Onslaught

CHAPTER ELEVEN: TO THE DEATH

From malarial mists, a grand arena rose. Its curving wall lifted uneven battlements above the fog. Sunlight splashed across the dwarf masons who set stones atop it, and murky fog shrouded the crews that toiled below.

Shorn rhinos strained against leather traces, pulling massive blocks across rolling logs. Gigantipithicus apes hoisted cement sacks up long stairs. Goblin grunts worked the pumps or stirred the mortar or scrambled up ladders or sat in stocks. Taskmasters watched them all, their whips of black magic driving the whole machine forward.

Pain was the coin of the realm-pain and no little fear. Like it or not, Zagorka had become the usurer of that coin.

She and Chester made their plodding way among the work teams. Sight of that old woman and her doughty ass put fear into the hearts of even the most brutal taskmasters. The woman's disapproval meant Phage's disapproval, and Phage's disapproval meant pain or death. Zagorka preferred fear. If she could make the crews fear the consequences of failure, they would not have to suffer those consequences.

Chester snorted irritably as another mule, smaller and younger than he, bustled by beneath a crushing load of gravel. Despite his size, Chester's main use now was as a ride for Zagorka.

"Not much farther," she murmured to the beast.

He brayed in response, and nearby goblins shied as if from a blow. Chester's other role was enforcer, for he could kick over a rhino.

Zagorka and her comrade approached a particularly ominous taskmaster. Yokels would have called it a demon: a goat-headed, bat-winged, lizard-bodied thing that once had hid in a cave. It was a leftover from the War-but then again, so were they all. This beast had been hunted and snared by the Cabal, brainwashed and forced to fight in the pits, and eventually commissioned as a taskmaster. So far, it was not a very good one.

Zagorka dismounted and tugged the leathery wing of the thing. " 'Scuse me. You're Gorgoth?"

"What's it to-" he began, spinning around with teeth notching each other. As soon as he saw Zagorka, though, the red fire in his eyes turned greenish. His talon fell, dispersing the scourge-spell it had conjured, and his knees folded to the ground. "Zagorka! My humblest apologies." He bowed his curved horns and touched a furry forehead to the dust. "I am indeed Gorgoth."

Zagorka smiled absently, a look she knew inspired terror. "How does your work progress?"

"Well. Very well," Gorgoth replied. "We have met every quota for two weeks and are right on schedule according to the timetable."

Zagorka scowled. "That's too bad."

The demon's rectangular pupils closed to slits. 'Too bad?"

"All the other crews are running three days ahead-"

"But we are meeting our quotas- -and whenever their work overlaps yours, they have to wait."

"But the schedule-"

"You're dragging down the whole project."

"But-"

"Why not be first rather than last? Alive rather than…?"

Gorgoth offered no more objections. He had sunk lower with each reply and now lay prostrate before the old woman.

Zagorka stroked Chester's mane. "You've survived since the War. It's clear you want to keep on, but the old way of surviving-hiding and skulking-won't work anymore. You cannot hide from Phage."

The demon released a whimper.

"You have to drive these workers."

"I'll beat them to a pulp-"

"No, you won't. Maimed workers don't work. Dead workers don't work. You cannot beat them to a pulp, but you must make them think you will."

The beast lifted his homed head, and a cocky glint showed in his eyes. "Is that what you are doing? Threatening with no thought of following through?"

"No," Zagorka replied. "I don't threaten. I advise. I don't follow through. Phage does. She plans for all of you to die, whether in building this coliseum or fighting in it. I advise you how to avoid death." She took up Chester's reins and pivoted him slowly away. "Listen to me and live. Ignore me and die. It is as simple as that."

"Yes," Gorgoth replied, forehead once again pressed to the ground. He remained that way as the woman mounted her mule and rode off.

Though outwardly the demon was utterly still, inwardly his mind churned. Zagorka's words were more than a warning.

They were an object lesson. She gained the ear of the taskmasters by acting as their advocate. Phage would punish, yes, eternally-unless one listened to the advocate. Gorgoth would work the way Zagorka did.

He rose from the ground and roared into the mists, the signal for his workers to assemble. They answered immediately-dwarves and goblins from the cutting fields.

"There is a new decree," Gorgoth said. "The slowest team will be flogged each night. We are the slowest."

"But we're meeting our quotas-"

"We are the slowest."

"But already we work twelve hours-'

"We are the slowest."

