Please note the following has some (censored) cursing, and some graphic descriptions of violence. Reader discretion is advised.
This is part one of a two or three part story, I haven’t decided yet. Will try and keep future parts a bit shorter too!
I make no apology for the fact that the black liquid idea is ‘borrowed’ from one of the Malazan stories.
DESDAEMONA
Part One
Dessie squatted with her back against the upturned pew, crossbow clutched to her heaving chest.
“CROSSBOWS”, bellowed Captain Radcliffe.
She spun as she leapt up, taking a moment to track the monstrosity as it lurched between the three men that had surrounded it, and were attempting to pin it in position and prevent it from leaving the temple where they fought. Its four eyes glowed unnaturally from within it’s hard black armored skin. It didn’t appear to have a neck; its head began at the top of its chest and a huge mouth full of several rows of pointed teeth was set in the middle of where its chest would have been, had it been a human. Of course, had it been a human, it would also have not been ten feet tall. The disproportionality would have been offensive just to look at, even had it not been trying to kill everything within its reach.
Huge gauntletted hands with sharp claws were taking chunks out of the shields of Dessie’s comrades, the men doing everything they could to withstand the savage attacks, pressing it back wherever they could. Six large tentacles that looked to be formed of bone, black as the rest of the creature’s carapace, spread from the creatures back like contemptuous wings, stabbing over the creatures shoulder with the motion of a scorpion’s tail. The creature’s huge range had meant that so far the men had little chance to strike a blow, as it was all they could do to hold it in its position. Weapons bounced off its skin as though they were striking stone. It had been maybe a few hundred heartbeats since the daemon appeared, and so far no-one had managed to even scratch the wretched creature.
“Aim for the daemon’s maw”, Figgs said from beside her.
Daemon. Dessie had never seen one before, but that sounded right. Nothing like this would exist naturally anywhere in Krystera, she was sure of that.
“I can get its eye”, Dessie replied. She tracked the creature - the daemon - through the crossbow sight. She slowed her breathing and relaxed the muscles in her arms. The noises of the fight - the shouts of the men, the crash of claw on shield, the guttural howls of rage from the creature - quietened into background noise, and Dessie concentrated on the rhythmic drum of her own heartbeat pounding in her head.
“Negative Dessie, target too small. Aim for the maw”.
Dessie bit back her retort, re-settled and adjusted her aim. Figgs called ‘mark’ and she breathed in, then ‘fire’. They loosed simultaneously with exhaled breaths, then immediately dropped back down behind the pew to reload.
Captain Radcliffe ran over to their position, hopping and skipping over bodies that lay strewn across the floor; most barely moving, some faintly moaning, some weakly clawing at their mouths or eyes.
“Figgs, Dessie, I’m going in to help. Stay out of its range and keep firing. I’m not sure steel can hurt this thing so I need you to find a weakness.” He looked both of them in the eye. “We’ll hold it there, but I’m depending on you”.
“Captain”, Figgs had to raise his voice to be heard above the grunts, shouts, and guttural roars. “Perhaps a tactical retreat? Let Morthani take this temple, and anyone left in it.” He spat to one side to clear the Lady of Death’s name from his mouth.
“I would, but we don’t get paid if we don’t finish the job.” Radcliffe winked, sprung up, and was gone, bounding towards the fight happening at the other end of the temple with a rallying call.
Dessie peered back over the pew. The creature was still swinging between the men, slashing indiscriminately with its claws. She watched as Mikke and Captain Radcliffe tried to draw the creatures attention, which resulted in a huge blow from a claw that almost staggered Radcliffe as he held his shield with both hands to block it, but left the creature’s back open to Sunny who jumped in with a fierce low swing of his axe. The axe made contact with one of the creature’s legs and some hard material seemed to chip off, but the creature did not appear to be in any way wounded by the blow. It spun round to attack Sunny, who was forced to defend with his own shield.
I’ve got you, brother, Dessie thought whilst watching Sunny stand strong against the creature, using his shield to bash back the claws and his axe to parry the stabs of the tentacles. As the creature roared, she saw the crossbow bolts still lodged in its mouth.
