BIzzare Tales! Gibbous Tendrils

Jem couldn't think of one time a man had ever actually acted as if he cared what she thought - her father had traded her for profit, her brothers had rarely spoken to her, and the Pasha had treated his hounds better. And she'd never questioned it as the way things worked. Until now.

If he kept her, she would be accept whatever he wanted, forever. Just for that.

She started. A sound. Something was moving in the room behind her. She rolled away from Val and looked behind her.

The Magus was standing next to the barred door – holding a single azure gem that he'd pulled from their trove – a horrible leer twisting his face.

He darted toward her with one clawed hand out.

She recoiled, screaming.

"Val!"

The hand touched her and she felt herself being pulled backwards at horrible speed.

Val reacted as a true warrior, pulling a bukhari knife from the bedding and spinning toward her, reaching toward her outstretched hand.

Too late. She was falling away into somewhere. Somewhere that smelled of darkness and damp.

Once chance. She screamed to him.

"The caves under the palace!"

A brilliant azure flash before everything went dark.

She found herself lying on cold black stone. Damp and night seemed all around. As she struggled to push herself up she could feel slime under her naked body. A thick rope tied her hands and her feet.

A huge, black-domed, circular chamber lit only by the fitful light of a few guttering torches.

A single thickset ancient plank door in the wall.

And the Magus walking around a dark pit that dominated center of the room.

He looked over at her.

"A royal wife. Perfect for the Calling."

Jem glared at him. "This is an outrage! How dare you touch a wife of the Pasha!"

He cackled in response "As if he cared about you. Or maybe as if I hadn't found you rutting with one of those foreign... things! I doubt very much that the Pasha would ever want to touch you after one of those foul beasts."

He continued on, muttering to himself. "That from the stars can destroy the city, destroy those creatures."

He began drawing symbols in dimly glowing chalk as he walked around the pit, whispering in an arcane tongue. He'd obviously been working at it for some time as the circle was almost closed.

As he finished his circuit, she felt a subtle shift in the air. A sharp tang of something unpleasant in the back of her mouth.

Just for a second, something seemed to flicker, glowing pale and unearthly, deep in the pit.

The Magus walked toward her, still spewing a vile litany of syllables, over and over, louder and louder.

"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Ton'sai wat dom'rei wgah'nagl fhtagn"

He snatched the rope at her ankles and began dragging her toward the pit. She twisted, trying desperately to free herself.

"Ia! Ia!"

Something arced briefly out of the pit, ghostly luminescent, long and snakelike. It seemed to leave a phosphorescent mist hanging in the air.

Wide-eyed, Jem choked back a scream and struggled harder, kicking herself loose for a second.

The door exploded inward, two of the huge guards stumbling back into the chamber – a blur of green and silver slashing and stabbing at them with awful fury.

While the guards were much larger, their huge swords moved far too slowly to hit the mailed warrior.

Jem felt her heart explode"Val!"

A small figure raced from the doorway. Toward Jem and the Magus.

Naked, battered and bruised, Asha slipped on the slime covered floor, almost sliding into the pit. Jem felt something – a hint of hunger from the pit as a lion scenting prey.

One of the huge guards went down under the warrior's blade.

Then a single long tendril of frozen gibbous moonlight flickered out of the pit, wrapping itself around the remaining guard's body

He screamed. An awful keening cry of pain and death, wailing on and on, as smoke sprung from his flesh wherever the vile tendril touched him.

The Magus shrieked triumphantly and spun to face the pit, arms raised, hands held frozen claws – more tendrils erupted, blindly grasping from the pit.

The withered figure swayed and the awful tendrils swayed with him. One began to blindly grope toward Val. He poised himself, cautiously backing toward the door, looking desperately for a way to get to Jem. Asha began to back away from the pit in a near panic.

She paused, looked over at Val, then back to Jem.

"Jem!"

She hurled something dark across the pit – it skittered on the stone, somewhere near Jem, nearly invisible in the dim light.

A tendril shot out at the sound of Asha's voice wrapping around her ankle – she began to scream from the horrific pain.

Jem blindly groped around - seeing Val parrying a tendril as others closed in.

She felt something under her hand. A knife!

She grasped the wooden handle of the kitchen knife and began sawing furiously at her ropes.

More dimly shining tendrils began to move toward Asha, whose wailing was ringing off the damp stone. The louder she screamed, the brighter the coils became.

The ropes on jem's ankles finally fell free. She could see Val was cut off from the door as more of the revolting tendrils moved toward him.

The Magus howled with awful glee.

Jem snarled and launched herself, hands still bound, but gripping the long carving knife.

Val was her warrior, her man. Nobody would take him from her.

The knife slammed home between the wizard's shoulders.

His howling changed tune to a screeching litany of pain and he staggered, trying desperately to reach the handle of the knife.

Jem rolled away as one of the rope-like things slammed into the rock next to her. She sprinted for the edge of the chamber, seeing Asha, crawling with a badly burned leg toward her.

The things flailed mindlessly as the Magus stumbled closer to the edge of the pit.

One feeler snaked around his legs and his cries rose in pitch. Then another. And another.

With sudden awful, purpose, the tendrils suddenly arced back around him and pulled him into the pit.

The glowing symbols flared and disappeared as the screaming suddenly stopped.

Asha gripped Jem's leg.

"Please. He promised that if I helped find you, he would get us free of the city."

Jem looked across the chamber at Val, who sent her a brash smile and a wink, while he poked a severed tendril with his sword as it crumbled to nothing.

She helped Asha to her feet just as Val came around, with a wicked glint in his eye.

"Couldn't have you running off without a kiss!"

They helped Asha out the door, where she pulled away and stumbled to a figure slumped against the wall.

Asha's palace guard was alive. Exhausted and wounded, but alive.

Together, the four staggered through the caves until they came out in the quarters of the Magus.

Bodies of harem guards along the way testified to Val's determination to reach her.

They stepped out onto a balcony.

Smoke hung over the blackened wreckage of the city as the sun rose.

Val smiled softly down at her.

She wrapped her arms around him, crushing herself to him as she kissed him passionately.

//Post Production Notes: Lord knows it isn't perfect, but I hope you enjoy it. Yes, it has plot holes you can drive a caravan through – how did he find her, where the hell did Asha and her lover come from etc. Yes, the characters, scenery and villains are nearly all arch-types. But all of that's classic thud and blunder pulp. And it was a blast to write. I hope you had half as much fun reading it as I did writing it. If so, let me know, I'm sure I could convince Jem and Val to come back for more. After all, Jem still has a bone to pick with her rather nasty husband, the Pasha.//