by S. E. Lindberg
in Issue 114, July 2021
“Put the ax down, Melanie.”
“You check on my health, Doctor Grave?” My daughter laughed from behind shadows that curtained slithering, colossal larvae. The ancient larval wyrmen raised their anteriors to peer at me, much like their siblings had while spying my trek into the Underworld.
Marsh gas from the bogs above effused through the spongy earth. Veiled in miasma, Melanie nestled in a throne of the eldritch brood. She held the ax like a scepter. She scoffed, “You trespass my lair, Father.”
“You have been absent from the Keep for too long. The people think you are dead, diseased, or crazed. Are you well?” I asked, leaning on my caduceus for support, as aged humans might. It sufficed for my senior golem physique, too. Atop the staff wrapped wrought-iron sculptures: a serpentine wyvern entwined an insectan larva, both with mouths agape, maws spitting flame-tongues. The cavern flickered as they licked the air and ignited the fuel-rich drops loosed from the ceiling.
“Well enough to hack you into pieces!”
I sighed. Years of reclusion underground affected her psyche. Just a few ebony stalagmites and puddles of oil separated us, yet the phlogiston flares from my lantern-staff failed to illuminate my daughter’s humanoid form. Her communing with the cursed larvalwyrmen concerned me less than her weapon. Sickly, bruised-blue light shone from Orphan-Maker’s blade. The cyanic aura burned from the liver-textured growths, and the blistering metal sprouted fungal veins. I demanded, “Drop it, Melanie.”
“Father, I don’t need your patronizing or your medications.” She shifted closer to present the ax. Orphan-Maker extended, its power enabling her frail arms to wield a weapon twice her weight. My golem-sight allowed me to visualize the corruption. The ethereal taint of the previous owner, the mercenary who murdered parents for decades, was plain to see. Branching hyphae sprawled from the discs and rooted in her alabaster wrists. Ferrus fungalysis infected the metal. And her.
Melanie tilted her head as she spat. “You. Are. No longer,” she gathered her spittle with her tongue, “needed.”
“You are beguiled, daughter. You do not know the history of that ax, nor its accumulated malaise. It controls you.”
Giant larvae proceeded past her, surrounding me. Staring in judgment. Had the larvalwyrmen’s queen remained, they could have pupated decades ago. I had been the queen’s caretaker when illness took the colony. But I could not heal her, or her brood. The insectan queen, and her nurturing magic, was long absent. The Underworld served as a playground for her offspring. Doomed to roam and never mature, they yearned for a mother. Melanie had adopted the larvae; disowned me.
“I reject the human form you gave me. I reject humanity. You!” Melanie’s ruined face emerged with two dark wells suspended over a crooked mouth. Bundles of azure warts sprouted from her gums, preventing moist lips from closing. From the depths of the cavernous eye sockets, the jewels that had once functioned as her eyes now dangled, gouged but not detached.
“You blinded yourself?”
“You crafted me with Mother’s eyes! I could not tolerate looking through them anymore. Besides, I see through them now.”
The eldritch larvae oriented their heads at me again. Then Melanie cocked her head, likewise, readying to target me. With a snap of her neck, the eyes freed. Faceted, almond-shaped crystals bounced toward me.
“Fae!” I cursed, collecting the orbs.
Melanie moved closer. Oil sluiced off her slicked, matted hair. Wyrms suctioned to her torso, thighs, and breast. Their stepmother snickered. “You failed them too. It is time for a reckoning.”
I stepped backward eyeing the flammable liquids seeping through the bedrock. I positioned myself accordingly.
“I accept the role of the mother of the orphaned larvalwyrmen.” One wyrm mantled her shoulders as would a scarf. Two latched to Melanie’s fungus-coated breasts, feeding like leeches from her golem blood, the milky lapis elixir, dripping from their mouths. “I foster those you abandoned.”
It was not my fault that the colony fell ill to dyscrasia and forced the queen to leave her larvae. As their physician and caretaker, I had maintained their health as best I could. “The larvalwyrmen nurse upon your infections. You make them sick.”
Larvae adorned with seeping carbuncles encroached me from all sides. Via telepathy I commanded them to stand down. They ignored or disobeyed me.
Orphan-Maker trembled in Melanie’s hands.
“That ax corrupts you, darling.” I retreated. “Where did you find it?”
“The larvalwyrmen discovered it, exploring the Underworld. You have left many scars here. The land is just like those cadavers you study. You enjoy playing with earth’s flesh like a little maggot.”
I returned, “Yes, I have mastered geomancy, the art used to forge us golems. And that ax.”
She readied the weapon before her, arms aloft. Ringed discs unfurled like a ruffled dress as she stretched. Melanie slobbered as she spoke, “I sensed your craftsmanship in it once I touched it. The handle’s engraving is one of your riddles: ‘Parents, receive that which you give’.”
