Viridian Sunset

Part 1

The Summoning

            Orlen was counting coppers when they found him.

            One of the boys was overbearing; he had a thick mane of tousled black hair that stuck to his budding sideburns and beard like iron shavings, and sweat creased his brow from the noon sun. The other two were heavily bound by workman's muscle and equally nearing their status as young men. Two wore hefty tunics and bore the marks of forge aprons, the last smelled of a butcher shop.

            An oversized hand stretched out and grabbed him by the hair while simultaneously yanking him into the street.

            "No loiterin'," the lead boy shouted, and dumped him on the ground.

            The clatter of coins on the cobblestone caught his ears even as a boot came down on his back.

            "Hey, look," one of the others shouted, "he's got some money!"

            "He doesn't work, the little shit," the other one replied, "he stole it!"

            He jerked away and cupped his hands over his mouth.

            "Thief!" he screamed.

            Orlen struggled to turn his head.

            "Earned," he grunted.

            "What's that?" the leader mocked.

            "I, I earned," he panted, "scribe."

            "You can't possibly read, you shit-faced punk," he said, shoving Orlen's body closer to the gutter, grinding his nose in the dirt and waste, "see that? Shit-faces can't read because they can't see anything."

            His eyes burned, but the sound of shouting guards was immediately followed by the sound of scattering feet. He staggered around for a moment upon rising, feeling around for the coppers he'd dropped. All he needed was ten. Ten coppers and he could just go to a cheap inn for one night. His brown hair was roughly grabbed and he was thrown onto his back.

            "That's for letting those boys rough you up," a heavy voice called.

            He smelled tobacco, seeing a blurred shape, and reached up to wipe his other eye. A man at arms stood there, with the town's two-headed sheep emblazoned on the front of his tunic and a halberd in his arm. He grimaced under a dull steel helm

            "What is it?" another man cried, his youthful face still clear of stubble and chin still smooth and unscarred.

            Six. There were only four coppers still on the ground and two in his hand. He felt his face grow hot, his eyes ready to burst.

            "Just some street shit," the first guard grumbled.

            It was illegal to accost guards. Doing so cost a night in the holding cells. He clenched his teeth and jerked up, spinning towards the second guard. His fist came out, but the response was a simple palm to the chest, and he fell back.

            "You little ass!" the young man shouted, "do it again and you're under arrest!"

            Orlen snarled and kicked outward, striking home on the man's crotch, who for his part howled and dropped to his knees. He spent a moment huffing while the older man clubbed Orlen in the head a few times with the butt of his spear.

            "What the fuck, snot-boy?" he growled.

            "Arrest me, damn it!" Orlen screeched.

            They looked confused for a moment, and the younger man finally stood, gurgling.

            "Crozen, look. He got my new uniform all muddy in the knees," he said, "they've got shit on them."

            "I think he wants a place to stay," Crozen rumbled, "I bet that's why he jumped you. Thinks we'll put him in the jail. Let's see your money."

            He ripped open Orlen's hand and smacked his wrist.

            "Only six coppers total," he spat, "not even enough for a good bribe at all."

            The younger one picked up his halberd.

            "Thought you could assault a guard? Picking on the smaller one, huh?" he said, and kicked Orlen in the gut, "I know a place he can stay."

            "Where's that?"

            "We gots wall duty right now," he said.

            Crozen laughed.

            "Yes," he said, "that sounds a good place. Into the old section of the city. Let the dead sort out their own."

            "He already looks half-dead, don't he?" the younger man giggled.

            "Maybe that's because we beat on him so much!" Crozen bellowed.

            They laughed together, dragging him by his shoulder. He tried to spit out the taste of rotten mud from his mouth, the smell overpowering him too much to worry about the throbbing in his chest or the sting of scraped flesh on his face. He panted and focused as much as he could on forcing his legs to move, to lift themselves over the stone streets and run away, but they would not respond. Heat streamed down his cheeks, washing lines of excrement and sludge in veined shapes across his face.

            He heard the sounds of clamor and laughter in the distance, but he didn't care, not even when the sound of metal bolts and a hard shove at his back reached him. He lay there for some time before moving his hands. Pushing up, he moved to a sitting position.

            "Hey, boy!" Crozen called out from above him.

            He turned to see the pitted face of the older guard without his helmet, nearly shaved head with rigid hairs in the waning sunlight.

            "You'd better get moving someplace fortified in there, boy!" he said, "the urgles love to munch on things like you."

            "How many are in there?" he heard from someone far off.

            "Just one," Crozen said after turning around, seemingly certain that Orlen couldn't hear him, "but it doesn't hurt to scare him. Besides, it might be dead. Again. It doesn't have anything to eat in there."

