Father of Monstrosity

They had been in this rank and fetid hell for hours now, with scarcely a track to follow, yet Stelji seemed no less enthusiastic about carrying out Skin Robe’s order. Kabel would have escaped by now, if not for the futility of it. He was utterly beholden to the Monstrosity’s guidance, as, without her to lead the way, he was lost. And even if, by some miracle, he should find his way out alive, the Crown was on the lookout for him, so he would probably not make it far before he was caught. So, while the chances of this venture turning out in his favour were flimsier than parchment, it was the only real chance to survive that he had.

Suddenly Stelji froze, becoming like a statue, then she arced her head down and lifted her spike leg slowly, the bone-covered limb trailing a fine strand of silk.

Kabel quickly joined her and looked at the trail, seeing that it led down a side-tunnel, which, thank the Eight Saint, sloped upward. His enthusiasm refilled, he bounded up the slope, leaving the spike-legged Stelji to catch up.

“There’s more up here,” he called back to her, the excitement infecting his voice.

Then something else responded to his call as well, its guttural voice shaking the stones under his feet.

“Loke? Is that you?”

Something enormous blundered its way into view up ahead where the tunnel curved right. The first thing Kabel noticed was large black wet eyes the size of dinner plates and rubbery skin covering a body which seemed barely able to fit within this narrow demesne of filth. Its six legs were each capped with three curiously-rounded fingers that held talons the length of his forearm.

“I don’t think that’s Loke…” he remarked, his body frozen in terror at the sight.

Stelji walked past him, the air flooding with static in her passing, before she launched a single bolt of lightning at the enormous frog-like demon. The crimson bolt raced across the tunnel floor in a skittering zig-zag, before connecting with one of the monster’s legs and cascading a torrent of lighting up through its body and into the ceiling where it dispersed outwards in ripples of red snakes of light.

The frog-beast practically exploded as it was cooked from within, flinging steaming pieces of rubbery skin and blubber across the tunnel. Tiny pieces spattered his legs, but given what things he had already waded through down in this stinking hell, he did not bother to wipe it off.

“I love you, Stelji,” he announced sincerely.

Suddenly the air started to vibrate and the Lightning Lady turned to glare at him with its eyeless helmet.

He lifted his arms in mock surrender. “Just kidding, obviously.”

It was damp and the stones were cold and rough to his skin. They had left him gagged and blindfolded, but, more distressingly, they had taken his robe and no doubt confiscated his priceless tomes.

He was fairly sure he was kept underground, as there were no audible sounds of the wind and the temperature remained fixed, despite the passing of the sun. For some reason, he was still alive, though he wondered if that was simply due his capturers dragging their heels in preparing his torture chamber, to which he was no doubt soon to be acquainted.

Barely-perceptible tremors in the stones made him turn his head in the direction of the door. A peeking-hole was slid open and unseen eyes assessed him meticulously, before the lock was disengaged and three sets of boots entered the cell.

“Wait outside,” the stern voice of the leading person demanded of his companions, likely bodyguards, and the sounds of their retreat was followed swiftly by the door being slammed and locked again. From how the voice of the man before him echoed through the room, it seemed he was in a tall circular chamber, which Jakob found to be odd. But, then again, he was unfamiliar with Novarocian prison architecture.

Though the hood obscured most of his vision, he could make out the faint outline of the man before him. He seemed tall and slender, verging on too much of both, which gave his silhouette an off-putting appearance.

“You may be wondering why you are still alive,” he began, his voice as blunt as a rock. Surprisingly, he spoke in Llemanian.

Jakob shrugged, which was difficult to accomplish with his hands and feet bound together.

The figure sighed loudly.

“So brutish, these Guardsmen. But then, they get the job done.”

He distinctly picked up the sound of cloth shifting as the man knelt down to pull off his hood. Even though it was dim, the light momentarily blinded Jakob. As he blinked away the blur in his vision, he finally saw his captor in full. Immediately, he was struck by the fact that he was clad in a flawless off-white robe accented with purple embellishments and wore a long necklace of an eagle with amethysts as its eyes. Secondly, he noticed just how old the man was, perhaps into his sixties, which his voice did not betray the slightest notion of.

