"The Pit of Snakes"
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dochermes"The Pit of Snakes"
4/20-4/21/1983
I.
With the faintest flicker of pale blue light, three figures appeared from nowhere, abruptly standing on a hill under a clear Spring sky. In the middle of their grouping was a woman in a bright Kelly green one-piece jumpsuit, who swayed and almost lost her footing. The fact she was holding hands with the man on her right and the woman on her left gave her enough support to remain standing.
"Whew," she said and took a deep shuddering breath. "That took more concentration than I expected." Tall at five feet eight, slim and athletic, Karina seemed to be in her late teens with auburn hair cut in a shag and deep luminous green eyes that her jumpsuit had been selected to match. Her appearance did not hint at the full truth. The body standing there was that of a nineteen year old college student named Barbara Hoyt but it was now the willing host to the ancient spirit of the warrior-goddess of Myrrwha. Karina had existed since the Darthan Age of thirty thousand years ago, inhabiting with permission the physical forms of one host after another.
"I thought your ability to cross into other realms was effortless," said the black man to her side as he helped steady her. Ted Wright wore one of the dark field suits with its heavy boots, pants and waist-length jacket that had an inner layer of the flexible Trom armor inside. He was very dark-skinned, with a serious thoughtful face and there was grey beginning to scatter here and there in his tightly curled beard and short hair. The Blue Guide always seemed worried and anxious because that was both his nature and a result of his rolr as one of the healers of the Midnight War. "Your vitals seem good. Heartbeat is a bit fast at one hundred and nine."
"Oh, I'm fine, don't worry, Ted." Karina straightened and took the small travel bag from its strap on her shoulder to lower it to the ground. Her snug jumpsuit had a thin vertical black stripe down each side of the body, and she wore ordinary white sneakers but she had no pockets. "I'm used to just traveling between realms by myself. I've only taken one person at a time with me before."
Standing to Karina's left, Cindy Brunner gazed around the countryside where they had just materialized. She was a tiny blonde, not much over five feet tall, with dark gold hair that hung straight down her back. Cindy wore a field suit like that which Ted had on, although her jacket showed an impressive bust ledge over an otherwise thin little body. Her dark blue eyes moved quickly around the area.
"I'm picking up Human minds, not too far away," she said. "Maybe... six or seven adult males. Kind of rough, raw minds. Not really bad people, though." She frowned and turned back to her friends. "They're riding horses."
"Good, Cin. We're ready for company." Wright unclipped a small flat device from his belt and examined it. "Ah, too bad. Technology doesn't work in this realm. All our gadgets and weapons are going to be useless."
"Yeah, we sort of expected that," Cindy said. "That's why our team all has innate powers."
Karina laughed. "Do we need electronic gimmicks and anesthetic dart guns when we have the Midnight War's best telepath, the best gralic healer and the best unarmed combat fighter ever?" She jabbed a thumb at her own chest. "By that last, I mean myself, of course."
The Blue Guide shielded his eyes from the sun with the flat of his hand, peering up the hill. "Evaho. None of us have been here before. I suppose our first step is to meet those horsemen Cindy detected and see what the situation is. Then we can worry about finding this Walking Snake sorcerer."
The blonde telepath raised a hand, "No need. They're riding this way. I'm getting a clearer sense of their attitudes. They're kind of direct, uneducated farmer types. Simple, but not in a bad way. Still, there's a lot of anger just under the surface."
The three KDF members stepped out into plain sight, as much in the open as possible. Higher up the hill, dense forest began but they stood on wild grass that grew shin-high. Overhead, a bird circled and then wheeled away... a raptor of some sort, much like a hawk.
Seven men came down the slope on horses, bent over their saddles with weariness, faces grimy with sweat and dust. They were big, sturdy men in simple leggings and tunics of coarse material almost like burlap, and each had a short sword at his belt and a bow with quiver fastened to the saddle behind him. The riders were darkly tanned and weathered, their brown hair was tied back behind the neck and they had roughly trimmed beards. As they saw the three unexpected strangers standing before them, the riders pulled their horses short.
"Pergamir!" yelled one. "What does this mean?"
The lead rider was also the biggest man there. He had wide shoulders and a massive barrel chest, and his hair and beard had scattered grey hairs which in a Melgar indicated considerable age. The leader leaned forward in his saddle and gazed down thoughtfully at the three strangers.
"Know you that I am Pergamir son of Harakon. I gather that you are not from this realm but from another. We have seen no people with black skins here, yet you do not seem like a Danarakan nor a Veganoran to me. And you, my lady, surely with that sunset-colored hair and emerald eyes, you must hail from Myrrwha itself."
"You are widely traveled, good Pergamir," Karina replied. "I am indeed a daughter of Myrrwha. My friends here are, like myself, knights of the Order of Tel Shai."
II.
III.
Gazing somberly down at the ceremony far below, Ted Wright said, "There is something very wrong here. The gralir is being twisted and distorted. Some potent and malignant entity is struggling to emerge into our view. It feels to me as if giant fists are pounding on the locked doors of our reality."
"I don't always follow what you're saying," Cindy said as she drew closer to him. "But I don't have gralic awareness. All I'm getting is terror and anxiety from minds about to break. You mean... what they call the Old Ones?"
