Rogan's Monsters 3: Temple, page 4
A hot shower. Indoor plumbing. A greasy burger from the local diner rather than spit-roasted lizard or bat.
Perhaps it was this moment of nostalgia, or at least the echoes of it still in my mind, that led me to answer Ecco’s next question the way that I did.
The dragonfly girl and Zera had been flitting about for much of the morning, but neither of them seemed built for extended periods of flight. From time to time, they both alighted, walking with the rest of us for a while before launching into the air once again. It was during one of those intermissions when Ecco returned to the line of questioning she had begun the previous night.
“And what of your reasons, Rogan?” she asked me. “Are you on this quest simply to offer your protection to Lady Gamma? Or do you have your own reasons for seeking out this priestess?”
I had to think about my answer. “Up until I woke up in the wastelands, I had no idea that the Temple or this priestess even existed. Before then, I lived another life, in another time. I wasn’t the Rogan Ward that Lady Gamma and Ash both knew. Nor do I fully understand the limits of the priestess’ power.”
Before the wraiths had descended on earth, I had never given any thought at all to the limitations of magic. I mean, why would I? I was just a guy, trying to make my way in the world, working different jobs to pay the bills and tinkering with my old Mustang whenever I could. That was before I had joined up the first time, and gotten my ass kicked and my leg all blown to hell. The limitations of magic was a question for philosophy majors and fantasy novelists, and pretty much nobody else.
If the priestess could do no more than look through the veils of time, then it wasn’t likely I would have a snowball’s chance of ever seeing that life again. But if she could do more…
“I would like to return,” I said finally. “To go back to before all this began. And live out my life as I should have been able to.”
Ecco didn’t know quite what to think of this answer. She didn’t understand the reality of where I had come from. Not entirely. She looked at me with a puzzled expression, but I was thinking once more about the words that had reverberated through my mind since before I had woken up in this land.
“You can save them. You can save all of them.”
Perhaps this priestess had the power I sought. Perhaps she could somehow send me back into the past. And if she could, then maybe I could persuade the powers that be that the approaching armada hadn’t crossed the vast emptiness of space just to say “Hi!” That instead, they were there to turn our world into a living nightmare from which there was no escape.
“You can save them. You can save all of them.”
I found myself chuckling at the thought. I glanced at Ecco, drinking in her beauty, before expanding my gaze to include the others. In the short time I had been in this world, each of them had become special to me in their own way. Even Gamma, despite how difficult she had been at the start, and quiet, solid Ash, the looming giant whom I’d first mistaken to be male.
If I were to somehow find a way back through time, all the adventures we had shared would mean nothing. Worse, if I somehow succeeded in convincing the powers that be to blow the living fuck out of the Wraiths and Goblins before it was too late, none of these women would even exist. All of them were the product of the Wraiths’ desire to merge species, to seek their view of protection.
None of them was even fully human.
“Rogan?” Ecco asked, and I realized my thoughts were having an impact on my expression. I smoothed my frown away and tried for a smile.
“Or maybe not,” I said. “I don’t know. I guess, for me, it depends on what the powers of this priestess actually are.” I thought about it for a moment more, then continued. “Of course, we have to get there first.”
Ecco nodded as if I’d said something meaningful, then turned her attention to Camille, asking her much the same question.
But the fierce lizard woman refused to be drawn. “I have my reasons to seek the priestess out,” Camille said, and that was it.
Ash was more forthcoming. The looming giant put real thought into her response. “I guess my reasons for coming along on this quest have changed,” she said. “At first, I had no quest of my own. I was here to protect Lady Gamma, and that was enough. But the things I have seen and done… the world is not as I thought it to be.” The gigantic woman glanced down toward me. “When Rogan and I first talked, I told him of the merging, and of the gods that were behind it. At the time, he didn’t truly respond, but the things he has said since, both of where he is from and merely in passing, have led me to reevaluate what I thought I knew.”
Ash continued to stride along across the plateau, and I wondered what exactly I had said to encourage this reevaluation. But I didn’t have to wonder very long. Ash herself supplied the answer.
“It seems that those I thought of as gods were none other than wraiths, like the one we fought before entering your caverns. It seems that their arrival signaled a descent, into what we now see as normal.”
I was astonished. I thought back to all the conversations we’d had and couldn’t for the life of me figure out how the big woman had put this all together. Not that she was wrong. It was just that I thought I’d been careful not to shake her belief system.
And yet, somehow, she had worked it out for herself anyway.
By then, I thought I grown to know my companions. I thought I had figured them out. But it looked like I had to reassess at least one of them. There was more going on in Ash’s head than I could have ever expected.
The giant woman hadn’t finished. “I guess, now, if I found myself face to face with the priestess and had the opportunity to ask a question of my own, it would be, ‘Is this all there is? This ongoing misery that most of us experience throughout our lives, with no more than a moment or two of joy to break it up, if we are lucky. Can there be more to our lives than this?’”
