The Siege Against Tolkeen

Hubert Possman waited for his torturer to return, a magical instrument of torture in his hands. The ranger was drooling ever so slightly, and breathing very hard. He was tired, and he was fairly sure that he was about to die, but he wanted to bring this bastard down with him. Death didn't seem quite so bad if he didn't have to face it alone.

The jar of squirming, magical maggots on a long, extendible handle squirmed in his hands, the vile insects making faint squealing and chirping sounds. "Ah, pipe down," Possman growled. "I don't like you bastards very much either."

After what seemed like hours but was probably just a few seconds, the door opened again, and the demonic mage stepped in. "You're really quite a handful, you pile of..." said the creature, in its soft, Euro-accented voice, before it saw Possman. Its eyes opened wide with terror when it saw what he had in his hands, and the ranger grinned inwardly. He had caught the bastard unawares. He had made the bastard fear him.

"You don't know what that is in your hands," he said. "The Federation of Magic has been making weapons of war more fiendish than any I saw in my years serving the Angel of Death or Emperor Zeerstrun. That's one of them that you're holding right now. It's far too powerful to use on a minor demonic being like me."

"Contrary to popular opinion," said Possman, playfully thrusting the jar at the mage, "The meek shall not inherit the Earth. I honestly don't give a damn that you're a minor demonic being. You've been torturing me for a long time now, and by this point, I'd be quite willing to use devastating overkill on you."

"No, please!" shrieked the demon mage, as Possman shoved the jar in the creature's face. The thin, fragile glass keeping the maggots contained shattered violently, shards of rainbow and crystal spinning wildly away from their original form. With something that could only be called glee, the tiny, glowing insects swarmed over the shrieking face of the torturer. The first thing that they went for was the eyes. And once they were in there, they were inside the body, and could move about as they pleased, to eat the most delectable morsels first.

"Shit," murmured Possman, as he saw what used to be a humanoid creature turn into a mass of writhing larvae on the floor, as the mage was eaten from the inside out. "Forget the survival training, I am never eating bugs again, no matter how hungry I am." The ranger carefully pulled the demon mage's robe out of the maggots, shaking it to get all of the tiny creatures out, and then pulled the robe onto his own body, grimacing a little. He then walked out of the torture chamber, praying that his skills in remedial Dragonese and his acting ability would be good enough to get him out of this hell.

"This is insanity, Shaard!" cried one of the members of the High Council. "While you insist that every scrap of magical energy we have be stored in this pyramid, the Coalition troops are entrenching themselves around our borders! We are not giving our soldiers enough energy to push the Dead Boys out!"

The ice dragon sat on his enormous throne, smiling like a mischievous cat, listening to the cries of the other members of the Council. "It doesn't matter that our soldiers can't push the troops out. As long as the soldiers aren't coming in any deeper, we shall be fine. In just a short time, the jewel of the Coalition States will be a crater at least a mile deep. Let's see how much their entrenching helps those poor Dead Boys when they have no resupply shipments coming in, when their loved ones are all vapor."

"That may not help Tolkeen much," said one of the mages bitterly. "People are hungry already. In weeks, they may be fighting to the death over food. By the time that this weapon is ready to be used, by the time that we can use the energy of the alien intelligence we have trapped here, then few of our citizens may be left alive."

"Individuals matter little compared to the greater good," said Shaard, with more than a little bit of malice in his voice. "I have taken great care to build one of the greatest cities in the megaverse. It is more than a city, actually, it is an ideal, a philosophy. I will not risk its safety, its existence, in a vain attempt to spare a few lives. If our citizens die, well, it is quite regrettable, but more citizens shall come to replace the dead. Even better, the city shall live on."

"We'll see how many citizens come to replace the dead when we make your musings public!" cried out a techno-wizard, producing a tiny audio CD recorder/player. "I've had enough soldiers die in this war because of your schemes. No more! Allot 25% of the excess energy you've stored in this place to our men in the field, and I won't release this CD to the public."

Shaard's visage hardened. "A word to the wise," said Shaard. "Do not even try to blackmail a dragon. It is perhaps the hardest and most dangerous thing to do."

"I've had enough of your empty threats, Shaard! Put up or shut up!"

Suddenly, the door to the central chamber opened, and a pale, bloodied man walked in, wearing the robes of a member of the mercenary company Shaard had hired. "D'oh!," he muttered in English, weakly smacking himself on the forehead.

"What is it now?" asked Shaard, sounding very, very annoyed.

"Uh...I...um...fell down the stairs and got myself banged up a bit," said the man. "And I...er... I broke a talisman that I needed for a ritual. Could you tell me where the...uh...teleporters are, so I can...er...go back to my apartment for another one?"

"Down the hall, take a right, and it should be the third door to your left," replied Shaard. The man nodded, and quickly left. "Now then, where was I?" asked the dragon. "Oh, yes. So it's action that you want, eh?" he asked the techno-wizard. "I've got a friend here who knows all about action."

Suddenly, a humanoid creature dressed in gleaming black armor and a blood red cape stepped out of seemingly nowhere, to stand right next to the techno-wizard. Clutched in its gauntlet was a string of pearls, their whiteness contrasting sharply with the ebony carapace of the creature. "I believe that your wife was missing these?" it said, in a voice like glass being crushed. "I saw her looking for them. What a lovely woman. It would be such a pity if something were to happen to her. Oh, such a pity. And there are so many things that can happen, so many accidents that can occur."

"Bastard!" cried the wizard, lashing out with a punch directed at the newcomer. But by the time that the fist was whistling through the air where the creature had been, the creature was on the other side of the techno-mage.

"Yes, it would be a great pity indeed," said the creature, and then it stepped back and was suddenly gone.

"May I advise you to play ball," said the dragon confidently. "You really don't have a choice. The recorder, please?"

The techno-wizard, looking like he was about to cry, took the CD out of the recorder, and snapped it into four pieces.

"How the hell do I work this thing?" muttered Possman, glaring down at the series of wires, controls, and buttons that made up the teleporter's control pad. He didn't know how to work magical equipment. And he didn't have much time. In a matter of minutes, the demon mage might be reported missing, he might be found out, he might pass out.

"Don't go into shock, don't go into shock," he muttered to himself, as he began pressing buttons. After he managed to get what looked like a promising set of coordinates into the panel's LCD display, he hit the ENTER button, and a pillar of blue light appeared on the central pad in the room. Possman nervously stepped into the light.

There was an electric-sounding buzz, and Possman suddenly found himself standing ten feet in the air in a dark, smelly alleyway. The ranger fell on top of a pile of garbage just as he realized that he had probably put the wrong coordinates in. He then passed out, a cold, nearly lifeless derelict, hopelessly lost in a city he hated, dressed in the robes of a demon lord.

Next Chapter

By David Haendler.

Copyright © 1996, 1997, 1998 David Haendler. All Rights Reserved.