While Jakob stared up at the man from his seated position, he muttered an incantation of some sort, and a translucent clawed hand of mist extended out from his right elbow and moved towards him, shearing through Jakob’s bonds in passing, before pulling out the cloth that gagged him.

“Why haven’t you killed me?” Jakob asked in Llemanian, his mastery of the language seeming to please the scarecrow-man.

“Oh they certainly were baying for your blood, and they may still have it, depending on what comes of our meeting.”

Jakob flexed his jaw with an annoyed grimace, it was sore from where someone had either punched or kicked him. The cold in the room was also bone-chilling, as he wore nothing but a set of frayed pants to preserve his modesty, which was ironic when he had been robbed of all else that he possessed.

“You want something from me,” Jakob guessed, switching to Octef, the language of the Eight Saint’s clergy.

The man followed the language switch with casual ease, as he replied, “Of course. You are an accomplished young man, despite your proclivities for the profane.”

“You know nothing,” he answered haughtily, switching to Heimlish.

“No one knows everything,” the man replied, following the switch again, not skipping a beat.

“Then tell me what you desire of me,” Jakob continued, switching to the sing-song speech of the Demons.

The man paused, then smiled triumphantly as he replied, not with a normal answer, but a direct quote of obscure Demonic poetry: “In a name lies a thousand truths and the leash of control, but I give mine freely in return for yours.”

He switched back to Llemanian, the stoic language of the neighbouring country. “My name is Jakob, but you no doubt know that already.”

“I know more about you than that, you can be certain. You may address me as Sirellius. Most know me as the Diviner, chief Advisor to King Ubrik of Helmsgarten.”

It was a euphoric sense of power that filled Kabel as he flung out his gauntleted hands, tearing apart the beasts and nightmarish creatures that flowed up from the many tunnels leading into the sewer cistern.

Stelji was meticulously laying in with her devastating lightning attacks, vaporising most of the creatures that even dared gaze her way. He barely had time to admire her destruction however, as the horde of monsters seemed inexhaustible. Even armed with Skin Robe’s powerful bone gauntlets, he seemed ill prepared to stem the tide.

After killing the toad-beast, the pair had ventured down long windy pathways that seemed to go on for kilometres, before they had once more picked up the track of spider-silk that seemed to indicate Loke’s passing. He still was not sure what exactly Loke was, but, as he reconsidered the Summoner’s description, it seemed obvious now.

As the realisation of what he had been sent to retrieve dawned on him, he let his guard down and a large bear-like rat barrelled into him, sending him straight into one of the tall pillars that held up the ceiling. He collapsed into it with a sickening crack, finding his right arm bent the wrong way at the elbow, but despite this injury, he continued slashing with his left hand, the magical gauntlet allowing him to shred apart anything he focused on, as though an invisible demon’s claw was under his control, turning the monsters’ own blood into the weapons of their destruction.

The bear-rat whirled around to smash him against the pillar again and Kabel struggled to get out of its way. Only moments from turning his midsection to mush with its colossal frame, some enormous weight landed with all eight of its legs atop the rat monster’s skull, crushing it against the stone floor and arresting the beast’s momentum.

Kabel’s thoughts were not that he had been saved, however, since the monstrosity before him was like a figment out of his worst fever-induced hallucinations. With a bone-carapace body longer than he was tall, eight triple-jointed skeletal legs capped with three fingers each, a thick cord of silk connecting it to the vaulted ceiling, and mandibles that chittered at the front of its eyeless face, it made all the creatures rushing into the cistern pale in comparison.

The Huntsman screamed in fear, only for the spider to lean in close, its chittering mandibles almost touching his ear, and the sound emanating from them inducing a drunken torpor on his body and mind. He tried desperately to fight back with his left fist, but the magic seemed unwilling to obey, as though the spider was impervious somehow.

Suddenly, one of its eight legs grabbed the cord of silk from its back, the one previously connecting it to the ceiling, then it took that silk and wrapped it around Kabel’s torso, before throwing him onto its back, his ruined arm hitting the tough bone armour of its body with enough force to make him momentarily black out.

