Deiparian Saga, Book 2
Epic Fantasy / Post-Apocalyptic
Date Published: 11-01-2022
Publisher: BHC Press
In a post-apocalyptic world where tyranny and medieval torture reign
supreme and witch burnings are an everyday occurrence, a top Witchfinder
must confront the very Church he serves when he learns of its dark past and
twisted plans for the future.
With the Fifth Order in complete control of the Church of the Deiparous,
Malachi Thorne and his friends must find “the Flame,” a powerful
weapon which may be the only chance they have of halting the evil of the
Crimson Fathers.
As they navigate the Tex’ahn lands and work with the resistance,
Thorne discovers a devastating secret that may destroy them all and
everything they have worked for.
Filled with swift action, unusual creatures, dungeon crawls, and an
engaging cast of characters, The Crimson Fathers is a must-read for fans of
epic fantasy and post-apocalyptic fiction.
EXCERPT
Thorne knew the guards were still pursuing them. They were not going to give up just because their quarry had gone down a tunnel. He resumed walking. It occurred to him that if someone could map these passages, the freedom fighters could make good use of them. It would be an excellent way of moving around the city unobserved. He tried to think if he knew someone in the Cartulian Order he could trust—someone who might know something about the tunnels or could help make a serviceable map.
Amelia tapped his arm.
“What?”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “You didn’t answer when I called you.”
“My apologies. Just lost in my head.”
She pointed into the blackness. “We’re coming to a big opening.”
He looked, even though he knew he could not see beyond the light of their torches.
“How far?”
She shrugged. “Sixty, maybe seventy feet?”
Thorne glanced back at Tua and Teska. “Keep your weapons ready. And watch our backs. We don’t want to get ambushed from behind.”
They crept forward again, the smoke continuing to lead them. The foul odor—like fishy mud and decay—grew stronger. Thorne thought it seemed brighter up ahead. As they reached the opening, he saw why. There were phosphorescent fungi everywhere. It clung to the walls, offering them ghostly translucent light. It covered boulders, and patches dotted the tunnel floor.
And the buildings in front of them.
Thorne stopped. His eyes widened, and his mouth fell open. He stared in disbelief.
“It’s a— It’s a city.” Amelia gasped.
Tua and Teska stepped up beside them.
“Damn, would you look at that,” Teska said in surprise.
“A city,” Thorne whispered. In the peculiar light, his face seemed to glow with amazement. So it was true after all!
Stalactites hung from the ceiling like fangs. The sickly green light created a disorienting, alien panorama. Parts of pre-Cataclysm buildings the color of turds leaned like gravestones. Their tops disappeared into the earthen roof of the cavern. Rows of sagging windows showed only darkness inside. Entire walls had collapsed, and piles of rubble lay in what had once been streets. Rusted shells of auto-mobiles sat here and there, half buried in rock and debris. Two parallel rusted rails lay in grooves down the middle of one street. Water dripped in soft, hollow plops.
The forgotten city sprawled throughout the cavern. They could vaguely see more buildings in the distance. How far it spread beneath Attagon was anybody’s guess. Their footsteps were drumbeats in a mausoleum. The light from their torches sent shadows crawling over stones, doorways and twisted signs, whose messages had long been erased. A series of rocks, too crude to be called steps, led down a few feet into the city. The tunnel continued to their left, winding farther away into the earth.
For several moments, no one spoke. They stood transfixed, gawking in awe at the ancient ruins of yesteryear. It was Tua who broke the silence, his breath forming wispy clouds.
“The guards are coming.”
“Any idea how close they are?” Thorne asked.
“Five minutes, give or take?”
Thorne looked at the passageway to his left, then back at the undercity. He stepped onto the first rock.
“What’re you doing?” Teska asked
He moved down to the next rock. “Hiding,” he said over his shoulder.
“Have you lost your mind? We need to get the hells out of here!” Her voice had grown in volume as she spoke. The last few words drifted back as echoed frustration.
“They are getting closer,” Tua reported.
“Yes, hiding,” Thorne said. “They’ll think we kept to the passageway. We can wait for them to pass.”
“And what if they come down there looking for us?” she snapped.
Thorne smiled. Teska Vaun might have black hair, but there was no covering up her redheaded ferocity. “If they come down, which I don’t think they will, we’ll have the element of surprise. We can choose the best place to make a stand, if necessary.”