"And what we in the Midnight War know as the Sulla Chun!" Karina interrupted. "Every time I have encountered those beings, I have come close to being destroyed both mind and spirit. They are monsters that flesh and blood is not meant to meet."
"Sulla Chun," Cindy repeated. "That's what Walking Snake learned about from Those Who Remember. Guys, we have to stop him before this goes any further. If he manages to free a Sulla Chun, nobody in Evaho will survive."
Behind them, still mounted on his steed, Pergamir shook his head. "By Androval's White Horse, I have heard scary tales around the campfire all my life of the Old Ones. They say this land was barren dirt for an age because an Old One stuck his head through a hole in the sky. It took forever for plants and birds and beasts to return and they were sickly for generations. Now you figure that will happen again?"
"Over our dead bodies!" Wright snapped in rare anger. "Come on, leave the horses. The path is too steep for them."
"Give me a second," said Karina. She took a few steps into the darkness and could not be seen. There came two of the faintest cracking noises and she returned just as suddenly. "The sentries are out of the way."
Led by Wright, the KDF members made their way down the incline, clutching at low branches of the trees and at brush for extra support. The Melgar settlers followed with quivers on their backs and bows in hand, which made their descent more difficult. None of the cultists noticed them. The pounding of the drums and the excited shrieks drowned out any noise the intruders might have made.
Hanging head-down over the fire, the Melgar sacrifice had died in dreadful agony as the top of his head had burned away. The stench was unbearable. Frequently, one of the Evahoim would jab the body with a spear to set it swinging, which provoked delighted cries from the crowd.
As they came within the circle of light from the ritual fire, Wright was in the lead. Cindy and Karina held back a few feet, as did Pergamir and his cousins. Abruptly, Walking Snake froze in mid-step and whirled to confront the intruders. The drumming stopped and shocked silence fell over the gathering. The Blue Guide raised his open hands over his head, and azure light crackled and snapped around him like lightning brought to earth. A sharp concussion of thunder deafened everyone as it echoed from the hills above them.
"Stop this now," Wright announced in the somber tone of a judge condemning the accused. "Walking Snake, you do not realize what forces you are toying with."
In the unsteady light of the bonfire, Walking Snake was a grotesque sight. The Evaho shaman was so thin he looked like a victim of starvation with only a red cloth wrapped around his loins. Up and down his skeletal body, arcane symbols were drawn in red paint, and he wore a headdress of red feathers that stood up stiffly. In one clawlike hand, the cult leader brandished a long staff around which the body of a real snake had been wrapped so that its flat head topped the thick end of the totem.
"My spirit has gone to the land of ghosts and come back! I speak for the gods," Walking Snake yelled. "Have you come here to be offered to the Old Ones who once ruled this world?"
"We have come to end this folly," replied Wright. "There will be no more offerings of Human life."
"Fool! Time for talk is long past." The sorcerer waved his totem staff to take in the crowd watching in silence. "The pale invaders have killed our fighting men, taken our women for their own, left our elders to starve as the fields went untended and the game was slaughtered. This must avenged. The Wakan-Mandu will arrive and slay all but the children of Evaho."
In a lower voice, the Blue Guide said, "Cindy, keep the warriors back."
There were almost thirty armed men around the fire, survivors of Melgar attacks who burned with bitterness and hatred. Their long spears bristled in the air as they began to come together after their initial surprise at the interruption of the ceremony. Cindy Brunner faced them without any sign of trepidation. She was a young woman still under thirty years old, small and not imposing in a physical sense but within her disciplined mind was power that few people could ever match. She extended her consciousness out over the mob, seizing command of the male Evahoims' reflexes and imposing a motionless state over them. With a smaller group, or with a group less intense in its rage, she could have pulled them all down into a deep slumber but she could at least manage to keep these warriors still.
"I'm making them stay out of the way, Ted," the little blonde said, "But that's my limit."
"That's fine." Wright pointed at the glaring shaman. "Walking Snake! Lower your staff and stand down, or be slain. I will not warn you again."
Defiantly, Walking Snake whirled toward the pit next to the crackling fire and screamed a final incantation. Lurid dark red force swirled around the end of his totem staff and an answering flash of red light flared up from deep within the Pit of Snakes. Wright lunged forward, seized the sorcerer to swing him around and crashed a tight hard fist to the shaman's face with the full impact of Kumundu training. Walking Snake reeled in a complete circle and fell to his knees. The Blue Guide seldom fought with fists and feet, but he could when he needed to. Wright seized the totem rod away from the dazed shaman, raised one knee and snapped the staff in half over it. As he flung the two pieces as far away as he could, the smoke of the bonfire grew thick and black. Within that smoke, something took shape.
IV.
Karina had come over to stand beside Wright while Cindy concentrated on keeping the Evaho warriors back by sheer telepathic dominance. The Myrrwhan goddess watched as the dazed shaman got back up on his feet, his defiance untouched.
"In the Pit of Snakes are the bones of a hundred sacrifices! In there have been thrown thousands of serpents over a generation, the red and black swamp serpent, the wide-headed serpent of the desert, the small yellow serpent that hides in your blanket. This final sacrifice of the pale invader has cracked the Walls Between the Worlds! Now the Wakan-Mandu will emerge."
