Victor of Tucson-Chapter 30Book 10: : Terror

30 – Terror

Grand Prince Troyssas sat in his box, high on the northern wall of the arena, his throne-like seat overlooking the spectacle with a vantage no other could boast. To his left, halfway down to the sands, was the box where his distant cousin, Queen Livessa, sat with her retinue. On the other side was the upstart, Queen Kynna. The two women were impressive, but Troyssas didn’t have eyes for them. He watched the strange champion, Victor, as he swayed on the sands, seemingly unsteady on his feet.

He stood hunched, his tall, muscular frame encased in powerful artifacts. His brow hid his eyes as he leaned forward, but the dark circles surrounding them were apparent. His bronze flesh glimmered with a sheen of sweat, and his mouth hung partially open as he took short, pain-filled breaths. Even his mighty axe resembled a crutch more than a weapon as he leaned heavily on the haft.

“What ails him?” Troyssas rumbled, his voice like falling boulders as it emerged from his chest.

Savinicus, his Master of Revels, was quick to respond, “None know, Highness. He was missing for months. Some speculate that he suffered some mortal malady in his battle with Loss Chenasta.”

“How can we not know?” Troyssas pouted. “Do we not employ the best spy masters in the world?”

“Naturally, Highness, however, if none know, then even the best spies cannot sus out the truth of the matter.”

“Well, it’s good that he will die, but I had hoped to be entertained.” Troyssas hadn’t wanted Livessa to issue the challenge. He hadn’t believed the champion had died or been replaced like so many had insisted. Even if he had been, why should they rush things? Plenty of champions in the great houses might have killed Kynna’s champion, whomever he or she may be. Why put Drok on the sands? If the unthinkable happened and he lost, Khaliday would be exposed.

Troyssas swung his enormous arm to his left, jostling Carpecus’s seat. “Well? You’re my chief advisor—advise!”

"Grand Highness, Queen Livessa is as astute as she is striking, and her unwavering faith in Drok the Skull remains unshaken. I am confident that today’s duel will decisively quell this regrettable insurrection. With the downfall of Kynna Dar’s house, we may commence the arduous yet necessary task of reaffirming the allegiance of the lesser nations to House Khaliday."

“You’ll stake your life on it?”

“I, um, well, no Highness, such bravery is beyond a simple administrator like myself. Why, I would—”

“Be still.” Troyssas waved his arm, sending the man cowering into silence. He leaned forward, pressing his chin into one thick fist, shifting his vision to the undead fiend who had come from off-world to serve Livessa. He was an imposing figure, certainly. “Steel bound,” he muttered, remembering what Savinicus had told him about the fellow—a creature of conquest, a monstrously evil spirit that had subjugated a hundred worlds. He claimed to be steel-bound by design and wanted to remain at that tier for various reasons. “Why?”

Savinicus was astute enough to know he was being spoken to but didn’t understand the question. “P-pardon me, Highness?”

“Such tedium. Why? Why is the fool avoiding the veil?”

“Ah! Drok? He claims there are challenges, dungeons, worlds—like our own—where he’d be barred should he advance. He claims that he seeks to experience all he can before pushing himself beyond the reach of such places.”

Troyssas gathered a wad of phlegm and spat to the side, unmindful of the servant who scurried forward to collect the precious bit of him, storing it away in a shielded dimensional container. “He sounds like a coward to me. He works himself to a pinnacle of power and then goes about smashing those still climbing the ladder. Of course he’s accumulated an impressive tally of victories with such methods.”

“That’s certainly a valid viewpoint, Highn—”

“Do you patronize?”

“N-never, Highness!”

Troyssas waved a hand dismissing him, still observing the Death Caster as Grand Judicator Lohanse began his usual spiel. Drok was clad in dark robes adorned with glistening feathers. He looked more like a shaman than a proper champion for one of Ruhn's oldest, most powerful houses. Still, that skull was impressive and he had a certain darkness about him, a strength of aura, that Troyssas could feel even from his seat, a thousand strides away. He tapped the control rune on his armrest and the air wavered before his eyes, bringing his view closer.

Drok turned his skull-faced gaze directly toward him, the orbs in his eye sockets roiling with flames that promised pain and despair. To his shame, though he’d never admit it, Troyssas looked away, widening his perspective so he could see both champions at once. Again, he turned to his chief advisor. “My sister is prepared for every eventuality?” ŕ𝐀Νo͍ꞖЁȘ

“Naturally, Highness. Empress Matessa has plans within plans, and she was in close counsel with Queen Livessa prior to her issuing this challenge.”

