Captain Adolo was a tall, terrifying, warrior woman.
Her athletic figure was all solid, lean muscle, crisscrossed by battle scars. Her eyes were a pale blue set in an attractive face marred by scars, including a wicked one through her left eyebrow and cheek. Her nose had clearly been broken before. Her fluffy blonde hair was cut short of her shoulders. Her helm, armor, and round, steel shield bore many dents and punctures from the long day's battle. She accepted a lance from a foot soldier while her armored steed moved restlessly.
Behind Adolo over 700 Turvoin citizens were fleeing for the Castle compound on the high hilltop. Over 4000 enemy Creedor soldiers were about to cut them off. Some citizens would be made Creedor slaves and others would be killed. Adolo and her soldiers knew the citizens' only hope was if the Creedor soldiers were stopped long enough for the people to reach the Castle.
"Charge!" Adolo shouted into her magic cone that greatly magnified her voice. The Creedor soldiers turned to face the attack. The opposing armies collided in a series of concussions louder than thunder claps, initially. Then the sounds rolled along in staccato beats of banging metal and thudding bodies amongst screams, shouts, and pained whinnies of horses. With the Turvoins' downhill momentum they plowed over and plunged through the front lines stabbing, slashing, hacking, and battering like berserkers, expecting only death among the cacophony clamor.
Leading the way, Adolo snapped her spear, sticking a soldier, a lance glanced off her shield. She leaned over with her mace, laying a lick on the man's helm, feeling him. A Morningstar barbed ball drummed her shield and she belted back, breaking her attacker's arm. An axe gashed her gorget before a sword and hammer battered her shield. Her mace mashed another foe's face. He fell away in the fray. Adolo continued her push, shield buffering blows and thrusts while her magic mace smashed skulls, limbs, and bodies as she pummeled the press pounding her.
A warhammer pasted her horse's head and it fell. She kicked free of her saddle and staggered on foot, being bumped about by horses and pounded by riders above. Shield high, mace low, she endured the whaling on her shield and clouted a mailed knee, mangling it. She cracked another knee with a sideswipe swing. She shattered a soldier's arm as he stabbed her shield. A hard-press of horses sent her reeling while being flogged from above. A horse bit her armored arm and she boxed its head in a back swing. Another soldier's broadsword blow bent her shield badly. She maimed the man's armored leg with a whack of her mighty mace. Then she shoved him from the saddle and took over the horse. A sword thrust punched into her side through mail. She drubbed the stabber's helm and he disappeared.
An arrow hissed venomously past her to drill through the eye slot of an enemy visor, killing him before he could bury an axe in her back. One of her archers had saved her. But it was short-lived. Her steed was speared and reared up on hind legs above the fray before collapsing, kicking and crushing others. Adolo lost her helm.
A hundred foot long red dragon swooped from the sky, slamming on the center mass of mounted men surrounding her. The Dragon's talons tore men's armor and flesh like tissue. A serpentine snap of its spiked tail sheared and smashed apart others. Its long neck flicked like a cobra and flames belched from its fang filled maw. Its torrent of fire swept over foes, melting men like candles under a torch. When it paused to inhale again its presence panicked the Creedor crowd into fleeing. It puffed conflagrant clouds after them.
The red ended the firestorm and glanced at Adolo. She smiled and shouted, "Hi Shiriki!"
The lady dragon flashed fangs at her. Shiriki's eyes were intelligent and hypnotically mesmerizing with white, yellow and green striations around slitted pupils. Her scarlet scales shone bright in the sunlight.
Years ago Adolo had found Shiriki as a baby. Her dragon mother had been killed by Creedor soldiers, sorcerers, and giants. Shiriki fled on foot, unable to fly. Adolo had somehow befriended the baby dragon and fled carrying her to safety. Over the next few seasons Adolo raised the red dragon until the day she flew away. Once in a while Shiriki would come close to see Adolo. She also never forgot what the Creedor armor looked like and often did fire fly over strafing's of Creedor soldiers that she saw. Now the red had just saved Adolo and her soldiers. With a knowing look Shiriki bobbed her head at Adolo and launched high off her hindquarters with her wings clapping air, carrying her away like a rocket. As she left she blowtorched the enemy again.
Adolo hollered into her cone the command to retreat to the castle.
Adolo found master sorcerer Zolfar on the ramparts. Zolfar stood nearly seven feet tall and he was a lean, lanky man. He wore dark armor, no helm and carried a gnarled Zergon wood staff. He looked very weary and sported burns along his cheek and scorched armor. Blood soaked a wad of gauze in his side. His platinum hair was close cropped and his eyes an alert emerald. His face was very average looking. But he was one of the mightiest sorcerers on the planet Nagora.
"King Tirak is badly hurt, but alive." He answered the question in her mind before she could speak it. "King Kavar with 30,000 soldiers breached our north wall and will be here soon."
