In the Company of Ogres (41 page)
There were still more shrinking pockets of resistance.
Unable to maintain anything larger, Seamus now wore the shape of an ogre, and it suited him as he swung a club with admirable talent. Ulga had apparently run out of lightning bolts and was now conjuring sticks and stones to throw at the demons. Ace’s roc was too wounded to fly now, but he spurred it to stomp its way across the battlefield.
Frank, beside Regina, had never been prouder. And if he was going to die a pointless death, he could think of no better company than Ogre Company.
Frank had done his best to protect the pub, but demons swarmed over it like everything else. The demons cackled with delight. Ned was probably dead, realized Frank, and very likely permanently so this time.
A bolt of red blasted through the pub’s ceiling. Demons disintegrated so quickly that they had no time to even utter a cry. Streaks of red erupted, blowing holes in the pub, destroying more of the enemy. Frank was so taken with the sight that he was nearly stabbed in the back by a demon, had it not been for Regina’s alertness and quick broken sword.
Regina kicked away the corpse. She shouted a warning to be more watchful, but he couldn’t hear over the chaos, and he was too distracted by this new occurrence to notice. She was more focused, and it took some time for her to spot the deep red glow emanating from the pub. Its crumbling walls distorted outward in slow motion. The earth trembled.
Frank grabbed Regina, pulled her tight to him, and put himself between whatever dark magic was about to be unleashed.
With a flash of crimson and a stifled boom, the pub exploded. The building was reduced to freezing ash that rained down from the sky. A few small bits of demons—a hand, an eye, half a horn—pelted Frank.
He gazed down at the Amazon in his arms, whom he quickly released. “Sorry, Archmajor. I wasn’t trying to imply I thought you were weak or delicate or needed my protection or anything. It’s just I’m a lot bigger than you, no offense, and it only made sense.” It dawned on Frank that all the noise had left the battlefield or else he wouldn’t have been able to hear his fumbled apology.
Regina wasn’t listening. She was too intent on the scorched earth where the pub once stood.
Ned stood in the middle of it. The staff in his left hand crackled and shimmered. Streaks of energy lanced outward to obliterate any demons foolish enough to stray within thirty feet of him. Most cowered just outside that range.
He’d changed. And it wasn’t just his left arm with its graying flesh and strange, spiky protrusions growing from its shoulder and elbow. There was no way to describe it, to quantify exactly what was different, except for a certain cold disinterest in his eye, a disturbing calm in his expression.
Ned raised his staff. Bolts of magic shot outward in every direction, leaping from demon to demon, burning them into the same icy ash the pub had become. One came directly at Frank, only to veer away at the last instant and destroy a fat incubus. The bolts zipped through Copper Citadel, obliterating demons but avoiding the soldiers of Ogre Company. The magic killed a few dozen of the horde before returning to the point of Ned’s staff. He lowered it, and the bloody aura around it dimmed.
Nobody did much of anything for a moment. Ogre Company and the demon horde alike gaped.
A huge green demon warrior, braver than his brethren, stepped forward. He put a shield glowing with unholy magic between him and Ned and then charged, intent on braining Ned with a single smashing strike of an ebony morning star. Ned thrust his staff through the impenetrable shield and into the demon’s heart. The warrior’s flesh and blood sloughed off into nothing. His bones clattered to the ground, shattering like crystal into powder. Ned looked bored with the entire affair.
Demons fled in horror. Those who weren’t instantly destroyed by Ned’s magic. The staff glowed brighter and brighter, and soon demons disintegrated without being struck by the red lightning. It was merely enough to stand too close to his dreadful radiance.
Ogre Company stood quiet. Victory was theirs. Never Dead Ned had become a living god of destruction, and every man could feel Ned’s cold, unstoppable power. And every soldier knew there would be a price.
Miriam drew nearer. She approached within fifteen feet but dared no closer. It was all she could do to not turn and run at that distance.
