Fallen: The Magnificent Bastard Rides Again! Dark Fantasy. Sarcastic Skulls. Daring Dwarves.

[stgmilleralive]

A Dark fantasy, with even darker humor, story I wrote some time ago. I intend to have it published, likely with another tale I'm currently writing. I have done primary grammar checks that a writer should do, but I know I didn't get everything. I please ask that you don't take it upon yourself to check for grammar as this storyline is too long to ask for a stranger's editing. But I do ask that you tell me if you enjoy it or not, especially the characters themselves.

Now onto the story and some explanation.

This is the tale of Sly and Ser Roderick, both important characters in the world of Fallen. I won't waste your time explaining this universe, just know that it is primarily Dark Fantasy. This storyline is divided into three 'short' stories.

The Cat's in the Cradle

The Magnificent Bastard Rides Again

A Song of Steel and Bastards

Don't try to read all of them in one sitting. Take your time and if you have new criticisms to add, please do.

The Cat's in the Cradle: I'm told the dialogue is excellent here but the focus wanes in parts. Nothing impacting readers mainly, many actually prefer the dialogue exchanges.

The Magnificent Bastard Rides Again: A lack fighting and lore building here, some love the atmosphere, some love the battle-scene at the end.

A Song of Steel and Bastards: Plenty of action. Only criticism I got here was a lack of closure with Sly's goal. This was intentional, his story continues in more Fallen works.
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Stories will be posted in readable parts over the course of these next nights in separate posts.

[editline]6th September 2011[/editline]

The Cat's in the Cradle (PART ONE)

"My boy. The Dwarves are rats, little buggers with no artistic culture to call their own or any homeland they haven't taken from others. Sure you are of that stock and breed, Sly, but you're being raised by proper Lightborne, now stiff up that chin and just consider yourself a deformed member of my family."

Sly Obmar awoke coughing on tomb dust and limestone particles. He rolled violently across the cold and dirtied stone slab he'd been laid upon, grasping at his burning side as he attempted to remember why it ached like a Colovian wasp-sting. The smells of spoiled meat and waste filled his nose as he rolled off his slab in the wave of agony overpowering his mind.

He landed on the equally dusty floor, a spider's forlorn web smacked into his face as he drew a haggard breath. He threw himself from the chilling ground as he tore the web away from his shaven face, feeling the dried blood that prickled across his rough and sculpted visage. He pressed his broad back to the foundations of the slab, pulling in as much rancid into his lungs as he could. By Demeter, where in the flying fucks of high-noon was he? He pulled his hand from his side as he stared at the gory spots covering it; his eyes were hazy, akin to being forced awake in the middle of the night by a snake bite. His lips were dry and chewed to a bloody pulp; the hardened leather armor he wore was cracked open like a sundered turtle's shell at his waist, he grasped weakly at the edges to inspect the gruesome river made in his flesh.

It had been stitched haphazardly shut; the novice needle-work told him a single name.

"Júlia," Sly whispered to himself. He noticed then that his side was...squirming. Maggots had been hatched on the spoiled flesh of his wound, tearing into meat and avoiding the still living, warm depths of Sly. Bitterly, he plucked one of the contemptuous little buggers from his hideous gash, regarding it with disgust before placing it back with its kin. He had once learned from a Lightborne that Colovian maggots promoted healing by ridding a wound a necrotic tissue, a small fact that had saved the Lightborne's Elven wife.

Sly laboriously pulled himself up, using his meaty fist to grasp at the stone slab for support; despite the efforts of his vile new friends, the agony couldn't be diminished through any gnawing of the flesh. Though he was trained to ignore such things, in his thirsty, starving, and tired state, he had to admit that it still hurt like a cosmic bitch-slap from Demeter herself. He coughed wetly into his fist, noting that he was bleeding internally, a very bad sign for a Dwarf; a single collapsed lung would lead to him passing out from oxygen-depravation in half the time it would take an Elf to drown in a lake. He leaned all his weight on his hand as he relaxed his breathing, finally taking stock of where he was.