When Kabel returned to consciousness, the Spider Demon was hurriedly galloping back along the tunnel through which he and Stelji had entered the cistern.

In the distance, he could still hear the grumble-and-roar of battle, silenced at evenly-paced intervals by the tremendous concussive force of contained thunder.

He gathered the breath in his lungs, before screaming into the cistern, hoping the Lightning Lady would hear.

“Stelji! Help me! Save me! I don’t wanna be spider food!”

“If you were aware of my work in your metropolis, then why was I left untouched?”

“Oh, I certainly wasn’t aware of all your work, nor your existence for that matter. I postulated that the Underking had made a return, despite our agreement.”

Jakob narrowed his eyes at the mention of Grandfather’s other name. In truth, his Mentor had many names, though most were known as different historic villains, such as the Wicked Doctor of Lilibeth, the Llemanian Widowmaker, and, more locally, the Underking of Helmsgarten. It seemed an inevitability that so long-lived a monster as him would garner many different names as he moved from place to place while plying his trade.

Though Jakob knew more about Grandfather than most, he had never heard about any sort of agreement with the Novarocian Crown. The notion disgusted him. It seemed a reneging of Grandfather’s self-professed ideals, but, then again, Jakob was well aware of Grandfather’s duplicity. He wondered if Heskel knew.

“How did you learn about me?”

“Through the Adventurers’ Guild. We of course pay close attention their members. After all, they are granted quite substantial freedoms within our domain. You rose quite rapidly through their ranks, and your manner and unknown origins immediately caught our attention. Then I began to put many scattered incidents together, and it seemed quite obviously linked to your emergence into our fair city.”

“But still you waited.”

“We cannot simply imprison someone on the suspicion of a crime against our Kingdom.”

“Yes, you can.”

The old man smiled, “Our King believes in justice, so we like to avoid acting in ways to reveal the illusion he has manufactured. Regardless, we only had to wait a few days after becoming aware of you, before you revealed yourself to be the person I suspected. After all, such magic has not been seen within Helmsgarten in over ten years.”

Jakob rubbed the soles of his feet. They were raw from being scraped along the harsh stones when he was dragged into his cell.

“We would like to enter into an agreement with you.”

“What would the terms be?” he asked, still rubbing his feet.

“You fulfil a request for us, and in return you are allowed to live. Of course, you will be exiled from Helmsgarten. After all, we can’t have our leniency become known to the public.”

“These are agreeable terms, but what request would you make?” Jakob wondered.

Sirellius was just about to answer, when two hurried raps on the cell door interrupted him. He turned to the source and told the person to enter. Moments later, a courier was let into the circular cell, pausing briefly to stare at the emaciated, bald, and deathly-pale visage of Jakob sitting almost naked on the ground, before regaining his professional composure.

“The entire southern part of the city is overrun with monsters, sire!” he blurted out in Novarocian.

Sirellius turned to look at Jakob, who simply shrugged.

“What sort of monsters?” the old Advisor enquired.

“Rats the size of bears! Six-legged frog beasts! Four-head serpents! And many more that I scarcely have the words to describe! The Major is asking for orders to be deployed.”

“They are granted. Tell her the following: the Adventurers’ Guild are to focus on civilian evacuations; the Royal Guard will stem the tide and find the source; and the District Guard will cordon the affected districts and lock down the bridges.”

With a double-handed salute that seemed to Jakob like an imitation of the Kingdom’s eagle symbol, the courier hurried from the cell.

“Grandfather has finally made his move,” he told the Advisor.

Sirellius scrutinised him for a long moment, then nodded to himself as if coming to some conclusion. “You are no longer on amiable terms, are you?”

“I owe him no fealty. He himself taught me that only the strongest survive.”

“Any advice you can give us?”

“I will tell you what his goal is, if you return to me my tomes.”

The old man took a while to consider the matter, but then nodded his assent. He reached down a hand, the fingers by themselves longer than Jakob’s entire hand. Reluctantly, he let himself be hoisted to his feet.

“Follow me,” Sirellius told him.

