“You! I need you!”
Edulcore Cicciotto turned on his feet, the hawk-bill axe dripping blood of disgusting, slimy animals from the underground, summoned by Godbolt from forgotten realms. In front of him was standing the mage, Ghaelon, pointing his index finger at him.
“Me? What do you want from me, mage?”
“Your help. To turn the tide.”
Euro frowned.
“Look!” The finger of the mage was pointing at the zombie forces, at all the undead things, men, animals and other beings, whose corpses rised at the call of Gaovulte. Or Grimm’s. “They keep coming. Millions more, lying under the surface, can still awake. You must stop those things!”
“Me? You are mad, wizard?!”
“Those are mindless beings, answering to the call of the one which yells louder. Godbolt or Grimm, there would be no difference. Both seeks power. They are hungry for power. You must stop this. You who know that lust…”
Euro was hammering madly one of the crocodile, while listening at the mage. When the croc finally died, he turned red in face to Ghaleon. “How I can tell you! I don’t know how I could command to those zombie! It’s something I never did. In all my lifes!”
The mage shook his head. “I didn’t ask you that. No one could overcome the call of those two. I want to give freedom of though to those zombie, so that they can choose to rebel to Godbolt. Or Grimm.”
“What do you mean, mage?”
“We need to ask to the souls of those men to rejoin their bodies, and stop to answer the call.”
“What do you mean? What I have to do? Speak wizard, stop with the riddles!” Euro was enraged, as the possible way to end that madness was beginning to surface in his mind.
“You went in the Land of the Dead so many time in your previous life. As Gilgamesh, Ulysses, Morpheus, Aeneas… so many others, so many times… return there, and bring back the souls!”
“I… I need the pass! Every time a pass is needed!” Euro was yelling like mad, scared and excited by the mission, as the different memories of hundred of different past lifes were mixing in his brain to create a cohesive vision of the way to the Elysean fields.
“I have the pass, Champion!” said Ghaleon, smiling. And from under his mantle produced a gleaming, long sword.
“LADNIKIA!” shouted Euro, at the sight of the sword. “But… that’s impossible! It has been destroyed!”
“It has. It will be. It never have been… who knows? Where are we? The past, the future, another place… Ladnikia baffles these very concepts. She lives outside time and space. Living embodiment of weapon and of man’s lust for power and war. She is every blade that has been forged. Sword of the champion AND of the adversary, enemy of herself, one, no one and one hundred thousands.
Take it, Eternal Champion!”
“It will be my damnation…”
“It will be the salvation of this land!” said firmly Ghaleon.
“I cant…”whispered Euro, but his hand, like moved by a proper will, went to the blade’s phallic hilt.
And grasped it.
The Raptor spouted his feathers, and raised Ladnikia once again, like he raised a sword thousands of times for each of his thousands lives.
“Death to Godbolt!” he shouted.
And disappeared.
Ghaleon smiled, and then morphed back into the form of Califron, the cursed warlock of Godbolt!
