The transit wurm pulled into the Crossroads Quarter Station with a hiss of vaporized mana that flooded the lobby with green mist. A shriek sounded from the wurm as its pores expunged rivulets of milky white lymph fluid. The hum of conversation was broken by a cry that sounded like a stuck pig’s squeal mingled with a lion’s roar. The crowds parted as a dwarf hobble-dashed across the lobby. The wretch was a stunted chimera of serpentine Orochi, draconic Salamander and leonine Manticore. It let out that horrid sound when it saw its Salamander pursuers. Eyes were averted to newspapers, watches, and forced conversations resumed as the cloaked and armored dragonmen dragged the dwarf from the Crossroads Quarter Station. Standing tall among the apathetic city folk was a pallid Elf, disgusted at the injustice and absurdity of it all. Then again, this was Nurlins, “Murder Capital” of Afrikannia.
Din’s hand darted toward the hilt of his elderwood sword. He felt the eyes of station security and scowled. Those toothless ground-crawlers always get a pass. The Salamander would never be able to rip their prey’s throat and savor the spurt of lifeblood. I would be angry, too, if I couldn’t drink of that lovely wine before my meal. Since dwarves were genetic throwbacks, it would make more sense if the Salamander hunted elves like Din. Besides, Din thought as he searched for his prey, slaying these misbegotten reptiles would inspire no ballads.
These elves that styled themselves Naturalizers weren’t hard to track; their war paint and pulsating vine armor were eyesores among the throngs of businessfolk boarding and disembarking the transit wurm. Unfortunately the elves’ attire blended right in with vulgar trappings of the Rite of the Saproling. Tourists from the northern territories of Afrikaurannia seemed drawn to these woe begotten elves. Their ignorance encourages my brethren’s ignorance, Din lamented.
Din pushed his way through the throngs of tourists and boarded the wurm. Moss diamonds bathed the wurm’s bones and innards in green light. Din’s attention was drawn to the enchantresses stationed at the wurm’s exocrine glands. Their touch filled the glands’ excretions with serpent’s poison to deter ambitious hoods. It’s a beautiful, natural progression. Deity, it breaks my heart to think that my own kind could be so blind! He lowered his goggles and saw his misguided kinfolk’s mana signature. They were a pale green that stood in contrast to his emerald emanations. Healing shall come to you, my ailing brothers. Din raced after the Naturalizers, thinking of the vast magnifur tree skyscrapers and business towers his kind had shaped from the dense forests of the Afrikanian south.
Why do you stand against nature’s progression, brothers and sisters? Din wondered. Must nature be the unthinking, submissive brute that you believe it to be?
Green mana gathered about his hands as he closed in on the Naturalizers. One of them glanced back, saw him, and screeched a command in their language. A truly lamentable bastardization of Elfish and Basiliskish, Din thought as he threw a swarm of chittering green xantidi insects at the panicked Naturalists.
The xathridi exploded in bursts of green mana that hurled the Naturalizers into a pack of fleeing suites and tourists. Din grasped the vine armor of the nearest renegade elf and laid the blade of his sword against her throat. He spoke to her in Elfish. “I’ve been sent to help you, sister. An evil that the Deity’s druids claim cannot be cleansed has led you into misappropriation of Gilakin magecraft, and worse. Here, beneath the primal light of green mana, we will prove that it can be cleansed.”
“You are the bane of the Elf: Illusionist and Wizard!” she said in Elfish. It became so much white noise as Din dug his taloned fingers fed green mana into the wurmflesh near the fixtures of moss diamonds. Glistening white wurmflesh twisted into red-veined tendrils that ensnared the other Naturalists.
“I am a druid of the highest order, Sister Vix,” Din said. “Our oath asks that we bring Nature’s might against renegades that presume to control It.” He smiled in the face of Vix’s anger. “Your conviction toward the Naturalizers’ cause is admirable. We could use your fire among the druids.”
Din coughed out a bolus of green mana that coalesced into a falcon-headed beast with a leather crest, bat’s wings and the lower limbs of a lion. The creature cradled a pod of throbbing purple roots in its bird-clawed forelimbs. “My thanks, cockatrice, and feel free to make sport of whatever summons you find lacking.” The cockatrice issued a roaring squawk and vanished in a burst of green mist. Din breathed deeply of the mist, returning the conjuration to his cerebral summonscape.
Din saw fear in Vix’s eyes; it was mirrored in her companions. “Nature is a most impartial judge. It doesn’t need wasteful sorcery, wizardry, or enchantment. Whereas my order would presume to judge you in Nature’s name, I will yield to Nature.” He rolled Vix over, deaf to her ranting, and allowed his elderwood sword to bite into the delicious joining of head and spine. The age rings in his sword burned green as it exposed Vix’s cerebellum. Din cut free the seat of elven spellcasting and dropped it into the root-pod.
Green radiance leaked from between the pod’s purple roots to illuminate the horrified onlookers. Trellis snaked from within the pod and dragged the rest of Vix into its emerald-lined mouth. An elemental with a bloated stomach was birthed from the pod in a spray of green mana. Long, black limp things flopped around, tasting the air with forked tongues.
