Chapter14 - Hellfire Forged
Gondorrah--Agartha, Antediluvian Age
Ahlgrim Thale shivered in the chill of his salon. The ermine-trimmed velvet robe that draped over his powerful shoulders did little to stave off the cold draft in the chamber, and he drew the waist tight against his chiseled physique.
Dark tresses, ringlets glistening with perfumed oils, flowed out from underneath a snake-shaped circlet on top of his head. The black mane cascaded down over his sinewy back, tied in golden cords. The heavy jeweled crown sat just above the branded sigil burned into his forehead. Thale traced a finger around this curious cuneiform in dark contemplation. It was a wound--a circled dot sending out three spirals of unequal curls like a depiction of some malformed octopus--seared into his flesh long ago at the hands of some crazed Averninoch warlock. It was a maddening mark, its purpose eluding the warrior-priest even to this day, even though its pain lingered.
Bronzed hands tied the robe tightly about his torso then reached for a silver cup of red liquid. Neither could defeat the frost in the air.
Thale drained the goblet and let it come to rest on the glided table top before him. His massive fingers, callused and scarred, ran across the smooth polished oaken top. His olive features danced and dashed against the reflective surfaces of the table and cup, distorting the powerful jaw-line and brooding brow into a comic grotesquery of the warrior-priest.
Thale groaned in discontent and sat at the table. A plate of cheeses and fruits before him held no allure, a notion surprising to this man who was once a pitiful beggar-child in the wanton and wicked streets of the land called Gondorrah.
Thale was born in the land of Canaan, north of Anrune, and worked for his father in the purple-dye trade his ancestors were famous for until his thirteenth year, when his village was sacked by an Anakim warlord. He was sold off as a spoil of war to an Anrunic vice-merchant in Zeboiim.
When Thale was of an age, or more to the point, when he had a belly full of his master, he liberated himself by his own bloody hands and set out to seek his fortune in the world.
As part of a Bedouin caravan, he managed to acquire several trades and skills that served him well as he grew to manhood: thievery, fighting, haggling, killing--all were but some of the long list of special talents the boy showed an affinity for. All those, and sorcery, as well.
He honed his skill-at-arms as a mercenary in the employ of the many warlords constantly in dispute along the fluid boarders of Gondorrah: Thracian infantry, Phoenician light cavalry, Thule shock soldiers, Jahannion flame-hurlers-–he waged war with them all. Or against them all. A sell-sword disavowing all loyalties but his own purse and purpose. Whoever would pay the most coin would decide whom he would call enemy.
When not on the march, he would sell himself as a warrior-whore to provide personal escort to the highest bidder, witch or warlock, and in return for his favors, at arms and otherwise, he would learn to read and write. And he would devour the arcane art as a prodigal apprentice: Gehennion sorcery, Stygian death-rites, Sumerian thaumaturgy, Avernioch necromancy, Thule alchemy, Anrunic apothecary, Hyperborean astrology, Lemurian cryptomancy, Argathian tetragrammancy--he was a conduit channeling them all. So great was his proficiency, several times he had to dispatch his employers who, jealous over his ability to overtake their own tuition, sought to end his training at the end of a knife blade or poisoned cup.
His status and station grew great and ever greater amongst the clans and lodges and orders of myriad arcane covens. Through magick and might Thale muscled his way from poverty to princely prowess in the most majestic coven in Gondorrah: the Agarthan cult of The Eyes of Tethys. In league with the ruling Grigori, this sect controlled the vast reaches of Gondorrah from their towering city-states. The Watcher-Grigori stood overlord and carved kingdoms from every land, their shimmering basalt pyramids standing guardians over Man: Mu, Thule, Quiviera, Shamballah, Lemuria, Anrune, Hyperborea. Each kingdom housed a capital governed by Nephilim overseers, the God-Kings of the Grigori, who employed a host of Gibborrim garrisons that controlled the populations at hand. In every courtyard and corner, and in every marketplace and mansion, and in every bordello and bathhouse, and in every house and hovel--man and demon cavorted in communion, practicing at the darkest arts of their overlords’ instruction.
