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The Sovereign NocturnaBy Bryan Rantala
PROLOGUE
The lord of destruction marched through the blistering heat, as resolute as if he were walking through a city street. The sweeping sands of Kal’Umaat were nothing when faced with his awesome powers.
Of course, he did not appear as he truly was; as of late, he had possessed the body of one of Xor’s worshippers. A necromancer in life, the man’s animated corpse was eternal evil in death.
Baal had tracked Xor for six weeks now, not resting even once on his journey. It was of vital importance that the Master of Plague be neutralized, so much so that Baal was forced to stop fleeing from Tal Rasha, the near god-like wizard who answered to Tyrael, Baal’s most hated enemy.
For a Lesser Evil, Xor was still a handful for one of his three masters. It would be delightful to gain vengeance on the insubordinate demon, Baal knew.
And he was so close.
Finally, after still more hours of trodding through the sand, Baal found the temple he was looking for. Older even than the desert, the temple was formerly the property of Zakarumite priests, who died in a vain effort to prevent Xor’s capture of it. It was ironic, in a sense, that Xor had chosen his own grave.
***
The stone seal at the end of the tunnel was still open, and the ground touched by Xor’s hooves had turned rancid with maggots. Baal stepped in gingerly, removing the hood from his cloak.
“Where are you, traitor?”
Baal’s words echoed through the mausoleum, but were answered shortly. One of Xor’s devout kinsman, a foul goat-man, came around a corner, snorting wildly with battle rage and swinging an impressive mallet.
Now Baal was annoyed. He grabbed the mallet with his hands when the goat-fiend tried to smash him with it. The creature snarled, but was easily bested by the demon lord, who threw the beast away like a rag doll.
Two more of the monsters joined the first. One bull-rushed Baal, but the demon swung the warhammer, crushing its skull. The goat-man fell in his tracks without a sound, and the next came forward, managing to dodge Baal’s upward swing. The beast-man’s spear hit Baal in the chest.
Flames flickered from the shallow wound, and Baal’s eyes flashed as the hammer came around again, decapitating his enemy.
The last of the creatures rose, unarmed, and clenched its fists.
Baal did not hesitate to bash its brains in. It was bad enough that Xor commanded the loyalty of the goat clans, but it did not please Baal at all to slay minions that should have followed him. Still, he enjoyed the carnage.
***
It had been a long time since Xor had laid hands on the Golden Obelisk. Though he himself had found it, the Lord of Plague had been denied its power by the Prime Evils, who took it for themselves. For that, Xor would never forgive them. Diablo, Mephisto, Baal. . . They would all die.
His mammothian body, standing well over twenty feet tall, did not need to crouch to touch the runes on the obelisk. When Xor did as much, the etchings glistened with fluorescent magic, all of scintillating colors. The demon laughed.
“I owe much to the mystique of the Horadrim. . .”
“We meet again, renegade.”
Baal had entered the sanctum of the obelisk, directly challenging Xor with words of loveless hatred.
The massive demon swiveled around, rearing its grotesque, animal-like head.
“I shall now take back what is rightfully mine. I am Xor, Master of Plague, and I will not be denied!”
“And I am Baal, as well you know. Lord of Destruction. Surrender now, Xor, and your punishment will not be so severe as Mephisto recommends.”
“Fool!”
A surge of the foulest breath known to creation escaped from Xor’s maw, which itself was dripping with putrid juices. The gas enveloped Baal even as he drew his cloak to ward it off.
The Lord of Destruction screeched through his host body, feeling it melt around him. Within moments, he burst from his shell of weakened man-flesh, and unfurled his wings to reveal his full countenance.
Instantly, Xor knew he had made a grievous error. The Lord of Destruction stood 34 feet from head to toe, dwarfing the Master of Plague.
Xor jumped forward to the attack, but was immediately swatted by Baal’s mighty backhand. The demon lord roared with laughter, his blackened scales stretching to move towards Xor, who was left prone, slumped against the wall.
Still, the Dark Baron of Capricorn (as some of his followers knew him) stood to meet his ancestral challenger.
“Xor. Your blood will stain these walls for a thousand years!”