Where, the Colovian cavern-ways was an obvious answer, he remembered entering them some...how ever many days had passed before now. Yet he wasn't in some black cavern, left alone to shiver in the presence of dipping stalagmites. Nay, the roof raised a monstrous height above him, a running gash was cut across it, and winter light and snow poured in as the outside howl of blizzard wailed beyond the glare of light. Sly covered his eyes from that pitiless light, turning his sight to the ornate walls around him. Columns rose up to the ceiling and sat at a precise distance from the walls bearing strange mosaics of indwarven characters. Interspaced between these were altars bearing metal plates and contraptions left to tarnish.

There he saw them then, bodies of Dwarven stock, cut to ribbons. The pitch-black blood of Dwarves coated the mosaics and painted the columns, stinking of age and carrying the sound of buzzing Colovian-flies wherever it was. They were soldiers, their Lightborne armor bent inwards wherever a strike had split them in half. Their entrails, stomach acids, half-digested food, and intestinal bile stained the floor in the scene of slaughter. Sly blinked with sorrow; he assumed such a thing had happened.

"Júlia?" Sly called out with his dry throat as he studied himself off the slab. She was his leader, 'twas good enough reason to find her, "Júlia," he called out to nothingness. He began to search for escape routes, finding none; the walls carried not a crack large enough for water to enter this tomb. "Júlia," he repeated as his worn boots shuffled across the ruined remains of his compatriots. This hellish place held only the smell of rot and the sound of loneliness. Júlia the Needle was not amongst the dead as Sly stumbled his way to inspect each fallen face, no she was missing from this apparent last stand...

Last Stand, Sly remembered the clash of metal and the rending of flesh vaguely. There had been a dozen noble Dwarves holding a doorway of steel back from an encroaching horde. They’d yelled some incoherent curses, and then Júlia had left him on the slab, her needlework half-finished. Sly turned about slowly to see a cave-in replacing the space that once held the steeled doorway. It confirmed his fears; he’d been buried alive by circumstance...

Feeling the exhaustion drain his rocky muscles, he returned to the slab and dropped back on the dirtied floor, not facing his dire situation, nor denying its terribly reality. Rather, he focused on trying to remember the blows and screams, attempting to give them names, which proved easy. He'd known them all from Rothadás the Kin-slayer to Wallace the Lightborne-lover, recalling instantly their favorite weapons or foods, and vaguely recollecting the order they fell in. "Demeter-Damnit-all," he cursed bitterly, by luck he’d outlive them...

"Hmmm, another visitor to my humble little hell, a pleasure to see I have someone to speak to now...the others were too busy joining my sister, a pity to be frank." Sly raised his visage; his mind was weakened, more than likely the words were nothing.

"Just keep your head screwed on and you'll find a way," he told himself with confidence; he rose from the floor, there was no reason to wait for death.

No, he had most definitely heard that. "By the Melittale's sweet cinnamon titties, you vile midgets are amazingly dense." It was a male; the soft-voice meant it was a Lightborne, maybe an Elf as well.

"Aki ott van?" he called out in Dwarven; better his company know him to be from the Imperium and not one of those barbarous Elhagyott.

"I speak Highgarian, Lightborne, and a little bit of Elven; I've been trapped here and always will be, so converse in such a tongue or spend the last moments of your wasting life teaching me." The voice was far more cheery than he wished to hear.

He popped his aching jaw. "I speak Highgarian. What creature seeks my company?"

"Creature? O, you vile midgets never learn to expect the unexpectable. Such caution is necessary; there are so many monsters in this world that inevitably catch the fair-haired virgin that would've given birth to the next Saint..." Sly snorted at the words.

"So, I'm led to believe a Lightborne is in the Colovian Underways?" The cheery voice chuckled in reply.

"Over here short-one, by the wall, yes the corpse by the wall..." There rested a skeletal body, a dagger jammed through its fused ribcage; a dusty book was held in its lap. "Yes, yes, I'm very dead...I'm not a rare case either, plenty of families never get to bury a kin's body, but at least mine knows I'm decayed. Unfortunately, I can't say the same to you, a pity to be frank." Sly moved over to it, unaffected by the revelation. Spiders and rats had gotten to the body, spider webs covered the open-mouthed skull, fingers had been carried away by rodents, and little nibbles had been taken out of a carefully woven robe still clinging in scraps to the shoulders.