"But-"

"Silence!" he growled. "You will work faster and harder. Every night, I will flog the slowest among you, whoever is dragging the rest of us down. Now, work!"

The fog burned off by midafternoon but rose again at sunset. In the raking light, the mist looked like spun gold. It was a fitting metaphor. Phage was turning this fetid swamp into gold: gold for the Cabal, gold for the First.

Phage stood atop the coliseum wall. Through rags of fog, she glimpsed the workers below. Many labored on, despite the dark hour. Some slept beside their work, having fallen unconscious. Phage let them sleep in the shadow of half-hewn stone or the heat of smoldering forges. Even in their dreams, they would work. Only the bridge crews were allowed true camps on the nearby islets. They had lost too many workers already to alligators and panthers. Now archers and swordsmen guarded them against such large-scale onslaughts, but nothing could defeat the clouds of mosquitoes.

Nothing but Phage's skin.

The stars above the desert were fiery. Jeska lay in chains and stared at them. Braids crouched nearby, doing something. She was always doing something. She had healed Jeska's wound and was carrying her away in chains to the Cabal. Jeska had submitted. This was her life. The alternative was death.

Phage shook off the reverie. Above a far shore, a line of torches slid out and slowly headed across the swamp. A barge, lit by brands on either gunwale, poled toward the main island. Barges were not to land after sunset, due to daily changes in mooring points. Nor were they to waste wood on torches. What load would need such a late and grand arrival?

Silhouetted against desert stars. Braids worked at Jeska's chains. "The First is eager to see you."

A chill swept through Phage. She pivoted on her heel and descended the stair. She touched every third step, nearly running. At each landing, guards startled, whirled, and recoiled from their dread lady. Phage paid them no heed. She rushed down the main entry and out into the fog.

A huge figure loomed up and brayed.

Phage withdrew her hand. She had almost killed her second's mule. Still her pace didn't slacken.

Zagorka ambled after her mistress. "Forgive us. We were just waiting around to see if you needed something." She coughed. "You seem to need something."

"Go to my quarters. Double the guard. Tell them to clean everything. They must find the thickest, cleanest pallet and put it on the iron cot Enlist the cooks to make a feast. Then report to me at the barge below." The commands leaped from her lips like bolts from a crossbow.

"What is happening?"

"The First is coming." It was all Phage said before she outpaced her second.

It was all she had to say.

Zagorka gave a strangled yelp and mounted Chester. The mule clottered off through the mist toward Phage's quarters.

Phage didn't spare them a glance. If Zagorka went to arrange quarters and food for the First, they would be arranged. Phage only hoped the docks would meet with his approval-only hoped the island, the workers, the coliseum, the progress, that all of it would please him. She would live or die at his hand.

"Rouse yourselves!" she called into the misty camp. "Prepare for grand inspection!" Her voice, though rarely used, was known to every last taskmaster and worker.

The word went out. Whips cracked to punctuate the commands. The troops would be ready-awake, straightened, and marshaled in rows. Anyone who failed inspection would not survive to morning.

Phage swallowed. Ahead of her, through the parting mists, she saw the torches of the approaching barge. They were not simple torches but burning skeletons. The First had perfected this execution technique-anesthetizing traitors, wrapping them in a gauze wick, dousing them with an accelerant, and lighting them aflame. They produced a hot, slow fire, and they lit the First's way. It was a well-known aphorism that the tallow of traitors was the light of the Cabal.

No light, though, penetrated the black pavilion at the center of the vessel.

Phage reached the shoreline and waited. The foremost of the skulls leered at her, its mouth and eyes trailing fire. Was it mocking her faithfulness or hailing her as a fellow traitor?

Black waters rippled before the barge. It eased forward, and poles stabbed into the muck to slow it down. With a gentle bump, the craft struck ground. Men leaned on their poles, and the anchor splashed in. Workers lifted a broad gangplank from the bow and slid it into place.

Phage waited for the curtains to part, for the man to disembark.

A voice called from within, "Phage, whose true name is Jeska, come forward."

Phage slowly ascended the plank. Wood sizzled beneath the balls of her feet, forever marking her passage. As she advanced among smoldering skeletons, the smell of burning fat gave way to the aura of the First. Most folk were nauseated by his presence, but Phage was renewed by it. Like called to like. Her skin trembled to touch cousin flesh. She approached the pavilion, curtained in black silk like her own body suit. She was home.