“It is for Nature to decide who may act as a true Naturalizer,” Din said. The writhing elemental rose before the elf on its centipede-like lower body. Snake heads prodded Din while its tongues dragged across his pale flesh. One of the huddled onlookers shrieked; a security officer burst into the wurm-car, fired a couple of shots at the monstrosity and was dragged back by the elemental. It devoured the confused suite and belched out his mucous-covered briefcase. Snake heads rested on the floor as the elemental laid itself prone. Din smiled and moved to the next Naturalizer.
“Vix has been welcomed back among the Elf as one of the Deity’s own warriors.” Din couldn’t hide his grin. She will also be among the tomes in the Dendrochron Library, assuming the druids don’t decide to violate Nature’s verdict and have her killed. How I wish to show my people the truth of our Order…yet that would be manipulation worth of a Wizard or Illusionist.
Din’s touch prompted the wurmflesh binding to pronate the next Naturalizer. This one’s shock of hair was still unbraided; he had yet to succeed in the Blooding Hunt that allowed the Elf to bind their hair into a braid symbolic of a root in the cosmic Evertree. Perhaps this silly departure into Vix’s scheme is a perversion of your Hunt, Brother. “Now I will give you another chance for your Blooding Hunt.” Din’s blade bit into the whimpering elf’s flesh. The world exploded in a burst of heat and rainbow strobes. Salamander… They will never find me in here, Din thought as he fled into darkness, seeking the cold comfort of the Evertree and their Deity.
*
Din’s journey brought him into a room that stank of sewage. “Well, it’s not sewage so much as Nature’s raw material waiting to return to the Deity.” After all, our ballads tell of the Deity’s mortal years, shaping the refuse of the world into new life.
“It’s ****, my waxing poetic friend.” The speaker leered at Din with a Salamanderan lizard’s snout that sagged into the hinged, tendril-bearded mandible of a Naja. A pair of Manticore wings hung limp from the little creature’s moss-carpeted arms. Silver scaled hands laid a plate on a wooden table beside Din.
The Elf had never seen anything like it. The fish was paralyzed by birthing pangs, leaving the fresh spawn unprotected. Din’s mouth watered at the sight of the meal while his mind raced. This fish is too small to be of use in combat, but perhaps it could serve as my eyes and ears in one of the Nyokalev Pods. He believed that some of the other druids were poaching for one of the Naja families. How else could one explain the flesh traders’ use of bio-engineered sea-beasts?
The Dwarf’s mouth opened in a lizard’s grin when Din spit out a mass of chewed fish and rice. The Elf wiped away streamers of drool and glared at the Dwarf. “It’s dead!”
“I would have saved you a human, but the others insisted on having them for a diversion. If we can catch Leatherlash before the festival, I might be able to get you something fresher.” The dwarf pushed away from the table and led Din from the room. When his eyes adjusted to the gloom, Din noted that the walls were made of mushroom-covered roots. The tunnels beyond the chamber were of similar construction. “My name’s Oilhands, by the way.”
“I’m Din, of the Beast,” the Elf replied. Order, I think, implies a semblance of control that has no place in Nature. In the dark corners he saw the furtive movements of other dwarves. The shadows cast by guttering torches were grotesque amalgamations of the various races of Ragavikros. Is this all that these poor things have to look forward to? Din recalled his services to the scientists on southern continent Merlingir. He’d seen the dead dwarves kept in preservatives for future use. Firing the laboratories had been a mercy then, and it would be a mercy now. I would, of course, wait to retrieve the ashes so that the liberated dwarves would experience a rebirthing.
A faint sound reached Din’s ears from within the sewers. Their laughter, hooting, and singing chilled the Elf’s blood. Shame on you, Din, you know they can’t help it. How would you sound if you tried singing with the mutated vocal cords of a Salamander, Manticore, Troll and Nyokalev? Din lowered his goggles and was startled at the multitude of red mana signatures surrounding them. They’re everywhere.
Oilhands lead Din down a tunnel decorated with stained red, black and green silken streamers. Graffiti painted in red on the root walls showed dwarves dancing around humans. Beyond the tunnel they came to an amphitheater. The stench of the massed dwarves—a mingling of decomposition, wet animal fur, rancid fish, and reptile pheromones—overwhelmed Din. He got sick in a dark corner, wiped his mouth, and rejoined Oilhands. The reek prompted Din to recheck their mana signatures—maybe his goggles had been damaged in the Salamanderish ambush—and he saw that the dwarves were, indeed, blotches of red mana.
“I’m sorry, Din. It seems you’ll have to wait a while longer for fresher meat.” Oilhands’s words fell on deaf ears. Din’s keen eyesight allowed him to read the plaques beneath each cage. One said THE HUMAN DUCK; the naked man behind the rusted bars was a legless torso that dragged himself around with the stumps of his elbows. That was the most pleasant spectacle; Din looked back down at Oilhands, horrified at the dwarf’s gleeful expression. Oilhands glanced at Din with black lizard’s eyes. A wattle of flesh swelled red from under his hinged sea-serpent’s jaw. “Much as I’d like to stay for the show, come, we have work you and I.”
They are indeed tragedies of red mana, Din told himself. He allowed Oilhands to lead him by the hand through the sewers. I do believe I detected an artist’s pride in their festival…and all the rage and passion that accompanies red mana. “Oilhands, are all dwarves—” A sharp pain rippled through Din’s crotch and abdomen. He jumped back and saw strips of his flesh hanging from the finned spines running between Oilhands’s Manticore wings. Oilhands glared at Din and flared his wattle.
