Preface
I had big plans for this one. When I first got this idea into my head that authors should have author websites, I figured that I could use mine to publish a serial, just like the old masters did, skipping past the part where they got actually paid for theirs.
The idea that won out there was essentially a sword & sorcery take on The X-Files where an old weapon master teams up with an ambitious inquisitor to travel the land and investigate assorted ghost stories and demon sightings. The first story then would introduce us to one of our heroes, the second would cover the other, and from that point, we would be free to follow their joint adventures in a less linear and more episodic fashion.
Having written that first story, I felt like I got off to a good start. But then the second one got away from me a bit, its word count bloating past what's appropriate for a tight short story. This made me wonder if I should rethink this whole endeavor and maybe turn these two initial stories into a novella, or even rework this idea into a proper novel.
In the end, this left me with one complete story, the first draft of another one, and some notes and outlines covering a few more. But whichever way I ultimately decide to proceed with this project, that very first story, I maintain, is pretty good.
So, without further ado, I present to you The Desert Lance:
LANCE OF CAIRNHOLM was hunched over a low table all but collapsing under the weight of exquisite plates, dishes, and trays. A quarter of an hour earlier, he was informed this was to be his breakfast.
One man could never finish all of that in one sitting, and Lance was forced to pick his battles. The frothy stews and skewered meats were the first to go. Lance had a hard rule against eating meat in a new place before he knew exactly who they ate there.
This left him with a bowl of assorted nuts, some roasted mushrooms, a cornucopia of cheeses, and what looked like a month’s supply of fresh fruit. A pitcher of rich cold wine was the centerpiece of his meal.
Lance sampled this and that before getting lost in a silent battle with a pomegranate. Having never tasted the fruit prior to that morning, he was quickly realizing this was a perfect example of a warrior’s food.
Just about any fool could butcher a pomegranate and squeeze it for its refreshingly-sour juice. But it took real skill, determination, and discipline, not to mention quite a bit of manual dexterity, to remove the outer husk without making a mess and then enjoy the spoils one delicious crimson seed at a time.
Faint metallic chiming interrupted Lance’s musings, as well as his meal.
A servant girl dressed in naught but a frilly sheer number was beaming a well-practiced but ultimately empty smile at him. Her more sensitive parts were scantily obscured by an abundance of jewelry that was without a doubt the culprit behind the earlier noise.
A scandalous outfit like this would surely cause an outrage back West and summon a gaggle of inquisitors all too happy to protect their flock from such an unseemly sight and the impure thoughts it invoked.
But since the kingdom of Naqara didn’t seem to share those values and concerns, Lance took a moment to appreciate the view, and only then acknowledged the girl’s presence with the slightest uptick of his lips.
"My sovereign will see you now," she said with but a hint of Naqaran accent.
Without a word, Lance got up, put the table knife down after the briefest of hesitations, and followed the girl through the royal palace.
Due to some oversight, or perhaps it was precisely the point, the rear parts of the girl’s weighty necklaces and belts were reduced to mere chainlets.
And while Lance was a seasoned mercenary who spent most of his adult life traveling the world, he did originally hail from a place where even the slightest immodesty was looked down upon. The Naqaran approach to entertaining their guests was a bit much for his taste.
As they moved through the spacious halls, instead of the obvious, he focused on the walls decorated with intricate mosaics of green and azure, and the plentiful burly guards armed with spears and crescent-bladed axes.
An unseen musician and his string instrument accompanied their journey, and in those moments when Lance’s eyes inevitably returned to his shapely escort, he could see her half-dancing to the soulful tune.
Lance could only surmise that everything since his arrival to the palace last night was supposed to be some display of opulence intended to awe him. But impressed as he was, for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out why anyone would bother.
His curiosity spurring him along, Lance soon found himself before a large important-looking door guarded by a large important-looking man.
The girl exchanged a few quick words in the Naqaran tongue with the guard, then nodded towards the door.
"You may come in now," she said.
Lance was about to do just that when the guard took a sidewise step and grabbed his shoulder.
The guard was younger, taller and heavier, and altogether a stark contrast to Lance’s wiry frame, but his arm was soft. A swift uppercut to the stomach doubled the man over and made him forget how to breathe for a spell.
In the brief moment before what felt like the entire Naqaran palace descended upon him following the girl’s terrified shriek, all Lance could do was grab the bent-over guard’s spear and put his back to the nearest wall.
He used both ends of the spear to keep his many attackers at bay, ducking and dodging as their axes chipped the wall inches away from his head.
Lance knew he wouldn’t be able to keep this up indefinitely and was considering his quickly dwindling options when a commanding shout in Naqaran came from behind the closed door. He didn’t understand the words but the meaning was clear. It was an order to stand down. The guards were quick to obey and Lance responded in kind.
The next burst of speech was longer. Once it was over, the girl said, "Please proceed now and accept our humblest of apologies."
Upon expressing his puzzlement regarding this whole situation with a slight shrug, Lance dumped the spear off to the nearest guard and went for the door. Before he got a chance to open it, the girl grabbed his wrist and looked him in the eye without a trace of her earlier feigned hospitality.
"He was just checking you for weapons. Everyone who wants to see the sultan has to go through it."
This made perfect sense, but Lance wasn’t in the business of apologizing for defending himself. "It’s your sultan who wants to see me, actually. And you could’ve warned me," he said.
"I didn’t think I had to."
"Well, treat this as a lesson then."
With that, Lance entered the sultan’s chambers.
Inside, sultan Qaddar, the ruler of Naqara, was revealed as a lean middle-aged man draped in rich, embroidered garments. He was presiding over a sturdy desk with a quill in one hand and a glass of wine in the other.
Gracing Lance with a look full of regal authority, he put away the quill and invited his guest to get comfortable in one of the couches lining the walls.
"What was that ruckus?" the sultan asked. His Commonwealth pronunciation was impeccable.
"Just a slight misunderstanding. My sovereign, right?" Lance wasn’t sure how to properly address the Naqaran monarch, so he went with what he heard earlier. Receiving no objections, he added, "You know how the language barrier can be." He didn’t feel like going into details.
The sultan wet his lips with wine. "That I do, sir Cairnholm, so let us speak of it no longer."
This simple lack of interest was more revealing than the servant girl's garment. Somehow, the sultan was aware of what had transpired on the other side of his door. This was a test of some sort. And Lance passed. But the whole thing didn’t sit right with him, not least because it was clear no one had bothered to let the poor girl in on this little joke.
"Beg your pardon, sovereign." Lance adjusted his position on the couch. "Someone who speaks my language as well as you do would know I’m no sir and that Cairnholm is merely the village I hail from. And just so we’re perfectly clear, it’s an insignificant fishing backwater not worthy of being mentioned in the presence of one such as yourself. Just call me Lance."
The sultan produced a short, controlled laugh. "You caught me, Lance. You might not know it, but feigning ignorance of another’s customs is a sure way to start a conversation among diplomats."
"I’m not a diplomat."
"Good to know."
