Location: Fubar
Timeline: Sixth Age, 53rd Year, Spring
My Apocrypha records more events I wasn’t aware of at the time. Here we see Kaoz in all his glory – he has The Grim and there is nothing stopping him from returning to Ramos to give the magical dagger to Inanna and advance himself into godhood. Or so he thought…
The moon was a bruised smear against the charcoal sky as the great grey shape of the Myz cresting the final ridge overlooking Fubar. Days had bled away since his fingers first closed around the cold, black hilt of the stone blade, and in that time, Kaoz had become a creature of instinct. He had not slept in over two days. Whether it was the magic of the artifact pressed against his hip or the soul-crushing ‘blessing’ Inanna had carved into his soul that drove him, the result was a state of manic, wild exhaustion. His thoughts were no longer a stream; they were a storm of energy and blood, whirling around a singular, fixed goal – getting his hand around the Viperz’s throat and completing the murder this time.
“Kaoz come for Ramssee.” He snarled, yet as he approached the city, he sensed the change in the atmosphere – it didn’t just grow cold; it grew heavy with the cloying stench of the Great Silence.
The plague I originally sent to destroy Akka by the viperz Pesties back in the Fifth Age, had since been unwittingly released multiple times over – first by Arwin’s dwarves as they searched for spies in the passageways after The Last Great War, and then recently by King Diked’s miners as they quested to open The Deepest Depths to steal the dwarves’ treasure.
The Red Weeping – as the poor mortals of Fubar called it – was no longer a guest in city; it was the master. Even from the base of the outer walls, Kaoz could hear the rhythmic, hacking coughs of the dying echoing from the hovels, and the orange glow of the corpse-pyres painted the undersides of the low clouds a sickly, pulsating copper. He moved through the waist-high yellow mist that clung to the ditch—a fog of spores that would have turned a man’s lungs to fungus in a dozen breaths. Yet Kaoz did not cough. He did not falter. He was a child of the shadow-waste, and when I created him it was with blood that was a concoction of older, darker alchemy that rendered the Akkanian virus nothing more than a foul perfume to him.
[And yet, the Myz never thanked me for such protection. Instead he continued to betray me – how’s that for appreciation?]
Reaching the city, Kaoz did not try to enter through the Grand Entry. Instead, he prowled the perimeter like a wolf, eventually scaling a section of the lesser-watched northeast wall where the stones were slick with moss and the guards had either fled or fallen to the plague He dropped into the city proper with a thud, landing in an alleyway where a cart of uncollected bodies stood abandoned in the mire.
The journey toward the palace would have been a walking nightmare for any other mortal. Even with his immunity, Kaoz moved like a grey ghost flitting through a graveyard of rotting homes and foul air. Fubar had become a labyrinth of shuttered windows and doors slashed with jagged red chalk—the sigil of the “weeping.” The yellow plague-mist clung to the cobblestones like a living shroud, thick enough to muffle the heavy thud of his boots.
Occasionally, a “Husk” would stagger out of the fog—a citizen whose soul had already been hollowed out by the fungus, wandering aimlessly with milky, sightless eyes. Kaoz ignored them, stepping arond their twitching forms as if they were nothing more than discarded refuse. Although he wasn’t afraid, his wits, sharpened to a razor’s edge by days without sleep, transformed the city into a theater of paranoia. The scuttle of a bloated rat in a gutter sounded like a charging battalion; the rhythmic creak of a hanging tavern sign was the whetstone of an executioner.
He was still a ways away from the palace gates when the flickering orange glow of torches reflecting off the wet stone sent him into the mouth of a dark alley.
“Search the ward again!” a voice barked, cracked with a fear that no amount of discipline could hide. “The Steward says the grey beast will surely return. He wants its head on a spike by dawn.”
Kaoz crouched behind a pile of plague-soiled linens, his nostrils flaring. A squad of ten soldiers marched past his hiding spot. They were encased in heavy plate, their visors down to ward off the spores, but their movements were jerky and uncoordinated. From the shadows, Kaoz watched them accost one another with the hollow bravado of foolish men. He hid not because he was afraid of common soldiers, but instead because he didn’t want to waste time. Focused only on destroying Ramssee, Kaoz was about to double back and find another route when he chanced to hear what the guards were talking about.
“He’s just a monster,” one soldier hissed, his poleaxe trembling. “Steel kills monsters.”
“Not this one,” another whispered. “Did you not hear the Steward? To kill a Myz, you don’t just stab it. You must take the head clean off.”