“We are not dwarves, you ****ing ignorant ****. We are Duergar!” Oilhands snatched Din’s delicate wrist, his nails digging into the Elf’s skin. He yanked Din along in his wake, nearly dragging him across the **** and piss stained service paths of the sewers. The Duergar’s ragged panting, animalistic, frightened Din. His fear heightened when Oilhands slipped into silence. They left the meager light of the torches and proceeded in darkness. Oilhands said “Forgive me, Din. I assumed your kind would know that we don’t like to be branded with our makers’,” Oilhands spat maker as if it were a piece of cooked meat, “term for our people.”
“If only the Elf were as passionate about their individuality,” Din said. A scent of oil began to intermingle with the stink of raw sewage. “I think we could learn much from the Duergar. Deity knows we’ve extended a hand in friendship to the Salamanders more times than they deserve.” And had that friendly hand infected with bloodflame.
A vision came to Din of the expedition into Norskavia’s wooded foothills. In those visceramoss forests they’d pursued rogue Salamander working with a Naja Pod. A grievous violation of Nature that engulfed that continent in a frenzy of looting, warmongering and raping; what choice did I have but to save those who tried to impose control over Nature? The Norskavian barbarians had been mowed down by Salamanderish spear guns. Din recalled the gelid red mana clinging to the serrated spearheads; out of curiosity he’d pricked one of the near-dead barbarians—the poor chimp’s chattering had tempted Din to kill the thing—and nearly had his face burned off by a burst of scarlet flame. Bloodflame, taken from the Salamander’s mana sacs.
“I feel bound to tell you, Oilhands, that I’ve followed you thus far because I feel the gentle nudge of the Deity’s battle axe guiding me forward.” Din said. “Had I detected any hint that you—or any of the Duergar—sought to bend Nature to your own ends, I would have been forced to feed you to the rebirthing pod.” The Elf felt a stab of panic; the pod was missing.
Oilhands let out a sound like a phlegmy death rattle. “The Salamander ran off with it before we could stop them. That was quite the device, and it’s a damn shame it’s in the hands of those inbreds.” The Duergar saw confusion on Din’s face. “Those Salamander were among the refugee influx after Norskavia’s Nineteen Year War. Worthless dragon****s that tried to pull something over on dragons deluded enough to believe they were the Cosmic Dragonlords reforged.”
Thank You, Deity, for this is surely Your divine reassurance. Din thought. Now I know why You’ve forced me to allow these Duergar to continue in their tortured existence. To Oilhands he said: “I don’t pretend to know your reason for taking me this far, but I must recover that pod.”
“And so you will, my friend.” Oilhands released Din’s hand. There was a sound of gears turning followed by a flood of crimson light. The Duergar’s chimeric features were cast in the crimson glow of red mana trapped in the torch’s glass bulb. “Behold the source of nineteen years’ worth of bloodshed.” Oilhands unlocked the vaulted door and shoved it open. The pungent smell of oil derived from the bones of Ragavikros’s extinct behemoths—Titans, Sarkaidrun, and all manner of sea-beast—overpowered the sick stench of the sewers.
Din looked upon a vast serpentine shape suspended by chains from the chamber’s domed ceiling. Multitudes of Duergar scurried over the artifact dragon with cogs, gears, clockworks, hammers, mallets, nails, and strips of leather. The Elf felt a swelling of appreciation for the sort of passion he saw here. Beautiful, simply beautiful.
“And look there, Din.” Oilhands pointed to a side passage. The Elf went through and saw a room full of clockwork creations: beetles, avians, horses, beasts found in the deadliest parts of the Wild Places, all waiting to be activated. Din reflected on the upper class’s automobiles—beasts of burden fueled by the old kings of Ragavikros; beautiful avatars of Nature’s cycle. Din returned to the main chamber and, in the sparks spat by the Duergars’ drills and the smoke rising from the clockwork dragon, the Elf saw It: a green-skinned hulk with a goat’s head framed by a twisted mantle of horns. A fur cloak was draped over its broad back. Green mana burned in its slit-eyes; those phantasmal fires drifted toward Din like the will-o-wisps of the Deity’s Wild Place and crashed against the age rings in Din’s elderwood sword.
The Deity was gone in another burst of sparks and mechanical roar that caused Duergar to fall from the dragon. They exploded against the stone floor in bursts of bone, oil and viscera. You’ve given me the tools to find the pod and my commission. The Elf strode down the steps, among the mangled Duergar corpses. These are as the Order of the Beast. Din glance at the clockwork dragon. The soothing sound of its gears blended with the bleating, crippled Duergar that survived the fall to create a chorus that enervated Din. He realized that he was hungry. He looked and saw Oilhands skittering up a vine attached to the chamber’s root walls. The Duergar was communicating with the clockwork dragon. Din left Oilhands to Nature’s new avatar, kneeling before each of the beseeching Duergar. He took their deformed, twisted forelimbs in his delicate hands and whispered words of encouragement as his elderwood sword severed their jugulars. The red mana intrinsic to the Duergar race spiced their blood with the aroma and taste of cinnamon and cloves. Din lowered his goggles as he ate the living, singing Duergar. Within the miasma of green mist that shrouded his mindscape’s forest he saw the Duergar questing about their new home. Their excitement drove the Elf to eat faster.