“Good.” Troyssas couldn’t imagine the sickly giant would win, but something about the man put him off—a discomfort of the mind that he wasn’t accustomed to—and he didn’t like it.

###

Victor stood on the sands, his mind wandering. The sounds of the crowd and Lohanse’s long-winded speech lost to him. He was fixated on the puzzle of his curse and as he thought about it, he let his thoughts drift down mental roads toward his strange meeting with Chantico and her message to him. She’d said they’d met before and discussed his curse, but Victor only had vague dreamlike memories of that encounter. This more recent one, though, was vivid and clear.

He could hear their conversation as plain as day, even now, while the crowd roared, the wind howled with the horns, and the sands shook with the thuds of the great drums announcing the imminent commencement of the duel:

“Victor, when you set yourself adrift in this void, was it your curse that sent you here?”

“No…”

“Was it fear of responsibility or, worse, fear of a foe?”

“No…”

“Was it fear of death?”

“No!”

“No, little brother, it was your poor, wounded heart. When you awaken, ruminate on that for a while.”

Ruminate. He’d sat up all night doing so. After all, why would he sleep? He’d just done so for six months. No, it would be a while before he once again allowed himself sleep. What was she talking about? His wounded heart? Love? Was he hiding from love? Is that why he’d failed to awaken? His heart? But… Despite his struggles with love, he still loved. He still loved Valla. He still loved Tes. He still loved all the people he’d grown close to. He wouldn’t hide from that, would he?

Cold shadows swirled around him, accompanied by the vague cackling of the death caster he’d met the day before. Had the fight begun? “That’s right,” Victor sighed, remembering the horns and drums. Waves of horrific Energy rolled over him—terror. He saw things that should have stopped his heart: monstrous incarnations of his abuela—flesh sallow, eyes oozing maggots. His mother rushed at him, her face a skull-like mask of death, her limbs too long, tipped with razor claws.

Victor swatted them aside, smashing them with Lifedrinker. They were horrible, but he was all too familiar with the threads of fear that twisted his reality. He could feel and taste the Energy in the air. It was thick and rich; had Drok created some sort of terror domain? Shadows clutched at his ankles, roped around his neck, pulling him like a torture rack. Victor’s thoughts were elsewhere, though, as he contemplated the fear.

Drok couldn’t have known his mother and abuela. No, the spell he’d cast must have been designed to bring his own fears to life. “My fears…”

More monstrosities came at him out of the darkness—twisted versions of Valla and Tes, Edeya, Lam, and Deyni. They were corpses, broken and rotting, with jagged claws and teeth filed to points. They leaped at him, climbing his legs and torso, clawing at his flesh as the shadows pulled him taut. His armor was gone, somehow stripped from him by the same shadows that bound him. The corpses of his loved ones tore his flesh, scooping bits of him into their mouths.

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The pain was immense, but Victor had felt pain. He’d felt constant agony for, apparently, more than half a year. He wondered if this torture and the sight of his loved ones in such a state was meant to break him. Was this a spell that Drok the Skull had used to conquer armies? Could he create a domain like this and allow his victims’ fears to break their minds? Victor was more interested than horrified. Was this what he feared most?

###

Kynna clenched her fists, looking into the arena, horrified by the spectacle. Victor hadn’t hardly tried to fight! He’d smashed the first couple of horrors Drok summoned, but now he stood, stretched like a sacrifice, while more and more horrors crawled over his body, clawing at and feasting on his flesh. “What happened to his armor?” she whispered, looking at Arona who sat close beside her.

“I…” Arona shook her head. “It can’t be real. These must be phantasms, projections of Victor’s subconscious. I say Victor’s and not Drok’s because I recognize some of those poor, broken creatures. What we see are manifestations from Victor’s mind, twisted by Drok’s terror-attuned magic.”

“Is he helpless?” Bryn asked, far more comfortable addressing Arona than she ever had been Kynna, herself.

Arona shook her head. “I don’t know. Victor keeps many secrets, even from me. Look at his face, though. He doesn’t look like a man being eaten alive by the corpses of his loved ones.”

“Loved ones…” Kynna whispered, looking more closely at the undead creatures crawling over him—naked, rotting, ghoulish. “How awful!”