"Not that it matters to you," Karina said as she took two quick steps forward, chambered her right knee up to her chest and slammed a straight front kick that flung Walking Snake back. Screaming as he realized what was happening, the sorcerer whirled his arms frantically but fell anyway into the Pit of Snakes where a dozen venomous serpents were ready to bite.
"It won't matter to you because you won't be around to see it," Karina finished with grim satisfaction.
Ted Wright had hardly noticed the action. His horrified gaze was focused entirely on the dim shape forming within the black smoke over the bonfire. "Cindy, try to get all the Evahoans back. As far back as you can make them go."
"Giving it a shot," she answered. Strain was showing on her face and her eyes had narrowed until they were almost closed. Slowly, resisting her influence every inch, the cult began to draw back away from the fire one step at a time. The telepath's head ached abominably with the effort, this was a greater number of minds to control at one time than she had attempted before.
Over the fire, near where the sacrificed Melgar still hung head-down, the dark cloud had condensed into a nearly solid mass in which threads of red force crackled. As Ted Wright readied himself, something appeared in that cloud, a white globe more than a yard across with a dark central spot. An Eye.
From that staring Eye, a bolt of dark red lightning snapped and shot straight at the Blue Guide. Wright deflected most of it with a hasty shield of gralic force of his own, but much of the blast still detonated squarely against his chest and threw him back off his feet in a violent skidding tumble.
At the same time, on the edge of the Pit of Snakes, a huge copper-skinned hand groped for support. The misshapen head and shoulders of a monstrous warrior heaved up from where Walking Snake had died a moment earlier among the bones of a hundred earlier sacrifices and a crawling mass of serpents.
Wright rolled and leaped back up on his feet. A charred hole in the tough material of his field suit jacket revealed the gleam of the flexible Trom armor beneath it.. the same silk-thin armor that had saved his life more than a few times. The Blue Guide stood up straight and raised his open hands with new resolve. He shook off the pain of his bruised and scorched chest. This was the greatest peril he had faced in his career and he steadied his spirit.
The Blue Guide unconsciously assumed a Kerwandu meditation stance, feet together and back straight, breathing deeply in and holding it for a beat before exhaling more slowly. Discipline. A calm spirit was needed. Wright pressed his hands together and extended his arms, sending a shaft of pure blue light to pierce into the red haze around the Eye. An unearthly howl echoed in the night air.
The monstrous revenant that had formed around the corpse of Walking Snake bent and seized an iron-bladed hatchet with a curved oak handle from where a dazed warrior had dropped it. The being swirled its new weapon in an elaborate figure eight pattern and screamed hatred in a hollow sepulchral voice.
Walking boldly up to the giant revenant came a slender young woman in a jumpsuit, carrying no weapons or shield, but with a faint mocking smile on her lips. "Well, how about that?" Karina announced to anyone who might be listening in the uproar. "I believe this joker is mine." As she stepped within reach, the corpse of Walking Snakes swung its hatchet in a vicious horizontal arc. Karina swayed her upper body just enough to let the swing go past and shoved her hand against that monstrous arm to keep the revenant turning further. Off balance, he was exposed and open for a split second. The Myrrwhan goddess crashed a tight fist just a few inches in a short jab that cracked hard against the monster's face. To her revulsion, the flesh of his cheek gave way in a soft squishy manner.
The hatchet came at her in a whistling backswing. Karina slapped up against the side of the blade to deflect it away from her, again trying to keep the monster from getting its balance and using its full strength. Her precision was uncanny. Just a half inch off and she would have lost her hand at the wrist to that hatchet. As his weapon arm went up, his torso was exposed and Karina drove in a simple straight side kick with impact that shattered bones. She felt his ribs crack under her foot and yet it didn't seem to faze him. Walking Snake whirled the hatchet overhead and flung it- not at Karina but past her, toward where Ted Wright was standing with his full attention on the glowering Eye.
In all her incarnations over the ages, Karina had seldom moved as decisively as she did then. She leaped up entirely off the ground, stretching her arms as far as they could reach and her fingertips could not quite grasp the handle of the hatchet. She did graze it thought, enough to deflect its flight and send the weapon spinning away into the darkness without harming her friend. Landing on hands and toes, Karina spun forward in a somersault that brought her back up on her feet just as Walking Snake's undead fist slammed into the dirt where she had been poised an instant earlier.
VII.
Cindy was keeping the Evahoan warriors back by sheer telepathic dominance. Karina was dueling with a revenant made from Walking Snake's corpse. And Wright was facing a manifestation of the Sulla Chun themselves. The remaining villagers had huddled into a mass of terrified misery as they watched all this. Most had been coerced into joining the sect of Those Who Remember and had never imagined any of these gruesome events could happen. Yet, one by one, the villagers backed away and turned to run off into the night in a blind panic with their hearts pounding. The crowd dwindled.
Hopping lightly on her toes, moving in to land a blow and then leap back out of reach, Karina was discouraged to find her enemy seemed insensible to pain. The undead thing reached out an arm thicker than her torso, its broad fingers clutching for her throat. With both of her own hands laced together, Karina smashed that arm down away from her and instantly threw a backfist that sank her knuckles deep into a mushy face. Walking Snake's nose flattened like soft clay and his cheek caved in but it did not matter to him. Again, he reached out and this time his huge paw closed like a clamp around Karina's upper arm.