“Figgs, those bolts hit home but aren’t doing nothing. The boys aren’t making any headway either. You heard Radcliffe. We’ve got to get a bolt in its head and the only way in is an eye”.
Figgs swore under his breath. “Even if you get the eye, Gaard only knows if it even has a brain. But alright lass, you go for it. I’ll keep hitting the maw and hopefully it’ll start bleeding.”
They fell into the familiar rhythm of ready, mark, fire as they fired salvos against the creature, Figgs peppering its maw with bolts and Dessie trying unsuccessfully to get a shot in its eye. She noticed from glances stolen in between reloads that Radcliffe was continuing to draw the creature’s attacks to allow Sunny to attack its back, but even after several rounds of this pattern the creature showed no sign of slowing.
Steadying herself, she lined up another shot at one of the creature’s eyes. She watched the bolt fly, almost in slow motion, before a twitch from the creature at the last possible moment meant that her bolt merely glanced off the creature’s skin. She swore, and sat down hard to reload once more.
“Where in the abyss did this thing come from?”, she asked Figgs.
“Never seen its like”, Figgs shrugged. “Abyss sounds about right though, lass. Heard of some mages making pacts with daemons to avenge them when they die, could be that. Heard of some can summon things like this. Could be the f****r just lived under the floorboards”. He made a warding gesture before finishing reloading his crossbow. “Evil, whatever it is”. They stood up to fire once more.
It wasn’t supposed to have been like this. Radcliffe and his crew of mercenaries had been hired for a job by the Lord Protector of Blackbridge as muscled back-up for a problem he’d been having in some nearby village within his jurisdiction. Blackbridge was a medium-sized, unremarkable town in an agricultural part of the Kingdom of Karkaroth, which existed mainly to provide a market to the small, unremarkable farms that surrounded it. When they’d entered the town to meet the Lord Protector , Dessie saw how the rest of her crew looked down on these folks as living small, unremarkable lives, but compared to where she and Sunny had grown up it was large and positively bustling.
The job itself was to have been a fairly simple one. A local cult that worshipped some kind of plague god had started causing some problems. Apparently, the cult had been going for some time but had recently gained in strength and number, and their ramshackle temple had been tacked on with more and more annexes and outbuildings as additional cultists moved in to dedicate their lives to its service. It wasn’t unusual to find cults like this in Karkaroth; unlike Whitehelm or Sword’s Edge, worship of most gods was tolerated here. Almost any town in this land would have any number of temples dedicated to fringe gods, and many cults began - and ended - here.
There had been some unsavoury incidents with this cult though, and as the followers had become more and more fanatic, the people had decided that enough was enough. The temple was responsible for an epidemic of drunkards, all addicted to a drink that the temple produced and sold. Those that drank it would stop caring about their families, their jobs, and eventually even themselves, and would do anything to get hold of the vile liquid and spend their lives in stupor. With petty crime on the rise, the people looked to their Lord Protector to act and he decided that the whole cult was to be kicked out of its temple and sent on its way. The town didn’t have enough guards to handle the crowd of fifty or so cultists if things went bad, so they looked to Radcliffe for extra protection and crowd control. Show up, flex some muscle and flash some steel, scare the cultists into leaving. Simple.
Dessie had started to get the chills as they marched to the temple, Radcliffe’s band along with a few of the townsguards. She was used to stares; it wasn’t every day that a heavily armored band marched through villages like these. But she noticed folk that stared at them with witless eyes and mouths stained black, open and gaping. She had seen them first in the poorer parts of Blackbridge, but as they marched she saw them too in fields and farmsteads along the way.
As they got closer to the temple, the number of people with black stained mouths grew higher and higher. A couple of carts laden with amphora drove past them from the direction they were heading, the drivers discourteously not tipping their hats.
When they came over a hill within half a bell’s walk to the temple, they all stopped short at the command to halt from Captain Radcliffe. The temple stood across a gentle valley from them, atop a hill. The land in between was farmland, but there were details that made the landscape markedly different from what anyone might expect.