Din had finished the last of the Duergar when he felt the familiar fish-scale touch of Oilhands. He turned his blood-soaked head to the Duergar and smiled, bearing his needlelike teeth. “They have peace now, friend. This isn’t why you brought me here, though.”
“If you can do that when we run into the inbred Salamander, I’ll pretend this never happened.” Oilhands said with a laugh.
“What are you talking about?” Din said.
“Look at yourself, elf!” Oilhands snatched Din’s forearm and held it up before the elf’s face. The pale skin had been torn to bloody shreds by claws, talons, and Manticore pedipalps. He took a piece of metal and held it before Din. The Elf’s warped reflection was of a face dripping with strings of ripped elfin flesh. “If you survive this, I’ll feel a lot better about enlisting you and your kind.”
Din gripped the hilt of his elderwood sword. “I don’t mean to be rude, but will this interfere with recovering the rebirthing pod?”
“Not at all, Din, for we need someone…reputable…” Oilhands sneered, “…in the eyes of humankind to get our clockwork artifacts into the market place. I understand that you elves are especially fond of those most human of games.”
“Indeed we are, friend Duergar!” Din smiled. “Humans are one of Nature’s most adaptable animals; their interpretation of Survival of the Fittest is something of a curiosity of the Elf.”
Oilskin shook his head. “You wouldn’t believe the narrow minded view most of the Duergar hold toward your kind.” His laughter turned to a guttural roar and ended in a hacking cough. He gestured feebly toward the remains of Din’s meal. “Assumption certainly made an *** of them!”
“I don’t look kindly on disrespect for the dead.” Din said, tightening his grip on the elderwood’s hilt.
“Excuse me for my morbidity then.” Oilskin cleared his throat. “What I need is for these renegade Salamander to use our clockwork creatures in whatever variation of their Path of Sarkaidrun they’re playing at.” He pointed to the clockwork dragon. “We’ll save that for last and circulate the other models—the avians, beetles, beasts—in the market place. What’s better,” Oilskin leered, “is that we’ll make them affordable for every grade of human—the poor, middling, and ruling—and let that draw the Salamander’s attention. Then, once they’ve taken the bait,” Oilskin led Din to a workbench with a clockwork beetle. Its mechanical innards were laid bare for them to see, “we’ll use this chemosensory device,” the Duergar pointed out a square box in the beetle’s thorax, “to track them to their lair.”
“Brilliant plan, Oilskin,” Din said absently. He was focused on the clockwork dragon. It reminded him to the beasts said to ride with the Deity during the Blooding Hunt. “I must insist that you allow me to take the clockwork dragon as my mount.”
“Certainly, Din.” Oilskin beamed up at Din, revealing a double row of jaws beneath the serrated ridges of his Salamanderish lizard snout. “I would be thrilled to see you leading us against the Salamander. I don’t subscribe to the constellation worshipping ******** that seems to strangle Ragavikros, but it feels right that you mount the dragon.”
*
The southernmost section of Nurlins—the Crossroads Quarter—was loud. Clouds of black smoke hid the sight of humans, Salamander, and Elf rioting and stampeding as Salamanderish powder kegs exploded, showing them with gelid red mana. Skin and hide were engulfed in red flame that filled the air with acrid smoke; the sheer amount of it sent the elderly and infantile into fits of coughing and choking. Amidst it all swooped Din astride the Duergar’s clockwork dragon, waving his elderwood sword and singing out to the Deity as barbed lines snagged human, Salamander and Elf alike, dragging them and flaying them against the streets of Nurlins.
Oilskin stood alongside a pair of maimed elves that purported to have known Din. They were attired in vine-armor and watched the massacre with fire in their eyes. The Duergar grinned to himself. I shouldn’t have any trouble keeping my cousin supplied with Salamander for the slave trade. The humans and Elf of Nurlins will be delighted to take back their city from the scaled menace.
“I am sorry to both of you Naturalizers,” Oilskin said. He affected timidity as he pointed at Din. “He promised to help us put an end to the Salamanderish pilgrimage, the Path of Sarkaidrun. We’re but genetic throwbacks; how could we know the Elves—”
“Do not even call it a Elf,” said one of the Naturalizers. “That is a butcher given to Wizardry and Illusion.” He glanced at his comrade. “Put it down. Stick an arrow in its head.”
The other Naturalized drew a rapid-fire crossbow and unloaded a barrage of arrows. Din was engulfed in a cloud of bloody mist. Then he was falling into the smoking riot below. The clockwork dragon, pilotless, crashed into a dockside warehouse. It exploded in a burst of flame, raining fiery projectiles of steel and iron upon the panicked populace.
Their screams were a sweet hymn to Oilskin. I’m not the religious type, but damn it if I don’t compose a hymnal of this stuff!
