Dreadnaut

By Benjamin Allen

Once again it falls to the great King Elgar to save the universe—or I screwed things up so badly that I have no choice but to save the universe. People started calling me King Elgar after my hero complex when I got stuck with the job of sealing Ryptose the World Ender to the Hell-Sword last October because I’m the only necromancer left in existence.

Speaking of that, did you know every three-hundred years Cthulhu comes back to our universe to parley with the psionic community through a group of necromancers? Me neither. Too bad all the necromancers but fourteen-year-old me are dead. You’d probably hate to be the loser who got stuck having to answer to Cthulhu without any guidance or ability to speak ancient demonic. I’d ask the Holy Council for help, but I’m pretty sure they’re hoping this whole Cthulhu reunion goes sideways; just a feeling.

At least my friends always have my back. Wait till you see Andrew’s new getup. Not saying we’d win in a battle against Cthulhu... but.... How big can Cthulhu actually be anyway?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Benjamin Allen
• Release date: Jun 11, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463119037

Benjamin Allen

Benjamin Allen is a writer, podcaster, and French Horn restoration artist from North Texas. He has been writing for over fifteen years, and has trained and worked in some of the top musical instrument repair facilities in the southern United States. Ben lives with his wife in Fort Worth.

Book preview

Dreadnaut

A Novel

By Benjamin Allen

Smashwords Edition

First American Edition

ISBN: 9780463119037

Copyright © 2019 Benjamin Allen, EK Publishing Media. All Rights Reserved.

This is the second tale in the Hell-Sword Series

Read Book One: The Last Necromancer

Listen to the Apocalypse Theater Podcast!

EK Publishing Media.Com

This eBook is licensed for the personal enjoyment of interested readers. This eBook may not be re-sold for profit, but may be loaned at the purchaser’s discretion. This eBook may be reproduced, copied, and distributed for non-commercial purposes provided the eBook remains in its complete original form and all due credit goes to the original author, Benjamin Allen. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

For Sam,

This One’s For You

And Always For Su

Disclaimer

This novel does not promise a happy ending. Heroes and villains may frequently be misconstrued. Antagonists won’t antagonize. Protagonists will often run away screaming. Nothing in this book has occurred within this universe save for the pages between your fingers or the words being read into your ears.

This was not written with the intent to aggravate or participate in any assault upon your beliefs. This story has been written under the prospect that all ideas are true and equal, that all philosophies and views of life shared or held solely to an enlightened individual are so. You may find yourself uncomfortable with the ideas expressed, but rest assured that none of this has really happened. And if it did, you wouldn’t be able to remember it anyway.

References to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

Table Of Contents

— Chapter One —

Demon In The Herd

— Chapter Two —

King Elgar

— Chapter Three —

Permission Over Forgiveness

— Chapter Four —

The Kawatora Del Grande

— Chapter Five —

The Ritual

— Chapter Six —

Grambutine

— Chapter Seven —

The Giants Of The Mediterranean

— Chapter Eight —

Pir’s Tower

— Chapter Nine —

Heart Of Darkness

— Chapter Ten —

Back To School

— Chapter Eleven —

No Respect

— Chapter Twelve —

The Son Of Cthulhu

— Chapter Thirteen —

Ms. Poe’s Warning

— Chapter Fourteen —

Dreaming No More

Chapter One

Demon In the Herd

Have you ever ridden a donkey before? I hadn’t, which made my trip to Porta Gulch fifty-miles west of Yuctaz in the third known universe much more uncomfortable. My name is Elgar King. I and my kind are known as psionics: people capable of manipulating the time-space around us like magic to those viewing from the outside. My second major trial began when I was fourteen years old, the summer after my first year at USS, the University of the Seven Suns.

Picture a vast canyon rolling out to the horizon with rising and falling mesas meandering through its channels and valleys beneath a gradually fading red sunset: that was Porta Canyon. The beauty is something that you would have to see for yourself if you were able to travel away from your Universe Seven to a desert planet that was scheduled for demise in about five-hundred thousand years. That planet was currently rocketing around a sun within a remote galaxy where I was lollygagging on a mandatory summer quest for school, which landed me on the stupidest brush donkey you’d ever laid eyes on. There were so many flies around his head and pointy ears I assume they’d already eaten most of his brain. So much for experiencing the flavor of the Wild West, although this was probably closer to the truth.

I had hoped that my best friend, Christina Harriet, would join me, but she travels with her family in the summers. I had other friends from school: a holy student named Andrew Sibelius, but he was seventeen years old and had bigger fish to fry than to hang out with a lowbie like me. I had another friend named Felonius Bruckner who went by the name of Bucky. He was a fellow alterations major. We had already killed six quests this week and needed a break from one another. My other friend, an elementalist named George Mozart, was off doing other awesome interdimensional things this summer while I was doing this summer quest that I had been putting off for the last month.

I mentioned earlier that I was an alterations student last year. I assumed I’d be in alterations again once my semester started back up, but that’s where things get complicated. There are four major schools of magic that are accepted by the psionic community as a whole and those are the holy discipline whose students spend years channeling God’s divine holy power and scrying magical scrolls that keep the rest of us alive. Then there are alterations students who can manipulate and alter the physical world around them. They also call upon foresight to give the rest of us quests. Elemental students can harness the elemental powers of wind, water, thunder, and fire. Nature students get their energy directly from the planets themselves. Different planets seem to give different druids particularly interesting powers. All of these psionic people studying and questing across the eleven universes were doing seemingly odd-jobs for xen credits—our currency—in order to maintain the time-space continuum in each universe for as long as possible.