At the heart of each city, rose a cyclopean pyramid wrought by the hands of man, devised and designed under the sickening scholarship offered by the Watchers.
The great city of Agartha ruled over them all. Even its sewers reached out into every corner of the continent like a grasping octopus, prying into every nook and cranny of the ancient civilization. It was said that what could not be seen from the monolithic spires presiding over Agartha, could be heard from its labyrinthine passages underneath. Nothing was unknown to the Tethys enclave.
The coven fraternized freely with the Nephilim renegades that defied the very edicts of the All Mighty, who made pacts, swore oaths, and openly mingled with Man. The unholy offspring of these manifold unions brought forth the most vile abominations the world would ever know and threw all of humanity into twisted torments and unspeakable debaucheries that called the great city of Agartha home.
From here the God-Kings emerged as overlords to the lesser beings below in the world.
There were three ways to obtain a residence in the higher echelons of Agarthan society: possessing great wealth would buy a berth, performing powerful sorcery would pave a path, or providing unspeakable services would secure a sanctuary. Ahlgrim Thale acquired his lodgings by prowess in all three.
His conquests along the highways and high-seas across the hinterlands as a warrior and freebooter had earned him coffers overflowing with gold and silver and jewels. His conquests in the bed-chambers of the Gondorran aristocracy had earned him the tutelage of the great and grand grimoires of arcana. His conscience driven by lust and greed had gained him the necessary tools to stop short at nothing to fulfill his desires to become a God-King.
The acquisition of his current chambers, and the murder it took to seat him there, was but one more flag-stone on the stairs of that journey to forging a birth right to be handed down to his chosen son. He had arrived. He was a member of the coven’s council. He held a station of high honor in title and reputation, matched by the chambers he now possessed and the garrison of soldiers at his command. Here, in the expansive penthouse in the central pyramid of the Tethys enclave, he had cut out a corner of the most powerful cult feared by Man, and he now walked the halls trodden by man and demon alike, sharing in a world so few would ever touch.
And yet, in the cold dank of a murdered witch’s domicile, amongst her sofas and divans, tomes and parchments, jewelry and linens, fetishes, liquors and perfumes, his heart was heavy with the treacheries that lay in his wake.
His victory waned without mirth or satisfaction. The blood on his hands belied the ever-present threat that, though his bronze body was a honed implement of violence and his mind a toned tool of savage sorcery, his triumph could be borne away in the fleeting flick of a sharpened tip in the dark or a poisoned drop in a crowd. For all his machinations, he failed to possess the one treasure he truly desired--to claim the affections of Jezebeth: the Witch-Queen of Rephaim.
Jezebeth was a surpassing beauty with a cold heart and a lust for her own designs. Powerful and proud, she sought to rule alone. Her power was legend. Her form irresistible. She would give herself to no man and no man would take her, though many had died in the attempt. Her spell upon Thale was as a granite vault, though, and nothing he could do would escape it. And he feared for the weakness she wrought upon his soul.
Though he now had the means to arrange a union and she had accepted his proposal, his desire was folly. His mind could not deny that feigned lust had brought him hence, his knife still wet with witch’s blood, and that his insatiable love for the Witch-Queen would find him trapped in the same game at the other end of the blade. He could see it, but not avoid it. For it was only Jezebeth, whose womb could bring forth the true triumph he craved.
The doubt grew, and in the growing became a fate he was charging headlong towards. A doubt as black as the heart that brought him thus; that of all he possessed in riches, power, might, and majesty, could be forfeit in the blink of an eye or a drop of a coin. For all that he had attained he lacked one thing he could never have. Trust.
The loneliness he had sealed for himself was sure and solid, as solid as the stone foundation upon which sat the hideous legacy that was Agartha.
Filling his silver cup and draining it only served to drive home his melancholy, its liquid fire refused to drive away the cold, and the voice that filled his hollow chamber ran him through as if it were a spear tip.