"Yes the rats and spiders have been my 'best friends' for the six centuries I've been in this crypt. When I was younger, if one can be young whist dead, I foolishly attempted to teach them language- insanity through boredom I guess. They repaid my efforts by picking me apart and, I would shiver if I could, breeding in me...too sad that they will never reach me again to finish the job."

The dagger was of Lightswore origin, pushed to the hilt into this corpse's chest; Sly cocked his head, there was still a shine to it, he could see that his beard had begun to grow. It had been maybe two days since he had been placed on that slab.

"Not frightened, good...or maybe you will be once you realize I'm not an illusion. Well, perhaps you could introduce yourself before the insanity wears off and you begin to come to terms with just how, pardon my Demonicka, fucked you are."

Sly scratched his whiskers, tracking blood from his wound to his face. "Sly," he bluntly said, rolling his shoulder to stretch his aching muscles.

The jaws of the skull snapped shut in response. A consuming field of shadows morphed around the head of the corpse as a chilling emerald glow began to erupt from it; a pair of verdant orbs took the place of the absent eyes. The skull twitched and shook before lifting off the top of the spine as if it had been removed before. It floated up a head and shoulders higher than Sly hovering there as the jaws snapped together in a mocking form of speech.

"Sly...strange name that is. There's nothing 'sly' about you, you're a bit too burly to sneak behind anyone with a nose, o' I most understand my double-jest there as well. A nickname I assume, one that you wish to be called before you die. I'll indulge you with this, this last wish if you're a pessimist. O' but I rant on, mortal life isn't long enough to truly understand anything, lest be consumed by my constant speech as well." Sly raised his bushy eyebrows, drawing in a sucking breath through his bulbous nose.

"I see you're idiosyncratic...”

“I’ve been in a tomb with dust, not a lexicon.”

“I just called you odd, which is what you are creature.”

“A creature? I’m Roderick von Tollen, you may call me Rick, or if you wish to be grand, Roderick von Tollen the Magnificent Bastard.”

“You glow akin to a lantern; I’ll just call you Glowlight…”

“Witty, you’re the best company I’ve had so far; I’m sorry that you’ll be a dead little man soon.” Sly shrugged his shoulders.

“Death doesn’t take a Shadowhunter slowly.” Glowlight, Rick, suddenly showed peaked interest, flying circles around Sly in investigation.

“A Dwarven Shadowhunter? Such a sight is more unlikely to see than a Dwarven woman- interesting little man you are. Midgets as assassins and stalkers? A pity that not everything has knees for you to bite. Your uniqueness could explain why you’re not babbling in terror at me, a representative of the undead….”

“I fear no ghouls; you are nothing more than a cursed little beast to me.” Sly tossed his bloody hand in dismissal, turning to the cave-in that impeded his escape. Through every Hell there is a path the Damned must follow, which leads both ways.

"Why do you depart midget, is it because I smell most foul?" Glowlight was following him, a bit of a blessing now that he could inspect the cave-in far better. "O, a way out...well I'm sure you can find a weapon to slit your wrists." There’s not a gap between these damn rocks, Sly confirmed what his instincts had told him. "Wasting from blood loss is much more peaceful than going mad with thirst...or at least I think it is. No, both are equally unpleasant... both filled with agonies that you wish would end-"

Sly shook his hand on Glowlight; the itchy cave dust was beginning to stick to his sweaty forehead. "You pester me insect; depart now before I rip that jaw off..." The vexing skull snapped its teeth next to his ear and floated twice his height above him.

"I'd like to see you jump for it..." Sly went back to his inspection. He flipped rocks over to search for a gash open to the other side. "Now as I was saying my newest friend, the act of dying isn't filled with those honorable falls and redemptions...if I'm correct, I died in tears. Alas, death ain't much better; it's just silence, not the pleasant kind either."

Sly reached for the scabbard at his waist. It was missing. Even turning the rocks about revealed not a single hair-line crack, through some freak coincidence, all the rocks were interlocking with each other. "Weaponless, wounded, and unable to Shadow-walk," he whispered to himself.

"Shadow-walk? O, woe to you midget, you will find no shadows here to flow to freedom. Maybe at night you can use the gash in the roof, but that'll lead you into the mountains...freezing to death isn't peaceful, I met a ghost who described it as burning alive, except you go mad first, then you strip naked from imaginary heat flashes! That joke made me chuckle for a few days."

