Deeping Lore - 5. Chapter 5 - Omega

Kian stood silently at the edge of the flickering firelight produced by Dolmani's spell. He was facing the priest, but he hid behind his helmet with the visor down. There was no way he was going to let on that he'd been crying only a minute earlier. Men weren't supposed to cry even if they were being tortured; this was an unwritten rule.

"Have you nothing to say for yourself?"

He shook his head.

"Give me the gauntlet from your left hand," Dolmani demanded.

Kian did as the priest ordered, slid his fingers out of it and gingerly handed it to him. The priest grabbed it and struck him about the helmet with it, making a dull clang. He hit him with enough force that it turned Kian's head to the left. Then Dolmani spit inside it and threw it at his feet.

"I apologize," he rasped. "I thought I saw...a monster in the dark. I wanted to make sure it wasn't my imagination." He picked the gauntlet up and slid it back onto his hand.

"What kind of monster?" His eyes searched the gloom of the huge room. "Did you kill it?"

"Yes," he nodded. "It was a..." Kian searched for something believable, a lie that the priest wouldn't detect in his voice.

"-a what?"

"-a ghost?" There was a slight question in his statement.

"Well was it a ghost or not? Do you have the sense to tell the difference? A ghost you idiot, is a disembodied spirit doomed to wander our world because he's unworthy of an afterlife. For example, if I were to kill you, you'd become a ghost because you're the most worthless servant of Tethyr with whom I've had the pleasure to work."

Kian hung his head, waiting for him to finish.

"Don't even pretend that what I'm saying isn't true. You've cost the church fifteen of those...whatevers," he stated, gesturing wildly at his killsuit. "It's a fantastic piece of armor and your disrespect of it is clear as in even this short time and under my direct observation, you've callously damaged it at every opportunity. By Tethyr's Teeth," he swore, "there's no way that what you do for me is worth the cost of that-whatever it may be-and I'm going to recommend that the coin you get paid for your contracts gets reduced by the price of maintaining your equipment. If it goes negative, it's coming out of your salary."

"I earned every gold pittance I got paid from the council! I've never failed an assignment, no matter how difficult."

"-Because your lack of skill has been propped up with these ridiculous items! Calisto who unfortunately died because you egged him on to do things that he lacked equipment to handle could've completed your assignments for a fraction of the price that your services demand. Mark my word, you should be dead instead of him and we are worse off because of it!"

"That's not true," Chisato stated, defending Hunter.

"Silence you elven whore before I take away your voice to speak."

"Listen, you -," Tenander started to say.

Dolmani wiggled his fingers and said, "Impedimus Silentia!" Tenander froze in place, paralyzed. He drew out his dagger and held it to the furry Xirasian's throat.

"Please," Chisato begged. "Don't hurt him."

Dolmani gave him a small cut on the skin, it wasn't fatal, but would bleed quite a bit. "That scar will remind you of who's in charge. When I prayed to Tethyr for guidance, I should've heeded his words when HE apologized for giving me nothing but retards and ugly men with whom to work."

"We aren't men," Kirhasa stated, motioning at Chisato as well.

"No. But if you were, perhaps you'd be useful. Kian, did you kill this ghost you found?"

"I already said yes."

Dolmani's expression was livid. No one threw words back into his face, least of all a teenage boy. The others just stood in awe at the humility that Hunter displayed while being chewed out by the priest of Tethyr. But Dolmani wasn't finished. He leveled an accusatory finger at Kian's chest. "If you go off again like that I swear I'll scourge you till your heart bursts in your chest and your face runs in rivers of blood you ungrateful stupid boy! Never forget that I'm in charge here, not you. I demand to be informed of every change in plan and I make all the final decisions."

"Yes, your grace," Kian said.

Dolmani held out his ring.

Kian raised his visor just enough to allow him to place his lips on it. The priest chuckled to himself and then wiped his hands again. "Alright, what is the plan?"

"We'll go to the end of this hall and open the door. Then we'll cross the bridge and once on the other side, you can use your magic to dispel the enchantment on the corobidian chains holding the door closed. I'll remove the lead from out of the cracks as they are helping to preserve the integrity of the seal. Once that's done, we go through and into the mountain, find the Hall of the Living Books in the Librarium Apocalypto, and then we kill the wizard Korga."

Dolmani nodded. "That sounds pretty straight forward, something even a handful of incompetents such as the ones in this group should be able to complete without fucking up. You've my permission to lead us there, provided you can avoid getting lost." He snapped his fingers, breaking the spell around Tenander. The Xirasian youth put his hands to his throat; Kian immediately took out a bandage, applied some medicinal ointment to it, and motioned to Tenander to allow him to tie it around his neck. The Xirasian agreed to allow him to do so, and the poultice soothed the cut skin and quickly staunched the blood flow seeping from his cut.

"Thank you," he said to him. Kian hugged him once because he felt the Xirasian youth needed it, and then put the medicine away in a belt pouch.

Then he took lead again, twenty paces ahead, checking for traps with his toes as he crept along and searched the hallway with his eyes for any additional signs of the boy he'd seen. After a few minutes, a doorway at the far end of the hall appeared. These were the double doors he'd seen from the other side. The handles were covered in a patina from the ambient moisture that floated in the air, and the bottoms of the door were thick with some kind of green slime.

Kian inspected the chains that bound the handles; there was a single lock present but it was heavily corroded and blooming with green mold. He knelt before it, studied the lock, and withdrew the leather sack that contained his thieves' tools. He unrolled it carefully on the floor away from the slime at the base of the doors, then selected two with which he believed he'd have the most success. The mold seemed suspicious and he knew it was the same color as the water from the Well of Zanda; Kian had no idea if it was poisonous or caustic. He slid the tools into the small opening that had almost rusted shut, and dexterously felt for tumblers inside. This particular lock was an older model he'd some experience in picking; it had five tumblers that would need to be moved before the latch would open. It required a delicate and skilled hand, especially given the lock's present condition.

Dolmani let out a sigh of impatience and cast a spell on the lock while it was a few inches from Kian's face. The mold reacted to the magic and multiplied, exploding over Hunter's facemask with spores that trailed acid and left smoke over the black glass. If he hadn't been protected by the visor, his face would be melting right now.

"Please, don't do that," he hissed.

Dolmani was incensed. "You could've warned us that the mold would do that when you went poking about in the lock with your tools. Don't look to me as a scapegoat for your own lack of skill."

He turned his head, regarded the priest through the emotionless black faceplate of the killsuit. It was probably better that way. If Dolmani could see Kian's eyes, he would have scourged him right then and there. "You did that, not me. It's obviously magically sensitive."

"Really? How can you be sure? You were poking it at the same time that I cast my spell! Is this more of your seemingly endless good advice?" he asked, sarcastically. "The last advice you gave resulted in the death of an assassin that was ten times the man you are."

Kian swallowed hard. He really hated the priest. "I assumed because the mold exploded just as you'd finished the spell, that it's probably magically sensitive. I'd had my picks in the lock a few seconds before and nothing happened."

"Extremely scientific of you," Dolmani sneered. "But I'll stand back here while you take care of that."

Kian nodded, turned his attention back to the lock. Once again, he inserted the tools and felt for the tumblers. This was a tricky devil, the rust had damaged at least three of the five that he needed to click into place and he found himself poking and prying at these tumblers with the thin metal tool until he was able to find the perfect place to wedge it, and pry them one at a time using as little force as possible. After five minutes, the lock popped open, and he grasped it with his gauntlet and removed it from the chains. Then he unwrapped the handles and gave a solid tug on one of the doors. It protested loudly, however, swung open. Wind from the other side blew in upon them and blew out Dolmani's spell which disappeared in a puff of smoke.