Even as that grip seized her, the Myrrwhan goddess swung up both legs, knees drawn into her chest, and drove her feet out against the wide coppery chest with all her strength. She barely broke free, more by surprise than by strength, and she backed up out of reach quickly. Her left arm ached and was almost useless after that crushing grip. Karina knew she must not let the brute get his hands on her again.
Walking Snake hissed like his namesake and stalked after her as she backpedaled.
VIII.
Paralyzed by terror, Pergamir stood unmoving as the three way struggle continued. He had always been praised for his courage and even among the Melgarin he had been considered a man without fear. This was something beyond anything he had ever experienced before. Facing the genuine supernatural for the first time unnerved him as no mortal enemy could.
The hero of Androval was not sure what the blonde woman was doing. She appeared to be merely staring down the Evahoim warriors and keeping them at bay somehow. That was beyond him. The redhaired woman was clashing with some gigantic unliving beast that resembled Walking Snake. Pergamir did not see how he could intervene in that duel. Karina and the monster were moving too quickly, getting too close together when striking, for him to quite follow, let alone get involved with.
Then he turned his anxious gaze to where Ted Wright was confronting the floating Eye. Pergamir felt his heart sink. The Blue Guide had not changed his stance but his knees were trembling and his face was beaded with sweat. The black outlander's expression was stern and resolute, Pergamir saw, but strain was showing in its taut lines. Between the Tel Shai healer and the minion of the Old Ones, opposing shafts of red and blue force boiled in the air where they met.. and the dark red beam was steadily pushing the blue light back. The blue light dimmed. Suddenly, Pergamir realized that Wright was losing ground and then in a moment the Old One might blast him away and then turn its baleful force on everyone in that realm.
Bending his great bow, a feat which in itself took more strength than a Human could muster, Pergamir looped the cord over its ends and tested its tightness. Reaching to the quiver on his back, the Melgar notched an arrow and drew the string back to his ear before letting it fly. The thick wood shaft, three feet long, hissed through the air and the arrow's cold iron barb tore a gouge open along the upper curve of the Eye.
Inside its boiling dark cloud, the Eye swiveled its glare directly at Pergamir, who had already fitted another arrow to the string and was drawing it back. The shaft never had the chance to be released. Dark energy exploded across the clearing to hit the Melgar squarely and fling him through the air like a corn husk doll struck by lightning. Smoke rose from a charred form that lay where it had been thrown.
Getting that revenge meant the Eye had turned its attention away from Wright in its pain and rage, which would be its undoing. The Blue Guide summoned up all the gralir he could manage at one time and thrust it at the Sulla Chun manifestation in an intense narrow beam. Clean blue light lanced the Eye like a needle piercing a pus-filled boil. The vile thing burst in a clot of white goo and fell apart. Every Human there suffered a surge of mental distress as the servant of the Old Ones screamed its death cry. In the next second, the cloud dispersed and what remained of the Eye plopped lifelessly down into the dying bonfire.
Still defiant, Karina saw her opponent reel and stagger as if having a stroke. Abruptly, the giant revenant literally fell apart into a stinking mass of white bone and shreds of long-dead flesh which had adhered to the corpse of Walking Snake. Without the presence of the Sulla Chun in the area, the monstrosity returned to the corruption from which it had been fashioned.
Frantic at these sights, the Evahoim warriors broke free of Cindy's mental control and ran screaming into the night. All the other cultists had fled in panic long before. In the days to come, many of them would be found wandering in the nearby hills with their minds broken, hopeless madmen who twitched and could not speak a coherent thought. Freed of the effort of controlling the mob, Cindy ran to where Ted Wright had sunk weakly to the ground.
"Cin," he gasped as he tried to sit up, "That was the worst- the worst I ever..."
The little blonde cradled him in her arms and kissed his cheek. "Huh. Don't talk about it now, Ted. It's all over. Rest. Take a deep breath." She called over to their teammate, "Karina, how are you doing?"
"A little bruised, a little burned," the Myrrwhan patron-goddess answered lightly. "I'll be fine. Now THAT was a fight well worth it!"
"And Pergamir?" asked Wright in a voice weaker than his normal deep tones.
"Dead," Karina told them. "That blast killed him instantly. If it helps, Ted, he never felt it. Natural lightning never slew a man more quickly."
The Blue Guide sat up, with Cindy still hugging him to give moral support. "I guess we won, then. Walking Snake took the knowledge from Those Who Remember with him, and the Sulla Chun won't be seen here again. But what a nightmare. And I will always respct Pergamir, he stepped in when he was needed most."
Disengaging and moving around to sit cross-legged on the ground in front of Wright, Cindy said, "Pergamir knew he was going to die."
"He did? What do you mean?"
"I could read it in his mind," the telepath told him as Karina came over to squat wearily next to them. "Pergamir was tired of all the skirmishing with the Evahoim. He felt guilty about taking this realm from them. The massacres made him ashamed. In his heart, he was grateful for a chance to die in battle against a worthy foe... like a Melgar."
