Maal The First Skull- Shadows of the Mind Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Dedication2

  Pronunciations

  The Nail

  I

  C

  A

  N

  O

  N

  L

  Y

  H

  The Nail

  A

  T

  E

  M A A L

  The First Skull:

  Shadows of the Mind

  Theodore J. Packwood

  Copyright © 2014 Theodore J. Packwood

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 978-1-943844-83-8

  For my brother,

  Kirk,

  who never got the chance to fulfill his dreams.

  This is mine.

  To the Writer’s Group, spawned from a single writing workshop, on Saturday during Minnesota’s bleak, cold February: this work was a crude pile of sludge, until you helped me fashion it into something amazing. You have my eternal gratitude.

  Ceridwen Christensen

  Esther Rodriguez

  David Earl Whitaker

  Enough credit cannot be given to my beta-readers. Without them, this book would have been a far lesser thing:

  Keith Becker

  Matthew Greseth

  Kimberly Kairies

  Jeanne Dolan Markell

  Sheila Packwood

  Jenna Troska

  Those who supported in other ways, whose encouragement and support is undeniable:

  Matthew W. Packwood

  Sheila Packwood

  Virginia M. Packwood

  William T. Packwood III

  Author’s Pronunciations

  Maal = Maul

  (major characters, in order of appearance)

  Jilii = jil-ee

  eXia = Ex-ee-yah

  eXiaxana = Ex-ee-yahk-zah-nah

  oXellona = Ox-el-loh-nah

  aXarelle= Ax-ah-rel

  Tchurn = “Churn” with “tch”

  Erigg = Air-ig

  Reze’ = Reh-zay

  (races)

  uXulu = Ux-oo-loo

  T h e N a i l

  They are going to kill you again!

  The thought pierced into the depths of my madness. The ocean of insanity was a cold darkness and an endless echo of murmurs: a discomforting shelter from the hopeless war.

  But not impenetrable.

  They are going to kill you again, Maal! cried Amber, her little girl voice engorged with distress.

  The voice dragged me, violently unwilling, to the surface of the ocean.

  “Kill me again?” I wondered, unable to comprehend the warning.

  I struggled to return to the depths, but failure was imminent.

  Maal! shouted Amber, terrified. I do not like it when you die!

  Pain snatched me out of the ocean as a long needle punctured the left side of my abdomen. I hissed as the pain sparked and burned.

  Will you scream, Maal? asked Tawny, her blithe voice steeped with teasing. Will you show weakness for them?

  “No,” I rasped. “Not for them.” I grabbed the armored hand that had skewered me, and snarled at the revolting creature.

  Only its lipless mouth was visible. Cadaverous skin was retracted to the gums, exposing bright, angular teeth. Its head was obscured by a smooth, onyx helmet that stretched from nostril to neck. I could see neither ears, nor eyes, nor hair.

  I could see mine, reflected and warped by the curved surface of its helmet. It was an icy face, gashed with sinister, black eyes and shrouded with voluminous, black hair.

  It screamed with furious Hate, and spittle dotted my face. The painful screech left a grimacing mouth and ringing ears in its wake.

  The creature yanked the weapon out of my gut, sliced my left hand, and tugged me forward. I slumped against the haft of an enormous upside-down axe, its blade embedded in bloodless corpses which formed a landscape of white tragedy.

  I needed both hands to catch my fall. My chest heaved, my limbs shook, and sweat formed a slimy layer upon my skin. I tried to spew a curse at the creature, but a cough escaped instead, and I tasted blood.

  “Why am I so consumed?” I managed.

  I shifted as the creature lunged, using the haft to block the needle. The weapon was affixed to the gauntlet on its right hand, finger-thin and forearm-long. I had no weapons; it could stab at me at will. A weapon might not even serve, for a suit of onyx armor covered it, dark and smooth like its helmet. The armor was an ordered set of plates, each quadruple-layered with offset edges.

