Chapter XXVII:
Into the Arena
Erich Jr. woke only a few minutes before Arnulf, the two a meter apart, in virtual darkness except for two wax oozing candles before them, Arnulf waking only to Erich's screams.
When they had fallen through the floor in Verity's holding cell, tumbling down the tunnels of the Chateau to its cavernous basement system, they were seized by an unknown hand, following a spinal injection and sedative placing them into a deep sleep; both thanes of the Wildermark locked in separate cages normally reserved for ape hunting.
Waking hours later they discovered themselves to be trapped, but more alarmingly, they were altered.
The scream, high and hoarse from Erich, low and and guttural from Arnulf put a smile on their gaoler’s mustached face.
Both men were shaped like beans, their arms, legs gone.
They could only wriggle in their bandage-chains, their stitches crude, the shock of the revelation of amputation worse than the pain.
“You both are fit well for those cages...couldn’t fit before, so I had to improvise.”
The jailer spoke in the darkness, glee in his tone. He waited for their screams to taper off before speaking again.
“You know this your damn fault Herrenhausen. Your daddy had to throw a party for you and your spoiled friends from the island.
Piss on his grave-you know he’s dead? Well, partially at least. He useta be a friend on the battlefield...helped me get rid of a couple of my wives, so I’ll forgive this little mishap of my Chateau being burnt down an’ all...still haven’t decided if I’ll let you foos go though...probably won’t...”
They screamed more; he smiled more. “See? How much fun this is...I mean, bit by bit, I’ll whittle you guys down until...welp, until you’re fun-sized.”
“Pfuck you!” Arnulf growled.
“No, pfuck you! You don’t think this is like, poetic justice, or something? Every day, you kill and torture apes...my people, yeah I’m an ape, right? Never did the apegift once, so now it’s like, what’s that old word? Karma. You self-declared gods killed by a monkey...yeah, this monkey has another god on his side...Team Mockwitch, baby.”
“Shut Up!!!!” cried Erich Jr. “Call Dr. Geissler and fix this!!!”
The jailer put his face close to the cages, red and menacing in the candlelight.
Carolus Eisenforst shook his head, smirking. “Geissler? You really haven’t been following the news, have you boy? Your daddy was killed by Geissler! He used him, made him into a suit. Now Geissler wears that corpse suit of your dad and is calling himself the new Groomslayer...quite sick if you ask me.”
Erich Jr. howled. “I’ll kill him too!”
“Wait...I thought you needed him for his apegifting expertise? Be consistent now, Herrenhausen.”
“Father, leave them be," spoke another voice in the room.
The men hushed.
Another person had entered, or perhaps, been there with them all along.
Concealed by the dark, his figure stepped closer to the candlelight.
“Let them go, Father,” said the figure.
“Father? I mean, I’ll be the judge of that. Doesn’t mean I’ll let you interrupt my business unpunished even if you are my kid.
I’m not afraid of a little parental discipline. And I got a thousand kids but not one have I ever liked...”
Carolus, turning toward the figure, gripped a bonesaw. “Come closer, lemme get a look atcha...”
“You can’t kill me,” said the figure.
“Hellfire I can’t!”
“Someone beat you to it: Erich," answered the son.
“What?” said Carolus quietly, unnerved.
The figure approached the light fully.
He glowed like a candle, his skin brassy, his eyes like glass.
“Erich killed me already,” said Etzel Galvan standing between the men and the cages.
“You tryna screw with me,kid?” said Carolus still menacing the bonesaw; he turned around to the cages. “You recognize this punk ass? I mean, he has my eyes, so he might be a son of mine...wait a minute...yeah I do know you, yeah...you’re the one I pumped full of rock-pulver. Shit musta backfired and became anti-pulver...so that explains it; how you coulda cheated death.”
Etzel shook his head. “It was King Rammbock. He sent his errandghosts to protect me. There was no cheating. Now I’m dead but reborn, alive again.”
“So what? Nobody really dies these days anyhow. You think you’re special or some shit, kid, just cos you’re my kid?
If anything, I helped you, giving you that pulver back in the day...you should join my team. Mockwitch can do incredible things for you...”
Etzel shook his head. “My fate is sealed. There’s no going back. But you three have a choice. Join Rammbock and his men.
They’ve set out now to destroy the source of that pulver once and for all.”
“You mean...him? The source-source? Come on, what a joke...even your leader Rammbock hasn’t been able to take him out after all these years.”
“He entrusted mankind to continue his battle. We have failed mostly...but it’s coming to an end now...so make your choice.
