by Jamey Toner
in Issue 153, October 2024
The Numivore, the Numivore,
The human whom the Gods abhor.
The Numivore, the Numivore,
The tomb of whom’s an open door.
- Nursery rhyme, anon., c. Year 220 of the New Empire
Two scarlet wings, like a galleon’s mainsails, billowed overhead. The valley, miles below, was a collusion of cartography and heraldry, vast and wild and beautiful. The dragon-fire subsumed all things.
I knew she didn’t want to fight. Like a man in the grip of a frenzying drug, she was choiceless in the matter, pointed at me and flicked into the fray. All her power, all her flame, only multiplied her anguish as she frantically battled the woman who had come to aid her. And I in turn could pull no punches if I hoped to save the both of us.
As the fork-tongued conflagration scathed the peak, my soul-self wheeled through higher spheres: spheres of which the world of matter and flesh was only a metaphor. There I beheld the dual nature of the One True Fire, which gave both death and life, and I spoke the softer of its two names. The flames around my frail human form became the consolation of a warmly crackling hearth.
“You can’t keep this up, Gloam!” the dragoness boomed across the mountaintops. “I told you to stay away.”
“And I told you not to be a dolt, Wu-Gar-Mei. I can keep going as long as he can.”
“He’s already got half my power on top of his own, damn you. Now I’ll have your blood on my—”
I heard the mental resonance of the command as clearly as she did: Stop talking and finish her.
She dove at me like a falcon, her claws spread wide: the same claws that had raised the walls of my beloved city. Had she not been down on the plains, building our mystically impregnable battlements, she would never have been ensnared by the Numivore. If a way existed to destroy him once and for all, I’d have been leading the charge; as it was, I just wanted to rescue my friend and go home before he devoured her essence and she devoured my wriggling torso.
From the higher realities, it was clear that the circle of Earth was not fixed in place but careened madly through the aether. But the very nature of the One True Rock, of which the ancient cliffs themselves were but shadows, was that of ultimate immovability. I spoke its ponderous name there in the high place, connecting myself to its self for what, below, was the merest fraction of a second; the mortal globe spun on while I stood still, and I was fifty yards from Wu-Gar-Mei when her talons struck the stone.
But I was still close enough, now that she was on the ground. As that fanged head whipped around to glare at me, I stared straight back into her baleful orange eyes and the pleading torment just behind the lids.
“Let’s end this,” I muttered, as I pushed my way into her mind.
And there he was, a leprous presence at the forefront of her brain. The sense of sight was meaningless here, but one’s mind inevitably creates images for the things it encounters—and so, naturally, I saw him as a rotting skeleton garbed in rotting robes. At his side, with her smoking snout in the dust, was the image of Wu-Gar-Mei.
This frontal self of her, the self that made the final decisions, was her Will; behind it was the phalanx of Reason and Passion—represented by my spirit-vision as dragons in poses of magnificent contemplation—and behind them were the Appetites, in corresponding attitudes of eating, raging, copulating, and so forth. In a well-disciplined intellect (such as hers), the Appetites kept their place in the phalanx, fueling the bodily actions but not usurping the Reason or the Will; and mind-controlling enchantments usually had to begin at the back, subtly influencing the moods and petty urges of the victim. The Numivore, however, was powerful enough to assault the Will directly, and gain full murderous control. And once he dominated any supernatural being (magic-users included), he consumed their numinous energies and left a desiccated husk behind.
With ironic courtesy, he bowed his cadaverous pate. Sorceress Gloam of Urd Thlol, this fight is not yours. I offer a chance at departure.
I bared my astral teeth. Man of maggots, I’m here for my friend. Whatever you might gain from her, it’s not worth what my enmity will cost you.
Squandering no more speech, the Numivore manifested his true inner nature: the form of a blank and moldering gravestone. I responded with the opposite, assuming the form of a rapidly expanding jungle: irrepressible life, worming my green tendrils into every crack and crevice in the stone of death.
