The Empress of Beasts, page 5
part #13 of The Wandering Inn Series
But they did not yield. They advanced. And he reveled in the slaughter. He laughed at the death, the spectacle of it. She? She saw something else. Something more that she tried to show him.
Look at how they died.
The thousands fell away. The corridors were filled with blood. The Soldier’s green. The Workers retreating, dragging bodies back to the Antinium Hive. But the Soldiers continued on. They had no home to return to. They had only one last order.
From thousands, they were hundreds. She watched them fighting, bringing down nearly a dozen Flesh Worms, a score of undead, battling through exploding larvae, until the Shield Spiders poured through the tunnels, destroying everything in their wake. Toren and the last Antinium fled. And she watched them fall.
Twenty three. And then sixteen. Nine. Five. And then, two. The last two Soldiers ran, fleeing the Shield Spiders that stopped to drag the corpses of their brethren back to their nest. The other monsters halted their pursuit as well. They had much to eat, or wounds to nurse. Even the enchanted armor seemed fed up with the slaughter. They marched back towards their garrisons.
Leaving the two Soldiers alone. There they stood. Worn. Bleeding. Dying. The dungeon surrounded them. They would never return. They could not. They had been sent to die, to strike a blow at the dungeon. So the Soldiers had been dead the moment they charged.
In the silent corridor, the two Soldiers stopped. The Soldiers stood, bleeding green, looking around wildly. But they had a reprieve. The spiders had fled. Something else was coming, summoned by the massive incursion into the dungeon.
The Soldiers paused. They turned to look at each other and lowered their fists. They stopped. And one of them made a clicking sound. The skeleton watched, her eyes seeing all. And what she saw next spoke to that spark in her.
One Soldier opened his mandibles. Closed them. He made a click. And it was soft. The other Soldier paused. And then it went click. What they said—if they were even words—Toren had no idea. But then the Soldiers stepped forwards each other.
They grasped each other, clumsily. All four arms of one, and three arms and a stump of the other. Toren thought they were trying to kill each other. But then she saw one step. Slowly, his hands on the other Soldier’s shoulders and waist. And the other stepped with him. In perfect sync.
They moved slowly, in a halting, rhythmic pattern. A swaying tracery on the floor. Turning, pausing. Twirling.
And Toren saw, amid the faint glow and death, the way they moved had a purpose. And she realized it was a dance. The Soldiers held each other, the last two in their world. And they moved. Not with the desperate last energy of the dead, but with dignity. With grace.
They waltzed, dancing in the dark corridor in the elegant style of a Terandrian ballroom. And Toren saw it all.
He didn’t want to see. He didn’t understand. But she saw. And it called to her. Toren turned her head. The dungeon had gone silent.
It was coming. So the skeleton stood from where she was crouched. She drew her sword and advanced slowly.
The two Soldiers stopped dancing as soon as they noticed Toren. They whirled, bringing up their fists. Toren held up her sword, her palm open, pleading. They stared at her, wavering. And then Toren felt it.
She turned her head. And there it was. A staring head poking around the corridor on a stick. Toren whirled. She pointed. The two Antinium Soldiers hesitated as she turned and lifted her sword. She pointed again.
Go.
They hesitated. And then they ran. Toren charged. And Facestealer was there. It looked down at her. The bag of heads it carried trailing behind. The heads on sticks clutched in one hand, a grotesque collection. Toren raised her sword and leapt forwards. Not for victory; she knew that all too well. But for something else. For—
…
It took her a long time to come back from having her skull and bones crushed into powder. At last, Toren got up. Her mask was broken. Her clothing torn. She found some dead spiders nearby and managed to fix the mask, at least. Her sword was lying on the ground, for all the good it had done. Then the skeleton looked around. She was afraid of what she would find. But she did look.
She found them two corridors over. The two Soldiers lay where they had died. Their heads were missing. The skeleton knelt next to them for a very long time. She bowed her head. And she felt…as terrible as he did when he thought of Erin.
And then Toren noticed one thing. The two corpses on the ground were identical. Not in every way of course; both had different wounds. But both were missing heads. And both had four arms.