He turned the rocks again and again, desperation fueling his drive. "Had I a weapon, I'd use it to banish your badgering voice from my presence. Yet fate places me in a room trapped with you...tell me, what causes your want of interaction with me?" There was no hope to be found at this cave-in; it was only whittling away at the precious energy left in his body.

"Pity your Dwarven ideal of 'fate' doesn't exist."

Sly breathed out in annoyance at the skull's words.

"I don't know why I find chatting with people now an enjoyable dalliance, maybe because Dwarves aren't people." The vile skull followed him back to the slab, lowering to his eye-level. "You spoke a woman's name, I've seen gentlemen and lasses awaken in carnage, but never have I seen them unbowed by it...tell me, is it because you're cruel?"

Sly scowled. "When does life breed anyone else?"

The glowing orbs inspected him. "Such a belief we don't share, little man." Glowlight turned to the slain bodies on the floor.

"Then you know I have no words to share for you, begone."

"Who is Júlia?"

"A Dwarf..."

"Good, I was expecting something with a beard would lay with a rat like you."

"If you were this vile in life, I would have to agree with the Lightborne that stabbed you."

"Why thank you friend...tell me, do you seek this Júlia?" Sly furrowed his bushy eyebrows. "You're not worried about dying in this cave are you? Júlia is the reason you press o-"

"My feelings are my own; I didn't ask to be locked in a damn tomb..."

"Truly now? From what those soldiers said, you were the one that awakened Them..." Sly felt the words burn his ears.

"We were asked to scout this underway for the Great Enemy, a tomb site is all we came upon; I was reckless, nothing mor-"

"And now an entire stock of Dwarves lay slain, nothing less." Sly backhanded the floating head, dismissing it from his view. He curled his fingers on the slab, feeling the guilt begin to build; he remembered the flight in darkness, a pair of hands dragging him as Dwarven warriors fought against shadows.

"We were chased back here, I placed upon this slab. Júlia bent her mouth to my ear as Erdész called her; she whispered something to me, and then took my weapon, Autumn." Sly recounted the events to nobody in particular; from there to when the metal doors were smashed open was a solid blank. No, there was a conversation beyond his ears, Júlia was there with- he couldn’t recall the face.

"Sly, may Aenwen have power to take your soul." Glowlight spoke as he floated to Sly's vision once more. "That is what she said before I lost interest. Aenwen is roughly translated to 'Nine Hells'. O, woe to you. The woman you seek damned you to hell, sounds like a complex relationship."

Sly chewed his already bloody lip. "Where did she go?"

"To death,” the skull turned to the macabre slaughter staining the floors, “what else does one find in a tomb?"

"Fool!” Sly declared with anger. “I've not a strand of hair thin enough to compare to my lack of patience!" he’d never accept those words, Júlia was impossible to kill; the woman had lost her arm and womb in a single battle, but still carried the Horn of the Imperium to the last moment of glory.

"I have existed in this state for six hundred years. I don't sleep, nor do I eat, or piss, or feel anything but the shadows of life that mortals hold with such callous disregard. So I've come to learn how to ignore events rather than remember them. That scene was nothing more than another eye blink, yes I can still do that, to me."

"Then I see no reason to patter about in this hole-"

"If you're going to ask for a way out, I'll point to that axe on the floor, pity I have no fingers to do said pointing. Your life's still yours little man."

Sly stared down at the axe in question; it was a bearded war-blade, a Lightborne weapon. The smith had little knowledge of Dwarven proportions; it felt akin to a staff, with a ball and chain weighting down the head. He ran his gloved finger across the chipped blade; it was still sharp, razor sharp. “O little man, I see you take the Magnificent Bastard’s advice, be sure to cut vertically, horizontally will just cause your arteries to rip-cord, then it’d be an extra hour of writhing on the floor in agony as you watch your life slowly tickle out your warm skin.”

“You’re like a candle with the better part burned out, the words of a poet not mine, but they hold a truth to you.” He dropped the axe’s long handle on his shoulder; he’d prefer a sword like any Dwarf would, axes and hammers were farmer's tools, nothing more…

Glowlight was pestering him, flying around in circles; he began humming a chilling lullaby. “And you’re a Cat in the Cradle, the words of Them not mine, but they hold a truth to you…midget.”

