My story is like that of any other. As a young boy raised by a single mother, my early life was a struggle. I was cast away to die in the darkness, but we talked a while and became friends, and life has been complicated ever since. All I want is to find a place that can accept a boy who loves the darkness, and tentacles that love me back.
My name is Clover, son of a very fit gentleman, who brought flowers. I am, at least until the final paperwork goes through a Dark Knight of the Dread Empire of Yn’Tereth. I am also running for my life, from the Dread Empire of Yn’Tereth, in specific, XVII Legion, Alpha Cohort, First Century ( The Butcher’s Own). I am not overly worried about them catching me. I am sustained by the darkness, I have been forged in pain, transformed by suffering, and baptized in blood! Just like the recruiting posters. You remember, the ones I believed long enough to cross half the continent to sneak across the border to the Dread Empire of Yn’Tereth to take service with the only army that was okay with Dark Magic. You know, the stuff I thought I did. Well, we did. Look, its complicated.
I stopped, the four running to catch me were Huntsmen, The Butcher’s Own personal scouts and assassins. I really admired those guys. In an army filled with practitioners of Dark Magic, combat magics, and unbelievable physical training, they stood out as insanely good at all of them. I had wanted to become one. Not during my first tour, but after a decade in, a few wars, I figured I had a solid shot at their ranks. Now they were under orders to bring back my skull, and my balls, in two separate containers.
I stopped, spun, we had been running for six hours straight, the horses of the regular knights foundered hours ago (poor wee beasties!), and it was only the Huntsmen and myself (well and friends). Maybe I could reason with them?
“Brother’s in darkness. This is all a misunderstanding. I am sure if the Butcher would simply accept the truth that it was all a misunderstanding, we can go back to serving the Dread Empire together. In a few years it will be just another funny story to tell beside the campfire while we sack the cities of the Holy Empire, am I right?” I shot them a grin and a thumbs up. They were good guys. I had already been through a campaign with them. They knew me. I thought they liked me! This can just be fixed right?
“HERETIC!” Screamed one Huntsman. “You soil the darkness.” Screamed another. “The demon’s wont even look at you.” Screamed a third. “Your blood poisoned the devil we tried to summon with it!” Screamed Cimaron, the leader of the Hunt.
“Now that isn’t my fault!” I objected. “I mean, maybe the devil was allergic. There is nothing wrong with my blood. I have been full of it all my life and I am just fine!”
“KILL HIM” The Huntsmen shouted as one, surging after me.
I turned and ran tirelessly towards the borders of the Savage Lands. I suppose I should probably take you back to earlier today when my time in the Army of Darkness, XVII Legion, Alpha Cohort, First Century (The Butcher’s Own) hit both its peak, and its shattering end. It really would be a funny story if his nibs wasn’t ready to have me murdered over it. Let me explain.
I had joined the XVII Legion as a soldier. I had come here because I practiced a kind of magic that was unwelcome in my home country. That is, in the Holy Kingdom they tended to burn people who had it. This makes it a bit hard to get instruction, and a bit harder to get realistic answers about how to control it. The Dread Empire is ruled by Dark Magic, and its Sorcerer-Generals (like The Butcher) are each unique terrors, living legends whose very step upon a battlefield can break whole armies, whose dark sorceries have broken the will of keeps that held unbroken for centuries. They run a solid meritocracy; if you manage to survive the endless campaigns (we do civil war every other Thursday, it may be the only reason we haven’t conquered the entire world. If we conquer the entire world, we would have to march back from its corners every Thursday for another round of civil war, and that is a lot of walking.)
I had served in the two campaigns of the last year. The Horde Invasion from the Savage Lands (orcs, all the orcs you could want, and quite a number I could have done without), and a civil war with the VIII Legion. Our lord, The Butcher, has a bit of a speech impediment, and Lord Yakov the Defiler did an impression of it during a banquet celebrating our victory on the Savage Lands border, and for the next four months we were turning VIII Legion cohorts into feed for the griffons. Now our griffons are too fat to fly, we don’t have an VIII Legion, and I had earned my second stripe, and the chance to test for Knight.
The tests are to determine your ability to master the battle magics of the Knight, the shadow magics of the sorcerer. Knights can call upon their magical power to supposedly boost their strength, speed, resistance beyond all human limits for short periods of time. I never really figured out how, but my friends taught me something that worked, so I figured I would be fine. Then there was the Dark Magic, you could use it to summon shadows, which I totally could do. You could manipulate shadows, which I could do. You could make illusions, which sounded neat, and I would love to learn. You could make yourself invisible but stay out of the women’s bathing area, since they also can practice dark magic, you will be spotted, you will be killed and it will hurt the entire time you are dying. I really wanted to learn how to do that part of the dark magic. There was also the demon summoning thing, but I didn’t really want to learn that one. I had my friends and that was enough.
Demon Summoning was the first lesson of the day, and we were getting a pop practical quiz on a spell in the latter half. I was worried about the quiz. Some of the darkness magic seemed so easy I had been doing it since I was a child. Some of it didn’t sound right, but given time I could find a way to make my darkness do what their darkness was doing. Then there was the stuff that didn’t make any sense at all. I frankly was hoping for a C+ and pass. I was never going to be any sort of sorcerer general if I only got about half what they were trying to teach.
