Book III
Chapter Twenty-Seven
DAWN FALLS on JE’GU’RA
When Brun’s soldiers took control of the Pyramid at Ne’jum, the first thing they did was search every room.
Ner’u was among them, as was Nal’kuth’ra. She was there in that first night, and again on the second.
On the third night, she tortured a human man, and found out where Ul’druk was.
There were hundreds and hundreds of rooms in what once was a temple, the largest temple on the entire continent of U’grj’uh.
Though the Lich laid claim to it, not all of the magic had been purged from the complex. The Na’ga who reigned, both above and beneath the waves of that coast, laid many magical traps that had never been triggered.
On that first night, twelve goblins died, just from entering mysterious rooms.
Pits, filled with horrible spikes.
A rolling boulder trap.
There was one room that locked automatically, sealed itself off, and then immediately flooded with water from the Childish Sea.
On the second night’s expedition, Brun’s crew were more careful. They brought poles, special torches, things to throw…
On the third night, they found the loot corridor.
The corridor was long and narrow, with three dozen doors on either side. The doors led into what must once’ve been prison cells.
But now, those cells were filled with…
Loot.
Loot from all over.
Loot from prisoners, loot from war… Spices and fabrics, armour and weapons, and weapons, and armour, and weapons.
In one particular cell, they found a few scant traces of Ba’ku’ra.
Loot from all throughout his life. It all went into this one cell, at the very far right end of the corridor.
Nal’kuth’ra was not there. The goblin Ner’u was, though.
He bent to inspect many things that he did not recognize or understand.
A filthy, ripped cloak, seemingly made of some enormous blanket.
A badly dented short sword, with no remarkable features.
There were beltbags and two tunics. The burnt femur bone of a creature, and a name written on it in Orcish : “A’zhul, the Mighty.”
But what made Ner’u sure that this was Ba’ku’ra’s cell was the pair of wings, rotting in the middle of the room.
What he did not find, and didn’t know he should have been looking for…
Were the fragments
Of
Uung’ra.
Bone mask.
Bone dagger.
Bone armour.
Bone sword.
Bone necklace.
Missing.
* * * * / * * * *
Above the Je’gu’ra Desert, a swirling storm of smoke and flame and burning red lightning was screaming.
A burst of black smoke tore from the storm’s body, tore down, descending like a meteor.
It crashed upon the sand, into a new-made bed of ash and glass.
Ba’ku’ra stood in its center, but the smoke did not clear from him. It came from him.
He wept and screamed and screamed and wept, caught up in the high of his vengeance.
Dressed in every piece of Uung’ra that he had, Ba’ku’ra let the Demon surround and buffet the little god of lightning with rage.
Dor, the one who once was the Death Knight, wailed within Ba’ku’ra. And Ba’ku’ra liked it.
That’s what he kept telling himself…
“YESSS! YESSS! I… LIKE IT! I LOVE… THHHHIS, URRRGGHAAAAA!”
For a day, and a night, and a day, he let his rage squeeze and squeeze and squeeze at Dor’s spirit. Sometimes, he didn’t know if it was the Demon squeezing, or just him, his own naked will, so full of hatred and resentment that it could bring low a god’s soul.
But eventually, the rage dwindled, as rage always does.
The raw emotional energy that poured out of Ba’ku’ra dispersed, and he was left a low shell of himself.
Gods cannot die, and so Dor shuddered within Ba’ku’ra. The storm above subsided. The little god of storms had been tamed.
But Ba’ku’ra was not quenched.
How could he be?
There was only one thing that could satiate him.
* * * * / * * * *
It was not difficult to find Old Je’gu’ra.
Though the Death Knight had killed every orc but one that night, he had left the structures unburned, unbroken.
The tattered flag of the Warfathers still whipped in the arid storms.
A single gash marked the yellowed linen.
Real blood, Ba’ku’ra knew. He nodded. Real blood.
It was hard to think of Je’gu’ra as a city after seeing Ne’jum.
Built against a steep mountain of clay-red mountains, huts of clay still stood. Wooden beam battlements lay collapsed, or else in bad disrepair, unable to weather the unforgiving desert for a decade without the help of mortal hands.
Je’gu’ra was built less than a league away from the maw of an enormous cave.
Ba’ku’ra dug into his memory, trying to remember the name of that place. He knew it was important, but his parents had always told them, “Don’t go in there! It is not safe! It is a place where feet fall. Only the bats like it there, and you are no bat.”
Ba’ku’ra twitched on of his wing-stumps. A bit of his rage came back to him, but it was followed by a long ache within him, and ache for happiness.
Happiness, he thought.
He went to where he knew his mother’s bones were. It did not take him long.
* * * * / * * * *
It did not take him long.
By the biggest hut in Je’gu’ra, out in the street, Ba’ku’ra knelt before his mother’s bones.
There was no flesh left. No brain. No tears.