Directly in front of them was a familiar narrow ledge of stone that still bore signs of Kian's passing in the dust. The Black Dragon Assassin's footprint, when he left it, was unmistakable because of the unique shape of his boot which conformed to the exact shape of his foot down to individually steel-encased toes. The rickety bridge he'd seen with Ren extended out over the putrid pit of green water; a thousand feet below them, the Well of Zanda churned and bubbled. The smell of rotten flesh rose up on the air like the heat from an oven.

The bridge was in terrible disrepair, one side of its supports had completely collapsed leaving the other a tenuous network of twisted steel, molding timber and heavily rusted cabling that partially dangled into the gorge. They would have to walk on the supports themselves, as long ago; the road had disintegrated, leaving behind only patches of wood that clung to metal girders run through by nails weakened from years of erosion.

"I'm not crossing that," Dolmani said. "You said there was a bridge. I should've realized that you wouldn't know your ass from a hole in the ground. This isn't a bridge; it isn't anything. Not even Calisto could've made it across without falling."

"Just follow my footsteps and you'll be fine."

Tenander moved past Kian.

"Be careful," he warned.

"You're not the only one with skills," the Xirasian stated. Kian watched as Tenander shimmered and changed into a large cat with a golden mane of fur that extended back over his chest. He had become a lion; a smaller cousin to the great dire lions that roamed the plains south of his home. Kian became wistful, thinking of the noble black lion he'd raised from an orphaned cub, named Cirayalayeth which was elven for "Night Stalker", and rode as his mount. He'd commissioned a custom-made saddle of the finest leather with black and silver buckles to match his armor and fashioned a harness for the great cat that attached to a corobidian war helm.

Tenander carefully leapt from girder to girder, nails extended and padded feet finding purchase on the narrow steel beams. He hopped over a gap between supports, landed gracefully, and then jumped atop a flat piece of wood that balanced on a piece of twisted steel that hung out over the well. It wobbled under his weight; Tenander leapt, bounded against one of the vertical support beams and pushed off to land on a small steel ledge only a few inches wide. The cat knocked loose some dirt and rock, and made a long jump, hit the edge of the ledge and scrambled up on the far side.

Kian breathed an invisible sigh of relief.

Chisato and Kirhasa followed next, both of them using weapons to assist with their balance in traversing the narrow beams. Chisato walked across barefoot, the touch of the steel to bare skin aiding with her natural dexterity. Kirhasa almost fell once, but slammed the butt of her spear down and stopped her fall by forming a triangle with her body against a serendipitous vertical girder that still remained from the supports that used to attach to the far side of the bridge. With all her strength, the witch pushed herself back upright, and moved forward again, till she joined Chisato and Tenander.

"Carry me across," Dolmani ordered him.

"That's dangerous. Your weight added to mine could bust through some of this structure."

"If that happens make sure that I'm safe before you fall."

Kian grimaced and lowered his tall frame by bending at the knees so that the priest could climb onto him. Kian was strong, still, Dolmani weighed at least 240-pounds and was shorter than Kian by about three inches. Carefully, Kian made his way across, trying to stay to the girders that he guessed were strong enough to hold their combined weight. However, the bridge protested its anger with loud groans at having to support them both.

Halfway across, he realized he'd have to make a jump of about six feet. It wasn't a problem, but he knew that Dolmani would have to remain perfectly still. "I'm going to jump this, please don't move."

Kian sucked in his breath and leapt, his strong legs easily carried them across, but as he landed, Dolmani panicked and squeezed him about the waist with his thighs and threw off Kian's balance. Even still, he managed to catch his center of gravity by adjusting his shoulders and digging in with his toes. "Stop moving!"

The priest ignored him.

Dolmani grabbed Kian's arms and scrambled over him. His struggles pushed Kian back as Dolmani propelled himself forward to grab onto the girder and save himself. Kian fell and barely caught the edge of a piece of iron with his fingers. Above him, Dolmani was dangling half off the bridge.

Kian, holding on with one hand, tried to pull himself up when Dolmani pressed his sandals onto Kian's head to give himself a boost up onto the bridge. Had he not had his visor down, Kian would have gotten a mouthful of the bottom of the priest's filthy shoe. However, Dolmani's added weight was too much for the iron rod Kian was depending on, and he plummeted into the void below the bridge.

Quickly, he invoked the quantum sidestep and appeared next to Dolmani who looked at him with disgust and motioned for him to turn around again so he could climb back on.

"Next time, don't be so clumsy," the priest said. "I almost lost one of my shoes."

"You knocked me off the bridge."

"I did no such thing. We were both falling and I tried to save you. It's a good thing you can teleport like you did."

"I didn't want to have to use it. There's a chance that my falling could have been detected by the watchers. You do realize that we should avoid being seen, right? That includes me falling from the bridge."

"Well then, proof that you should be more careful." There was a pause while Dolmani stared at him. "I'm waiting for your apology."

Behind his mask, Kian ground his teeth together. "Sorry, your grace," he said flatly.

Dolmani scrambled back onto his shoulders and Kian carefully carried him to where the others waited and then deposited him on the ledge.

The five of them moved forward toward the double doors bound in glowing chains. Dolmani recounted the words of a spell and the light faded; Kian set about to picking the lock, once again unrolling his tools and choosing two of them that he felt were good enough to do the job. It took him about ten minutes and some finagling, but he clicked the tumblers and it fell open in his palm. While he was working, he saw Dolmani eating some of the food that Chisato had wrapped. The priest thought he was being inconspicuous about it, but Kian could hear him smacking his lips together and his stomach growled. He also noted that he didn't cover the food that he was eating with any of the stuff in the jar. "Fucking bastard," he muttered to himself, voice barely a whisper.

He withdrew Bloodbane as Tenander unwrapped the chains, turned it pommel up and popped the jewel which slid on a delicate hinge off the end of the handle. From inside rose a torch that he could control with a button. Then, he manipulated the tongue pad which darkened the glass that protected his eyes.

"Don't look at the light," he warned.

He depressed the button on the pommel; a foot-long blue flame, pointed on the end and about an inch wide at its greatest point extended outward from the hand-held torch. Kian guided it along the lead seal, melting it, forcing it to flow in rivulets down over the iron door and clearing it out of the crevasses.

After several minutes, the metal was completely gone.

"Go ahead and give this thing a tug," Kian said, closing the pommel stone with his thumb.

He kept Bloodbane in his hand as the Xirasian pulled on the door, slowly grinding the ancient edifice open. The door was heavy, and Kian helped to leverage it open by inserting his armored foot through the gap and pushing on it with the muscles in his leg. The ancient sword slid its corobidian veins through the holes around the wrist and joined with Kian's flesh.

As the antediluvian portal opened, they looked for the first time on a lower passageway that led into the Librarium Apocalypto. It was a large hallway, dusty and unused and Kian heard a wailing noise, as that produced by human suffering, echoing from somewhere within the citadel. It sent chills down his spine; it was the first of many horrors that floated the depths of the depraved seat of Zandine's insane church. The Mad God was the Lord of all Illusion, Master of Chaos, and Kian heard the beating of the God's massive heart, as sure as his own pulse, resonating through the very stone.