Fight against this evil you’ve wrought on mankind: the apegifts, the ettin-bodies, the killing sprees, the wars, the prostituting of your sons and daughters.”
“And Rammbock hasn’t allowed any of that? That makes him even more culpable than the Unghost!
We’re just honest men tryna make an honest living, and, for the record, I ain't no ettin and don’t follow those clowns and their horseshit religion. I have my own god.”
“Yet your god Mockwitch is in the Eldermark pit as we speak. His time on earth is finished.”
Carolus’s face soured at the message. “That only proves I’ve become stronger than him.”
“No,father, I’ve seen the future. I’ve seen you in the pit with him, tied to a slab, a prisoner, murdered over and over by those men you murdered...”
Carolus set the bonesaw to Etzel’s skull.
He cursed, his arm vigorously pumping the blade, screaming, howling abuse.
The saw slipped from his steely grip.
Its teeth had been filed down to dust.
He looked down at his son, just one of his 1000-plus children, and doubled back, his head banging it against the apehunt cages.
He scrambled to his feet, grasping for his arquebus holster.
“Hellfire...” The trigger pulled, a round exploding into his leg.
He dropped down, crippled.
“Why are you doing this,son...why?”
Etzel looked to them and said, “I will send an errandghost to check on you all shortly. Please consider my offer.”
Erich muttered in his cage.
“What’s that?” asked Etzel turning back.
“I...I killed you...I killed you.”
“Yes...do not pity me...I am stronger now.”
“...I....killed you...killed you.”
Etzel nodded and then took his leave from the burnt ruins of Carolus’s Chateau.
+++++
Kurt did not wake until after the boats had met the shore.
The remaining 15 men still loyal to Quartertongue and Rammbock had rowed with a tremendous fury in the face of their pursuers.
But Kurt’s encounter with the beast had sapped him of virulence, left him a limp husk in that impenetrable armor.
So he slept, under a somnulent incantation of Grimnar, as the others carried on as they had for millennia, though their penance had been paid, as newly ensouled men they were setting their will-power to the sea, to a sea lorded over by ettins and ultimately Azza Unghost himself.
Most concerning to Verity was not that they had been attacked by Azza, but that he had released them.
He wanted them in his seas, he wanted them to reach the shores of Subohemia and, from there, did he want them to try again and face him;or something more dreadful they had not reckoned?
Their only chance now was to find Embla, and pray that she would offer up her heirloom Scale, unleashing whatever the great Weever was capable of. Even of the Weever, Verity was uncertain; and it was this uncertainty that Grimnar smelt on her, scolding her for her despair, though he too could not offer a more reassuring word: “Damn it all, damn your worrying. See above; beyond.”
What did he mean? Above, all Verity could see were winged obelisks, their red cyclopean eyes gazing on the tiny world below them; upon smoke and skyscrapers of impossible heights, disjointed and mangled like a great white's teeth in decay.
“By above, I do not mean this wretched heap of concrete and pulver before us, young lady;nor do I mean the pulver-made watchers” said Grimnar.
“Look to the final goal...or haven’t you seen it before? Didn’t Kalendros show you a vision of the world beyond?”
“I want to believe that world of shadows does not come to be...” said Verity.
“And may it never!” said Grimnar, “but now we are here in the belly of this unghost beast and whatever befalls us next will be left up to Lady Fortune.”
They sailed up onto a black sand beach, long and thin and bordered by a pulver wall, fifty feet high, obscuring the way forward.
“How do we get over the wall?” asked Verity hopping out of the wolf-head ship.
Uthurs pointed to the wall and said, “It’s made of pulver which means we’re not going over it, but through it.”
Verity remembered her vision of Jaguar Town, escaping on Blueboy as she and Kurt were chased by the Subhohemian horde.
“Get back in the boat,” said Grimnar.
“Why?” Verity asked, suspiciously.
“The boat's not finished sailing...”
Verity climbed back inside as Grimnar withdrew from his purple belt, the glimmering axe, the Tail of the Weever.
Wielded up and over the ship’s prow, the axe struck the black sand beach.
The axe heaved up sand, cutting back into the sea; striking the solid ground twice more, the sand splitting, the water gushing forward.
“A canal!” exclaimed Verity.
“Indeed...the damn beach, nay, the old damned island is made of the stuff...Land Reclamation using the Unghost’s bile as concrete...fortunately, it slices like butter against quickore!”
Grimnar struck the beach again, the canal widening, lengthening as he pulled forward, then aftward.
The other men took up their beams and swords of quickore,and following after Grimnar, used them as oars.
The ships coasted up to the wall. Uthurs raised his hand, and called out “Ker! Ker! Ker!”
