Tome of the Undergates

deviants, would not listen to us, to HER! They would not listen! We tried to make them, and what was wrought?’ It gestured to its mangled chest. ‘Scorn! Impurities! They cast a disease upon us Shepherds and now you say the flock is already brimming with sickness? I will not accept it!’

The creature’s roar echoed in Lenk’s ears, the same word repeating itself in his head: We, we, we. There were more of them, more Abysmyths, more cursed creatures with sharp teeth and glistening ooze.

He felt he should have been terrified by such words. He felt he should run, seek the others and flee the island. Such thoughts were small candlelights in his head, choked out and extinguished by the voice that quieted the demon’s howl with its echoing presence.

‘You don’t belong here,’ it spoke through him, ‘you were cast out, sent to hell.’

The creature grinned. It did not merely appear to grin, nor did Lenk imagine it grinning. Such an expression seemed painful, the edges of its face cracking, the corners of its lipless mouth splitting with the effort. Still, the demon grinned and spoke.

‘We’re coming back.’

And then the grin vanished. Lenk stared into a vast, black face dominated by expressionless eyes. The creature tilted its head to the right, as though regarding him for the first time.

‘Good afternoon,’ it uttered.

It tilted its head to the left.

‘I. .’ it sounded almost contemplative, ‘want you to die now.’

‘Riffid Alive,’ Kataria whispered breathlessly.

There were very few occasions outside of violent situations where it was acceptable to speak the shictish Goddess’s name. Everyday prayers and curses were for weaker deities of weaker races; the shicts were born with all the instinct they would ever need. However, if the Foe of all Kou’ru could have witnessed the carnage on the beach through Kataria’s eyes, she highly doubted the Goddess would begrudge her.

What had, undoubtedly, begun as a pristine stretch of white sand, completely indiscernible from any other chunk of beach, was now smothered under twisting sheets of grey and white. She stepped upon what had once been the beach, covering her nose as a heavy sulphurous odour sought to choke the life out of her.

The sound beneath her feet was thick and crunching, not unlike walking on pine cones. The sun’s warmth paled against the fierce heat that choked the beach. She glanced down; the earth smouldered, red embers burning stubbornly through the blanket of smoke that roiled over sands scorched black. She glanced up; what thin trees remained standing had been charred into dark, lanky arms reaching up towards a sky no longer visible from the ground. Upon their fingers burned bright fires, beacons in the smoke that drew her further down the coast.

They illuminated the earth, however faintly, and the story continued in the charred sand as Kataria spied the first tracks.

There had been a battle, she recognised, and not a clean one. Footprints were muddled: bare feet with webbed toes crossed over heavy, booted indentations in a brawl that sprawled the length of the shore. Here, someone fell hard upon the earth and left a pool of thick, boiling red behind. There, some strange green ichor pulsated hungrily in the sand like a disease. And all across the sand were the vast, webbed prints of something large that had stalked through the melee in long strides.

Abysmyth.

Lenk had told her to regroup with the others if she found any sign of the creature, but, she reasoned, he often told her many things she didn’t care to hear. For the moment, she forgot him, forcing down concern and instinct, and leaned closer to the ground, following the story further.

The demon had appeared somewhere in the midst of the brawl, after the earth had been scorched. It had wrought terror upon the field; everywhere its foot had landed, the depressions of fallen bodies lay nearby. Interesting twist, she thought, but unsatisfying.

If the Abysmyth had indeed killed and injured as many as the tracks suggested, where were all the corpses? Where were the drowned victims? Occasionally, shallow trenches had been carved where the bodies had hit the earth, indicating that they had either crawled or been carried away.

Whoever the Abysmyth had struck down had apparently escaped with their dead and wounded. She frowned, uneasy. That only accounted for one side of the battle; where were the frogmen that had rushed into battle beside the demon? For that matter, where was the demon? She paused by the base of a flame-scarred tree, scratching her chin thoughtfully. The wind moaned, peeling back a blanket of smoke.

It was then that she saw the needle-like teeth leering towards her.

She whirled, bow up and arrow drawn, levelling her weapon at the gaping maw that loomed out of the grey. Her hand quivered once, then stayed; the mouth did not move. Instead, the mouth glimmered a shimmering, crystalline blue.

The smoke retreated further, exposing the face that held the teeth, the large black eyes that dominated the face. From behind a skin of ice, the frogman howled soundlessly at her, immobile and unblinking within its azure prison. His spear was held above his head, icicles hanging from the weapon’s tip, the frogman’s muscles frozen and unquivering under a sheen of frost.

‘Well,’ she grunted, ‘I’ll be damned.’

Somehow, the human curse seemed more appropriate for what occurred next.

In a great sigh, the smoke peeled back. A forest of frozen flesh was laid bare before her eyes. They stood in a charge that had no end, mouths open to utter a battle cry that had no sound beyond the cracking of ice in the distance. Dozens of the pale invaders, turned into an expanse of endless blue, rushed towards some unseen foe that they had never reached. Many of them hadn’t even set two feet upon the ground before the ice claimed them.

And now they levelled their hatred, their black stares, upon her.

Kataria, however, had no more attention for them. Her concern was reserved for the emaciated beast that had stridden into battle with them. The Abysmyth’s tracks were not apparent in the frost-kissed earth nor the smouldering black sand. However, one set of footprints did catch her attention.

He, or she, for the tracks were made by slender feet set lightly upon the ground, had stood before the frogmen. The frost radiated from that position in a great arcing wave, staining the ground with ice. From there, this new character had turned about, unhurried, by the looks of its shallow, well-defined footsteps, and traipsed down the shore.

Where it had stopped, carnage was born. Fire savaged the land, sending bodies to the ground as burned husks, barely discernible from the scorched earth. Trees were split down the middle, as though by a great blade.

It didn’t take the shict long to deduce the presence of magic. Even through the acrid stench of brimstone, the stink of wizardry was thick in the air, a foul amalgamation of sulphur and something metallic, with a somewhat lemon-scented after-aroma.

That answered a few questions right away — for what earthly fire could smoulder for so long? What mortal ice could remain frigid even under the sun’s unrelenting warmth?

More questions arose than were answered, however; Dreadaeleon was the only creature she knew capable of the practice of magic, and he was far too frail to wreak such devastation. Besides, he had taken off with Gariath, across to the other side of the island. . hadn’t he?

The Venarium, she knew from listening to the boy, were the sole practitioners and custodians of magic. They were, she had learned, a secretive and largely boring lot, more content to study and make rules than actually use their powers for anything interesting.

This character, this set of prints, however, was anything but tedious. She followed the trail, noting each shattered tree, each heap of burned corpses, each patch of ice. So intent on the tracks was she that she hardly noticed the Abysmyth when it appeared through the gloom.

She did not start at the sight of the creature. Rather, she was struck dumb by it and its sudden appearance.

It was dark, far darker than she remembered it, wisps of smoke pouring from its gaping maw, an enormous