“You do not even know its name,” I said. “The murderer who wielded it called it Orphan-Maker. He did not have the loving father you do.”
Melanie cackled. “It compels me to end you. Receive your blade!”
Orphan-Maker slashed.
The awkward attack was easily dodged. The ax may have granted her strength, but it could not impart skill. Stepping back, I bumped into the encroaching barrier of wyrms.
“Fae!”
Larvalwyrmen coiled around my arthritic legs. Melanie lurched, chopping.
Constrained, I could only rotate to remedy the blow. My right arm swung the lantern staff to deflect Orphan-Maker aside. White ichor secreted from a nick in my forearm, but I kept visual focus on my opponent whose ax wedged into the rock floor.
Melanie was vulnerable now, leaning over her weapon close to me. I chose not to strike back. Instead, I raised the caduceus. Twin tongues lapped the bedrock above. The slurry of peat, emulsified oil, and swamp water sizzled. Moisture evaporated in swirling vapors. Then the soiled terra fluida ignited.
Poof!
Dendritic flames raced across the stone canopy. Lightning flashed, extinguishing an instant later. Plumes of phlogiston roiled about. The distraction loosened the grip on my ankles and opened a breach in the wyrm wall.
I bolted out of the chamber, momentarily out of sight from blood-sucking larvae.
Melanie yelled, “Father! Where are you?”
Her endearing call did not slow me. For a span I was alone, sprinting through subterranean corridors. The wyrms chased faster than she could, penetrating the earth, hunting me. Rumbling ground marked their proximity.
“I’ll cut you,” my daughter’s crass voice echoed. “Cut you into little pieces!”
When the natural hallways gave way to hewn walls, I reached a junction. To my left, a rugged path, infused with firedamp gas, descended toward the Red Mines.
To my right, an inclined ramp led to the Keep of Looming Cromlechs. A hundred yards distant, three silhouettes approached. The pick-wielding miners hailed, “Doctor Grave!”
“Fae!” Homo sapiens roam the lower levels. “Silence, all. Cease your work. Return to the Keep immediately.”
They began to retort, but they swallowed their thoughts as a grotesque, tentacled mass emerged from the fissure whence I came. The miners disappeared before I could issue another command.
Deeper in the Underworld I went. My descent was a blur. These tunnels I knew like my own appendages, having run them since they were first bored by eldritch ants. My pursuers knew them as well, but they did not know where I led them. My experience compensated for my worn body. However, the larvalwyrmen could burrow through rock, short-cutting paths I had to traverse by foot. They sought me, and I sought the Forge.
Countless thresholds pockmarked the irregular walls. Most paths I ignored, selecting a route to ensure the wyrms remained close.
Suddenly, rocks exploded from above, and a groping larva flagellated while it hung upside down, cerulean-glowing fungi clustered about its length, maw open, snapping.
My inflamed caduceus thrust. The wyrm clamped on the sorcerous fire, its interior burned, then it recoiled as it vomited bloody ash. It was not a mortal blow, but healing would be painful. Ducking the writhing mass, I continued.
Within an hour I entered the lower strata. An ancient battlefield with ossified combatants welcomed me. Once the colony had succumbed to illness, outsiders invaded. Alchemical warfare smothered any hope of healing. Navigating the calcined humans, harpies, and eldritch ants, I approached the pitch-black lake. Bones of eldritch things, and heaps of long-decayed life, rose from the surface of oil.
I waded into the expansive lake that was more viscous than honey, stepping atop concealed shells and the hidden dead. When the reef of organic refuse beneath me ended, I knew the depths plummeted. I would have to swim to reach the Forge. Or perhaps some untainted larvalwyrmen would still help their old master.
Melanie may be influencing some wyrms, but those residing away from her lair might remember me better here, on their birthing grounds. I had taken them as eggs from the queen’s abdomen after all.
“Take me to the Forge,” I commanded via telepathy. Atonal responses affirmed assent.
Several ripples preceded their arrival. Slick-backed larvae bumped my legs, curled under me, and lifted me. At least three carried me. My lower half remained soaked. Alongside the husks of mutated pupae, we navigated the flooded, abandoned nest. The lantern staff remained safely above the combustible waters.
We reached and entered a bay on the far shoreline, the center of the empty nest of the eldritch queen. A pond had filled the inside of the negative impression of her distended abdomen. Unlike the Hollow above, and the surrounding Lake, the liquid at this Forge was utterly waterless. Clarified terra fluida, the purest fuel, filled the vat.
I staked my caduceus at the edge of the pool. I rested at my staff’s base. Nearby were my old smithy tools, made from dragon bone. Even if they roasted in the hottest kiln, these would not melt like the metals they worked.