The men set to work upon the wall, lifting axe and adze and beam of Rammbock’s solid blood ore.
Deathbrand stood firm, Kurt sleeping against it, all the while his comrades bludgeoned the mighty black wall of Subohemia’s strand.
Like a dike bursting, the ships raced through the toppling wall: the reclaimed sea current carried them, flowing out into narrow roads beyond the wall; more walls, twisting, serpentine and filled with the flood; Grimnar’s axe pounding into the pulver, water swelling before it grew too shallow, and the boatsmen rowed on land, propelled by fire sparking at their tools. The river of fire that streaked forth illuminated the dark walls, ever turning, uncertainty at what may wait at the next curve’s end, the wolf-heads bobbed onward, onward, onward, spurred by Uthurs' command; more walls were toppled, more fire flew from their burning oars.
They were headed into the heart of the war, this, Verity was certain of.
Surely, the Unghost was waiting for them all; or at least his inferiors: the Groomslayer, Orbaulker, Adatmen, or a host of other ghouls from a forgotten time; but none of that mattered now. They were charging ahead, undeterred by those towering walls, no barrier could halt their pursuit of the evil-doers, no creature could possibly interfere in their gilded destiny, and their leaders, Uthurs, Grimnar, and Rammbock Oreld the King of Mankind greater than any unghost or ettin.
Verity felt light, free and exhilarated.
It was all coming to an end.
Another wall toppled and the road ahead became clearer.
A cityscape of twisted gray towers, all spiraling down into the pulver ground, the center punctuated with a colossal stadium, evidently for the use of sporting events, gray like the towers and encircled by descending winged obelisks.
Two walls of the same gray material as the other buildings in the near vicinity stretched out to the stadium a mile apart.
"The way forward is also made of the gray stuff...and it’s not pulver,” said Grimnar,“we can’t cut through it with quickore.”
Uthurs called off the rowing, the quickore oars striking the gray ground without a fraction of a dent.
“We’ll head on foot,” said Uthurs.
They leapt from the longships, their weapons in hand.
Grimnar muttered under his breath. “I can’t carry him along with his blade...”
He was gently shaking Kurt with his great hands. “Stay with him until he wakes” said Uthurs, “He can’t be left alone...”
Grimnar sighed. “It’s that damn ear...thing nearly killed him...we ought to just cut it off...”
“No!” Uthurs said. “That would kill him...the pulver is part of him, and only Rammbock himself may remove its hold of him.”
“I knew that...but if we only could do it now...we need the boy. The world needs him.”
“Rammbock is guiding us still, even invisibly. He and the Spellgesith and-” “-and all the errandghosts under his command!," said Grimnar, interrupting,"-...I know this...forgive my worrying,” he said shamefully.
Uthurs raised a hand,saying,“all is pardoned...come, onward, Ker, Meenenar!”
“All his errandghosts...” said a voice from behind the ships.
The men turned back towards the toppled walls and river of flame in their wake.
A corpse bodied errandghost, black robed, the face veiled, gripping a bleeding orb in one hand, wearing a black crown and holding a scepter in the left hand stood upon the flames. Todteld turned his gaze to one in the group and said, “For you, the provisional agreement is void. You shall be escorted directly to the graduation.”
The men looked about themselves confused, the language not being lost in translation through the ghost’s telepathy; rather the message itself, and the mention of a 'provisional agreement' unknown the the penitents.
“Void for whom, Doedeld?” shouted Grimnar.
Verity shook her head. “Void for me.”
“What does he mean?” asked Grimnar in a hushed voice.
Verity’s armor, brilliant even under the dead dark skies came undone, Todteld striking her shoulder with the scepter.
Exposed in the flesh tight garments she was made to wear at the apehunting party, Todteld picked the lady up by the hand dangling her above the others.
“That’s enough! Leave her!” shouted Grimnar.
“You dare defy me, Werwudu? I work on the Spellgesith’s orders...”
“Of course...take her safely then...but what about the Weever's parts?...we need her...and the boy, and also the Duchess of Herrenhausen-South...”
Todteld silently admonished Grimnar then, cradling the fainted body of Verity, flew up towards the circling hovercraft, leaving the rest to watch the errandghost’s descent into the mouth of the colossal gray stadium.
Uthurs looked upon his men and, his eyes heavy, said, “Ker.”
Kurt rose from the ship.
He looked around to the others, Deathbrand held high in his grip, and leapt from the boat.
“Sorry…I don't how I ended up asleep,” he said to Uthurs.
“No matter, you are awake just in time…onwards still we move to the stadium of Subohemian College.