In front of Kian was a passageway of flat tiles that extended for twenty or so feet across a bed of moist earth into a room bathed in a sickly yellow light. The floor was covered in the crusty remains of worms; there were puddles here and there on the tile, where the long pink bodies lay about, some on top of each other, extending the moist ends of their heads upward at the passage of outside air. There were walls on two sides of the room, but there wasn't a wall on the far end. Kian strode across the tiles, squishing worms under his feet, and peered out over a colossal shaft that dropped away into darkness and joined other similar canyons that ran perpendicular and joined the one upon which he gazed. From far above descended the yellow light, it lit this titanic chasm emanating from the eye sockets of interlocking skulls that comprised the ceiling like a field of unnatural stars.

"Tethyr's Teeth," he breathed, gazing all around.

The chasm was manmade, the walls perfectly smooth and the monotony of these featureless cliffs broken only by staircases without rails that descended and wrapped around the corners of the canyons that fed together in cross-sections. Kian felt like an ant, gazing out over a sheer drop that to his eyes seemed bottomless. Across from him, a procession of beings so distant that they appeared to be almost featureless lines of black made their way slowly down one of the staircases. Their movement was methodical, intentioned, and looked mechanical from this distance. Behind him, Tenander shimmered and resumed his humanoid form.

He heard the Xirasian gasp, "What is this place?"

"Hell itself," Kirhasa said, joining them.

"There are dozens of stairways," Dolmani added, pointing with his finger.

Kian saw stairways above and below them and down side canyons. The stairways led to different levels cut into the rock and emptied onto passages that had a floor, a ceiling, and one wall. The other wall was missing; in its place a sheer drop into the shaft. From Kian's point of view, they were horizontal lines across the smooth canyon surface, made darker against the stone because the ambient yellow light did not reflect into these halls, made dreadful for the featureless stone and gargantuan maw of an awaiting abyss.

"Do these go on for miles?" he asked. But the question was rhetorical.

Chisato shrugged, "I think we should go up and not down," she offered. "My instinct tells me that the Library of the Living Books will be found higher and not lower in the fortress."

Kian nodded, looked at the others to see if there were any more suggestions. When no one spoke up, he walked down the hall to where one of the rail-less staircases awaited. The floor, ceiling, and one wall on his right were black as pitch and felt smooth under his boots. Even with the aid of his low light on the inside of his helmet, he picked up no additional details. He decided to pop his visor and rely upon his natural vision.

On the staircase, he looked up and saw that it extended to beyond what he could see with no end in sight. It was so narrow that only one person could walk it up or down which seemed an odd choice. He stepped out onto it and a fierce wind rose from below. It was a brief gust, but it carried with it the stench of things putrid, of foul flesh left to rot and swarm with flies and maggots. One misstep, and a wanderer on these endless empty stairs could fall to a fate unknown into an impenetrable night.

Kian started ascending the steps, moving like a ghost upward, holding his sword out and searching the staircase ahead for any sign of movement. "Why do they call it the Library of Living Books?" he asked.

To his surprise, Dolmani answered back. They'd only just begun to climb but the priest's breathing was labored. "I've never seen it myself, but the Library is said to contain morbidly obese men and women, slaves who are force fed to produce enormous bodies of quivering flesh. Librarians inscribe upon the skin the lore of Zanda, covering them from head-to-toe in painful permanent tattoos. The place is said to reek of feces and these huge men and women are suspended over vats so that they can occasionally be hosed down to keep the insects from eating them. When every inch of their bodies is covered in writing, and they are no longer able to get bigger or produce more skin to write upon, they are killed, skinned, and their tattooed hide is dried in a room. Once it has been cured, it's sent to the permanent hall of records. Hence, that's why it is called the Library of the Living Books."

"I've seen fat men before," Chisato said with disgust. "These must be small books because even the skin of a four-hundred pound man could contain only so much."

Dolmani chuckled, "Four-hundred pounds is nothing. Believe me, you've yet to look on one of the Living Books. These are human men and women who possess the blubber and skin folds of a whale. They are utterly helpless and they are respirated by machines that breathe for them as their weight would crush their lungs. They have tubes that feed into their mouths to carry in the nourishment and other tubes that wend their way through multiple fat folds to get the waste they produce removed so as not to soil the tattoos." The priest stopped on the stairs. "Can we rest a bit? I'm a little out of shape."

Kian glanced back at him, nodded so that they could stop. While he waited, he looked uncomfortably over the edge. He wasn't afraid of heights, especially with the ability to teleport. However, there was something unnerving about this black abyss.

It frightened him.

After five minutes, Dolmani signaled that he could continue and Kian resumed going up the staircase. He was silently counting the steps in his head; when he reached a thousand, he could see a platform coming into view. It was a good thing. Everyone behind him was breathing hard now and he too was feeling the effect.

He emerged onto a large flat area that extended outward from the wall of the smooth shaft. The floor was covered in square black tile with no other walls aside from the one on which it was connected. He saw two tables attached to the walls, they were curved and made from black steel, shaped with ripples to suggest striated muscle tissue. Two naked women lay upon their stomachs on these tables, both had the skin of their backs removed and he could see bloody meat and spinal tissue. Hoses and metal pliers held back the skin and attached to veins. A pulsating fibrous bundle of thread was interwoven with nerve fibers of the spine. The apparatus draped over the backs of their heads and upward to bulbous organs that hung upon the wall shaped into human stomachs, only these were made of steel and glass. One of them had a sac of translucent skin that pulsed with light and moved in and out as if it were inflating and deflating with the breath of something living. When it inflated, Kian could see blood on the inside, the red color formed spiderweb patterns along the transparent surface.

Chisato gasped and he felt her grab his left bicep. It was a reassuring grab, so he repressed the reflex to wring his arm free. She was holding onto him to steel herself, even though truthfully, Kian had seen nothing like this and psychologically, was not a source of strength. He was just as horrified as she. What was happening to these two helpless women? However, unlike her, he had difficulty turning away. There was something about the fusion of metal and flesh that intrigued him, made him curious.

"We need to kill them, put them out of their misery," Kirhasa said.

"They're still alive?" Kian asked, suddenly realizing that indeed, these women were breathing.

"No," Dolmani ordered. "We have one target only, the wizard Korga. Let's not lose our focus. Disrupting this experiment will only draw attention to the fact that invaders have entered this sanctum."

Kian looked back at Kirhasa, "He's right," he said.

"I know," the wizard responded, her voice sad.

Just then, one of the women on the tables shuddered and screamed. There was a gurgling noise and one of the stomach shaped devices on the wall started shaking. Kian saw one of the plastic tubes fill with blood as it flowed upward from the prone woman and into the device. Then a sharp metallic probe lifted up from the table between the woman's legs, and drilled into her with the unmistakable sound of meat being cut.

Kian forced himself to examine the room to see if he missed anything. Close to the wall and underneath the stomach-shaped metal devices was a ledge about a foot wide. It rounded a corner and disappeared.

"Stay behind me," he said.

He crossed the room to the ledge, followed it around the corner, and waited for the others. As he stood there nervously tapping his toes on the thin piece of stone that was the only thing standing between his feet and the abyss below, he glanced at the corner, noticed how sharp it seemed. He carefully inspected it, craning his neck upward into the gloom to the diffused yellow light that emanated from behind the sockets of the leering skulls. He took off his gauntlet, touched the sharp corner with his index finger and felt it slice the skin. The edge of the immense wall that formed part of the colossal shaft was as sharp as a razor.

Kian swallowed hard, turned and walked carefully along the foot-wide precipice, conscious that only one step to his right was a sheer drop into the unknown depths. The others trailed behind Kian moving far slower than he. Dolmani pressed his back against the wall, moving sideways; his girth otherwise might have forced him off the edge.