"But while we’re conversing. What’s with the royal treatment? Your envoys made it painfully obvious that my only two choices were to go with them or leave behind two corpses and become a wanted man in your fine land. Stepping on the dock, I half-expected to get thrown into some dungeon, but instead, it’s like you’re greeting a long-lost brother. You know I’m just a mercenary? Maybe a weapon master on a good day. And if you’re the superstitious sort, I can pass for a monster hunter. Just pay me some coin, point me in the right direction, and I’ll get the job done."
"Do not tell me what to do Lance, or you'll see the insides of that dungeon yet," the sultan said. His face of a practiced statesman made it impossible to tell whether he was joking. "And if it makes you feel any better, none of the hospitality inflicted upon you was for your benefit. Consider it all a part of the job."
"And that is?"
With the grace of someone who practiced this exact move to the point of perfection, the sultan got up from his royal chair that was just a few jewels short of a throne and approached a painting decorating the wall. Not being someone who required explicit invitation, Lance joined him there.
The painting depicted a fiery lake with beings of living flame floating above it. In the distance, scruffy and spiky creatures that resembled demons from western folklore were taking some poor unwilling souls out for a swim.
"Grim," Lance stated blankly.
"It is my understanding that you are known by many as the demon-killer," the sultan said.
Lance had no choice but to sigh in response to that.
"Look, sovereign, I like easy coin as much as the next guy, but I don’t want there to be any more misunderstandings between us. I’ll give you the same spiel I give to all my prospective employers. While the stories are certainly true, I didn’t perform some heroic feat. Yes, there were demons. Yes, they were invading a royal banquet. But though a demon is stronger and faster than your average man and he bleeds sulfur, he still bleeds. My only claim to fame is that when everyone else was cowering under the table or trying to escape, I grabbed a sword off a wall and started slashing. Everything else you may have heard about me is nothing but rumors. The truth being, I’ve not encountered a single demon or even a monstrous beast since that banquet. Now, if you need your men trained or your defenses tested, I’m your guy. Anything else, you’ll be throwing your money away. Lance the demon-killer is just a folk tale."
When Lance was done, the sultan’s perfectly-white teeth were stuck somewhere between a scowl and a smile.
"And that oh-so-popular folk tale is precisely why I must show everyone that I hold you in the highest esteem and fully trust in your ability to save my kingdom from horrors utterly indescribable," the sultan said.
He then explained that for months now, his subjects have been reporting mysterious disappearances and otherworldly glows coming from deep in the desert. But when none of his patrols were able to bring back anything tangible, the monarch grew convinced that the whole thing was the result of some political plot against him. His opponents were attempting to undermine his authority and present him as incompetent in the face of a mystical threat.
An imaginary threat, as the sultan stressed. And what better way to fight an intangible enemy like this than a tall tale of your own.
This was where Lance the demon-killer and his continent-spanning fame came in. Get out in the desert, ride around in full battle gear, and simply by doing so, calm the populace down.
Even before the sultan mentioned the generous pay, Lance was prepared to accept the job. It was refreshing to work for someone who harbored no delusions about what he did.
The sultan and his men didn’t tarry. The suffocating Naqaran sun hadn’t reached its zenith yet when Lance was assigned a traveling party of four soldiers and a guide from among the palace guards.
This small but well-armed procession was given all the appropriate fanfare and then some. The sultan’s gossip-mongers ensured that everyone in and around the Naqaran capital of Apis was made aware of Lance’s arrival and his grand quest.
A crowd inevitably formed, attracting all manner of hawkers and peddlers. And where there’s commerce, there are thieves and pickpockets. Before long, a mobile bazaar sprung into life around Lance, slowing his camel down to a crawl.
The beast itself, its peculiar form aside, was basically a horse in every respect that mattered, allowing Lance to let his muscle memory take over and focus more on the people following him than on staying in the saddle.
A group of kids caught his attention. With sticks for swords and finger-horns, they were clearly reenacting his one legitimate encounter with the forces of the underworld.
The sultan was right, his fame had indeed reached this far-away land. Yet even all these years later, Lance still wasn’t quite used to being seen as a folk hero, someone to be impersonated by a grimy ten-year-old.
Then again, leaning into this side of himself, traveling the world while investigating alcohol-induced demon sightings, sure beat earning his keep by beating the twenty-man garrisons of minor lords into shape back in the land of eternal rain and mud.
So there he was, dressed in an imposing suit of lather lamellar, shining his pale complexion and greying hair for everyone to see as he slowly boiled in what felt like buckets of his own sweat.
Lance was beginning to suspect that no matter what they ran into out in the desert, heat would be his greatest foe on this quest. But seeing how his image was such a crucial part of the mission, he had no choice but to wear something recognizably western.
With a backsword on one side, a horseman’s axe on the other, and a quarterstaff sitting on his lap, Lance had a weapon for any occasion.
Jaleed, his Naqaran guide, couldn’t help but chortle and ask if Lance perhaps could use a bow as well, back when they were gearing up in the relative privacy of the palace walls.
To this, Lance replied that he wouldn’t be much of a weapon master if he armed himself with weapons he couldn't use with at least some degree of proficiency.
Throwing a glance at the large-bellied man now, Lance was quite jealous of his loose surcoat. The garment was explained to Lance as a great way to protect oneself from the sun. But it’s precisely the lack of a Naqaran coat such as this that made him notable, and so all he could do was endure.
And endure he did until the outer walls of Apis disappeared from view and he was given a turban and some light clothes.
Right after he changed, Lance asked Jaleed to instruct the soldiers to scout ahead. Jaleed’s lack of reverence and jovial nature all but precluded him from being the obligatory spy, leaving that honor to one of the soldiers.
"Now that we’re alone, what’s really happening out here?" Lance asked.
To that, Jaleed took a swig of water, then spat out some of it on the sand. "Must be brigands," he said. "I know his lordship doesn’t take this affair seriously, but I’ve been doing what you’re doing right now for a while, just for a fraction of the pay. The desert is vast, so I can’t tell you much, but the disappearances are real. The fear our people outside the towns feel is real. And mark my words, when this circus is over and bears no fruit, and I’m finally given enough men to comb this entire overgrown sandbox, we’ll discover a slaver market or maybe a mine of some sort."
"And I wish you the best of luck with that. For now, though, I’ll focus on putting some food on my plate."
"Can’t blame you for that, brother. But if half of what’s being said about you is true, you’ve served enough kings in your days. You know how frustrating it can get."
Instead of a reply, Lance snorted and turned his eyes to the horizon.
The next few weeks were a blur of dunes, tiny villages, and chasing vague rumors that without fail led nowhere. Sultan Qaddar’s kingdom stretched wide and at times seemed unending, for when your domain is sand, it doesn’t take a mandate from the heavens to lay claim to a whole lot of it.
Eventually, Lance’s pursuit of clues led his party to the verdant blotch of an oasis housing a few tents in what passed for a roadside tavern in these parts.
The talk there was of a nearby quarry and how it missed its latest shipment.
The decision was an easy one. And when the chipped rocks and the tents surrounding them were in sight, but no sound carried from within, weapons were drawn and shields got raised.
Lance had no delusions of knowing how to best command Naqaran troops. He allowed Jaleed to take point.