Adolo took the info in quietly. She had no words to counter the horrible news. Now the Turvoin Army was beaten back in all directions with the much larger Creedor Army surrounding the Castle. Creedor's King Kavar was the undisputed strongest sorcery slinger in the world. He shared a possession pact with the demon named Bal.
For brief periods Bal could conjure up his own true demon form in Nagora's dimension. So far no one could stop him. Making matters worse Kavar had achieved a pact with the mountain giants and thousands of the huge humanoids fought for Creedor. In the past giants only saw humans as foes or food.
"What can we do?" Adolo asked grimly.
"I have one option. But it involves demon magic and the heart blood of several innocent children. I have the petrified heart of a demon named Tark that fought Bal to a draw in their own dimension. I could summon him into my body. I might be able to kill Bal and scatter the enemy army. But it's evil doing."
"I think we're out of other options here Zolfar." Adolo pointed out. "They're organizing the siege machines and towers as we speak."
Zolfar gazed into the distance where the giants in titan armor helped the men set up ballista, catapults, trebuchets, scorpions, turtles, and towers. All the artillery and protection necessary to storm the Castle walls and take over the Turvoin kingdom.
"I guess you're right." Zolfar conceded.
Alone in his chamber Zolfar was in the final acts of a demon possession pact spell. He plunged his spell dagger into the chest of a comatose child. He used the rib spreader to open the chest cavity wider. In his hands was a large black stone that was actually the heart of the demon Tark, obtained when he was beaten and banished from Nagora's dimension centuries ago by an army of magic masters. He lowered the demon heart beside the child's beating heart before pricking the pumping heart. The blood hit the stone. The stone grew softer, soaking up the blood. Zolfar chanted words of power in the spell. He cut his own hands so that his own blood meshed in the mess. When the boy died Zolfar repeated the same act on four more humans that were mortally wounded and unconscious by drugs. The room grew colder. An amorphous smog swirled around Zolfar. A dark whirlwind whipped around him as his voice boomed, no longer sounding human as he spoke the demon language. The demon heart beat in his hand and he placed it against his chest. A hellish orange glow flared from the heart as it melted into his chest. His roar of pain was a cry from hell.
When Zolfar passed Adolo on the ramparts she gasped. His eyes no longer had pupils or irises. They were just jet black voids. His skin had turned pasty white. Thick, dark spider webs of veins and arteries looked like they pulsed with inky blood. He'd become some inimical entity.
"Zolfar." She blurted in horror.
"I had no choice." He replied in a demonic voice. He didn't sound or look human anymore.
Sunset became night as maelstroms of missiles shadowed the sun. Storms of shafts hissed and bit bodies. Siege machines slung stones, bolts, and barrels of hot tar and spiked logs. The massive missile's sped through space splattering and flattening foes in smooshed rows. The tar barrels soared down exploding upon impact. The burning barrages had both sides screaming and dancing to death on fire.
The giants did well hiding behind the shield towers they pushed or under the turtle shields. Some giants were bashed by boulders or had hot tar splash their skin, burning them like bacon. Whenever a giant revealed itself the Turvoin archers riddled them.
In the distance King Kavar conjured up the demon Bal.
A dark tornado rose 60 feet high. Hellish orange light glowed within the whirl-wind, revealing a monstrous shadow rising up in height and mass. Tendrils of lightning cracked in and around it making the wormhole from hell glow with iridescent energies. The ominous, titanic shadow stepped from it. The dimensional doorway slammed shut behind him with a sonic boom of doom.
Bal stood 30 feet tall and resembled a black, bipedal dragon and ape mix. Wings flapped at his back. Horns jutted from his head. A long, spiked tail undulated behind him. His armored stygian scales were clearly like dragons' plated scales. His hyena shaped snout opened wide exposing fearsome fangs. His eyes were ink pools and his demon form filled everyone with fear. But the Turvoin siege machine operators and magic pugilists punched him with energy blasts, spells, and showers of boulders, bolts, and burning barrels. The hits ricocheted away from Bal's psion sorcery shield enveloping him. He sprinted forward and hopped high, wings flapping furiously to fly at the wall. Jagged shards of lightning bludgeoned Bal's head like a skull hit by a hammer. He crushed scores of his own soldiers under his falling form. On the Castle turret Zolfar looked like an undead spectral figure with lightning lashing from his hands to dance on the demon's body.
Bal roared and rose. Brilliant bolts flared from his finger talons to zap Zolfar's sorcery shield in a starburst. The pair of magic pugilists pounded each other with pyro kinetic blasts that sent sizzling sparks searing through bystanders. The booming and crashing sounds deafened ears.
Bal hunched up as a shaft of emerald light skewered his side. It hurt him. But he lobbed a glob of dark matter that extended wide in the spiderlike shape that enveloped Zolfar. The tendrils crushed around him as his own energy strikes fried filaments. Abruptly he burst free before the dark matter imploded, disappearing. But Bal stuck him with a spear of sizzling, azure-orange energy that exploded, disintegrating most of the turret Zolfar stood on.