Meanwhile, the Death Caster stood exactly where he’d been when the duel began. His arms were uplifted and dark shadows poured forth from them, filling the arena with the cloying reek of terror. If not for the veil walkers’—Lohanse had companions in attendance after the last duel’s disastrous ending—magic, the power of their auras, shielding the spectators, Kynna was sure everyone would have fled by now. Even through their power, she could feel the stomach turning twinge of fear. “And Victor is in the thick of it.”

“Does he punish himself?” Bryn asked.

Kynna looked at her sharply. “What?”

“He lets those shadows pull him taut. His axe lies in the sand. His eyes are distant. Does he invite this torture?”

Kynna looked at Arona, wondering if the woman had some insight. She frowned, her pale eyebrows narrowing over her sparkling blue eyes. “I wish I knew.”

###

Victor felt like he was onto something. Why had Chantico been so insistent that fear drove his self-isolation in the void? Had she felt it? A piercing coldness entered his stomach, distracting him, and he looked down to see one of the terror manifestations—poor, sweet, Deyni—pulling the flesh of his stomach aside with her clawed hands, stretching a bloody hole into which she could crawl. Something woke in Victor’s chest at the sight. Hot anger began to flow into his pathways.

How did this bastard dare to mock and defile his mental image of Deyni like this? Was this supposed to break him? Was he supposed to be terrified? Should he fall to his knees and weep for the mercy of death? If that was the man’s goal, he’d picked the wrong man to try it on. Victor was intimately familiar with fear. It was his strongest affinity, after all. The falseness of the horrors was plain to him. The idea that they would break him, suddenly sparked something in his chest that began to cook with his indignation, boiling out of his mouth in a mirthless laugh.

“You think you know fear, Death Caster?” For, even though Drok used terror, a spirit affinity, Victor could feel the cold touch of death laced in every one of the nightmare creatures and shadows that clung to him. He could taste the corruption of the grave in the thick, terror-attuned Energy in the air. “I can show you what pure fear is like.”

Victor washed the rage from his pathways and opened himself to the broad band of fear-attuned Energy encompassing his Spirit Core. He let it flow like a river into his pathways, and then he shaped the pattern for Aspect of Terror. To someone observing, they might think Drok had finally broken through, that Victor was succumbing to his dark magic, for, indeed, shadows enveloped him. They sprouted from the ground, his flesh, and the very air around him, swathing him in a ball of roiling darkness that spread into the arena.

Victor’s fear-attuned shadows compounded the darkness of Drok’s death-tinted terror, and the sun, barely peeking over the eastern edge of the enormous arena wall, seemed to dim as an unnatural chill fell on the arena, quieting the crowd as people hugged their arms close and murmured their unease.

As Victor’s nightmarish alter ego manifested, trying to push his conscious mind into submission, he fought hard to keep some semblance of himself in control. The Aspect of Terror fought, but, in the end, it acquiesced. They were one—a duality—that would feast and slaughter together. So, as his body broke and twisted, reforming into something horrifying, Victor was aware of the process like he’d never been before. He knew that his understanding of the spell in the past had been wrong.

He wasn’t becoming something that reflected the fears of his foes. No, he was creating a manifestation of eldritch terror, something that existed in the primal minds of most sapient creatures. Worse, the shadows that flowed from and with him, would amplify the horror, bringing forth visions tailored to the minds of any being unfortunate enough to witness his presence.

As his bones snapped and twisted, reforming into wings, feathers, and scales, he sent out probing shadows to clutch Lifedrinker, drawing her into himself to form a beak and talons that would ruin his foes. He slipped free of the bonds Drok had worked so hard to weave; they were to him like water to a fish.

The nightmare creatures, the beings representing those he loved, were simply twisted bits of terror. He drew them in, pouring their Energy into his Core, strengthening himself. As his transformation completed, and the world became a gray plane inhabited by the brilliant spirits meant for his feasting, he lifted his great beak and shrieked, a sound amplified rather than muffled by the dense shadowy Energy that hung heavy in the arena air.

###

“Dead gods!” Troyssas hissed, feeling something strange happening in his guts. What was that twisting, bubbling sensation?

“Highness, we should depart! That sound!” Savinicus was on his ass and he turned, scrabbling on all fours up the stairs toward the exit.

Troyssas scowled at him, then looked at his personal guards. They were on their feet, weapons ready, but they weren’t as affected as his master of revels. It dawned on him then that Savinicus was a mere iron ranker. “Get him out of here,” he said to Brinnit, the captain of his guard.

