by K. T. Booker
in Issue 153, October 2024
I
Hamill woke to the dark. The damp. He knew not if it was day or night. The guards were outside. The pounding of their boots on the stone floor echoed through the iron door of the prison cell. They’d come in soon. He readied himself for the pain.
He sprang up, paced the perimeter of the cell. Eight by eight. He measured it many times. He knew every inch. How much space he had to avoid a swinging fist, a charging shoulder. The stones were cracked from the skulls of the previous guards. Every day they came. Every day they asked the same question. Every day he gave them the same answer. No.
The footsteps were close now. Just outside the room. His body tense with the anticipation of violence. He rubbed his chin. His beard had grown long. He stretched his muscled arms, his legs. Still strong. He thought they would starve him, but they hadn’t. In fact, they fed him well. He knew why they fed him well. He knew what they wanted. He would tell them no again.
Get ready, he told himself.
The grinding slide of the lock. The metallic screech as the heavy door swung open.
The man who came through the door was bigger than the last. If you could call it a man. More abomination than man. Humanoid creations brewed by the sorceress Morena. Brewed within her vats of dark alchemy. Each time her creations were larger. Smarter. More agile. Brewed to brawl. Iron fists that could crush a man’s skull as easy as taking a breath.
This brawler could barely fit through the space of the prison door. Naked, like the rest. Completely bald. Lavender skin shining, swollen, as though it had just been fished out of the vat. Its gray eyes soulless voids. Its face an expressionless mask. The door was quickly locked in its wake.
It asked the same question as the last humanoid, and all the others. The same grinding voice of gravel. “Will you enter the realm of Taknia? Will you retrieve the mask of immortality?”
The realm of Taknia. Hamill knew what waited for him in the realm of the immortal wizard king. A death sentence.
“No,” he said.
If there was any emotion swirling within the skull of the humanoid, it did not show. Hamill was taller than most. Stronger than almost all. But these humanoids loomed over him. Towers of brainless muscle.
“I ask again. Will you enter the realm of Taknia? Will you retrieve the mask of immortality?”
Always the same questions.
“No,” Hamill stated flatly.
The brute came then, instantly, automatically, as his kind was programmed to do.
Hamill stepped back and avoided the first swing. He came in low, striking the humanoid in the ribs, feeling the pleasurable crack. Through ruthless experience, Hamill learned the violent mannerisms of these creatures. He knew their weak spots. But even so, with each fight, he learned something new. And he learned it the hard way.
The humanoid grunted, slashing with its elbow in a vicious backswing. It connected squarely with Hamill’s neck, dropping him to the floor. The humanoid immediately pounced on his back, pressing down with its massive bulk, looking to end the fight with a chokehold. Hamill snapped his head back, connecting with the pudgy lavender face.
The crack of bone rang through the stone cell.
Hamill rolled over. Got to his knees. Gray milky ichor flowed in gouts from the creature’s nose. Its welted lavender skin spotted in seeping gray bruises. This was a new one. The skin was still as soft and delicate as a babies. She must be running low on humanoids, he mused sardonically.
As the thing tried to rise, Hamill struck it in the neck with two quick blows. Knees weak, it dropped momentarily, but shot back up with astounding speed, driving Hamill into the wall. His head cracked against the stone, dazing him. A tremendous pressure squeezed the air out of him, his ribs caving in, as though they would collapse like rotten beams.
Hamill clawed at the creature’s face, desperately trying to obtain leverage. But the brawler only wrapped him tighter in its crushing embrace. His hands slipped on the gray blood flowing from its face. He gasped urgently for air that would not come. His eyes bulged from the pressure. Rage filled him. He would not die like this. Not in this stinking cell, against this lowly being. His thumb caught at one of its soulless eyes, pressing viciously against the gray orb. His other thumb clawed into the other eye, and he drove them deep into its skull, his massive muscles bulging as the creature fell to its knees, he pressed further until it collapsed completely to the floor.
Hamill fell, gasping for breath. He turned over, sprawled on the stone floor of the cell, his body slick with sweat and the creature’s gray blood. He closed his eyes. Resting for the next fight. How many more visits could he withstand? He didn’t know. But he would kill them, one after the other, until his last breath. If nothing else, he was comforted by that thought.
His mind wandered to Vada. He hoped they hadn’t found her. This thought bothered him. The little girl had become a weak spot, a loose end, in his otherwise martial mind. He never should have let her follow him, after her family had been killed, after he had saved her. He knew it was a mistake when he heard her little feet moving through the snow behind him. He knew he should have run her off then.