But the lich’s graveyard expanded as well, representing the unchecked swath of desolation he would leave in his wake all the way across the continent, as the single headstone explosively multiplied into thousands. The tsunami of stone crashed into my soul and hurled me backwards like a rag doll. Only one thing saved me from being knocked straight out of Wu-Gar-Mei and back into the physical plane: my connection with her, to which I clung like a tethering vine.
And now, with her hope rekindled, she began to fight back as well, and the vine that linked us burst into sudden bloom. Berries, apples, melons, passionfruit—they all ripened instantaneously, overwhelming the cemetery march with the weight of their endless exuberant vitality. The Numivore’s advance was clogged, avalanched, and finally defeated; the wings and flames of Wu-Gar-Mei’s spirit burst up from the graves, scattering them across the higher spheres, and she was free.
Back in the terrestrial world, the dust and debris of her claw-strike was still swirling through the air as my soul returned to my body. The dragoness reared up her massive head and roared a victorious inferno, and the clouds above parted at the force of her jubilation.
I took a deep, deep breath, and slowly let it out. “All right, my friend. Now let’s get out of here before that thing comes back.”
She stared at me. “You can’t be serious. Gloam, we have a chance to stop that undead abomination forever!”
“Incinerating his body won’t do any good. He’ll just return to his phylactery and take possession of another corpse.” The soul of a lich was kept in a hidden gem, ensorcelled, and nothing could send it to the Hell it deserved while that phylactery existed. But the gem could be anywhere on Earth.
“He just gorged himself on my life-force. Wherever he goes, I can track him by sensing my own energy.”
“Till he digests that energy into his newest mildewed carcass,” I said, dubious.
“All the more reason to strike while we have the chance! I need you to break whatever spells he’s got protecting that gem.” Her head swung back and forth on her sinuous red neck, sniffing as intently as a hound. “We were just over there in that cavern when you showed up. I can still smell the reek of his shredded flesh. He can’t have gotten far.”
“There!” I stabbed my finger at a winding path, not more than half a mile down the slope. A clatter of necromancied bones in a tattered cloak, much like my vision in Wu-Gar-Mei’s mind, was fleeing down the mountainside. His powers of mind-control were unprecedented, but his corporeal magic went mostly to maintaining his hideous mockery of life—which meant he had no chance of repelling her primary means of attack.
“Son of a plague-rat,” snarled the dragoness. She drew in air like a giant bellows, then exhaled a blast of fire like a blazing hurricane. The spirit-draining sorcerer was obliterated. “Now climb on my back and let’s rid the world of a monster.”
I scrambled up her titanic foreleg and sprang to the hollow between her shoulder blades. Then the wings pumped once, twice, and she launched herself into the howling cerulean chasm of wind and sky. Cyclone-towers of wispy cloud shot by, and birds like crossbow bolts. Far, far below, the dim green panorama dizzily unfurled, an illuminated scroll of all living things. We hurtled onward till the scroll became a deeper blue, and the distant rush of breakers fluttered up like whispers in a storm. Onward, onward, over white snowfields, across long brown lands, to a place of grey: a gloom-haunted canyon full of age-old shale. The sun was setting as we plummeted from the golden skies into the shadows underneath the living surface of the Earth.
“I’ve galloped with the swiftest horses on the continent,” I panted. “But if I live to be a thousand, I’ll never forget this ride.”
“Few human folk have ridden on drake-back,” she replied. “But the two of us have a special bond, haven’t we?”
“Well. . .”
“There!” she said in turn, stabbing a claw at the river winding through the colossal twilight depths. “It feels like me down there.”
We swooped down into the well of violet shade, alighting on the rocks just yards above the foaming water. A plume of dragon-fire lit up the scene; in the looming dusk, that water looked awfully cold.
I frowned. “We should have seen this coming. How do we get to a gem at the bottom of a river?”
“My people can hold their breath a long time. You climb down to the bank and be ready when I come back up.”