  Despite the girth from the armor, the creature was abnormally thin. With my long hands I could encompass its waist, and its limbs looked as if they could be readily snapped off. A stump was all that remained of its left arm, leaking dark droplets onto the dead at my feet.

  The needle jabbed to the other side of the haft. I twisted away, but the wound in my abdomen punished me with new arcs of agony. I hissed while it screamed in frustration.

  “I Hate you, as well.”

  I tried to pull the axe out of the ground, but it was immovable. The double-bearded blade came up to my waist, its weight fearsome, its edges sharp and unmarred. The bottoms of the twin blades pointed upward: two lethal points.

  You can not move it, Maal, but it can still be useful, said Cerulean. His voice was that of an aged, raspy scholar.

  I gave the creature a gritty smile, and waited.

  It lunged again, and my hand clamped down upon its gauntlet. I squeezed. The metal cracked and splintered as I crushed armor and bone. It did not cry out, nor even flinch. I pulled its wrist, noticing then the bone-like hooks upon its arms, each thicker than a thumb, each pointing toward the wrist. I dragged the creature toward me until its head was over the blade, put my right hand upon the cool, smooth surface of its helmet and pushed.

  It squirmed and fought, but its strength was petty. Despite trembling arms, I forced the helmet down and down, toward the point of the axe-blade.

  It screeched at me again, one last cry, before I rammed its head onto the point.

  “Die,” I said through clenched teeth.

  Body and armor burst into a dark, oily liquid, splattering the nearby body parts before slithering down between them. No trace of it remained.

  My legs surrendered and I fell to my knees, certain of triumph. Desperate for air, I sucked in huge breaths despite the bitter bite of blood. When my heartbeat finally abandoned its a rapid thump-thump-thump, I took in the massacre.

  I was alone atop a hill of broken, twisted corpses. They were remnants of slaughter; bodies sliced to ruin. No body part had been spared dismemberment: eye sockets gaped from decapitated heads; a sliced-open torso grimaced with exposed ribs like teeth; severed arms and legs were broken or wrenched backward to impossible angles; hands pointed accusations with their remaining digits. Puncture wounds covered every surface, and thick clumps of long, black hair snaked through the wreckage, wrapped about the dead in bloody embrace.

  Worse, this was not a solitary hill. Hills stretched off in every direction, obscured by a distant, leaden mist. There were hundreds of hills of corpses. Millions of bodies!

  “Who killed them all?”

  You killed them, Maal. You did, said Carmine. Her voice was that of a cruel and condescending matron.

  I liked the idea. Perhaps it had been delightful—full of gore and violence, but I could not remember. The place should reek with a tremendous stench, and its absence led me to examine the nearby corpses. Nowhere could I see decay.

  “What is this place?” My voice was strange; it was grating, and carried an al
to disharmony that hurt my ears. My throat burned as I spoke.

  Have you been screaming, Maal? You said you would not, tck-tck, said Tawny.

  There was no one else. I was alone with the voices in my head.

  “Be…” I started, but something vile caught in my throat. I attempted to clear it, but I gagged and bent over, spewing blood.

  My knees had sunk into a pool of it: black blood, thick and gooey. It stuck to my thighs like grasping fingers, the dark digits stark against my chalky skin. Entrails glutted the pool like giant, grey worms, encapsulated by a chest cavity whose broken ribs seemed to clutch at my legs.

  I struggled to escape the vile pool but my legs betrayed me; I could not stand. The wound the creature had delivered screamed in retaliation.

  I clutched at the hole in the side of my abdomen. It exuded blood of same texture of the liquid covering my knees. Not oily, like the creature’s blood, but sticky, like the pool.

  “Is that my blood?” Worried I was further injured, I examined my body. Cuts covered my skin, deep and shallow, some still leaking intricate tributaries of black blood. Puncture marks were also unhealed, their pain sparking as I discovered them. My skin was tight and translucent, as if stretched thin, revealing the veins and corded muscle beneath. I felt engorged with strength, but my frame bore little evidence of that. My arms were…

  There were hooks on my arms, just like the creature’s.

