Chapter Fifty-Two

The Not So Innocent Bystander

Mayor Keong watched the battle raging below. At first, his heart soared when he saw a bedraggled Tooth face off against the ogre. The man looked worn down and exhausted, but had still managed to find some misplaced sense of duty to the town, and stood up to the vulgar babyish bastard.

Keong’s heart sank when he saw Tooth not only take some hits and survive but return those blows in kind. While it was clear that the two weren’t evenly matched Keong could see that the fight could go either way, especially if Tooth got help from the guards or constables; so far though he’d been holding his own and that did not bode well for Keong’s plans.

His plans were already ruined. Keong was not supposed to have been in Goulcrest when the raid occurred. It was fairly obvious that the ogre’s appearance wasn’t a random attack; the bandit leader had moved up the timeline and now he was stuck. The raiders would kill him just as much as they would anyone else. Now was the time for him to flee, if he stayed any longer then he was a dead man. Was it any wonder that he hated Tooth to the very core of his being?

So far, Tooth had served the town in an avuncular nature; playing the role of a kindly older man who had everyone’s best interests at heart but Keong knew better. Tooth was a monster just like him. He sought power and control. He wanted to take over Goulcrest and use it for his own little power base. Keong had gotten here first, though, and had no intention of letting the graybeard take over his town.

“It is not your town, puppet.” The snakelike quality of the voice sent chills down the mayor’s spine and sucked the air from his lungs. His mouth went dry as if he’d been chewing cotton balls, and his head spun a little. He knew without turning around that Skull had arrived.

“I can see that you have no control over this situation. Things are not unfolding according to your plans, nor mine. You have no reign over the bandits nor the grotesquerie that has entered my town,” Skull hissed. “I entrust the everyday running of Goulcrest to you and you fail to meet expectations in order to expand your pockets. I do not mind your greed, Keong. Greedy men are easy to control, and I care nothing for money, but your greed has grown into ambition. You seek to supplant my rule with your own.”

Keong forced himself to turn and face the thing known as Skull. He was expecting to see the mysterious character decked out in his cult regalia, but nearly choked at what he saw instead. Instead of a horned skull covering the head of the leader of the Skull and Bones cult the mayor saw a golden human skull floating in the air.

The skull was cracked and missing a large chunk of osseous material from the frontal to parietal bones from just above the left eye to an area at the halfway point of the head. Three teeth were missing including a top lateral incisor on the left and a premolar on the right, with the lower-left cuspid missing as well. The remaining teeth all held a singular gem embedded within them. The jewels were varied and Keong could, at a glance, see rubies, diamonds, jade, pearls, and garnets among others. It was the eyes that sucked all hope from Keong.

The sockets were not just empty, they were an empty void that tried to rip his soul from its physical frame. Like twin black holes they sucked in his life force and the mayor knew that what they stole could never be retrieved again. He fought against them, but it was like ice skating uphill. In spite of their unrelenting pull the sockets radiated malevolence. Their evil bore into him like hungry maggots, tearing away tiny chunks of his spirit.

Keong realized that he had severely underestimated Skull, and that he should have taken the man more seriously. Oh, he had taken some beatings at Skull’s hands, but he realized that Skull had never unleashed his true potential upon him. The thing that stood before him wasn’t human. Clearly, it had been at one point, but time and dark practices had transformed the man into something less than human and more than mortal. Keong assumed that at one point, long ago, Skull had been a lich, but battle attrition had worn him down into demi-lich status.

Skull had no body at all, but the head rested upon a cascade of shadows that poured forth from the lower jaw granting the undead mage a physicality it would have lacked otherwise, and Keong, recipient of numerous beatings from those shadowed hands, knew that they were as hard as sledgehammers. Shadow substance they might be, but they were as real as a sword in the gut. Keong would have swallowed, but he lacked the fluid to do so.

“S-s-skull?” Terror had entangled him so deeply that even his lips trembled.