As we continued to walk, and both Zera and Ecco once more took to the air, I couldn’t help but wonder at the somber nature of my companions’ quests. Gamma had chosen this course of action out of desperation. To her, it was a matter of survival, not just for herself, but for her people, everyone she knew. Zera wanted to know if there was somewhere better, a haven of some sort, but would be happy to learn that her family still lived. And Ash just wanted to know if there could be more to life than this bleak quest for survival.
For a moment, I felt like a self-centered bastard. My only desire, or at least the thought that had inspired the one I had expressed, was to go bowling.
I shook my head at myself, and resolved to do better.
You can save all of them. Perhaps the words didn’t refer to the people of my time. Perhaps they referred to the people now. Gamma’s people. Zera’s and Ash’s. Perhaps even Camille’s as well, despite how tightlipped she had been.
I didn’t know. Fuck it, I didn’t even know if the words in my head were any more than the remnants of a dream.
As the morning turned into noon, the nature of the plateau changed. The air grew thick to the point where the conversation seemed muted, and we started walking among mud pools and geysers. But if we thought to see if the water expelled by the latter was drinkable, Zera quickly put that thought out of our minds.
“It is acid,” she said. “Boiling acid.”
I didn’t know how she knew, but trusted her implicitly. And the stench of the steam given off by the geysers, some of which were substantial, lent credence to her words. It was acrid to my senses and seemed to sting the eyes as we passed by.
The mud pools slowed our progress, and it was midafternoon before we found ourselves entering another area of broken boulders, like steppingstones for giants leading up into the sky. I was thinking it was getting close to time for a break when Camille held out a hand, gesturing for us to stop.
“There’s something ahead of us,” she said.
6
Right away, I surged ahead of Ecco and Gamma, joining Camille and Ash. In the past, Camille had proven to be sensitive to hidden dangers. If she said there was danger ahead, I believed her. At the same time, I needed to know what this danger was, so I used the AC lens on various settings, seeking to catch sight of our hidden foe.
But Zera caught sight of him first.
She had been flitting about just ahead of the party, and she hurried back on wings of fear, dropping in behind Ash, me, and Camille as if we could protect her.
“It’s him,” the butterfly girl gasped. “It’s Vesh D’Agon!”
I turned to her. “Vesh D’Agon?” I demanded. “Here?”
When last we had seen the Wraith-like magic user, I had leveled a blast of my chi at him and blown him out of a narrow crevice that Gamma had then sealed up. I hadn’t expected my chi blast to kill him. The loathsome Wraith had survived such in the past, and even though I had given it all I had, I’d counted it fifty-fifty on it being enough.
But for him to reappear now, days after our last confrontation and an unknown number of miles away was almost beyond comprehension.
Had the Wraith managed to track us through tons of rock? Had he somehow picked up the trail again when we emerged?
And then there was the more pressing question. Was Vesh D’Agon alone?
The Wraith wielded dark chi magic, which he used to control an army of revenants, human and beast hybrids that had eked out some sort of pitiful existence in the Wastes. Sand walkers, they were called, and Vesh had hurled hundreds, if not thousands, of the creatures at us.
I had mowed them down by the score, their blood soaking into the sands of the wastelands.
“You are sure it is him?” I said.
The butterfly girl nodded.
“And his army?”
“I did not see anyone other than him.”
Well, that was good news, at least. I drew a deep breath. “Where is he?”
Zera pointed in a direction not quite matching where we had been heading, but still further up the jagged and broken hills we were climbing. I focused my AC lens once again, and this time, managed to pick him out. A dark figure that seemed to exude blackness, as if the sunlight didn’t want to touch him. It was like he was a manifestation of evil, an incarnation of death. If he had been carrying a scythe instead of the same staff he’d held before, I might have picked him as that entity.
Even as it was, even over the distance, I felt a chill in my blood.
He was still some distance away, but his trajectory was clear. He was heading toward us as if he knew we were there.
I glanced at Ash and Camille, and that was enough. Ash squared her shoulders as if preparing for a fight, and both of Camille’s hands went to the hilts of her daggers.
It was too early to draw my sword, but I did so anyway, and heard Ecco asking Gamma what was happening.
“A dark chi user. A Wraith we have met in the past. He is a chi vampire of some kind, and when we first met him, he was keeping Zera in a cage, siphoning her strength.”
“We battled him across the width of the Wastes, and it wasn’t clear-cut who would win,” I added. “It looks like we’re going to get a chance to find out for sure.”
With that, I quickened my pace, striding out to meet him, but not moving too quickly that I would outpace Ash or Camille. Gamma, Ecco and Zera followed along in our wake, keeping behind us, Zera and Ecco both flitting over boulders as required, and even helping Gamma when the need arose.
But most of my attention was fixed on the dark being before us, getting closer with each passing moment.
“Be wary,” I gritted under my breath. “Keep an eye out for his revenants.”
Neither Ash nor Camille responded, but I knew they would do as I said. Yet by the time we had approached to within a couple of hundred feet, there was still no evidence of Vesh’s army.
The Wraith seemed to flow toward us, a cloud of living darkness and malice, until he finally came to a halt about fifty paces away.