One of the Soldiers had been missing a hand. Toren looked up. She looked around. She searched. But she never found another pair of Soldiers, or one with a missing hand. Maybe the monsters had gotten them. Or maybe…
The skeleton smiled. And she had a winning grin. She stood up and stretched. She twirled amid the death and laughed silently. They both sought it, each in their own way. He, and she. And she found it in this.
And in battle. That was true. But one Toren killed to kill. She—did it for a reason. The skeleton drew her sword. And she went hunting. She had only one quarry in the dungeon worth doing battle with. He and she could agree on that, at least. They were a nuisance. And they had killed Toren countless times before. Now the shoe was on the skeleton’s foot.
She found the Raskghar camp after nine hours of searching. They had hidden well. But not well enough to escape a skeleton with all the time in the world. They smelled her, of course. And she was used to their howls.
The Raskghar were already waiting for her. Especially the special one. Toren halted in front of their camp. She adjusted her mask. And she moved forwards slowly, as gracefully as the two Soldiers. She was a [Sword Dancer], Level 13. It might not be enough today. It hadn’t been the last twenty-three times.
But she could try again. The Raskghar could not. And they knew her. Oh, yes. They remembered. The one standing guard snarled. Her voice was guttural. Desperate, rasping—that was new—and hateful.
“You. Thing.”
The Raskghar coughed. Nokha bared her teeth, the glowing blade in her hand held up warily. Toren paused. She lifted the blade in her hand and tapped it with one finger.
A new sword. Nokha had destroyed the last one in their last encounter. The skeleton smiled behind her mask. Nokha warily held her ground. Behind her, the other warriors backed up, howling quietly at the camp already preparing to flee. There were less of them, now. Far less than when the Minotaur had led them. Far less camps too. Toren had played a part in that.
“Leave. Leave now. We surrender. Tell magic-Human. Surrender. Surrender.”
The Raskghar was speaking nonsense. Interesting nonsense, but nonsense nonetheless. Toren tilted her head. And then she advanced. Nokha raised the magic sword Toren wanted so much with a snarl of rage. The two waited.
Nokha coughed again, unable to suppress it. Toren leapt. And the Raskghar snarled and screamed. Toren swept towards her, blade slashing up in a two-handed arc. Nokha swung straight. She was faster and stronger. But Toren had anticipated the cut. She let it slash through her ribs and struck Nokha along the arm. The Raskghar howled in pain. Toren grinned. She could recover. She rolled, trying to get away to attack again later—
Too slow. Nokha stomped, crushing Toren’s bones, smashing her skull with her foot over and over. Then she fled, coughing, howling a pained call to the other Raskghar. They fled with her. Toren lay on the ground, her body rebuilding.
Darn. Well, it was worth a shot. And next time, maybe the Raskghar’s arm wouldn’t have healed. She was annoyingly intelligent, though. Still, that cough…
As Toren rebuilt herself, she decided she needed a bow. A bow and arrows might really help. But it was hard finding good weapons that didn’t get smashed with her body. And could she even shoot a bow and arrow? The skeleton picked up her skull and had to fix her mask. Again. She sighed, but it was busy work.
This was what the skeleton saw and did. But what she was really doing was waiting. And then, at last, the skeleton heard it. Distantly, in the way the monsters moved, the dungeon shuddered and adjusted. She turned her head. And she knew they were there.
Adventurers. She smiled and ran towards them. Because she liked people. And they were always worth seeing. Protecting. And maybe her team would be there. The ones she liked.
Her…
Friends? She liked that thought, even if she didn’t understand the concept entirely. But that’s what the Drake had called her. He hated the idea. Hated it and them. But he wasn’t in charge. And they were both lonely. So she kept the mask on. They could always sit in the inn later.
——
A skeleton sat in a tiny bubble in the ground. A hollow depression of dirt, barely large enough to hold her. A coffin would have been more spacious. In fact, the crushing weight of the dirt trying to settle on her would have killed any living creature. The lack of oxygen certainly would have.
