Chapter XXIV:
Verity's Promise to Death
Eisenforst Chateau had erupted in flames.
The cause of the fire was a spark from an arquebus shot, deflected by a quickore saber.
As the flames devoured the walls of the building, few escaped.
Many that could have fled, remained hoping to slay a few more apes.
Count Bloodfirth was one who remained, on horseback chasing after an armored ape down the candlelit halls.
He could smell the scent of that nether-creature, even under layers of its brilliant suit of armor carrying a staff, a candelabra, a saber all in one.
Minutes before the Chateau had been set afire the ancient ettinlord Mockwitch slept within his mountain hall’s bowels; but the peak had another guardian, keeping watch over him and the blade Deathbrand that had plunged him into the ancient fell to begin with.
As the blade had been pulled from the ground, it shocked him into waking, pulled out from his heart and reanimating his sleeping corpse.
The guardian had promised him that much, that his freedom from the brand would be secured.
As he ascended to the peak to greet the guardian, he met a man on a black horse, clad in quickore armor.
Beside him was the deathly guardian Todteld.
In wrath, Mockwitch swiped his clawed hand, down upon the armored man’s tiny head.
Mockwitch jerked his hand back, ape-blood dripping from his talons. Someone had fallen; but not the horseman. He repeated his strike; and once again received blood of a man. It was this strange armor, he surmised: the horseman stood tall. The ettin sniffed the blood, so familiar was its stench; it brought fear to that ancient giant, the blood of him who once cast Mockwitch into the Mountain; of him who plunged Deathbrand into his heart; the blood of Rammbock Oreld.
The Horseman finally retaliated. Deathbrand carved both eyes from the skull of the ettinlord, then its candles’ flames, seven guardian–bolstered, whirled about the ettin’s bark-rough hide. “You said, I’d be free!” shrieked Mockwitch.
The guardian of Deathbrand said flatly: “Indeed. Now fly from this hill.”
Mockwitch fled to the only nook in the world that fit his terrible shape: the Eldermark Maelstrom.
The horseman then set his sights on the Chateau.
He sped through the gate, its pulver defense unmatched by Rammbock’s ore.
Inside the chateau he met the arquebus of Count Bloodfirth, setting off the blaze.
Other ettins, their flesh aglow like neon lights, charged the horseman, only to be struck down by the dull end of Deathbrand.
Arnulf fired more rounds, feeding the blaze.
The horseman had already left him, galloping down the hall, his deathly guardian leading him along, racing past the dead and dying, some killed moments before. The ape-hunting did not cease even as the Chateau crumbled into ash, so desperate some men were for the Unghost’s promises of godhood. As the horseman reached a corridor marked by paintings depicting violent orgiastic celebrations of ettins and errandghosts and men, he entered a room painted red, occupied by three teenagers, two male one female. He lifted the three and hoisted them onto his saddle.
The hall was immersed in flame, a tempest of heat and smoke suffocating the exit. “Remember your promise, boy,” Todteld said to the horseman. It was a promise that graced him with the armor and Todteld’s temporary guardianship.
“A minute more you have with me, and then the fire will claim you. Are you ready for such a demise?”
“No,” said Kurt Eisenforst.
“Then come...leave the horse. He belongs to me now.”
“What about Etzel and Verity? And Erich?” asked Kurt.
Arnulf stood at the door. His eyes were wild white saucers, his humanity stripped.
“Etzel is dead. Leave him,” said Todteld.
Arnulf extended an obsidian scimitar, hurling it into Kurt’s chest.
Deathbrand collided with the scimitar, then against Kurt’s armor, and finally the horse’s neck.
“A noble death,” said Todteld.
Kurt swung Deathbrand round; under his blade rushed a black-clad shape.
Erich had woken. With iron fists he pummeled Kurt's quickore armor, before melting his pulver-filled hands off.
He screamed.
“You have seconds to decide, boy,” said Todteld.
“Verity has the Weever’s Tooth...she must go, at least.”
Arnulf pressed onto the telescreen,whispering in a strange tongue. As he spoke, the floor collapsed.
“I’ve decided!” said Kurt.
Arnulf and Erich fell, escaping into a basement reserved for those who refused to play “An Ape for a Shape.”
The fire continued to spread, taking the forest and valleys beyond, as Icewild sounded, blaring across Earth and Ettinland.
Flying above the burning mount, black wings spread, Todteld carried Kurt; Kurt cradling Verity.
“Remember your promise to me,” said Todteld as they descended onto rock mound in the desert.
Beside yucca and sand, they were subjected to the pitch dark night, to the barren wilderness, to the borderland of worlds between man and ettin and unghost.
+++++
Verity woke as a coyote yelped behind the rocks.
