He frowned, and pulled his axe from his belt.

  “With axe and shield,” he replied, giving the axe a little twirl.

  I blinked a few times, trying to parse through what he’d said.

  “What’s your name?” I asked, then quickly added, “I’m Clyde Hatchett.”

  “Erling Sigemærsson.”

  “In this world?”

  “In this and the last.”

  “Um, Erling,” I said, trying to say his name correctly and wondering why, exactly, this stupid yet amazing language learning skill didn’t seem to apply to names, “I think that we came from very different times in our world. In my time, Denmark and Norway were separate countries, and they definitely weren’t fighting in England any more. The place we called England.”

  “Everything about it is odd,” he said. But then he shrugged and smiled at me. “Thus is the way of the gods, eh?”

  Erling burst out laughing and slid his axe away.

  “It is good to meet someone from home,” he said wiping a tear away from his eye. “Different time or not — it is good to know that I am not insane. Some nights, I have lain awake, wondering if everything was just a dream. You have given me a lifetime back. Thank you, Clyde.”

  He grabbed me in a tight hug once again, which would have been much nicer if his armor didn’t have pokey bits on it. Then he went back into the tavern, calling out, “I will see you on the lift in the morning, eh?”

  But he didn’t wait for an answer. As he opened the door, light and laughter spilled out, and I wondered what the hell I was doing outside in the cold.

  I looked at my hands, which were trembling. I needed to sleep.

  22

  Sleep was both exactly what I needed and precisely the last thing I should have done. I looked around for Nox, hoping to get him to do the sleep spell with me, but he must’ve snuck back out to his library. And given how long it had been since I’d actually let myself rest — days at that point — it probably would have been a bad idea anyway.

  I laid down on one of the beds in the tjene room and pulled the blanket over me. I figured that Mornax clomping into the room would probably wake me up, and I could see that he’d pushed two beds together to make one big enough for himself.

  As soon as my head hit the pillow, I was out.

  I tumbled through infinite darkness, being pulled along through my dream-space into somewhere new. I came to as a shadow looking into a world. A world I was likely never meant to see.

  It took me a moment before I could understand where I was, or when.

  It was a nice room with thick red and gold carpet, and large windows across one wall. I could see nothing but sky out of them. Not much in the way of furniture, just a small writing desk along the nearest wall, and a slim bookshelf next to it. A man in black silk hunched at the desk, writing something feverishly.

  I headed toward the windows, not exactly touching the floor, and looked out. I was high above a larger city. Older buildings, topping out at three stories, judging the windows. But this tower was much, much higher than that. I could make out some larger buildings in the mid-distance. They looked more like temples, with ornate roofs and columns. City walls rose in the distance, with verdant farmland beyond. Far to the west were snowcapped mountains. At least, what I presumed was west. It was where the sun was setting. A crowd had formed directly below the tower, swarming in and around the courtyard.

  A door opened, its hinges creaking loudly. A man in a chainmail coif peeked inside. Bits of red hair peeked out and framed his round face.

  “It is time to go, your highness,” he said softly. “They have breached the doors, and are coming up the stairs.”

  The man sat up straight, as if snapped out of a trance. He looked over his shoulder, and I recognized him. The prince from the last dream. Just older.

  “Oh, let them come,” the prince, er, maybe king, snapped. Then he went back to his book.

  “Are you, well, are you, uh, do you think that is a good idea?”

  The prince-king sat up straight again. There was something wrong about the way he moved, like he wasn’t quite sure how to make his body work correctly. It wasn’t any one thing I could point to. Just that his movements were disconcerting.

  “I think it is a fine idea, young man,” the prince-king said. “I have no worries about those miscreants outside. They have been little but trouble since I assumed the throne, and I fear I have run out of patience.”

  So he’d become king.

  The king stood up, a bit jerky. He shook his hands out and cracked his neck from side to side. I pushed into magesight, not bothering to consider how that was possible in this memory, or dream. I could see the king pulling his power in, and I got a sense of how much mana he could bring to the table. More than me, that’s for sure.

  He looked down at his writing, and then bent over to fix a few words.

  Noises traveled up the stairs: a raucous mix of screaming and boots. Rage-filled shouted reverberated to us.

  The man in the armor looked nervously back over his shoulder.

  “Your highness,” he said, “if we are to escape, we—”

  “Bah,” the king snapped, once again having gotten into his writing, and rather irate that he had been forced to acknowledge reality. “There is no reason to worry. Although, if you don’t mind, I could use your assistance with something?”

  “I, uh, your highness—”

  “I can’t quite discern why I would require your permission, but that seems to be a potential lynchpin for the spell. So, unfortunately, I need you to agree.”

  The guard’s face went pale as he looked down the stairwell. It was actually hard to hear anything over the coming mob.

  “What?” The guard asked.

  “Say you will help me,” the king snapped.

  “Yes, of course I will,” the guard replied.

  “Thank you,” the king said. I saw magical energy moving inside him, twisting around into a triple helix structure that shot out of the king and into the hapless guard, tethering the two men together. “Hrm, less than average mana, eh?”