“Vengeance is already mine, Baal. Even now, the wizard Tal Rasha closes in on you. You will not escape him this time.”
Baal bull-rushed his opponent with renewed vigor, roaring as he grabbed Xor’s arms and held them back. Within moments, Xor had been slammed against the obelisk, nearly breaking his massive spine.
There the two grappled, as the magic of the obelisk intertwined over both.
Finally, with a surge of ghostly light from his eyes, Baal made a final, titanic effort, and bathed Xor in his essence of destruction and evil.
When the scathing heat subsided, there sat Xor, encased within the obelisk, petrified.
***
The sands whispered Baal’s fate as he crossed the desert toward Lut Gholein once more. There he would see the prophet Radament, and know if Xor’s parting words rang true.
Even if they did, he had a plan.
-1-
Jergash was second to last in the long line of men marching down the tunnel, all armed with an assortment of weapons, armors, and tools of exploration. He wondered, as he quietly studied the dark, ever-descending corridor, if it was worth the 200 gold pieces that wizard had promised him. There must have been thirty men in all, but they did not make him feel any safer. Whatever it was in here that required thirty men to get rid of, well, would not be easy to get rid of.
It wasn’t like Jergash didn’t have any fighting skill; he had fought those carnivorous apes in the southern jungles, helping the “great” General Karguthos battle them off, the same general who couldn’t see danger if it bit him in the face. Five years later, and Jergash was on the move again, paid to help ransack this crypt “at any cost.” Well, was it worth two hundred gold pieces?
He’d soon find out. He knew that much, as he wiped his heated brow with a sigh of exhaustion and nervous, steadily growing fear.
“Ho! A door!”
The call came from up ahead. Another shout.
“Well, open it, stupid!”
“Right!”
The dull sound of a stone seal being removed, grating against the sand of the desert.
Soon enough, Jergash was stalking about in the crypt, helping the other men remove the stone slabs from the coffins and looting them, all the while looking for signs of trouble.
But inside each coffin was a perfectly preserved body. Each one, as he found out, was kept in excellent condition, its eyes still bulging, its flesh maggot-free, and the powerful stench of chemical additive steaming out of it. Yes, each and everyone had been mummified. This was to be expected of such an ancient tomb, since mummification was all the rage back in the day.
Each corpse, though life-like, contained little in the way of treasure, regrettably. In short order, all nine coffins had been opened, and each body laid still, prodded and poked, its fingers checked for rings, its neck studied for amulets, so on and so forth.
“Not a damned thing.”
“Nothing too terribly exciting, either.”
“I don’t know. I have a bad feeling about this.”
“Save your bad feelings for later. We’ve got the rest of this crypt to pillage.”
“All right, then. Here’s the plan. There’s thirty of us, and four ways out of this chamber. One of them leads outside. The plan is that three of us stay here, nine others go through each door, take all they can find. We meet back here in an hour. Whoever stays behind, be sure to close the outside seal of the crypt. We don’t need any trouble from the locals, or worse.”
“So which three of us do the guarding?”
Jergash volunteered first, stepping out from the small mob of men. Soon, two other gruff, uneasy men were by his side, and the other groups were moving off, pushing aside more stone slabs.
“All right, then, Jergash. Let’s close the seal and get ready to sit around.”
They put cloths to their faces to ward off the scent of un-spoiled death.
After a while, Jergash was standing guard in the warm, humid tomb, waiting for something to happen. So far, this was an easy two hundred gold pieces.
“You think all this nonsense is worth two hundred gold planks a piece? Ain’t nothin’ here but crusty ol’ corpses.”
“Ain’t that the truth, for sure. Anyway, least we won’t be in the way if those other dunderheads find some traps.”
“Three cheers to that.”
An uncomfortable silence followed. None of them had anything to do or talk about. Despite these plain facts, Jergash tried to open his mouth to start some more small talk.
Just then, a chorus of screams greeted them from each of the three doors.
“Trouble!”
The men, startled and unsure of what action to take, finally went down the left corridor, and the sounds of battle and suffering grew louder. Soon, they found themselves in another chamber, with seven other soldiers.
And something very odd.
