fires could crinkle it back, rupturing the meat beneath, and how they would writhe and spit and heave up vile fluids in an endless torrent of foul toxins and all the flesh would tumble out, fold upon fold, gelatinous and pocked with big, suppurating pores, the flesh filling the street and how was he to get past this? By the Lady, it lived!
“Oomph!” the massive body gusted at the sudden impact.
Invett Loath’s wild charge was brought short. He plunged into flabby folds, then popped back out to land on his backside, blinking water from his eyes, fresh blood streaming down from his swollen nose.
“That hurt!” a piping squeal.
The Paladin leapt to his feet, cloth at his face. He could get around this! He had a sword. Cut, cut and dice and chop and cleave and hack in twain! With a roar, Invett Loath raised his blade high.
Twenty-odd paces away, the barrel-sized, misshapen blob that was Nauseo Sloven’s sweaty face, spread out to the sides and above and below in a expression of terror, the tiny eyes widening and bulging sufficient to push away the puffy flesh, and the demon screamed.
And flinched back, narrowly avoiding the descending sword.
Iron rang on cobbles.
Panicked, Nauseo Sloven lunged forward, heaving his mass to grapple with the Paladin before he could swing again. Stretched, oily skin slimed over Invett Loath in a desperate embrace. Pores sprouting curly hairs, the flesh around them enflamed and raised up like tiny volcanoes, pressed indiscriminately against the struggling Paladin, squirting volcanically foul juices.
Nauseo’s arm drew inward once again, dragging the squirming figure into his right armpit.
Where all manner of horrors resided.
Invett Loath could not breathe. But he didn’t need to breathe! He was the Paladin of-of-he was asphyxiating! Swallowed in fleshy darkness, matted hairs like worms sliding across his face, pimples bursting, a crevasse of skin spreading to smear years-old greasy dirt across his lips-oh, the taste, what was it? What did it remind him of? Yoghurt?
Yoghurt. Invett Loath’s last conscious word, sobbing dreadful in his mind.
“Give me that baby!”
Imid Factallo flinched back at that reptilian hiss. In his arms, the babe fell silent, eyes suddenly wide as it stared up at the saint.
“Give it to me!”
Imid looked across at the Stentorian Nun. Their public debate had collapsed into a ruin of vicious insults which, while entertaining to the crowd, were otherwise worthless. One rather strange consequence of the exchange was that the nun’s clothing had become disheveled. Even her veil had begun to sag at one corner, revealing half of the hate-twisted mouth.
In which Imid now saw pointy teeth. He stabbed out an accusatory finger. “She’s got filed teeth! She wants my baby! She’s a cannibal!”
Mobs were unpredictable beasts, particularly after a night of unspeakable trauma. Among this one could be found mothers who had lost their young ones to the Temple, to nuns just like this one. With her hungry snarl and shark-like teeth. The shouted proclamation from Imid Factallo required a moment of stunned silence in which to do its work, time sufficient for various terrible details to fall in line.
Then-screams, a surge of vengeful humanity, grasping hands, ugly animal sounds.
The nun bleated and made to flee.
She did not get far.
A horrifying scene ensued, Imid Factallo’s witnessing thereof cut short when Elas Sil used both hands to pull him away, round to the other side of the altar, then stumbling onward towards the temple doors. Seeing their destination, Imid pulled back. “No! Not in there!”
“You idiot!” Elas Sil hissed. “Those teeth weren’t filed! They were rotten! Just stumps! That woman slurps her meals, Imid! Understand me?”
He looked back, and saw very little left of the Stentorian Nun. “I could have sworn they were pointed-”
“They weren’t!”
“Then… baby soup!”
“Oh now, really!” They approached the doors, and Elas Sil added, “Mind you, what a great way to close a debate. I’ll have to remember that one.”
“They looked pretty pointy to me,” Imid persisted in a grumble.
Elas Sil grasped the iron ring and tugged.
To their surprise the door swung open. They peered into the gloom. An empty chamber, longer than it was wide, the ceiling arched and sheathed in gold leaf, and no one about.
“Where is everyone?” Imid wondered in a whisper.
“Let’s find out,” Elas Sil said.
They crept into the Grand Temple.
King Necrotus The Nihile was feeling decidedly unwell. For one, his left arm had fallen off. And he’d found bats nesting in his crotch. They’d fled, thankfully, some time during his frenetic dancing on the wall. Even so, the little claws from which they had hung were sharp, and now that brittle sensation raced through his withered flesh, sensation so painfully reawakened, he found certain parts aching abominably.
Stumbling over his own arm was an unexpected development. One moment swinging amiably at his side, the next fouling his feet, resulting in a face-flat fall that broke something in his jaw, where things now rattled loose whenever he turned his head. All of this in consequence to his panicked flight from that mob, a mob that had been perniciously hunting down the dead and tearing them apart. Base prejudices hid beneath even the most placid of surfaces, which came as little surprise to the king known as the Nihile, but had proved inconvenient nonetheless.
And now he was lost. In his own city. Hopelessly lost.
There were no burning buildings nearby, and so he stumbled along in darkness, left arm tucked under his right (the Royal Seamstress could do wonders, assuming she still lived), in search of a familiar landmark.
Unexpected, therefore, the strange transformation of the street he walked down, the sudden swirling of mists, the leaden smear of sky, and the massive arched gate appearing at the far end, a gate composed entirely of bones, from which a hunched, scrawny figure hobbled into view.
Necrotus halted twenty paces from the figure, who also stopped, leaning heavily on a gnarled cane. The figure then lifted a skeletal hand, and beckoned.
Overwhelming compulsion tugged at Necrotus and he found himself slowly drawn forward. “Who are you?” he hissed.
Hooded head cocked to one side. “The Lord of Death? Harvester of Souls? The Bony Fisherman who casts his all-encompassing net?” A sigh. “No, just one of his minions. Have I not great potential? I keep saying so, but does he ever listen? No, never. I keep the path swept clean, don’t I? Polish the skulls of the Gate, yes? Look at them- blinding, even the teeth are entirely devoid of tartar! I am no slouch, no sir, not in the least!”
Necrotus struggled to escape, yet watched, in horror, as his feet were dragged forward, one then the other, again and again, closer to that dread gate. “No! I’ve been raised! You can’t have me!”
The minion grunted. “Korbal Broach. One abominable act after another, oh we despise him, yes we do. Despise and more, for I am tasked to pursue him. To capture him. That must mean something! Great potential, and so I must prove my worth. I have gathered a legion-all of Korbal Broach’s victims-and we will find him, oh yes, find him!”
“Go away!” Necrotus cried.
The minion started. “What?”
“Go away! I hate you! I’m not going through that infernal gate!”
In a small voice, “You… hate me?”
“Yes!”
“But what have I ever done to you?”
“You’re compelling me to walk through that gate!”
“Don’t blame me about that! I am only doing my job. It’s nothing personal-”