Before I could obey, however, the gelid water began to boil. Rising like a phantom from the steam, a human body, half-decayed, came levitating into view. From vacant sockets, it glowered; from a nearly fleshless throat, it rasped: “Begone.”
“Not this time, you filth,” said Wu-Gar-Mei. “Your damnation has caught up with you.”
Having already expelled him once, I had no fear of meeting his gaze. But a lurid glow abruptly emanated from his skull, and I heard his voice inside. I see your memories, sorceress. Would you have her see them as well?
“Poison our friendship if you must,” I spat. “It’s the last poison you’ll ever spread.”
The dragoness peered up at me. “What do you—”
Then we were inside my mind, looking at my memory of a week ago. Sergeant Mrawg, the best scout in the city, burst into my council chamber, exclaiming breathlessly, “My Lady!”
It was irregular, but I knew my guards wouldn’t have let him in without cause. “What news, Sergeant?”
“My Lady, it’s the Numivore. He’s back in the Northlands!”
I didn’t realize I’d leapt to my feet till I heard the clatter of my chair on the pinewood floor. “Gods above, are you sure?”
“I saw the shriveled remnants of the Kenoman Archmage with my own two eyes. That twice-damned lich wrung him out like a pomegranate.”
“Kenoma. . .” I paused and pondered. “That’s nigh on forty leagues from here. Wu-Gar-Mei could still complete the wall before he gets here.”
Mrawg looked faintly shocked. “But, my Lady—if he does get his hands on her—”
“That will do, Sergeant.”
Knowing better than to argue policy, he saluted and withdrew. And with that, the memory faded.
Smoke curled up from Wu-Gar-Mei’s pupils. “You knew he was coming.”
“I made a choice.” My tone was defiant, but I couldn’t meet her eyes. “For the safety of my city.”
She said nothing.
“. . . Yes, I knew. I’m sorry.”
How can you trust this woman? the Numivore’s mental voice hissed. She sacrificed you for a wall. If you let her touch my phylactery, who knows what she might do with its power, rather than destroying it?
“That’s no business of yours,” the dragoness said flatly—and once again, she blasted the undead creature into ash.
Night had fallen. The tumble of the river and the zing of cicadas filled the dark. For a long time, neither of us spoke.
“Get off my back,” she said finally. “I’ll get the gem and we’ll finish this.”
“And then?”
“And then nothing. You’re a sorceress, I’m sure you can find your own way home.” She shrugged me onto the riverbank and dove into the water.
Seconds passed. Then minutes. I gathered my power, meaning to project my consciousness down through the flowing waters to investigate; but once again, the river boiled. Once again, a form rose dripping from the steam. But this time, it was Wu-Gar-Mei—with a pebble-sized gem in the exact center of her forehead, gleaming with an eerie green light.
“No,” I breathed. “Oh, no.”
“Hello again, sorceress,” he rumbled in her voice. “I would never willingly gamble with my phylactery, but it seems the dice have fallen in my favor.”
“You walking curse. I freed her once, I’ll do it again.”
“Perhaps you could. But removing the gem by force would kill her instantly.”
There was no time to think. I spread my arms out wide. “Lich, I give you myself. Free her and I’m yours.”
He snorted fierily. “What use is your paltry frame, compared to the body of a dragon?”
“Where will you go? To the mountains, to the caves? Take me and you’ll be among the foremost magic-users in my city. Wealth, power, sorcery—anything you crave will be yours.”
The vast wings beat the air, and the body of my friend hovered before me while the possessing spirit ruminated slowly. To inhabit a living body, he had to keep the phylactery embedded in its flesh, hence accessible to attack; and the defining trait of any creature that chose to dwell inside a corpse, simply to keep its soul hidden safely away, was cowardice. On the other hand, my identity would grant him ingress to the unparalleled arcane libraries of Urd Thlol. His power could double or even triple in just a few years of study.
“I accept,” he said at last. “Lower your defenses.”
My arms sank down, and my energies burned low. I closed my eyes, relaxed my muscles, opened up my mind. Wu-Gar-Mei alighted once more on the rocky bank.