It wasn’t quite a dragon, or a man, a giant, or a skeleton. But somehow, it had the characteristics of all. It wore a large collection of protective chains, which seemed to burden its speed, and it had layers of rotten flesh, and two huge glowing, orange eyes, set floating in a sunken, wolf-like skull. And then there were its arms. Luckily for all, it came wielding no weapons, although it had two men, one in each set of claws, dangling and screaming.
As Jergash watched, it violently smashed one against the side of the wall, dropped the other quite a few feet away, and then rose again, towering a good twelve feet tall, and continuing to fight. Spears gored it, and scimitars cut at it, but to little avail. It simply kept coming, despite whatever wounds it took.
Another man screamed as the huge claw came raking across his face, and nearly took it off. Jergash, momentarily stunned by the scene, charged with his spear, ramming it into one eye and letting go in a state of terror.
The monstrosity backed away, screeching, the spear impaled in its head, letting its skull swing from side to side. Distracted, it flopped over, and the soldiers clamored over it, jabbing ever more.
At long last, it laid still, both eyes extinguished.
“What in the black tarnation was that?”
“No time to talk now. The others are in trouble as well!”
With that, the men left, leaving the three others to bleed. Only one was still alive; a man named Hadrival. He tried struggling to his feet, in vain; his pelvis was broken. Instead, clenching his teeth, he grabbed his sword and crawled. He knew there was still something coming. He could hear light, shaky footsteps, perhaps dozens, coming from behind. He tried, hurriedly, to crawl into the dark where he would not be seen, but he knew as well as any that whatever was coming would find him even in complete darkness.
He turned onto his back, and raised the sword. The first had come in. The thing was the size of a man, and moved awkwardly, but it was definitely deadly. Its eyes gleamed just as its predecessor, and they illuminated its fetid flesh. And more were coming behind it, dragging their feet lifelessly.
It went faster at the sight of a victim, raising a sickle through the air and charging. Heedless of danger, it ran into the wounded soldier’s blade, but that only restricted its movement, and hardly anything more.
Hadrival screamed. The sickle came down, and when it rose, it had a fresh spatter of blood on it.
***
Jergash and company were waylaid in the central room again, and were fighting the same sort of horrors, with little more success. Two more men were already down, although five more had recently joined them. There had to be dozens of the ghouls, each one more eager to kill than the first. As the fighting grew thicker and more fierce, Jergash was separated from the rest of the group, and he fought ferociously against the growing tide of undead.
Out of the corner of his eye, as he hacked and slashed at the clumsy zombies and skeletons, he saw some of the men run for the exit. A good idea, at this point.
A spray of foul gore splattered his face as he downed yet another villainous minion of the Nine Hells.
“Aauugh!”
The monsters were finally starting to clear up, their number depleted. Now, they were being slashed apart in hopeless battles, overpowered by the healthy living.
After another five minutes, all was silent, except for the approaching unliving re-enforcements, drawing slowly nearer from the left chamber.
“The seal won’t open! We’re trapped!”
“Remain calm. There can’t be that many left!”
Five dead warriors littered the room, strewn along with piles of foul skeletons.
“I say we cut ‘em down to the last. What can they do?”
“You don’t know how many they are. We could be dealing with hundreds!”
“Shhh. Quiet. The footsteps have stopped.”
The silence was complete. And then, interrupted. A gust of putrid wind filled the room, and the men choked in pain, their eyes burning. With a ferocity unlike any other, something entered the room with them. Jergash, slightly blinded, yelled as it folded its swords around one man’s throat and scissored his head off from behind.
“Open the exit! Open the exit!”
Jergash ran up the corridor to the entrance, and helped six other men heave at the slab, which had strange, glowing runes carved into it.
Finally, miraculously, it budged. Eight men in total came running out, another blast of the vile breath overtaking the last in line. The man fell to his knees, struggling to continue. Jergash raised his sword and waited as the man crawled meekly.
Just as the black mist overtook the fellow soldier’s form, Jergash saw a shape close in from behind the man, and heard a baleful groan, followed by a scream.
The shroud of death-stench was growing ever-larger. Jergash ran with the others.
They would not be returning to that tomb any time in the near future. Not for a king’s ransom.
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