Location: Fubar, Akka, and Nektar’s Cauldron
Timeline: Sixth Age, 53rd Year, Spring
Later that night, the moon hung like a jaundiced eye over the silent city of Fubar, but within the palace walls, Ramssee felt the invincibility of a god. Observing him through the shifting ripples of The Eye, I watched as he moved through the intricate, high-walled tapestry of the Palace’s Hedge Maze. The Steward was a pale, preening mortal wandering through a labyrinth of his own making, his footsteps crunching softly on expensive white gravel. Safe from the red weeping and the spore-choked air that decimated the rabble beyond the ramparts, Ramssee casually strolled the winding paths with a practiced air of contemplative majesty. His long, slender fingers traced the manicured boxwood leaves with a lover’s touch, as if he were already stroking the heavy, gold-stitched velvet of a coronation robe.
The fool was drowning in his own self-satisfaction, a heady wine that blinded him to the rot at the roots of his power. To him, the plague he’d released from Akka was not a tragedy, but a convenient scythe—a divine tool that had cleared the field of King Diked’s relevance and shackled the meddlesome General Alec in the lightless, damp dark of the pits. The throne was no longer a dream; it was a foregone conclusion for him. Yet, as I leaned into the scrying glass, I could feel the frantic, staccato pulse beneath his outward calm. It was the lingering tremor of the night I had visited him as the Shaitan, a primal fear he couldn’t quite suppress. He truly believed a wish whispered to a captive djiin and a shard of broken, rusted iron would be enough to bar my shadow from his heels for good.
I watched as he rounded a sharp bend of flowering hawthorn, his mind likely spinning more intricate lies for his new lapdog, Holms, when the night was punctuated by the violent scream. The massive hedge to his left didn’t just part; it erupted. A three-hundred-pound mass of grey, corded muscle and mindless fury burst through the greenery in a shower of leaves and dirt. The impact was enough to cause The Steward to be launched backward, his silk robes fluttering like the wings of a broken moth as he tumbled across the gravel, his carefully maintained “majesty” dissolving into a frantic, undignified scramble for footing.
Through the gaping rupture in the hedge stepped Kaoz. His grey, hide-like skin was slick with the black filth of the road and the dried gore of lesser men, his chest heaving like a bellows. Black, viscous spittle flung from his lips as he growled, the sound echoing off the stone walls of the palace.
“Where Grim?” the beast demanded, his voice a grind that set the air vibrating. “Kaoz no wait! Kaoz Queen calls. Kaoz take Dagger… or Kaoz Ramssee throat!”
The Steward was back to his feet, his breath coming in ragged hitches. He desperately brushed the white dust from his ruined silk robes, his amber eyes darting toward the narrow exits of the maze as he fought to regain his composure. “Well, partner,” he gasped, his voice thin and sharp with a sarcasm to hide his terror, “it’s a delight to see you’ve maintained your… rustic charm. Though I must say, your entrance lacks a certain suburban refinement.”
Before Kaoz could lunge again, Ramssee raised a trembling hand, palms out. “Wait! Stop, you brainless brute! There is news you lack the wit to gather. Did you know our master paid me another visit? The Black One was here in this very palace, Kaoz. He grows hungry, and his patience is a thread ready to snap.”
“Ha!” The Myz leaned forward, his long arms nearly brushing the gravel. “Shaitan YOUR father, snake! Kaoz serve Inanna.”
I felt a flicker of cold amusement. The beast truly believed a conniving, minor goddess could shield him from me—The Harvester of Souls – their souls. They are both my creatures, tethered to my fingers by invisible wires of debt. Ramssee, ever the opportunist, was quick to pivot as he saw the opening.
“Is that so? How fortunate for your soul,” Ramssee sneered, side-stepping cautiously to put the stone sundial between them. “But even the Queen of Ramos will not welcome a failure. and you are a failure, aren’t you? You have no prize to bring her, only the stench of the road and the blood of peasants.”
“Kaoz bring Grim!” the Myz bellowed, the sound startling the crows on the battlements. He swiped a massive, clawed paw through the air, narrowly missing Ramssee’s shoulder. “Depths open! Kaoz feel it! Kaoz smell old stone.”
Ramssee’s lips curled into a dry smile, the predator recognizing the bait had been taken. “You smell correctly, you overgrown cur. The Deepest Depths were breached two days ago by my miners. The way to the mountain’s core is clear. The prize is sitting there, waiting for a hand to claim it.”
