“Undead troops too weak. Demogorgon eat all of them. Then Demogorgon start to eat villages, towns, cities… all of them. Nothing can stop Demogorgon and Blood God. Old broken clocks everywhere in dream.”
“Thank you, Drok,” I murmured. I didn’t like the sound of any of this. As I mulled over everything Drok had just told me, he placed one of his massive hands on my forearm and shot me an intense look.
“We need to go see Wise Woman, Vance,” he rumbled gravely. “We stay in Brakith too long, waste too much time. Please, Vance, we must go. She tell me, only you can fight Blood God, and now, in dream, I see Blood God grow very strong. Too strong. Soon, Blood God too strong to fight, even for you. Then, Blood God eat everyone, everything. Nobody can stop him. Not even you.”
I nodded. “I understand, my friend. And you’re right; perhaps we have wasted too much time here in Brakith. Yes, maybe I have. Shit. Things are getting worse than I realized. All right, all right, we’ll leave on our quest at first light tomorrow. I’ll tell everyone during the course of today. I just have a few last things to take care of here, but you’re right, Drok, we can’t waste any more time here. The Blood God must be taken care of before he becomes too powerful.”
A smile brightened Drok’s broad, grimy face, but it did little to alleviate the ugliness that afflicted his greasy features.
“Thank you Vance,” he said. “Wise Woman be happy to see you. She have special magic weapon for you, help you fight Blood God. She say to Drok, Vance cannot defeat Blood God without this weapon.”
“And do you have any idea what this weapon is?”
He shrugged and shook his head.
“She no say. She tell Drok she only tell you, Vance, what magic weapon is. But Drok think weapon is strong—very, very strong.”
“Okay, my filthy friend, you sharpen those battle axes of yours and get your grubby belongings packed up. Like I said, we’ll be leaving tomorrow.”
Chapter Two
I left Drok to get whatever preparations he needed to organize underway and headed over to Rollar’s chambers. He was my other northern barbarian ally, a former enemy who was now one of my closest friends. Rollar may have looked like Drok, but that was where the similarities between the two of them ended, even though they had the same cultural and linguistic background.
Unlike Drok, Rollar spoke the Common Tongue fluently, and since he’d infiltrated the Splendorous Army, working his way up to the rank of sergeant, he knew a great deal about the Lord of Light, as well as possessing a vat of knowledge about many of the Old Gods, whose relics he had traversed the length and breadth of Prand to track down. What was more, he believed that a prophecy had foretold my coming and that same prophecy bound him to serve me. More than almost anyone else in my inner circle, I could trust Rollar with my life, which was kind of weird to think about, considering how bent I’d been on sticking his head on a spike just a couple months ago. But times had changed, and I was used to adapting to far greater transformations than a powerful enemy becoming a powerful ally.
Without reservations, I rapped on Rollar’s door. “Rollar, it’s me. You awake?” I asked.
“Come in, Lord Vance,” he said.
I opened the door and saw he had gotten his day well underway. A candle was burning on the desk in his chamber, and a number of scrolls and tomes were spread out across it. He’d been scouring the libraries of Brakith for information about the Old Gods, particularly the Blood God and the Demogorgon.
“Have you managed to learn anything new in recent days?” I asked. “It sure as hell looks like you’ve been delving deep into this research.”
“Aye, Lord Vance. I did find out something interesting, something that you might find to be pertinent.”
“Go on.”
“There’s an ancient prophecy, all but forgotten,” he said. “I found it in an old tome that looked like it was last cracked open hundreds of years ago. It speaks of Death riding in from the sky on a great blue storm, his armies covering the land, but this prophecy tells of Death being a hero, who hopes to save the living from the scourge of the Red Sea, which has risen in a great tsunami, ready to crash across the shores of the living and drown the whole land in blood.”
“That sounds very pertinent indeed,” I remarked, idly stroking Grave Oath’s demon-head pommel as I spoke. “It sure as hell sounds like it’s gotta be a reference to me engaging in battle with the Blood God. But what does the imagery mean? I mean, there’s Death—likely me, right, the God of Death—riding in on a ‘blue storm’ out of the sky? What the fuck could that mean?”
“I’m not entirely sure,” Rollar admitted. “These old prophecies can be quite vague. I’m not sure how much of it to take literally and how much is just symbolic metaphor.”
“Did it say who wins the encounter?”
Rollar shook his head, the expression on his face grave. “The last pages of the tome have been devoured by rats or mice, and those are, unfortunately, the pages that tell of the outcome of this huge battle that the seer foresaw.”
“Shit. Do you think the ‘blue storm’ could have something to do with my harpy? I mean, she flies, she’s blue… could be something, right?”
Rollar shrugged. “It could be, but as large as your harpy is, it’d require a real stretch of the imagination to call her a ‘storm.’ Maybe if you had an army of undead harpies, yes, but they’re rare enough in the wilds these days. You were lucky to capture one of them, and I’m not sure how soon you’re going to be able to find another, let alone