At first, Thale thought it had been a phantasm of his own doing or a final spell cast from beyond by his dead paramour, but those notions evaporated when the echo in the chamber proved to be a call from behind.
“Ahlgrim Thale,” the oily voice called out, “Do not turn to look upon me.”
Thale hesitated, his neck jerking, but heeding the request at the last.
“Cast your eyes to me at your peril, Ahlgrim Thale.”
“Who is it who dares disturb my chamber? I am Thale-Sorcerer, Warrior-Priest of Tethys. I will see you flayed.”
Thale reached his hand to the hilt of his bronze sword, a weapon that few men could wield two-handed that he managed viciously with one.
“I know who you are, Ahlgrim Thale of the Eye of Tethys. Reaver. Thief. Murderer. The would-be God-King. Slave.”
The voice was hypnotic and soothing, despite its mocking tone. It had a maternal quality that at once eased and enraged the warrior-priest. For no reason he could discern, an image emerged into Thale’s mind’s eye: a blonde haired man with delicate features and blue eyes so searing as to cause even the mighty Thale to quiver. Jezebeth in the skin of a man.
The visage of the unseen intruder burned brightly, golden and terrible in his brain, and he felt at once frozen and scorched in its presence.
“Who are you?”
“I am the Morningstar, Ahlgrim Thale,” the voice grinned. “I am your ally, if you will entertain my request.”
“You are the Usurper?”
“I am the Rebel,” the voice chided softly. “I am the Outcast. I am the Fallen. I am the Satan. I am Lucifer.
“But,” the voice rolled warmth over Thale, comforting him, “if only you would call me Lord, I will give you that which you so desperately seek and sustain you in your ascension.”
“How would you do that?” Thale spat.
“Champion me and I will champion you. Together, we will serve each other.”
“And if I refuse?”
“I will find another to supplant you.”
“What army can stand before the cohorts I command?” Thale huffed.
“Oh, dear Favored, such grotesque diversions are the province of the unsubtle brethren I removed from my ranks eons ago.
“Pull your blade, then, if you must. Let us settle the matter as equals.”
It was as if compelled, that Thale withdrew his blade, only to find the tail of a venomous hooded viper writhing in this hands, entangled about his wrist and straining to strike with dripping fangs at his terrified visage.
“You see, you sit on a fulcrum that I hold sway. But for an instance of mercy, you still pull breath in this world. You be but a moment from death and in the next realm, you will rue a rash decision made out of hubris. This is an assurance.”
The snake in his hand, but for his iron grip and straining thews, lurched forward, gleefully seeking to sink its teeth into the sweating flesh of the warrior-priest.
“Die here and now, and I will find my avatar in the next apartment. Or the next. Or the next. Eventually, I will find one with whom wisdom will begat glory untold. One who will plant the seed you so desire, into the fertile womb you covet.”
Thale bristled, but strained further against the serpent at his arm.
“But you, mighty Thale, are at the top of my list,” the voice cajoled. “Pray, do not disappoint me.”
Thale could feel his arm going numb, even as he brought his free hand to the neck of the serpent and redoubled his efforts. The creature responded in kind with an ease that brought a pitiful groan from the man, his face twisted into a grim rictus of horror, his fingers slipping against its scaly skin as it crept ever forward.
Thale let loose a bellow that shook the room.
“What would you have me do?” the warrior cried.
The snake became his sword, the tip lunging forward towards his neck. Thale barely caught himself, and the blade fell with a clatter to the stone floor below.
“A reasonable question,” the oily voice continued. “You see, before The Fall--before the lines were drawn between the Host and the battle was joined--the Watchers pulled themselves out of the conflict. Politicizing vermin afraid of taking a stand one way or the other, they chose to step back in hopes of finding a berth of comfort in the aftermath. When the war ended, they found themselves awash in coward’s spoils. Left with nothing but the dust of the dead. Disgraced and castigated on all sides, they took up with the only allies they could muster. Man.