The rage in Kaoz’s yellow eyes shifted instantly to a shimmering greed. He took a heavy step forward, the gravel groaning under his weight. “Ramssee have Grim? Give Grim to Kaoz! NOW! Or Kaoz peel skin from snake-man!”
“Ah, but there’s the rub,” Ramssee purred, his voice regaining its oily confidence as he moved in a slow circle. “I had to mandate that the passageway be re-sealed immediately. I received urgent news that two more dwarves are on the road from Skarra Bree, riding hard for our gates. Surely they’re after the royal pair you waylaid during the winter. I’ll need you t–“
“WHAT?” Kaoz interrupted. The Myz’s face contorted, his sharp incisors bared. “Ramssee stop Kaoz destiny? Ramssee seal dark?”
“I did it to protect our interests!” Ramssee shouted back, ducking low as Kaoz’s fist smashed into the stone sundial, sending sparks and granite shards flying. “Don’t you want to know the plan? If you’ll just kindly go meet them on the road and ensure they never reach—”
“RAWR!” The Myz was done with the Steward’s shifting tongues. He faked a heavy lunge to the left, then pivoted with a predatory speed that belied his massive bulk. His long, powerful arms reached out and secured the surprised Steward before the man could escape. With a grunt of triumph, Kaoz hoisted Ramssee off the ground, his massive fingers locking around the Steward’s neck.
“Kaoz no care Drukka! Kaoz want Grim…” He squeezed the Viperz’ throat, his yellow eyes boring into Ramssee’s with a promise of absolute extinction. “Kaoz kill Ramssee! Kaoz take Akka!”
The Steward’s face turned a mottled purple, his legs kicking uselessly against the Myz’s chest. But before the life could be choked out of him, Ramssee’s form began to buckle and warp. Using the dark, fluid magic I’d birthed into his bloodline, he forced the change. His bones turned to liquid, his spine elongated, and his skin erupted into a thousands of shimmering, diamond-patterned scales. He slipped through the Myz’s tightening grip like spilled oil—a thick mountain viper that dropped to the gravel and slithered with lightning speed beneath the tangled roots of the hawthorn hedge.
Kaoz stared at his empty, calloused palms, a guttural shriek of frustration tearing from his lungs. He lunged at the hedge, tearing away great handfuls of branch and leaf, ready to rip the entire garden down to find the snake. Then, he stopped. He stood tall, his nostrils flaring as he caught the scent of the north wind. He looked toward the northern horizon, toward the dark silhouette of the Akka Mountains.
“Ramssee, fool!” the Myz yelled, his voice carrying over the palace walls and into the silent streets. “Ramssee keep Fubar! Kaoz keep Grim!”
With a violent crash, the beast bolted. He didn’t bother with the paths; he smashed through the remaining hedges like a runaway siege engine, destroying the symmetry of the maze as he thundered toward the northern gates.
After his nemesis was gone and the echoes of breaking wood faded, Ramssee flowed back into his human form. He slumped against a stone bench, gasping for air and clutching his bruised throat. He looked down at his silk tunic, now shredded and stained beyond repair. “No matter,” he wheezed, a dark light returning to his eyes. “Let the beast do his worst. The sooner he breaks into those depths and claims the Grim, the sooner I’ll be rid of him. And then… then I shall see who truly rules this world.”
I leaned back into the velvet shadows of my bed, the Bone Dagger removed from my rib cage and resting across my lap. It hummed a low dissonant chord that vibrated through the rest of my osteel anatomy, its edge thirsty for the discord that now ripened in Fubar. Ramssee thought he had outplayed a god with his wish to Sssaura, and Kaoz thought he could outrun my reach by chasing Inanna’s favor, but they both forgot they were tethered to the same iron truth – ME!
Dagaal was more than a weapon; it was the ultimate conductor of the symphony I was composing. And it was in my hands now. With a mere thought, I could bleed its malevolence into the winds, turning the dwarves’ stubbornness into a suicidal rage or curdling the Steward’s cleverness into a paralyzing paranoia. I could have done all those things and more – using the Dagger to sharpen the edges of their despair, ensuring that when the “beast” and the “snake” finally converged upon the Deepest Depths, they would clash over my prize. But I wasn’t ready to go that route yet. I had another idea in mind first.