  Large hooks, the size of a curled thumb, unevenly spaced along the outside of my arms. Each one pointed toward my hands: I could rub my hands safely across them from shoulder to wrist, but not in the opposite direction. They were dull and rigid, extruding from beneath the skin like strange claws. I found no hooks upon the remainder of my naked form; it was hairless and smooth, including my…

  What? My cock and balls had been severed! All that remained was a huge gash between my legs!

  I scrabbled around in the dark liquid, finding then discarding slimy chunks of intestine. I emptied the pool of all but blood, splattering myself, and failed to find my genitals.

  With arms elbow-deep in the pool, I paused with sudden confusion. “Did I cut it off?”

  Of course you did, said Carmine.

  It was awful! said Amber.

  As I thought of this, I stared at the pool below my face. I was overcome with thirst, and dunked my face into it. I drank deep, desperate for hydration, choking down the thick liquid that had once kept someone alive. Perhaps this was why I vomited earlier.

  As I fought to keep the blood down, the pool settled, becoming a dark mirror. Arched, black eyebrows made sinister peaks above eyes of solid black. Gaunt cheeks and a thin, narrow mouth led to a smooth, pointed chin. The blood covering the lower half of my face was like a psychotic's warpaint. It was a handsome face, but it bore a malevolence I did not understand.

  Hair poured over my shoulders, some of it wet from falling into the pool. I collected the dense and extensive bundle in my hand as I sat up. The weight of it pulled down over my shoulder to clump atop the pool. Its length was extraordinary; I pulled more and more of it from around my back until I felt a tug at my feet. Twisting at the waist—and enduring the pain—I sought to free the copious strands, but to my surprise it was not caught beneath me. It was attached at the heel.

  Every bunch I pulled forward eventually tugged from the back of one foot or the other. The entirety of this lengthy, thick mane was attached not only at my skull, but also at my heels.

  I had no time to investigate further. A rumble like thunder rolled across the hills, setting off a swell of anxiety I did not understand. The sound came from the direction I faced, but the view was blocked by the axe blade. I meant to look over it, but the weapon was fascinating.

  The stone haft was covered in sharp, red runes which hurt my eyes when I looked upon them. A large gemstone sat atop the upside-down handle, an uncut and jagged chunk of obsidian. The double-blade was a terrible black, a dark metal that not only gleamed but refused to reflect my visage. Tendrils of black smoke spawned from the surface of the blade, creating a shadowy haze around the weapon. No, not smoke. They were slivers of pure darkness, twisting and turning in the air as if in agony before vanishing. The flat part of the blade rippled and roiled as if infirm, but it was unyielding when I touched it with a finger.

  The tip sizzled on contact. I snatched my finger away and shook my hand to alleviate the pain, but it did not. The tip had been obliterated; the area that had made contact with the blade was void of skin and nail, as if sliced off. Black cracks spread down my finger as the pain eclipsed that from all the other wounds on my body. I watched in horror as a small portion of the fingertip turned to dust and fell away, but no more, to my relief. The pain subsided and I tested the finger. It worked, but as I bent it, the intense pain returned and more cracks appeared.

  I had leaned on the haft without consequence, but the blade was deadly. Despite a few moments of intense concentration, I recalled no details of its origin or purpose. It was somehow familiar, but I could not explain why.

  You should pick up the weapon, Maal, said Viridian, with his nasty, high-pitched voice. Soft giggles followed.

  If your weak hands can lift it, said Carmine.

  I grabbed the haft of the axe with both hands, meaning to pull myself up, but my left hand slipped, smearing blood across the raised runes. The blood soaked in where it touched the runes, which began to glow. They flared bright-blue before deepening into black, sinking into the haft as the color shifted.