“Did you eat crazy bread for supper?”
Tua followed Thorne. Teska looked back into the tunnel. She cursed, motioned Amelia ahead of her and joined the procession down into the silent, freezing necropolis.
Thorne had never imagined a city actually existed beneath Attagon. When he was small, he had wondered what such a city would be like. But as he got older, he came to believe—as adults do when they lose their childhood curiosity—that it was all just a myth. Tunnels for Church officials to move about unseen, he could accept. But an entire city, fallen and forgotten beneath the streets? That simply was not possible.
And yet here he was, staring at the impossible as he stepped off the last rock and onto a street that had not seen the sun in well over a thousand years. Probably more. Tavern talk claimed that Attagon rested atop a pre-Cataclysm city once known as Chattanga or Chantoga or Chantanooga or something like that. As the River Tense rose and fell and flooded over the years, the land around it shifted and sunk. After centuries of silt deposits, sinkholes, erosion and earth turbulence, the lower part of the old city disappeared. And every few hundred years, the city streets had been raised, regardless of whatever was below them. Overhead, Attagon still had the remains of some of its pre-Cataclysm structures. But down here, the foundation of the city dug its roots into a bygone era.
Thorne led them quickly but carefully into the city. He avoided areas where they might leave footprints that would give them away. It felt like walking through a mummified corpse. The death that surrounded them was so archaic that it had crumbled to dust, ground into powder for the earth to reclaim. They were in the midst of atrophied history.
As they picked their way around rubble that was antediluvian when the first Heiromonarch was chosen, small creatures fled in all directions. Most were rats, sleek and dark, their eyes glinting blue in the abnormal light of torch and lichen. Thorne preferred not to guess what they lived on down here. The creatures disappeared into the numerous piles of rubble, avoiding the large holes that speckled the ground. Each hole was about a foot in diameter and sank straight into the ground. He recoiled from the first one he bent over to inspect. The stench of rotted meat rose from it.
“Keep your eyes open,” he instructed as he gave each hole a wide berth.
A few insects skittered from the invading torchlight, but most were dormant until warmer weather returned. There were plenty of cockroaches, however, and again Thorne was clueless as to what they found to eat. They were unafraid of the torchlight, probably because they lived in this half-lit world. This was their domain, and they did not scatter like those above. Thorne’s boots crunched them into gooey smears when they moved too slowly.
They saw an occasional snakeskin, cracked and flaky white, but it was too cold for them now. Bats screeched and took flight whenever the group ranged too close to a building. Their leathern wings sounded like rain as columns of them spiraled up into the darkness.
Crumbling buildings like decayed teeth stood to their right and left. Some leaned; some had collapsed into their foundations. Once-stout wooden walls were reduced to pulp or desiccated by vermin. Arches had collapsed. Once-decorative millwork had rotted away. Rusted pipes crossed overhead or simply ended in midair. Gritty sand mixed with the stone and dirt, indicating that at some point it had been used to fill in depressions or shore up foundations. Bricks lay scattered about, the mortar on them having turned to powder ages ago. Ice filled the mudholes and potholes.
They found bones here and there. Most were from cats, raccoons and rats. They did see an occasional human skull or ribcage. Aside from the stench rising from the holes, the place smelled like a muddy riverbank.
Not surprising, Thorne thought, considering how easily the river floods.
“In here,” Thorne said. He pointed toward a building with arched windows. They navigated over detritus and slipped inside the hollowed-out framework. Then they waited.
Not long after, they heard voices. Thorne peered through a hole in what remained of a wall. A knot of constables and deputies emerged from the tunnel. They halted and looked around, dumbfounded. Two Crusaders pushed through them.
Thorne motioned for everyone to stay low and remain quiet. He had been sweating while they walked but now found himself shivering. He dug his hands deeper into his coat pockets. Thanks to the acoustics of the cavern, he had no trouble hearing their pursuers.
“What in all the bleedin’ hells is that?”
“By the Church…”
“…bloody cold down here.”
“…it’s a bunch a buildin’s!”
One Crusader turned to the stunned Churchmen. “Silence!” His voice tolled like a death knell and echoed back.
“You think they’re down there?”
“Go back, all of you,” the second Crusader said. “Return to the surface.”