“Now, here they are, kings and queens of the world, yes? Giants in a playpen,” Thale’s fist clenched involuntarily.
“Yes, you are well acquainted with them, aren’t you? The Grigori and their loathsome offspring, the Nephilim, are living high and mighty. Playing with you all, as carelessly as a child with stones. And with each generation they bear forth a lesser community of rabble that does nothing but push forth the hand of God towards your destruction.”
The warrior-priest of Agartha held his breath, biting down on his tongue. The man had sold his soul to reach his station, yet the words drowned him in humiliation. A stinging, numbing revelation that he had cast his lot amongst callow cohorts, hollow husks of hubris serving an impotent pantheon; that his past conquests, borne in equal parts of brutal barbarism and inglorious ignominy, had merely made him a monster, but not a king. Not a god. To claim that crown, Thale now knew, would take a renewal of supplications to a much dire authority.
“O! You think differently. All your ilk does. These creatures are the fantastic benefactors to your weary and toilsome plight on this rancid clump of clay. But what you do not see is that the further you turn your back to Him, the closer to His Wrath you stumble.
“Each day you and your lot carouses in their shadow, you draw judgment closer.
“Trust me: that is not a cup you want to sip from.”
Thale flexed against the chill in his bones and burning beads of sweat dripped past his brand and into his eyes. He gulped air and felt the pressure in his chest rising, inexplicably, as the voice pushed and pulled him from despair to inspiration and back again.
“Here in this place, the very heart of their manifestation, do they even now drive us all to our doom. And they are not concerned. Having abandoned either side, they have abandoned themselves. Insolent children, they seek to wantonly shatter their playthings unto the point of swift and total retribution. They cannot win and so out of spite they seek to despoil it all in rampant, puerile pettiness. Content to avenge their plight at the expense of all else.
“I would stop them, but I need assistance.”
“Why?” Thale growled, “Why not just turn their cups to scorpions and sting them to death or make snakes of their staves and ruin them?”
“Ah, Ahlgrim Thale. Mighty as you are, you are still a man, aren’t you?” the voice mocked. “That is the Grigori way. Have you not listened to what I have said? Direct intervention is what has led us to this point. Bedding the daughters of men and mingling shoulder-to-shoulder with their husbands .... Their abominations and aberrations beget nothing but more ruination. That is the path of sure desolation.
“I have lost the battle, but I will not lose the war. Time has been ending since it began, but its pace, whether glacial or mercurial, is largely a matter of perspective of one’s vantage point. I would end slowly and risk the rewards of recreating all things in passing, than to tumble headlong into twilight. His hand can be stayed, and in doing so, a victory can be wrought. But for that, I need a weapon, deceitful and subtle and sure. I need you, Ahlgrim Thale. And you need a mate to craft your heir.”
The warrior-priest hackled, but at once felt the surge of power as the words of praise welled in his killer’s chest. His heart and mind raced as before him a vision took hold. A sardonic grin creased his lips as his face furrowed in the possibilities. It would not be in servitude that he would toil, but in collaboration.
“Behind you, on the dais, is a weapon worthy of a God-King no mortal hand has ever held,” the voice cooed. “It is unfinished. You will complete it and use it to vanquish our enemies. You will find it wrapped in linen. Do not look upon its naked metal until it has been forged anew, in the fires of the forge above in the chambers of the Eye.
“Take it. I will walk with you, silently and unseen. We will make Agartha ours alone. You, my champion, will become one with the blade.”
“Why here?” Thale’s mind raced. “Why take arms against the mightiest of Gondorrah? Would we not fare better to start on the outskirts? Seek to overthrow Mu or Quiviera? Build our strength and march against the Grigori from the outside.”
“Cut the head and the beast will die, Ahlgrim Thale. We will strike fast at the heart and upon hearing of your exploits; the others will follow you or be driven into darkness. Stall and we only give them time to prepare their houses as fortifications.
The warrior-priest pondered those words and could feel within him the courage growing.