The camp reacted to this careful approach by producing a dozen or so of rough-looking men brandishing the curved Naqaran swords just like the one in Jaleed’s hand, but theirs were visibly chipped.
These were decidedly not quarry workers, but unlike your regular variety of brigand, they didn’t attempt to scatter upon facing a well-equipped mounted force.
Something didn’t feel right. Lance slowed his camel even further to better assess the situation. As he did, the sand to his left and right began to shift, revealing four archers lying in ambush, two on each side.
He barked a warning. Something loud and short enough to be understood even by the soldiers who didn’t speak his language.
It came out just as the archers let loose their first volley. One of the soldiers was too slow to react and was thrown out of his saddle by the combined forces of two arrows hitting him at the same time.
Their initial attack not quite as successful as they had hoped, the archers then targeted the camels with their subsequent volleys, forcing Jaleed to order his men to continue their advance on foot while preserving at least some semblance of a unified formation.
Caught between the archers and the now advancing brigands, Jaleed looked to Lance for help, only to see the weapon master already sending his camel at one of the archer clusters before dismounting in one swift motion.
With the beast covering his back for the moment, Lance rushed the two nearest archers. The treacherous sand wasn’t helping, but Lance was still able to reach the first of the two before the next volley hit. The quarterstaff connected with the brigand’s head, turning its insides to mush. Immediately, Lance spun around the body, the staff echoing his movement in a wide arc. This deceptively simple implement of doom was just about long enough to reach the second archer, crushing his neck in a single blow.
The sounds of clashing steel were coming from up ahead, but Lance had no time to worry about that. The remaining two archers now had him in their sights, and there was quite a stretch of sand separating them.
In the brief instant before he broke into a run, Lance regretted not bringing a shield.
Two arrows flew. One of them missed, the other was heading straight for Lance’s chest.
Without altering his course or slowing down, Lance adjusted his body to be more parallel to the archers, allowing the arrow to get stuck between the scales of his armor, leaving but a scratch underneath.
A seasoned warrior, Lance knew not to rely on getting lucky twice. He changed the grip on his staff and flung it forward like a javelin.
He followed this projectile with redoubled effort and when the archers were almost within his reach, dropped down on his ass and allowed momentum to carry him the final few feet. As he slid across the sand, he drew his sword and then continued the motion to slash the brigand in front of him.
The last remaining archer dropped his bow and darted for Lance with a dagger in hand. Still on the ground, Lance waited for the exact right moment to catch the archer’s leg between his two feet and send the brigand tumbling down with a simple twist.
Both of them on a level playing field now, Lance sent a heavy downward slash at his opponent, ceasing his clumsy attempts to regain balance.
Lance jumped back up to find the Naqaran soldiers surrounded. Just three of sultan Qaddar’s men were left standing by then. The soldiers had the superior training and Jaleed’s boastful heroism on their side, but their armor was far from all-encompassing, allowing the odd slash or stab through.
With his straight sword in hand, Lance soon joined this chaotic melee of curved blades. His immediate goal was to reach Jaleed, as the large man was showing the most promise among the Naqarans.
The brigands were lucky to have a worn-out hide protecting them and Lance had no trouble cutting a path through them. Still, by the time he found Jaleed in the mess of battle, only one other soldier was drawing breath.
Attacked from all sides, Lance wasn’t able to intercept a chop to the back of the soldier’s head, but he did avenge his fall with a quick thrust, leaving Jaleed and him to face the five remaining brigands.
The big man was covered in blood by that point, only some of it his, and together with Lance, he was able to erect a wall of blades and cut down several of their assailants.
A common Western feint was news to a Naqaran brigand, allowing Lance to skewer the bandit just in time to witness Jaleed grab another brigand by the throat and crush his skull with a powerful headbutt.
A dagger sticking from Jaleed’s side was all the explanation a desperate move like this needed.
"Oh, come on, he was a good man. I think," Lance said and confirmed Jaleed’s last kill with a stab.
He then turned to face the last remaining brigand whose eyes were showing only the madness of battle. There was no taking him back to the sultan. The brigand shouted something in Naqaran and rushed forward with his blade raised high above his head.
It didn’t take a master swordsman to cut such an advance short.
A quick post-battle assessment revealed no survivors. All the camels were either dead or missing too, leaving Lance stranded in an abandoned quarry in the middle of the desert.
He was busy with the grim task of collecting waterskins from the many surrounding corpses when he felt a sudden prick at the base of his neck. An instinctive slap produced an insect maybe an inch in length.
This discovery allowed Lance to adjust his senses and realize that the buzzing he’s been hearing for a while now was not coming from within his head.
A loose humming blob was slowly advancing towards him from deeper within the quarry. That certain tough-to-pin-down sense trained fighters tended to develop sooner or later screamed at Lance that this wasn’t a mere swarm of bugs. There was some malicious intent behind their rhythmic swaying.
Lance tried to run but was soon overtaken by the swarm. Within its buzzing, ever-moving, endlessly stinging body, it was difficult to tell up from down and left from right. Lance tried swinging his sword, but the bugs were too innumerable to cut down. His efforts only left him gasping for air that was a precious commodity inside the swarm.
In time, the countless stings, and the tiny droplets of venom they carried, overpowered Lance’s fortitude and sent him on his knees, then face-down into the warm Naqaran sand.
There’s an art to waking up after you’ve been captured. It dictates concealing your lucidity for as long as possible.
And even though Lance had no clue how or why a swarm of bugs would throw him in a cage, when he regained consciousness, he soon realized he was in one. It was barely wide enough for him to curl up into a ball, and wouldn’t allow him to stand up had he tried.
His weapons were gone. So was his armor. And even his clothes. And if that wasn’t bad enough, his entire body itched. It took every ounce of Lance’s self-control to not start rolling around in an attempt to relieve the torturous irritation.
The next step was a bit of a gamble, but there was no way around it. Slowly, Lance opened his eyes. The first thing he was able to spot was another cage, one housing a sizable pile of skeletal remains.
A sight like this doesn’t exactly fill one with a lot of optimism, but Lance wasn’t about to just give up and start working on slowly decomposing.
But as if to remind Lance that things could always get worse, the bones began to move and a whole bunch of empty eye sockets lit up with otherworldly yellow.
Almost against his will, Lance jerked back, cursed, and invoked the name of God, something he prided himself on not doing too often.
"Ah, good. You’re awake," a creaky voice carried from a distance.
Consigning the very much disturbing discovery of undeath to some distant corner of his psyche, Lance gave up his little ruse, sat up, and looked around.
He found himself in a spacious cavern illuminated by a host of torches. A smooth slab of stone about a dozen paces away housed a motionless body with a ghoulish old man of Naqaran origin standing over it, curved knife in one hand, a tangle of entrails in the other.
"Believe it or not, but my present company doesn’t provide a lot of opportunity for conversation. Even if it is in your crude tongue," the man said while rifling through the entrails with the knife.
"Sure, I’m up for a chat. But you’ll find me a much better conversationalist when I’m not stuck behind bars." Lance gave his cage a rattle and then worked really hard on not turning his head when the neighboring cage responded with a similar noise.
"All in due time, my friend. I have big plans for you, you know. A man of your skills will make a great general for my ever-growing army."