A graduation, as they call it is taking place, and we must do what we can to stop it…”
At this word, the men picked up their weapons and marched to the gates.
+++++
The stadium was filled with hundreds of thousands of spectators between its bleachers and its arena field.
Most of the spectators were Subhohemians, around a third apegifted once or twice but no more, and the remaining, those to be graduated, eagerly waited to be admitted entrance into the apegift booths, as exclusive a list it was.
As winged obelisk apegift booths circled above the stadium, a hundred plus booths descended onto the arena, those red-eyed sentinels of Orbaulker watching the young faces in attendance.
A diamond shaped telescreen projected the general action in the arena: dancing and killing and copulating captured by the hornet buzzing cameras. Youthful faces grinned from their bonfires and tents, lining up before the booths, camping on an astro-turf field.
The arena proper, a pit of gravel marked with chalked distance lines up to 100 yards, was blocked off from the campers with a pulver fence.
From a glass box at the top of the stands, a group of a dozen VIPs watched over the soon to be graduates.
Verity von Herrenhausen was among the dozen. She could not remember her being transported there, but that fact was less troubling to her than her current company. Her father was one of the twelve, whom she embraced with tears. She had aged and grown in beauty considerably, to her father's bewilderment.
The others saw her as a ghost, an illusion of beauty that could not have arisen from her upbringing amidst ettins and vaighlings.
She met eyes with a man equipped with the legs and arms of apgifted man, his limbs overlong and bulging with pulver muscle.
Arnulf Count of Bloodfirth glared at her with spiteful eyes.
The nine others were Subohemians, glowing in various colors, looking upon the girl and her father with murderous hatred.
“Don’t mind them, Dot,” Martin told his daughter,“I’m here with you…that’s what they hate…”
“I thought you were dead…” Verity whispered.
“No…no, but the county…they sent in those winged vaighlings…thousands of them...they killed so many…”
Verity said nothing, seeing the Subohemians smiling at the news.
“How many survivors?...”
“Not many...Except for some of the students…, they brought them here. Why…I still have no idea…”
“It’s a graduation, you damned dotard!” spat a gray skinned she-ettin, “our finest students are getting a taste at the apehunt! The strongest of your kind will get a chance at the apegift too! The weaker ones will be eaten, I imagine…”
Verity yanked the Weever’s Tooth from her neck, lunging towards the ettins.
“Hey! One more step and your father is a corpse!” This time Arnulf spoke. He had faced the power of quickore before.
“We have micro-explosives crawling around his heart: any of us are touched by you or your friends and…what a show we’ll get.”
Arnulf smiled. Verity looked on him with disappointment. “We saw you, Count Bloodfirth, in a future where you shared your estate at the edge of the Eldermark with a great king. You fought with him, fought against the ettins…you can still join us. Your history is not yet set in stone.”
Arnulf winced.
“Another one of you apes told me the same…”
“Who told you???”
“A boy, the boy we dragged into your cell…that bastard is the reason why I had to get my legs replaced…”
“Etzel?? But…I saw him die…” Arnulf shook his head.
“He’s possessed by a ghost. Nothing but a walking corpse…”
“Liar!” shouted Verity.
Arnulf reached out a great long arm, his hand squeezing Verity’s throat. As he choked, he cursed and said, “If a monkey speaks to a god like that again, a god will turn a monkey into jelly…”
He tossed her across the room.
“And the explosive offer is the same for your little she-ape, Herrenhausen. We got bug bombs crawling all over her heart,” he said pointing to Martin ready to attack.
“Now watch the show and shut your monkey-mouths,” snapped the gray she-ettin, pointing to the jumbo-sized telescreen.
+++++
They reached the gates, long and blood-red like the skies above.
Uthurs stood first before his men, raising his eyes to heaven and speaking silently.
The rumble of chatter from the stadium buzzed like the cameras about their heads, watching them, as the obelisks surveilled from the sky and shadowy faces watched from the stadium’s loftier vantage points.
Like a lightning bolt singeing the earth, a dark figure manifested in front of the company.
His form between gorilla and raven, the face a man’s, Orbaulker stood between the men and the gates and spoke in his soft tenor:
“Azza bids you welcome-”
The men murmured in confusion as Orbaulker continued, “-but it was not necessary to destroy our walls and roads.
Despite your intentions, you are all honored guests to celebrate this joyous occasion…but only those with Pulver in their body may enter the stadium.”
“Then we’ll knock the stadium walls down!!” Grimnar cried.
Orbaulker shook his head. “I’m afraid you cannot…perhaps Uthurs can explain it in simpler terms for you, Green-churl.”