The land was littered with scarecrows painted black, more than any farm could conceivably need and then more again. Every six feet or so, there was a scarecrow atop a pole with what looked to be pots beneath them. Not a bird was in sight. The ground was also covered in black patches, stains of the paint spreading like a sickness from beneath each scarecrow. As they all surveyed the scene, the Captain edged cautiously down the mound and into the field to inspect the nearest scarecrow more closely. “This is why I f****** hate Karkaroth”, Sunny remarked. The townsguards fidgeted.
Radcliffe gave the handsignal for them to join him. As they got closer, with dread it dawned upon them that the scarecrow was, in fact, a human being, and the paint was, in fact, not paint. Eyes and mouth oozed viscous black goo, with amphora at the base of the pole collecting it as it slowly ran down. Figgs made a warding symbol. One of the guards vomitted.
“Should we cut him down, Captain?” asked Mikke.
“Leave him”, the Captain replied. “We’re here to get rid of them, not save them.” He stabbed a finger towards the guards. “It was their job to protect them”.
He spat to one side, then strode on towards the temple, waving them to follow. “Stay alert”.
The mercenaries drew their weapons and immediately fell into a combat formation. Radcliffe at the head, Mikke and Sunny on either side of him forming an arrow head. Dessie and Figgs ranged, crossbows in hand, while Rish kept a rearguard. They proceeded like this towards the temple.
Any hope of a peaceful resolution was confounded by the fact that once they did start encountering the cultists, they found themselves being completely ignored. There was quite an operation underway amongst them to carry the full amphora back to a barn and set down fresh ones in their place, but not a single cultist would acknowledge them or even look them in the eye. Radcliffe took one by the shoulders and shook her, and her head flopped back and forth like a ragdoll. He grabbed her jaw and looked into the eyes, but the black stained mouth hung slack jawed and the woman made no sign that she understood a word he said. When he released her, she simply picked up the empty pots she had been carrying and continued her task as though nothing had happened.
Upon entering the temple through its large double barn doors, they located the priest immediately, standing as he was on a dais at the far end of the main part of the building. Many cultists were present, but again continued to ignore the mercenaries, barely moving. Some lounged on pews, others had slid to the floor where they remained. Others still stared at the wall, or simply lay prone. The priest was the only one that eyed them, and the only one whose mouth was not stained black. He wore a crown of bone, and a cloak that was pinned with an ornate bone epaulette that spread down to form a kind of armour on his upper arms. “He’s not even trying to look like he’s not evil”, Sunny murmered, while Figgs nodded sagely.
Radcliffe told the guards to wait by the doors, and approached the priest, the rest of his crew following cautiously. The priest laughed as he watched them approach, and unclipped his cloak. As it fell to the floor they saw he had two sets of arms. “Evil!”, Figgs whispered.
As Radcliffe and the smiling priest stood face to face, the priest opened his mouth to speak but never got the chance to. With a lightning fast move, Radcliffe drew his sword and swung a hard backswing, horizontally, taking the priest’s head clean off. The body fell to its knees, neck pumping black blood, and Radcliffe kicked the body hard in the chest to topple it where it lay sprawled across the middle of the dais. “Whatever you were going to say, not interested”. He spat on the body, and began wiping his blade clean. And that, as far as Dessie was concerned, should have been that.
A chorus of wailing filled the air, as the cultists began to become animated. As one, they rose from their positions and, hands covering their mouths, eyes wide with panic, they bolted. Some crashed into each other and fell, some ran into the walls or the pews. Some made it to the door and sprinted past the townsguards who watched them pass, unsure what to do other than gape, open-mouthed, in an ironic reversal of roles.
The priest’s body lay in a pool of black blood, and as the mercenaries moved their attention back to him they noticed movement.
“Is… is he melting?” Sunny asked.
“More like… sinking” replied Rish. He leant forward to peer at the body, which did not seem to be sinking into the middle of the dais. Dessie crouched down to look at where the small stage met the floor, but couldn’t see any kind of mechanism or trapdoor. It was as though the dais was sagging, the weight of the blood weighing it down like water on a skin.
