The Heart of a Necromancer Read online

The minotaur made a deep sound—a series of quiet bellows and chortles that sounded like choked words muttered in another language.

  Everything stopped for Jason—just for a moment. He saw the beast's dark eyes staring up at them, flickering between them all as it muttered something, reaching up to hold its bleeding neck with a massive, clawed hand. At first, Jason only saw the sunlight reflecting in its black eyes, but then he saw a fire inside. There was a spark of something in there...

  Jason remembered Athelos casually explaining that the beast—the same alpha minotaur, but killed by three Jasons in universe 1241—had felt sorrow as it died; desperation. Athelos had mentioned that it was upset that Jason and Riley and Gliath had killed its mate ... and its mate's brother. Jason had just assumed that the creature was feral...

  "Wait!" Jason 934 cried, feeling his face go red and his heart burst with something he didn't totally understand.

  Riley was aiming at the monster's face. He paused, relaxing his trigger finger, but didn't look away. "What?!" he snapped, his dark eyes flashing over to Jason from his gun sights for an instant. "What is it, Jason?"

  "Uh..." Jason had no idea what to say, so he stammered. "Um ... wait a ... uh ... don't kill it. Hold on..."

  Riley scoffed, putting his finger back on the trigger. "What the fruk, Jason? What are you thinking?"

  "It's talking!" Jason exclaimed. "It's not feral! What's it saying?!"

  "Who cares?" Riley replied. "Come on, man. Let's hurry this shet up before your government catches up to us."

  "I uh..." Jason tried to let the chaos of thoughts racing around in his brain settle. He tried to make sense of a strong wave of emotion bubbling up from his center. "But ... it's sentient! We just killed its mate and its mate's brother! This creature didn't ask for this! We just ... hunted it down for no reason!"

  "Are you shetting me?" Riley laughed. "We had plenty of reasons, Jason. Thirteen ounces of gold worth of reasons. We're monster hunters. Fruk ... it's what we do, man..."

  "We have to kill it!" Jason 1241 cried suddenly with a touch of mania. "This bastard killed Mr. and Mrs. Hines, and those other neighbors in the house, and who knows who else! Are you fucking nuts, Jason?"

  "But not this one," Jason 934 replied. "That was the Nargog from universe 1241! This one just broke up a bunch of shit and ran off into the mountains!"

  "This one tried to kill me, Jason," Riley said flatly.

  "Yeah," Jason 934 replied with a laugh. "It tried to kill us after we hunted it and killed its family. What the hell do you expect? Besides—I thought they were feral! Mindless animals! This guy's not feral! He's trying to freaking talk!"

  "Oh, who the fruk knows what it's trying to say?" Riley replied, lowering his rifle and smirking at Jason, which quickly flashed into a glare. "This is stupid. What do you want to do with a deadly fruking alpha minotaur?"

  "I know what it is saying," Gliath said suddenly in his low, rumbly voice.

  Everyone stopped and stared at the leopardwere, who was still aiming his railgun at the minotaur's brainpan.

  "What...?" Jason 934 said.

  "I do not completely understand its words," Gliath replied, "but the minotaur's language is similar to that of the Torax from my world. He is asking that you kill him quickly."

  They all stared at the beast.

  The monster was larger and broader than all of them. This very minotaur had flipped Riley like a rag doll when it had charged at them from a very effective ambush, nearly killing the man. Now, it lay crumpled; a huge mass of muscle and shaggy black fur, blood spurting from between huge black fingers and splashing the ground with every beat of its massive heart. The alpha minotaur repeated the same sounds, choking on its dark, muttered words as its fiery eyes watched, curious...

  "Gladly," Riley finally said, raising his rifle again.

  "No, wait!" Jason 934 cried out again.

  "What the fruk, Jason?!" Riley snapped. "This is crazy!"

  Jason turned to Gliath. There was a faint sound of helicopter blades on the wind.

  "Gliath, can you talk to it?"

  "You're running outta time, Jason," Riley said. "This is stupid. They're coming..."

  "Can you?" Jason repeated.

  "I can try to, Jason Leaper 934," Gliath replied, his yellowish-green cat eyes darting back and forth between him, Riley, and the fallen monster.