*
Salamander were dragged, chained and drugged, into the sewers. Oilskin and the flesh-runner watched as the Duergar and Naja crew loaded the reptilefolk onto nautilus-like sea behemoths. After each pick-up Oilskin returned to his office with his cousin’s payment. Soon the Salamander were accompanied by Elf and humans accused of sympathizing with the lizardfolk or Elves. Oilskin took the juiciest looking humans for pleasure and kept them for himself. It’d be dishonest of me to sell my cousin broken goods. Each time Oilskin took a human, he envisioned the scientists who’d created him—and all of the Duergar—so many decades ago in their laboratories. I can hire an Elf huntmaster to track each of them down. Oilskin began taking human slaves in pairs—spouses, siblings, friends, homosexual or bisexual, it made no difference to him. They all broke the same.
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Din’s hand darted toward the hilt of his elderwood sword. He felt the eyes of station security and scowled. Those toothless ground-crawlers always get a pass. The Salamander would never be able to rip their prey’s throat and savor the spurt of lifeblood. I would be angry, too, if I couldn’t drink of that lovely wine before my meal. Since dwarves were genetic throwbacks, it would make more sense if the Salamander hunted elves like Din. Besides, Din thought as he searched for his prey, slaying these misbegotten reptiles would inspire no ballads.
These elves that styled themselves Naturalizers weren’t hard to track; their war paint and pulsating vine armor were eyesores among the throngs of businessfolk boarding and disembarking the transit wurm. Unfortunately the elves’ attire blended right in with vulgar trappings of the Rite of the Saproling. Tourists from the northern territories of Afrikaurannia seemed drawn to these woe begotten elves. Their ignorance encourages my brethren’s ignorance, Din lamented.
Din pushed his way through the throngs of tourists and boarded the wurm. Moss diamonds bathed the wurm’s bones and innards in green light. Din’s attention was drawn to the enchantresses stationed at the wurm’s exocrine glands. Their touch filled the glands’ excretions with serpent’s poison to deter ambitious hoods. It’s a beautiful, natural progression. Deity, it breaks my heart to think that my own kind could be so blind! He lowered his goggles and saw his misguided kinfolk’s mana signature. They were a pale green that stood in contrast to his emerald emanations. Healing shall come to you, my ailing brothers. Din raced after the Naturalizers, thinking of the vast magnifur tree skyscrapers and business towers his kind had shaped from the dense forests of the Afrikanian south.
Why do you stand against nature’s progression, brothers and sisters? Din wondered. Must nature be the unthinking, submissive brute that you believe it to be?
Green mana gathered about his hands as he closed in on the Naturalizers. One of them glanced back, saw him, and screeched a command in their language. A truly lamentable bastardization of Elfish and Basiliskish, Din thought as he threw a swarm of chittering green xantidi insects at the panicked Naturalists.
The xathridi exploded in bursts of green mana that hurled the Naturalizers into a pack of fleeing suites and tourists. Din grasped the vine armor of the nearest renegade elf and laid the blade of his sword against her throat. He spoke to her in Elfish. “I’ve been sent to help you, sister. An evil that the Deity’s druids claim cannot be cleansed has led you into misappropriation of Gilakin magecraft, and worse. Here, beneath the primal light of green mana, we will prove that it can be cleansed.”
“You are the bane of the Elf: Illusionist and Wizard!” she said in Elfish. It became so much white noise as Din dug his taloned fingers fed green mana into the wurmflesh near the fixtures of moss diamonds. Glistening white wurmflesh twisted into red-veined tendrils that ensnared the other Naturalists.
“I am a druid of the highest order, Sister Vix,” Din said. “Our oath asks that we bring Nature’s might against renegades that presume to control It.” He smiled in the face of Vix’s anger. “Your conviction toward the Naturalizers’ cause is admirable. We could use your fire among the druids.”
Din coughed out a bolus of green mana that coalesced into a falcon-headed beast with a leather crest, bat’s wings and the lower limbs of a lion. The creature cradled a pod of throbbing purple roots in its bird-clawed forelimbs. “My thanks, cockatrice, and feel free to make sport of whatever summons you find lacking.” The cockatrice issued a roaring squawk and vanished in a burst of green mist. Din breathed deeply of the mist, returning the conjuration to his cerebral summonscape.
Din saw fear in Vix’s eyes; it was mirrored in her companions. “Nature is a most impartial judge. It doesn’t need wasteful sorcery, wizardry, or enchantment. Whereas my order would presume to judge you in Nature’s name, I will yield to Nature.” He rolled Vix over, deaf to her ranting, and allowed his elderwood sword to bite into the delicious joining of head and spine. The age rings in his sword burned green as it exposed Vix’s cerebellum. Din cut free the seat of elven spellcasting and dropped it into the root-pod.
Green radiance leaked from between the pod’s purple roots to illuminate the horrified onlookers. Trellis snaked from within the pod and dragged the rest of Vix into its emerald-lined mouth. An elemental with a bloated stomach was birthed from the pod in a spray of green mana. Long, black limp things flopped around, tasting the air with forked tongues.
“It is for Nature to decide who may act as a true Naturalizer,” Din said. The writhing elemental rose before the elf on its centipede-like lower body. Snake heads prodded Din while its tongues dragged across his pale flesh. One of the huddled onlookers shrieked; a security officer burst into the wurm-car, fired a couple of shots at the monstrosity and was dragged back by the elemental. It devoured the confused suite and belched out his mucous-covered briefcase. Snake heads rested on the floor as the elemental laid itself prone. Din smiled and moved to the next Naturalizer.