A brown-skinned deputy with long black hair looked at him. “Whatta ya mean go back?”
“Go back. That’s an order. We’ll follow them from here.”
“The hells you will!” someone said. “We gotta run those thieves down!”
Cockroaches scurried around and over Thorne’s boots.
Teska, Tua and Amelia were out of sight but positioned so they could see what was happening.
The Crusaders grew irritated. The first backhanded the brown-skinned deputy, sending him careening against the rock wall. The second Crusader slid the broadsword from the scabbard across his back.
“Never question our orders!” he barked. “Do as you are told, or I will gut you where you stand.”
“You shits!” a tall deputy exclaimed. “We ain’t afraid of you! There’s four times as many of us as there be of you.”
The second Crusader swung the sword as if it weighed no more than a quill pen. The blade finished its arc, trailing blood. The tall deputy’s head struck the floor, bounced and rolled down the stone steps. The first giant unsheathed his sword and leveled it at a constable’s midsection.
“Go,” he growled, “while you still have life in you. We will track the fugitives.”
Grumbling, but not too loudly, the men gathered up the corpse. One went to retrieve the head. The first Crusader held the constable at sword point. The other cleaned his blade.
“Ye going down in there?” a different constable asked. He was sufficiently out of sword range.
“No need,” the Crusader said. “They will have stayed with the passageway.”
“Begging yer pardon, but how do ye know? There’s a million hiding—”
A scream reverberated throughout the necropolis.
Everyone except the Crusaders flinched.
The deputy who had picked up the head was entangled in what appeared to be roots coming out of the ground.
“That’s why,” the second Crusader said as he watched without emotion.
The deputy screamed again. Then Thorne realized they were not roots.
They were tentacles.
Dozens of them wrapped the deputy as he continued to shriek. More tentacles encircled his torso and legs. His arms were pinned to his body. Between screams there was a moist, slurping noise.
A constable started toward the stone steps, but the first Crusader stopped him with a hand on the chest. “No,” he said, his voice detached and hollow. “He is already dead. You go down there, you will be as well.”
“B-But we can’t just leave ’im t-to that!”
By now the deputy’s agonized shrieks had become hiccupping squeals. More tentacles latched on to his body.
The creatures the tentacles were attached to wiggled out of the holes. They were like earthworms, pale white in color, almost transparent, and reeked of putrefaction. Thorne had heard of them before but had never seen one in person. He estimated them to be two to four feet in length. Shiny, viscous slime covered their ringed bodies. Fifteen or twenty of them slithered toward their catch, their tentacles stuck to every available piece of skin. They had no eyes, only lamprey-like mouths nestled inside the ring of tentacles.
“You cannot save him,” the Crusader reiterated to the assembled Churchmen.
“What the fuck are those bleedin’ things!”
The first Crusader sheathed his sword. “They are called Galorme. ‘Madworms,’ by their more common name.”
The deputy continued to twitch but made no further noise. More Galorme surfaced. Tentacles quested here and there. Thorne held his nose and breathed through his mouth.
“M-Madworms?” Amelia whispered to Teska.
“Move out!” the second Crusader yelled. The men took their headless colleague and retreated into the tunnel. The two Crusaders turned and continued forward into the other passageway.
Thorne silently counted to a hundred before moving. His knees hurt from crouching. Tua indicated that he heard nothing beyond the squelching and sucking of the worms.
“I-I have never seen anything such as this,” Tua mumbled. He buried his nose in the crook of his arm.
“Me neither,” Amelia said, horrified. Even in the phosphorescent light, she looked pale. “Wh-What are those things?”
Thorne rubbed his knees before straightening up. He sounded funny as he tried to talk without breathing through his nose. “Like he said, they’re known as Galorme, but people usually just call them madworms.”
Tua frowned. “Why madworms?”
Several of the creatures slithered toward a black opening beneath a rubble pile. A dozen or more worked together, using some of their tentacles to drag the deputy’s body. They quested along the ground, feeling their way toward the gaping hole as effortlessly as if they could see it.
Thorne paused and swallowed. The back of his throat tasted like phlegm, and he felt his stomach roll. He used the fingers on one hand to block his nostrils.
“It’s because of what they do to their prey,” he said.
More tentacles appeared from beneath the debris, guiding the body down into the earth. Thorne closed his eyes when he heard a faint moan as the deputy slipped out of sight.