“My queen will be pleased,” the malignant creature intoned, once again speaking almost as if we weren’t present. “I have found you. And it seems that you have added to your strength since last we met. That strength will be added to the glory of the one that I serve. Bow down before me and your suffering will be brief.”
“That’s the same bullshit line you were peddling last time,” I shouted to him, making sure he could hear me over the distance. “It didn’t work out that well for you then, did it?”
On a whim, I fed a line of chi into my oversized sword, enough to make it glow around the edges with power. From a functional perspective, it would mean little, but that was beside the point. I meant to show this Wraith I’d come to fight, and I meant business.
To rub it in, I pointed out the obvious difference. “And this time, you’re here all by your lonesome. How long do you think you can stand against us without your army of foul creatures?”
I was already starting forward, not yet engaging any of my Divine Steps, not yet spinning my massive weapon about, but working up to it.
I thought Vesh D’Agon would take a defensive pose, or perhaps call forth the inky dark power of his magic. To at least acknowledge the threat I presented.
But he just watched me from afar, immobile.
At the same time, he wasn’t silent.
“That is where you are mistaken. Not all my resources could follow me away from the Wastes. But some of them could, and I have indeed brought them along with me.”
At the creature’s words, I felt a moment of confusion. I looked about, but still saw nothing.
“Submit,” the Wraith said, echoing his previous statement. “Your strength will be added to that of my Queen whether you like it or not. Submit, and spare yourself a measure of pain.”
I felt my lips curl into a snarl and stepped toward the foul creature. I wanted to cut the Wraith into pieces, to slice through him like he was made of butter and my blade was a hot knife. But I knew it wouldn’t be that easy. Zera had said the man—if that’s what he was—was protected by his magic. He had shown himself to be immune to all sorts of direct attacks.
Nevertheless, I was more than willing to see if I could find a way through his defenses.
Vesh D’Agon had survived blasts of my chi that had mown down his supporters like wheat before a scythe. Perhaps the power of my chi might get through his protection if it came with the weight of my soul blade behind it.
Ash and Camille were both with me, matching me stride for stride, each of them intending to deal with the dark magic user in their own way. I could already see Camille flickering in and out of existence, using her invisibility technique to get close, and carve out chunks of Vesh’s flesh. Ash would be more direct, teeing off with her club like a baseball player, aiming to smash the Wraith out into the bleachers.
As for me, I saw no need to get fancy. No need to employ any but the most rudimentary of the Divine Steps, spinning about at the last moment to convert any momentum I had built up into power behind the blade, and swinging it with all of my might.
I could shear boulders in half with a single strike of my blade, and could have literally carved my way through a mountain, given sufficient time and inclination. I saw no reason why I shouldn’t be just as effective against this abomination before me.
But before I could begin my windup, before Ash began her back swing, and Camille flickered out of existence for her own, more subtle attack, the lizard woman hesitated. She paused in her tracks and pointed up into the broken sky.
“There,” she said.
At first, I didn’t make out what she was pointing toward, but then my AC lens clicked in and I could see. There was a dark smudge in the sky that quickly grew bigger, more substantial, and clearer.
It wasn’t a flock of starlings making patterns with their own bodies in the sky. It wasn’t some dark, angry cloud, a warning of foul weather to come.
Instead, it was a collection of creatures, and I knew exactly what they were.
“Air revenants,” I murmured out loud, and then added, “Fuck.”
The Wraith had told the truth. He did have his army with him. And these creatures, as desperate and loathsome as any of those on the ground, were heading our way. In moments, they were no longer a distant smudge, but were turning the sky dark with their presence. There were thousands of them, all of them different, beating wings made of leather or feather, their furred or scaled bodies ranging in size from that of a large dog to many times that size.
Just like their Waste-dwelling counterparts, they carried what weapons they could, from swords and spears to clubs and knives.
Some even had rocks gripped in their hands and feet, depending on if they had them, ready to drop.
The noise was incredible. Even before they were upon us, the air was filled with their raucous cries and shrieks. It was as if somehow the Wraith had coaxed all their anger to the fore, and then given these foul creatures a target.
I could do no more than curse out loud, and turned back toward Gamma and the others. “Find shelter,” I bellowed, and that was enough. Right away, Ecco got to work, bending the soil around them, crafting a dome made of rock that covered her, Zera, and Gamma completely.
The move caught me by surprise. I had thought Ecco might simply vanish into her seed, leaving Zera and Gamma to find some nook in which to hide. But this was far better, and it filled me with pride that Ecco had gone to the effort to protect the others.
It wasn’t something her sister would have done.
Camille and Ash were backing toward me, gearing themselves up for the fight, but I had one more gambit remaining. “Will your Queen be so pleased if you present her with corpses?” I demanded. “I thought you wanted our chi!”
To my surprise, the Wraith chose to respond. “To lose two or three to harvest the rest is a bargain my Queen is more than willing to make. Yet my followers will avoid killing outright, if they can. Even injured, your strength will be added to that of my Queen.”
With that, he gave his minions a signal, and the flying revenants began their attack.
7
