Flesh Gambit Read online

  He said The Word that he had lied and stolen and murdered to obtain, and sealed his soul to the black device. He felt the metal vibrate in his frantic grip like a tuning fork. A flash of heat and light snapped out around him, and his attackers were thrown clear. The Sphere leapt from his hand, screaming with banshee intensity, and it felt as if his guts were attached to it by metal hooks.

  Khat screamed at the intensity of the pain, of the agony. Even as he screamed, helpless in the face of torture, the Sphere spun under the power of its weird. Its spinning violence lashed through flesh and ripped it apart with a living ferocity. A tornado of flesh and blood, gut and bone flew through the air, splashing bodies and walls.

  Through it all Khat screamed.

  He saw the heads of guardsmen detached with ragged, haphazard indifference. Sheára, stumbling on her ruined legs, was sliced through her breasts until her torso slid off her body at a sharp angle. The spinning, screaming Sphere tore through Abraxsis’ back and straight out the front of the Herald. It severed so many bones in the Caliph that the walking corpse drooped like a jellyfish washed up on the shore.

  Khat felt each puncture, each rend and tear that his mystic weapon inflicted. It was an unending torture, but even as the agony of the death-dealing mutilation racked his body, Khat bathed in an oily feeling of fullness that engorged him. He felt arcane energies feeding him, making him stronger as he cannibalized the living energy being ripped from the animated corpses. It went on until he was fairly drunk and he knew without questions that if he were to unleash the Sphere on the truly living that he would feed on them like the vampire or the succubus.

  His pain was unbearable. He flopped on the ground, helpless in the face of the power that fed him and the price it demanded. He felt each rip and slice, each stabbing wound, each cut and stab, until he thought his flesh would simply fly off his body, ripped apart like sailors in the teeth of hungry sharks.

  Then it was over.

  He gasped and felt his heart lurch painfully in his chest. He sat up, body slick with sweat under the paint of gore. The Sphere now inexplicitly clutched tightly in his massive fist was icy cold despite the fever pitch of his own grip.

  Like a man in an opium fugue, Khat staggered up to his feet. The pain had simply stopped and now he fairly thrummed with the power he had leeched. He kicked his way clear of the bodies and parts of bodies like a man breaking trail through a swamp. He was coated with bits of flesh like soggy parchment and crimson from head to toe, his hair clotted with blood and bits of bone.

  Giddy with the intoxication of his murders, Khat made his way to the window. He stopped and picked up Abraxsis’ glaive. He leaned against it, one hand still clutching the Sphere. He knew he had found the answer. Found the key to the pathway of revenge he had blazed out for himself so long ago in Primus.

  Khat went over the balcony and landed on the deck of his ship. He looked over at the slave girl. She stood naked at the tiller and held the sunship with a steady hand. She stood with feet spread wide in confidence at her new command. The wind off the sea played her hair behind her like a tattered banner. She met his gaze without flinching, unmoved by the blood that dripped with his every step and breath.

  “What is your name, woman,” Khat demanded.

  “Annja,” she answered.

  “Take me over the sea and away from the place, navigator.”

  “Aye.”

  Smoothly the sunship rotated under her sure hand and slid out away from the highest tower in Gomorrah. Annja’s eyes were a fierce blaze as she exercised her power. Khat turned his face into the breeze and he couldn’t wipe the smile from his face.

  I’m coming, he warned. Let the mighty tremble, he felt himself laughing, the son of Primus rises and the works of man done in Her name will fall.

  Gomorrah, Tiered City, shrank behind him as he sped for the sun hanging low over the ocean. Beneath him the shadow of his sunship slid across the waves as he ran.

  About the Author

  Mark Adam is the working pseudonym for a prolifically published traditional author. Flesh Gambit is a conscious effort to mix traditional Sword & Sorcery with the new brand of fantasy erotica currently popular.