"Enter, Jeska," came a voice from within. The First's stare reached through the cloth that separated them.

Hands parted the curtains from within. The First's servants drew back the folds. Air spilled out over Phage-cold and dry, death smelling. She walked into it, and the fabric dropped behind her. Darkness filled the place, and the drapes showed only dim columns of gray where the corpses burned.

Phage went to her knee and then to her face. She lay prostrate. Beneath her, the woolen rug withered and rotted.

"Rise," said the First. He sat in a large chair at the end of the space, only just visible in the gloom. "The Cabal is here."

"The Cabal is everywhere," Phage answered as she came to her knees.

Eyes studied her. "I said rise. To your feet."

She stood up. Her black silhouette remained on the ruined rug. "Forgive me, Lord."

"You need no forgiveness, Jeska," he whispered. "I am well pleased with the reports you have sent-running ahead of schedule i and behind budget, raising bridges and deepening canals, paving the way for the world. You say you have even found a way to render the swamps sterile?"

She nodded. "Lime will poison every plant and beast and will settle thickly on the bottom and harden. Within a mile radius of the coliseum, all waterways will be sky-blue and lined with cement."

A dry chuckle came from the First. "It is, of course, perfect."

"Also, I've commanded the dementia summoners to devise some amazing beasts. They are swamp creatures that eat sand and disgorge water. Even now, they extend the reach of the swamp into the trackless desert. Only when we reach the Corian Escarpment will we have to cease."

"You are a credit."

Beyond the barge came a small commotion. Someone had arrived, and the First's guards were barking questions. Amid the replies came a familiar bray.

"Even now, my quarters are being cleaned and converted for your own use, and a feast is prepared," Phage said.

Zagorka's protest could be clearly heard in the pause. "She ordered me to report to her."

The First continued as if oblivious. "It is not your progress or your preparations that concern me. It is my reception."

Phage felt a flutter of panic in her chest. She strode to one of the First's hand servant, knelt, and kissed his fingers. The touch of her lips brought a bubbling necrosis to the servant's knuckles. "I honor you with my life."

"Yes, you do," responded the First as he wrung his own hands. He waved his servant back from Phage. "But do your people? They treat you as a goddess-with fear, reverence, and admiration."

"They do?" she echoed, incredulous.

"They swear by you, Phage," he replied. "They are to swear by me, not by you."

"I w-will tell them."

"You will tell them tonight."

"With your leave, I will tell them now."

"Go."

Phage rose and headed for the curtains. Hand servants drew them back. Phage emerged from cold dryness into the wet heat of the swamp. She strode down the gangplank.

At its base clustered the First's personal guard, arguing with an old woman and a very large ass. Zagorka's voice rose above the din. "… Not here, he ain't. Phage is the law here, and she said to meet her-"

"And here you are," interrupted Phage as she strode into their midst. All those gathered recoiled instinctively from her rotting touch. "What is my best work team?"

"This week, Gorgoth and his masons."

"Bring them. Command all the rest to watch what happens here."

"Yes," said Zagorka, once again scrambling onto the back of her mule. She kicked her heels into the flanks of the beast. It bounded forward whickering.

The woman and the creature rushed amid mustered troops. They stood like rows of com across Coliseum Island. Zagorka would find Gorgoth and his team quickly and bring them. Phage planned a demonstration of fealty. The workers would know soon their true master. The First would know it, too.

Jeska vomited on the floor when she entered the First's presence. He stood there, arms open wide. There was no escape. She stepped into the killing embrace.

An algid breeze tapped Phage's shoulder, and she knew the First had emerged. With hand servants on either side and skull servants behind, the First descended the gangplank. Out beneath the sickle moon, the man's multiple robes and towering miter made him seem huge.

He was huge. He was the black sun around which they all revolved, whether they knew it or not. Shortly, they would know.

As the First made his way past rot holes in the plank, Phage went to her knees. None of her folk had seen her that way before.

Zagorka returned. She bounced on Chester's back and poured out a harangue. "Watch Phage! Turn your eyes upon the shore. Watch Phage or die!"

In her wake came a motley collection of dwarves and goblins, gigantipithicus and shorn rhino, all driven forward by the lashing scourge of the demon Gorgoth. They winced away from their taskmaster and hurried toward their kneeling mistress.

None of this helped Phage. It only proved the First's suspicions.