5/13/2017
4/20-4/21/1983
I.
With the faintest flicker of pale blue light, three figures appeared from nowhere, abruptly standing on a hill under a clear Spring sky. In the middle of their grouping was a woman in a bright Kelly green one-piece jumpsuit, who swayed and almost lost her footing. The fact she was holding hands with the man on her right and the woman on her left gave her enough support to remain standing.
"Whew," she said and took a deep shuddering breath. "That took more concentration than I expected." Tall at five feet eight, slim and athletic, Karina seemed to be in her late teens with auburn hair cut in a shag and deep luminous green eyes that her jumpsuit had been selected to match. Her appearance did not hint at the full truth. The body standing there was that of a nineteen year old college student named Barbara Hoyt but it was now the willing host to the ancient spirit of the warrior-goddess of Myrrwha. Karina had existed since the Darthan Age of thirty thousand years ago, inhabiting with permission the physical forms of one host after another.
"I thought your ability to cross into other realms was effortless," said the black man to her side as he helped steady her. Ted Wright wore one of the dark field suits with its heavy boots, pants and waist-length jacket that had an inner layer of the flexible Trom armor inside. He was very dark-skinned, with a serious thoughtful face and there was grey beginning to scatter here and there in his tightly curled beard and short hair. The Blue Guide always seemed worried and anxious because that was both his nature and a result of his rolr as one of the healers of the Midnight War. "Your vitals seem good. Heartbeat is a bit fast at one hundred and nine."
"Oh, I'm fine, don't worry, Ted." Karina straightened and took the small travel bag from its strap on her shoulder to lower it to the ground. Her snug jumpsuit had a thin vertical black stripe down each side of the body, and she wore ordinary white sneakers but she had no pockets. "I'm used to just traveling between realms by myself. I've only taken one person at a time with me before."
Standing to Karina's left, Cindy Brunner gazed around the countryside where they had just materialized. She was a tiny blonde, not much over five feet tall, with dark gold hair that hung straight down her back. Cindy wore a field suit like that which Ted had on, although her jacket showed an impressive bust ledge over an otherwise thin little body. Her dark blue eyes moved quickly around the area.
"I'm picking up Human minds, not too far away," she said. "Maybe... six or seven adult males. Kind of rough, raw minds. Not really bad people, though." She frowned and turned back to her friends. "They're riding horses."
"Good, Cin. We're ready for company." Wright unclipped a small flat device from his belt and examined it. "Ah, too bad. Technology doesn't work in this realm. All our gadgets and weapons are going to be useless."
"Yeah, we sort of expected that," Cindy said. "That's why our team all has innate powers."
Karina laughed. "Do we need electronic gimmicks and anesthetic dart guns when we have the Midnight War's best telepath, the best gralic healer and the best unarmed combat fighter ever?" She jabbed a thumb at her own chest. "By that last, I mean myself, of course."
The Blue Guide shielded his eyes from the sun with the flat of his hand, peering up the hill. "Evaho. None of us have been here before. I suppose our first step is to meet those horsemen Cindy detected and see what the situation is. Then we can worry about finding this Walking Snake sorcerer."
The blonde telepath raised a hand, "No need. They're riding this way. I'm getting a clearer sense of their attitudes. They're kind of direct, uneducated farmer types. Simple, but not in a bad way. Still, there's a lot of anger just under the surface."
The three KDF members stepped out into plain sight, as much in the open as possible. Higher up the hill, dense forest began but they stood on wild grass that grew shin-high. Overhead, a bird circled and then wheeled away... a raptor of some sort, much like a hawk.
Seven men came down the slope on horses, bent over their saddles with weariness, faces grimy with sweat and dust. They were big, sturdy men in simple leggings and tunics of coarse material almost like burlap, and each had a short sword at his belt and a bow with quiver fastened to the saddle behind him. The riders were darkly tanned and weathered, their brown hair was tied back behind the neck and they had roughly trimmed beards. As they saw the three unexpected strangers standing before them, the riders pulled their horses short.
"Pergamir!" yelled one. "What does this mean?"
The lead rider was also the biggest man there. He had wide shoulders and a massive barrel chest, and his hair and beard had scattered grey hairs which in a Melgar indicated considerable age. The leader leaned forward in his saddle and gazed down thoughtfully at the three strangers.
"Know you that I am Pergamir son of Harakon. I gather that you are not from this realm but from another. We have seen no people with black skins here, yet you do not seem like a Danarakan nor a Veganoran to me. And you, my lady, surely with that sunset-colored hair and emerald eyes, you must hail from Myrrwha itself."
"You are widely traveled, good Pergamir," Karina replied. "I am indeed a daughter of Myrrwha. My friends here are, like myself, knights of the Order of Tel Shai."
II.
III.
Gazing somberly down at the ceremony far below, Ted Wright said, "There is something very wrong here. The gralir is being twisted and distorted. Some potent and malignant entity is struggling to emerge into our view. It feels to me as if giant fists are pounding on the locked doors of our reality."
"I don't always follow what you're saying," Cindy said as she drew closer to him. "But I don't have gralic awareness. All I'm getting is terror and anxiety from minds about to break. You mean... what they call the Old Ones?"