“Sir?” Her voice, taxed by the battle, was barely a whisper.
Ned didn’t look at her. “One second.”
He held high his staff and emitted a single blinding burst of light. The distant retreating survivors of the demon horde disappeared. Just like that. This time there was no fire or ash left behind. Only an emptiness that caused even the trees to tremble.
“Sir?” asked Miriam.
“Almost finished,” he replied.
He stamped his staff on the ground, and it launched a pinpoint of magic that shot across the night sky. It reached the Iron Fortress and opened a sucking vortex. The fortress tried to run away, but the pull was inescapable. Brick by brick, the Iron Fortress struggled, but soon enough it and all its inhabitants were consumed. All save one. A single tiny underworld emperor had enough strength to slip free, but no one noticed.
The brilliance of Ned’s staff slowly dimmed until it shimmered with the faintest hues.
“Sir?” said Miriam.
This time he turned his head in her direction, though not all the way. He merely cocked an ear as if trying to hear a distant sound. The calmness on his face should’ve been comforting, but there was something alien about it. It wasn’t so much calm as disconnected coolness. The serenity of a madman. A madman with the power to annihilate a horde of demons.
“Are they gone?” asked Miriam. “Is it over, sir?”
“They are. It is.”
“Then you’ve saved us. Haven’t you, sir?”
“Saved you?” He smiled then, very slightly. “For the moment.”
Somewhere high in the sacred heavens, immortals cowered under their beds and discovered the hollow comfort of futile prayers. Every soldier of Ogre Company stepped back from Ned. Except for Miriam who dared step closer until she was within his reach. The staff’s light glinted off her golden scales, turning them a coppery red: the color of old blood.
“It’s okay. It’s done. It’s all done.” She reached for Ned’s hand.
He grabbed hers suddenly. His burning touch overwhelmed her. The siren screamed, and every soldier in Ogre Company was knocked off their feet. Ned released Miriam. She fell to her knees, clutching a fresh red wound sizzling on her arms. He regarded her agony with a pinch of curiosity. He no longer understood pain, save for a distant memory. He remembered he didn’t like it, and being reminded of that filled him with contempt for this weak thing cowering before him. He would destroy it, and he would forget again. And then he would destroy it all. It was the only way to forget it all, the only guarantee he’d never be reminded of any of it.
“Sir?” Miriam covered her eyes as his staff flared. “Ned?”
He stopped. Something about that word made him pause. It reminded him of memories he wasn’t sure he possessed.
Part of him wanted to destroy her for her weakness, but another part of him remembered the uncertainty that came with being a little thing in a grand cosmos.
He moved toward her, but she recoiled.
“It’ll be okay.” He held out his hand. “Here. Let me help you up.”
She hesitated.
He pushed down his power. It took more concentration than it’d taken to destroy an entire demon horde, but he managed. He took her hand in his, and while his touch was hot, it didn’t burn. He helped her to her feet.
“It’ll be all right.” He smiled. “Everything will be all right.”
Rucka crashed into the courtyard, sending shudders through the ground, knocking everyone but Ned off their feet again.
“Oh, no, Ned. It will not.”
The tiny emperor grew into fifteen feet of seething demonic fury. He spread his four tremendous black wings and growled. Rucka had never unleashed his full might for fear of breaking ancient treaties with old powers. But his army was gone, his fortress destroyed. And there was nothing quite so dangerous as a demon driven to madness, boiling with all the enraged, accursed fury of the Ten Thousand Hells. Even the boundless might of the Mad Void might hesitate in the face of that.
Rucka pounced, but a bolt from Ned’s staff ripped through the demon’s chest, blowing a hole through him. He fell to one knee and gasped, but it wasn’t enough to destroy him.