“Back. I don’t like this”, growled Radcliffe.
They watched as the body slid out of view, and the blackness that it sank into began to swirl up from the dais. The darkness radiated, impossibly, and chaos appeared to swarm within it. The building started to tremor, then wobble, then shake, and cracks spread across the floor, outwards from the yawning black. A clawed hand thrust out from within, dug deep into the temple floor, and dragged up behind it the rest of the hulking daemonic creature.
Mikke had been caught by a claw, and lay on his back clutching his chest where the daemon’s talons had shredded his armour and left deep wounds of red ribbons. Rish had joined Radcliffe in the game of bait and counter, while Sunny still attempted to take a leg out when the opportunity presented. Dessie and Figgs’s fire had not managed to make any impact on the daemon.
For all their efforts, the men were tiring and the daemon was beginning to press them back towards the temple’s single exit. Dessie and Figgs had peppered the daemon with bolts, some of which had bounced off and some of which had stuck, but the creature continued to be relentless in its assault. Dessie wondered how it kept its energy up, its raw fury unabashed and indiscriminate.
“I’ve got to get closer, Figgs.”
“That’s a negative, lass. Keep your distance. You’re no use to us if you take one of those claws”.
“Morthani be damned. I’m not letting that thing get out of here.” She spat.
She ignored Figgs hissing at her as she crept forward, trying to stay out of the daemon’s attention. As Radcliffe once again stepped forward to draw the creature’s attack, she rushed to a position behind Sunny, sliding to the floor and resting her crossbow on a pew ready to take aim when the creature next turned. Sunny didn’t see her coming, and started at the noise.
“Dessie!”
“Turn round, you idiot!”, she snapped, but Sunny had let his concentration lapse. The creature had reared at the sound and Sunny still had his back to it. She watched as a bone spear from the daemon’s hideous wings pierced his chest below the clavicle, and then another stabbed through his abdomen, the tips protruding out through the front of his armour. She couldn’t move, frozen in horror at the brute power that had forced through the steel plate like a skewer through cooked meat. Sunny’s eyes were wide open, an expression of surprise on his face as he slowly looked down to the black bone spikes extending from his chest. The creature raised the hideous wings lifting Sunny off the floor, before a claw swung and Sunny’s body fell in two, a curtain of blood and bile descending between it.
Dessie felt rage swell up inside her as the creature stared at her with its four, pearly blue eyes, and began stepping towards her over what was left of Sunny. Radcliffe and Rish were furiously trying to cut the daemon down with all their might, but it didn’t even waver from the blows. Dessie heard shouting, but not the words. Biting down tears of grief and fury with a clenched jaw, she rose from her position, stepped up and over the pew, and advanced towards the creature, determined to get one good shot in before it took her.
The creature loomed over her, and Dessie didn’t have the time nor inclination to question why it hadn’t raised a claw to kill her yet. She lifted the crossbow up as the creature was almost on top of her, and shot. The bolt hit true. The daemon stopped, swayed, and fell backwards onto the dais from whence it had emerged, where it began slowly sinking into the black just as the priest’s body had.
Dessie didn’t hear what Radcliffe was trying to say to her. She shrugged off the hands that tried to squeeze her shoulder to comfort her, and knelt by the upper half of Sunny’s body to stroke his hair. Figgs was treating Mikke’s wound. The others gathered behind her, the victory marred.
Brave, strong Sunny, the brother that had always protected her. The one who’d looked out for her, who’d saved her from Father’s anger and ran away with her. Who’d worked to keep her safe and fed, and who’d taught her how to fire a bow. When he had been offered a place with Radcliffe’s company, he was firm he would only accept if she could join too. She had known he was only human, but she had never believed it. It had never occurred to her that he could come to any harm and that it would be her left, not him.
None of them noticed that as the creature was about to slide out of view, it reached out the giant fist nearest Dessie. Before anyone could do anything, it dragged her down into the blackness with it, the portal closing firmly behind them.