Yet, he never did.
II
When Hamill awoke, the door to his cell was open. The floor and walls were scrubbed clean. The dead humanoid removed. He didn’t question his luck. He stepped through the door immediately, willing to accept whatever waited for him on the other side.
The hall of the dungeon prison was empty. Torches burned and flickered their wan light down the stone hall. To his right, there was a locked iron door, similar to the door of his cell. To his left, the door was open. A strong light shone through the opening, and he entered.
The sorceress Morena sat in a high backed chair. Four of her blue-skinned humanoids flanked her, two on each side. Between him and the sorceress was a table. On the table sat an object covered in a fine silken sheet. He knew what the object was. Taknia’s gemstone. The portal into the wizard king’s realm, where he lived eternal. How Morena had acquired the artifact, Hamill didn’t know. Nor did he care.
“I’m told you still have no desire to do as I’ve asked?” Morena’s voice flowed silken, tinged with a current of emotion. Fine red hair flowed over smooth, creamy skin. Her face oval, small and delicate. Dark eyes held Hamill in their lustful gaze.
He didn’t answer, only clinched his fist, his calculating, violent gaze on the humanoids. Their milky gray eyes stared off into the distance. Hamill’s huge muscular chest, covered in cuts and bruises, shined in the bright light of the room. Even down here in this dead part of Morena’s castle, even after the endless beatings he had taken, day after day, Hamill still burned with an unquenching vitality, the flames of vigor gleaming brightly within his manic eyes.
“I’m impressed,” she said, standing up and walking past the table. A black robe wrapped carelessly around her body, laying loose on one bare shoulder. Through the fabric he could see the generous curves of her body. “Most men would have broken long ago,” she said, walking up to him. One elegant finger ran over his chest, the nail travelling along a deep cut in his skin.
He gazed upon her with contempt. A gaze she seemed to take pleasure in.
She pressed her body against him, digging her nail into the wound as she lifted onto her toes and whispered in his ear, “I found something that might persuade you.” Her silken voice broke into a laughter of derision as a fifth humanoid came into the room, holding a dagger in one hand and dragging a little girl with the other. The raven-haired girl kicked and screamed curses at the creature.
It was Vada.
In a flash, Hamill had Morena by the neck, cutting short her infernal laughter. His forearm flexed, a hair’s breadth from snapping her delicate neck. Her guards stepped forward in a wave of brutish force, but she raised her hand. They stopped as one. A wicked smile stretched across her attractive face.
There was a sharp inhale from Vada. Hamill’s deadly gaze fell on the girl. A small line of blood trailed down her neck where the lavender-skinned humanoid had cut her. A small incision with the dagger.
Vada’s teeth were clenched, as though not to show any weakness. Her eyes pleaded with Hamill to kill the witch, consequences be damned. He couldn’t help but be proud of her reckless hatred.
He looked back at Morena. She was suffocating, yet her dark eyes stared playfully into his. He dropped the sorceress with disgust, and she collapsed to the ground, panting. But she lay there only briefly. When she rose, she was cloaked in a victorious smile.
“So you have a soft side after all,” she said. “Pity it’s for such a wretched creature as this.” She turned and smiled contemptuously at the little girl. Vada glared back at her with a murderous gaze.
“Nevertheless,” the sorceress continued, “if it gets me what I want, then so be it.”
He looked at the stone on the table, still draped in its silken cover. “Why not send in an army? Why me?”
“It doesn’t work that way. Only one man through, not a whole army. And believe me,” she said. “You are not the first. I’ve sent my humanoids in, one after the other, with no effect. None have returned. I don’t expect them to return. You can’t imagine the resources I’ve wasted.” She gazed briefly at the humanoids still standing expressionless, waiting for her command. “Get the mask, and bring it to me,” she said. “And then you can have your little strumpet back.” She leaned against him again, raising up and licking slowly along the side of his cheek, whispering, “and we can finish the rough games we’ve begun.”
He brushed her off and picked up the wrapped stone. “If you hurt her, I’ll kill you,” he said as he walked back to his cell.
The sorceress feigned an expression of injured pride, then laughed evilly. “Get the mask, my fine warrior. Or I will take pleasure in flaying the skin from her body.”
III
He sat in his cell, took a deep breath, then uncovered the stone. A massive purple geode stared back at him. The yawning mouth of the gem held within it a universe of swirling stars. His mind reeled from it, desperate to pull away. But there was no retreating. The grip of magic held fast. He was carried swiftly through the portal, into the lair of the immortal wizard king.