Directly ahead, the path crossed through a gate in the black stone and into a hallway with an arched ceiling. The gate itself was a huge circle of steel almost 100 feet across, pitted with rust stains that resembled blood. Inside the circle was a vertical slit that was ten feet wide and rose up at least a good fifty or more feet taller than Kian stood. The narrow black ledge joined directly with the bottom of this vertical opening.

He stepped through the arch; his boots sloshed on water an inch deep. The motion sent ripples cascading to the walls, forming patterns on the glossy, previously undisturbed surface. The walls here didn't seem to be made of stone, and Kian's breath rose in a fog before his face. He reached out and touched the surface. It felt cold through his glove.

It was ice.

He looked through the surface, saw something that resembled a shadow only a few feet in. He leaned in, held his hands up around his eyes, and gazed into the ice, searching.

He saw a face staring back at him.

If it was human, Kian was at a loss to put it into words. What he could see of it was that perhaps it was once human. Now, the upper half of its head had been removed above the nose. In its place were two hemispheres of metal, joined together and completely covering where the eyes might have been. The slit between the hemispheres of metal coincided precisely with the center of the face. The mouth had also been removed, replaced with a perfect circular opening that matched the gate they had just entered. The middle of this circle was a vertical slit. The throat of the thing was also split open, the skin held thus by wires that wrapped around the neck and disappeared into the ice. Below that, Kian could make out no additional details because both ice and darkness obscured his vision.

"What do you see?" Chisato asked him.

Kian stepped away from the hall. "I'm not sure." He looked at her, face pale. "Let's just keep going."

He took lead, cautiously looking to the sides, picking up with his peripheral vision that there were many of these shapes behind the ice walls. Hundreds, if not thousands of bodies were trapped there, preserved, and Kian knew not whether they were alive, dead, or perhaps persisted in some tortured state of existence made possible through the madness of Zandine, the God of Illusion, the Lord of Lies.

Kian crept along the corridor and saw the gloom lighten ahead with more yellow light. It was the end of the dreadful hallway and a bridge only four feet wide that extended in a thin black line over the bottomless shaft. On both sides of the bridge, flowing out of the very rock itself were two enormous hands with long fingers of stone ending in sharp nails. Each hand held onto huge wooden handles that flowed into 200-foot long metal rods that ran parallel to the bridge, almost like a guard rail. This rod pierced through vertical standing statues that resembled humans, clothed in ghostly white robes with caps that completely covered the face and had pointed tops; narrow slits for the eyes. These statues had no arms; the front of the robes came together in the middle with a raised ridge that Kian thought looked like a human spine. As he set his foot on the bridge, one of the huge stone hands animated and twisted on the handle causing ghostly shrieks to emanate from behind the hoods. It was like a musical chorus of damned souls.

"Help us," he heard from one.

"Save me," another whispered.

Kian grimaced and made his way out onto the bridge. He paused in the middle, looked down, and saw another bridge far beneath them where four individuals in black robes made their way across, accompanied by some loathsome, shapeless, glistening mass of flesh wearing a collar to which were attached glowing chains.

When he looked up to continue, he saw the Israfil of Zanda blocking their path.

There were two of them, one behind the other and they watched him with unholy light streaming from behind their eyes.

There was enough left of the Israfil for Kian to recognize as belonging to a woman but the resemblance required some imagination. The hair was completely gone, replaced by a headdress that glittered with stars; directly above the smooth brow was a goat's head with black horns that twisted to frame the headdress. The nose was gone, two slits of undead skin remained, a mouth filled with white sharp teeth and long canines surrounded a black oily tongue. The flesh was white, transparent, and incandescent from a cyst that grew in the woman's belly. She wore a cape about the shoulders, her only other clothing. It was leathery, shiny, black as oil. There was a ribbed pattern to it, like the inside of the throat, and great horns of bone depended from the spaulders. They sniffed the air, smelling Kian. He didn't know if they even detected any of the others; he had their full attention.

"Young blood," the first one said. "He is mine."

Kian quantum sidestepped between them, reappeared in a flash, catching the first one unawares. The second one cackled with glee, the cyst within her gave off a sickly white light through the gap in her cape. He saw everything, the Israfil's ribcage, her beating heart coiled about by foot-long glowing worms, and the cyst of millions of smaller worms that formed a ball the size of a grapefruit in her uterus. It writhed around even as he watched; it was the source of their life-stealing power.

The Israfil of Zanda took a step back on her emaciated legs and power erupted from her mummified fingertips. White light flew from out of her and struck Kian as she attempted to suck the youth from out of his body. Waves of white energy passed over him causing him to flicker where in one instant, he appeared normal and in the next, his skin had become transparent. The bones of his skull, his muscles and tissues that comprised his face and eyeballs became visible through skin as clear as glass. This all changed in the next second, as his beautiful blond hair turned gray and white and finally to ash, and his skin wrinkled to a paper-like texture. Then, he was as he had always been, a flawless blond boy, untouched by age.

It was clear the Israfil had never before encountered this ability in any of their victims.

The Israfil shrieked at him, making claws with their fists. The effect intensified, it cycled in waves with all four stages occurring in the duration of a full second. Each time he was aged to oblivion by the Israfil, his eternal youth fought back, and rebounded him back to how he appeared normally, which was as an 18-year-old boy.

The other Israfil turned around and hit Kian with the same life-robbing power and the cycle went even faster over him, his face unvisored flickering like a strobe light. It horrified and fascinated Chisato, who watched with the others as both Israfil invoked the cysts within their bodies and the worms erupted within their flesh to provide everything that they could muster.

Kian reached out and calmly grasped the throat of one of the Israfil in his left hand, with his right, he stabbed backward with Bloodbane. The Israfil behind him was also a spellcaster; she had shielded herself with a spell that would turn away melee weapons. However, cibrian blades ignored this and Bloodbane cut into her cyst and Kian could feel the weapon's exultation as it drank her blood. She fell limp on the sword and slid off slowly, dropping onto the bridge.

Kian tightened his grip on the throat of the remaining Israfil of Zanda, who clutched at his wrist barely able to speak. He shook her, causing her feeble body to rattle in his hand, and she looked upon him with piteous eyes.

"Impossible," she whispered. "Who are you?"

"Tell me where to find the Library of the Living Books." His voice was stern, demanding.

The Israfil's eyes widened but she was clearly choking, gasping for air in Kian's grip. "You seek Korga." She tried laughing. "You are assassins sent to kill him. At least I die well; you must be the best for only the best could get into here."

"The library..."

"Why should I tell you? If you kill me, I go to my God to serve him for all eternity."

"Because my sword drinks souls," Kian lied. "Your soul will not pass on beyond the veil, it'll remain trapped in my blade for all eternity."

Her glowing eyes fell to his blade in his right hand which still dripped from her sister's blood. "Follow this path through to the tunnel which ends in a spiral stairwell that goes both up and down. Take the stairs up to the pit of the Living Books."

"Thank you."

Then Kian crushed her windpipe, tore it loose from her neck and she dropped onto the bridge, the glow fading from her body.

"Is everyone okay?" he asked.

Wordlessly, all of them nodded. Even Dolmani didn't speak. There was nothing he could say about what just happened; only Kian could have survived the encounter with the two Israfil of Zanda unscathed. The priest knew this and Kian thought that he probably hated him for that fact.

They followed Hunter across the bridge; he stopped at another gate that passed through a similar orifice as the one he'd seen far behind them. This corridor had a steel floor and there was a dry heat as well as a putrid smell that lingered in the air. He moved inside, feeling heat rise up off the floor. In the distance, he heard the cracking of a whip and a scream.

