The Stygian, Xultak Setis, turned a slow circle and took in the full horror of the Desecrated City of Thogani. It was… exhilarating. And here he was, right in the center of it after days of travel all the way from Pellor, across the Farfall Mountains, and through the unpredictable, ever-shifting landscape of Qlippoth. It was a journey that would have cowed even the hardiest of adventurers, but not Xultak. He’d been spawned in Qlippoth. His people were attuned to its ways.
Carcasses littered the ground for miles in every direction—birds, rodents, things with two heads, some with three. Those that weren’t already skeletons were stiff and moldering, rank with decay, save for the few that looked fresh. No indication of what had killed them. It gave the impression that mere contact with the city’s buildings had been enough to snuff out whatever life they had once enjoyed.
And what buildings they were: vast structures of obsidian fronted with intricately carved bas-reliefs depicting pain and suffering in all its multifarious guises. There were shaded cloisters, colonnaded walkways, aqueducts long since dried up that had once fed every section of Thogani—not water, he’d been led to believe. Blood. An endless supply that had still not been enough to sate the appetite of the Witch Queen, Hekata N’Gat, who had ruled the city in life and still did so long after death.
Xultak raised his hand to gaze once more at the Witch Queen’s ring upon his finger. It glinted red in the light of the setting suns. He still couldn’t believe he’d actually paid the homunculus Shadrak for delivering it. Usually, Xultak saw no point keeping his end of the bargain. Indeed, it was part of the fun watching the look of betrayal on his accomplices’ faces, followed by shock when he made clear his intentions to eat them. The thought of homunculus flesh washed down with a bottle of two thousand year-old Arnochian mead still made him salivate, but there had been something about Shadrak the Unseen that had given Xultak pause. Something dangerous.
It was of no matter. He had what he wanted, and the few hundred denarii he’d paid for the job seemed suddenly trivial now that he had arrived at his destination. He knew Hekata N’Gat would be here, waiting for him. His blood tingled with the desire to embrace her and enter into her eternal dominion over Thogani, where he would be king to her queen.
The ring had shown him as much each night he’d worn it to his bed. Such dreams it had bestowed upon him, of lying with the Witch Queen in all her exotic beauty. How they’d taken pleasure in each other’s bodies, then after each coupling they had supped on each other’s blood.
They had become one in his dreams, for all eternity, and now they were to become one in reality. Xultak could barely suppress the urge to howl for her, to scream her name until she came running. So strong was the lingering scent of her from his dreams, she could have been standing beside him right now: roses and musk and something else delightfully sweet. As he remembered her satin skin pressed against his, relived each sensuous touch, each brush of her luscious lips, he became aware that her perfumed scent wasn’t just a memory: it was here in the Desecrated City, rising above the pervading stench of decay. His nostrils flared as he drew it in, and he began to follow it to its source.
Xultak passed in near delirium along a broad avenue flanked by statues of winged beasts and gigantic skeletons carved from obsidian. At its far end he climbed gleaming black steps all the way to a dark pyramid. Ebon pillars stood either side of the gaping entrance. Set back a way inside was the statue of a beautiful woman upon a throne—a human, long hair bound up into horns, a jagged crown upon her head. It was her, Hekata N’Gat, just as she’d appeared in his dreams!
Unable to contain himself, Xultak ran to the statue and flung himself at its feet. He felt certain that if he prayed hard enough, if he pleaded and begged, the obsidian it was cast from would crack and the Witch Queen would rise from the throne to smother him with hot kisses. So much did he desire her, did he need to feel her in the flesh, that Xultak was drenched with sweat, and his limbs began to tremble. He raised his eyes to check, but the statue was still just a statue. He let out a long and anguished groan then stood.
A heady rush of scent came from deeper inside the pyramid. Xultak followed it along a shadow-black passageway until he reached the first of many flights of rough-cut steps. He ascended them interminably as they twisted and turned through level after level, until finally, bone-weary but still driven, he emerged into a chamber that must have been close to the apex.
There was no other way in or out that he could see. It was a plain room, box-shaped, walls of green-veined black stone lit by some hidden radiance. At the center of the chamber sat a four-poster bed with closed drapes the consistency of cobwebs. They might even have been cobwebs, thick and dusty with age. Through them, seated on the bed, facing him, he could see the silhouette of a woman.
Xultak gasped. His heart pounded a fierce tattoo in his chest. He raised his be-ringed hand—his claim on her—as he crossed to the bed and parted the drapes. Strands of web clung to his fingers, but he barely noticed. He had already envisioned the beauty he was about to behold, and nothing was going to distract him.
Only…
It took long seconds for Xultak’s mind to register what it was seated on the bed, and when it did, the disconnect unmanned him. It was Hekata N’Gat, he was sure of it, though her face was desiccated, leathery, flaking away. From the neck down she was mummified in mildewed wrappings that smelled as rank as they looked. Gone was the cloying scent that had summoned him, replaced by the odor of the grave.
He wanted to back away, but invisible hooks snagged him deep in the guts. When he tried to avert his gaze he found he could not move his head. In desperation, he reached into his mind for his sorcery, but it slipped like sand through his fingers.
The Witch Queen’s eyes flared into sudden life—burning emeralds that seared deep into his soul. Sorcerous energy fled through the pores of Xultak’s skin, drawn to those unnatural eyes like iron filings to a magnet. He felt diminished as she drank upon the essence that defined him as a Stygian, his innate magical abilities that had granted him such dominance in Pellor. Again he tried to back away, but she held him locked in some kind of paralysis.
As the last of Xultak’s sorcery left him, the Witch Queen stood from the bed. The emerald glow of her eyes now suffused her mummified body; somehow it seemed to animate her.
Xultak’s skull was close to bursting with the need to scream as Hekata N’Gat wrapped him in a chill embrace. Insects crawled across Xultak’s skin. The Witch Queen lifted his hand and worked her ring from his finger, slipped it on her own.
And then she pressed her face up to his. Bile rose in Xultak’s throat at the suffocating closeness of her stench. She opened cracked lips. Something writhed within her stub-toothed mouth—a black tongue furred with yellowish mold.
No! Xultak screamed inside his head. No, no, no!
And then the Witch Queen kissed him…