out of her crystal heart construct, shredded her immortal essence, took away her innate immortality, then dumped her into the Devourer of Souls to get pureed into a fresh, clean mortal soul…” He smiled with wicked glee. “She’s probably sixteen years old right now, I hope its awkward as fuck for her… And that’s as much of the story as we have time for, buddy.”

  Ward sat down on the porch of a mostly collapsed hut and grinned up at the immobile corpse that was his strange tale’s only visible audience. “Now, of course, none of that matters to you, lich…” He said with a small grimace.

  “Did you notice how I never asked your name? You’re not that important and are already doomed, nothing can save you… But I do owe you something for calling up all these trapped ghosts and spirits for me. I was probably going to take at least another century to get my cult to spread this far. You saved me a ton of work, with this little crime of yours.”

  The lich tried to speak, but the deity’s Will held him silent.

  “My reward for your service is the story I just told you… And the knowledge that pontiff Lumos has been watching this whole time, through your senses. That tricky asshole is always one step ahead of his goons, cause he only hires idiots.”

  The insane being leaned close to his undead prisoner and smiled sweetly, while gazing beyond the dead man’s curdled eyeballs.

  “Hey there, Lumos…” Ward said gently, to the very distant immortal, watching from his throne.

  “I know we’ve only just met, but I think we’re sharing something special here…” He sighed wistfully and gazed up at the moons and the vanishing swarm of shades.

  “Once the Necromancer finishes with your boy, he will be doing his very best to arrange a face to… whatever you have, meeting between you and I.”

  Ward cocked his head to one side and grinned with deranged delight. “They’re playing your song, lich. I hear dragon wings in the darkness and the goblin king’s shamisen.”

  He stood and began strolling back into the low, tangled heap of fig boughs he had emerged from. He paused for a moment, glancing back at the dead man and the lich lord hiding inside his ragged corpse.

  “As you fly off into the void, screaming about the unfairness of it all, remember that in the end, life is too sacred a thing to ever truly end, even yours. Even a soul as wretched and soiled as yours can be cleansed and reborn for another try…”

  Ward paused, his mad, smiling face still barely visible among the fig leaves and pendulous fruits. “Or maybe, you could spend your last few minutes on this mortal plane considering the beauty of my world by night. Take a moment to remember how it felt… being alive and mortal. Perhaps you might find a glimpse of what you’ve thrown away, to become the reeking pile of disjointed desires and desperate misery, you are now.”

  Just as suddenly as he’d appeared, the madman was gone, as was his strange, imprisoning compulsion power.

  Fletcher wasted barely a moment in rallying his wandering zeds… and only those stupid zombies, since not a single haunt remained within reach of his silent voice. They rushed to his side, forming up in orderly ranks, preparing to push into the town at any cost… Once inside, the mortals would shield him from that monster’s awful powers.

  In all the centuries the Necromancer had been roaming the realms, he’d never razed a living town, despite the rumors. Fletcher himself had helped spread those rumors, as a part of his work with the temple of light. Once his army and more critically, he was snugly in among the mortals, the creature would need to work hard to root him out.

  Revvin' up your engine,

  Listen to her howlin' roar!

  Metal under tension,

  Beggin' you to touch and go!

  The sound of rushing wings and strange, wailing music filled the silent night sky, as something swooped low over the harbor, roaring out a torrent of silent blue flames that burned his ranks of flesh and bone to ash.

  Liquid ghostly dragonfire pooled and splashed all around, clinging to and burning away any marching undead flesh it touched. Trees, bushes, even the battered and ruined huts remained unharmed in that eerie blaze; just as living creatures of the night fled it’s touch uninjured, but spooked beyond all endurance.

  Above the flames and chaos, circling on wings of tattered leather, the necromancer circled, as a small figure danced and sang an impossibly loud and incomprehensible song into the night.

  Highway to the Danger Zone!

  Ride into the Danger Zone!

  Leaping and capering spectres of flame danced in the eldritch inferno, performing joyous, exuberant acrobatics as the lingering revenants locked within the preserved zombies escaped from their unclean bondage.

  Butterflies and moths of sparking fire, took flight in a glittering swarm of multicolored embers, winging away into the sky, headed for that distant, little green moon.

  Fletcher watched helplessly as his army vanished away, halfway to the town gate… leaving only ash and a stream of sparkling lights flying off into the night. He stood there, alone among the ruins, as the last flickers of eldritch flames dwindled away in thunderous silence.

  The low thud of a few tons of dry, dusty bones landing on the seashore broke the lich lord’s shocked reverie; far too late for any hopes of escape. His ragged corpse was barely able to shamble around the town’s empty streets, forget fleeing into the swamps…

  When Fletcher turned to look into his oncoming doom, the dragon was busily creating a shallow depression in the sun warmed sand and settling in for a nap.

  “Ooo! Look, Goose, a lich lord!” A slightly high pitched, yet masculine voice chirped from the skeletal dragon’s back. “Can I has it? I could spin his life out into so many fine things…”

  “Now, now, Ghnash… We promised we wouldn't do anything… unclean in Gary’s homeworld. He’s trying to stay on the sunny side of life.”

  The Necromancer rumbled in a voice that chilled even the half spectral lord of the undead standing before the monstrous reptile of dried bones.

  “Hmph… Call me Maverick… but very well, I’ll just peel away all his mojo and then break his hold on unlife… boring boring.” From atop the nightmare of animated bones, a small, muscular green man lept to the sandy and sooty ground with a grunt of displeasure.

  “Reeks of blood and undeath… nasty nasty!” The absurd goblin man capered and jeered at the lich, who stood all alone in the ruined market square.

  “Come on, deadman! You want power? You wish to rule over others? Then you must be prepared to face a true king in the fullness of his power… and learn where you fall short!”

  Ghnash twirled his spear of decorated obsidian and ironwood, making the feathers, beads and bone fetishes spin and clatter in the silent square, facing the lich in his stolen flesh.

  “Go on… I won’t interfere.” The dragon of haunted bones whispered from his cozy nest on the beach. “Like those humans on the city walls, I am just a spectator.”

  /

  “A skeleton dragon…” Marshal Benedict breathed softly as all hope fled from his tired body and he sagged to the battlements in despair. “Empress preserve us…”

  “Relax, buddy.” A tall, absurdly handsome man in black declared firmly from the next battement over, where no one at all should be, during this absurd emergency.

  “Your empress asked for help and her friends answered, with style… You guys are missing one hell of a show.”

  He chuckled in amusement, as if he could see what was happening, down in the unlit ruins of the docklands.

  “Who are you and what are you doing on my walls?” The exhausted lord asked weakly.

  “Oh, sorry pal… I’m Ward, your local death god… I came to collect an army of loose ghosts, my brothers came to smash your lich flat. I really struggle with self willed undead beings, I don’t work that side of the street.” The lunatic answered with a wide, inhuman smile. “Let’s see if I can give you a better view of the action; this is too good to miss!”

  /