"Your army, you say?" Lance finally threw a glance at the animated skeletons. "Well, I guess that solves thy mystery of all the disappearances. Which leaves my schedule wide-open. Let’s talk price."
"Enticing as that sounds, if it at all can be helped, I prefer not to deal with the fickle nature of the living."
"I don’t think I’d be of much use to you without sinews, my good man," Lance said with a hint of hesitation. "Who are you, again?"
The Naqaran lifted his face towards the cavern’s ceiling and produced a silent laugh.
Turning back to Lance, he said, "If you must know, I am, or rather used to be, Qaddar’s court alchemist. After years of tireless work, I offered him the fruit of my research. An undying army that doesn’t tire and requires no logistical support. And what did my royal cousin do? Did he shower me with praise and riches? No, he exiled me and called my discovery an abomination."
"Smart man," Lance noted.
"We’ll see how smart he is when the army he so readily discarded is tearing through his capital. With you at the helm, I might add."
"And here I thought you’d forgotten about that part."
"How could I? You will have the honor of being the first to go through the transformation while still alive. Perhaps that is the key to a subject retaining his abilities post-death."
"Perhaps? I don’t like the sound of that perhaps."
The alchemist growled and shoved the body he’s been working on from the slab. Only now, Lance recognized it as Jaleed.
His features distorted with a sudden flash of madness, the alchemist screamed, "You’re looking at a visionary. There are no guidelines for what I’m doing. Of course, a certain degree of failure is to be expected."
Not saying another word, the alchemist squinted, and moments later, a nearby tunnel responded with a shuffle and a moan.
Soon after, a disheveled man entered the cavern. His motions were slow and unsteady as he dragged his feet across the cavern’s floor. The man’s clearly broken neck betrayed him as one of the brigand archers Lance struck down earlier.
"Hey, didn’t I already kill you?" he asked when the moving cadaver got stuck for a bit on unlocking his cage.
"Exactly," the alchemist said from behind the slab. "With you at my disposal, I will no longer need to rely on these brutes for procurement. I swear, some of them actually become smarter once they’re dead."
"How frustrating for you," Lance drawled, his mind busy working through various scenarios in an attempt to find one that didn’t end up with him dead or worse.
The cadaver’s struggles to open the cage filled Lance with confidence that even in his current miserable and sore state he’d be able to outrun the creature. He was just waiting for the right moment to make his move.
That moment came when the stiff got frustrated with his precise task and simply yanked the lock, ripping it off like it was nothing.
Doing his best not to fixate on the creature’s unnatural strength, Lance sprung from his squatting position into a roll. The cadaver moved to intercept, forcing Lance into a crawl, then a jog, and finally a full-on run.
The rocky ground was boring deep into Lance’s bare feet as the cavern opened into a series of caves connected by narrow natural tunnels, but he knew he couldn’t stop.
He also knew that running was but a temporary solution to his problems. He was stuck underground somewhere in the middle of a desert. Even if he could outrun the alchemist’s creations and somehow evade his bugs, he still would have no way of reaching civilization. There was but one option left for him. Win.
Lance had no clue how to achieve that, but at least now he had a goal.
Naked and unarmed, he felt like the sorriest excuse for a weapon master. He grabbed a torch from a wall to use as a substitute for a club. Clutching to it, he kept moving through the caves, spurred by the persistent moans and growls coming from seemingly every direction.
A wrong turn in the treacherous flickering torchlight led Lance inside what looked like a storeroom of some sorts stocked with sacks of grain and various corked jugs.
Lance was about to turn around and leave that place when he heard the familiar by then hum of the alchemist’s pet swarm.
Given their previous encounter, Lance wasn’t sweating his lack of gear. Instead, he darted towards the jugs and started hurriedly uncorking them one by one. When one of them passed the smell test, he took a sip, then spat the liquid back out. It was some nasty spirit, too pungent to be drunk, probably some alchemical reagent.
Holding onto the jug and the torch, Lance waited. A few overly eager bugs entered the storeroom. Lance ignored their incessant buzzing, as he did their attempts to land on his exposed skin.
He waited stoically until the main body of the swarm appeared in the portal and moved towards him.
This was his cue to take a big gulp of the alchemist’s rotgut and spray it from his mouth onto the torch and the bugs directly ahead.
A fiery inferno blazed through the cave, consuming innumerable bugs as it expanded forward. Some of the flames seeped back inside Lance’s mouth, burning the delicate flesh, but it was a small price to pay for defeating a foe impervious to steel. Still, a part of the swarm remained. With a pained squirm, Lance took a second gulp and breathed fire again, nearly passing out from excruciating feedback.
Down on his knees, he could hear blood pumping inside his ears and felt his entire mouth pulsing with agony. And through that haze, he saw one of the alchemist’s creations shamble into the room.
Throwing whatever strength he had left into getting up, Lance faced the cadaver, and after a moment of introspection, smashed the jug over its head and stuck it with a torch.
The stiff lit up like a tar pit, but was seemingly unconcerned by the predicament and kept moving towards Lance. With the one exit blocked, Lance retreated as much as the room allowed, pressing his back to a shelf full of sundries.
Lance was preparing to push himself past the flaming corpse when it finally stopped moving and fell over as a lifeless charred lump.
Picking up a spare jug of spirits, Lance continued his blind dash for the exit. After everything he’s been through so far, luck finally smiled upon him when after just two more turns and a near-miss with a lone cadaver, he spotted the heartening glimmer of starlight.
Outside, Lance found himself staring at an ill-kept brigand camp, but given what he’d just been through, it still was a sweet, intoxicating sight. His pursuers be damned, Lance stopped to take a single deep breath of cool night air.
This brief moment of respite was interrupted by hurried Naqaran speech. A group of brigands, still breathing by the looks of it, was gathered around a flimsy table. Their eyes full of puzzled apprehension were aimed at Lance.
He placed himself in their shoes. Naked, dirty, covered in sores, bruises and burns, and holding onto seemingly random objects, he could easily pass for a demon to someone who didn’t have his first-hand experience with that bunch.
Having come to this realization, Lance did the only thing that made perfect sense to him, given the situation. He produced a prolonged guttural roar and charged the brigands.
And this was just too much for these common ruffians of the desert. Exchanging a few quick glances, they abandoned their dice game and scattered to avoid Lance’s supernatural wrath.
Knowing what was behind him, Lance considered joining them in this retreat, but without supplies, he had no chance of surviving a prolonged trek through the sandy wastes.
Instead of running, Lance ducked into the biggest tent. As he suspected, this was where the brigands stored their excess gear. He had no luck finding his own stuff, but when he emerged outside, he was wearing a pair of simple sandals and a long Naqaran outfit. He also had with him one of their curved blades.
The triumphant feeling of once again having some clothes on evaporated when Lance saw a good hundred cadavers gathered by the cave’s mouth and the alchemist standing in their midst.
"You didn’t really think you would be able to escape?" the alchemist asked.
"Guess not," Lance said and started running. Not away, but towards the cadavers.
The alchemist, cooped up in his cavern for who knows how long, was too slow to react. When Lance was almost upon him, the cadavers started forming a wall around their master, but it was too late.