The walls of this passage were heavily carved. Childlike bodies with limbs that flowed into black tubes that ran along the floor and ceiling framed ridges that looked like a tightly coiled steel spring. Pipes melded into hairless carved skulls with four eyes, jawbones were missing on these carvings, replaced by metal spines covered in rust. The spines disappeared through holes in the steel floor. The corridor widened; he saw on his left were portals in the rock that opened onto cells, narrower at the top than the bottom, almost resembling flesh in extraneous flaps and bits of stone carved to resemble obscene vaginas. He saw wretched humans seated upon benches, some of them so starved they were essentially skeletons, looking out at him with empty eyes and hair that had fallen out from their skulls where the skin had tightened and discolored.

He continued onward, heard another crack from a whip.

That was when he saw Dylan.

He was unmistakeable, sitting in one of the cells, looking very much like the day he'd left him in Kala-Pur. His beautiful blue eyes were despondent, he had the beginnings of a beard and his hair was a medium-length mane the color of raven's feathers. He swallowed, Adam's apple bobbing visibly along his throat.

Dylan was wearing the armor of a Valion Knight, the tabard of a Crimson Guard.

White corobidian of the finest make, albeit his was smudged with blood and other foul things. His feet were wrapped in black leather boots; he could see the shiny silver dragon spurs on his heels. The tabard of the Crimson Guard was black, bore the howling head of the ice wolf superimposed over the silver moon of Mondath. The cloak was red and black, about his waist the leather belt, attached to it, the scabbard and his sword.

"Keep going," Dolmani hissed.

Kian looked at the priest then sought out the bearer of the whip.

In the cell next to Dylan's the door was open. Inside was a horrific creature that moved like a spider on six human arms instead of legs. Its head was wobbling on a long neck covered in transparent skin. Kian saw the spine of the thing was metal, the sound of the whip originated from its long tongue which it used to lash the back of an unmoving, naked man in the corner of his cell. It had already removed nearly all the skin on the man's back, bits of bone gleamed through red blood. Hanging from the back end of this creature was a long phallus that it dragged on the ground like a serpent's tail. Where it joined the body, it was about a foot wide, the far end of it only an inch in diameter, the slit spitting venom out on the ground.

Disgusted, Kian teleported onto its back and beheaded it with Bloodbane.

A fountain of black blood sprayed into the cell as its head clacked against the ground and its body collapsed. Then he stabbed the man in the corner with Bloodbane to make sure he was dead. The sword in his hand hissed with glee.

"What in Tethyr's name are you doing?"

"Just give me a second," he said, searching the spider-like creature. He found a ring of keys, grabbed them, and walked to Dylan's cell.

The knight looked up at him, blinked with disbelief and got to his feet.

"Kian?"

He nodded, unlocking the door.

Dylan strode up to him, broad-shouldered, lean, and standing 6'2". Kian thought him so handsome, with a narrow face, black hair that fell about his brow in unkempt clumps, and a distinguished narrow nose with small delicate nostrils; a thing common only amongst purebred Atlantean and Valion men. Being Valion in and of itself was a thing to be proud of for the population participated in selective breeding, and had done so for a thousand years. Only the comeliest men and women with athletic ability were allowed to reproduce. The results were genetic superhumans. Men that had little to no bodyfat, stood tall, and were perfectly proportioned.

As the door swung open, Dylan punched Kian in the gut, doubling him over with the blow from his Valion gauntlet.

Valion knights did not use shields, and the Crimson Guard in particular fought with a sword and a special gauntlet known as the Valion Gauntlet, that was ribbed and extra thick. It was made to punch through armor; to break ribs, to maim and kill. Dylan only struck Kian once, but he felt it to his spine.

"I should kill you," he said, spitting on his back.

"Dylan, wait," Kian said backing carefully away from him, holding himself. As the pain subsided, he looked at his friend who seethed with anger.

"You left me in Kala-Pur," he accused. "I loved you."

"D-I-I didn't leave you."

"Yes, you did. A year later I got released no thanks to you. But if that hadn't happened, I'd be dead."

Kian sucked in his breath, trying to swallow the pain that Dylan had inflicted upon him. Chisato spoke up, "Look, whoever you are, we could use your help."

There was a pause as Dylan calmed down and realized that he owed his freedom to Kian.

"Just give me time to explain," Kian whispered, voice gravelly. "Just not now-not here." Still doubled over, he spit and coughed. Tenander gave him the water bottle so he could drink from it. When he was done, he stood up and offered it to Dylan as a sign of peace. "You look thirsty-it's good."

Dylan's eyes changed somewhat, softened; he took the water bottle, uncorked it and drank deeply from it. Then the knight handed it back to Tenander. "Thank you. And yes, I'll help you. I've seen enough of this place to know I can't make it out by myself."

He watched the knight move, his spurs clinked, but there was a stumble to his gait.

"D-are you hurt?"

He nodded, "That thing you killed, it hurt me in the leg pretty bad. I'm bleeding under my armor from where it struck me with a knife and I think several of my ribs are broken."

Kirhasa's eyes widened, "How can you walk?"

"With some difficulty miss. But I'll be okay."

"I thought Valion Knights were formidable warriors," Dolmani stated, eyes narrow. "They have a reputation of being able to rapidly heal themselves, to survive severe cold, and to shapechange into Ice Wolves akin to their deity, Thomas, God of War and Winter."

"Well all of that is true except for the healing," Dylan stated. "The healing rumor is actually a gift to us from Thomas' consort, the Goddess of Love. In order for us to have that kind of power, the pack needs to have an Omega."

"An Omega?" Kirhasa asked him.

He nodded. "Yes. The Ice Wolves hunt in packs-and we have a hierarchy. We also have three sub-orders of Valion Knights. The Crimson Guard is the most elite-there are only a handful of us. In our pack there are Alphas like me who are leaders and Betas who protect and guide the pack."

"What is the Omega then?" Kirhasa pressed him.

"I honestly don't know; I've never seen one. There hasn't been one in a thousand years." He paused, thinking of how to explain what he was about to say. "The Omega is a gift from Elistra, Goddess of Love. It's a man who could pass Elistra's test of perfection and has to be a pure blood for Elistra wouldn't tolerate anyone that isn't. If an Omega were to be found, we'd feel drawn to him sexually; it'd be irresistible and the same would happen for him. He couldn't say no. But this isn't like an unconscionable rape or gang bang on a person. It's actual true love. It's rumored that an Omega can bring a pack together in ways that are impossible to imagine, literally joining our souls with each other so that we can share thoughts, memories, feelings, and most of all love. The Omega brings out in every one of us the best possible traits even though he isn't a part of the pack. And the desire to have sex with the Omega is overwhelming which is why it's so tragic."

"I don't understand," Chisato said. "Why is the Omega a man and not a woman?"

"Because we only have sex with women to reproduce. In order to be the best warriors, we do not love women. We love each other which serves us in battle and gives us a means of release in the event that women are not available which is generally true in times of war."

"And why is having an Omega so tragic?"

"Think about it-there are legions of Valion knights and if one Omega is discovered the whole lot of them are in love with him and vice versa. He would get fucked to death. That's why there are no Omegas and there hasn't been in a millennia."

"How is an Omega recognized?" Dolmani asked, deeply curious.

"The sign of Thomas and Elistra appears in his eyes; the sign of winter and spring. Don't ask me what that is because I couldn't tell you to save my life."

Kian who was silent this whole time stood his full height, feeling better. Still, he regarded Dylan with respect and felt a warming in his heart at seeing him again after so many years. "I'll take the lead," he indicated.