“You are my blade and I will wield you. You will cast aside Ahlgrim Thale, the Warrior-Priest of Tethys. You are become Ahlgrim Thale, Baal Butcher. You are … Hellrazor.”
The massive shoulders of Ahlgrim Thale heaved heavily. He rose then turned. On a gilded table lay a sword wrapped in the finest cloth, bound in a chain of bones and skin. He took the weapon in his hand, gripping it above the hilt. His tremendous bulk struggled against its heft and moved both hands to clutch it to his breast. He could not imagine easily wielding the thing in battle, but he gripped it tightly and walked towards the chamber’s exit, into the halls that led to the upper chambers of the pyramid.
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The upper floors of the massive stone structure at the heart of Gondorrah’s greatest city was a market place of the most vile amusements and atrocities the world had ever crafted. Chambers sequestered and secured for the sake of the ruling powers of evil men and women sprang forth from every corridor and antechamber, each one leading the visitor to new and unspeakable diversions into terrible pleasures of the flesh.
Brothel chambers brimmed with child-harlots and nubile whores ragged with the successive taking, but for those inclined a fresh lot of those ripe for the plucking could be procured.
Thale marched past, ignoring the charnel glee issuing forth from his compatriots and the screams of their captive trophies.
Death-house stench flowed into the halls, where rooms devoted to torturous murder-sports were arranged, and for those prepared to pay the death blows could be purchased.
Thale marched past, heedless of the hails of his brothers and sisters to join them at the gambling tables or knifing pits.
Vast tables of cannibalistic feasts were prepared and continuously flowing, where those hungering for the unending feasts of flesh could slake their blood thirst and fill on the meat of the dying.
Thale marched past, turning away from the cries of his comrades to partake in the banquet.
The high-throne of Agartha was surrounded by the braziers that boiled with the fat of the dead, rising with smoky black tendrils into the peak of the pyramid’s spire. Here the degenerate spawn of the Watchers and their children held court with the unclean of humanity reveling at their feet. The darkest arts were practiced and plied with cruel intent and depraved communion. At its center before the throne, sat the forge of The Eye of Tethys, a great oval furnace that blazed with an unholy intensity.
Thale marched forward into this den of evil, amidst the welcoming salutations of his brethren, to the call of the God-King of Lemuria.
Upon the basalt throne sat a plump sack of a thing, its bluish skin splitting in slick, purple welted-seams that bore tongues and teeth of a dozen faces. It licked and giggled and gulped in endless spasms of thirst and hunger. Arms reached out at points all along its girth, wrapped in bejeweled bracers of gold and silver, grasping here at cups of elixirs of mead and wine and blood; tearing there at roasted and raw flesh from spits hanging over dozens of burning pits bearing the choices meats of man and beast cooking alive. Atop the bloated mass rested a multi-faced head that wore diadems of curious designs, taken from the coffers of all the Gondorran lands. The thing was a horror to behold. The thing was Baal Ravan, Grigorian champion of Agartha, God King of Lemuria.
“Welcome!” many mouths upon and atop the thing on the throne cried. “Welcome Brother Thale!”
A chorus of greetings, led by the manifold mouths on Baal Ravan, rose into the God-King’s chambers. The congregation of the God-King’s palace, man and beast-thing and giant and Nephilim, echoed the greetings of their overseer.
“Take meat with us,” the cacophony of voices burst forth from Baal Ravan, each mouth frothing and oozing spittle.
Ahlgrim Thale lifted the blade out with both hands.
“I bring you this.”
“Ah,” the monstrous thing cooed. “A gift! It pleases us!”
Thale turned and cast the skin and bone wrapped sword into the smoking hearth of the forge. All within the chamber pressed forward to glimpse the token in the flames.
The faces of Baal Ravan quivered in anticipation of the warrior-priest’s actions, confused and amused. A great gust of wind churned through the palace chamber and green flames began to dance along the blade, as the wrappings peeled away to reveal the Damascene steel beneath it.