“Yes, Highness.” She moved from the door to grab Savinicus by the collar, hauling him up and out of his private seating area.

Troyssas turned back to the arena, scowling. It had gotten so dark. “Was that screech something from Drok? Another of his terror creatures?”

“I’ve no idea, Highness,” Carpecus replied.

Troyssas frowned, watching the roiling shadows. Another shriek split the air, twisting his guts further. Was that… Was that fear? “Impossible,” he muttered. When Brinnit reappeared, he pointed toward the arena floor. “What makes that sound?”

“I believe it’s Gloria’s champion, Highness.” She stepped toward the ledge of his boxed-in seating area, peering with her sharp, silver-lit eyes. “He’s transformed into something terrible. A creature of shadow and scale. He—” She stepped back, gasping. “He’s in the air! Look!”

Troyssas followed her pointing finger and saw a ball of shadows hurtling into the air, swooping in a slow, lazy arc. As he watched, the shadows began to stream behind it, filling the air with deep darkness that blotted out the sunlight entirely. For a moment, Troyssas caught a glimpse of a glowering, angular red eye, and the knot in his guts wound tighter. “Dead gods,” he hissed again, repeating a curse he seldom used—why should he remind himself that there are or were beings beyond his ken?

###

Victor reveled in the terror-thick air. He took it in, bolstering his Core, feasting on it. The brilliant spirit on the sands below was kind enough to continue making it, feeding him as he gathered his strength. As he swept through the air, amplifying and spreading the fear, blotting out the unpleasant light of the sun with his shadows, his eyes fell on the countless brilliant spirits surrounding him. They were ripe for harvesting.

He would reap their fear, and with it powering him, he’d rip a hole in the veil bridging the plane of nightmare with this world, creating a realm meant for—

A ball of icy death smashed into his wing, and he banked, shrieking again, turning his baleful gaze on the spirit below, the one who had been feeding him. It wielded death as readily as terror, it seemed. “You first,” he hissed, pumping his terrible wings and falling like a hawk on a mouse. More terror manifestations emerged from the brilliant, icy-blue spirit, but Victor only drew them in, shrieking his laughter as his prey fed him.

Then he was on the spirit, clutching limbs with talons, snapping his beak through metal and cloth, peeling away roiling, shadow-filled feathery robes. He pinned his prey to the sands and stared into its orange, hate-filled eyes, savoring the sensation as the hate and anger gave way to more fear. “Yes!” he hissed, drawing out the “s,” as he pulled the fear and terror into his Core, discarding the death to fall like frost on the sand, inert and useless.

The Energy was so rich. His prey fed him directly from its core; the spirit was made of terror already, and so, so much of it! It was filled with more terror, by far, than Victor’s own Core held fear! He couldn’t help the ecstatic joy as he screamed, howling in ecstasy as his fear-attuned Energy swelled and pulsed, pushing his Core up a steep cliff, climbing toward a breakthrough he was sure to reach—his prey wasn’t even half-drained!

Even better, the waves of fear-laced shadows flowing out of him as he feasted, and the echoes of his shrieks were having an effect on the tens of thousands of bright spirits around him. They bled their own fear and, like a vortex, that Energy began to spiral downward into him. He swelled, his nightmare form stretching, growing, looming over his victim. He pulled and pulled, greedy for the deep well of terror that lurked within it.

Victor knew he was slipping. He could feel the Aspect of Terror trying to assert itself. Part of him wanted to let it. He felt good for the first time in months. His pain was a tiny thing, a minor annoyance easily ignored, next to the euphoria of accumulating his prey's rich, delicious Energy. The air was filled with fear-attuned Energy; he was swimming in it. He knew his Core was close to a breakthrough. He knew his prey was helpless underneath him. Why not let go? Why not run with it? Wasn’t this one way he might beat his curse? If he feasted on an entire world—

He broke the thought off, unfinished. He knew he couldn’t. He had to remember who he was. Growling, shrieking involuntarily, he refocused on his prey—Drok—and drew his Energy into himself. “No!” he shrieked. “I’ll finish with just you.” His words—more shrieks laced with intent—had the effect of further wilting the Death Caster. He shrank under Victor’s talons, his Energy flowing like someone had opened a floodgate. Victor soaked it up and felt his Core breakthrough, but he didn’t pause. He wouldn’t stop until Drok was utterly annihilated.