Bal suddenly spun, staring at the sky. He laced the heavens with a lambent lance that slashed past Shiriki's flying form. She hit him hind legs first, letting her talons tear down his shield. Then she followed up with front talons trying to gut him. His shield held. But the impact dropped him. He tried to clutch her head in a lock while delivering a point-blank photonic beam into her side. Then he raked toe talons into her belly trying to eviscerate her. His tail lashed her back puncturing some plates.
Shiriki went nuts. In the same way a crocodile will clamp its bite on an antelope and go into a death roll, that's what she did. The pair of tumbling titans crushed a lot of Creedor fighters during their colossal wrestling match. In the end Shiriki emerged with Bal's right forearm in her mouth. Her final spin ripped it free in a mess of splintered bones and tattered tissue.
Bal broke free. A hail of sorcery spelled, poison-tipped, dragon-lances launched by ballista, and giants peppered Shiriki and some pierced deep, stinging her flesh like acid. In reply she spat a flood of fire the whooshed and crackled over her enemies. Then she hopped high again, rocketing above all. She swept over the enemy blasting them with flaming breaths.
Bal had retreated into his own dimension to heal. That left King Kavar behind with a severed forearm. He almost died before his magic healers could stop the blood loss. As Shiriki flew by the Castle, Adolo could see her flashing fangs.
It was Shiriki's smile. Adolo smiled back.
The next day King Tirak joined Adolo on the battlements. Tirak stood a little shorter than Adolo and was much more muscular. He was a good-looking, middle-aged man with salt-and-pepper hair and a mustache. Brown eyes alertly surveyed the terrain around the castle. He leaned on a crutch with a stab through his thigh and the back of his head bandaged from an axe blow that cut through his helm. He looked sick studying over 20,000 corpses strewn far as the eye could reach. Vultures, crows, eagles, and a wide variety of animals gorged on the fresh kills.
"What have you learned, Adolo?" He asked at last.
"King Kavar is missing half of his sword arm. He is very weak. His army is rushing him home for safety. But they are being attacked a lot. My previous pet Dragon Shiriki keeps hitting them with surprise fire strikes. They say that our sorcerer Zolfar has become an undead demon that attacks quickly, dragging men to disappear. But those missing men come back as ghouls hungry for the blood of their former friends and fellow fighters. He's lost close to a thousand men already, my spies estimate. I just got this news from a raven right before you came up." Adolo explained.
Tirak sighed. "But no word from Zolfar?"
"No." She admitted."
Tirak cursed softly. "Do you think he's okay?"
Adolo paused to choose her words carefully. "I hate to tell you this, but I must. In order to beat Kavar, Zolfar had to use a possession pact spell with the demon called Tark. He said he had the petrified heart of Tark. To do that he needed the blood of three virgin children and two regular adults. He selected several wounded kids not expected to survive and fed their heart blood to the demon heart. He told me if he did it he would no longer be the man we knew. I don't think he will come back."
"The blood of children?" Tark echoed aghast.
"He said it was the only way." Adolo sighed.
Tirak had no words for that fact.
In orbit around the planet Nagora the starship Quest recorded world events for the documentary. The crew found the primitive planet fascinating. They couldn't understand how some of the planet's people and other species created magic like telekinetics, pyrokinetics, teleportation and such. The humanoids had Homo sapiens DNA mixed with mutant DNA. Many denizens appeared to be genetically engineered by some intelligence.
But Adolo was a favorite amongst most of the crew. Her face, figure, ferocity, intelligence and skills on such a violent world would earn her billions of fans across the cosmos when the documentary was played. She was about to become a movie star.
Zolfar the sorcerer wasn't a man anymore.
The demon Tark had taken over most of his mind and body. But Zolfar violently rebelled and almost expelled Tark from him when Tark was going to feed on Turvoin people. Tark didn't want another battle for control and turned his attention to killing Creedor warriors and wizards. That was working well. They fed on dead warriors then rose as part of Tark's vampire army.
Within a small part of his mind Zolfar knew that he'd saved his people and kingdom. But he'd sold his soul to do it. He wished that he’d never used the magic key to open that box.
Bio:
Tom Kropp’s work has appeared in The Horror Zine, Dark Harbor, Chiron Review, Short-Story Me, Churches, Children and Daddies, Freedom Fiction Journal, Blood Moon Rising, Down in the Dirt, Phantomania, Lowlife Lit, The Listening Eye, J Journal, Evening Street Review, Conceit, Spontaneous Spirits, Bracelet Charm, Spotlight on Recovery, Muscle and Fitness, Outdoor Life, Woodworker’s Journal and many other magazines. His play Jailhouse Confessions was performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC in 2019. You can find more of his writings at tomkropp.wordpress.com and Scars Writings websites. He has numerous free audiobooks and eBooks available at Google Play Books.