“Then you gotta burn the trunk.” Added another.
“And crush the skull to powder.” Said man from the back. “If so much as a finger remains, it crawls back to life.”
“Ramssee send men,” Kaoz surmised, his lip curling back to reveal his sharp teeth. “Ramssee… traitor.”
The Myz’s blood began to boil. The Steward—his supposed partner—had just gifted these lesser, soft-fleshed mortals the forbidden knowledge of how to destroy a Myz. It was a betrayal so profound it shattered Kaoz’s restraint. He didn’t need to stay hidden. He didn’t want to.
With a roar that sounded like the mountains splitting, Kaoz burst from the alley. He was a whirlwind of grey muscle and screaming fury. The soldiers barely had time to level their pikes before the “beast” was among them.
The first man didn’t even have a chance to scream; Kaoz’s massive fist collided with his face-plate, collapsing the steel and the bone beneath it into a red slurry. The Myz snatched a poleaxe from a falling hand and swung it in a wide, horizontal arc. The blade sheared through a breastplate of the nearest man, disemboweling the soldier and sending him spiraling into the muck.
“Burn Myz?!” Kaoz howled, catching a spear-tip in his bare palm and snapping the shaft like a dry twig. “Crush Myz?!”
He seized the next soldier by the throat and the waist, hoisting the armored man high above his head. With a sickening crunch, he snapped the man’s spine over his knee and tossed the broken husk into the remaining group. The soldiers, though they knew the theory of how to kill him, found the practice to be a nightmare beyond their comprehension. Their “false bravado” turned to high-pitched shrieks of terror.
Kaoz took a slow, agonizing pleasure in the slaughter that came next. He didn’t just kill his enemies; he dismantled them. He used his immense strength to twist limbs into impossible angles and used the soldiers’ own daggers to pin them to the tavern walls while they still gasped for air. He was a macabre sculptor, and the plague-infested alleyway was his gallery.
At last, only one man remained. Broken and pinned against the blood-slicked cobbles, the hapless soldier was too shattered to flee, his breath coming in shallow, wet rattles as he waited for the inevitable.
Kaoz approached with a slow, predatory deliberate step, an expression of pure, unadulterated malice carving deep lines into his grey visage. Reaching the forlorn guard, the Myz towered over him like a monument to extinction before leaning down until their faces were nearly touching—the hunter inhaling the frantic, copper-scented terror of the prey. Thick, black saliva roiled in Kaoz’s maw, dripping in viscous strings onto the soldier’s trembling skin.
Then, the Myz let out a laugh—a jagged, maniacal sound that scraped against the stone walls of the alley. With a sudden, explosive tensing of his corded muscles, Kaoz drove his thumbs into the soldier’s eyes. He pressed with a steady, sickening force until the man emitted a scream so high, so visceral, and so laden with agony that it seemed to ripple through the fog-choked streets, causing the very city to shudder in a collective fit of fright.
His would-be destroys defeated, Kaoz stood in the center of the carnage, his chest heaving, drenched in the hot blood of his enemies. He looked around at the bodies—now a gruesome “work of art” for the next patrol to find—and felt a manic energy. Then he turned his gaze back toward the high spires of the palace, the hidden Dagger pulsing in time with his rage.
“Ramssee,” he growled, spitting on the pile of broken steel. “Kaoz coming.”
Kaoz reached the palace without further incident. Once inside he moved through the corridors like a hungry wolf. The decadence of the place—the plush Mersian rugs, the marble statuary, the delicate gold leaf—irritated his raw, sleep-deprived nerves. He was eager to find The Steward but the Myz wasn’t familiar with this royal residence and didn’t know how to navigate the hundred or so rooms. He’d only been here in secret a handful of times and the Myz’s memory was a fractured mess. For hours, he prowled the wings, his shadow lengthening under the flickering lamps like a reaching claw.
His first intrusion was into the royal bedchambers – he remembered their location and expected Ramssee to have taken them over by now. Kicking open the double doors, he found King Diked. The monarch was hunched over a basin of vinegar-water, frantically scrubbing his hands until they were raw and bleeding.
Diked turned, his face a mask of twitching terror. At the sight of the grey monstrosity standing in his doorway—drenched in the blood of the gate-wardens—the King let out a high-pitched whimper and fainted, his head landing in the basin with a wet splash.
Kaoz snorted, black spittle hitting the fine rug. “Diked soft,” he grunted, before turning on his heel and vanishing back into the hall.
