“I didn’t say we were going to leave all of them alive,” Ralph said, with a manic grin. “Just those that are protecting the eggs. We’ll leave the others to breed, so we can return to them later. Once we conquer Zagorath, they’ll be ours to do with as we wish.”
The pirate nodded and produced a bloodthirsty smile.
Then, as one, the Sand Pirates charged the nesting monsters.
Some shrank back from their charge, hissing and gathering themselves protectively over clusters of grey-black eggs. Those, the pirates left to live. But the others whirled to match them, their talons ready to strike. Their wings, however, were incapable of flight, and on open ground, the pirates had the advantage. Ralph led from the front, dual blades singing a deathsong as they sliced, cleaved, and bit into bone and flesh and feather. Blood splattered over him, and he absorbed their essence even as his cut them down. A snarling yell entered his ears, and he almost recoiled, but then he realized it was coming from his own throat.
The vulture-creatures fell before the vicious onslaught. The pirates bathed their swords, maces, and axes in blood while their bodies ingested demonic energy. The monsters finally broke and scattered backward, leaving the nesting creatures alone.
A pirate yipped with glee and sprinted for a nesting mother, but Ralph gripped him by the throat and yanked him back.
“We leave the mothers,” Ralph commanded.
“Yes, Chief,” the pirate struggled to say.
Ralph tightened his grip a little around the man’s neck before tossing him to the ground.
“Don’t kill me,” the pirate pleaded from his knees. “The lust for essence overcame me.”
“I’m not going to kill you.” They were difficult words to say, and it was even more difficult not to take the head from the pirate’s shoulders. With Kerril in his mind, Ralph knew what was required to lead a band of brigands like these. Except he wasn’t quite ready to kill the man, and he was more valuable alive. Zagorath required bodies—the traps wouldn’t trigger themselves.
“Thank you, Chief,” the pirate said as he scrambled to his feet.
“Zagorath is close,” Ralph said as he ignored the traitor. “Our destiny awaits.”
He led the charge up the path, and the others raced up the skittering slate, leaving tiny avalanches of pebbles sliding into the abyss. For a moment, Ralph thought he saw a black, winged shadow hiss through the air, vanishing into the rocky outcrops. A last survivor of creatures they’d killed? An unfettered creature? Or just a bat, racing back to its cave, away from the carnage they’d bathed Shadow Crag in? It was unimportant - it hadn’t attacked them, and it wasn’t a threat. Not with the power they now wielded.
Ralph’s feet touched the zenith of the mountain, and he breathed in the sulfur-laden air.
“We’re here,” he said. “The gates are over there.”
The sun had long since died, drenching the band in silver moonlight. Ralph looked over the dungeon gates, and his breath caught with anticipation.
It looked different.
A simple, thorned archway had become something else entirely. It was now an enormous creature, peppered with ghastly thorns and layered with grinning skulls and jutting cheekbones. Ralph’s gut clenched as he recognized something familiar about them. The Scalpers. The dungeon had used their bones to decorate its entrance.
It was a reminder of their failure. Their failure to allow Ralph to lead. If they had simply taken him as their chief like the Sand Pirates had, then Alaxon would still be alive. His corpse wouldn’t have been swallowed up by Zagorath.
The pirates shifted, and Ralph turned to them. Their eyes glittered with a combination of essence, bloodthirst, and manic anticipation. But there was still cunning in their faces, still canniness that the Scalpers had lacked.
And Ralph would lead them to victory.
They’d slain the monsters of the mountain and laid waste to the defences of Zagorath. Now came the final battle. The men at Ralph’s back believed in him.
Ralph Fucking Kraus, the child who’d tried to hang himself.
Who’d believed that he was the Chosen One, because Alaxon had lied. Because he’d read it in the bottom of a bowl of stew. Because he was an old, decrepit man, trying and failing to live out his younger days through Ralph.
Yet maybe the stew had spoken correctly. The false-priest had echoed Mother’s words. And here stood the justification. Ralph, a mighty warlord and Chieftain of the Sand Pirates. Mere weeks it had taken to get here, and it was only the beginning.
“Zagorath will fall by my hand!” Ralph screamed, and he only then realized that he had said the words aloud.
The pirates didn’t care; instead, they roared their approval.
“Pirates of the Black Sands,” Ralph began. His voice was deep and resounding, with just a hint of a rasp from the earlier battle cry. “Zagorath awaits us. The last dungeon in the Infernal Realm. Littered with traps, swirling with minions, and more than capable of killing, maiming, torturing and consuming an unprepared adventurer.”
The others grinned, and Ralph spun one of his broadswords high, letting it catch the moonlight before his hand retrieved it from the air easily. It felt so light, so simple to use, such was the Infernal power flowing through his veins.
“But we are not unprepared,” he continued. “We have fed on the spawn of Lilith, and we have found her wanting. We have sought power unlimited, and the dull, disgusting, weak creatures of the Crag have strengthened us in limb, savagery, and mind.”
“Aye! Aye!” they all screamed. “
Ralph’s men, so recently won from Kerril. All brimming with power, unlike anything he’d ever seen before. The elf would pay for his arrogance, his words, and the death of Alaxon. Once Ralph bathed his blades in the blood of that accursed elf, the trollish minion, and whatever else teemed in the underground lair. Zagorath would become his eternal playground, the means of his ascension.
But maybe that was thinking too small? Maybe there was more than this lone dungeon at the top of Shadow Crag?
Ralph