Lance stopped a few steps short of reaching his mark and simply lobbed the scimitar. The blade flew right past the cadavers and lodged itself in the old man’s throat, killing him on the spot.
Without the alchemist’s mind to command them, his creations became docile and were just standing around his corpse, their dead gazes completely blank.
It took some time and quite a bit of effort to corral all the cadavers, and whatever other abominations Lance could find in the caves, together. But once that was done, he doused them with spirits and threw in a torch.
With the massive pyre raging behind him, Lance more than earned his coin. The stars would guide him back to the city of Apis. From there, his legend would only grow.
One man could never finish all of that in one sitting, and Lance was forced to pick his battles. The frothy stews and skewered meats were the first to go. Lance had a hard rule against eating meat in a new place before he knew exactly who they ate there.
This left him with a bowl of assorted nuts, some roasted mushrooms, a cornucopia of cheeses, and what looked like a month’s supply of fresh fruit. A pitcher of rich cold wine was the centerpiece of his meal.
Lance sampled this and that before getting lost in a silent battle with a pomegranate. Having never tasted the fruit prior to that morning, he was quickly realizing this was a perfect example of a warrior’s food.
Just about any fool could butcher a pomegranate and squeeze it for its refreshingly-sour juice. But it took real skill, determination, and discipline, not to mention quite a bit of manual dexterity, to remove the outer husk without making a mess and then enjoy the spoils one delicious crimson seed at a time.
Faint metallic chiming interrupted Lance’s musings, as well as his meal.
A servant girl dressed in naught but a frilly sheer number was beaming a well-practiced but ultimately empty smile at him. Her more sensitive parts were scantily obscured by an abundance of jewelry that was without a doubt the culprit behind the earlier noise.
A scandalous outfit like this would surely cause an outrage back West and summon a gaggle of inquisitors all too happy to protect their flock from such an unseemly sight and the impure thoughts it invoked.
But since the kingdom of Naqara didn’t seem to share those values and concerns, Lance took a moment to appreciate the view, and only then acknowledged the girl’s presence with the slightest uptick of his lips.
"My sovereign will see you now," she said with but a hint of Naqaran accent.
Without a word, Lance got up, put the table knife down after the briefest of hesitations, and followed the girl through the royal palace.
Due to some oversight, or perhaps it was precisely the point, the rear parts of the girl’s weighty necklaces and belts were reduced to mere chainlets.
And while Lance was a seasoned mercenary who spent most of his adult life traveling the world, he did originally hail from a place where even the slightest immodesty was looked down upon. The Naqaran approach to entertaining their guests was a bit much for his taste.
As they moved through the spacious halls, instead of the obvious, he focused on the walls decorated with intricate mosaics of green and azure, and the plentiful burly guards armed with spears and crescent-bladed axes.
An unseen musician and his string instrument accompanied their journey, and in those moments when Lance’s eyes inevitably returned to his shapely escort, he could see her half-dancing to the soulful tune.
Lance could only surmise that everything since his arrival to the palace last night was supposed to be some display of opulence intended to awe him. But impressed as he was, for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out why anyone would bother.
His curiosity spurring him along, Lance soon found himself before a large important-looking door guarded by a large important-looking man.
The girl exchanged a few quick words in the Naqaran tongue with the guard, then nodded towards the door.
"You may come in now," she said.
Lance was about to do just that when the guard took a sidewise step and grabbed his shoulder.
The guard was younger, taller and heavier, and altogether a stark contrast to Lance’s wiry frame, but his arm was soft. A swift uppercut to the stomach doubled the man over and made him forget how to breathe for a spell.
In the brief moment before what felt like the entire Naqaran palace descended upon him following the girl’s terrified shriek, all Lance could do was grab the bent-over guard’s spear and put his back to the nearest wall.
He used both ends of the spear to keep his many attackers at bay, ducking and dodging as their axes chipped the wall inches away from his head.
Lance knew he wouldn’t be able to keep this up indefinitely and was considering his quickly dwindling options when a commanding shout in Naqaran came from behind the closed door. He didn’t understand the words but the meaning was clear. It was an order to stand down. The guards were quick to obey and Lance responded in kind.
The next burst of speech was longer. Once it was over, the girl said, "Please proceed now and accept our humblest of apologies."
Upon expressing his puzzlement regarding this whole situation with a slight shrug, Lance dumped the spear off to the nearest guard and went for the door. Before he got a chance to open it, the girl grabbed his wrist and looked him in the eye without a trace of her earlier feigned hospitality.
"He was just checking you for weapons. Everyone who wants to see the sultan has to go through it."
This made perfect sense, but Lance wasn’t in the business of apologizing for defending himself. "It’s your sultan who wants to see me, actually. And you could’ve warned me," he said.
"I didn’t think I had to."
"Well, treat this as a lesson then."
With that, Lance entered the sultan’s chambers.
Inside, sultan Qaddar, the ruler of Naqara, was revealed as a lean middle-aged man draped in rich, embroidered garments. He was presiding over a sturdy desk with a quill in one hand and a glass of wine in the other.
Gracing Lance with a look full of regal authority, he put away the quill and invited his guest to get comfortable in one of the couches lining the walls.
"What was that ruckus?" the sultan asked. His Commonwealth pronunciation was impeccable.
"Just a slight misunderstanding. My sovereign, right?" Lance wasn’t sure how to properly address the Naqaran monarch, so he went with what he heard earlier. Receiving no objections, he added, "You know how the language barrier can be." He didn’t feel like going into details.
The sultan wet his lips with wine. "That I do, sir Cairnholm, so let us speak of it no longer."
This simple lack of interest was more revealing than the servant girl's garment. Somehow, the sultan was aware of what had transpired on the other side of his door. This was a test of some sort. And Lance passed. But the whole thing didn’t sit right with him, not least because it was clear no one had bothered to let the poor girl in on this little joke.
"Beg your pardon, sovereign." Lance adjusted his position on the couch. "Someone who speaks my language as well as you do would know I’m no sir and that Cairnholm is merely the village I hail from. And just so we’re perfectly clear, it’s an insignificant fishing backwater not worthy of being mentioned in the presence of one such as yourself. Just call me Lance."
The sultan produced a short, controlled laugh. "You caught me, Lance. You might not know it, but feigning ignorance of another’s customs is a sure way to start a conversation among diplomats."
"I’m not a diplomat."
"Good to know."
"But while we’re conversing. What’s with the royal treatment? Your envoys made it painfully obvious that my only two choices were to go with them or leave behind two corpses and become a wanted man in your fine land. Stepping on the dock, I half-expected to get thrown into some dungeon, but instead, it’s like you’re greeting a long-lost brother. You know I’m just a mercenary? Maybe a weapon master on a good day. And if you’re the superstitious sort, I can pass for a monster hunter. Just pay me some coin, point me in the right direction, and I’ll get the job done."
"Do not tell me what to do Lance, or you'll see the insides of that dungeon yet," the sultan said. His face of a practiced statesman made it impossible to tell whether he was joking. "And if it makes you feel any better, none of the hospitality inflicted upon you was for your benefit. Consider it all a part of the job."
"And that is?"