But Ijvani, the greatest skeleton in the world and obviously, the only one with actual intelligence, was too depressed to care. Her magical robes were puddled around her, filthy and unwashed. An earthworm digging through the soil went straight through her ribcage.
Ijvani didn’t move. She didn’t react, or move. She could have been an actual skeleton, the dead kind, save for the two dimly golden flames burning in her eye sockets. And her bones.
They were black. Black and glossy—coated with a dark metal. They were part of what made Ijvani special. Unique, in fact. But she didn’t feel special. She was a sad skeleton. Because she was alone. Abandoned. Or worse—would it be worse?—forgotten.
It had been ninety six days. Ninety six days since her last communication with her master, her creator, Az’kerash. Ninety six days since he had reached out to her and she had felt his presence.
He had forgotten her. That was the plain truth of it. Ijvani knew it to be true. Why else had he left her, his Chosen, and not called her back since? He had forgotten her, or replaced her. She didn’t matter.
So. How had she ended up in a hole in the ground rather than proudly serving her master? Ijvani knew the answer. In fact, since she could neither sleep nor forget, she dwelled upon it every moment of her existence, without any biological functions interrupting her grief. Skeletons were unparalleled at having pity parties. And Ijvani could name all the reasons for her despair.
Firstly, she was inferior. She had failed her master, the glorious Az’kerash. The Necromancer. The most brilliant, most powerful [Necromancer] in the history of the world. She had failed him by failing to kill Zel Shivertail with her brothers and sisters. Not only had he survived and forced her master to take to the field himself, he had wounded Az’kerash. And he had damaged all the other Chosen—destroyed one of their number beyond repair, Oom.
Secondly, Ijvani had witnessed a horror worse than her own inferiority. She had seen…her master…the great and powerful Az’kerash whose wisdom and intellect was unmatched by all the Archmages of Wistram…lose a game of chess.
Yes. Lose a game of chess. Ijvani groaned in her pit in the earth. How could it happen? It shouldn’t have happened. But it had. He had lost a game. She had failed him. And now, thirdly, to top it all off, he had forgotten about her.
She had already been in despair about points one and two. Ijvani recalled it so clearly. Her master had killed Zel Shivertail, albeit at cost. And he had retreated, calling on the remaining Chosen to teleport back with the Scrolls of Greater Teleportation that he had spent so lavishly to kill his hated foe. But he had been one short. So he had looked around and—
“Ijvani, you will make your way back with an invisibility spell; there are no more scrolls of teleportation.”
The black skeleton [Mage] shuddered. Oh! The pain of it! The horror! Her master had looked around and named the least worthy of his Chosen to return on foot. The most expendable. He, in his infinite knowledge, had looked among his Chosen and found her the least worthy after measured thought and consideration.
Thus, Ijvani knew: she was a failure. Even more so than Venitra, who had failed to capture both the Human Runner, Ryoka Griffin, and been defeated by Zel Shivertail. But Ijvani was somehow worse.
Even so, that might not have been so bad. Ijvani would have walked through molten magma for her master after all. She had slowly made her way back towards his castle south of the Blood Fields. And then…then had come her error.
It wasn’t disobedience. Ijvani cringed internally. Not really. At first, she just hadn’t heard her creator’s voice in a week, and she had been tired of travelling south, hiding behind illusion spells and moving at night to avoid being spotted. She’d decided, well, to stop.
Not to disobey her master! But just so that he might contact her, to demand what had slowed her down. Because…because that would prove empirically that she still had worth to him. Of course! It had been such a simple plan. He would contact her and no doubt be furious. But he would contact her and then Ijvani could return without fear of going back to him and being…worthless.
So the skeleton had stopped. She’d slowed her pace to a crawl. And the first week had been a grand, butterfly-inducing game of disobedience! Ijvani had hid herself, burying herself in the earth under the pretext—if her master asked—that she had been swallowed by a sinkhole. Buried miles deep, so she’d been faithfully digging her way out!
That was a logical explanation, wasn’t it? She would never have dared to trick her master before, but he had lost a game of chess. So perhaps he might not be perfect in every other way?