"And what we in the Midnight War know as the Sulla Chun!" Karina interrupted. "Every time I have encountered those beings, I have come close to being destroyed both mind and spirit. They are monsters that flesh and blood is not meant to meet."
"Sulla Chun," Cindy repeated. "That's what Walking Snake learned about from Those Who Remember. Guys, we have to stop him before this goes any further. If he manages to free a Sulla Chun, nobody in Evaho will survive."
Behind them, still mounted on his steed, Pergamir shook his head. "By Androval's White Horse, I have heard scary tales around the campfire all my life of the Old Ones. They say this land was barren dirt for an age because an Old One stuck his head through a hole in the sky. It took forever for plants and birds and beasts to return and they were sickly for generations. Now you figure that will happen again?"
"Over our dead bodies!" Wright snapped in rare anger. "Come on, leave the horses. The path is too steep for them."
"Give me a second," said Karina. She took a few steps into the darkness and could not be seen. There came two of the faintest cracking noises and she returned just as suddenly. "The sentries are out of the way."
Led by Wright, the KDF members made their way down the incline, clutching at low branches of the trees and at brush for extra support. The Melgar settlers followed with quivers on their backs and bows in hand, which made their descent more difficult. None of the cultists noticed them. The pounding of the drums and the excited shrieks drowned out any noise the intruders might have made.
Hanging head-down over the fire, the Melgar sacrifice had died in dreadful agony as the top of his head had burned away. The stench was unbearable. Frequently, one of the Evahoim would jab the body with a spear to set it swinging, which provoked delighted cries from the crowd.
As they came within the circle of light from the ritual fire, Wright was in the lead. Cindy and Karina held back a few feet, as did Pergamir and his cousins. Abruptly, Walking Snake froze in mid-step and whirled to confront the intruders. The drumming stopped and shocked silence fell over the gathering. The Blue Guide raised his open hands over his head, and azure light crackled and snapped around him like lightning brought to earth. A sharp concussion of thunder deafened everyone as it echoed from the hills above them.
"Stop this now," Wright announced in the somber tone of a judge condemning the accused. "Walking Snake, you do not realize what forces you are toying with."
In the unsteady light of the bonfire, Walking Snake was a grotesque sight. The Evaho shaman was so thin he looked like a victim of starvation with only a red cloth wrapped around his loins. Up and down his skeletal body, arcane symbols were drawn in red paint, and he wore a headdress of red feathers that stood up stiffly. In one clawlike hand, the cult leader brandished a long staff around which the body of a real snake had been wrapped so that its flat head topped the thick end of the totem.
"My spirit has gone to the land of ghosts and come back! I speak for the gods," Walking Snake yelled. "Have you come here to be offered to the Old Ones who once ruled this world?"
"We have come to end this folly," replied Wright. "There will be no more offerings of Human life."
"Fool! Time for talk is long past." The sorcerer waved his totem staff to take in the crowd watching in silence. "The pale invaders have killed our fighting men, taken our women for their own, left our elders to starve as the fields went untended and the game was slaughtered. This must avenged. The Wakan-Mandu will arrive and slay all but the children of Evaho."
In a lower voice, the Blue Guide said, "Cindy, keep the warriors back."
There were almost thirty armed men around the fire, survivors of Melgar attacks who burned with bitterness and hatred. Their long spears bristled in the air as they began to come together after their initial surprise at the interruption of the ceremony. Cindy Brunner faced them without any sign of trepidation. She was a young woman still under thirty years old, small and not imposing in a physical sense but within her disciplined mind was power that few people could ever match. She extended her consciousness out over the mob, seizing command of the male Evahoims' reflexes and imposing a motionless state over them. With a smaller group, or with a group less intense in its rage, she could have pulled them all down into a deep slumber but she could at least manage to keep these warriors still.
"I'm making them stay out of the way, Ted," the little blonde said, "But that's my limit."
"That's fine." Wright pointed at the glaring shaman. "Walking Snake! Lower your staff and stand down, or be slain. I will not warn you again."
Defiantly, Walking Snake whirled toward the pit next to the crackling fire and screamed a final incantation. Lurid dark red force swirled around the end of his totem staff and an answering flash of red light flared up from deep within the Pit of Snakes. Wright lunged forward, seized the sorcerer to swing him around and crashed a tight hard fist to the shaman's face with the full impact of Kumundu training. Walking Snake reeled in a complete circle and fell to his knees. The Blue Guide seldom fought with fists and feet, but he could when he needed to. Wright seized the totem rod away from the dazed shaman, raised one knee and snapped the staff in half over it. As he flung the two pieces as far away as he could, the smoke of the bonfire grew thick and black. Within that smoke, something took shape.
IV.
Karina had come over to stand beside Wright while Cindy concentrated on keeping the Evaho warriors back by sheer telepathic dominance. The Myrrwhan goddess watched as the dazed shaman got back up on his feet, his defiance untouched.
"In the Pit of Snakes are the bones of a hundred sacrifices! In there have been thrown thousands of serpents over a generation, the red and black swamp serpent, the wide-headed serpent of the desert, the small yellow serpent that hides in your blanket. This final sacrifice of the pale invader has cracked the Walls Between the Worlds! Now the Wakan-Mandu will emerge."