While I was busy working on my next ‘project,’ another event took place that my Apocrypha notes now, but which I didn’t know at the time. Although even had I known it wouldn’t have changed things since this snippet simply confirms what I already knew – Kaoz was a traitor.
The next morning, as the Myz was trudging towards the ancestral home of the Drokka of Akka, the clouds did not simply break; they dissolved into a bruised, purple sky that seemed to sit heavy upon the peaks of the mountains. Rain fell in unrelenting sheets, turning the mountain pass into a chute of grey sludge and treacherous shale. Each step the Myz took was a battle against the earth itself, as the mud sought to claim his boots and the wind tried to throw him from the narrow ledges.
He wiped the cold grit from his eyes, his breath coming in ragged plumes. “Ramssee hide Grim,” he growled into the gale, his voice barely audible over the roar of the storm. “Kaoz break Door. Kaoz get Grim.”
A blinding flash of white light lit up the sky. A bolt of raw, celestial fire slammed into the granite a mere arm’s length from his feet. The concavity of the explosion threw his massive frame through the air like a discarded toy. He hit the muddy slope, sliding twenty feet before slamming into a gnarled root.
Dazed, with the scent of something musky stinging his nostrils, the Myz surged to his feet. Instinct took over; his hand flew to the hilt of his heavy blade, the steel rasping as it cleared the scabbard. He squinted through the steam rising from the scorched earth, his yellow eyes searching for a foe in the shifting grey mist.
The rain didn’t stop, but the wind died into an eerie, suffocating silence. From the heart of the fog, she stepped forth.
Inanna.
The Goddess of Lust did not appear as a soft, distant dream. She manifested as a towering, four-armed Myz war-queen, a goddess forged in the crucible of a thousand slaughters. She stood nearly ten feet tall, her grey skin an atlas of fresh, weeping scars and jagged brands that glowed with a dull, internal heat. She was a vision of beautiful, terrible violence. In one hand, she gripped a broad-bladed sword that mirrored the silver of the lightning; in the second, a rusted, three-pronged pitchfork; in the third, a heavy mace crusted with dried marrow. Her fourth hand remained open, fingers twitching like a spider’s legs.
A thick, crimson fluid—a viscous, unnatural milk—seeped from the seven breasts that lined her torso, staining her muscular abdomen. Her black hair was a tangle of wire and thorns, and her face was set in a mask of divine, unholy…hunger.
Kaoz felt the roar in his own blood. He didn’t drop his sword; he raised it. With a primal shriek that defied the thunder, he threw himself at the goddess. They collided with a sound like two falling stars. The earth beneath them groaned under the weight of their violent union—a coupling that was less a romance and more a struggle for dominance. Amidst the mud and the driving rain, they tore at each other, their bodies clashing with the same ferocity as their blades.
The hours bled into a dull, grey noon.
When Kaoz finally blinked the rain from his eyes, he found himself pinned to the cold stone of the mountainside. Inanna straddled him, her shadow blotting out what little light remained. The pleasure of their meeting had turned into a cold cruelty.
The point of her sword bit into the soft skin of his throat, drawing a thin line of black blood. The tines of her pitchfork were driven deep into his pectorals, pinning him like an insect to a board. The mace, heavy and cold, pressed down upon his loins with a crushing weight that made his vision swim.
Kaoz let out a strangled cry, his muscles tensing against the agony.
Inanna leaned down, her lips inches from his tattered ear. Her breath smelled of honey and rotting meat. “Listen to me, my King of Ramos,” she hissed, the words slithering into his mind. “The snake has sealed the path. He has hidden the prize behind a wall of dead stone.”
She twisted the sword, a fresh jolt of pain lancing through his spine. “You will go to Akka. You will find the way barred by the coward’s hand. But you carry my fire in your marrow now. You will use the strength I have carved into you today. You will break the mountain. You will break the world if you must.”
She threw her head back and cackled, a sound that echoed through the ravines like the breaking of glass. “Bring me the Grim. Trust no one—neither the snake nor the boy king. Return to Ramos, and you shall sit upon a throne of skulls.”
To punctuate her command, she drove the pitchfork deeper. The pain reached a crescendo that the Myz’s mind could no longer process. The world turned to a featureless white, and Kaoz slid back into the welcoming dark of unconsciousness.