“Vix has been welcomed back among the Elf as one of the Deity’s own warriors.” Din couldn’t hide his grin. She will also be among the tomes in the Dendrochron Library, assuming the druids don’t decide to violate Nature’s verdict and have her killed. How I wish to show my people the truth of our Order…yet that would be manipulation worth of a Wizard or Illusionist.
Din’s touch prompted the wurmflesh binding to pronate the next Naturalizer. This one’s shock of hair was still unbraided; he had yet to succeed in the Blooding Hunt that allowed the Elf to bind their hair into a braid symbolic of a root in the cosmic Evertree. Perhaps this silly departure into Vix’s scheme is a perversion of your Hunt, Brother. “Now I will give you another chance for your Blooding Hunt.” Din’s blade bit into the whimpering elf’s flesh. The world exploded in a burst of heat and rainbow strobes. Salamander… They will never find me in here, Din thought as he fled into darkness, seeking the cold comfort of the Evertree and their Deity.
*
Din’s journey brought him into a room that stank of sewage. “Well, it’s not sewage so much as Nature’s raw material waiting to return to the Deity.” After all, our ballads tell of the Deity’s mortal years, shaping the refuse of the world into new life.
“It’s ****, my waxing poetic friend.” The speaker leered at Din with a Salamanderan lizard’s snout that sagged into the hinged, tendril-bearded mandible of a Naja. A pair of Manticore wings hung limp from the little creature’s moss-carpeted arms. Silver scaled hands laid a plate on a wooden table beside Din.
The Elf had never seen anything like it. The fish was paralyzed by birthing pangs, leaving the fresh spawn unprotected. Din’s mouth watered at the sight of the meal while his mind raced. This fish is too small to be of use in combat, but perhaps it could serve as my eyes and ears in one of the Nyokalev Pods. He believed that some of the other druids were poaching for one of the Naja families. How else could one explain the flesh traders’ use of bio-engineered sea-beasts?
The Dwarf’s mouth opened in a lizard’s grin when Din spit out a mass of chewed fish and rice. The Elf wiped away streamers of drool and glared at the Dwarf. “It’s dead!”
“I would have saved you a human, but the others insisted on having them for a diversion. If we can catch Leatherlash before the festival, I might be able to get you something fresher.” The dwarf pushed away from the table and led Din from the room. When his eyes adjusted to the gloom, Din noted that the walls were made of mushroom-covered roots. The tunnels beyond the chamber were of similar construction. “My name’s Oilhands, by the way.”
“I’m Din, of the Beast,” the Elf replied. Order, I think, implies a semblance of control that has no place in Nature. In the dark corners he saw the furtive movements of other dwarves. The shadows cast by guttering torches were grotesque amalgamations of the various races of Ragavikros. Is this all that these poor things have to look forward to? Din recalled his services to the scientists on southern continent Merlingir. He’d seen the dead dwarves kept in preservatives for future use. Firing the laboratories had been a mercy then, and it would be a mercy now. I would, of course, wait to retrieve the ashes so that the liberated dwarves would experience a rebirthing.
A faint sound reached Din’s ears from within the sewers. Their laughter, hooting, and singing chilled the Elf’s blood. Shame on you, Din, you know they can’t help it. How would you sound if you tried singing with the mutated vocal cords of a Salamander, Manticore, Troll and Nyokalev? Din lowered his goggles and was startled at the multitude of red mana signatures surrounding them. They’re everywhere.
Oilhands lead Din down a tunnel decorated with stained red, black and green silken streamers. Graffiti painted in red on the root walls showed dwarves dancing around humans. Beyond the tunnel they came to an amphitheater. The stench of the massed dwarves—a mingling of decomposition, wet animal fur, rancid fish, and reptile pheromones—overwhelmed Din. He got sick in a dark corner, wiped his mouth, and rejoined Oilhands. The reek prompted Din to recheck their mana signatures—maybe his goggles had been damaged in the Salamanderish ambush—and he saw that the dwarves were, indeed, blotches of red mana.
“I’m sorry, Din. It seems you’ll have to wait a while longer for fresher meat.” Oilhands’s words fell on deaf ears. Din’s keen eyesight allowed him to read the plaques beneath each cage. One said THE HUMAN DUCK; the naked man behind the rusted bars was a legless torso that dragged himself around with the stumps of his elbows. That was the most pleasant spectacle; Din looked back down at Oilhands, horrified at the dwarf’s gleeful expression. Oilhands glanced at Din with black lizard’s eyes. A wattle of flesh swelled red from under his hinged sea-serpent’s jaw. “Much as I’d like to stay for the show, come, we have work you and I.”
They are indeed tragedies of red mana, Din told himself. He allowed Oilhands to lead him by the hand through the sewers. I do believe I detected an artist’s pride in their festival…and all the rage and passion that accompanies red mana. “Oilhands, are all dwarves—” A sharp pain rippled through Din’s crotch and abdomen. He jumped back and saw strips of his flesh hanging from the finned spines running between Oilhands’s Manticore wings. Oilhands glared at Din and flared his wattle.