"Not that it matters to you," Karina said as she took two quick steps forward, chambered her right knee up to her chest and slammed a straight front kick that flung Walking Snake back. Screaming as he realized what was happening, the sorcerer whirled his arms frantically but fell anyway into the Pit of Snakes where a dozen venomous serpents were ready to bite.
"It won't matter to you because you won't be around to see it," Karina finished with grim satisfaction.
Ted Wright had hardly noticed the action. His horrified gaze was focused entirely on the dim shape forming within the black smoke over the bonfire. "Cindy, try to get all the Evahoans back. As far back as you can make them go."
"Giving it a shot," she answered. Strain was showing on her face and her eyes had narrowed until they were almost closed. Slowly, resisting her influence every inch, the cult began to draw back away from the fire one step at a time. The telepath's head ached abominably with the effort, this was a greater number of minds to control at one time than she had attempted before.
Over the fire, near where the sacrificed Melgar still hung head-down, the dark cloud had condensed into a nearly solid mass in which threads of red force crackled. As Ted Wright readied himself, something appeared in that cloud, a white globe more than a yard across with a dark central spot. An Eye.
From that staring Eye, a bolt of dark red lightning snapped and shot straight at the Blue Guide. Wright deflected most of it with a hasty shield of gralic force of his own, but much of the blast still detonated squarely against his chest and threw him back off his feet in a violent skidding tumble.
At the same time, on the edge of the Pit of Snakes, a huge copper-skinned hand groped for support. The misshapen head and shoulders of a monstrous warrior heaved up from where Walking Snake had died a moment earlier among the bones of a hundred earlier sacrifices and a crawling mass of serpents.
Wright rolled and leaped back up on his feet. A charred hole in the tough material of his field suit jacket revealed the gleam of the flexible Trom armor beneath it.. the same silk-thin armor that had saved his life more than a few times. The Blue Guide stood up straight and raised his open hands with new resolve. He shook off the pain of his bruised and scorched chest. This was the greatest peril he had faced in his career and he steadied his spirit.
The Blue Guide unconsciously assumed a Kerwandu meditation stance, feet together and back straight, breathing deeply in and holding it for a beat before exhaling more slowly. Discipline. A calm spirit was needed. Wright pressed his hands together and extended his arms, sending a shaft of pure blue light to pierce into the red haze around the Eye. An unearthly howl echoed in the night air.
The monstrous revenant that had formed around the corpse of Walking Snake bent and seized an iron-bladed hatchet with a curved oak handle from where a dazed warrior had dropped it. The being swirled its new weapon in an elaborate figure eight pattern and screamed hatred in a hollow sepulchral voice.
Walking boldly up to the giant revenant came a slender young woman in a jumpsuit, carrying no weapons or shield, but with a faint mocking smile on her lips. "Well, how about that?" Karina announced to anyone who might be listening in the uproar. "I believe this joker is mine." As she stepped within reach, the corpse of Walking Snakes swung its hatchet in a vicious horizontal arc. Karina swayed her upper body just enough to let the swing go past and shoved her hand against that monstrous arm to keep the revenant turning further. Off balance, he was exposed and open for a split second. The Myrrwhan goddess crashed a tight fist just a few inches in a short jab that cracked hard against the monster's face. To her revulsion, the flesh of his cheek gave way in a soft squishy manner.
The hatchet came at her in a whistling backswing. Karina slapped up against the side of the blade to deflect it away from her, again trying to keep the monster from getting its balance and using its full strength. Her precision was uncanny. Just a half inch off and she would have lost her hand at the wrist to that hatchet. As his weapon arm went up, his torso was exposed and Karina drove in a simple straight side kick with impact that shattered bones. She felt his ribs crack under her foot and yet it didn't seem to faze him. Walking Snake whirled the hatchet overhead and flung it- not at Karina but past her, toward where Ted Wright was standing with his full attention on the glowering Eye.
In all her incarnations over the ages, Karina had seldom moved as decisively as she did then. She leaped up entirely off the ground, stretching her arms as far as they could reach and her fingertips could not quite grasp the handle of the hatchet. She did graze it thought, enough to deflect its flight and send the weapon spinning away into the darkness without harming her friend. Landing on hands and toes, Karina spun forward in a somersault that brought her back up on her feet just as Walking Snake's undead fist slammed into the dirt where she had been poised an instant earlier.
VII.
Cindy was keeping the Evahoan warriors back by sheer telepathic dominance. Karina was dueling with a revenant made from Walking Snake's corpse. And Wright was facing a manifestation of the Sulla Chun themselves. The remaining villagers had huddled into a mass of terrified misery as they watched all this. Most had been coerced into joining the sect of Those Who Remember and had never imagined any of these gruesome events could happen. Yet, one by one, the villagers backed away and turned to run off into the night in a blind panic with their hearts pounding. The crowd dwindled.
Hopping lightly on her toes, moving in to land a blow and then leap back out of reach, Karina was discouraged to find her enemy seemed insensible to pain. The undead thing reached out an arm thicker than her torso, its broad fingers clutching for her throat. With both of her own hands laced together, Karina smashed that arm down away from her and instantly threw a backfist that sank her knuckles deep into a mushy face. Walking Snake's nose flattened like soft clay and his cheek caved in but it did not matter to him. Again, he reached out and this time his huge paw closed like a clamp around Karina's upper arm.