Ravan’s many mouths began to gibber and gawk, offering speculative conjectures in hoarse whispers and shrill cries at the trophy lain at his feet. Its fat fingers, greasy with gore, began to pick and paw or bridge together in excited agitation, anxiously awaiting a revelation.
“Tell us! Tell us! Tell us!” it pleaded.
“I bring you no gift, Baal Ravan!” Thale shouted.
The flames drew back at the collective gasping of the God-King’s shock, each mouth falling silent at the declaration.
“I am a harbinger. Your day is at an end.”
Thale’s voice erupted in a blast of some guttural blasphemy, as warding glyphs bled from his forehead and hands, crimson pentangles and circles and trapezoids of eldritch design inscribing runic protections against all manner of unspeakable sorceries burst as woads upon his skin.
The warrior-priest screamed in pain at their emergence, and grabbed the glowing weapon with both hands. The blade’s forte was wide and straight from its obsidian hilt, the length of man’s arm then curved at the foible out--at once a scythe and sword. It was double-edged and darkly gleaming.
Thale was surprised that now its weight was slight, balanced precisely in his hand--an extension of his arm, nay of his whole being. He held the scimitar above his head.
“Behold! Hellrazor!”
With a swift cut, the right hands of Baal Ravan were lost to the chamber floor; a second cut, and the left side was similarly severed.
A further stroke removed the many heads atop the bulging sack of skin of the God-King. The clatter of crowns rang out into the throne room, as a hundred mouths of Baal Ravan cried out in agony.
“Treachery!” the remaining mouths spewed, and in a spasm of death each maw vomited forth a geyser of bile.
The carcass collapsed under its bulk, and a river of fuming offal spilled over the vacant throne.
“Hold, all of you!” Thale implored, climbing onto the empty throne. “Hold! Hold, my kindred! Take arms with me and free yourselves from this tyranny. Make me your king and together we will rid ourselves of this blight. Defy me, and fall as you will, at the hands of Hellrazor!”
The warrior-priests of Tethys, the greatest sorcerers and witches of humanity, paused at his words. The Nephilim and Gibborim froze as well.
The braziers spattered and crackled in the gloom.
“Be not slaves, but slayers!” Ahlgrim Thale commanded.
Every man and woman borne of Man drew forth their weapons. And every abominable thing in the hall turned to flee.
“Hunt them: Gibborim. Rephaim. Anakim. Zamzummim. Hunt them all, to their last. Let none of their ilk escape. Let none of their bloodline survive!”
Through every chamber and hall and through every bordello and pit, the giant slayers tore forth, hacking and slashing as they ran, with the bloody blade of Ahlgrim Thale leading the savage chase, the cry of Baal Butcher--Hellrazor on each killer’s lips.
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And so it was, for the centuries to follow, that the Horegim Haanakim would hunt their bloody hunt. And the great foes were driven into darkness. But for Ahlgrim Thale, it was an effort that would flourish in vain. And though he would take his prize, the crimson-haired Jezebeth would remain forever barren.
Thale grimaced, his once raven locks now grayed and entwined in snagging coils against the rain flowing out from under a tarnished crown of bejeweled golden spires, as he lurched upward to the highest crag at the mountain’s peak. The scorched brand on his forehead ached, burning now as it had the day it first pierced his flesh.
Here he stood on a once exalted plain upon which vast stones had been set to the sky in an altar to dark gods, now fallen away in the torrent--a last precipice holding dolmens in impotent tribute to the false covenant of the foulest of gods.
His chest heaved with the effort, his lean outline a faint reduction of his once formidable form.
His wife, the once proud Jezebeth, stood by him, her long flowing silver-white robes drenched and clinging to her now-frail form. A tiara of dark diamonds dug into her milky flesh, opening wounds on her forehead so that she appeared to be weeping blood as the rivulets of red washed into her eyes, cascading down her sunken cheeks. She wailed against the rain and thunder, pounding in despair with her fists against the black stones and tearing at her dull hair between sobs--a fallen queen dying with her king.