After abandoning his cell and climbing spiralling stairs for many minutes to escape the depths, they found themselves in one of the lower floors of the Helmsgarten Castle. For a brief moment, Jakob considered just how much devastation and long-lasting damage he could inflict, but he was not a vindictive person and his focus was on the horizon of the future, not the meagre spoils of the present. After all, a temporary loss or setback meant nothing if the end result was favourable.

Sirellius eventually led them to the third floor, where he had a study adjoining a command centre of sorts. The room was crowded with lieutenants and officers of the Royal Guard, whom the Advisor seemed to be in charge of coordinating. Additionally, there was an entire cadre of scribes and their couriers, who relayed messages as efficiently as possible.

Upon seeing the old man, the lot of them paused what they were doing to salute him with their hands crossed over their hearts, the same way Jakob had seen the courier do earlier.

“Have my orders been relayed?”

“Yes, sire!” they voiced unanimously.

“Then what are you standing around for? Get to it!”

“Yes, sire!” they replied, the commanding officers at once evacuating the room to no doubt rouse their men to action, while scribes handed off letters and notes that were carried from the room by fleetfooted youngsters in light form-fitting attire.

The pair and their escort continued into the adjoining study, which Sirellius closed the door to behind them. Jakob noticed there was another door that led from the hallway and into the study, but knew the old Advisor had purposefully shown him the power he possessed.

With a hand, Sirellius indicated a soft-looking couch, but Jakob declined the offer. He smiled amusedly, then sat down on the opposite couch, before leaning forward and grabbing a little bell, which he sounded gently.

Moments later, the hallway-facing door opened and a red-haired servant with a dimpled smile entered.

“Sire?”

“Bring a tray of sweetmeats and cakes, as well as tea for myself and my guest.”

“Of course, sire,” the servant replied meekly before exiting and hurrying down the hall, his steps audibly on the carpet outside as he rushed to obey.

“Now. You say you know the goal of the Underking and why he has chosen now to overrun our fair city with his beasts.”

“Return to me my tomes, and I will enlighten you.”

Sirellius’ amused smile froze, before an annoyed expression briefly crossed his face. Then he arose and went over to a large metal chest next to a bookcase, which was overflowing with historical memoirs and accounts that seemed to date back centuries. From within the large chest he withdrew a smaller wooden box, which he brought to the table that sat between the two soft couches, before returning to his seat.

Jakob immediately undid the clasp and withdrew the three tomes, checking them to ensure they were undamaged. Then he thought about how they had been shoved together into the same box and realised something. His face twisted into a grimace of contempt. The spell tome was inert and glued shut, and he immediately recognised the spell.

“Unseal them.”

“That was not part of the deal.”

Jakob chuckled, realising that the Advisor had not actually violated their agreement. Sirellius seemed unsettled by his response, but Jakob did not care. He finally sat down opposite the man, with the three tomes clutched jealously to his chest.

“These are what he seeks.”

“The tomes?” Sirellius asked, a flash of anger crossing his face at being fooled. If Jakob actually cared, he might have found some joy in turning the table to his favour.

“He is also seeking my Lifeward.”

“The one called Heskel, correct?”

Jakob nodded. “He may also attempt to recover the core of one of his pet demons, who was slain in Market West.” Though Jakob doubted it could be recovered, as it had been devoured by Mercilla, and her vessel had in turn been petrified by the Stone Plague he unleashed. But then, a demon’s core was as strong as the will of the entity within it, so it was never a sure thing, especially when the demon in question was Raleigh, Grandfather’s fiercely-loyal executioner.

“That was his doing!?”

Jakob neither confirmed nor denied it. If the old fool did not know Jakob was to blame for unleashing Mercilla, then he had no reason to enlighten him on the matter. After all, their agreement did not include that sort of information.

“If he is still as fond of feints and smoke-and-mirrors, then his released horde of monsters in the southern districts will be a distraction, while his more powerful servants travel through the sewers to strike further north, beyond your cordons and lookouts. If he is aware of my hideout in Market North, he is likely to strike there as well.”

“This is very useful insight. Thank you.”

Jakob was momentarily wrongfooted by the sincerity with which the old man said it.

“What happened to my robe?”