It was just a test. Just a little test! To make sure of what she had been sure of—that she still mattered to her master. That, in time, she could regain her grace with him. So Ijvani had waited. She knew that her master knew how long it would take her to return. So after, say, two weeks, he would begin to wonder, if not sooner! After all, she could be very swift when stealth wasn’t a hindrance.
That knowledge had kept Ijvani waiting for the first week. And then the second week. He’d contact her and demand to know where she was tomorrow. And then tomorrow had come and she had heard nothing. But, surely, it would be the next day. Sometimes he spent weeks working on a project, but even then, he could still devote some of his incredible intellect to managing his Chosen, giving them orders.
He would contact her tomorrow. He was just busy today. Venitra had probably done something stupid again. It was a month before it had dawned on Ijvani how long it had been. And then she’d been in denial the second month. Waiting, day after day, to hear him reach out for her. Then she’d been afraid. Something had happened! One of his enemies had laid siege to him in the castle! But—Ijvani realized that would have made her master call her even sooner. Unless she was so useless that even an attack by the Dragon wouldn’t necessitate her presence.
So that led her to today. And Ijvani now realized the truth: she was unloved. She was forgotten. So the skeleton sat. She could not weep. She didn’t even really understand the action. In Az’kerash’s castle, there were no tears. The undead did not laugh or weep. Nor did their master. So Ijvani was sad without knowing how to be sad.
In the darkness of the ground, she whispered to herself. Ijvani’s voice was a ghastly whisper, an echo from beyond. And a bit petulant.
“I am superior. Master loves me. I am unique. Master will call for me. He remembers me. I am…”
Weak. Ijvani remembered Oom dying. Again and again. She saw the Drake crushing his mana core, breaking Oom’s center like glass. She had thought she was so much stronger than Zel Shivertail! He was just a [Warrior]! A mortal of flesh and blood! But he had torn through the Chosen like…
Oom was gone. Not just broken, able to be fixed, but gone. That meant Ijvani could be…gone…too. The skeleton shuddered, confronted by her own mortality. What would it mean, now that the Chosen were one less? How were the others reacting to Oom’s demise?
Not with satisfaction. Yes, the Chosen vied to be the one most loved by their creator, but the loss of one was a blow to their master. And that was a terrible thing. Moreover, Ijvani had liked Oom. More than Kerash or Venitra, at any rate. What would Bea, the lovely creature of plague, do with him gone?
Bea was the one who liked Oom most. They had been created at the same time, after all. Oom had been the second-oldest, Bea third by only a day or two. Ijvani next. And then Venitra. Kerash had been there from the beginning and he was special in a different way. Nevertheless, they were five of Az’kerash’s Chosen, his special creations. But now they were four.
Or was it three? Ijvani shuddered. Was she no longer one of the Chosen? Forgotten as she was, was she like…Viltraid? She remembered him. He had been…not one of the Chosen. But more than a regular undead. And she remembered how he had been removed.
At the time, Ijvani had rejoiced in his demise, because he had been a pest in her eyes, inferior to her. But now she wondered. He hadn’t been one of the Chosen. But her master had created him. And could it be that he had once been one of the Chosen who had…?
Kerash claimed he could remember…more. More who had once been…Chosen. And had somehow failed. Was that what Ijvani was?
“No. No. I am not a failure. I am still one of the Chosen! I am—”
The black skeleton shuddered. She was a special creation! She had a nigh-indestructible body, the ability to match any Gold-rank [Mage] in magical combat! But…
She couldn’t stay here any longer. But—she was afraid to return and have her fears proven. Even so, Ijvani was tired of the dirt. Water kept trickling down every time it rained, and the worms were getting on her nerves. She’d find somewhere else. And keep thinking. Her master might not not hate her, after all.
So Ijvani stood up. Her head was immediately engulfed in soft, earthy loam, but she barely paid it any mind. She put her hands up and began excavating the ceiling. Dirt swallowed her, but Ijvani kept digging, climbing upwards.