Moments later, he burst into a private salon where Monnik sat in a cloud of jasmine-scented smoke. She was half naked and mid-sip of a dark wine, surrounded by three comely male courtiers who were reading her poetry and performing other duties to pleasure her in order to stave off the gloom of the plague. The delicate men shrieked, scattering like pigeons, but Monnik held her place, her dark eyes tracking the Myz with a cold fascination.
“You are the one Ramssee spoke about,” she said, her voice a silk needle.
Kaoz moved closer, “Where Snake-man?”
Monnik didn’t flinch. She simply pointed a slim, ringed finger toward the east wing. “Further than your small mind can grasp, beast. Try the lower galleries.”
Kaoz growled. The woman pleased him and normally he’d have forced himself upon her, but time was racing by for him and the need to murder Ramssee overpowered any other desires. He swiped a crystal decanter from a nearby table – shattering it against the wall to see her blink. She didn’t. Frustrated by her lack of terror, Kaoz vowed to returned, and then stormed back into the labyrinth.
On his way towards the east-wing, he met a pair of night-wardens. Unlucky enough to cross his path, the men were later found stuffed into a broom closet, their limbs bent into impossible shapes to make them fit. Further on, a luckless page was discovered the next day wedged into a decorative suit of armor, his muffled moans echoing through the visor.
Finally, in a narrow servant’s passage, Kaoz intercepted a lone guard carrying a tray of late-night pottage. He pinned the man to the stone wall by his throat, his massive feet dangling inches off the floor.
“Steward,” Kaoz hissed, his voice a tectonic grind. “Tell Kaoz. Or Kaoz eat fingers. One. By. One.”
The guard, looking into the yellow, mad eyes of the Myz, didn’t hesitate. Between choked gasps, he pointed toward the heavy, iron-studded doors at the end of the hall. “The King’s Den… he’s there… drinking… please…”
Kaoz smiled, then tightened his grip until the man went limp. He tossed the guard aside and turned toward the massive portal of the Den. The scent of Ramssee was in the air now—the smell of scales, expensive liquor, and treachery.
When he finally reached the oak doors of the King’s Den, he was ready to explode. Barging in, he found…Ramssee!
“Ah, Kaoz, my dear friend,” Ramssee purred from the gloom of the room. “You are right on time.”
The Steward lounged in a plush, high-backed armchair, a crystal glass of Tessele spirits cradled in his long, pale fingers. He didn’t look up. He didn’t flinch. He looked like a man waiting for a guest to arrive for tea, not a killer draped in the gore of his own guards.
“Wh—?” Kaoz stammered, his exhausted mind tripping over the sheer normalcy of the scene.
“Please, have a seat,” the Steward continued, finally looking up. “You look quite… strung out, partner. Days without sleep? It shows. Shall I pour you a measure of the King’s best? It steadies the nerves.”
Ramssee made as if to rise, but Kaoz lunged forward, his massive frame shaking with a manic, electric energy. “No games! Kaoz no drink! Kaoz show… THIS!“
With a violent, snapping motion, the Myz ripped the black dagger from the scabbard at his hip. The Grim appeared to be a common black dagger – nondescript in appearance but for the ruby “G” in its pommel. Ramssee was not impressed.
“I see you’ve found…it.” Ramssee smirked. “The legendary toy of the Drokka kings. Well done, champion. I figured you’d show up here on your return.”
Kaoz was confused. “How Ramssee know?!”
The Steward’s sly smile widened, showing the tips of his own fangs. “My friend, I know the weight of your greed. I saw you leave for the mountains days ago with the fire of a fanatic in your eyes. You wouldn’t be standing in my Den, dripping blood on my Mersian rug, if you hadn’t succeeded. There is only one reason you are back.”
Ramssee leaned forward, his swirling eyes locking onto the Myz’s dilated pupils. The green-gold vortex in his gaze intensified, a hypnotic pull that felt like warm oil sliding into Kaoz’s brain. “Actually, I take that back. There are two reasons… you mean to kill me, don’t you?”
Kaoz’s lip curled. The logic of the beast was simple: Kill the rival. Take the world. He raised the glowing dagger, the blue light reflecting in the black spittle at the corners of his mouth.
“Kaoz kill Ramssee,” he whispered. “Kaoz feel… happy”
“Ah, but what do you lose?” Ramssee’s voice was a honeyed caress and his eyes became a swirling vortex of emerald and gold —the Power of Persuasion uncoiling like a serpent in the grass. He stayed seated, his arms folded loosely in his lap, the picture of defenselessness. “Think, partner. If you kill me, who covers your tracks? Who tells the Shaitan that you are still searching, while you slip away to the safety of Ramos?”