  The guard’s eyes went wide and he looked down at his stomach.

  I flipped out of magesight to see the green tether barely visible, but it was definitely still there, and definitely held the men together. Or, rather, it held the guard to the king, who didn’t seem anywhere near as bothered.

  “Still,” the king said, taking a deep breath. He was drawing all his mana to bear, and seemed to shove it down the tether into the guard.

  I could see the ball of magical energy move down the tether, slamming into the man with an arcane ripple.

  The man’s eyes went wide as he tried to understand what had just happened to him. Primal screams ripped out of his mouth.

  “Honestly,” the king said, aghast, “what an unpleasant noise.”

  The king gestured with his hand. I saw a quick magical weave, and the man went silent.

  I replayed the weave in my mind, tracking how it worked.

  Look at that, you’ve learned the spell: Silence Other (Lvl 9)

  Silence Other allows you to prevent another creature from making noise. At higher levels, you may silence additional entities.

  Interesting.

  The king opened his pouch at his hip. He poured a few mana potions down his throat, tossing the bottles onto his desk one after the other.

  The screams of rage and anger were right outside the door now. So many voices that I couldn’t make out any single one.

  The king rolled his eyes, and walked calmly to the door.

  I followed. Not really of my own volition, but pulled along, somehow, by the king. Or the memory. Or a mixture of a the two.

  Hundreds of people crowded the stairwell. The first few brandished weapons that had clearly already seen blood that day. Faces were twisted in anger and hate. They didn’t stop at seeing the king emerge. Rather, that seemed to drive them further into their blood rage, lunging at the king.

  The king took a breath, and something that looked like a spear of bone launched out of his torso.

  It moved in a blur, slamming the first ten or so oncoming opponents, spraying blood with every hit.

  The bone-spear, tore flesh from the charging men and women, revealing their skeletons beneath.

  Screams of a new sort echoed through the tower. The charge was completely halted.

  The bone spear evaporated back into arcane energy while the skeletons of those who had died clawed their way free from their fleshy confines until they stood tall. They were particularly eerie, still covered in blood and gore. I looked over and saw energy pumping through the tether and back into the king, refilling his mana at an incredibly accelerated rate as he raised skeleton after skeleton. He’d turned the guard into a mana-battery.

  Plenty of people still waited on the stairs. The ones at the front seemed frozen in horror, and I could hear the ones in the back beginning to question what was happening up above.

  Then the skeletons picked up weapons, and charged the mob.

  It wasn’t much of a fight. Fear overwhelmed the people. Some tried to retreat, but were just cut down as they ran into others. As the cries of horror echoed down the stairwell, it turned into gruesome stampede, every person out for themselves, happy to trample their previous comrades for the chance to get farther away from the oncoming skeletons.

  The king chuckled as he watched the massacre unfold.

  He looked over at the mounds of muscle and remaining flesh left behind by the skeletons. I saw his eyebrows raise with interest. He walked over and poked at the flesh, examining it more closely. Then he began a complicated weave, pulling strands of magic together over and over. He released the magic in little bursts, and the flesh started to ripple and move. Eventually, all the various bits merged into one large, horrific mass of muscle and guts. More magic went into it, and the flesh mound began to pulse and shiver.

  I’m pretty sure if I had been real, I would have thrown up. It was one of the most discomfiting things I had ever seen.

  Things inside the mound pulsated, and I realized that eyes were forming all over the outside, opening up and looking around. Then skin somehow emerged from the inside and covered the mass in a patchwork skin membrane. Especially terrible were the tufts of hair from scalps.

  Finally, it started to settle into stillness.

  “Go on then,” the king said, almost gently.

  The flesh-mound shuddered into life, or a form of life. It began to move, a bit like a fat slug or earthworm, loping down the stairs with impressive speed and the terrible, dry shuffling noise of skin sliding across the stone.

  I didn’t even want it to happen, but it did:

  Look at that, you’ve learned the spell: Greater Aberrant Flesh Construct (Lvl 19)

  Flesh construct allows you to build a construct from gathered flesh. Construct will obey your commands until it perishes. Greater Flesh Construct will also repair and enlarge itself from additional flesh it consumes.

  For a moment, the king stood there on the landing and just listened to the screams echoing from below. The noise merged with increasingly common sounds of death.

  He sighed, then strolled back into his room. He had not even a speck of blood on him from the horror show I’d just seen.

  Once again, I followed.

  The guard was slumped on the floor.

  “I told you there was no need to worry,” the king said as he crossed the room back to his writing desk. He sat down at the desk and bent back over his papers, reading over what he had written.

  I looked back at the guard and realized the man was dead. He appeared to have been drained from within, his skin pulled taut against his frame, missing all the things inside.

  “What was that?” the king asked, looking over his shoulder. He noticed the guard’s condition. “Ah. Well. That is less than ideal, eh? Must make a note of that.”

  And the king did just that — he made a note, and returned to his work.

  I watched the man work for a moment before walking over to the window and looking down.