With the grace of someone who practiced this exact move to the point of perfection, the sultan got up from his royal chair that was just a few jewels short of a throne and approached a painting decorating the wall. Not being someone who required explicit invitation, Lance joined him there.
The painting depicted a fiery lake with beings of living flame floating above it. In the distance, scruffy and spiky creatures that resembled demons from western folklore were taking some poor unwilling souls out for a swim.
"Grim," Lance stated blankly.
"It is my understanding that you are known by many as the demon-killer," the sultan said.
Lance had no choice but to sigh in response to that.
"Look, sovereign, I like easy coin as much as the next guy, but I don’t want there to be any more misunderstandings between us. I’ll give you the same spiel I give to all my prospective employers. While the stories are certainly true, I didn’t perform some heroic feat. Yes, there were demons. Yes, they were invading a royal banquet. But though a demon is stronger and faster than your average man and he bleeds sulfur, he still bleeds. My only claim to fame is that when everyone else was cowering under the table or trying to escape, I grabbed a sword off a wall and started slashing. Everything else you may have heard about me is nothing but rumors. The truth being, I’ve not encountered a single demon or even a monstrous beast since that banquet. Now, if you need your men trained or your defenses tested, I’m your guy. Anything else, you’ll be throwing your money away. Lance the demon-killer is just a folk tale."
When Lance was done, the sultan’s perfectly-white teeth were stuck somewhere between a scowl and a smile.
"And that oh-so-popular folk tale is precisely why I must show everyone that I hold you in the highest esteem and fully trust in your ability to save my kingdom from horrors utterly indescribable," the sultan said.
He then explained that for months now, his subjects have been reporting mysterious disappearances and otherworldly glows coming from deep in the desert. But when none of his patrols were able to bring back anything tangible, the monarch grew convinced that the whole thing was the result of some political plot against him. His opponents were attempting to undermine his authority and present him as incompetent in the face of a mystical threat.
An imaginary threat, as the sultan stressed. And what better way to fight an intangible enemy like this than a tall tale of your own.
This was where Lance the demon-killer and his continent-spanning fame came in. Get out in the desert, ride around in full battle gear, and simply by doing so, calm the populace down.
Even before the sultan mentioned the generous pay, Lance was prepared to accept the job. It was refreshing to work for someone who harbored no delusions about what he did.
***
The sultan and his men didn’t tarry. The suffocating Naqaran sun hadn’t reached its zenith yet when Lance was assigned a traveling party of four soldiers and a guide from among the palace guards.
This small but well-armed procession was given all the appropriate fanfare and then some. The sultan’s gossip-mongers ensured that everyone in and around the Naqaran capital of Apis was made aware of Lance’s arrival and his grand quest.
A crowd inevitably formed, attracting all manner of hawkers and peddlers. And where there’s commerce, there are thieves and pickpockets. Before long, a mobile bazaar sprung into life around Lance, slowing his camel down to a crawl.
The beast itself, its peculiar form aside, was basically a horse in every respect that mattered, allowing Lance to let his muscle memory take over and focus more on the people following him than on staying in the saddle.
A group of kids caught his attention. With sticks for swords and finger-horns, they were clearly reenacting his one legitimate encounter with the forces of the underworld.
The sultan was right, his fame had indeed reached this far-away land. Yet even all these years later, Lance still wasn’t quite used to being seen as a folk hero, someone to be impersonated by a grimy ten-year-old.
Then again, leaning into this side of himself, traveling the world while investigating alcohol-induced demon sightings, sure beat earning his keep by beating the twenty-man garrisons of minor lords into shape back in the land of eternal rain and mud.
So there he was, dressed in an imposing suit of lather lamellar, shining his pale complexion and greying hair for everyone to see as he slowly boiled in what felt like buckets of his own sweat.
Lance was beginning to suspect that no matter what they ran into out in the desert, heat would be his greatest foe on this quest. But seeing how his image was such a crucial part of the mission, he had no choice but to wear something recognizably western.
With a backsword on one side, a horseman’s axe on the other, and a quarterstaff sitting on his lap, Lance had a weapon for any occasion.
Jaleed, his Naqaran guide, couldn’t help but chortle and ask if Lance perhaps could use a bow as well, back when they were gearing up in the relative privacy of the palace walls.
To this, Lance replied that he wouldn’t be much of a weapon master if he armed himself with weapons he couldn't use with at least some degree of proficiency.
Throwing a glance at the large-bellied man now, Lance was quite jealous of his loose surcoat. The garment was explained to Lance as a great way to protect oneself from the sun. But it’s precisely the lack of a Naqaran coat such as this that made him notable, and so all he could do was endure.
And endure he did until the outer walls of Apis disappeared from view and he was given a turban and some light clothes.
Right after he changed, Lance asked Jaleed to instruct the soldiers to scout ahead. Jaleed’s lack of reverence and jovial nature all but precluded him from being the obligatory spy, leaving that honor to one of the soldiers.
"Now that we’re alone, what’s really happening out here?" Lance asked.
To that, Jaleed took a swig of water, then spat out some of it on the sand. "Must be brigands," he said. "I know his lordship doesn’t take this affair seriously, but I’ve been doing what you’re doing right now for a while, just for a fraction of the pay. The desert is vast, so I can’t tell you much, but the disappearances are real. The fear our people outside the towns feel is real. And mark my words, when this circus is over and bears no fruit, and I’m finally given enough men to comb this entire overgrown sandbox, we’ll discover a slaver market or maybe a mine of some sort."
"And I wish you the best of luck with that. For now, though, I’ll focus on putting some food on my plate."
"Can’t blame you for that, brother. But if half of what’s being said about you is true, you’ve served enough kings in your days. You know how frustrating it can get."
Instead of a reply, Lance snorted and turned his eyes to the horizon.
The next few weeks were a blur of dunes, tiny villages, and chasing vague rumors that without fail led nowhere. Sultan Qaddar’s kingdom stretched wide and at times seemed unending, for when your domain is sand, it doesn’t take a mandate from the heavens to lay claim to a whole lot of it.
Eventually, Lance’s pursuit of clues led his party to the verdant blotch of an oasis housing a few tents in what passed for a roadside tavern in these parts.
The talk there was of a nearby quarry and how it missed its latest shipment.
The decision was an easy one. And when the chipped rocks and the tents surrounding them were in sight, but no sound carried from within, weapons were drawn and shields got raised.
Lance had no delusions of knowing how to best command Naqaran troops. He allowed Jaleed to take point.
The camp reacted to this careful approach by producing a dozen or so of rough-looking men brandishing the curved Naqaran swords just like the one in Jaleed’s hand, but theirs were visibly chipped.
These were decidedly not quarry workers, but unlike your regular variety of brigand, they didn’t attempt to scatter upon facing a well-equipped mounted force.
Something didn’t feel right. Lance slowed his camel even further to better assess the situation. As he did, the sand to his left and right began to shift, revealing four archers lying in ambush, two on each side.
He barked a warning. Something loud and short enough to be understood even by the soldiers who didn’t speak his language.
It came out just as the archers let loose their first volley. One of the soldiers was too slow to react and was thrown out of his saddle by the combined forces of two arrows hitting him at the same time.