In time, the storm had passed, leaving the Akka Mountains draped in a heavy, suffocating silence that was broken only by the rhythmic drip of meltwater from the jagged peaks. Kaoz stirred from the mud, his body a map of fresh, angry welts and deep punctures from the Goddess’s “parting gifts.” By all laws of the flesh, he should have been a corpse. Instead, as he pushed himself upright, he felt a terrifying, electric heat coursing through his veins. Inanna’s torture had not broken him; it had tempered him.
Kaoz stood. His muscles felt like coiled iron. His vision was sharp, cutting through the lingering mountain mist like a hunter’s blade.
“Kaoz live,” he grunted, the words rattling in his chest. “Kaoz strong. Queen give power. Now… Akka.”
He began the final ascent toward the ancestral seat of the Drokka. He moved with a predatory grace, traversing the open valley that sprawled before the main entrance. In years past, this expanse had been known as the Killing Fields—a natural trap where an invading army would be picked apart by a thousand unseen archers nestled in the murder-holes of the surrounding cliffs. But today, the mountains were hollow. The Drokka were gone, and the only eyes watching Kaoz were the cold, stone stares of the dead.
As the slope steepened, Kaoz reached the Monuments on the Hill. Ten monolithic statues of ancient dwarf kings, each carved from the living heart of the mountain, stood in a silent, arrogant line. They were titans of granite, their stone beards flowing over breastplates etched with runes of power.
Kaoz stopped before the fourth monument—a warrior-king holding a massive stone hammer aloft. The sight of it made the Myz’s blood boil. The dwarves had always been his people’s most hated rivals.
“Stone kings,” Kaoz spat, black bile staining the grey mud. “Kaoz hate stone kings!”
The rage, fueled by the Goddess’s lingering fire, snapped his restraint. With a guttural roar, Kaoz unsheathed his heavy blade. He lunged at the monument’s base, swinging the steel with every ounce of his unnatural strength.
<CLANG!>
The sound echoed through the ravine like a funeral bell. The vibration traveled up Kaoz’s arms, rattling his teeth, but the stone remained unyielding. Not even a chip of granite fell.
“Kaoz break!” he screamed, his yellow eyes wide and bloodshot. “Kaoz destory!”
He swung again, a frenzy of rhythmic strikes. <CLASH!> <BLANG!> <CLANG!> Sparks showered the air, blue and white, illuminating the Myz’s distorted features. He was a whirlwind of grey muscle and screaming steel, yet the dwarf king merely looked out over the valley, its blind stone eyes fixed on a distant horizon, utterly indifferent to the creature gnawing at its feet.
The indifference was the ultimate insult.
Kaoz backed away, his chest heaving. He gripped the hilt of his sword with both hands, channeling every spark of Inanna’s agony into a final, desperate assault. He spun his entire body in a 360-degree blur, the weight of the heavy blade gathering a terrifying momentum.
<KA-BA-BLANG-BLANG!>
The jolt of the impact was so violent it felt as if the mountain itself had bucked. The shockwave threw Kaoz backward, his fingers losing their grip as he tumbled through the muck. He scrambled to his feet instantly, his breath coming in gasps, and ran forward to witness the destruction he had surely wrought.
He stopped dead. The statue stood perfect, its polished stone legs unmarked. At its base lay the shards of his own weapon—the heavy blade had shattered into a dozen jagged splinters of useless iron.
“NO!” Kaoz howled, falling to his knees before the stone king. “Sword break! Why not stone?!”
He began to beat his fists against the granite, the skin on his knuckles splitting as he struck the unfeeling rock. He kicked it until his boots were slick with his own blood, a mindless tantrum against the weight of history. The statue remained silent, its expression one of eternal, stolid pride.
Eventually, the fire in his blood cooled into a low, simmering coal. He looked up at the statue, a twisted, maniacal grin spreading across his face.
“Stay,” Kaoz whispered, leaning close to the stone ear of the king. “Stay cold. Kaoz go. Kaoz take what kings’ love.”
He spat upon the stone feet of the monument, the black fluid a final mark of defiance.
“Kaoz take Grim. Kaoz be King.”
Laughing a high, discordant sound that sent the birds fluttering, he Myz turned his back on the monuments and began the final climb toward the Grand Gates.
“KRAAAAA! Damn, Ramssee! Snake-man pay blood!”
The roar tore from Kaoz’s throat, echoing like a landslide through the hollow ribs of the mountain. He stood trembling, the orange flare of his torch casting long, dancing shadows against the obstacle that had brought his destiny to a screeching halt. It was a wall—freshly mortared, the grey sludge of the cement still damp to the touch, a crude but solid barrier of stone and brick that sealed the mouth of the Deepest Depths.