  Jason looked at Riley. "What if we sent it to the Wilderlands? It could heal up and live out its life hunting dinosaurs. It'd be a great life."

  Riley scoffed. "What?! This is so stupid. Jason, you've got a jacket being made right now from the skin of literally the same minotaur from a parallel universe!"

  "I don't—" Jason went on but paused, staring at the beast. "I don't totally know what I'm thinking, but I really feel like we shouldn't kill this guy for no reason. We can't even sell its hide anymore, right? Let's make a deal with it and let it live and get it off of my world."

  The soldier stared at Jason as if unable to respond.

  "You can't!" Jason 1241 exclaimed suddenly, his face twisted up with fury. "It killed Mr. and Mrs. Hines!"

  "This one didn't!" Jason 934 replied.

  "It's a pointless gesture," Riley said. "There are infinite versions of this minotaur across infinite Maze Worlds and infinite versions of your world where we're hunting it down. This is meaningless and we're out of time. Let me kill it and put it out of its—"

  Jason turned to Gliath. "Tell it ... tell it that it fought bravely, and ask if it wants to live on a world where it can hunt and survive where ... where prey is plentiful; where it can live in a cave!"

  Gliath's feline eyes darted to Riley. The soldier shrugged and looked up into the sky, searching for the approaching helicopter.

  The leopardwere looked down at the minotaur and stumbled through some noises that may have been words.

  "We're about to have company..." Riley said, squinting at the bright sky.

  The minotaur listened to Gliath and stared at Jason and Riley for a moment, then it grunted out a single strange sound.

  "It agrees," Gliath said.

  "Okay, let's go!" Jason exclaimed, slinging his rifle and diving into his pouch of focus keys. Riley scoffed again and Jason 1241 watched everything with open revulsion.

  Jason 934 found the infinity crystal, unwrapped its strip of cotton cloth, then squeezed it in his hand. He could hear the helicopter approaching quite clearly now—it would pop over the ridge any moment. What a sight they'd see...

  Flexing that strange part of his mind that he'd been learning more and more about in the last few weeks, Jason visualized his universe at the appropriate angle to open a big, horizontal rift under Nargog, tunneling instantly through the ninth dimension toward the Wilderlands like a stream of light. He felt a small bloom of satisfaction when he heard the familiar fluttering sound...

  With a loud snap like the crack of a .22 rifle splitting the air, a brilliant orange light appeared around the shaggy black edges of the monster and a whirlpool of bright and fiery color appeared in the rocky ground under its heavy body. A ring of sparks spun madly at the edges of the unfurling portal, casting motes of light a lot like burning metal slag being thrown by a miter saw.

  An instant later, the minotaur let out a shocked grunt as it suddenly fell through the spinning hole in the ground. It disappeared into a pitch-black space through the center of the wild and roaring disc into what Jason knew was the wyvern's cavern in universe 312.

  "Great!" Riley shouted above the roar. "Now we have to jump in on top of a fruking minotaur. Watch your step."

  All four of them approached the swirling, sputtering edge of the horizontal rift. It twirled and spun and roared with orange, fiery light.

  Jason looked up at the sky, scanning for the helicopter.

  "Can you see it?" he asked Riley. The soldier had all sorts of enhanced modes of vision in his cybernetic eyes. He'd even mentioned a kind of HUD Display. Jason imagined that Riley must see the world around him as if through a video
game.

  "Here it comes over the ridge," he replied, stepping up to the edge of the rift. He looked down. "Looks like the minotaur moved..."

  Riley leapt in and disappeared into the darkness.

  The rest of them followed.

  Jason dropped down into the darkness, knowing that there'd be uncertain footing of dried mud and bones and rotten dinosaur carcasses below. He hoped for the best. After a short drop through the rift, his face and lungs were slammed by a wave of hot, humid air and the terrible stench of rot and reptile shit that he'd become so familiar with. His boots hit bottom and Jason miraculously caught his balance without falling down.

  Riley was standing there, rifle shouldered, watching something that Jason couldn't see—probably the minotaur—hidden in the pitch-black cavern. Gliath dropped down through the portal with ease onto nimble feet. Jason 1241 crashed into a pile of grisly bones with a clatter and a cry of pain, immediately cursing to himself as he struggled to reorient.