The Butcher smiled. “I am going to summon a demon. It is a far stronger demon than any of you can summon. If you summoned it, it would shatter your circle and slaughter you. That will change. I will drill you until you can summon a fiend from the deepest pit and break it to be your mindless slave!”
The voices in my mind whispered “He’s not a very nice man at all. And he spits when he gets excited. No one will tell him though.” I could not take my eyes off the spit now that my friends pointed it out. Shit. Don’t get caught looking. I got caught looking.
“Clover. You seem to be watching closest of all. You will watch me and do the same.” The Butcher smiled and began to speed cast his demon summoning. Only a master mage could cut an incantation down to a fraction of its sounds and still shape the intent well enough to bind the world to his will. A form with blue scales a body shaped like a baboon, and improbably long claws began to form in his summoning circle that burned with blue flame. Mine just burned with black. I looked inside my head where my friends were coiled. “Anyone want this?” I asked.
A shape shot out my hand and appeared in the circle. I recognized her. “Agatha, take battle form!” I said, because the lesson I was taught was to take a formless spirit from the Abyss, and cause it to take one of the classical demon shapes that seemed to be so much expected by this world that it stabilized the construct the demon essence was bound into. I don’t really get that. I just have to ask any of them to take a shape, and they do it on their own. I mean, I don’t think I bound them. We talked about it after class, and after a fair amount of discussion conclude that I don’t bind anyone.
Agatha took her battle form faster than The Butcher’s demon, as he was torturing it into obedience. Agatha was putting on a show. I took her to see the masked wrestlers in Dorn, so now she thinks summoned demons have to act like Luchador Wrestlers. While Agatha grew bored waiting for The Butcher to beat his demon into submission, she amused herself by running at the edges of the circle and frightening the other students. At last, The Butcher had his demon stabilized, and sweating he turned to the class.
“Now, we shall see how your summons stands up to a mid ranked demon. Push out the boundaries of your circle to meet mine, and join them.” The Butcher showed the amazing control of a master mage as his circle just extended towards mine like it was sliding across a sheet of ice. A perfect flawless extension like it was being brushed on by an artist. My own circle sprouted a tentacle, which waved at me, waved around, seeking the scent, then bounded along the ground like a seal on a mission for free fish until it reached The Butcher’s Circle and merged.
The second the two circles merged, the blue demon charged at Agatha. She bunny hopped over its head, planted her hands on the ground, her feet in his ass, and kicked him into the back wall of the conjuring circle. He hit the elastic boundary like a wrestler hitting the ropes, and bounced off them to come careening back at Agatha. She closelined the thing right in the neck with her forearm, moved behind to grab the beast around its middle and drop backwards to pile drive its skull into the ground. As it flopped stunned and trying to recover, Agatha leaped to her feet, and performed at Atomic Elbow Drop, before rolling the demon into a terrible looking move that locked both her arms around one of the demon’s arms, and both her legs around the other. It looked like she intended to break both of them by bending them to meet in the middle behind the poor demon’s back.
The Butcher was not pleased with this response, and with claws of scarlet flame, he raked the body of his demon apart. I could hear it scream as its soul essence was torn apart, forever lost into incoherence.
“Never summon a demon you can’t destroy. They will all try to turn on you. Whenever one fails to obey the least instruction, like to beat your demon to a pulp, you DESTROY IT. Now Clover. Destroy your demon.”
Well, we have all been there, haven’t we. That moment when we realize we are working for a right prick. Destroy Agatha? For what? Liking Luchador Wrestling more than a being of living darkness should? I think not!
I reached my arm out, and she leaped to it like a terrified kitten. For a second I worried if the boss would destroy her out of spite if he could detect her, so I didn’t let her find a roost wherever like my friends usually did. I grabbed her in my hand as she wrapped around it like a tentacle or snake, and swallowed her into my mouth.
“Well well. You consumed your slave. Took its demonic essence into you. Risky, but might add a bit to your magical power. Still, it teaches the rest of your slaves to obey or be consumed. You pass. Do as well with the spell test, and you will be a Dark Knight by nightfall.” The Butcher said, with a frankly disturbing smile on his face.
There was squirming in my clothes, under my armour, and in my stomach as Agatha ducked under a solid organ to be extra, extra hidden. My little friends didn’t like The Butcher. That is fine. Only the practical demonstration of a spell to go and we are Knights baby! As long as it isn’t invisibility, I am fine.
We got to the testing ground. The chief of the knights announced the test.
“This is a test of your ability to both use advanced darkness magic, and your physical stealth skills. You must make yourself invisible, and pass through the guards of the Legate’s own tent to take tomorrow’s watch rotation list from his desk. Return with that list, and you will pass. Get caught, or fail to come back with the watch list, and you fail.”
Sugar coated bad word. Poop. I really don’t like that spell. I have the theory. They theory even makes sense. It just doesn’t work when we try it.