There was a strange visceral sound like a boot coming up from clinging muck: the gem pulling free from her forehead. Then a stabbing, burning pain in my own brow as it fastened onto its new host. In the pit of my stomach there was a sudden twisting ice like the news of a loved one’s death—then the ice twisted its way up my chest and down my legs, filling me with emptiness. Blackness crept into my vision; the river-music faded.
And then I stood alone in the astral plane. Grey were the heavens and grey the earth. Infinite flatness stretched away in all directions. The Numivore had won.
I hoped—I trusted—I yearned—that in the very instant of gaining her freedom, Wu-Gar-Mei would immolate my flesh with a rampaging torrent of flame. It wouldn’t break the phylactery, but (as long as she didn’t touch it again) she could fly to the walled city and bring back another sorcerer to finish the job. Even if the lich had more bodies stashed in the riverbed, he wouldn’t get far with that gem before she returned.
But I’d forgotten that the lich’s corporeal magic was no longer tied up with animating a decomposing body. I could feel the tingle in my limbs as the Numivore wove a protective nimbus around himself, and for a moment I despaired. A moment later, however, it struck me: I could feel my limbs again. The shield magic was drawing off the power that kept my spirit sealed away from the material plane.
Summoning up every flicker of sorcery from the uttermost wells of my numinous self, I raised my astral hands like a woman parting curtains and forced open a tiny spyhole in the nonexistent stuff of the vacuum. Darkly, I could peer out through my own distant eyes and catch a few sparkling shards of images and murmured sounds.
Wu-Gar-Mei was not breathing fire at me. Instead, she had seized my body in her gigantic claws and slammed her head against my own. Her head, far bigger than my whole body, was pressed squarely against the gem in my brow, so firmly that it would have splattered my brain across the waters if not for the lich’s warding nimbus. “Put it back!” she thundered. “Put back the gem and take me! Take me, damn you!”
As the Numivore struggled, more and more of his magic was pulled away from the task of containing mine. I stood a step back and peered into the inner wall of my own forehead, and there it was: the glimmering pale-green aura of that accursed artifact. On examination, I realized it was enchanted in such a way as to latch automatically onto any living body that came in contact with it. There was no protocol in place for a situation in which two separate bodies were touching it at the same time. Presumably the lich could choose which host to transfer his spirit into, but the gem itself was now acting as a rivet, holding my forehead and Wu-Gar-Mei’s together. His struggle to break us apart cost the Numivore yet more of his focus, and I saw my opening.
The physical form of the gem was imbued with sorcerous energy; and, thanks to the dragoness, the physical gem was being dragged in one direction. Now, from the inside, I astrally seized hold of the energy itself and began pulling in the other direction. The Numivore realized, too late, what was happening and thrashed desperately in both the spirit realm and the world of matter—but the magic was already peeling away from the phylactery like venom drawn out of a viper-bite. The more of his power I unspooled from the gem, the weaker his powers became. At last, abruptly, the gem’s supernatural properties snapped away and it fell to the ground, the witch-light fading away.
The crunch of Wu-Gar-Mei’s heel was deafening.
A scream—primordial, lingering, horrific—an escalating shriek that plunged away into unknowable depths—and the undead sorcerer was truly dead. My body went limp as it became my own once more, and I would have fallen but for the support of draconian claws. She lowered me gingerly onto a rock, and I sat gasping for breath while she watched me inscrutably.
“You saved me,” I said, once I could speak again.
“You saved me too.”
“Only from the consequence of my own betrayal. I don’t expect you to forgive me.”
“I don’t,” she said sharply.
In shame and sadness, I bowed my head.
Then, more gently, she added, “But I will. Climb on my back, old friend. Let’s go home.”
©October 2024, Jamey Toner
Jamey Toner has contributed to many magazines and has published a memoir and a children’s book. His work appeared previously in Swords & Sorcery Magazine under the name J. B. Toner.
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