Just bones, beneath an unrecognizable dress. The sun had dried all the moisture out of it years and years ago, and now the cloth lay like a hard, brittle sheet.
He picked up his mother’s skull.
The bone was exfoliating, peeling. It peeled off onto his hands, seeming to stain his red flesh pink. His palms were tinged with speckles of white.
“…Do it,” Ba’ku’ra said.
He spoke to the Demon, but it looked like he was yelling at the skull.
“I said do it.”
Nothing.
“Do it!”
Ohhhh my boyyyy….
“Bring her back! You said you could bring her back!”
I’m sssssorry, but—
“Bring her back!”
Ba’ku’ra’s whole face was shaking with shouted tears.
“DO IT! DO IT! BRING HER BACK! BRING HER BACK, NOW!”
Though the storm swirled around and above and within him, the fragments of the Demon only frowned in pity. They all spoke at different times, in different tones, but they all wore that same… pity…
We cannnn’t.
hhhh
Too late…
hhhh
Shhhhe can’t come back.
hhhh
I’m sorry, boyyyy…
hhhh
It doesn’t work thhhhhat wayyyy.
“Why,” he mouthed, as he closed his eyes and pressed his forehead to his mother’s forehead.
He didn’t want an answer, though. They all knew that.
And so did Dor.
Dor didn’t answer, per say… But his unvoice chuckled.
Ba’ku’ra’s eyes snapped open.
You took too long, said Dor. And now there’s nothing left to raise.
Dor began to chuckle again, and Uung’ra seethed with silence that should’ve frightened.
But Ba’ku’ra was too mad to be scared.
He ssssssquuuuuEEZED the Death Knight, and Dor yelped, and screamed, and gave a sound of surrender so horrible, even the Demon shuddered at the violence of it.
But Ba’ku’ra just kept… on… squeezing.
And he didn’t let go.
Ba’ku’ra rose, with his mother’s skull still in his hand, and looked toward the…
“The Caves of Blis,” Ba’ku’ra remembered out loud. “That’s what you called it.”
The five fragments said yes, each one in its own way, and gave Ba’ku’ra a memory of… Or a half memory of…
It was more like a vision.
Ba’ku’ra saw the shape of the tunnels, all the twists and the turns.
He remembered the way, without ever having flown it before.
Hhis flesh turned to fire. The armour turned into a maw, and his wings sprouted once again.
As he transformed, he hugged his mother’s skull, tight to his body, protecting it from the flames. Protecting her from him.
Then, as a dragon of flame and wreathed lightning, Ba’ku’ra flew into the Caves of Blis.
* * * * / * * * *
Book III
Chapter Twenty-Eight
A FISTFUL of FANGS
The caves were tall. The air was damper than outside, which was not difficult to do.
Ba’ku’ra remedied that.
The flames of his body burned every living thing, every drop of moisture, burned it all right out of existence.
When the dragon finally came to its destination, Ba’ku’ra landed there, and absorbed the dragon back into the armour.
He was flesh again.
Naked, but for his bone implements.
Armour.
Mask.
Necklace.
He held his dagger and sword in one hand.
He held his mother in the other.
He was deep in the cave now.
Ba’ku’ra stood atop a huge stone pillar, half-a-league high, with no way to get to or from it. No way, but to fly.
Atop the pillar, Ba’ku’ra found himself staring at a wooden chest.
He had lit that chest ablaze, and now it burned bright and hot. Ba’ku’ra watched the flames, the first and only source of light that cave had seen in thousands of years.
Ba’ku’ra went to the chest, and went to lift the lid. There was no lock. Why would there be? The location was hard enough to get to, it didn’t need a lock.
The flames clung to Ba’ku’ra’s skin, like suckerfish against a grimy stone. He ignored them, and flung the lid open.
Within, at the very bottom of the chest, were…
Teeth.
Fangs.
Big fangs.
Fangs from the mask, thought Ba’ku’ra.
All the fragments hissed their yes-es. Excitement was leaking from the hateful bone implements.
Take it.
Yesss…
Take it, boyyyy
Take it, Ba’kuuuu
Ba… ku… raaaaaa…
Take it…
hhhh
Yes, boyyyy
Yesssss….
Ba’kura dropped his sword and dagger, and they clattered on the ground. He knew they would not break, or crack, though he felt them ping with rage at the gesture.
He didn’t care. He reached down, into the flaming chest, and picked up a fistful of fangs.
“I can’t have happiness,” he muttered.
He cocked his head, and studied one fang in particular. He let the rest drop back into the chest, though some spilled out around his feet, scattering and skipping off the stone pillar and into the abyss.
The tiny sounds echoed a long time.
Ba’ku’ra went to push the fang through his septum.
“Then let me have… a little more… vengeance.”
* * * * / * * * *
Link to Orcish-English Dictionary
Wanna hear the music of NALA SAGA?
* * * * / * * * *
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