“We are not dwarves, you ****ing ignorant ****. We are Duergar!” Oilhands snatched Din’s delicate wrist, his nails digging into the Elf’s skin. He yanked Din along in his wake, nearly dragging him across the **** and piss stained service paths of the sewers. The Duergar’s ragged panting, animalistic, frightened Din. His fear heightened when Oilhands slipped into silence. They left the meager light of the torches and proceeded in darkness. Oilhands said “Forgive me, Din. I assumed your kind would know that we don’t like to be branded with our makers’,” Oilhands spat maker as if it were a piece of cooked meat, “term for our people.”
“If only the Elf were as passionate about their individuality,” Din said. A scent of oil began to intermingle with the stink of raw sewage. “I think we could learn much from the Duergar. Deity knows we’ve extended a hand in friendship to the Salamanders more times than they deserve.” And had that friendly hand infected with bloodflame.
A vision came to Din of the expedition into Norskavia’s wooded foothills. In those visceramoss forests they’d pursued rogue Salamander working with a Naja Pod. A grievous violation of Nature that engulfed that continent in a frenzy of looting, warmongering and raping; what choice did I have but to save those who tried to impose control over Nature? The Norskavian barbarians had been mowed down by Salamanderish spear guns. Din recalled the gelid red mana clinging to the serrated spearheads; out of curiosity he’d pricked one of the near-dead barbarians—the poor chimp’s chattering had tempted Din to kill the thing—and nearly had his face burned off by a burst of scarlet flame. Bloodflame, taken from the Salamander’s mana sacs.
“I feel bound to tell you, Oilhands, that I’ve followed you thus far because I feel the gentle nudge of the Deity’s battle axe guiding me forward.” Din said. “Had I detected any hint that you—or any of the Duergar—sought to bend Nature to your own ends, I would have been forced to feed you to the rebirthing pod.” The Elf felt a stab of panic; the pod was missing.
Oilhands let out a sound like a phlegmy death rattle. “The Salamander ran off with it before we could stop them. That was quite the device, and it’s a damn shame it’s in the hands of those inbreds.” The Duergar saw confusion on Din’s face. “Those Salamander were among the refugee influx after Norskavia’s Nineteen Year War. Worthless dragon****s that tried to pull something over on dragons deluded enough to believe they were the Cosmic Dragonlords reforged.”
Thank You, Deity, for this is surely Your divine reassurance. Din thought. Now I know why You’ve forced me to allow these Duergar to continue in their tortured existence. To Oilhands he said: “I don’t pretend to know your reason for taking me this far, but I must recover that pod.”
“And so you will, my friend.” Oilhands released Din’s hand. There was a sound of gears turning followed by a flood of crimson light. The Duergar’s chimeric features were cast in the crimson glow of red mana trapped in the torch’s glass bulb. “Behold the source of nineteen years’ worth of bloodshed.” Oilhands unlocked the vaulted door and shoved it open. The pungent smell of oil derived from the bones of Ragavikros’s extinct behemoths—Titans, Sarkaidrun, and all manner of sea-beast—overpowered the sick stench of the sewers.
Din looked upon a vast serpentine shape suspended by chains from the chamber’s domed ceiling. Multitudes of Duergar scurried over the artifact dragon with cogs, gears, clockworks, hammers, mallets, nails, and strips of leather. The Elf felt a swelling of appreciation for the sort of passion he saw here. Beautiful, simply beautiful.
“And look there, Din.” Oilhands pointed to a side passage. The Elf went through and saw a room full of clockwork creations: beetles, avians, horses, beasts found in the deadliest parts of the Wild Places, all waiting to be activated. Din reflected on the upper class’s automobiles—beasts of burden fueled by the old kings of Ragavikros; beautiful avatars of Nature’s cycle. Din returned to the main chamber and, in the sparks spat by the Duergars’ drills and the smoke rising from the clockwork dragon, the Elf saw It: a green-skinned hulk with a goat’s head framed by a twisted mantle of horns. A fur cloak was draped over its broad back. Green mana burned in its slit-eyes; those phantasmal fires drifted toward Din like the will-o-wisps of the Deity’s Wild Place and crashed against the age rings in Din’s elderwood sword.
The Deity was gone in another burst of sparks and mechanical roar that caused Duergar to fall from the dragon. They exploded against the stone floor in bursts of bone, oil and viscera. You’ve given me the tools to find the pod and my commission. The Elf strode down the steps, among the mangled Duergar corpses. These are as the Order of the Beast. Din glance at the clockwork dragon. The soothing sound of its gears blended with the bleating, crippled Duergar that survived the fall to create a chorus that enervated Din. He realized that he was hungry. He looked and saw Oilhands skittering up a vine attached to the chamber’s root walls. The Duergar was communicating with the clockwork dragon. Din left Oilhands to Nature’s new avatar, kneeling before each of the beseeching Duergar. He took their deformed, twisted forelimbs in his delicate hands and whispered words of encouragement as his elderwood sword severed their jugulars. The red mana intrinsic to the Duergar race spiced their blood with the aroma and taste of cinnamon and cloves. Din lowered his goggles as he ate the living, singing Duergar. Within the miasma of green mist that shrouded his mindscape’s forest he saw the Duergar questing about their new home. Their excitement drove the Elf to eat faster.
Din had finished the last of the Duergar when he felt the familiar fish-scale touch of Oilhands. He turned his blood-soaked head to the Duergar and smiled, bearing his needlelike teeth. “They have peace now, friend. This isn’t why you brought me here, though.”