  Hoping that the chopper still hadn't spotted them, Jason 934 looked up at the roaring, swirling rift and the deep blue Colorado sky on the other side then released his hold on it.

  The rift crumpled into itself with great speed, then fizzled out with a pop, leaving them all in darkness. The cavern was quiet other than the four of them moving. Jason could also hear the deep, huffing breaths of the minotaur from somewhere in the darkness. Infinity crystals on the cave floor lit up here and there, agitated by their activity and glowing blue like dim starbursts for only a second...

  Jason scrambled for the flashlight on his belt, his lungs heaving the terrible, humid air of the cavern. He turned it on with a click.

  The minotaur, Nargog, was hunched over near the wall of the cavern, staring back at them all with dark, unreadable eyes. The monster was still holding its neck and appeared far too unsure of itself for how big and strong and deadly-looking it was.

  "I can still kill it, Jason," Riley said. The soldier was standing still in the darkness, Gauss rifle shouldered and ready. "It's still a very dangerous monster. It could kill us. The dinosaurs are bad enough, aren't they? This alpha fruker might just wait until—"

  Jason felt his neck and face grow hot.

  "No," Jason said. "This is right. " He turned to Gliath. "Tell Nargog to follow us. Show him the way out. Let's go."

  This is right, he thought.

  Jason 1241 finally climbed back to his feel, seemingly furious. "Fucking stupid!" he muttered, adjusting his rifle strap. "Terrible idea..."

  The four of them struggled through the cave floor of mud ridges and animal remains, following the well-worn path to the low tunnel that would lead them outside. Jason expected to see the same dim light that would grow as they approached the cave's exit, but the tunnel was dark the entire way.

  By the time Jason stepped out into the open air ahead of his friends, he realized that it was nighttime in the Wilderlands. The sky was totally clear of clouds and a brilliant canvass of millions of stars tried in vain to illuminate the black depths of jungle and thick forest below. Jason spotted the moon. It was just a sliver of brilliant white with a very visible dark side.

  Down in the valley, there was no fire and no light sources of any kind. The world was black. Jason didn't hear any cannibals—they must all be bedded down in their camp for the night—and nothing big moved around down there. Instead, he heard the echoing and varied trills and small, curious sounds of raptors of various sizes hunting around in the darkness for food. Jason shined his light around, pausing on the very-decomposed carcasses of the wyvern and the Tyrannosaurus rex that had fallen there some time ago. A single feathered raptor about as tall as Jason's knees paused and looked at him from where it was perched on the T-Rex's right leg. A strip of meat hung from its little snout.

  When the minotaur emerged from the cave, heavy and making chunky thuds with its massive hooves, everyone scrambled out of its way.

  Jason 934 looked up at the black beast. God—it was big! They'd shot it ... how many times?! ... and it could still walk.

  "Over there," Jason announced, flashing his light across the valley directly east of the cave's entrance. He couldn't point very well with his light—it diffused into nothing after a short distance past the rock slab at the bottom of the slope—but he pointed, anyway. Jason knew that directly east—across the valley, through the forest, across Doe Creek, and half-way up the ridge—was his old 'spider cave'; the place where he'd lived for a while after killing the Ettercap-type-monster that had dragged him in there one night. "There's a good cave over there, and plenty of water." He looked at Gliath. "Tell him. Please."

  Gliath took the minotaur's attention—Jason felt a stab of fear when he saw those huge horns turn in his flashlight's illumination—and spoke several strange, guttural words to him.

  "Last chance," Riley said crisply. "We might never see him again ... at least, until he's ambushing us one day from the jungle..."

  "Let him go, Riley," Jason said.

  The soldier scoffed, smirked, then shrugged. "Eh—what's it fruking matter? We can find another Wilderlands if we need to, I reckon."

  The huge, black minotaur replied to Gliath with a string of sounds that vibrated Jason's bones. It paused to look at all of them—so fucking big! Jason thought—then walked down the slope with heavy steps, still clutching at its neck wound. Starlight glimmered on the beast's smooth and wide black horns as it approached the dead Tyrannosaur. Nargog reached down with one massive hand, grabbed a bone the size of a parking meter, and ripped it from the huge carcass with ease. The monster turned to go and limped away across the valley toward the eastern forest, holding the big bone like a club. Jason lost sight of Nargog in the darkness before it reached the tree line.

