“He looks for me in his dreams,” Alia had told me, and it was to dreams that I fled then, my mind rejecting any world that would allow such horror. I had assumed that the demons, those “shoggoths,” had eaten up everything on the deck of Beldur’s ship, but as I took sanctuary in the realm of nightmares, my fevered brain provided other explanations…
There is now very little to add. I awoke on a beach, upon a small island, and the curious people I found there and how I ultimately escaped them is the subject of another tale. But there is one final detaiclass="underline" when I came to on the sand, there beside me was the little book, and it was once again open — a dagger shot through its pages and spine, keeping the covers apart, an amputated, skeletal human hand firmly clasped around the hilt. I stared at the book, remembering my fight with the purple-robed wizard, and his words... then I clambered to my knees, then my feet, and walked away, leaving book, knife, and hand to be reclaimed by the hungry surf, to rejoin the accursed skeleton in the deep.
Of All Possible Worlds
Eneasz Brodski
My heart plummeted to my sandals.
“Titus…” My throat tightened, strangling my words. “This isn’t what I was expecting… ”
The Ludus Matutinus trained and housed the Bestiarii gladiators, as well as the animals they slaughtered. In its stables, I gazed down at a wretched human form chained in a dusty cart. A stunted thing, barely four feet tall, with knobby joints and not a single hair upon him. His wrinkled skin was scrawled with tattooed lines, cutting him into odd segments. He was the furthest thing from a horned, six-legged bear I could imagine.
“You promised me a horned, six-legged bear,” I protested. I could see Titus’s face grow dark, and fear crawled up my spine. If I could make him laugh… “He’s ugly enough, but Gracus was really excited about that horn thing —”
Titus’s open hand struck below my temple. The pain wasn’t as bad as the humiliation, the knowledge that he could do what he wanted with me.
“You forget your place, Marad.” He spit out my foreign name. “There weren’t any giant bears. This barbarian wizard will do.”
He would not do. Gracus had charged me with procuring beasts for the games. All damn year I’d been waiting for that bear. The legion had returned with plenty of regular, boring animals, but the horned bear was to be the centerpiece. I’d promised Gracus a monster battle.
“I can’t pay for this,” I said, avoiding Titus’s eyes. Looking lower. He was clean-shaven, as befitted his station, and my own salt-and-pepper beard felt all the more damning in contrast. He stepped forward purposefully, one hand resting on his sword’s pommel, the other pressing flat against my chest. He pushed, following as I retreated, until I was up against the stable wall. His breath assaulted me, inches away.
“You’ll pay full price,” he rumbled.
“Guards!” My voice broke, the bastards were standing right there. They marched over but didn’t lift a hand to restrain him. It didn’t matter that Gracus paid them to protect me. In the weighing of Roman Centurion versus Jewish Slave, there was no contest.
Titus grinned and ran his hand down my chest, to my belt, and slipped his fingers into my money pouch. I turned my face aside, praying my bladder would hold. He fished out several denarii.
“I’ll be back for the rest.”
A moment later he was gone, and I was sliding to the floor, trembling. The so-called wizard in the cart wheezed out laughter. I glared at him. His mocking eyes met mine, a glimmer of madness flashing behind them.
“Go ahead and laugh,” I muttered. “You’ll be dead soon enough.”
I gave the diminutive barbarian to Balthar to put into one of his dwarf fights. I regretted it by the next morning. With his flattened head and hunched form, the savage looked more like a poor Scythian monkey than a human. He couldn’t be blamed for his insult any more than an animal could.
The festivities were midway through their first day. The morning’s beast shows were over, but I stayed at the Colosseum, waiting for the noon spectacle. I had a duty to watch the barbarian die, the way I watched each of my animals die. Someone should witness their passing, and mourn it. Someone should counterweigh those cheers.
When the tattooed form of the savage was thrust onto the arena floor, it was with two dozen other dwarves, all armed with tiny stilettos. Opposite them stood two gladiators, one armed with a spear and shield, the other with a massive battle-axe. It was to be a slaughter then.
“I am sorry,” I whispered toward the old barbarian. He couldn’t hear me, of course; this was for my benefit. I spoke these words to every animal I sent to its death. “You must die so that I may live. I don’t ask your forgiveness; this is the way of life. But know I wish this world was different.”
As the savage stumbled out from the overhang of the Colosseum’s walls and saw the open sky above him, his mouth curled up into a shit-eating grin. As the dwarves charged forward, he fell back, fingers tearing at his leathery skin. My eyes darted to the melee. The first gladiator stepped directly into the oncoming tide of dwarves, swinging his battle-axe double-handed. It sheared the head from the first small man, cleaved through the torso of a second, before embedding itself halfway through the ribcage of a third. The gladiator roared as he jerked the axe loose, splitting the small body like a log as it came free.
Darkness flickered at the edge of my vision. A shadow swooped through the air, movement where there should be none. I strained to look at it but there was nothing to focus on. An inexplicable presence descended to the savage’s side, and as it touched the sand, it finally resolved into a discrete thing with surfaces and heft.
Its body was that of an ox-sized crow, but bare of any feathers. Black skin stuck tightly to jutting bones. A jagged beak took up the entire face, its upper mandible curving down from the top of the skull. The wings consisted of long arms webbed to the body in the manner of bats. Cricket-like legs folded beneath it.
The Colosseum grew still. Even the gladiators gaped at this intruder. With a shout of glee, the barbarian wizard hopped on the monster’s back, throwing his arms around its neck. It leapt upward with a beating of its wings, a deafening squawk piercing the sky.
Bellowing a challenge, the first gladiator sprang forward and hurled his battle-axe overhand. It spun over the mass of dwarves, and crushed one monstrous wing at the shoulder joint. The beast screamed and spiraled to the ground. The impact threw the wizard from its back. Thick black liquid spilled from the wound, and the perfume of rotting corpses filled the air.
The monster was immediately back on its feet. It pounced, clawed wings flashing, and crashed into the unarmed warrior before he could react. He toppled backward, and sinking its talons into his stomach, it kicked out, disemboweling him. A roar of delight from the crowd. The second gladiator was already charging.
His spear skewered it, plunging between neck and shoulder, into the body. He withdrew the weapon as the monster reared up, screaming. A lunging thrust and the spear pierced up under its beak, into what would be the brain in any normal animal. Black oil rolled down the shaft, dropped in gooey clumps to the sand. The thing shuddered, then collapsed to the Colosseum floor.
The stadium erupted in cheers. I grabbed the nearest guard.
“Get that wizard!” I hissed. “Get him out of there right now. He mustn’t be harmed!”
Nearby I saw the Emperor stand, then point down at the monster’s corpse. A demanding motion. It was being retrieved for him. Its nightmarish essence seeped into the city’s air. I doubted he would be satisfied with only one such performance — my life depended on how fast I could get that wizard to the healers.