"That's fine by me, Kian," Dylan responded. "And thanks for letting me out. I'll give you a chance to explain what you want to say to me later."

"I appreciate that."

He shrugged, "It's the least I could do."

By this time, dwellers in the dozen or so other cells had moved to the doors and started pleading with them to set them free. He saw emaciated hands hanging from arms that sagged with skin scourged with violent and angry open sores. Flies swarmed in the air about the prisoners smelly bodies.

"What should we do?" Kian asked.

"Nothing!" Dolmani insisted. "They're not healthy, not like this strapping young man. They'll be the end of us if we take them along."

He shook his head, hearing the priest's wisdom. Then he started down the corridor again, heading in the direction that the Israfil had indicated to him would lead to the spiral staircase.

"You came here by yourself?" Kian asked Dylan.

"No. Ten others. We were sent to kill a black wizard and got ambushed. Four of my men were killed, the other five went through a gateway to Vas of Kleef. I told them too, or they'd be dead as well. Irtemara apprehended me after that, tortured me for a day, but when I didn't break, she threw me in the cell so that the festival could go on. That's when you found me."

"Vas of Kleef is a winter world; home of the Ogavran Kor, correct?"

He nodded. "Kian I know it sounds bad but if they'd have stayed, I would still be the only one alive as they would have killed the others. At least there, they have a fighting chance; maybe some of my pack will make it back."

Kian saw that Dylan's clear blue eyes looked sad. He set his jaw, "When we get done with this, I'll help you find them."

Dylan tossed him a sideways glance. "I don't need your help."

"I know. I'm just offering because you're my friend."

"Well, you're not mine."

Kian swallowed hard. Hearing those words stung to the pits of his soul.

Up ahead, from out of the gloom materialized a spiral stair that ascended through a circular shaft that flowed up and down through the citadel. Leading off from the shaft were different rooms. One of them, held a horror beyond Kian's imagination.

He saw four rows of tables holding up human bodies; each appeared to be in a different phase of decomposition ranging from one that still looked fresh to another that was quite advanced. They were men and boys whose skin was boiling and erupting with bloody pustules and each one had clear tubes carrying some kind of gray matter inserted into their abdomens. All of the bodies were naked, bore terrible wounds upon the skin, as well as huge purple misshapen bruises. Some of them were missing body parts that had clearly been gnawed off and bleeding had been stopped with a smartly placed tourniquet. One of the most badly decomposed bodies had nearly transparent skin like that of a jellyfish. Kian could see shapes moving beneath the skin that looked like worms. Sallow flesh around the eyes had sunken so deeply that the eyeballs lay in their sockets naked, dried, and puffy with bloody veins. They were lidless and just stared upward at the ceiling, mouth agape. Then the most wretched thing occurred.

Kian saw that one take a breath.

It was still alive.

"Which way do we go?" the knight asked.

"The Israfil said that the Library of the Living Books is up from this point. So, we take the stairs." Kian managed to tear his eyes away from the awful laboratory in the next room; looked at Dylan's handsome face who seemed somewhere between the ages of 20 and 24 in age. He suddenly realized why his friend was so mad at him; what lay in the next room could easily have happened in the prisons of Kala-Pur. He'd consciously left a loved one in such a horrible place while he made it out alive. How could he have been so callous?

"D, I-I'm sorry."

"Save your apologies," he said.

Kian frowned, turned, and started up the stairs, trying to focus on the task he had before him. Once again, he found himself counting the steps in his head. At 750, he spied an opening. He invoked the sidestep to spare him the next fifty stairs and waited at the gateway, surveying what lay beyond, while the others caught up to him.

There was a huge chamber, with a domed ceiling that rose 100-feet above the floor. Pillars carved to resemble human leg bones supported the roof; the whole of it was lit with ghastly chandeliers suspended from cables meant to resemble braided hair. Kian counted twenty or so enormous circular vats made of steel in which rested the most obese men and women he had ever seen. Tubes that ran from clear containers holding liquefied food were attached to muzzles where the mouths had been permanently attached. Faces were so overcome in folds of flesh that their eyes virtually disappeared inside craters of skin, the noses were hardly visible. These living books were covered from head to toe with tattoos, inscriptions of the ancient lore of Zanda. Spindly librarians wearing corsets that crushed their waists almost to the spine with skin stretched tight over bone, worked tattoo needles on all of the books, adding illustrations to support the writing, and wiping away blood. The place stunk worse than a pig farm and flies were thick in every corner, buzzing away.

Attached to the base of the vats were long pipes ferrying away the human waste to a central pool that bubbled with brown goo and urine. Something fleshy swam in this tub of filth, Kian wondered if it was one of the Lemortis Corpiem, one of the "skin that swims".

Dylan pulled up next to him, crouched, and swore. "Where do you think he is?"

"Not sure," Kian stated. He moved into the room. One of the librarians stopped his work and looked at Kian through a thick monocle that appeared to be drilled into his very skull. Then he went back to work. It appeared that they would be indifferent to him.

Kian chose a path; the others followed behind him. He walked in the shadow of the huge vats; he heard the books gurgling and passing fluids. It was the grotesque sound of liquid passing through flesh, of gas bubbling forth, of things he simply didn't want to think. In the center of the room was a swirling gateway that emanated frigid cold. It was fully forty feet across, suspended between two statues of Israfil, arms outstretched and joined at the fingertips.

"Is this one of the gateways to Vas of Kleef?" Kian asked Dylan.

"Yes...one of many such gateways in this enormous place."

Kian looked at the swirling white that stretched between the statues. He thought he could see snowflakes carried by wind, of icicles that hung from the parapets of an enormous castle.

"D, may I ask you a question?"

"Yeah."

"Are you related to the Tinerval line? Does their blood run through your veins?"

Dylan looked at him with piercing blue eyes. "Yes. How'd you know?"

He shrugged. "I-I didn't. That's just it, but I've been seeing things."

"Seeing things?"

"Yeah, earlier today I saw-"

Kian stopped as he heard the unmistakeable sound that steel makes when it is drawn from a scabbard. He looked around in the room; to his dismay, he saw five armed men appear. Only, these weren't men. They were Nevrenachtur Slayers who'd drunk from the blood of Yogwomaryl, the Lord of Chaos, who'd been defeated in the wars of the second age at the cost of millions of lives.

This was the trap the boy had warned him about.

"We're in trouble," Kian said. "Nevrenachtur."

The Nevrenachtur Assassins were Death Giants who had undergone a ritual to make them human-sized yet they possessed all the strength and constitution of the Death Giant that they truly were. In addition, their former self overlay their own in an illusion that confused their actual location. Nine times out of ten, a melee blow would land on the illusion rather than the real assassin. It also afforded them a reach like that of a Death Giant, able to smite someone from twenty-five feet away as if they stood next to them. Add to that any further blessings that they would have gained from drinking the blood of Yogwomaryl, such as immunity to Kian's Black Dragon gifts as a Lord of Chaos was higher in rank than a Disciple level power, and it became easy to see that this was a foe to which Kian had no hope of overcoming.

Kian took an opportunity and looked back at Dolmani to see if the priest was afraid. If he had been fearful, he might have thought he had Dolmani pegged wrong-that maybe he hadn't been set up. However, the image on Dolmani's face was that of a calm man; it almost seemed like he was smirking.

One of the Nevernachtur swung his blade at Kian from twenty feet away and he brought Bloodbane up just in time to block the blow, showering both he and Dylan with sparks. In a flurry of parries, Kian knocked the blades aside, one of the swords struck Dylan and he flew ten feet with blood spraying out of his side.