Sirellius was already moving towards the door that led to the command centre, probably to update his orders to include this newfound information. Without turning he replied offhandedly, “We burnt your profane clothes, but you may take one of my robes to replace it.”

While the Advisor was busy barking orders for his scribes to jot down and relay through the messengers, and the two guards by the door watched him with open contempt and disdain, Jakob had a look at the closet that stood next to a modestly-sized bed. Within were hangers with robes, vests, trousers, and so forth. In the end, he simply grabbed a crimson magister’s robe, knowing it would let him pass inspections without any questions asked. He was quite frustrated to have lost his hand-crafted tail, as it had proven quite a useful tool both in his work and as a protection against assailants.

Sirellius returned to the study to find Jakob sitting cross-legged on the couch wearing the robe, while studying one of the books. Though Tchinn was sealed and his magic along with it, the Necroscript and Demonology tomes were as they had always been, inert. It seemed Sirellius considered the Hemolatry Spell Tome the biggest threat, despite the fact that the other tomes arguably held bigger dangers within their pages to those who could discern their texts. The knowledge in the blood-rag tome had after all led to Mercilla’s summoning, but Sirellius did not seem a scholar of the summoning arts, else he would have known not to return them to Jakob.

“It’s a bit too big for you.”

“It will suffice until I craft another robe.”

“You know that won’t be possible. I told you that you’d get to live, but I cannot in good conscience sit idly by while you mutilate innocents.”

“Will you object to me harvesting my material from demons?”

Sirellius paused. It was clear that he could not fully gauge whether Jakob was being facetious or not. “Err, no, I suppose not…”

“Now. The true reason why I am still breathing,” Jakob started.

“You don’t waste time, do you?”

“I would rather conclude our contract as soon as feasible, so that my true undertaking can commence.”

Sirellius lifted an inquisitive eyebrow, but Jakob kept his face blank within the obscuring hood.

“We have a matter which you seem uniquely suited to solve.”

“Pray tell.”

Two knocks on the door came, and the guards let the red-haired servant enter with a tray of plates with dried-and-sugar-coated fruits, small slices of cakes and pies, empty cups on saucers, and a fragrant tea in a porcelain vessel. It clinked as the man crossed to where they sat and settled it on the table between them. As soon as he had set down the tray, he left the study.

Sirellius indicated one of the cakes. “I recommend the gooseberry tart.”

Jakob took the crumbly pastry, eschewing a plate, and bit into it. The tart was both acidic and sweet, with the dense-but-brittle crust balancing the flavours. He followed down the bite with a sip of the hot tea.

Watching his expressions with some satisfaction, the Diviner noted, “It is calendula tea. I had the leaves shipped here from Libou yesterday.” To Jakob’s knowledge, Libou was a small vineyard and farming town in the northeast of Lleman. It lay more than two-hundred kilometres from Helmsgarten. Once again, it seemed that the old man enjoyed flaunting his power. How ironic that so powerful a man required help from Jakob.

“I am unused to such flavours,” he told his captor.

“What do you normally eat?”

“Corpse-meal. It is quite bland, but nutritious.”

“Corpse… meal?”

“The dried and processed bits of my subjects which I have no use for.”

Both the guards looked on the verge of emptying their stomachs, but Sirellius took it in stride. “They certainly breed them strong in the sewers.”

“You have it wrong. It is not that those who live in the sewers are strong by nature, but rather that those who survive have overcome the innate adversity of the environment and evolved into stronger beings.”

Sirellius finished his pastry and settled his cup on an empty plate before him. “I will tarry no longer. I require you to resurrect someone of great importance to our fair city.”

Jakob emptied his cup in a final swig, the liquid scalding its way down his gullet, then he arose from the comfortable couch.

“Take me to the body.”

With the guards in tow, they left the study and descended to the entrance hall of the castle, before delving deeper into its belly, into what was easily-recognisable as a family tomb of the Royal Family and wealthy aristocrats, as well as national heroes.

Braziers of burnished steel were licked by guttering flames on the sides of the walls as they descended into the undercroft. The stone staircase was worn smooth by the passing of thousands of boots over hundreds of years and the air was stale, with a faint odour of dry bones and dust.

