David Farland - The Wyrmling Horde

"Am I a cur to be commanded so?" From the sound of his voice, Chulspeth had taken too many endowments of metabolism-perhaps twenty or more. Though he tried to slow his speech so that it might be better understood by common folk, it sounded squeaky and high, with strange lapses.

"You re not a cur," Vulgnash said, hoping to sound reasonable, hoping to lure his enemy into the open. "I honored you, and respected you. You were the first of our master s servants to taste the kiss of the forcible. It is rumored that you now crave it like wine, and you have lost all composure. I have come to reason with you, to offer you a chance to serve our master once again. You could be his most valued warrior."

"I would rather serve a bull s pisser than our craven emperor!" Chulspeth squeaked. Still there was no sign of movement from within the fortress.

"The emperor no longer rules Rugassa," Vulgnash informed him. "Despair has taken flesh, and now walks the labyrinth among us."

The news should have inspired a proper sense of religious awe in Chulspeth, or even fanatical zeal. Instead, there was only a yelp, followed by a snarl and a threat.

"I do not fear Despair!" Chulspeth cried. "What are you, Vulgnash, nothing but a serving boy, bringing your lord dinner one moment, then pleasuring him the next? You should have a place of honor beside your lord, not groveling at his feet." Now Chulspeth tried the inevitable bribe, one that Vulgnash had heard a thousand times before, though it varied in particulars. "You, Vulgnash, should dwell with us. You would be welcome here. You would have honor among us, and be a great lord. The finest food would be yours, the finest women."

A soft chuckle rose from Vulgnash, cool and deadly.

"I do not desire such things," he said. "And it would not be an honor to be counted among you. Lord Despair has come among us, and he has strange powers, unheard of among mortal men. I fear that if I were among you, he would crush us all beneath his heel, as if we were mice."

Chulspeth roared in anguish.

Attack! Despair s voice raged in Vulgnash s mind. Vulgnash raised a hand, prepared to unleash a fireball.

Suddenly, from the recesses of Caer Luciare, Chulspeth rushed from the shadows. Never had Vulgnash imagined such speed. Chulspeth came sprinting from the darkness, running at well over a hundred miles per hour, a black iron javelin in his hand.

Vulgnash hurled a fireball, white-hot and roaring in its fury. It was the size of his fist when he hurled it, but as it traveled it expanded in size, so that it was a dozen feet in diameter when Chulspeth came bounding through it.

For a heartbeat, Vulgnash imagined that his foe would simply race through the flames unscathed, like a child leaping through a campfire.

But Chulspeth hesitated an instant before it struck, long enough to hurl his iron javelin.

The javelin hurtled through the flames faster than any ballista dart. With hundreds of endowments of brawn to his credit, Chulspeth s attack was devastating. The javelin struck Vulgnash in the chest at dead center and hit with such force that it passed cleanly through him.

No matter, Vulgnash thought. This flesh will knit back together in time.

Then Chulspeth bulled through the fireball.

He might have done better to dodge it.

Perhaps Chulspeth did not imagine that the flames would be as hot as they were. Or maybe with so many endowments of stamina coursing through him, he imagined himself to be invincible. Or it might have been that the endowments of bloodlust he had taken had merely driven him mad.

For whatever reason, Chulspeth leapt through the fire and came roaring out the other side, his flesh blackened and oozing, his clothes blazing like an inferno. The fire wrung cries of agony from him, yet he charged toward Vulgnash, half-sword drawn, eager to battle to the death.

Flee! the Earth King s warning came.

Vulgnash flapped his wings, lunging into the air like a bolt of lightning, and though Chulspeth leapt to meet him, the bones of his legs snapped from the exertion, and he fell far short of his desired target.

Soaring high, Vulgnash left the High Lord of the Fang Guards there on the ground, sputtering and burning.

Now Vulgnash dove toward the central arch of Caer Luciare, where the remains of his fireball had blackened the pale archways and melted the gold foil.

Time to finish this, he thought.

He worried that he might meet strong resistance inside, but no warning from Lord Despair sounded in his mind.

He landed in the archway, and gathered heat once again. Kryssidia marched at his back. Together they strode into the tunnel, and there found the fortress as Kryssidia had described it: wyrmling warriors lay sprawled upon the floor in heaps as if they had fallen during drunken revelry, arms and legs spread akimbo.

They had not fallen from wine, but rather from granting endowments. Even now, some were rising to their feet, regaining the precious strength, stamina, and speed that they had granted to Chulspeth.

Vulgnash was sickened by this waste of power. The fools in the Fang Guard had not realized what they were doing. They were leaving Dedicates unprotected, perhaps unaware that if a Dedicate was slain, then its master would lose the use of its attributes.

If the humans had tried to return and take the fortress, Vulgnash thought, they would have found it an easy target.

Ahead, down the hall, he suddenly saw some Fang Guards ready to oppose him-half a dozen warriors standing shoulder-to-shoulder.

Their faces were filled with fear and rage in equal measure, and every muscle in their bodies seemed strained, ready to spring.

Yet they were not eager to fight.

"Are you such fools?" Vulgnash cried. "I could kill you all more easily than I dispatched Chulspeth. I should leave you to the mercies of the humans. But I will need force warriors to guard this fortress against the day of their return. Oh, and they will return-soon, and in great numbers. They left a mountain of blood metal behind."

Vulgnash s words decided them. Seeing that there was hope of forgiveness, one warrior hurled his battle-ax to the floor in a clatter, then dropped to his knees to do obeisance.

In seconds, the rest of the Fang Guards followed suit.

Kryssidia went striding forward, into the midst of them. "Cower before me," he cried. "For the Great Wyrm has chosen me and made me a lord over you. The Great Wyrm has come in the flesh, and now rules Rugassa and the world. But here, here in Caer Luciare, I shall be your emperor, and you shall be my people."

With the battle won, Vulgnash set to work on his next chore. He demanded blood metal, and the wyrmling troops showed him to a foundry, where hundreds of pounds of forcibles had already been poured into molds.

Vulgnash smiled. His master would be well pleased, and Vulgnash imagined that he would be rewarded with more endowments.

Beyond that, Vulgnash had gotten something that he had wanted this day-a little vengeance.

It was late evening when the Wizard Sisel and Lord Erringale reached the One True Tree. All through the day they had marched, and Erringale was witness to the rot and filth of the shadow world, the blight that afflicted the trees, the frequent ruins abandoned by the defected warrior clans, and the bitter scent of death.

He had never witnessed such things before.

"I thought that things were harsh in my world," he said at one point in the journey, as they hunched inside the ruins of an old inn. "I have seen places like this in the Blasted Lands, but never have I seen destruction so unrelenting."