“If you can do that when we run into the inbred Salamander, I’ll pretend this never happened.” Oilhands said with a laugh.
“What are you talking about?” Din said.
“Look at yourself, elf!” Oilhands snatched Din’s forearm and held it up before the elf’s face. The pale skin had been torn to bloody shreds by claws, talons, and Manticore pedipalps. He took a piece of metal and held it before Din. The Elf’s warped reflection was of a face dripping with strings of ripped elfin flesh. “If you survive this, I’ll feel a lot better about enlisting you and your kind.”
Din gripped the hilt of his elderwood sword. “I don’t mean to be rude, but will this interfere with recovering the rebirthing pod?”
“Not at all, Din, for we need someone…reputable…” Oilhands sneered, “…in the eyes of humankind to get our clockwork artifacts into the market place. I understand that you elves are especially fond of those most human of games.”
“Indeed we are, friend Duergar!” Din smiled. “Humans are one of Nature’s most adaptable animals; their interpretation of Survival of the Fittest is something of a curiosity of the Elf.”
Oilskin shook his head. “You wouldn’t believe the narrow minded view most of the Duergar hold toward your kind.” His laughter turned to a guttural roar and ended in a hacking cough. He gestured feebly toward the remains of Din’s meal. “Assumption certainly made an *** of them!”
“I don’t look kindly on disrespect for the dead.” Din said, tightening his grip on the elderwood’s hilt.
“Excuse me for my morbidity then.” Oilskin cleared his throat. “What I need is for these renegade Salamander to use our clockwork creatures in whatever variation of their Path of Sarkaidrun they’re playing at.” He pointed to the clockwork dragon. “We’ll save that for last and circulate the other models—the avians, beetles, beasts—in the market place. What’s better,” Oilskin leered, “is that we’ll make them affordable for every grade of human—the poor, middling, and ruling—and let that draw the Salamander’s attention. Then, once they’ve taken the bait,” Oilskin led Din to a workbench with a clockwork beetle. Its mechanical innards were laid bare for them to see, “we’ll use this chemosensory device,” the Duergar pointed out a square box in the beetle’s thorax, “to track them to their lair.”
“Brilliant plan, Oilskin,” Din said absently. He was focused on the clockwork dragon. It reminded him to the beasts said to ride with the Deity during the Blooding Hunt. “I must insist that you allow me to take the clockwork dragon as my mount.”
“Certainly, Din.” Oilskin beamed up at Din, revealing a double row of jaws beneath the serrated ridges of his Salamanderish lizard snout. “I would be thrilled to see you leading us against the Salamander. I don’t subscribe to the constellation worshipping ******** that seems to strangle Ragavikros, but it feels right that you mount the dragon.”
*
The southernmost section of Nurlins—the Crossroads Quarter—was loud. Clouds of black smoke hid the sight of humans, Salamander, and Elf rioting and stampeding as Salamanderish powder kegs exploded, showing them with gelid red mana. Skin and hide were engulfed in red flame that filled the air with acrid smoke; the sheer amount of it sent the elderly and infantile into fits of coughing and choking. Amidst it all swooped Din astride the Duergar’s clockwork dragon, waving his elderwood sword and singing out to the Deity as barbed lines snagged human, Salamander and Elf alike, dragging them and flaying them against the streets of Nurlins.
Oilskin stood alongside a pair of maimed elves that purported to have known Din. They were attired in vine-armor and watched the massacre with fire in their eyes. The Duergar grinned to himself. I shouldn’t have any trouble keeping my cousin supplied with Salamander for the slave trade. The humans and Elf of Nurlins will be delighted to take back their city from the scaled menace.
“I am sorry to both of you Naturalizers,” Oilskin said. He affected timidity as he pointed at Din. “He promised to help us put an end to the Salamanderish pilgrimage, the Path of Sarkaidrun. We’re but genetic throwbacks; how could we know the Elves—”
“Do not even call it a Elf,” said one of the Naturalizers. “That is a butcher given to Wizardry and Illusion.” He glanced at his comrade. “Put it down. Stick an arrow in its head.”
The other Naturalized drew a rapid-fire crossbow and unloaded a barrage of arrows. Din was engulfed in a cloud of bloody mist. Then he was falling into the smoking riot below. The clockwork dragon, pilotless, crashed into a dockside warehouse. It exploded in a burst of flame, raining fiery projectiles of steel and iron upon the panicked populace.
Their screams were a sweet hymn to Oilskin. I’m not the religious type, but damn it if I don’t compose a hymnal of this stuff!
*
Salamander were dragged, chained and drugged, into the sewers. Oilskin and the flesh-runner watched as the Duergar and Naja crew loaded the reptilefolk onto nautilus-like sea behemoths. After each pick-up Oilskin returned to his office with his cousin’s payment. Soon the Salamander were accompanied by Elf and humans accused of sympathizing with the lizardfolk or Elves. Oilskin took the juiciest looking humans for pleasure and kept them for himself. It’d be dishonest of me to sell my cousin broken goods. Each time Oilskin took a human, he envisioned the scientists who’d created him—and all of the Duergar—so many decades ago in their laboratories. I can hire an Elf huntmaster to track each of them down. Oilskin began taking human slaves in pairs—spouses, siblings, friends, homosexual or bisexual, it made no difference to him. They all broke the same.