Inferno 7004

5. THE ADHERENTS OF THE BLIGHTED GOD

They'd been hiking through the dense forest for about an hour, Greg reckoned, and he was starting to get pretty sweaty and sore. His only comfort came from watching Dalile. After she'd bathed herself there wasn't much left of her scale girdle and her silken wrap; for quite some time now Greg had been watching her bare ass sway in front of him as she followed the guidance of her ancestral instinct.

The forest itself was quiet - horribly quiet, Greg thought. No birdsong. No panthers creeping through the underbrush. No fish in the streams. No signs of life apart from the foliage, which was unnaturally dense and lush.

"Why do they call this the Blighted Forest again?" Greg asked. "It seems basically fine, except for the total lack of living creatures."

"I don't know." Dalile sniffed the air. "It's very unusual."

"It makes me nervous," said Greg.

"You are wise to be cautious," said Dalile. At that moment a snare closed around her foot and shot up into the air. She shrieked and dangled, upside-down, from the branch of a nearby tree.

At the exact same time, a swarm of bizarre creatures leaped from the trees. They looked sort of like people, only bizarrely deformed, their skin a deathly-grey and covered in what looked like tiny tentacles and suckers. Their faces were nightmarish death-masks, their eyes empty, their mouths agape and filled with needlelike teeth. They were waving crude stone spears and charging at Greg.

"For Kitra!" he yelled, ready to be carried along in the familiar battle-dance. The sword began doing its work, cleaving through horror after horror. Instead of spraying gore as Greg had become accustomed too, the deformed creatures simply fell apart and dissolved like dust.

"Be careful, Greg!" Dalile yelled, struggling. "There's some evil enchantment at work here!"

"Obvs!" Greg yelled, as the sword dragged him through the ornate motions of an expert warrior. In moments the swarm of creatures were dead - piles of grey dust on the forest floor.

"Phew," Greg said, wiping his forehead. "It's getting hot here." He was starting to think that maybe he should turn his jeans into cutoffs.

"Your assistance would be appreciated," said Dalile.

"Right," said Greg. He took a step towards where she was dangling, and then halted as a loud BOOOOOOM resonated through the forest, as though someone had just banged an exceptionally loud gong.

"The fuck was that?" said Greg.

"Hurry!" said Dalile.

A faint whisper filled the air as the slain warriors rose from the earth, particles of dust combining to reassemble their grisly forms. They looked even more twisted and misshapen than before.

"Goddammit," said Greg, "this is going to get tedious."

BOOOOOOOM, came another resonance. Greg's sword hung heavy in his hand. "For Kitra!" he yelled - and the sword dropped to the ground.

"Oh shit," he said. He scrambled to pick it up. It wasn't feeling any lighter.

BOOOOOOOOOOOM.

The deformed horde rushed towards him, spears upraised. "SPIRIT OF KITRA, AID ME!" Greg yelled, and dragged the sword up, smashing the foremost attacker in the face. He could feel the obsidian blade pulsing in his hand, struggling to move against some unseen force. It thudded back into the earth. The point of a stone spear embedded itself in his chest. He spat up blood, fell on his back, and died.

*

"Arise, Spirits of the Unseen Deeps," intoned the shaman.

"Mmmrrg!" said Dalile.

After slaughtering Greg, the grey-skinned monsters had bound her tightly, and dragged her and the corpse through the forest. Their journey had ended in a sprawling tribal village, built into a clearing in the forest. The inhabitants of the village were less frightening than Dalile had expected - in fact, they looked fairly normal: dark-skinned, with red tattoos, clothed in animal skins. But there was a hint of grey in their complexions.

In the centre of the camp was a huge fire-pit, and beside it an extremely tall man covered in charms and clothed in strips of coloured cloth. His eyes were milky white with blindness, and his skin had changed almost entirely to the sickly grey of the monsters, although there was no sign of the more extreme deformations yet. He shook his head at Dalile.

"I beg forgiveness for what you will soon undergo," he said, raising his hand. "It is the will of the Blighted God."

"It would seem you made your choice of gods poorly," said Dalile.

The shaman sighed. "The Blighted God chose us," he said. "We are all its slaves. Bind the dead one to the Pillar."

Beside the fire was a thick wooden stake. The grey monsters bound Greg's corpse to these. Dalile was dragged to the other side of the fire. There two stakes were driven into the ground, two arm-lengths apart, and connected by a thickly-knotted rope.

"I will explain," said the shaman. "The Blighted God requires two things of us. One is a vessel to inhabit: the corpse of a dead hero. The other is a fair maiden. In the years of our slavery under the Blighted God, all of our great warriors have perished, and our fair maidens have turned grey with sickness. We must hunt outside of our tribe now."

"Insanity!" yelled Dalile. "Revoke your god of evil! Better to die in flames than to serve and die under his awful yoke!"

"Alas," said the shaman. "To revoke the Blighted God is not to die, but to suffer eternally in the halls of his blighted palace in Hell. But those who die in his service may be reborn as spirits of the free forest, and spend eternity in bliss."