"No!" Kian shouted. He glanced at the worried faces of Chisato and Kirhasa the witch. She threw a pillar of fire down upon one of the Nevrenachtur but it lanced harmlessly off of him. Then his eyes flew back to Dylan who was struggling to get to his feet and whose young eyes looked at Kian filled with worry.

Then, Kian did the most selfish thing he could think of. He bull rushed Dylan, grabbed him about the waist and dove into the swirling gateway of white flakes. As the magic of the portal enveloped them, he tried to port both Dylan and he out of the gate to make it to the stairwell in the Library. Instead, the quantum sidestep which was dangerous to perform with another living person in his arms, reacted with the magic of the gateway and expelled them into the cold world of Vas of Kleef in an unknown location.

The frigid wind howled around him as he struck the top of a glacier. Dylan landed next to him, blood spraying into the snow. In the distance, a mountain rose against a sky alight with cascading color, an alien aurora, that flickered behind jagged peaks covered in thick snow and purple clouds. The sky was dark, lit by a million stars that peeked through gaps in cloud cover. Everywhere snow blew in the wind, flakes buffeted Kian's face, and he looked down at Dylan with the blood draining out of him, his face white as a sheet.

Kian picked the knight up and took shelter behind an outcropping of ice that had formed in the shadow of the enormous mountain. He needed to get them out of the wind, even if Dylan was immune to certain levels of cold, Kian was not and he was feeling it cut through his armor like a sharp knife. He rummaged through Dylan's pack, looking for anything, when he found a small two-man tent made from seal skin. Quickly, he pitched it in the lee of the huge ice outcropping. Once it was done, he pulled Dylan inside and closed the enclosure.

"What happened?" Dylan asked, his face pained.

"I tried to teleport us to safety inside the magic of the gateway. I had this crazy idea that maybe I could do that if the gateway used the same kind of magic that my quantum sidestep uses. I thought there was a sliver of a chance that they could amplify each other and we'd get away. Instead, I think it blew us to some random spot on Vas of Kleef. I've no idea where we are now."

"That's just fucking great Kian!" Then he howled in pain. "Fuck, I'm going to die here."

"You're not going to die." Kian inspected the wound, lifted his hand up from where the Nevrenachtur's blade had struck the knight in the side. He found a two inch long gash that was almost that deep. He pulled out the bandages he'd made, put the rest of the ointment on them and pressed them onto the wound. Almost immediately, they soaked through with blood.

"I'm going to have to cauterize it."

"How?"

Kian pulled out Bloodbane, flicked the pommel to produce the torch, pressed the button and the blue flame extended out. He pushed Dylan's blood covered hand to one side, set the bandages on the floor of the tent, and then told him to bite down on his belt. He waited while Dylan fed the leather into his mouth and clamped down on it with his teeth. Then, Kian cauterized the wound with blue flame.

The knight cried out, tears flowed down his cheeks, but the wound stopped oozing blood. Then Kian reapplied the bandages. Dylan lay back against the floor of the tent, breathing hard, trying to control the pain and Kian dug around in his pack for other supplies. He pulled out some food, water, and a small thin blanket. He rolled it up into a neck pillow and put it behind his friend's neck.

"Where are your friends?"

"I don't know," he answered.

"You just left them?"

He nodded. "I hope that they got out of there somehow. There's nothing I could to, D. We were going to die; I made the only decision I could."

He broke off some bread and some cheese and gave it to his friend to eat. Dylan chewed on it slowly, then washed it down with some water. "This hurts like a son of a bitch," he said.

"I know. I'm sorry." Kian was fixated, watching Dylan, staring at him as he ate. He was so hungry.

"Now's as good a time as any," Dylan offered, voice low and clearly pained.

"As good a time as what?"

"To tell me what you wanted to say."

He nodded, "I know you won't believe me, but, I paid for your release from the Corobidian Mines of Kala-Pur."

Dylan stopped chewing. All that the both of them heard was the howling of the blizzard outside the tent. He stared at him in a long uncomfortable silence and then rummaged in his pack for a small candle. Kian heard him utter a magical incantation and the candle sputtered to life, casting forth a warm glow. Despite its diminutive flame, it grew warmer in the two-man tent with just this single candle.

"Aren't you going to say anything?" Kian asked.

"What's there to say? I've no idea if I can trust you. I want to believe you; I really do. But you left me there. That's-a lot to ask. Forgiveness?"

"I'm sorry."

Dylan hung his head. "I loved you."

"I still love you," Kian said, "with all my heart."

He saw the knight swallow, the shallow veins along his white skin bobbed with his Adam's apple. Dylan took another bite of the bread, looked at Kian who had the frenzied look of someone on the verge of starvation. He was as beautiful as he remembered, young, perfect, blond hair hanging ever so delicately in front of his brown eyes. But he looked skinnier too, the veins on his neck were highly visible. "Aren't you hungry?" he asked. "You can have some."

"Dolmani forbid me to touch food."

"So you're going to just starve?"

He nodded. "Until I can get a priest to remove that. Whichever comes first."

"Why would he do such a thing?"

"To fuck with me. He's hated me since he met me a few days ago."

"And yet you still do as he says?"

"He's a priest," Kian said, "of Tethyr. They're infallible. I cannot question them or it means I question Tethyr. I'd do anything for my God, even if that means that I must die." He lay down next to Dylan. Gently, he slid off one of his gauntlets and stroked Dylan's black hair from his young face. "But yeah, I'm fucking starving. That looks so good." He managed a chuckle.

"He forbid you to touch food, but he didn't forbid you to eat food someone else is touching, right?"

"Yeah, that's right," Kian acquiesced.

"Then eat out of my hand."

"You'd do that for me?"

"Yeah."

Dylan took off his black leather gloves and rummaged in his pack and pulled out an oily sack that still had a bit of mashed potatoes, some congealed gravy, and a piece of meat from a meal he hadn't finished in a tavern. He put the whole thing into a metal cup that he used to drink from. Then he held it over the candle till steam rose up from the inside. Carefully, he set it down and scooped the contents into his hand.

Kian bent down and ate from his palm, swallowing the meat, lolling his tongue between Dylan's long fingers, licked the gravy from his skin. "It's so delicious. Can I have more?"

Dylan went for a second scoop; Kian relished the taste, hungrily lapping it up until all of it was gone. Somewhere in the midst of all of that, the knight found himself gently stroking Kian's platinum blond hair. After he'd cleaned the cup, Dylan fed him some bread. He giggled and then winced in pain from his wound.

"You should rest." Kian said, trembling.

"Are you cold?"

"Very. But thanks for the food. It's more than I've had to eat in at least a couple of days."

He lay next to the knight who tried to extend his cloak over the both of them. Here they were, in the unknown regions of a hostile planet ruled by the followers of Zanda, and he was worried about keeping Kian warm.

"Kian?"

"Yeah," he responded, breath forming a cloud of mist over his lips.

"I forgive you."

"Thanks."

Then Dylan rolled to his side, gently placed both of his hands on Kian's face and kissed him. It was a warm, wet kiss, their tongues slid over each other and Kian opened his mouth further to allow Dylan more access. His hot breath filled him with warmth, made his toes curl, and his eyes roll with pleasure. Dylan kissed him long and tenderly, his mouth felt like cool spearmint probably as a result of worshiping the God of Winter. When they parted, Kian opened his eyes and smiled. Dylan met his gaze and his jaw became slack with what he saw.

"What?" Kian asked.