“Indeed,” the lich replied. “I can stomach incompetence, but I will not brook complete and utter lack of control. I wanted this town solidly under my thumb, and at every turn, you are stymied by one man.”

“Tooth?” he questioned as he struggled to hide the terror in his voice, “He’s nothing. I can handle him.”

“You can handle him? Did you honestly just say those words to me? If you could handle him he would have been killed the first time he visited your office.” Skull didn’t stride over to Keong so much as glide, but for some reason, the shadows seemed to make a scuttling sound nonetheless. A shadowy arm formed and the mayor suddenly felt a hand with a grip of iron wrap around his throat. It lifted him from the ground and Keong found himself staring down into the lich’s empty eyes.

“Hurka,” was all that he could manage to say.

“I want you to look out that window again, and see what you are dealing with.” Somehow, Keong found the hand on the back of his neck and his face was forced into and through his window. The mayor felt his face sliced by broken glass, but he did not cry out or whimper. He had instinctively shut his eyes as he was pushed through the window, and he opened them only to have his vision obscured by a torrent of blood. Through the crimson haze, the mayor could see that a huge creature was now fighting the ogre. The beast was bear-like but grizzled and more horrific than any normal bear ever could hope to be. Its fur was matted with what he could only assume to be ogre blood, and the two opponents stood their ground staring one another down, and in that moment of hesitation between them, Keong realized that the Tooth hadn’t been killed or vanished into the unknown. He was the odd creature that was in mortal combat with the ogre.

He didn’t know how he knew that, but he was certain that it was true. The man was a monster. A gods-be-damned honest to gods monster. He was no more human than Skull was, and he suddenly realized that he had been placed in a hopeless situation.

“Yes, you see the truth of it now. You could no more handle that man any more than you could hold a handful of acid.” Skull’s tone was bereft of emotion as he was of life. His voice was an empty cold that would dim the fire in a man’s heart. “You have been failing since the start. You are useless. You are the most useless being in this town.”

There was a loud crack and the grip on Keong’s neck vanished. The mayor collapsed to the floor in a heap; his body soaked in blood and weak from its loss. In spite of his clouded eyes, he spied Chozen standing before the lich with a glowing mace in his hands. The mace was comically heavy-looking as he struggled to hold it aloft. The great spiked ball quivered in the air more than the man himself normally did; still, he somehow managed to bring it back into a swinging position over his shoulder enough to look mildly threatening.

“Y-y-you need t-to leave m-mister Skull. I-I’m afraid you need an ap-ap-appointment to see him; he’s very b-booked right now.” The clerk somehow managed to look determined and terrified to the core simultaneously. Shockingly, Skull was slowly backing away from the timid man. Keong thought that he could see a sliver of bone fragment on the floor of his office, and he wondered if Chozen had managed to harm the undead.

“You dare bring a holy mace into my presence? You mock my authority?” If the lich’s voice had lacked emotion before it was not missing any now. He spoke in a chorus of different voices in numerous foreign tongues. “The affrontery of your insolence without bounds. Had I the time I would provide you proper punishment. However, my schedule did not consider allotting time enough for torturing fools. Lucky for you.”

The lich’s eyes illuminated, and twin shafts of light erupted from their hollow depths. The beams seared through Chozen’s chest like a hot needle through a stick of butter. The clerk dropped his weapon as the rays melted his chest and the wall behind him only to explode into the sky outside; continuing on unhindered to infinity and probably somewhere beyond. Chozen collapsed into himself as his thoracic cavity vanished. Skull ended his spell and turned to face the mayor.

“I leave you to deal with him,” he said as a shadowy finger pointed outside to the man-bear. “Otherwise, what I have done to your pet clerk will pale in comparison to your fate.

His body was wracked with pain, blood pouring from numerous parts of his head Keong managed to have one last thought before he passed out. Maybe, he thought, just maybe, I am on the wrong side.