Kaoz froze. The word Shaitan acted like a cold drenching of water.
“Listen to me, Kaoz!” Ramssee’s voice suddenly climbed into a commanding shriek, his eyes burning with a blinding, iridescent light as The Power deepened. “LISTEN TO ME!”
The Myz felt his knees weaken. The air in the room seemed to thicken, pressing him down. The Steward began to pace, his words weaving a silken web around the beast’s fractured mind. “We made a pact in the Wastes, remember? I don’t want that cursed blade. It’s a beacon for Death itself! I want this kingdom—a city of men to rule as Emperor. You want a Goddess and a throne of skulls. Why am I a threat? If I die, Shedu Mazai will know the game is up in a candlemark. He will hunt you across the flat earth before you even reach the borders of Pennal. But if I live… I can buy you four months, even a year. I can tell him the search continues. I can be your shield.”
“Ramssee help Kaoz?” the Myz spat, struggling against the hypnotic fog.
“Yes. I will help because I want to be a god in my own right, untouchable behind my walls!” Ramssee declared, his voice filled with a infectious passion. “And you will be Inanna’s immortal champion. She will make you immortal. Sparing my life is a small price for your own divinity, isn’t it?”
Kaoz’s arm lowered. The glowing red ‘G’ on the blade flickered, its light dimmed by the Steward’s overwhelming aura. “Small price,” he muttered, his mind turning to lead.
“Now,” Ramssee added, his voice dropping to a casual, conversational tone, “I do need one tiny favor in return. A trifle, really.”
Kaoz’s eyes snapped back into focus, the beast’s suspicion flared. “No!”
“Peace, partner! It’s a gift, really,” Ramssee soothed, the green-gold swirl in his eyes never wavering. “I need you to take Diked with you. The King. He’s a broken, babbling nitwit, but I need him gone from my capital under ‘legitimate’ circumstances. Take him to Ramos. ‘Lose’ him in a ravine along the way. I don’t care. It makes your journey through the northern provinces look like a royal escort rather than a flight of a thief. It’s a cover, Kaoz. A perfect one.”
Kaoz became so manic he began to snicker. The idea of the pampered, weeping King Diked trudging through the mud behind him was almost as satisfying as a kill. A human shield to wave at patrols. He was about to grunt his assent when a sharp, frantic <KNOCK> <KNOCK> rattled the door.
Ramssee’s composure shattered. “Ugh! I must find a new dungeon for these interruptions!”
He stormed to the door, wrenched it open, and collared the trembling figure of Holms before the page could even speak. He dragged the Aide into the center of the room, exposing him to the terrifying sight of the blood-stained Myz and the glowing dagger.
“Master! The dwarves!” Holms blurted out, his knees knocking together like castanets. “They have entered Fubar! Two of them are at the Haunted Star even now!”
Ramssee felt a chill that even the Power couldn’t mask. How did they make it past the soldier and reach the city? Why didn’t the plague take them? He looked at Kaoz.
“No,” the Myz shrugged, his apathy heavy. “Kaoz leave.”
“But what if they are tracking you?” Ramssee spun the lie with masterful speed, his eyes boring into Kaoz’s soul. “A lonely pair of dwarves? They are scouts, Kaoz! The vanguard of an army coming to reclaim the Grim! We have reports… Surely they are here for your head! They know about your theft!”
“What?!” Kaoz roared, the black saliva flying. “Stone-rats hunt Kaoz?”
“Wouldn’t it be wise to have a little… ‘discussion’ with them first before you go off?” Ramssee purred, patting the Myz’s massive shoulder. “A quick stroll to the Haunted Star. Bring them back here. I’ll convince them the city is a plague-pit and that no Myz has ever walked these halls. We break their spirit, and they go home with their tails between their legs. What say you, partner? One last hunt for the team?”
Kaoz’s yellow eyes flared with the promise of more Drokka blood. He looked at the Grim, then at the door. “Kaoz find stone-rats,” he growled, a terrifying grin splitting his face. “Then Kaoz Diked go Ramos!”
Ramssee nodded, his own grin reflecting the darkness in the room. “I knew we were still on the same team. OK now, off you go.” And he shoo’d the Myz and Holms away.
The Apocrypha of Azazel 