"You're an Omega," Dylan whispered. "Your eyes, they're changing colors from brown to robin's egg blue. That's the color of spring. And your pupils aren't black but turning white and black; literally alternating as I'm looking at you. White is the color of winter."

Kian thought about what Dylan had said earlier, about Omegas. "Claim me as an Omega, it'll give you healing powers and will make you stronger."

"You don't know what you're asking."

"Yes, I do."

"Kian, you won't have the ability to say no. When you're around my pack, they'll smell that you're an Omega. You'll want to make love to them and they you and I don't want to share you like that."

"Then don't."

"How do you mean?"

"Protect me. You're an alpha...you said it yourself. Protect me. Don't let me get fucked to death by a legion of knights."

"Kian, I-I don't even know if I can do that. If that's even possible. And you'll be drawn to them like a moth to a flame. As soon as one touches your skin with even their hand, you'll be begging them for sex and they won't be able to refuse."

"So I'll stay away from the Valion Lands. I will never go there for any reason; that eliminates 90% of them."

"You don't know what you're asking."

Kian grasped Dylan's head in his hands, and stared at him with those beautiful eyes that were constantly changing color from blue to brown, with pupils alternating from black to white. "I do know what I'm asking. I love you and I won't lose you again. Make me an Omega."

Dylan kissed him again, Kian could feel tears on his friend's face. "Is there anything that you want from this, that's sacred. Because once you're an Omega, when it comes to sex, you won't be able to speak your true mind."

Kian thought about it, then told him about the curse and his efforts to become a father. "Please, respect me in that one aspect. Don't make me cum, not until I've had a chance to father my child."

"There's one more thing you need to know about," Dylan said.

"What?"

"Ice Wolves are...well, I'm not an alpha for nothing. I produce a lot of whatever it is that makes a man a man."

"So?"

"Kian, I'm saying that I'm big."

"Oh," Kian paused, trying to think. "Like, bigger than me?"

"You're just above average, no offense. Think of a head the size of a small apple."

Kian swallowed hard. "Will you try to be gentle?"

The young knight responded by kissing Kian's naked fingers. "Okay." Then, he pressed his mouth against Kian's. Holding a legendary Omega in his arms was like owning liquid lightning. He felt like a predator pushed to the brink of starvation; in his claws was fresh meat.

The heat of Kian's mouth and the taste of him were like electricity through his nerves. He plunged at Kian's mouth, softly gnawing, licking, caressing and loving him tenderly; violently depending on the second, with the press of tongue, the stroke of lips, and the scrape of teeth. That part of him that was wolf, ached to release itself in a shapechange, but he controlled it, repressed it.

They both held lips parted so that their tongues could slide against each other, and each shared the other's breath which flowed hot over the skin. When Kian exhaled through his mouth, Dylan inhaled; inside his chest, his heart pounded away, generating heat. Sweat rolled off his brow and dripped onto Kian's nose. It was almost like there wasn't enough of him to caress, to suck, to place into his mouth. He assaulted the blond boy. He pressed Kian's back flat against the floor, restrained him using his hands and feet.

Dylan paused to help Kian remove his armor. He tossed his helmet and spaulders at the door of the tent while caressing Kian's sweat soaked rippling abdomen.

"My boots," Kian whispered, pointing with an index finger. Dylan helped him slip his naked sweaty feet out of them; he pressed his tongue between Kian's long, delicate toes and licked the sweat from his arches. He was so much raw meat that it excited the Ice Wolf spirit more than anyone had ever done; he almost wanted to eat him. He bit down on Kian's perfect skin hard enough to make him yelp; stopped before wounding him but it took every bit of control he had left. Dylan clawed at Kian's hands, ripping off his gauntlets, and tore Kian's bloody armor from off his hairless legs and gaped slack-mouthed at the blond teen's perfectly proportioned body. Kian gleamed in the glow cast by the flickering candle. Dylan could discern every muscle along his veined, shimmering torso and chest which stood out by definition through highlights and shadows. His eyes followed down a platinum blond treasure path; he admired the uncircumcised foreskin.

Dylan removed his own armor while licking Kian's left hand, suckling from his long thin fingers. Completely undressed, their two bodies intertwined, Kian on the bottom covered in bite marks, Kolin on top, maintaining control. Smeared blood made skin as sticky in places as fly paper. Everytime Kian accidentally pressed the wound with his hand; Dylan whimpered, pupils dilated; despite the abuse, the raven-haired knight stroked Kian's hair softly, his physical touch filled with love.

Dylan supported himself over the tent floor with his strong hands and rested his weight on the back of Kian's hamstrings, so he could look down at him missionary-style while they fucked; he wanted eye-contact with his Omega. He stabbed at Kian with his flesh; the boy's body resisted but his mind didn't. "I'm ready," he whispered, eyes narrow slits. "Please, fuck me." He shared spit with him in a single kiss; Dylan held him pinned and continued to press down on him with his weight.

Kian squeezed his eyes shut against the pain as Dylan forced himself inside, splitting him open. It hurt; Kian turned his head, clenched his fists, and stifled the pain which soon turned to pleasure. It was the first of hundreds of thrusts; Dylan's well-muscled, smooth, hairless back was rolling in a sweaty sheen. Kian ran his hands through Dylan's fine black chest hair which felt so warm and inviting. The knight's pecs were firm, his ribs and flared muscles of the serratus anterior rippled like iron pipes.

Dylan used long, even strokes, his well-defined glutes flexed on each push, and he set a rhythm; he was breeding the Omega. They were two young men engaged in anal sex, Alpha and Omega, Kian pinned underneath Dylan with ankles resting on his shoulders. His fingernails raked across the Valion Knight's sweaty back, the soles of his high-arched feet pointed upward.

It ended with Dylan's long climax inside him which needed to occur to transform Kian into a fully realized Omega. He withdrew from him, dripping semen. Dylan rolled Kian over onto his stomach which pressed Kian's seven inch erection into the floor of the tent and carefully marked him with a hot shower of urine. He made certain to get some behind the Omega's ears, neck, and slender feet. Then he rubbed it into the skin with a gentle massage of his open hand. Underneath him, Kian trembled as his veins caught the fire of passion instilled by the Goddess of Love over pure bloodlines. The mark branded his spirit forever. It opened a door between his soul and Dylan's and others of his kind that could be revisited with but a single physical touch to bare skin.

He rolled over, his eyes pure blue that swirled with color like ice floating in a freezing pond, pupils were spots of pure white. Kian's mouth was bleeding. This, Dylan came to understand, was the product of the feral rut.

The blood was there for him to drink.

He kissed Kian and drank the flow of his blood that pooled in the Omega's mouth and rose from his tongue. It was warm, hot, and brimming with life that was milked from the magic of their union through an ancient bond. He felt himself grow instantly stronger and his wound healed over in a matter of seconds. Broken bones became whole under his skin and he felt his spirit soar from out of his chest.

Drops of red dripped down the side of Kian's face as they kissed; the blond boy was oblivious to the pain.

Somewhere, in the distance, the other Ice Wolves that had crossed through the gate--the last five of his pack--felt Dylan's wolf spirit calling to them across the ice. They paused and changed direction, loping toward the call of their Alpha.

Kian, feeling drained, fell asleep still quivering in Dylan's strong arms. And the knight now realized the danger his true love was in. Not only would every Valion want to make love to Kian, but they'd need to drink his blood afterward. Kian was only one man with maybe a gallon of blood in his whole body and he needed most of that to stay alive. There was no way he'd have enough to feed more than ten knights. He clutched him to his chest, transformed into a huge Ice Wolf, and lay over him to warm the youth with his fur and the heat generated from his body.

Then, they slept.