            He sat, confused for a brief moment before the words of the guard fully sunk in. Immediately he leaped to his feet and broke into a run. The section of town he'd been dropped off in was nearly seven years old, with crackling buildings missing their doors and windows, the roofs collapsed, and the well split and leaking into a small pond. The stones were weathered. Those years ago, the dead had risen from their graves, flanked by hideous beasts. He couldn't remember clearly, having been nearly five when his parents confronted that army along with most of the people along the border between kingdoms. They had been desperate then, willing to try anything to stem the tide of darkness. The city eventually just moved the walls and double up the iron, and anyone who didn't help build and wasn't a near-infant was out of luck.

            Shuffling through a ruined doorway, he grabbed a central pillar for support and spat a bit more before vomiting. Crozen had mentioned an urgle, but he'd meant an urglstata, something that filled Orlen with more shivering terror every minute. His breath continued to quicken, and his heart threatened bodily harm to his ribs. He was ragged, the stench of the muck that clung to him overpowering. He stumbled once more and fell into a stony street.         

            The evening was gray and fraught with a pale and clingy mist that spread tendrils over the ground like thick, arduous reaching the top of an overturned ceiling. He heard the scatter of bricks off in the distance and froze. He took in a quiet breath through his nose and nearly gagged from the stench of rot.

            "Hey!" he heard.

            It was the blacksmith boy's voice.

            "You sure he's out here?" came another voice from the mist.

            "S'what the guard said, innit?" he replied.

            "Who cares," was the answer, "said he told him there was a monster out here and then laughed."

            "What does he want?"

            "He wants us to rough him up a bit. Give him a lesson in standing up for himself, or some shit."

            "Bull. He just wants us to beat the snot out of him. Otherwise he wouldn't take those coppers we gave him."

            Orlen scrambled over the stones, breaking out into the open.

            "There, I see him, in the mist, over there! Split up and go around!"

            He ran again, arms in front, the world blurring and seemingly infinite in size, with nothing to see in front or behind. He slammed heavily into a solid barrier, then felt the cold grasp of the stones of the earth. Standing to get his bearings, his fingers landed on a corroded brass handle.

            Exploring further, solid mahogany still stood on the front of a harsh brick building decorated with splintered glass. A temple of the sun. He grasped the handle and jerked, the hinges creaking but still intact. He rushed inside, but a hand on his shoulder yanked him around. He was there, the blacksmith boy, and he was pulling a workman's strap from his pocket.

            "Found him!" he shouted, "Come on, boys!"

            Drawing in a heavy breath, Orlen tried not to stand where he was, but only succeeded in shivering. Something black quivered in the fog.

            "This is going to be fun," he giggled heavily, "right, boys?"

            Orlen closed his eyes and bit down on his lips. He was showered in something warm. His eyes flew open. The boy's head was still there, hanging right where he had been, everything below the neck torn and shredded, held up by a pair of rotten, bile-soaked hands.

            "Oh," he managed to get out, "it hurts."

            Screaming, Orlen shoved forward, feeling dead, struggling flesh under his hands as he pushed, stumbling out from the cathedral. He collapsed forward on his elbows and looked up, the blacksmith boy flailing in the air at the end of a long, maggot-like snake or proboscis framed at the base by an oversized upper jaw stretched over pulpy flesh. The eyes swiveled in their sockets, the rib cage serving as legs for the oversized pile of fat and caked innards. It drew the boy's body beneath the tremendous bulk and began to quiver and enlarge. Like a snake disgorging its last meal, the lock proboscis bulged and spat out the corpse, which slowly began to unfold less like a standing human and more like a wooden marionette, all joints or else no joints and only breaks.

            Finding the strength to stand suddenly rushing into him, Orlen backed into the cathedral again and slammed the door. The moaning began. Shapes and shadows filled the windows, pressing against the stained glass, illuminated by the full moon behind them. He spun in place, fighting back a wail and a cry, dropping to the floor and scrabbling all around with numb fingers, slowly growing cold with the unnatural chill in the air.

            He had to find the basement entrance; hopefully that would remain bare and still fortified against the intrusions from the dead outside. His wrist found the ring before the rest of him, and he wrapped both hands around the rusted metal. Pulling up, he strained and grunted, eventually screaming, partly to drown out the moans. The floor shifted, the door slowly creaking up until he could place a hand underneath.

            The ring snapped.

            He grabbed the bolt swiftly, reacting without though, and pushed both hands beneath the entrance, lifting instead of pulling, at least until he could slide underneath, and rolled down the stairs to the tune of dramatic pain in his ears from the tremendous change in pressure wrought by the collapsing cellar door. His knees cried out and his forehead throbbed as he stumbled down the stairs, landing in a heap and moaning himself.

            The slow moaning and pawing outside could barely be heard now, and a pair of torches flanked the walls, lit by some esoteric miracle of the sun he could barely be bothered to remember at the moment. He stopped again, slowly rising to his feet. There was another sound here, one that seemed more akin to something he might hear at a taffy pull, were everyone to afraid to make a noise. There were stairs to his left; the sound came from there.