Blue-ringed larvalwyrmen arrived, stationing along the recess. Having encircled me, it would appear as if they captured me.
“Father!” Melanie’s angry call reverberated from opposite the cavern.
Her ill-wyrms aided her across the Underworld Lake. Mel smiled observing my apparent arrest. She hoisted the ax *Orphan-Maker* over her shoulder, poised to strike as she shuffled closer. Without hesitation, she swung wildly.
“Cut you ‘to pieces!”
Ebony muck caked her legs. As she charged, I drew my staff. Holding the flames toward her, I kept her separated. She advanced regardless.
Viscous *terra fluida* rolled before her, too thick to even splash. Melanie paused to catch her breath. Laughing maniacally signaled her rest was over. She motioned to rise and go berserk again.
“Daughter, with this act, I heal you.” I tipped my lantern staff into the oil in which we bathed. Phlogiston ignited the terra fluida.
A prismatic firmament engulfed the Forge. The pool burned as a crucible. Our ceramic nature would not submit to heat like organic flesh, but the conflagration brought us to incandescence. Melanie’s entourage of sick wyrms seized as the parasitic fungi softened, melting away as floating puddles of cyan.
One of Melanie’s companions shriveled, incapacitated. My daughter stopped abruptly, snapping her heading as if slapped in the face.
Then two more of her ill-larvae collapsed. Remaining in place, my daughter’s head jerked back and forth. Her vision required her brood to be conscious. Blinded, she seethed.
I spoke in the light, as darkness enveloped her mind, “You are an emerging witch, dear Melanie, but I have practiced sorcery much longer. You will usurp me eventually. But not yet.”
With her diminishing vision, Melanie discerned the tools to work the Forge behind me. “What? You… lured me!”
She lunged and swiped, falling to her knees. Orphan-Maker submerged, boiling with contact. The haft burned to a cinder, disintegrating. The discolored, rotting blade sunk.
The remaining larvalwyrmen infested with Ferrus fungalysis succumbed to exhaustion, releasing the liquified disease. A layer of shimmering blue amalgamated about their forms.
Melanie groped desperately. She grabbed about in despair. Screaming. Her warts lost solidity, dripped as a slurry from her eyes and mouth, as she sobbed furiously.
The molten Orphan-Maker bubbled up and spread as a brilliant, mercurial sheen. The curse disintegrated.
“Be free of Orphan-Maker,” I said.
Weaponless and truly blind, Melanie cradled her knees, the oil rimming her neck.
“Be independent, Melanie.” With the targeted conviction of a striking cougar, I darted, clutched her head, and dunked it into the simmering oil. Standing firm, I stood over her glowing with heat. Waiting.
I lifted her to let her breathe. She gasped while flailing. The bath renewed her beautifully carved face. All the fungi dissolved away, but she bled ichor from each wound. Her eye sockets were cleansed. Alchemy had erased the taint of evil.
“You are free of Orphan-Maker’s spell.”
She fainted in my arms. I raised her limp form and laid her atop the knotted mass of prone, motionless larvalwyrmen. Her closest minions, who had fed on her contagious blood, were now as purified as her. In still convalescence, they supported their stepmother, their adopted queen, limned in the magical Forge light. I collected Mel’s coalesced blood by panning the surface with an amphora. “I have your ichor and your crystalline eyes. Once I decontaminate the metal, I will have all the ingredients needed. But I will not be forging you a weapon.”
The elements of Orphan-Maker reconstituted without its tainted past. Blending in Melanie’s immiscible, pearlescent blood yielded a veined amalgam. As it cooled in a mold, I placed the jeweled eyes in the visor. Tempering set the metallic crystal. To honor her earth crawlers and attachment to the Underworld, I sculpted seven erect uraei to sit along the diadem’s rim. Finally, I engraved the interior: “Daughter, perceive through others. Be yourself.”
“Daughter, I crown you with Independence. Wear it to symbolize your desire to mother a colony. Independence will amplify your telepathy with the larvalwyrmen.” Melanie’s oily hair parted as I put it on her smooth forehead. “If you ever come to the Keep again, then the humans will see you as a royal queen. Not some creature of the earth.”
I instructed the wyrms to carry her back to her lair. They carried her away, lifting her on a living palanquin. I watched the procession leave the Underworld. I sat down in the ashes.
“Fae!” I called my wife’s spirit. “Raising daughters is tough without you. Glad we only have three to nurture.”
©July 2021, S.E. Lindberg
S.E. Lindberg is a Managing Editor at Black Gate, regularly interviews authors on the topic of “Beauty & Art in Weird-Fantasy Fiction,” and is the lead moderator of the Goodreads Sword & Sorcery Group. He contributes short stories for Perseid Press’s Heroes in Hell and Heroika series, and independently publishes novels under the banner Dyscrasia Fiction.