“Oh my God!” Amelia cried. “H-He’s still alive!”
Thorne nodded. “Madworms drain most of the blood from their prey. Then they take them into their warrens. They’ll”—he cleared his throat—“they’ll keep him alive and incubate their young inside his body. When the offspring are old enough, they’ll…chew their way out.”
Amelia gagged and covered her mouth.
“And their prey remains alive the whole time?” Tua asked. Even his tanned complexion had lost color.
“Once a madworm starts drawing blood, they inject a kind of paralyzing poison. Victims can’t move, but they can see and hear and feel everything that’s happening to them. That’s why they’re called madworms. Their prey goes insane long before they ever die.”
Amelia turned away. She bent over with her hands on her knees and vomited.
“It’s a cruel, vicious form of death,” Thorne agreed. “But madworms aren’t intelligent. They’re simple creatures, like ants or birds. It’s just their way of surviving.”
“Yeah, nasty way of doing it,” Teska said.
Amelia shrieked. She stood trembling, finger pointing toward the archway they had used to get into the building.
Dozens of madworms crawled over stones and debris toward them, leaving pearly trails behind them.
Amelia screamed again, hands clenched in front of her mouth. She remained frozen as the foul-smelling things wiggled closer. Thorne moved across the rubble to help her. As he did, a deep rumbling came from beneath his feet.
“Shit!” He threw himself forward.
The rumbling grew louder. Stones grated together. The ground shook. A loud crash blasted through the cavern. The place where Thorne had just stood collapsed. The gaping pit sucked in rotted wood, stones, bits of metal and everything else nearby.
Thorne hit the debris hard, knocking the breath from his lungs. His hand flew open, and his sword clattered down the newly opened slope and into the sinkhole. The sound of tumbling rocks echoed from below. Dirt billowed in the air. Thorne lay on his back, holding his chest, mouth working like a fish.
Teska and Tua grabbed Amelia’s arms. They pulled her back and away from the madworms. More slithered through the arch.
Teska leaned out a window. Madworms crawled from their holes, tentacles flailing. She knelt beside Thorne. “Are you okay? Can you get up?”
He wheezed an acknowledgement, but she had to help him. More debris tumbled into the sinkhole.
“Back against the wall!” Tua yelled. He extended his arm for Teska to steady herself and Thorne. Amelia cowered behind him.
Thorne finally pulled in a lungful of the rancid-tasting air into his lungs. “D-Damn it! L-Lost my sword—”
“Never mind,” Teska said. “Head that way.” She pointed to the right. There was enough room to navigate the edge of the sinkhole and keep them away from the madworms. She led the way, Thorne at her back, Amelia behind him. Tua brought up the rear.
They climbed through a window on the other side of the building. There were no worms here, so they hurried down the buckled street.
Behind them, the rumbling came again, louder this time. The ground shook so hard it threw them off their feet. Rocks and dirt rained from the darkness overhead. Bats flitted and screeched through the air. The ground kicked and groaned. The building behind them shuddered and broke apart, collapsing into the hole with ear-splitting finality.
Coughing dust from their lungs, everyone stood and surveyed the damage. Nothing remained of the building except a handful of stones on top of one another. The pulped, glistening bodies of madworms writhed and twitched throughout the rubble, their stench even more abominable in death. A hole at least a hundred feet across blocked their path back to the safe room.
“Come on,” Thorne said, wiping cold dirt off his hands. “That’s bound to have alerted those Crusaders. We need to find another way out of here. Fast.”
About the Author
My first novel, “The Witchfinder,” was released on September 23,
2021 by BHC Press, and was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. It is the first
installment in my Deiparian Saga trilogy. The second book, “The Crimson
Fathers,” was released on November 1, 2022; the final installment,
“Bane of the Witch,” is slated for release sometime in 2024. BHC
Press has also contracted to publish my horror novel “With a Blighted
Touch” (working title) in 2023.
I have written two non-fiction books: “Carrying on the Mission of
Jesus: Rediscovering the Mission, Identity and Purpose of the Church”
(2013, Dove Publishing) and “Bullied! Confronting and Overcoming Six
Major Obstacles to Church Effectiveness” (2016, eLectio Publishing),
and regularly contribute Blu ray reviews for “Screem”
magazine.
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