“Them…”

“Yes, the rats…little bastards have a habit of plotting.”

Sly breathed out in exhaustion and pain; his lungs were still functioning, a good sign. Yet he could still taste blood; he was bleeding somewhere inside, and the ‘somewhere’ part was what frightened him most. “Y-You,” he coughed heavily into his hand, “yo-u know what I speak of.”

“Spiders? Yes, yes, yessss now that I’m an immortal I can spend the rest of eternity eradicating those six-legged freaks…or eight…o why would I bloody care! Burn the rat, hang the spider, purge all carrion-eaters!” Glowlight turned frantically left and right, seemingly searching for his tiny foes. Sly grunted with rage. “Fetch me my blade midget! You’ve inspired me on a crusade-”

The Metal-Lords, lantern-skull!” The word left a nasty iron taste in Sly’s mouth; it was even harder on his ears. Metal-Lords be damned! “Have the rats taken your cunning, along with your wit, manners, and intelligence?!”

“I have no brain, my heart was carried off by the largest, hairiest rodent in Keal Modan, and my only companions have been dust particles…” Glowlight snapped his rotted teeth. He began to float off as he hummed that chilling lullaby; the language was Lightborne. “Ich denke dein,” he hymned as he returned to his abandoned body, “wenn mir der Sonne schimmer,” he sang cheerily as he snapped his teeth. “Vorn Merre strahlt, Ich denke dein,” Sly turned fully to see the skull pull the dagger from his chest, carrying it back as he sang through the blade. “Wenn sich des Mondes Flimmer,” he spat the blade to Sly’s feet, “in Quellen malt.”

A stranger creature there’s never been…

“I know you desire a knife more than an axe, Shadowhunter.” Sly looked down, the blade was curved and very elegant; it had belonged to a family judging by the bear paw marking on the hilt, one of great statue. He painfully bent down and snatched up the weapon, the weight was absent. "Now Metal-Lords, yes I just jested with you- 'twas Them that stood over you and described you as such."

“My thanks Ser Roderick,” he retorted, surprised at the suddenly respect the skull gave him. Sly carefully sheathed the weapon beneath his plain, black leather belt. "They...knew I lived?"

[editline]6th September 2011[/editline]

The Cat's in the Cradle (PART TWO)

"If I could nod, for I lack a neck you lucky bastard, I would indulge you with such an unappreciated gesture..." Sly threw up his hand is annoyance.

"I'm supposed to believe that Metal-Lords stood over me without desiring my blood, and stranger still that you can understand them?" The skull chuckled merrily.

"I know...makes you think I'm mad, well maybe I am. Madness is relative to the observer; I could just be imagining you, or this tomb, or even the fact that I'm dead. But, stupid, stupid midget, I've seen them visit this room before, and I've seen some of the gifts they left upon that slab you laid on. From those two happenings, I've learned a modest armory of words they speak, along with a section of culture-"

"They have no culture!" Sly interjected angrily. "They're fucking beasts of a long forgotten era, beasts and nothing more."

"Ah, something we share in common, racism...You say they are beasts, but what are Dwarves? The cities and halls your people moved into were already built...by whom? I'm not sure on such, but were I a homeowner, I would not take kindly to rats entering my bedding…” Sly spat a mouthful of sticky blood upon the tomb dust at his feet.

He released a deep breath. “Wiggle that venomous tongue however you wish ghoul, I’ll keep my hate at bay so long as you wish to aid me.”

“Oh jolly-good then little-man, I’ll keep my imaginary tongue within these choppers and I’ll tell you what those strange metal beasts said as they stood over your wasting flesh.”

Glowlight, apparently in extreme excitement, began to fly about in circles. He spoke with a sing-song accent. “O’ they stood over you all-a-silent, speaking in their grating language. Yonder there is a dwarf beneath them, weaponless and unarmored, foolish and wasting, his kin-all-slain. Did they kill him, NAY! Bloody why? Hell if I know! Maybe he smelled bad?”

Sly raised a bushy eyebrow; he slid his body over to the tomb slab. It was actually a sarcophagus now that he had time to inspect it; the smooth top a lid that was air-tight to his fingers. At the bottom was an inscription that curled around the sides, forming figures instead of words; it was the language of the Great Enemy, the Metal Lords. Sly drew a deep breath as he felt a spike of fear push into his throat…this tomb was twelve by five in the Lightborne system of ‘feet’. No doubt it housed the remains of one of his foes, and judging from the small creatures the monstrous figure in the inscription was slaying, it had been an even greater warrior.