Into the twisting tunnel of gleaming gemstones he stepped, his reflection a thousand cutting images of himself. He began to question his own eyes. His understanding of things, how they moved, how they fell, seemed to not apply here. There was some internal logic, but one he could not comprehend, like that of a dream.
He pushed further through the disorienting labyrinth of crystals. Suddenly the confusing vision spread open like a flower, revealing an expanding golden field of wheat. The wheat was bent over as though from a strong wind. Yet the wheat was not whipped by a breeze, it was frozen in that bent motion.
Hamill stepped into the field, as his legs brushed against the blades of grass, they shattered against his leather. He saw now that they were crystalline, not living. Inside the broken stems swirled an infinite vortex of colors.
Something small gleamed at eye level. A green speck. A grasshopper, in flight, springing through the air, its tiny wings spread wide. He plucked it between two fingers, held it. Crystal. Nothing living. A pure crystal replica of a grasshopper. Or what may have once been a grasshopper. The color, everything exact to the finest detail. There was something beautiful yet disturbing about this small delicate gem in his hand.
He looked around, dropped the insect, and headed for a hut that sat at the center of the field. A trail of smoke was rising over the home. But the smoke was motionless like everything else. Frozen in some form of lost time. There was overwhelming silence here, as though his ears were stuffed with cotton. He’d never experienced such a silence. It made him question his sanity.
What was this place? Hamill didn’t linger on the question. Above him the sky was not a sky, but an ever shifting haze of deep purple, like that of the Taknia’s gemstone. What it contained, Hamill knew not. He also knew it would do him no good to stare at it. That was a job for philosophers, for deep thinkers. He had another job to do. And he meant to get it done.
He pressed forward through the field, tramping over the crystal blades of grass, shattering them under his boots. A lone oak tree sat in the distant field, its giant bulk creating a shadow from a sun that didn’t exist.
Soon he came upon one of Morena’s humanoids in the wheat. It was dead. The lavender body crushed by some unspeakable violence. Eviscerated. Glistening intestines strung among a section of the field trampled to dust by something large. Very large. Hamill saw now that a wide line, wider than he was tall, snaked through the field as though the trail of some hideous creature.
The humanoid had undergone the same transformation as everything else in this realm. Its body was pure crystal. Its face racked with agony. A strange sight for one of Morena’s emotionless minions. The raw fear in its usually expressionless eyes made Hamill feel uneasy. He moved on, toward the small hut. It too was solid crystal. He tapped on the wood. Solid as a rock, as though petrified.
Inside was a domestic scene of ordinary occurrence. Three peasants sat cramped within the hut. Or perfect crystal representations of a family. A boy, a mother, a father. The flames of a fire locked in frozen motion in a small fireplace. The boy was leaning over a book, a smile on his face. His mother was pointing down, as if to emphasize something within the text.
Hamill looked down at an engraved image in the book, an image of an immense library. He instantly felt the press of magic on the page. He looked away before the magic could pull at him once more, suck him into its clawing depths. He felt it was important to understand the scene before him.
The boy was young, not older than six or seven. He had intelligent eyes, a power in them, his stare driving down on the book as if to master it. The mother was in a plain dress. A dress worn and ragged. Yet there was a natural beauty to her. The father was in opposition to the mother’s harmony. His face a twist of anguish and disgust. He sat in the shadows. His hands in his lap, not resting, but one squeezing the other nervously. He stared with an awful hatred at the woman and the boy. The expression on the father’s face was so foul, Hamill had an urge to destroy the pathetic creature.
But there suddenly came a strange noise, like the very air was tearing open outside in the frozen field of wheat. Hamill stepped out quickly just as the giant oak began to lean over, collapsing to the ground. It groaned with the cracking of crystal roots before it toppled, shattering into a glittering mountain of fragmented shards.
The roar of some alien creature reverberated in the air. Before ducking back into the hut, Hamill caught a glimpse of the something large and hard to define. It radiated with an intense white light that blurred its overall shape. And it was heading toward the hut.
Hamill stepped back against the far wall as the creature passed by one of the windows. The light shone intensely into the hut, almost blinding him, but he caught a slight glimpse of a swirling motion. Whatever it was seemed to be calling out to him, its voice spectral, moaning almost. Hatred was tinged within that haunting echo.
