“You don’t have to do this,” she said, as she was marched out of the cell. Was she even on Earth any longer? “I…”
Shadye cackled, a high-pitched sound that chilled her to the bone. “Your death will bring me all the power I could desire,” he said. Emily redoubled her struggles, but the skeletons never loosened their grip. “Why should I let you live when I would remain like this?”
He pulled his hood away from his face in one convulsive motion. Emily stared, horrified. Shadye’s skin was pulled so tightly around his skull that she could see the bones underneath, his nose cut away, replaced by a melted mass of burned flesh. His eyes were burning coals of red light, shining in the darkened chamber, utterly inhuman. She saw his hand as he lifted it to stroke his hairless chin and winced at the cuts that crisscrossed his flesh.
Emily had seen all sorts of movies, ones where the directors strived to outdo themselves in creating new horrors, but this was different. This was real. She took a deep breath and smelled dead flesh in the atmosphere surrounding him. It was suddenly easy to believe that his body was dying, animated only by his will — and magic.
“There is always a price for power,” Shadye said. His voice darkened, unpleasantly. “But there are always ways to escape the price. And when I offer you to the Harrowing…oh, they will rebuild my burned frame and grant me power eternal.”
He turned and strode off down the corridor, pulling his hood back up to cover his head. Emily stared at his retreating back, just before the skeletons started to push her down the corridor after him. Resistance seemed utterly futile, but she struggled anyway, panic giving her extra strength. Just for a moment, she broke free of their grip and turned to run, but then there was a flash of blue light and her muscles locked, sending her falling to the floor. No matter how she struggled, she couldn’t move anything below the neck. She watched helplessly as the skeletons picked her up and carried her after Shadye.
The sorcerer started to laugh. “I told you where you are,” he said, mockingly. “Even if you escaped my dungeons, where would you go?”
He was right, Emily realized. She’d never heard of the Craggy Mountains, let alone the Blighted Land of the Dead. And he had never heard of Kansas. No matter how she wanted to avoid it, she had to accept the fact that she had somehow been transported from her own world to one where magic worked, where skeletons could be used as servants and an evil sorcerer could sacrifice her for power. She was utterly alone, ignorant of even something as basic as local geography.
Shadye was right; even if she did escape, where would she go?
They reached a stairwell leading up into the darkness. Shadye seemed unbothered by the lack of illumination, as did the skeletons, but Emily found it hard to restrain her panic as they climbed onward and upward, while she was unable to see anything. Her legs bumped against the walls from time to time, the spell binding her holding her body as firmly as ever, just before they finally walked out into the open air. The ground below their feet was mud…no, she realized suddenly, it was ash. She sniffed and then shuddered at the stench of burned flesh in the air. In the distance, she caught sight of what had once been a forest. Now, it looked as if something had killed the trees, leaving their dead remains standing in the midst of the darkness.
“The Necromancer Kings faced the assembled might of the Empire not too far from here,” Shadye said with heavy satisfaction. He seemed to like the sound of his own voice. “They say that the skies were black with dragons and terrible lizards as they fought for forty days and forty nights. In the end, so much magic was released that the land was permanently warped by chaos. Those who stray into these lands without protection find themselves twisted and transformed into horrors. Few dare to visit my fortress, even though they believe that they have powers that can match my own.”
Emily found her voice. “Why did they fight?”
“The Necromancer Kings wished to enjoy their powers without restraint, to create a world where their whims and wishes would be the whole of the law,” Shadye said. “But the Empire and their wizards believed the necromancers to be an abomination. The wizards believed that they had won, yet the Harrowing can never be stopped. All they could do was delay it, for a time.”
He stopped and muttered a series of words under his breath. There was a brilliant flash of light, bright enough to make Emily squeeze her eyes closed against the glare. When she reopened her eyes, she saw a large building made out of dark stone right in front of them, as if it had been there all along. Perhaps it had been invisible, she told herself, taking some measure of comfort from the thought. If Shadye had needed to hide his dark temple, or whatever it was, it suggested that someone was watching for him. Maybe he’d been lying when he’d claimed that no one came into the Blighted Lands of the Dead.
The skeletons carried her into an opening that appeared out of nowhere, an instant before her head would have slammed into the stone. Inside, there was a sense of overpowering vastness, as if the building was much larger than she could comprehend. The smell of blood assailed her nostrils; a moment later, as she looked around, she saw great waves of red blood washing down the walls and pooling on the ground. Shadye seemed unbothered by walking through the blood, bowing from time to time towards statues that appeared out of nowhere, only to vanish again when Shadye walked past. They were disturbing. Oddly, the ones that looked most human were the most disquieting. One of them, a stone carving of a handsome man with sharp pointy ears, was impossible to look at directly. Another, an eldritch horror out of nightmares, seemed almost friendly by contrast.
And yet she couldn’t understand why one scared her more than the other.
“There,” Shadye said. He reached into his robe and produced a sharp black knife, carved from stone, before addressing the skeletons for the first time. “Place her on the altar.”
The altar was a simple stone block, easily large enough to accommodate her — or any other sacrificial victim. Emily opened her mouth to protest, but it was futile; the skeletons picked her up and carried her forward with implacable strength. Somehow, the simple lack of carvings on the altar was even more terrifying than the horrors she could see in the distance. It struck her, suddenly, that there was no doubt to whom the altar was dedicated. This place belonged to Satan. It was a place beyond the sight of God.
She tried to recall the prayers she’d learned as a child, but nothing came to mind. Instead, she kept trying to struggle, but the force holding her refused to surrender. The skeletons placed her on the stone and stepped backwards, almost as if they were admiring their work.
“We begin,” Shadye said. He started to chant as he waved the knife in the air. Emily couldn’t understand a single word, but she felt the gathering power in the chamber, as if someone — or something — was slowly pressing itself into existence. Brilliant tingles of light danced over her head, slowly fading into a darkness so complete that it sucked up the light. In the last moments of gloom, she saw new statues — savage-faced angels — appear at the edge of the chamber.
Shadye stopped chanting. Absolute silence fell, as if unseen watchers were waiting for a final command. The summoned presence hung on the air, its mere existence twisting reality around it.