Ned pushed Miriam away from him. The staff flared as he grew to match Rucka’s size. The grayness in Ned’s left arm grew lighter and lighter until it was a translucent white that spread from his shoulder to cover his entire body. His many scars turned into a gruesome black lattice across his flesh, and beneath that skin lurked not muscle and bone, but an ocean of lights, of colors and shapes that didn’t belong in this universe, held behind a fragile illusion of mortal tissues.
The staff in his hand grew and changed along with him.
It twisted into a spiky gnarled stick, squirming with a life of its own.
“You can’t defeat me, Rucka,” said Ned. “Even the unbridled egotism of a demon emperor must surely see the pointlessness of this.”
Rucka’s wounds closed. He stood and sneered. “Oh, but I know your weakness.”
He launched himself into Ned. The force of his charge carried both of them across the citadel to crash into the barracks. The building collapsed, burying them in a mountain of rubble. A blast of power disintegrated most of the debris, but some pieces shot out with dangerous velocity. They bounced off the ogres, but a few elves and humans were knocked off their feet to lie dazed and bleeding on the ground. One particularly large chunk hurtled at Frank. The ogre deflected it with his fists. His fingers broke audibly, and he grunted.
“Frank, are you okay?” asked Regina.
“It’s nothing.”
Ned and Rucka stood locked in a deadly embrace. They wrestled over the staff as it crackled with power, seeming to draw strength from both of them. Rucka dug two of his clawed hands into Ned’s throat, and Ned fell to one knee.
Miriam drew a sword from a convenient corpse. “Come on,” she grunted with her worn voice. “We have to help him.”
Frank and Regina readied their own weapons.
A column of crimson mist rose in their path. It spoke. “No. You can’t help him any more than you already have.” The mist solidified into the Red Goddess. She wasn’t the same gnarled, old creature she’d been. She was now tall and youthful and strikingly long and angular. “It’s time to find out if Ned is ready.”
“Ready for what?” asked Regina.
The Red Goddess smiled. “Ready to be his own keeper.”
The Void roared. The staff burned brighter, and Rucka was sent hurtling, screaming, blazing into the air. The demon emperor howled all the way until he hit the ground in the woods a mile or two outside the citadel.
The Mad Void glanced down at the Red Goddess. “I see you’ve remembered what you are.” There was an absence in his voice, a certain lack of Nediness that was hard to define but still missing.
“The cosmic counterbalance that bound us both to slumber has broken. You remember what you are, so I remember what I am. You awake. I awake. That is the way of things, the nature of this ancient magic.”
“I remember,” said the Void. “Just as I remember that even your power is no match for mine.”
She nodded. “You are the supreme destroyer. There is no equal.”
The Void frowned. Without saying another word, he soared off into the sky after Rucka.
“He’s going to win, isn’t he?” asked Miriam.
The goddess nodded. “There can be no doubt.”
“Then why am I worried?” asked Regina.
The continent quaked as Ned collided with the earth, and the roar of clashing gods threatened to shake Copper Citadel to ruins. What little of it that wasn’t reduced to ruins already. Many soldiers of Ogre Company were knocked off their feet again, and most had the good sense to not bother getting up anymore.
“Because to do so, Ned might very well have to become a greater monster than Rucka could ever be.”
“Can’t you help him?” asked Frank.
“No one can help Ned but Ned now. Even the gods must sit this one out.” And so the Red Goddess did sit, looking quite indifferent as the sky darkened and cracks appeared in the earth.
“We have to do something,” said Miriam.
“Then by all means, rush to his side if you must.” The Red Goddess waved her hand. Miriam disappeared in a scarlet flash.
Regina stepped forward. “Excuse me, but could you—” She vanished with another wave.
Frank, his broken hands hanging limply at his side, approached. He didn’t even have to ask, and she teleported him away.
Ace, Elmer, and a small band of goblins were next, but the goddess lowered her hand.
“Well, if this is how it’s going to be, I suppose it’ll be easier to do you all at once,” she remarked. “Everyone who wishes to have a good view of the end of all things, please raise your hand.”
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