Its motion ceased as though it sensed something, and the creature cried out again, slamming itself against the exterior of the building. The petrified wood cracked, glassy rubble tumbled down into the shadowed space. The mother had tumbled over, snapping into multiple piece. He could see the outline of her heart, her lungs, consumed in an utterly beautiful swirl of crystalline colors.
Hamill dove for the book, stared at the page, at the vast library, and let his mind be consumed by the pull of the magic. He felt himself being transported, just before the hut collapsed completely, consumed by the anguished scream of the creature.
IV
Books. Thousands of books. Millions. Enough to read over a hundred lifetimes. A thousand lifetimes. The sheer size of it was staggering to Hamill. There were stories of a library like this. The Library of Zal’Thul. Burnt to ash thousands of years ago. It was said that a substantial majority of the elder arts was lost within that conflagration.
Hamill stood on an upper level of the library. It was an enormous domed building. He stepped up to the railing, looked down. A dozen stories or more loomed below him. The library gleamed as though made of glass, just like the field and the hut. Everything crystallized.
He was surprised to hear someone gasping for breath behind him. In one of the isles, he found another humanoid slouched over, huge legs sprawled out as it leaned heavily against a tall bookshelf. The brute was partially engulfed by the spreading crystal, but part of it was still alive.
Hamill knelt, touched the warm lavender flesh. Half its face was solid rock. Half-frozen lips sucked in breath. When Hamill’s finger brushed against it, the gray eyes shot open, bright with agony, a desperate fear. The humanoid clutched at Hamill fiercely. He tried to break away as they fell against a rack of books. Some clattered to the ground, shattering.
The two tumbled, clawing at each other. But the humanoid was stronger and pinned Hamill to the ground under its great stony weight. It punched downwards with a fist solidified into pure mineral, meaning to crush Hamill’s skull, but he flicked his head to the side and the humanoid struck the solid marble floor. The hand snapped off cleanly at the wrist. It gazed vacantly on the gleaming vibrant stump before Hamill brained it with one of the crystallized books. The creature toppled over. The parts of it still alive twitched, softly.
Hamill saw they had tumbled into an open space where lines of long, ornate tables sat. The room was built to house a hundred or more diligent students deep in study, but the tables were empty except for a man and a woman. They sat across from each other, their warm expressions frozen in eternity. Above them a stained-glass mosaic spread across the wall. It was formed into the shape of a flaming tree. Some distant light source illuminated the glass panels with a false brilliance.
The woman was young, smiling mischievously at the man. There was a purity to her face, captured, that struck Hamill. He was reminded of his time employed within the Palace of The Seven Rivers, famous for the vast marble carvings of the seven goddesses. Each statue was the lifetime’s work of a master, and at the time they seemed so real to him as he walked those eerie halls, day after day, serving the whims of a mad king. But now looking upon this young woman, he saw that art never reaches the real thing, no matter the dedication or genius.
Hamill recognized the man. It was the boy who inhabited the hut, but older now. His mature features sharp-edged, intelligent, eyes radiating the same powerful ambition. Stacks of books surrounded him. Most of the books were frozen solid, some still ordinary paper. He opened a book at random. There was another engraved image, swirling, pulling at him. Page upon page. Memories. The pages were full of memories. The man’s memories. This whole realm was an accumulation of dead memories, he realized.
As he snapped the book shut, the library suddenly shuttered from a great force. There came a snapping, a displacement of air as something massive was set in motion. Hamill turned, saw the giant chandelier toppling down through the empty space at the center of the library. A cacophonic shatter tore through the stillness as the chandelier crashed into the lobby floor. It was followed by the anguished roar of the creature from the field. As though it was announcing its presence, an almost guttural plea of existence.
The light burning off the creature created deep shadows within the library. The shadows flickered as it slid its enormous body through the cramped isles. Towering bookshelves toppled over, one by one. Hamill stepped back into the shadows, staying silent, as the creature moved into the open space where the man and woman sat.
He got a good glimpse of the creature now and his eyes ached as he took in its form. The humped shape of a crab, or a fat slug. It slid wearily, but with a strange grace, across the marble floor of the library. It seemed not to have a skin or an exoskeleton, but was sheathed in a churning mist, bright like a sun-lit cloud. Within the mist, shadows swarmed on occasion, as though they flickered past an internal light source.
It seemed aggravated by the sight of the woman and pounced on her with a speed that surprised Hamill. It ground the woman’s crystalline figure into fine dust. Hamill saw a human form sliding within the mist of the creature. It was the father from the hut, his hateful face descending down into the clouded light, hands clawing as though trying to escape imprisonment, like a man drowning under a sheet of ice.