She wondered if what she saw was yet another phantasmagoria: the mound was the very same whereupon they had met Todteld as shadows in that dreaded time yet to be. Todteld, recognizing her waking state, turned his blind gaze upon her.
“You are naked,” he said. Verity looked to Kurt for a hint of clarification. Her fellow traveler pointed to his breast plate.
“Many of us can clothe you, but there is a promise you must make. I cannot tell you the terms; think hard, and you shall receive a suitable defense against the sons of the Unghost.”
She looked back to Kurt who said, “He is the guardian of souls between worlds. But he is not their master.”
“Do not speak for the girl or I shall depart!” Todteld intoned.
Verity nodded. “I understand. We want to destroy the source of the pulver, wherever it may be...we need to unite ourselves to the other heirs to the Weever to do so...so I promise to your Master, King Rammbock-” “Speak it not aloud,girl! Think it; I shall hear.”
Verity bowed her head before Todteld responded to her telepathic request: “Your promise is the same as the boy’s. But is it suitable for your own path ahead? I must speak with Rammbock before approving your request; I will grant you a provisional suit of defense in the meantime.”
From the rock he scooped gravel with his skeletal hand; the gravel bright under the moon.
“Quickore,” he said. “It exists in tiny pockets on the earth, yet few know where...even among errandghosts. Now, lie upon the rock.”
Verity followed his command, and, as she did, he wielded Deathbrand, swinging its flaming candles against her torso, the pain beyond anything she had ever experienced within that petite anatomy. The quickore soon cooled on her flesh, and she felt relief, confidence, clarity in purpose. She wore the suit of Rammbock, the same shimmering armor as Todteld and Kurt.
“Wait until the old one comes, fare with him, I must return to the Eldermark," spoke Death.
“A final question, please,” said Verity. Todteld’s eyes flickered hot.
“Embla Herrenhausen...we need her in our ranks to complete the Weever. When we experienced our shadowy future,we learned she was convinced to help us only after meeting a lady in purple...where might we find this lady?”
Todteld mounted a greenish horse that appeared from the shadows, and said, “If one asks for her, she may come. Enough interrogation now.”
Death rode off into the night on his cadaver steed.
+++++
Kurt and Verity waited as the errandghost commanded, though neither knew whom he referred to as “the Old One.”
“Kalendros, perhaps? Or Rammbock?” said Verity.
Kurt shrugged.“Perhaps. Or perhaps, or maybe it’s a riddle and we have to wait here until we become the old ones ourselves.”
“...No, we can’t wait that long...already, my father, Etzel...”
“Your father is alive; as for Etzel, I sense an errandghost retreived his body from the flames of the chateau and returned him to Rammbock’s Fortress.”
“You sense that?”
“ I hear little things still...” Kurt pointed to his black ear.
“...I hoped he would have been taken," said Verity, "like when we saw him in the crypt in Rammbock’s castle...still, sort of alive."
“Sort of alive?” repeated Kurt.
“Certainly, he is more alive with Rammbock’s guardianship! That king is a wonder worker, his limits I have not yet noticed.
;if he has limits...his nature is still a mystery to me, even after all we have seen through that vision,” Verity said, her palm held fast her new glimmering breast plate.
“What we experienced was only a warning, or maybe a message of hope...you saw what happened to me in there, right? In Azza’s throne room?” Verity shook her head.
“No. I only saw myself falling into the Eldermark Pit.”
“I too fell into the Pit, in a worse manner than you," said Kurt.
Verity sighed. “A reminder that we must destroy the source of this wickedness at once at its source, Kurt Eisenforst.”
Kurt nodded,“Yes...a source I am too familiar with... I drank from Azza's poison chalice, spilling from his putrid maw, it was the purest pulver I had ever known, intoxicating, incredible...it turned me further into whatever thing Orbaulker is...to become a vaighling is part of metamorphosis, a breaking down of the natural body into one entirely consumed by Azza’s will, until there is nothing of you left. But the change did not stop. I became ever smaller...I was broken away in fragments, and more fragments still, unceasing, and so it is with all the children of Orbaulker... fallen away bits of what he was at the moment of his union with the Unghost.”
Verity said,“Yes...fighting Orbaulker is and has been only a distraction...we need to go to Azza’s temple directly and strike him in the gut.”
“Yes. And he knows very well what we plan to do...he will not let us come to his home quietly. But where is Rammbock?”
said Verity quietly, mournfully, “We need him. And he's been absent in our ordeals...”
Kurt stepped forward. He put a hand to his heart and then onto Verity’s breastplate.
“Rammbock's given us enough already. Do not fall for the same trap of pride that caused my doom...the Unghost is counting on it.”
As dawn came, they slept and were only woken at noon by the tremoring ground, shaken from a thousand men.