"Lies!" said Dalile, but then one of the monsters stuffed a gag in her mouth, and it was too late. Another tore off what remained of her clothes. They dragged her, naked, to the knotted rope, and laid her legs over it, so that she straddled the rope at one end, her toes barely reaching the ground, her groin driven cruelly into the rough ropes.

"Arise, Spirits of the Unseen Deeps," intoned the shaman.

"Mmmrrg!" said Dalile.

The fire began to burn a shade of sickly green, and ichorous smoke belched from its depths.

"We summon the vanguard of the Blight," said the shaman. "Begin the Walk of Pain and Pleasure!"

Someone prodded Dalile's back with a spear. She realized instantly what she was supposed to do, and grunted in horror. "No!" she tried to say, but the gag made it sound more like "NNNN!"

The spear prodded harder. She held her ground. "BEGIN!" shrieked the shaman, and then a whip fell across her back, stinging with the agony of a thousand cuts. She let out a muffled scream.

Fine.

She started to move, staggering on tiptoe, the rope dragging against her cleft. When she reached the first knot she almost gave up. Her toes could strain no further: she had to press herself against it, enfold the coarse rope with her womanhood, and experience its awful combination of agony and pleasure. She nearly fainted.

There were six more knots in the rope.

Another lash fell on her back. She knew that she would not be able to continue: the agony was too great. Instead, she muttered something through the gag, hoping that the words would echo into the halls of her ancestors, even through the gag: "Kull Natura. Kull Levanta."

She began to levitate slightly.

It wasn't enough to carry her over the knots, but it was enough to lessen the agony. She drove herself on. The pain was less excruciating now that the rope hardly touched her; the only downside was the intense effort required to move while levitating. She reached the second knot, pressed against it, and surmounted it.

By the time she had passed the third, however, her strength was nearly gone, she was sinking back to the earth, and her passage was not even halfway finished. She considered giving up. But she knew that to refuse participation in the ritual would invoke the rage of whatever dark god or demon they were summoning, and that if the shaman spoke true (and he probably did) it would mean an eternity of suffering in a palace of blight.

Whether or not death in service would mean eternal bliss in the woods - that seemed less likely. Perhaps only because she was a cynic. But it was worth trying for.

The shaman was still chanting. Dalile closed her eyes. "Kull Natura," she said. "Kull Eternia. Kull Gulthar. Kullgar Invictem! Kullgar Argalis!"

She entered the Battle Trance.

The rage began to fill her, the sensation of physical pain evaporating, and she could feel her arms urging against their bonds, ready to tear free. She rushed along the rope, ignoring the sensations shooting through her body, eager only to reach the end and kill whatever she saw.

She came to the far post.

"AWAKE, GOD OF THE BLIGHT!" screamed the shaman in throes of unbelievable ecstasy.

Dalile turned. Through the film of red, she saw Greg's corpse thrashing wildly. Suddenly it turned a sickly shade of green. Enormous batlike wings burst from his back. His eyes turned yellow and slitted like a serpents. His hands twisted into the shapes of huge claws, with poison dripped from their tips.

"I AWAKE, SLAVES," roared the voice of the Blighted God from Greg's mouth. Free of the post, it towered over the leaping black flames. "WHERE IS MY SACRIFICE?"

The shaman pointed to Dalile, who strained against her bondage, the blood-lust coursing in her veins.

"WORTHY," said the Blighted God. "I WILL SEND YOUR DEAD TO BLISS NOW."

The Blighted God waved his hand, and the grey monsters dissolved with a great cry, their ashes rising into the air.

"YOU HAVE EARNED ANOTHER YEAR OF SERVICE," intoned the Blighted God. "SERVE ME WISELY, SLAVES, OR ENDURE THE ETERNAL HORRORS OF MY PALACE OF BLIGHT."

There was a deafening roar. In an instant the fire had gone out, and Dalile had vanished.

*

She awoke in a room of black marble. The walls dripped with venom, and the stench of ichor rose from every crevice.

Still naked, she was chained by the neck and wrists to a post, forcing her to bend over. Her legs were spread and bound apart. She quivered with blood rage, unable to feel fear, unable to feel anything except the desire to kill.

"PREPARE TO RECIEVE MY SEED," said the Blighted God.

It stood before her, its form appearing even faster than it had in the forest. She could see more of it now: the flaps of skin through which venom issued, its enormous cock, rancid with poisonous seed, deformed and hideous.

"CONSIDER YOURSELF FORTUNATE," said the Blighted God. "FOR TEN YEARS ONLY YOU WILL LIE IN MY ICHOROUS CELLS. THEN MY YOUNG WILL BURST FROM YOUR BELLY, AND YOU WILL DIE OF THE SLOW POISON THEY IMPART, ALLOWING YOUR SOUL TO TRAVEL TO WHATEVER UNKNOWN REALMS LIE BENEATH."

"Rrrrrggg," said Dalile, straining against her bonds.

"PREPARE YOURSELF," said the Blighted God. "THE AGONY OF IMPREGNATION IS BEYOND YOUR COMPREHENSION."

The monstrous creature moved behind her. She felt one leathery wing scrape her bare back, and then the chains broke.

The instant they shattered she flung herself forward, towards the only hope she had: a dark crevice in the floor. She wriggled through it and plunged down into a dark abyss.