  My right hand suddenly moved, pulling the handle down. The axe blade rotated as I twisted the weapon, slicing through dismembered parts so easily it began to sink into the pile beneath me. I strained to halt its progress, and was surprised that I could.

  One-handed, I lifted the enormous weapon off the ground.

  I watched from my knees as I waved it overhead; it had become nearly weightless. The blade left wisps of darkness through the air as it devoured light and darkened the area above my head.

  “Incredible,” I said.

  Get up, Maal. The Nail prepares to send forth its creatures again! said Cerulean.

  “The Nail?” My voice had a tremble that I despised.

  The Nail, the Nail, it will make you quail, said Viridian, cackling.

  “Desist!” I told him. I pounded my palms against my forehead, hoping to silence the voices by force.

  I lowered my gaze from the weapon to the view ahead, previously blocked by the axe. By the sudden clench of gut and rapid heartbeat I knew. I knew one thing.

  Fear.

  The ominous tower stretched into the sky, tenfold taller than any single hill, its apex obscured in the mist above. It loomed over the landscape like a colossal monument to an ancient, angry god. The exterior was a dark, dull gray, gouged with scores of giant, irregular pits outlined in rust, like dried blood on unclean wounds. Its girth spanned several hills of bodies, which surrounded it like remnants of dark sacrifice. There were no entrances, nor windows, yet someone had hewn a deep alcove at the base, with no success at obtaining entry. From the base of the hill where I knelt, a flattened area reached to the alcove: a depression of pulverized corpses.

  The ground shook as the tower shuddered, spawning a rumble that rippled across the landscape, disturbing the mounds and creating slides of severed limbs and heads. It struck me like a portent of death: I could not suppress the anxiety that accelerated my breath’s tempo.

  Do you remember, Maal? asked Tawny, teasing.

  “I do not. What is it?”

  With the second quake The Nail will form the boils, said Cerulean. With the third, they will hatch.

  “And then?”

  Then they will kill you.

  The voice amplified my anxiety. Echoes of a nightmare from within the ocean of insanity swelled, fragments of violence and pain, building panic with every breath.

  They are going to kill you again, Maal! quailed Amber.

  Because you are weak, said Carmine.

  I gritte
d my teeth and clenched every muscle, trying to physically squeeze the Fear into submission. “I will not flee. I am not a slave to Fear!” My body refuted the commandment, guts churning in defiance.

  As I struggled to control myself, the tower changed. Dark blobs grew rapidly all over the surface of it, like a sudden, violent rash.

  I was overcome by the ocean of insanity. I was not aware of what happened for a time.

  When I returned from the blackout, my cheeks felt as if they had been clawed, a stinging pain of ten vertical lines. I meant to rub the pain away, but The Nail had completed growing the boils. They were large enough to be man-sized embryos, and in a fashion they were. I knew what squirmed inside.

  Inside were the creatures who Hated me.

  Kill, kill, Maal. Kill them all! shouted Viridian.

  I struggled to vacate the pool, but my feet slipped; my legs were still clumsy. “I can not move!”

  Then you will die, said Carmine. Again.

  No! cried Amber, sounding terrified. No more quakes!

  Like a herald ignored, her demand summoned the final quake. The trembling beneath the hills loosened dismembered corpse parts, which wiggled down their hillsides. I insist there was no accompanying tremble within me.

  The boils burst, spewing black oil and dark figures onto the ground. Within moments they were falling by the dozens, as if the tower was regurgitating a foul meal.

  The creatures thumped to the ground, landing heavily upon one another, on and on, hundreds of them raining down into the depression. As the last of the boils burst, the creatures began to disentangle from each other. Those freed from the pile formed a dense group. Their helmets obscured their faces, but each one had turned its head upward. White teeth gnashed at me.

  The creatures were not perfect copies of each other. Some displayed thicker shoulders, others had shorter stature, while others were thinner. Despite these small differences, I could not otherwise tell them apart; their dark armor and pale mouths were all too similar.