The others looked to Uthurs who answered in his language and then in Inglish: “The stadium is not made of pulver, it's...made of the gray material crafted by Azza to be impentrable to men.”
Grimnar huffed in displeasure.
Kurt moved to the fore, Deathbrand held upright at his side.
“We all go in,” he said.
Orbaulker grinned. “No deal…and there is no other way to enter but by my admittance. Your friends will be safe. They can watch the show here from the big screen.”
Grimnar growled. “Stinking Volltroll! This is not the hour for negotiations! This is war!”
Orbaulker chuckled. “War against whom? The arena is full of children! Students from the Great Oak County Zone High School.
Or perhaps you would prefer to slay the Subohemian students, loyal to their king and country if you consider patriotism to be a crime…”
“No,” said Kurt. “We are here for one alone. For your Master.”
“And he awaits your next move, Kurt Eisenforst! He met you out at sea already, yes?”
“Yes.”
“So…he will come greet you as he wills, or do you expect that he will offer his neck to your blade lying like a lamb?”
“No. I expect you will though.”
“Pardon?”
“You will take my blade, because he commanded you to face us, no matter the risk. A noble sacrifice.”
“??? I take no creature’s command, even Azza’s! I command myself for myself and of my own power.”
“You’re just a puppet. I understand your nature and origin…you’re made of pulver from head to toe, Azza’s literal excrement.”
Orbaulker spread his wings like a black rose’s petals. He drew a crooked wand and pointing it to the telescreen said, “He wishes you to live, but I wish you all to die. He has given me that freedom, now decide your move, because it will be the others too, all the apes that will face my sons and their talons.”
“Azza is the arch-liar. He wishes nothing but death and your time is running short, Volltroll,” Grimnar said, his axe raised.
“Do not speak to me of time, Green-churl. I was there when the world was first formed, when Azza raised his legions against your ghosts, and was there when we slew your king’s Grandfather. Such delight I took in that torture…”
Uthurs stepped forward now and said, “Then, Master of Death, as you claim to be, this man Eisenforst carries the Ettinslayer Deathbrand.
He was granted its power by the errandghost of death, and, as per his agreement, his death can only be finalized with Todteld’s involvement…what rights over his death do you have? Let him and us all through, unless you doubt Todteld will allow his saber to fall on your neck at this instant…” “…But only the one with pulver may enter the arena…” “According to you? Or your master?” “According to…me. Yes, I am one with Azza and he is one with me.”
“So you have woken from your sleep and understand now, that you are only a marionette forced to dance by the Unghost?”
“No…no…I can prove it to you, only Eisenforst gets in…the others…out…” Orbaulker gripped his face, talons plunging into the skin. His wings shriveled, he shuddered and cursed in the vaighling tongue.
Uthurs spoke: “Your name was Wisdom…you were a gentle creature. But you were not satisfied with your place in the world and abandoned your post. The world lost wisdom and received self deception in his stead…that has become Azza’s will for you.
You churn and breed more and more sons, but they are only fragments of your body, your true self chipping away until nothing is left. Wisdom has been forsaken completely and the deception complete.”
Orbaulker clawed at his skin and body, black blood flowing freely. “No…no…he’s here, here…I can find him…I know him…”
“Find him! But you cannot do it alone, you need help, creature! You need help!” shouted Grimnar.
“Help…help…give me help, please…”
Uthurs stretched out his right hand. In it was an orb, liquid quickore dripping forth.
“No…not that…not Ramm…Ramm…”
“Rammbock’s blood you spilled with glee, tortured by your hand…that deed has brought us to this point in time. Are you proud of your treachery still?” asked Uthurs.
“No…yes, no…I need him…please…I am weak…”
“Need whom? Whom??”
Orbaulker smiled. “Him…” He pointed to the telescreen. The gaunt face of the Unghost appeared.
His great and terrible form was flanked by Eugenius Geissler and Adatmen at his left and right.
His throne on a dais, he towered over the arena.
Azza’s eyes turned to them outside the gates.
Kurt felt his gaze like ice, and then a whisper in his ear: “Kill him. Or do you not believe he can still be saved? Come Kurt, enter now.”
Kurt stepped back. He swung Deathbrand at the neck of Orbaulker.
The creature turned to dust and then, looking to the others first saw the gates open.
A voice boomed from the stadium: “Now entering the arena! For our first event of the night, the brave bastard from Temek Hill, son of Carolus, Kurt Eisenforst!!!”
Kurt stepped forward not looking back, Azza’s words still drilling into his ear, the gates slamming as he passed through.