Tome of the Undergates

cheering fervour from their smaller, paler companions. Claws lashed as they waded into the purple, rending flesh under talons, snapping bones in great webbed hands, tossing bodies aside with contemptuous disinterest.

The longfaces scurried backwards, closing against each other. In the span of a few screams, the three demons had diverted the tide, crushing and scarring without the slightest thought for the iron sinking into their hides.

Asper fought the urge to look away as an abominable claw seized a longface by her throat. Her struggling, snarling and kicking were nothing to the creature. Her companions, like so many gnats, were swept away by its free claw. In one blink of her white eye, the creature’s hand brimmed with glistening mucus.

In another breath, she hung like a limp, lamentable trophy in its grasp.

A silver blur cut the air. With an angry popping sound, the demon’s emaciated arm twitched, then fell from its shoulder. It looked to the stump with momentary confusion for the pulsing green ichor that gnawed at its flesh. It could scarcely form a surprised gurgle before metal flashed once more and a great, single-edged blade burst through its ribcage.

The sound of the creature’s agony was not a pleasant one. Asper threw hands to ears at the wail that burst from its jaws, winced as it collapsed to knees. In a spray of emerald, the blade was out and painting a silver moon at the thing’s neck. When she blinked, the fish-like head sank into the water with a plop.

‘QAI ZHOTH!’ the longfaces howled.

‘ULBECETONTH!’ the frogmen shrieked.

The Abysmyths remained silent, looking up from their slaughter as a hard, purple figure rose atop the fallen fiend’s corpse.

Asper immediately recognised the stark-white hair of the leader, her heavy iron wedge slick with green and black as she held it aloft and loosed a cry to her underlings. The shout was taken up, the throng was pushed forwards, and the killing began anew.

‘Ha,’ Gariath chuckled blackly. ‘Now it’s a fight.’

Asper was hard pressed to disagree as the female leapt from the demon’s body and hacked a swathe through frogmen, wading deeper into the battle. With purpose, the priestess realised, noting the shadowy archway at the farthest corner towards which she was cleaving.

Gariath, apparently, noted it too, taking a step forwards before she cleared her throat.

‘You’re aware there’s a knife jutting from your back, aren’t you?’ She took a step towards him, reaching for the handle. ‘Here, just hold on for a moment and I’ll-’

‘NO!’

He whirled on her with eyes flashing and the back of his hand colliding with her jaw. She collapsed to the floor, more shocked than pained. The dragonman loomed over her, blood pooling in the furrows of his scowling face, and levelled a single accusatory claw at her.

‘You will not ruin this for me.’

‘Ruin. .’ There was not nearly enough room on Asper’s face to express her incredulousness. ‘Are you demented?’

‘This is a beautiful fight,’ he said, sweeping a trembling arm over the melee. ‘You don’t belong here.’

That wasn’t entirely untrue, she realised as she clambered shakily to her feet. There was no reason to be here, trying to convince a murderous reptile to let her pull a chunk of metal out of his back. There was no reason to be here, in the midst of a battle between two breeds of creatures that should not be. There was no reason to be here, chasing friends who would kill each other in a heartbeat and undoubtedly deserved to die on their own merits.

Then why am I here? she wondered as she rubbed at her left arm. It still burned, seared her from the inside. She grimaced; the pain was coming in sharper now. It wasn’t supposed to come so soon, she thought, not after what had happened on the Riptide. But it still throbbed, still seared, still was angry.

Perhaps that was why she was here. For as she looked out over the melee, filled with people who wanted to kill her, to kill her companions, she knew of only one way to make it stop hurting.

No, no, no. She shook her head. Bite through it. You know you can. You don’t have to-

‘GNAW! BITE! GNASH!’

The war cry shattered her thoughts. She looked up as Gariath whirled about, both spying simultaneously the frenzied longface charging with shield and spike held high. Shrieking, the female lunged into the air, her weapon slick and whetted, her eyes crazed and bulging.

There was little time to appreciate the howl, however, for the echoing word of power that resounded behind her drowned out all other noise. There was the crack of thunder as a jagged bolt of electricity split the air to pierce the longface, reaching through her breastplate, through her breast, and leaping out of her back.

She landed, a smoking hole in her chest, muscles twitching with involuntarily convulsions, teeth forever locked in a sudden rigor. They both turned to regard the scrawny boy lurching forwards, Asper with shock, Gariath with ire. Dreadaeleon seemed rather unconcerned with either them or the woman he had just struck from the sky.

‘That one,’ the dragonman growled, ‘was mine.’

‘If I had thought you were capable of killing her in a timely manner, I would gladly have let you trade blows until one of you wet yourselves.’ The boy blew on his smoking fingertip. ‘I didn’t think I had time for that, though.’

Asper noted the tremble in the boy, the limp that was swiftly developing in one of his legs. He made no effort to hide it, nor his heavy breathing or the sudden bags that hung like purple fruits under his eyes.

‘You should probably sit back for a while,’ she suggested. ‘You. . don’t look so good.’

‘How about that,’ Dreadaeleon muttered, ‘I wasn’t actually lying when I said magic drains me. Thus, forming a raft made out of ice using only my brain actually might leave me looking not so good.’

‘There’s no need to get all smarmy about it.’

‘He gets smarmy over everything. The little runt could pull a gerbil out of his pants and he’d somehow manage to end up in a coma and complain about it.’ Gariath snorted, prodding the boy in the chest. ‘I’ve got a knife in my back, but I don’t go crying about it. You don’t get hugs for doing things right.’

‘What do I get for killing that last longface?’

‘Punched in your ugly face.’

‘The fact that you’re decidedly unbothered about a knife in your back and the troubling questions it raises does not concern me now.’ The wizard swept a glare about the carnage. ‘Where is the heretic?’

‘The what?’

‘The renegade,’ Dreadaeleon hissed. ‘The defiler of law. The male. Where is he?’

Answer came in the form of a sudden pyre that cast the room into a glowing orange hell. A vast circle formed within the battle, charred black figures collapsing around its centre. The male longface, however, seemed to pay these no mind as he turned the plume of flame that leapt from his palm upon the pulsating sacs infesting the hall.

With methodical patience, he reduced them to ash. With contemptuous casualness, he flitted a hand at any frogman that rushed towards him, sending them spiralling against the stones.

‘Ah,’ the dragonman replied, ‘there he is.’

‘Incredible.’

The male, having torched one cluster of the fleshy sacs, strode across the water upon stepping stones of ice, smirking slightly as he drew back curtains of frogmen to make a path for himself towards the next.

‘Simply incredible,’ the boy repeated, narrowing his eyes.

‘How so?’ Asper asked. ‘You can do the same thing, can’t you?’

‘Not like that,’ the boy muttered. ‘I made a boat out of ice and almost lost consciousness.’ He pointed a trembling finger. ‘He’s channelling three schools of magic at once after doing what he did to the Omens and he’s not even sweating.’

‘So. . he’s better than you.’