The monster stood near the boy, its ghastly lament intensifying as it studied the face of its son. Hamill stepped back slowly, trying to sneak away, but his foot ground on a shard of crystal. A tormented, high-throated scream erupted from the creature as it wheeled around and hurtled its bulk toward Hamill with violent force.
He ran. The giant shelves collapsed behind him in the wake of the monster. He heard the wailing getting closer, growing in intensity, as though in anticipation of catching its quarry. He ran faster than he’d ever run before, his massive thighs burning from the extreme effort.
At the end of a long row of bookshelves hung a large mural. That of a giant battle amongst spurting volcanoes. Hamill sprinted toward it, felt the magic pull as he neared. He dove through the mural just before the creature’s cold embrace wrapped around his leg.
V
Two great armies spread out before him, frozen in some distant memory of desperate combat. The black sky burned red with a violent volcanic spray of magma. Bright red rivers of molten lava, their thick snaking flow motionless, blazed among the black peaks. Ash flakes hung still in the polluted air. He pinched one between his fingers. Ground the black crystal into dust. Let it fall to his feet. All around him men were forever locked in determined violence. Pure carnage. Pools of blood. Men crawled, faces stiffened in screams of pain.
There seemed to have once been a semblance of order to the battle, remnants of standing formations had begun to disintegrate, break away into a rout. It was a mop up now. A victory for those who held the banner of a flaming oak tree. The army of the immortal wizard king. He saw the form of the king at the top of a hill, raised above everyone else. He held the mask in his hands, torn from the face of some black-charred body.
Surrounding the hill was a tight formation of pikemen, the king’s personal guard, their sharp gleaming pikes raised in an impenetrable phalanx of crossing blades. Hamill came down a small slope and weaved his way through the chaotic throng of frozen soldiers.
Yet he hadn’t made it far before he heard the familiar reverberating wail of the creature. It was following him, hunting him relentlessly. It tumbled down the slope in a wave of oozing light. The creature had closed the space in an instant. Hamill sprinted for the pikemen and dove at their legs, crawling under the bristling wall of steel. A dead soldier was on the ground next to Hamill, staring at him with vacant eyes. A shortsword lay next to his outstretched hand. Hamill snatched it up. It was solid as a stone, crystallized, but sharp, as if freshly forged.
The creature surged into the hedge of pikes. It roared in pain as it shook off the pikes that thrust into its shuddering body of light. The wavering form contrasted, expanded. The shimmering light at once bright, then dull. Ghostly silhouettes glided within the shapeless body, their howling voices wracked with anguish, as though stuck in some dreadful torture.
Hamill dove at the creature in desperate fury, slashing ferociously. The vicious swing cleaved through the mist, as though through air, and he tumbled into its amorphous body. Instantly thick wiry tendrils stung him, clawed at his flesh. He screamed in disgust and one of the tendrils poured down his mouth. He bit down in revulsion, maddened with fury, he hacked at anything that moved, severing the tendrils from whatever source controlled them.
He felt as though he was being roasted alive, his flesh searing from the heat of some unnatural light source. He staggered under the damage to his flesh, hacked even more wildly, desperately alive, yearning with a hulking will to stay that way. He grasped at the stinging tendrils, tore at them, slashed blindly, pulled himself closer to the light source. The heat was unbearable, and yet he staggered further, deeper into the creature. He saw a solid form swirling ahead of him, a passing visage of hatred, the face of the father. Hamill stabbed out violently with what little strength he had left. He struck something solid, tangible, and there came a great trembling that emanated deep within the swirling body.
Hamill felt himself falling, as though from a great height. But when he opened his eyes, he was laying back on the battlefield. Next to him lay the form of the father. The mask of anguish and torture gone. The father’s face now seemed at peace. Above them rose the frozen form of the wizard king. The weighty robes of the king swirled in a torrent of wind that did not exist anymore. That had been dead thousands of years. The wizard king’s face was burned, filthy with black ash, and yet magnificent in its conquest. The king held the mask up in victory, that familiar ambitious gaze drunk with power.
Hamill walked up to the wizard king, took the mask out of his hand. Not the real mask. Not what he was searching for. Only a mind’s replica of the item. Crystallized. Frozen in time like so much else in this empire of memory.