I will go last. It will give me the time to review how Darkness makes invisibility work. I have had Darkness since I was a child. Invisibility is child’s play for Darkness magic users. I’ve got this! I mean, I never have. But this is all or nothing, pass or fail, be a knight or back to the ranks forever.
“Okay guys,” I say, and the thousand whispers that have been with me as long as I can remember all start listening hard. “Invisibility is a spell where you wrap yourself in darkness, which would be you guys, and then you command the darkness that no one should see you. So basically, I wrap myself up in you, and you make sure no one sees me. Right?”
A had a good feeling. This time it was going to work. They all seemed to listen. They were my tentacle friends, and tentacle friends never let you down.
I was the last. Jerome failed. T’von failed. Irene passed. Chen-Lu passed. Amon got tossed out in two pieces, so that is also a fail I guess. Now it was just me.
I felt my friends surge forth from every darkness upon and under my clothes, from the shadow beneath my feet, the shadow at my back, from the hollows under my eyes, and Agatha surging up my throat where she had been hiding from the boss since she made his demon look like an unmasked chump. They wrapped me in darkness. I stalked to the tent, not going to the front, but slicing down the back of the tent, sliding between the felted silk without any of the disturbance or light of the main tent doorway. I let my senses extend into the darkness. Tentacles of awareness augmented my sight, even around corners. I spotted the one guard hiding in the shadows.
I asked my friends almost inaudibly. “Am I Invisible?” A thousand whispers answered back “They won’t see shit!”
I stalked to the main table, the guard didn’t move. I searched among the papers and found tomorrow’s watch list. Perfect. I heard a whimper, and smelled fresh pee. Oh my god. That poor guard has been here so long he peed himself. That is discipline! I am proud to be joining such an elite company! I saluted him, even though I was invisible and he couldn’t see me. Then I stalked to the back of the tent and escaped. Jogging to the front, I handed in the stolen paper and accepted the congratulations of my class. I was the newest Knight of the Dread Empire.
…..
The Butchers POV.
That little shit Clover had made a fool of him. Instead of his summoned demon tearing the little nobodies demon apart, his demon had been bullied, battered, and finally made to submit by an UNDERLING in front of all his prospective new knights. Clover was a talented boy. Solid soldier. Excellent battle record, excellent at some skills, barely passable at others. He could have made a knight out of him. Instead, he would make an example of him. He would catch him, cut him in half, and toss both parts out like he did that idiot that spilled the ’17 Stolhaven Red on the desk and ruined a day’s work and an irreplaceable bottle of wine.
The boy entered through the back of the tent, so he wasn’t stupid. He wrapped himself in darkness, but while he looked like the very image of a Dark Knight, he was in no sense of the word invisible. Just as The Butcher prepared to kill his second student of the test, a hundred little tentacles of darkness entered every joint and gap in his armour. A thousand little tongues licked and a thousand little teeth scraped his skin. Something wrapped around his throat, cutting off his air, and when he went to speak the Word of Power to banish the darkness, a little voice whispered, “Agatha’s turn!” and filled my mouth and throat.
Teeth nipped at my ears, and two voices made of darkness and nightmare whispered in my ears.
“You don’t see nothing. You don’t hear nothing. You don’t move. You don’t even breathe until Master has left the tent. Otherwise we will tunnel through you so thoroughly that when you open your mouth to scream, sunlight will stream out your ass.” The darkness given form whispered to me with a cold will no demon possessed, with a cold power no devil commanded. I, dark lord of the XVII Legion, was terrified of a glorified boy.
They tore through my protective enchantments. They held me crucified in my own tent, promising me they would violate me like a thousand randy elephants if I even thought I saw their master. In my fear, in my helpless rage, and in my shame, I lost control of my bladder, and peed myself. I saw Clover sniff, then he saluted me. Saluted! If I even twitched, they were going to violate me with shadowy versions of elephant parts! I would murder Clover, raise him from the dead so I could murder him again.
Clover left the tent, and the darkness left me go. I collapsed shuddering. I patted dry my pee covered robes, then stalked out of my tent where Clover was celebrating with the other successful candidates. He looked surprised when I screamed out that he was a Heretic, a threat to the purity of darkness, and needed to die. I sent a company of horsemen, and four of my Huntsmen, and still they haven’t run him to ground!
…..
I hit the border to the Savage Lands, or rather I fell over it. I fell over it and onto an Androsphinx. Head of a man, body of a lion, if lions ran about thirty feet long. He had been napping and looked up in alarm “Who in the hell are you?”
That was fortunate. To pass a sphinx you had to answer their riddles. I was not the brightest, and never did well with riddles. He only asked me who I was. I actually knew that one.
“I am Clover, son of a very fit gentleman who brought flowers!” I announced proudly. The sphinx nodded. “That is correct, pass friend.”
He looked a little upset. I think the question he asked when he woke up wasn’t his best work and it made him a bit embarrassed. I began running deeper across the border as I heard the Huntsmen catching up. I don’t know what he asked them, but they got it wrong, and I heard a lot of roaring and crashing, followed by soft wet sounds. After that I heard one more roar that strongly implied the sphinx was still alive when all the wet squishy sounds ended. I slowed to a walk.