Kaoz had reached the Grand Gates as the sun dipped behind the Akka peaks, bleeding crimson over the snow. Not concerned about any plague, the Myz had moved through the upper galleries with the practiced ease of a looter, scavenging oil and torches from the abandoned miners’ camps. The labyrinth of Akka was a maddening honeycomb of thousands of natural fissures and Drokka-carved arteries; without the markers Ramssee’s crew had left behind, Kaoz would have wandered until his bones turned to dust. But the Steward’s greed had left a trail—splashes of white paint and iron spikes driven into the rock—leading the Myz straight to the prize.
And now, after an hour of frantic tunneling through the dark, he was met with this: a wall of silence.
Kaoz cursed the Viperz, envisioning the moment he would wrap his hands around that slender, scaled neck. He paced the narrow tunnel like a caged predator, his heavy boots grinding the loose shale into powder. One hour passed. Then two. The Myz’s mind, built for slaughter rather than strategy, began to lock. He threw his head back, a high-pitched shriek of pure despair rippling through the caves.
“Viperz wins!” he howled, his eyes bulging. “Ramssee keep Fubar! Ramssee keep Grim! Kaoz nothing! Kaoz dirt!”
He slumped against the opposite wall, his torches flickering low. But as the shadows lengthened, the air in the tunnel grew heavy, smelling of fresh slaughter. A violet haze bled from the stone, and suddenly, the Myz was no longer alone.
Inanna.
She manifested again as the four-armed war-queen, her towering frame barely contained by the arched ceiling. Her skin was a map of glowing, necrotic scars, and her eyes burned with a terrifying, unholy hunger.
“KAOZ!” Her voice was a whip of thunder. “How can I let a coward sit upon the throne of Ramos? You weep before a pile of mud? You let a curtain of brick stop the King of Beasts?”
She pointed a clawed finger at the barrier, her lip curling in a snarl of needle-teeth. “This tiny obstruction? This pebble in your boot? If this stops you, then you are the failure, Kaoz! You are the worm, and Ramssee is the eagle! He feasts in his palace while you rot in a hole!”
Before he could speak, the Goddess lunged. She seized him by the throat with two of her powerful arms, hoisting his massive bulk off the ground and slamming him into the jagged rock of the tunnel wall. The impact cracked the stone behind his head.
“DO WHAT YOU WERE CREATED TO DO!” she shrieked into his face, black spittle stinging his eyes. “Overcome the barrier! Break the mountain! Bring me the Grim or I will leave you here to be eaten by the dark!”
She threw him down into the dirt, delivered a vicious, bone-cracking kick to his ribs, and vanished into a swirl of stinging smoke.
The pain ignited a fire in Kaoz’s marrow that the storm could not quench. His blood literally began to boil, his skin turning a dark, bruised purple as the adrenaline of the Goddess’s touch flooded his system. He sprang upright, his breath coming in wet, feral snorts. He was blinded by a white-hot haze of hatred, his mind projecting the face of Ramssee onto every individual brick of the wall.
“Kaoz break wall!.” He roared. “Kaoz break snake. Kaoz break world!”
He dropped his head, his massive shoulders bunching like the haunches of a charging bull. He didn’t think; he didn’t measure. He simply unleashed every ounce of his unnatural strength. He ran.
<KA-BA-SMASH!>
The explosion of stone was deafening. Kaoz hit the barrier like a siege engine. Bricks shattered into red dust, and chunks of wet mortar whistled through the air like shrapnel. The Myz blasted through the center of the wall, a tidal wave of grey muscle and fury, sending a massive cloud of grit billowing into the virgin tunnels beyond.
He tumbled into the dust on the other side, rolling through the debris before springing back to his feet. Amazingly, Kaoz was unmarked—no blood, no broken bones. The Goddess’s protection sat upon him like a second skin.
He looked back at the gaping hole he had torn in the Steward’s designs and spat a thick glob of black bile. “Kra! Wall gone. Ramssee gone. Now…Go Deep.”
Kaoz retrieved his flickering torches and turned toward the dark. Before him lay the Deepest Depths—a tunnel that had not tasted the air of the surface in an age. The stone here was different; it was black, veined with a strange, pulsing violet ore that seemed to thrum in time with his own heartbeat.
But just what would Kaoz find?
The Apocrypha of Azazel 