  The crowd was in full flight, pursued from the courtyard by a collection of horrors. The skeletons were bad enough, but the walking flesh lump was pure nightmare fuel, launching itself onto its victims and pulling them into its body, leaving a clean skeleton behind. I almost expected the skeletons to rise and give chase as well. But they didn’t — at least not then.

  I realized the king was standing right next to me, his papers in his hands.

  He read over his notes.

  I leaned over and looked over them as well. At first glance, they seemed to be the scribblings of a mad man. Arrows and lines drawn seemingly at random and whatnot. But then I started to parse it all together, and I realized I was looking at the working out of a spell. A very large, very powerful spell. And after a second glance at the page, it all clicked.

  Look at that, you’ve learned the spell: Mass Raise Dead

  Mass Raise Dead allows you raise dead across an entire geographical region. Higher levels allow an increased raise range.

  Oh no, I thought.

  The king smiled. Maybe at my thought, or maybe at his own — it was hard to tell. But with a sudden snap of his hand, the glass of the large window exploded outward, and cold wind rushed inside. The king laughed, lifted his arms, wove the spell, and unleashed a massive surge of magic.

  Arcane energy tore across the city and thunder clapped back.

  I looked down and saw the dead bodies stand up and begin shuffling forward.

  The king downed a few mana potions as he watched the zombies, who were searching out anything living. He threw the empty bottles out the window, happy to watch them tumble through the air before crashing into tiny little fragments against the stones below.

  He took a deep breath, and another piece of paper appeared in his hands. I wish I could tell you I quelled my curiosity, that I refused to learn any more horrors from him. But I peeked at this one as well. It was another spell, with similar ideas, motions, movements.

  Look at that, you’ve learned the spell: Mass Raise Skeletons

  Mass Raise Skeletons allows you raise skeletons across an entire geographical region. Higher levels allow an increased raise range.

  He unleashed the spell, and sure enough, down below, the skeletons left behind by the flesh monster rose up. These, however, did not shamble or shuffle.

  They ran.

  Next things poured out of the sewers, things that had long been dead. Skeletons from ages past. In mere minutes, the streets were filled with death and the undead. I knew, by nightfall, the king would likely be the only thing alive in the city.

  As I came to that realization, I was ripped away, back to my own reality.

  23

  I jolted up in the bed. Moonlight was on my face. I was sweating, and my sheets and were clothes nearly soaked.

  Denitza stood at the window, gazing out.

  “You have bad dreams,” she said softly, not bothering to look at me.

  “I do,” I said, wiping my face.

  She just nodded.

  “It’s, uh, this thing inside me,” I said, feeling like I needed to keep talking. “The reason we’re here. I mean, the reason I’m here.”

  “I have read the quest,” she said. “And spoken to Nox. I am familiar with what is happening to you.”

  “Are you, I mean, is it, do you want to go down there with us?”

  “My wants are not at issue here, master.”

  “No master stuff, if you don’t mind.”

  She bowed her head a little in compliance. “I exist at your pleasure now,” she said.

  “I don’t agree with that,” I said.

  “It is not for you to agree—”

  “Let’s just pretend we already had this conversation, maybe multiple times even, and you eventually agreed to humor me.”

  She gave the slightest of smiles, and nodded once more. “As you wish. Were I not of your tjene, would I choose to go to Gloomguard, then?”

  “Yeah, that’s a better way of phrasing the question.”

  “If I found myself in Raim, then yes. I would. I cannot imagine being so close to something so incredible and not wishing to at least see it. For most, this is the only chance to visit the Gloom and return.”

  “I don’t really know much about the Gloom.”

  “I know only stories, which are likely full of half-truths and hyperbole.”

  “That seems about right. Where did you, I mean, what were you doing before you, uh—”

  “Offered myself to become part of a tjene?”

  “Yes.”

  “I worked with my family in the Lakarr Forests,” she said, still staring out the window. “My father was a woodcutter, and my mother a ranger, like myself. Some of my sisters are beekeepers, and some care for our small herd of cattle.”

  “Seems nice.”

  “Laid out as such, there is a nicety to it. And yet...”

  “It’s what’s unsaid that really brings the story out.”

  “Yes. My father was not a nice man. He had a temper. And other problems. I was not sad when he died, but his dark past came calling. We were called to pay his debts, and I chose this path so my family did not need to do something more drastic.”

  “Ah. Yeah. I can, um, sympathize with having a not-so-great father. Or mother.”

  “My mother was not like my father,” she said harshly. “She just loved a bad man. My mother still keeps our village safe. She is a legend in that forest, and I could not allow her to throw everything away to try and pay that stupid man’s debts. So, here I am. Available to be used by you in any way you see fit.”’

  She looked over at me, her face hard, but eyes fearful.

  “Oh,” I said softly, the conversations I’d had with Klara came roaring back, “yeah, that’s not something, I mean, I don’t want you, or I don’t think.” I stopped my stammering. “I don’t do that with, um, well, anyone really. And it’s never something I would ask you to do. Or expect from you.”

 

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