Chill waters lapped against the rocks that betimes before ran red with the wanton sacrifices of the pure, cleansing the stones and reaching out for the warrior fleeing from the flood.
Thale the Slayer ground his teeth and lowered his shriveled brow to the torrent.
“Where are you?” he called out to the black sky. “Abandoned to cold treason. You have forsaken me. Am I so useless to you now? Is there no magick you can bring to bear to serve me now?”
The old warrior cried to the wild sea roiling below him, awaiting a response. None was returned, but the howling lamentations of his queen.
“Your great scheme,” the warrior spat. “For all your cunning and guile, you have wrought nothing. Here!” Ahlgrim Thale thrust his hand to the rising waters, “Here, the desolation you were sure we could forestall. It has come! This world, so wicked, is washed cleaned by the Hand of God!”
Thunderbolts crashed out into the darkness, alighting the vast turmoil on the horizon--white hot flashes against the blackened waters rising towards a black sky. And in those moments of blazing light, the old man caught a glimpse of the laden barge as it disappeared in the dark.
The rumbling in the aftermath was answered by the quaking from below, sending gouts of water over Thale, who struggled to maintain his hold on the slippery stones.
“And what of that? That vessel? It bears away the last remnant. Salvation. What is this,” Thale held aloft Hellrazor. “This steel is nothing, compared to that refuge. What have you provided for me, but a rusted tool worthless against the rain?”
As if in answer, a coughing, choking spasm sputtered above the din of the tempest, as one of them emerged from the frigid death-tide. The thick arms of a giant grasped at a ledge below Thale. The giant pulled itself up out of the clinging waves, seeking sanctuary amongst the rocks.
Thale swung out with his blade and lopped the head from the beast. The stump of its neck disappeared into the black swell.
The warrior laughed bitterly.
“Gondorrah drowns! Awash in her wickedness, her mountains fall! Her mighty cities crumble with the tide! And to the end I serve you! Or so it would seem, yes?”
The old man screamed and the lightening shattered the darkness again. The cross-beam cromlech atop the two mighty stones in his midst cracked with a sickening groan, and again, the old slayer laughed.
“But here is my treachery, Morningstar! Look! Look.”
Ahlgrim Thale, God-King of Gondorrah, tore away at his brow, removing the ancient mark seared to his flesh and cast the bloody swath to the rising seas. Taking the Hellrazor blade in both hands, he lifted the weapon to the dark skies.
Jezebeth in blind horror, fell to the man’s feet, clutching at his sandals pleadingly.
“No!” she cried, “No, Ahlgrim! Do not do this. Do not forsake ourselves to this hollow promise. Look! Look at me. I grow plump with your seed. I will bear you the son you want. You need. I will give this to you, and we will rise again in glory!”
The warrior kicked at the woman beneath him, but she would not release him. Abandoning his efforts, he ignored her finally, and held Hellrazor aloft.
“I am bound by this metal. It is me and I it. But to you I am bound no longer. An oath anew, I declare this day: Only those righteous in His eyes shall wield this blade. Only in service to Him, above, who brings the cleansing rains, shall see this steel again and with it deliver His justice.
“To you, O Lord of Hosts most high, I am Your unworthy servant!”
Ahlgrim Thale, with a final cry--face to the sky--plunged Hellrazor through the breast of his woman and drove it deep into the granite slate at his feet. For one final time, the rock would drink blood, but not this time of the innocent.
Jezebeth drew her last breath, eyes wild with disbelief at her husband’s murderous thrust.
Driving the blade into stone, Thale’s wrists shattered and his arms cracked even as the sword sunk to its hilt into the top of the precipice.
The heavens exploded in fury and the mountain shook. The cracked stone above split and fell, toppling the monoliths that had supported it.
The avalanche that broke free sent Ahlgrim Thale and his love to their watery tomb.
And in the black distance, a harrowing protest drowned in the maelstrom.
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“We must be gone!” Longinus cried out.
Hands pressed against unyielding blackness. The witch-hunter found himself enveloped in darkness, encased in a tomb.