Their initial attack not quite as successful as they had hoped, the archers then targeted the camels with their subsequent volleys, forcing Jaleed to order his men to continue their advance on foot while preserving at least some semblance of a unified formation.
Caught between the archers and the now advancing brigands, Jaleed looked to Lance for help, only to see the weapon master already sending his camel at one of the archer clusters before dismounting in one swift motion.
With the beast covering his back for the moment, Lance rushed the two nearest archers. The treacherous sand wasn’t helping, but Lance was still able to reach the first of the two before the next volley hit. The quarterstaff connected with the brigand’s head, turning its insides to mush. Immediately, Lance spun around the body, the staff echoing his movement in a wide arc. This deceptively simple implement of doom was just about long enough to reach the second archer, crushing his neck in a single blow.
The sounds of clashing steel were coming from up ahead, but Lance had no time to worry about that. The remaining two archers now had him in their sights, and there was quite a stretch of sand separating them.
In the brief instant before he broke into a run, Lance regretted not bringing a shield.
Two arrows flew. One of them missed, the other was heading straight for Lance’s chest.
Without altering his course or slowing down, Lance adjusted his body to be more parallel to the archers, allowing the arrow to get stuck between the scales of his armor, leaving but a scratch underneath.
A seasoned warrior, Lance knew not to rely on getting lucky twice. He changed the grip on his staff and flung it forward like a javelin.
He followed this projectile with redoubled effort and when the archers were almost within his reach, dropped down on his ass and allowed momentum to carry him the final few feet. As he slid across the sand, he drew his sword and then continued the motion to slash the brigand in front of him.
The last remaining archer dropped his bow and darted for Lance with a dagger in hand. Still on the ground, Lance waited for the exact right moment to catch the archer’s leg between his two feet and send the brigand tumbling down with a simple twist.
Both of them on a level playing field now, Lance sent a heavy downward slash at his opponent, ceasing his clumsy attempts to regain balance.
Lance jumped back up to find the Naqaran soldiers surrounded. Just three of sultan Qaddar’s men were left standing by then. The soldiers had the superior training and Jaleed’s boastful heroism on their side, but their armor was far from all-encompassing, allowing the odd slash or stab through.
With his straight sword in hand, Lance soon joined this chaotic melee of curved blades. His immediate goal was to reach Jaleed, as the large man was showing the most promise among the Naqarans.
The brigands were lucky to have a worn-out hide protecting them and Lance had no trouble cutting a path through them. Still, by the time he found Jaleed in the mess of battle, only one other soldier was drawing breath.
Attacked from all sides, Lance wasn’t able to intercept a chop to the back of the soldier’s head, but he did avenge his fall with a quick thrust, leaving Jaleed and him to face the five remaining brigands.
The big man was covered in blood by that point, only some of it his, and together with Lance, he was able to erect a wall of blades and cut down several of their assailants.
A common Western feint was news to a Naqaran brigand, allowing Lance to skewer the bandit just in time to witness Jaleed grab another brigand by the throat and crush his skull with a powerful headbutt.
A dagger sticking from Jaleed’s side was all the explanation a desperate move like this needed.
"Oh, come on, he was a good man. I think," Lance said and confirmed Jaleed’s last kill with a stab.
He then turned to face the last remaining brigand whose eyes were showing only the madness of battle. There was no taking him back to the sultan. The brigand shouted something in Naqaran and rushed forward with his blade raised high above his head.
It didn’t take a master swordsman to cut such an advance short.
A quick post-battle assessment revealed no survivors. All the camels were either dead or missing too, leaving Lance stranded in an abandoned quarry in the middle of the desert.
He was busy with the grim task of collecting waterskins from the many surrounding corpses when he felt a sudden prick at the base of his neck. An instinctive slap produced an insect maybe an inch in length.
This discovery allowed Lance to adjust his senses and realize that the buzzing he’s been hearing for a while now was not coming from within his head.
A loose humming blob was slowly advancing towards him from deeper within the quarry. That certain tough-to-pin-down sense trained fighters tended to develop sooner or later screamed at Lance that this wasn’t a mere swarm of bugs. There was some malicious intent behind their rhythmic swaying.
Lance tried to run but was soon overtaken by the swarm. Within its buzzing, ever-moving, endlessly stinging body, it was difficult to tell up from down and left from right. Lance tried swinging his sword, but the bugs were too innumerable to cut down. His efforts only left him gasping for air that was a precious commodity inside the swarm.
In time, the countless stings, and the tiny droplets of venom they carried, overpowered Lance’s fortitude and sent him on his knees, then face-down into the warm Naqaran sand.
***
There’s an art to waking up after you’ve been captured. It dictates concealing your lucidity for as long as possible.
And even though Lance had no clue how or why a swarm of bugs would throw him in a cage, when he regained consciousness, he soon realized he was in one. It was barely wide enough for him to curl up into a ball, and wouldn’t allow him to stand up had he tried.
His weapons were gone. So was his armor. And even his clothes. And if that wasn’t bad enough, his entire body itched. It took every ounce of Lance’s self-control to not start rolling around in an attempt to relieve the torturous irritation.
The next step was a bit of a gamble, but there was no way around it. Slowly, Lance opened his eyes. The first thing he was able to spot was another cage, one housing a sizable pile of skeletal remains.
A sight like this doesn’t exactly fill one with a lot of optimism, but Lance wasn’t about to just give up and start working on slowly decomposing.
But as if to remind Lance that things could always get worse, the bones began to move and a whole bunch of empty eye sockets lit up with otherworldly yellow.
Almost against his will, Lance jerked back, cursed, and invoked the name of God, something he prided himself on not doing too often.
"Ah, good. You’re awake," a creaky voice carried from a distance.
Consigning the very much disturbing discovery of undeath to some distant corner of his psyche, Lance gave up his little ruse, sat up, and looked around.
He found himself in a spacious cavern illuminated by a host of torches. A smooth slab of stone about a dozen paces away housed a motionless body with a ghoulish old man of Naqaran origin standing over it, curved knife in one hand, a tangle of entrails in the other.
"Believe it or not, but my present company doesn’t provide a lot of opportunity for conversation. Even if it is in your crude tongue," the man said while rifling through the entrails with the knife.
"Sure, I’m up for a chat. But you’ll find me a much better conversationalist when I’m not stuck behind bars." Lance gave his cage a rattle and then worked really hard on not turning his head when the neighboring cage responded with a similar noise.
"All in due time, my friend. I have big plans for you, you know. A man of your skills will make a great general for my ever-growing army."
"Your army, you say?" Lance finally threw a glance at the animated skeletons. "Well, I guess that solves thy mystery of all the disappearances. Which leaves my schedule wide-open. Let’s talk price."
"Enticing as that sounds, if it at all can be helped, I prefer not to deal with the fickle nature of the living."
"I don’t think I’d be of much use to you without sinews, my good man," Lance said with a hint of hesitation. "Who are you, again?"
The Naqaran lifted his face towards the cavern’s ceiling and produced a silent laugh.