While taking each of the large stone steps one at a time, Jakob remarked, “I cannot resurrect a long-deceased body without major consequences to the inhabiting soul’s state.”

He had been running through a list of ideas for how to go about bringing back life to someone who was deceased. Grandfather himself seemed to have solved the problem of mortality some centuries past, but Jakob was well-aware of the inherent problems that came with that exact method of Unlife.

Jakob also doubted he could get away with a simple reanimation. After all, when people spoke of bringing back life to a body, what they truly meant was returning the soul to its mortal prison. The personhood of someone lay in the soul, while their physical body was simply a vessel that most suited it. There were several ways to overcome a ruined vessel, but none to overcome a ruined soul, and, depending on the manner of death and the duration the soul had been without a mortal bond, the resurrected person might as well have been a mindless servant, as time eroded their personality like water-and-wind erodes stone.

They came to a set of ornate-but-rusted steel doors, which the two guards pushed aside to allow them in. Sirellius paused on the threshold, before withdrawing an item from within his robe and handing it to Jakob. It was his scent-mask.

He inspected it thoroughly, but found it to be mostly-intact, with only minor cosmetic damage to its exterior. His handmade scent-balls of Misty Reminiscence still sat within the tip of its beak.

“I do not know what sort of narcotic is contained within, but I gather it is important for your concentration.”

“It is not a narcotic,” Jakob said, then fitted the crimson mask to his face. He imagined it suited the magister’s robe quite well, as they were near-identical in their reddish hues. With a deep breath and an indulgent exhalation of spent air, he elaborated, “Without such a mask, the depths of the sewers are inhospitable. The smell will rob you of your faculties and you will pass out, never to wake again.”

From the face which the Advisor made in the torchlight, it seemed he did not believe him.

After a brief respite, as one of the bodyguards retrieved a torch, they went through the gates and followed a long series of narrow tunnels wherein everyone except Jakob needed to lower their heads to fit through. It seemed like they wandered for ages, but Jakob realised quickly that Sirellius was leading them on an intentionally-confusing and long-winded roundabout-way to their destination, perhaps hoping to trap Jakob within the tomb once his work was completed. But one did not inhabit the labyrinthine sewers and not develop a preternatural sense of direction.

Eventually, they came to a room about ten metres across and three metres tall, wherein were many stone slabs. It seemed a room for morticians to prepare a body for burial, as there were many vessels of harvested organs and the tools of the trade strewn about on wheeled tables. Jakob took off his mask briefly to taste the air, noting a pervasive smell of death and sickly-sweet embalming fluids. Such scents were nostalgic to him; Grandfather’s laboratoriums had all borne the stench, given that no amount of scent-water nor abrasive cleaning methods could fully eliminate it.

Only one of the stone slabs was occupied, and two men stood above it, chanting quietly. Minor frost-burn was evident on the pale body of the corpse.

“Tell them to halt their primitive attempts at preservation,” Jakob told Sirellius.

“Why?”

“They are damaging the vessel beyond repair.” Already, he saw that the body would require several amputations on its extremities to prevent gangrene if the resurrection was successful.

“Can you bring him back to life?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

Jakob looked around, wondering whether the guards and sorcerers would balk at his words.

“They are loyal and will obey what I command,” Sirellius informed him, seeming to guess his thoughts.

Jakob grinned and exhaled air from the vents of his mask. “The best course of action would be to turn him into a Lich. But I will have to prepare the vessel and bind the soul with the aid of a Daemon.”

Everyone around him, except the Advisor, seemed to suck in air in unison.

“What must be done?”

Jakob pointed at the two sorcerers defiling the body. “I will need their bodies.”

Sirellius nodded, and before the two men could act, his bodyguards had restrained and gagged the two men who protested vehemently to no avail.

“What else?”

“I need you to unseal my Spell Tome.”

Sirellius took a step back.

“As the Watcher is my witness, I will fulfil your request. Now, unseal the tome, so I can get to work. The more time passes, the worse the condition of the returning soul.”

The Advisor extended his hand and Jakob gave him Tchinn.