  He sighed.

  "Well that was ridiculous," Jason 1241 muttered with a large dose of venom. "Can we go back now?!"

  "What's next, Jason?" Riley asked with a smirk, slinging his rifle. "Wanna set up a monster sanctuary for dragons and trolls and shet?" The soldier laughed and walked back into the cave. Jason 1241 followed.

  Jason looked up at Gliath, who stood, regal in the night breeze with his black fur sleek under the stars. The leopardwere stared to the east with eyes pale in the darkness, watching the path of the minotaur. Hell—he could probably still see it.

  Looking down, Jason saw the skulls of some of the other minotaurs they'd killed. Gliath had left them out by the cave mouth for the insects to clean—presumably so that they could make trophies out of them later. The skulls were swarming with huge ants the size of peanut shells.

  "What do you think, Gliath?" he asked, looking up at the Krulax warrior.

  Gliath looked down at Jason and met his gaze. His feline face was as unreadable as always.

  "One day perhaps," the leopardwere said with his low, rumbly voice, "we come to the Wilderlands to heal our battle wounds and that alpha minotaur will kill us all."

  With that, Gliath turned and followed the others back into the cave.

  Jason sighed and joined the Reality Rifters to return home.

  Chapter 2

  The fog was thick, blotting out vision beyond several paces. Morgana could hear the monsters moving above her. The gargoyles swooped through streets like stony angels of death. Their wings ground like salt crushed in a mortar and pestle and their large, lithe forms made the woman's heart race every time she heard one whoosh by.

  Morgana's calloused hands were empty as she quietly moved along the sides of poorly-barricaded homes. Her boots padded along cobblestone streets full of mud and debris.

  As the young woman listened—her green eyes open wide and weary, her mouth parted to let the faintest sounds of the night reach her ears—she resisted the urge to call upon Dawnbringer, her father's sword. Eyeing her smuggler's ring—also a relic of her father's days of battling the Darkness—she could feel her brilliant blade an instant away, folded into the space between space; tucked away in an angle that didn't make sense next to the real world. If the stone beast
s fell upon her, she could call the sword into her hand in an instant by turning it out of the place she couldn't see. The ancient sword was ready and waiting. But she didn't want the monsters to see the brilliant light of the blade; not yet.

  She stared at her father's ring for a moment, shocked that she'd been able to keep it a secret from everyone—even Lillian—so far.

  These were dark days, and darker nights...

  Morgana's village waited out the night in terror, barricaded into homes half in ruin, huddled in darkness waiting for the necromancer's army of nightmares to leave just before the dawn.

  Most nights, Morgana listened to the screams of the poor families of New Bozeman that were unlucky enough to be targeted. She would sit in her room, safe and secure in her family's home that was built out of stone back when they founded the town over a hundred years ago, and weep as her people were murdered and ferried away by claws and wings in the night.

  But that was before her rebels had started disappearing at a rate that suggested something more sinister at play.

  Lately, Morgana had taken to quietly patrolling the empty streets after dark. Whenever the sun went down across the western valley in a bleeding, red haze, when the fog rolled in and the Darkness descended on her village, she's been there, stalking the streets with Dawnbringer. Night after night for weeks now, Morgana had been sneaking through the chaos and carnage of death and abduction in search of proof that the Golden Lady's Communion and their eunuch soldiers were the doom of the good people of New Bozeman. She knew that somehow those gold-masked bastards were condemning her people—those who still resisted the cult's dominion—to become victims of the roaming beasts in the night.

  Morgana always stayed out of the Crossroads; that place of humiliation and death in the middle of the century-old mountain town. The woman knew that if she ever managed to get caught up into a fight with the Darkness within sight of the church, she'd likely be spotted by Magister Estren or the Virgin Oracles that lived there. Some of her people were hanging from the crosses there even now. She could hear their screams from almost anywhere in town as some were tortured by the gargoyles in the night. Her heart burned and wept at the terrible sounds. There was nothing that she could do to save them; not yet.