Thank Demeter that it was dead…

“Woe to this little Dwarf in the hands of the Metal-Lords, creatures of an old era, an era before even the Lightborne lived on Azure. For eight centuries ago they crawled from the pits of the world, back to the cities in the mountain that perhaps they had once built. Yonder there they found the thieving Dwarves, creatures of the valleys that had fled the growing Lightborne civilization to keep their ways intact though-they-had-no-artistic-or-technological-culture-of-their-own-so-they-rely-on-others-like-rats! But I digress, yes I don’t need to breath, I’m most definitely dead. I find it humorous just how long you Dwarves have fought; it’s going on what, nine centuries of daily battle now? And every day another town in the Underways is lost to a threat that knows this world better than your kind…a pity.”

“I get that they spoke Ser Glowlight…you needn’t give me sarcastic sympathies.” Sly whispered low, his skin was growing cold, not from the winter air gusting in but from the dire silence of this tomb.

It was the most intricate he’d ever seen, centuries of work had been put here for a dead monster. He spun around and left for the cave-in; he’d best start digging his way out, his instincts told him something was amiss and a Shadowhunter always listened to his primal voice. The lantern-skull followed him, humming to his little tune as he continued to speak.

“Yonder there was the Scruffy Shadow Son, Sly von Ordo Fallen, the Metal-Lords all looked to it each other. With voices of screeching metal, they proclaimed judgment, ‘leeeaaave himmm’. Though one most politely disagreed, with the phrase ‘this creature is a cat in the cradle’…”

“A Cat?” he spoke with befuddlement at the metaphor as he reached the first rocks. He needed to hurry. By Demeter, why wouldn’t the Great Enemy slay his kind wherever they found them?

“A creature the Lightswore and Lost and Damned have a fancy for, furry little bastards that like to rub against things. The Lightborne have a legend for them, from the recent Sanguine Crusade waged against my kin, not the dead ones of course; it says that the Demonicka would release these cats into the cradles of Lightborne children and the vile beasts would steal the breath of the infant, killing it. Is it true? Perhaps. They say every tale is first told by a true believer, lest they not exist at all…say, why are you digging?”

“I’m leaving this hole,” he pulled the rocks away with new-found vigor; his gash finally felt the powdered salt in the rock dust. “And I know what felines are, but why would the Metal-Lords even refer to me as such? They are only in Keal Modan; in the deepest bowels of the Vestige Mountain Range…they wouldn’t know of surface-dwellers or their customs.” He only had to dig till he saw a shadow, then he’d be able to leave this damn tomb and its inhabitant behind to rot.

“To be frank, what the one spoke in protest is…well he described you like a cat in the cradle. He was speaking as if a child was in that tomb over yonder…” Sly stopped digging; the hairs on the back of his neck prickled in attention. “A pity that the secrets of Azure belong to such stupid creatures.”

The Shadowhunter turned, drawing his dagger. The lid had moved, the disturbed dust indicated that. What the flying-high-fucks was this sorcery, why had that lid moved? “Glowlight, what circumstances led you here? Was this tomb already in place? Was it empty?” It just moved again, that scratching sound, what is it?

“The circumstances were bad enough that it ended in my death…need I say more?”

“You sarcastic idiot! Both our lives are in danger, tell me what you know.” The skull peered over to the moving lid, he chuckled darkly.

“I know that you are most, pardoned my Elven, fucked.”

The world turned to a blur for Sly Obmar, the crackle of an explosion filled his ears and the sensation of smacking against three separate walls was accompanied with the tearing of his stitches and the loss of four teeth. He tasted blood before air, seeing darkness before that bastard skull entered his clouded vision. It floated about, inspecting him, humming as it snapped its teeth in tune. “My, my, my, your blood is black…is that normal? No Dwarves have black blood, or was it purple? Hmmm no it was black; yes it was…you’re also in a lot of pain, this I know, because I can see your entrails, ouchy.”