Zagorka rode to one side, clearing the way for the work crew to spread out before Phage. They did, and went to their knees, and to their faces. Gorgoth lashed them until they were facedown and still. Then he, too, knelt To Phage. Every last one bowed to her.

"Tell them they are not to kneel to me," Phage growled, "but to the First."

Zagorka cupped an old hand to her lips and shouted. "Kneel to the First!"

Unsure what to do, the dwarves and goblins squinted where they lay.

"AH of them must bow to the First. The whole camp."

"Bow! All of you! Bow to the First!"

With a rumble like thunder, hundreds of creatures knelt.

"We serve him unto death," Phage said.

"Serve him to the death!" shouted Zagorka.

They bowed their heads, but Phage could feel their hot glares on her back, as surely as the cold glare of the First on her face. She rose. It was time to prove her loyalties and those of her workers. She strode before the work crew. All lay prostrate. None had shifted toward the First.

Phage shouted, "Not to me! To the First!"

Looks of terror filled their features. Dwarfs and goblins shuffled on their faces, reorienting. They touched their foreheads to the ground and clenched their eyes.

"You are my best work team. Quickest. Most efficient. Most skilled. You are my best. You must be the First's best." She strode on, stopping to stand on the back of the first dwarf.

Cotton burned away. Skin peeled back, muscle sloughed to rot, and bone went to chalk. Vital power rose ghostlike from the corpse and twined around Phage. She drew her hands to one side. Webs of life force rolled from her fingertips to stretch across the darkness and wrap the First. He seemed to breathe in the power. Soon his figure glowed, and Phage stood in the burned-out midst of the body.

With a shriek, the goblin lying beside the dwarf tried to scuttle up and away.

Phage stepped again, pinning the creature to the ground.

While the goblin died, the other workers tried to rise, but Gorgoth dutifully lashed them. Black coils of magic struck and stung, enervating them.

Phage's words lashed them as well. "I am faithful to the First unto death. Now so are you."

Despite the barbed thongs that opened wounds just ahead of her, she advanced. The scourge brought agony. Phage brought death. One by one, she slew the workers of her best team.

Every eye on the island watched these summary executions, and every mind understood. Pay homage to the First or die. Phage was not their ultimate leader. She was only a knife in the hand of the First.

Gorgoth watch more closely than any other. Though the demon's scourge roared mercilessly, his eyes held sick pity. He had turned these workers around, and now they all were dying. Still, Gorgoth knew about survival. This was what he must do to survive.

"Man… woman… child… beast…" called Phage. She grappled the rhino's head and rotted it away to a skull. The vacated body gave a groan and crumpled. "AH must serve the First unto death." Almost tenderly, she wrapped her arms around the gigantipithicus. It tried to fight back but dissolved to gray slime wherever she touched. In her embrace, it ceased to be. The gang's most powerful workers lay in heaps. Phage shifted to stand before the taskmaster.

Gorgoth went to its knees. "I-I have whipped them. I-I have been faithful to you to the death."

"Faithful to me" Phage said, shaking her head sadly. She grasped his goat head and kissed it-the kiss of death. Her hand slid to his neck and squeezed. The skull came off in her grip. While wings shivered, the body fell over. Phage carried the fragile bones to the First. She laid them at his feet, and laid herself there as well.

The First stared down at her, then at the skull, then at the whole island, covered with prostrate figures. Even the crone knelt deeply, her mule beside her. "You have done well, my servants." He spoke quietly, but magic carried his words to all those who knelt. "The Cabal is here."

From thousands of throats, the answer came. "The Cabal is everywhere."

"I am especially pleased with my daughter Phage. She wisely builds my coliseum. She wisely speaks through the old crone there. She will speak also through another." The First's smile glimmered in the darkness. "Phage, I have brought the one who gave birth to you, who once ruled you. Now you will rule her. As this crone is your voice to the workers, this one will be your voice to the world." He gestured behind him.

The curtains on the barge parted. From them emerged Braids, a smile stitching across her face. "Hello, big sister!"

"I am honored," Phage said, still in her deep bow.

"Stand, Phage, Zagorka, and Braids. Approach."

While Phage rose, Braids skipped down the gangplank and came up alongside her. Zagorka left her mule, hobbling up with the others.

The First's smile deepened, and he lifted his hands to the starry heavens. "You three will make this coliseum into the center of Otaria, the center of Dominaria."

In that killing embrace, Jeska lived. In trembling agony, she became Phage.