William King - The Serpent Tower

A few strides took it round a corner and out of their line of fire. It paused for a moment and inspected itself for damage. The bullets had torn its flesh, weakening it somewhat but it knew that given time it would heal.

The walls around it burned with sorcerous energy and it sensed powerful spells designed to maze and confuse intruders. Even as it realised that, the spells began to warp and twist its sense of direction. It paused for a moment and concentrated on the scent of its prey.

As long as it could hold on to that it would find its victim.

Rik pushed on down the corridor. His eyes adjusted to the gloom and he noticed that sometimes, strange symbols swirled along within the walls. They did not seem to be doing this in response to his presence. He felt as if he was merely the witness to something that was always going on. The corridor carried him towards a split like a serpent’s tongue. One branch went up and the other continued on the same level. He took the path heading up. The lights became dimmer. The air became staler. The oppressive sense of alien presence continued to grow.

At times dizziness swept over him. At first he put it down to the bad air but after a while he realised that it was more than just that. Magical energy was all around. Sometimes he felt as if he were crossing invisible lines of it. He felt a tingling on his skin and pressure in his ears that should not have been there. The path curved and branched, curved and branched. Always he kept to the left hand path, the one that went higher. The deeper within the Tower he went the stronger the sorcerous pressure became.

He felt as if something was opposing him, willing him to retreat, not to proceed any further. There were times when his feet felt like lead, and it took an enormous effort of will to continue to press forward.

He took another step and felt something click beneath his foot. He cursed himself for his carelessness. He had been so busy trying to deal with the sorcery he had neglected to look for the most basic of traps.

He glanced around waiting to see what would happen: wondering if he had triggered something that would seal the corridors or summon a guardian. He had encountered such things in the treasure rooms of merchants back in Sorrow. For a long moment nothing seemed to happen then the floor underneath his feet began to move.

He struggled to maintain his balance as the stone started to flow like a river at a uniform pace, carrying him upwards and inwards swifter than a man could run. He tried to turn but there was nothing he could do. No matter how fast he ran he was carried along: all his efforts were doing was slowing his progress and exhausting himself.

Eventually he sat down on the stonework and marvelled at the Elder World sorcery that could make the glassy stone flow like a solidified form of water. He felt as if he were on a sledge being carried upwards, at forks he was effortlessly and dizzingly moved between switches so that he became lost. He was moving so quickly and so randomly that he doubted he would be able to remember his way back even if he were allowed to depart.

Had he triggered a trap, he wondered, such as ancient kings set for tomb robbers? Or was this a sorcerous defence set by Ilmarec? The thought that the ancient wizard might know he was here filled him with fear. His swift progress had taken on an air of unreality now. The lights blurred by, the stone felt warmer. He wondered if he was being carried out of his world and into another, passing perhaps from the reality of Gaeia into some extra-dimensional hell.

Ilmarec laughed with pure pleasure then began the final stages of the ritual. He was dimly aware that somewhere far away an alarm had been triggered. The moth wings of a warning system beat against his senses. Intruders, he thought, but there was nothing he could do about it now. He needed all his concentration simply to keep control of the Tower’s intelligence.

And there was something else too. Somewhere another entity had seized control of part of the Tower. Had the Old One waited for this most critical moment to try and rebel? He promised himself if that were the case he would make it pay for its insolence and soon.

Right now he had other more important things to worry about. This was the most important stage of the ritual. If he failed here, the magic would run out of control and the consequences would prove incalculable. So much energy saturated the Tower that if he failed to rein it in, even this mighty structure would be destroyed. A power like that of a god lay at the Tower’s core ready to be unleashed. If he failed to control it now, everyone within the Tower and for leagues around would be destroyed.

Under the deepest compulsions, the Old One had been most insistent on this when it warned him of the consequences of any mistake in the ritual. He gave his fullest concentration to invoking the magical symbols it had taught him. He would not fail. He must not fail.

Eventually, Rik saw that the moving ramp ended inside a cavernous chamber. Along each wall were enormous sarcophagi. In the middle of the chamber was an altar. The dim greenish glow still illuminated everything. He stepped out into what looked like an ancient tomb. He had a sense that what was buried there was not entirely dead.

Slowly, reluctantly, he pressed forward to inspect the nearest sarcophagus. It was long and low and he could see that the lid was made of translucent green crystal. Inside was a skeleton of a creature long dead. It has not been even remotely human. It has a strangely shaped ribcage and a long neck and a skull like that of a giant serpent. A small gem had been set right in the middle of its forehead. Tatters of scaly skin still clung to its bones. Long snakes of cable emerged from the walls of its coffin and led into its flesh. What ritual significance might they have had, he wondered.

He checked another sarcophagus and found something similar. When he looked closely he saw the serpent-like cables led out of the coffin and into the wall. Glancing around he saw that something was different about the sarcophagus across the chamber. Its inhabitant appeared better preserved.

As he moved closer a sense of dread grew within him but he was compelled against his will to approach the thing, and he feared what he would find when he got there.

Looking down into this crystal lidded sarcophagus, he saw a robed figure. It was a Serpent Man, clearly one of a different caste from the ones in the other coffins. It was slimmer and lighter and full fleshed. The preservation was perfect. It could almost still have been alive.

Its scales were finer, and the patterns on them more intricate, as if its skin had been tattooed in intricate dizzying patterns of sorcerous significance. As he looked on them the patterns he had seen flickering in the walls above came to mind. There were echoes of them here, and perhaps links to them.

The Serpent Man’s neck was long and thick and muscular like the body of a constricting snake. Its head was large and reptilian, the jaw outward jutting, the forehead bulging. The eyes were lidless. The creature’s irises were golden and as Rik glanced into them he sensed intelligence there, something cold, swift and dangerous. It came to him that he should not have met the thing’s gaze but it was too late, contact of some sort had been made. He tried to look away and found he could not. He stood transfixed, like a small bird before a large venomous serpent.

“I fear something has gone very wrong,” said Asea. Sardec did not have to ask her for explanations. The rain fell harder smashing against the window panes with all the force of the storm, but it could not obscure the Tower. Glowing light enveloped it now. Sheets of green lightning leapt up from the Serpent’s Fang to light the lower bellies of the bloated clouds.