He rolled over, coughing as he felt a rope slough out of his torn side; he grasped the pinkish thing in his agony and shoved it back into his gut, holding it there as he stood with dagger in hand. There the tomb stood splintered, chucks of the ornate stone scattered all about the cavernous room; it was empty. Sly drew a haggard breath as the shadows of the room began to curl with unnatural life, darkness curling around every source of light, snuffing it out. The Shadowhunter calmed his body, ignoring the blood gushing from his side; darkness was his friend.

And in the darkness, I shall hunt.

Glowlight suddenly lit up, shattering his concentration. “Dark sorcery? Bah! I’m the meaning of dark sorcery; this creature is too foolish to be the death of all the Dwarves…though it will kill many, starting with you of course.” The skull fluttered down, inspecting his wound. “Ouch…” he declared with a snap of his teeth, “some of your maggot friends got jammed in there too-”

Sly knocked the skull away, “fuck off you floating buzzard-trap!” he shouted, not hearing the first scrap of metal on metal. He halted when he finally detected it.

Eeeeee, shhhh, eeeee, shhhh.

Glowlight chucked, “O’ I hear the beast in the dark!”

Eeeeee, shhhh, eeeee, shhhh.

The skull floated down to his eyes, “I have powers, midget. Powers you could use…powers easily capable of being your salvation.”

Sly’s eyes narrowed, he was already feeling the crippling effects of blood loss. What lay in the shadows around him, he could only guess now; he collapsed to a knee. He felt his hand lapse from his side. Damnitall, he was going out like this, eh? “Why?” he asked the skull as Sly crumbled back onto the rocks behind him.

“Because in six hundred years, you’re the only creature that hasn’t made my existence intolerable.” Glowlight hovered down to his sundered side, eyes lighting up as a beam of searing heat projected from him and hissed into Sly’s side. He hadn’t the time to move before the process was over with and all he could smell was burnt flesh and hair. “It’s called Necromancy; I invigorated your dead flesh to grow over the wound. The patch will rot away in a day, but it’ll keep your guts and blood in. Hurt like a Dwarven bitch’s squeezing cunt though, eh?”

Sly pushed himself up.

Eeeeee, shhhh, eeeee, shhhh.

He steadied his grip on Glowlight’s dagger. “What lay in this tomb?”

“Something dead?” the skull snapped.

“No id-Roderick, I’m not talking about you,” he pointed into the pitch dark, “the sarcophagus, what secret was it hiding?”

“The hell if I know, I got bored reading the inscription-picture-thingy. Maybe its one of those monsters you dwarves are afraid of…that blood-sucking thing that goes after mountain goats and their farmers, cupapatha, cupacrab, cupa-thingy?” Sly buried his building rage.

“You know what it held, what entertainment do you get out of misleading me?” The skull turned about to seemingly stare at the rock wall absently. “My life hinges on knowing what shares this room with us, though I pray it isn’t what I think it is…”

“And what would that bloody be?” Sly felt his weapon hand tremble.

“The Acél Légió,” His beard hairs spiked with trepidation, “the Steel Legion…”

Eeeeee, shhhh, eeeee, shhhh.

“Ho, Ho, HO! That is what you face, O’ Sly von Ordo Fallen!”

Eeeeee, shhhh, eeeee, shhhh.

“Don’t you hear it!? It’s sharping its blade…”

Sly saw the spark in the dark; his eyes turned to see the eight-foot curving blade glinting just yards from him. It vanished in the curling curtain of shadows. “I need the shadows, keep your light from me…” Sly told his ghoulish accomplice; who laughed at his request as he retreated from the Shadowhunter.

“Raise your dagger or raise your head Sly, doom comes…”

The edges of Sly’s body melted from view as he disappeared in his own cloud of darkness; he shadow-walked to every corner within an eye blink, searching high and low for his foe. This creature was massive; though it stepped with the ease of a Lightborne. It was well hidden too; Sly only caught glimpses of it, a rusted back, and a face that…terrified him. It was moving towards the cave-in, where Roderick floated about humming his little song. The dagger in his fist was five-inches long; he’d need six to punch into any of the vital components. Did he think he could win? He didn’t know, but he had too.