Through the eye holes of the mask, Hamill looked out onto a vast alien lake. At the center was a soaring purple tower of crystal gems. He put the mask on and stepped into what he knew was the central realm of the immortal wizard king.
VI
An island of pulsing purple gems sat within the hollow of a giant sphere. The sphere churned in an astonishing miasma of shifting memories. What was left of the wizard king’s mind resided in this subterranean soup. Parts were solidified, like a half-frozen winter lake, cracked and brittle. Hamill focused on the thin crystal bridge that stretched to the floating island of towering gemstones, ignoring the swirling, disorienting vortex.
On the island of gems, the wizard king Taknia sat on his throne. Or his tomb. It was as though the realm was eating him, or he was eating the realm, Hamill could not tell. An intricate web of gemstones engulfed his body, piercing up through what was once Taknia’s flesh. All that was left was the withered head of the wizard king, looking out with clouded purple eyes through the mask of immortality. A thrumming vibration coursed through the colossal purple stones, as though it was the feeble heartbeat of one immense organism.
Hamill paid them no attention. He reached for the mask and a disembodied voice, a great exhalation rose up from the depths of the gems.
“Ahhhhhhhh. A visitor. Someone to end my torment. Who are you?”
“I am no one to you, Taknia” Hamill said.
There was a guttural laugh, the sounds echoing through the crystal hall. “A name I haven’t heard in a long time. And you are far from no one, warrior. You are here for the mask, I see. But I must warn you, you’ll find immortality… not as pleasant as the allure.”
“It is not for me that I come,” Hamill said. “What you have I would never desire.”
“As wise as you are strong. I see from the wounds on your body that you’ve met my father.”
“I destroyed him,” Hamill stated without remorse.
“Oh, I’ve killed him many, many times myself. Actually, it was the first thing I did after my apprenticeship. A revenge you could say. For killing my first love. My only love.”
“The woman in the library,” Hamill said.
“N’aza,” the old wizard said. The voice filled with emotion. “She was low born. That was her fatal fault. Ironic that I was low born too. But my father always tried to hide that.”
Hamill thought of the hut in the field. The boy and the mother. The father in the shadows. The dark, hateful eyes.
“He thought he was doing me a favor, my father. The whimsy of young love. He had her tossed into the bay, chained to a rock.” The beating heart of the gems pulsed quicker. “I burned him alive. That evil man. I thought I had rid myself of him for good. And yet he still haunts me. He has become part of me. An undying harbinger of my regrets within this agonizing timeless death, stalked by memories. I desired to be a god! But achieved only a cursed, wretched throne of eternal atrophy.
“This life, it’s an abomination! No. To live one life. One life only. To blaze with vitality. That is the way. Being alive during your given time. That is everything. To burn brightly within your slit in eternity. To grasp it with both hands and bend the world to your will. I was once beautiful like that. Glorious. No more. Take this false gift. Rip the false mask away. What you do with it is yours, not mine. But end this torment. Provide me with that, warrior. And if there is an afterlife for beautiful mortals, I will find you there and repay my debt.”
Hamill stepped up to the wizard king and tore the mask off unceremoniously. There came a great shiver, a shattering of giant crystalline towers within titanic depths. The gemstones toppled from the sky. Hamill looked down into the flowing haze and saw the welcome vision of his jail cell. He dove down, dropping into the vision like a stone. He came up sitting on the cold stone floor of the cell, the mask in his hands.
“Is it really … it cannot be,” Morena exclaimed when Hamill handed her the mask. She stared lustfully at the purple-gemmed mask. “You’ve done it.” Her voice was a whisper, awed.
“Give me the girl,” Hamill said.
Morena flicked her hand, as though the girl was an afterthought. Vada walked up to Hamill, looked at him with fierce, defiant eyes, and then slowly, the wall of boldness broke and tears fell down her cheeks. She moved close and hugged him at the waist. He knew not what to do, then he placed a massive arm gently over her shoulders.
“Let’s go,” he said.
Morena still stared at the mask in fascination.
“How’d they catch you?” Hamill asked as they walked along the vast halls of Morena’s dungeon.
Vada frowned. “It’s a long story,” she said.
Behind them came the anguished cry of the sorceress, as though the tormented voice echoed down a hall of infinite crystals sprouting into an alien world.
©October 2024, K. T. Booker
K. T. Booker is a writer who lives in Northern California and writes strange stories and poems when they have free time. They have recently been published in Whetstone: Amateur Magazine of Sword and Sorcery. This is their first appearance in Swords & Sorcery Magazine.
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