Turning back to Lance, he said, "If you must know, I am, or rather used to be, Qaddar’s court alchemist. After years of tireless work, I offered him the fruit of my research. An undying army that doesn’t tire and requires no logistical support. And what did my royal cousin do? Did he shower me with praise and riches? No, he exiled me and called my discovery an abomination."
"Smart man," Lance noted.
"We’ll see how smart he is when the army he so readily discarded is tearing through his capital. With you at the helm, I might add."
"And here I thought you’d forgotten about that part."
"How could I? You will have the honor of being the first to go through the transformation while still alive. Perhaps that is the key to a subject retaining his abilities post-death."
"Perhaps? I don’t like the sound of that perhaps."
The alchemist growled and shoved the body he’s been working on from the slab. Only now, Lance recognized it as Jaleed.
His features distorted with a sudden flash of madness, the alchemist screamed, "You’re looking at a visionary. There are no guidelines for what I’m doing. Of course, a certain degree of failure is to be expected."
Not saying another word, the alchemist squinted, and moments later, a nearby tunnel responded with a shuffle and a moan.
Soon after, a disheveled man entered the cavern. His motions were slow and unsteady as he dragged his feet across the cavern’s floor. The man’s clearly broken neck betrayed him as one of the brigand archers Lance struck down earlier.
"Hey, didn’t I already kill you?" he asked when the moving cadaver got stuck for a bit on unlocking his cage.
"Exactly," the alchemist said from behind the slab. "With you at my disposal, I will no longer need to rely on these brutes for procurement. I swear, some of them actually become smarter once they’re dead."
"How frustrating for you," Lance drawled, his mind busy working through various scenarios in an attempt to find one that didn’t end up with him dead or worse.
The cadaver’s struggles to open the cage filled Lance with confidence that even in his current miserable and sore state he’d be able to outrun the creature. He was just waiting for the right moment to make his move.
That moment came when the stiff got frustrated with his precise task and simply yanked the lock, ripping it off like it was nothing.
Doing his best not to fixate on the creature’s unnatural strength, Lance sprung from his squatting position into a roll. The cadaver moved to intercept, forcing Lance into a crawl, then a jog, and finally a full-on run.
The rocky ground was boring deep into Lance’s bare feet as the cavern opened into a series of caves connected by narrow natural tunnels, but he knew he couldn’t stop.
He also knew that running was but a temporary solution to his problems. He was stuck underground somewhere in the middle of a desert. Even if he could outrun the alchemist’s creations and somehow evade his bugs, he still would have no way of reaching civilization. There was but one option left for him. Win.
Lance had no clue how to achieve that, but at least now he had a goal.
Naked and unarmed, he felt like the sorriest excuse for a weapon master. He grabbed a torch from a wall to use as a substitute for a club. Clutching to it, he kept moving through the caves, spurred by the persistent moans and growls coming from seemingly every direction.
A wrong turn in the treacherous flickering torchlight led Lance inside what looked like a storeroom of some sorts stocked with sacks of grain and various corked jugs.
Lance was about to turn around and leave that place when he heard the familiar by then hum of the alchemist’s pet swarm.
Given their previous encounter, Lance wasn’t sweating his lack of gear. Instead, he darted towards the jugs and started hurriedly uncorking them one by one. When one of them passed the smell test, he took a sip, then spat the liquid back out. It was some nasty spirit, too pungent to be drunk, probably some alchemical reagent.
Holding onto the jug and the torch, Lance waited. A few overly eager bugs entered the storeroom. Lance ignored their incessant buzzing, as he did their attempts to land on his exposed skin.
He waited stoically until the main body of the swarm appeared in the portal and moved towards him.
This was his cue to take a big gulp of the alchemist’s rotgut and spray it from his mouth onto the torch and the bugs directly ahead.
A fiery inferno blazed through the cave, consuming innumerable bugs as it expanded forward. Some of the flames seeped back inside Lance’s mouth, burning the delicate flesh, but it was a small price to pay for defeating a foe impervious to steel. Still, a part of the swarm remained. With a pained squirm, Lance took a second gulp and breathed fire again, nearly passing out from excruciating feedback.
Down on his knees, he could hear blood pumping inside his ears and felt his entire mouth pulsing with agony. And through that haze, he saw one of the alchemist’s creations shamble into the room.
Throwing whatever strength he had left into getting up, Lance faced the cadaver, and after a moment of introspection, smashed the jug over its head and stuck it with a torch.
The stiff lit up like a tar pit, but was seemingly unconcerned by the predicament and kept moving towards Lance. With the one exit blocked, Lance retreated as much as the room allowed, pressing his back to a shelf full of sundries.
Lance was preparing to push himself past the flaming corpse when it finally stopped moving and fell over as a lifeless charred lump.
Picking up a spare jug of spirits, Lance continued his blind dash for the exit. After everything he’s been through so far, luck finally smiled upon him when after just two more turns and a near-miss with a lone cadaver, he spotted the heartening glimmer of starlight.
Outside, Lance found himself staring at an ill-kept brigand camp, but given what he’d just been through, it still was a sweet, intoxicating sight. His pursuers be damned, Lance stopped to take a single deep breath of cool night air.
This brief moment of respite was interrupted by hurried Naqaran speech. A group of brigands, still breathing by the looks of it, was gathered around a flimsy table. Their eyes full of puzzled apprehension were aimed at Lance.
He placed himself in their shoes. Naked, dirty, covered in sores, bruises and burns, and holding onto seemingly random objects, he could easily pass for a demon to someone who didn’t have his first-hand experience with that bunch.
Having come to this realization, Lance did the only thing that made perfect sense to him, given the situation. He produced a prolonged guttural roar and charged the brigands.
And this was just too much for these common ruffians of the desert. Exchanging a few quick glances, they abandoned their dice game and scattered to avoid Lance’s supernatural wrath.
Knowing what was behind him, Lance considered joining them in this retreat, but without supplies, he had no chance of surviving a prolonged trek through the sandy wastes.
Instead of running, Lance ducked into the biggest tent. As he suspected, this was where the brigands stored their excess gear. He had no luck finding his own stuff, but when he emerged outside, he was wearing a pair of simple sandals and a long Naqaran outfit. He also had with him one of their curved blades.
The triumphant feeling of once again having some clothes on evaporated when Lance saw a good hundred cadavers gathered by the cave’s mouth and the alchemist standing in their midst.
"You didn’t really think you would be able to escape?" the alchemist asked.
"Guess not," Lance said and started running. Not away, but towards the cadavers.
The alchemist, cooped up in his cavern for who knows how long, was too slow to react. When Lance was almost upon him, the cadavers started forming a wall around their master, but it was too late.
Lance stopped a few steps short of reaching his mark and simply lobbed the scimitar. The blade flew right past the cadavers and lodged itself in the old man’s throat, killing him on the spot.
Without the alchemist’s mind to command them, his creations became docile and were just standing around his corpse, their dead gazes completely blank.
It took some time and quite a bit of effort to corral all the cadavers, and whatever other abominations Lance could find in the caves, together. But once that was done, he doused them with spirits and threw in a torch.
With the massive pyre raging behind him, Lance more than earned his coin. The stars would guide him back to the city of Apis. From there, his legend would only grow.
THE END