“Oooooo crap…” the skull silently spoke as it floated away; the aura of light he emitted just barely showed the nightmarish foe Sly was ready to pounce on. “Ooooo crap o crap, it’s digging its way out, Shadowhunter.” Rocks flew away with surprising speed; if it left this room…

Sly condescend into his form on the ceiling, hanging above on a hand-hold. He dropped twenty feet above his foe, soaring down with his glittering dagger first, he landed on the creature’s metal back, dagger plunging into steel. He ripped the blade free, aiming for the spot were the delicate clockwork neck connected to the body. A grasping fist solved that, pulling him from the back as the beast of steel spun about to face him; rather its ever-changing face did.

For it was a creature as unique as its kind could be, its head was composed of artistically realized sculptures of bronze, constantly swapping out one of four features to form dozens of female and male visages. Its mouth opened on a rail, turning clockwork gears creaked with rust and age. The Metal Lord spoke in un-words, sounds that brought blood dripping out of Sly’s ears. He could pick out one of a thousand voices all speaking at once before it closed its mouth, bringing the point of its arm-blade to his chest.

“Infidel…” it still spoke as all the features of its face changed to those of a vaguely-Lightborne priestess. “Our battle…” the face changed to that of a warrior-king, “ends in the Heavens…” It tossed Sly aside as it turned to the cave-in, waving a metal fist as the rocks seemed to obey its command and roll aside.

The very earth bowed to the will of this monster…

It left him upon the ground, departing into the darkness without a word. An enthusiastic Glowlight zoomed over to him. “By Melittale’s spearmint-smelling cunt! It spoke Highgarian! In the name of every saint raped by vampires, it spoke bloody Highgarian!” Sly pushed himself up; he dusted the dirt from his body as he immediately followed his foe’s path. “Where the hell are you going? You haven’t realized that the big bastard just spanked that midget arse of yours?”

“You say it’s the Steel Legion!” Sly shouted as he turned back to Glowlight. “Then it’s the messiah of the Metal Lords, the Last General…I have to stop it in these caves.”

“Well, this isn’t a tale of heroes ganging up on a Dark Lord, I have no arms to wield a sword, and you couldn’t even headbutt a man above the groin.” This time Sly caught that damn skull by the lower jaw, holding it in place.

“You realize just what I’ve done means…you’ve read the inscriptions…now tell me why I was left alive.”

“Indeedy, I’ll tell you what was upon that slab.” Glowlight pulled from his grasp, staring at a nearby wall. “In Highgarian, it would read: Here lies Triestes Messor, the once and future king. It says nothing else, but yonder there was a picture…something that chilled my blood.”

“What was that?” Sly questioned as he feebly attempted to itch the dryness of his throat away. “Why do you stare off into nothingness?”

“Because whist I read, the image shifted to a succubus being raped, mutilated, and devoured by her Lightborne allies. It was a message meant for my eyes only…delivered by a False God that is rising.” Sly sheathed his dagger, ignoring the chill grasping at its heart.

“You know what my next question is…”

“Then my answer is here. What lay in that coffin shall shake the very foundations of the world. For a Succubus of the Lightswore to be betrayed by her Lightborne kin it is- it is… I can’t speak of it. This beast needs you for something Sly von Ordo Fallen, it shall know no remorse, no pity, and no respite till it has what it needs from you. We shall end at that for now.” Sly snorted at the grim words.

“Good, I shall be the only one to suffer from my mistakes.” At this, Glowlight spun around, his sternness gone in a seeming heartbeat, his upbeat voice echoing through the tomb.

“O' if only I could hear the juicy comments your comrades would say now..." Glowlight intentionally whispered the words loud enough for Sly to hear. "Or the screams of the Dwarves in the cities when the Steel Legion and all its gruesome allies storm the gates..."

"The Metal-Lord was coated with rust...it's still just a reanimated corpse." Sly softly spoke. He'd unleash his fury ten-fold on this pestering lantern, but Glowlight had been here some six centuries. Stubborn as it was, the creature still relinquished secrets given time, and he’d patched his side up. In fact better than ever, the pain was gone even a surge of energy was in his veins.

"As a woman I once knew would say, "Goddess's breath lest these not be your final words", she was veerrry religious. Hard to believe so since her nether-regions had seen more action than Sargarrus Malleus in the first two Sanguine Crusades. Though I patter on, you'll most certainly be reduced to an oily stain upon the mountainside, and I'll be perhaps moved to a single tear before I move on."