            Pulling a torch off the wall, he stepped around the room to try to gaze down the hall. There was nothing but pitch darkness in that direction, like a spilled inkwell spattered over the walls. He cautiously moved forward, stepping lightly as he could, the only sound his heavy breathing and what sounded like rippled candy being pulled or pasta being strung ahead of him.

            He reached the bottom of the stairs and the room still was black with shadows, at least, that's how he interpreted the scene at first. All around was warm wetness, like a mat from a bog or slime pit. Pulsing nodules slid and moved amongst each other like worms.

            "What on earth?" he whispered, even though that wasn't right.

            The room was a small worship room, the private prayer chamber used by the wealthy, possessed of an altar and banner now climbing with the hideous and sprawling black bits of chitin plate, oil, bile, and muscle that touched the walls. There was a pedestal in the center, and a circle that contained the thickest parts of the creeping tissue, where the air seemed to bulge unnaturally. He felt his spine quiver and seem to move of its own bony volition.

            He stepped toward the pedestal. There was a book there, and the remnants of skeletons poked through the slipping muscles there, like something trying to find purchase. They wrapped over his feet, slipping down his shoes, retracting again, and burbling like a river, ever louder as he walked forward. Some tendrils lanced up to wipe the shit from his face and arms. He heard pounding on the door above him followed by a low roar he knew to be the maggot-thing, the urglstasta.

            There was a book there, along with a blood-stained knife, here in the temple of the sun. Rust kissed the blade where blood had once been. A ritual was detailed there, a drawn circle, a demon's countenance drawn on the opposing page and the symbols used to trap its essence. Desperate times, indeed.

            There was a howl from below.

            He narrowed his eyes. Looking at the numbers and letters, squinting, he puzzled out the remaining words, in a language he had only seen in three books at his master's library. He'd been beaten for trying to read them, which made them all the more tempting to steal late at night and stay up with candle in hand, working out the words. He ran a finger over the circle. The ritual had been almost completed. He sought for why they may not have finished it before whipping around and counting the skeletons.

            There wasn't enough death, or perhaps enough depravity, and maybe not enough blood. Maybe there hadn't been enough intent. He clenched his teeth as a particularly solid thud brought dust from the ceiling. He wished they'd just shut up, or die again. He wished the dead would just go back to their holes and leave him alone; even those who'd already passed on wouldn't cut him any slack. He slammed his fist on the podium.

            Desperate times called for desperate measures. Ripping the book from its place, he turned around to face the room. He whispered for a moment, puzzling out the language before issuing the statement.       

            "Oh, Emerald Dusk at the Blood-Soaked Gate," he said, repeating the text, and the ground tightened, the black resin contracting back to the circle almost instantly.

            He tried to calm himself, trying to shut out to pounding on the cellar door and the new moans coming from below.

            "By your power and mine," he hissed, "grant me, grant us the road to this world, that you may execute that which I conceive in my mind and desire to do, the end which I would attain by your aid."

            The tissue formed a pool, reaching up toward the center. The sound of the cellar door splintering reached him. He clenched his teeth.

            "I entreat thee to inspire thyself to manifest before me that you may give me," he panted, "my true and desired ends, so help me. This, I swear with my blood and my life, I give these souls to the gate upon which you stand."

            Nothing seemed to happen at first, though a sickly green glow began to shimmer from underneath the mass, which was still writhing towards the center of the circle. The heavy shuffling down the hall caught his attention, however, and he watched a thick, maggot-like form slip through the entrance. One giant eye, human shaped, opened on the end of the trunk, scanning the room before closing. The tentacle locked in his direction and whipped forward, the rib cage mounted on the end unfolding into a nest of razor-sharp spikes.

            The ghostly white trunk never reached him.

            Mist exploded from the circle just before he was sprayed by black, coagulated blood and cold pieces of flesh that spread out into a cone behind him. The roar of the beast beyond told of victory, and the moaning ceased altogether. A shadow in the center of the room stepped forward, clicking talons on the floor.

            The thing in the circle was like a squat stork some four feet high at the shoulder, at least in the body; long and spindly legs sprouted from the hips like spikes tipped with razor claws. The wings, which one might hesitate to call feathered, quivered and hissed with an oily residue while the bare and exposed muscles glistened like a machine or muscle. At the end of the long and stretched neck, however, sat a peach-pale human face, though the eyes were devoid of pupils.

            A long and pitted tongue of unearthly biomechanics sprouted from between the lips, and it hung over him, strands of dreadlocks like thick moss. He sat, shivering while the grotesque licked the blood from his wound. Smacking its lips, the neck craned upward and let out a moaning sigh.

            "Master," the bird-thing cooed, "I'm hungry."

            The neck shivered, the hair-mat wriggling like gelatin or tentacles before the face snapped down to lock eyes with him in a pleading expression, almost akin to a child just before breaking out into tears.

            "Do you have any guts?" it toned, "I want to eat guts."