Even as that grip seized her, the Myrrwhan goddess swung up both legs, knees drawn into her chest, and drove her feet out against the wide coppery chest with all her strength. She barely broke free, more by surprise than by strength, and she backed up out of reach quickly. Her left arm ached and was almost useless after that crushing grip. Karina knew she must not let the brute get his hands on her again.
Walking Snake hissed like his namesake and stalked after her as she backpedaled.
VIII.
Paralyzed by terror, Pergamir stood unmoving as the three way struggle continued. He had always been praised for his courage and even among the Melgarin he had been considered a man without fear. This was something beyond anything he had ever experienced before. Facing the genuine supernatural for the first time unnerved him as no mortal enemy could.
The hero of Androval was not sure what the blonde woman was doing. She appeared to be merely staring down the Evahoim warriors and keeping them at bay somehow. That was beyond him. The redhaired woman was clashing with some gigantic unliving beast that resembled Walking Snake. Pergamir did not see how he could intervene in that duel. Karina and the monster were moving too quickly, getting too close together when striking, for him to quite follow, let alone get involved with.
Then he turned his anxious gaze to where Ted Wright was confronting the floating Eye. Pergamir felt his heart sink. The Blue Guide had not changed his stance but his knees were trembling and his face was beaded with sweat. The black outlander's expression was stern and resolute, Pergamir saw, but strain was showing in its taut lines. Between the Tel Shai healer and the minion of the Old Ones, opposing shafts of red and blue force boiled in the air where they met.. and the dark red beam was steadily pushing the blue light back. The blue light dimmed. Suddenly, Pergamir realized that Wright was losing ground and then in a moment the Old One might blast him away and then turn its baleful force on everyone in that realm.
Bending his great bow, a feat which in itself took more strength than a Human could muster, Pergamir looped the cord over its ends and tested its tightness. Reaching to the quiver on his back, the Melgar notched an arrow and drew the string back to his ear before letting it fly. The thick wood shaft, three feet long, hissed through the air and the arrow's cold iron barb tore a gouge open along the upper curve of the Eye.
Inside its boiling dark cloud, the Eye swiveled its glare directly at Pergamir, who had already fitted another arrow to the string and was drawing it back. The shaft never had the chance to be released. Dark energy exploded across the clearing to hit the Melgar squarely and fling him through the air like a corn husk doll struck by lightning. Smoke rose from a charred form that lay where it had been thrown.
Getting that revenge meant the Eye had turned its attention away from Wright in its pain and rage, which would be its undoing. The Blue Guide summoned up all the gralir he could manage at one time and thrust it at the Sulla Chun manifestation in an intense narrow beam. Clean blue light lanced the Eye like a needle piercing a pus-filled boil. The vile thing burst in a clot of white goo and fell apart. Every Human there suffered a surge of mental distress as the servant of the Old Ones screamed its death cry. In the next second, the cloud dispersed and what remained of the Eye plopped lifelessly down into the dying bonfire.
Still defiant, Karina saw her opponent reel and stagger as if having a stroke. Abruptly, the giant revenant literally fell apart into a stinking mass of white bone and shreds of long-dead flesh which had adhered to the corpse of Walking Snake. Without the presence of the Sulla Chun in the area, the monstrosity returned to the corruption from which it had been fashioned.
Frantic at these sights, the Evahoim warriors broke free of Cindy's mental control and ran screaming into the night. All the other cultists had fled in panic long before. In the days to come, many of them would be found wandering in the nearby hills with their minds broken, hopeless madmen who twitched and could not speak a coherent thought. Freed of the effort of controlling the mob, Cindy ran to where Ted Wright had sunk weakly to the ground.
"Cin," he gasped as he tried to sit up, "That was the worst- the worst I ever..."
The little blonde cradled him in her arms and kissed his cheek. "Huh. Don't talk about it now, Ted. It's all over. Rest. Take a deep breath." She called over to their teammate, "Karina, how are you doing?"
"A little bruised, a little burned," the Myrrwhan patron-goddess answered lightly. "I'll be fine. Now THAT was a fight well worth it!"
"And Pergamir?" asked Wright in a voice weaker than his normal deep tones.
"Dead," Karina told them. "That blast killed him instantly. If it helps, Ted, he never felt it. Natural lightning never slew a man more quickly."
The Blue Guide sat up, with Cindy still hugging him to give moral support. "I guess we won, then. Walking Snake took the knowledge from Those Who Remember with him, and the Sulla Chun won't be seen here again. But what a nightmare. And I will always respct Pergamir, he stepped in when he was needed most."
Disengaging and moving around to sit cross-legged on the ground in front of Wright, Cindy said, "Pergamir knew he was going to die."
"He did? What do you mean?"
"I could read it in his mind," the telepath told him as Karina came over to squat wearily next to them. "Pergamir was tired of all the skirmishing with the Evahoim. He felt guilty about taking this realm from them. The massacres made him ashamed. In his heart, he was grateful for a chance to die in battle against a worthy foe... like a Melgar."
5/13/2017