However, last year it became clear that there was another magical discipline that I would need to cover single-handedly for the rest of my life. I discovered three months into my psionic training that I was not an alterations student, but a necromancer. Everyone has an aura that aligns with their given specialty skill. Harriet’s—as a nature student—is green, Andrew’s holy aura is white, Mozart’s elemental is yellow, and Bucky’s alterations is clear. My aura is black. It was clear while I was an alterations student until I sealed my first arch daemon, Ryptose, a few months back. From then on, I was a necromancer with a black aura and proud.

Not really. Being a necromancer in a community of holy-run psionics is a real pain in my ass. I was constantly finding myself in courtrooms. They started with the school courtroom, then it was a community forum, and then it was in a massive temple on the psionic side of the Vatican. My existence was an abomination in the eyes of God, even though I had to do my penance and understand the scriptures just as well as any holy student. There were a few reasons why I hadn’t been butchered to death, burned, decapitated and buried chained upside down under a river, the main one being that I was under nineteen. There are psionic laws stating that an underage psionic cannot be executed unless he or she has been proven dangerous. Sure, I killed my first mortal when I was eleven years old, but only because I was trying to rescue an innocent student who had been kidnapped.

Another reason the Holy Council found it hard to throw the book at me for existing was the fact that at the end of the last year, I became the last psionic diplomat capable of moving between Hell and the mortal world; ergo the emissary between Heaven and Hell. That sounds really awesome, but the only task I had been given was to deliver a package that turned out to be a package from Cronus, the Greek titan of the Underworld. The package was confiscated by a few arch angels before I could get out of Arcana City.

To say that my life as a psionic was rocky is an understatement. Would I trade and go back to a mortal life? Not in a million years. That being said, I still had no idea just how far my influence went, and wouldn’t know until the middle of August when school started again. For now, it was a lazy Saturday afternoon and I was hoping it would be one of those special afternoons that sticks in your memory as the perfect day where nothing happens and all is well.

My donkey had started walking sideways toward the ranch in the middle of an oval field between the cliffs of the canyon. I traveled alongside a river that I had followed since I left Yuctaz. When I approached the ranch-house, the owner, wearing a pair of leather riding pants but no shirt, stepped out onto the porch. He had a big bushy mustache and kind of looked like Freddy Mercury. Years of living off the land in the midst of this planet’s old west had taken its toll on him. This man’s name was Miguel DoLero Nala Calshian.

Oy hay! I called. My quest target didn’t speak English. I’d gotten to know the local language in Yuctaz pretty well even though I still didn’t know what the regional dialect was called. I wasn’t sure if he knew different words or if I was just bad at speaking his language, but I asked him if he needed help rounding up his escaped cattle and he seemed to understand. He held up a hand intending for me to wait. He went inside for a minute before returning with a white shirt and a brown leather jacket.

Famosi, famosi, Miguel waved at the donkey. I hitched the pathetic creature at the hitching post in front of his house and followed the man toward his stables. You might be wondering why, if I was basically an interdimensional space-jumper, I would be going through this much trouble to help this lonesome soul gather his escaped livestock without using magic to speed up the process. This particular quest offered a twenty-five percent bonus to my xen reward if I finished it without magic.

I wasn’t even able to port out here. We have the power to visualize a location and teleport there in an instant assuming that location is connected to the ground and assuming we’ve been there before. You couldn’t look at a photograph and appear at the location. A lot of locations change over the years, making it harder to teleport there if you haven’t been in a long time.

That afternoon, I would be working my legs and living the hard life until every last one of Miguel’s cows had been returned. In the next few days, he was going to meet a formerly wealthy wanderer who had lost his wife and fortune at sea. The wanderer would offer Miguel a contact who would buy all of his cows at a marked-up price. That contact would pay Miguel more money for every trip he made to bring bigger crews of cattle. All in all, it was necessary for a descendant at the end of this to inherit Miguel’s fortune that would fund one of the first manned faster-than-light speed vessels that would keep this strand of humanity alive beyond the inevitable death of their planet.

If I didn’t do this summer quest, Miguel DoLero Nala Calshian would have nothing to offer the wealthy wayward traveler and thus thwart his future business opportunities. By helping Miguel, I thought as I watched him open the gates to the stables, I realized that I was helping close the door on a happier life. Losing the cattle would have been the best thing in the universe for Miguel. He would be forced to move back to Yuctaz where he would fall in love with a woman and they would have three children. He would have an average job as a shopkeeper for his father’s company, but as far as changing the world and fulfilling his dreams as a rancher and cattle-driver to succeed in his only solo business venture that a friend helped him start… that dream would be dead.

In his alternative success, Miguel would be married three times but never satisfied. He would wander through the marketplace in his wealthy garb and his eyes would pass over the woman he fell in love with in a different life. He would see straight through her. This is what I know of Miguel DoLero Nala Calshian, and this is why I felt bad for him. Is the universe itself worth sacrificing for a brief glimpse of love?

But I had chosen this quest out of a number of equally crushing quests so I was to help Miguel round up his cattle. He let me borrow a spotted gray mare that made my donkey feel like one of those quarter rides in front of the grocery stores. We rode out, Miguel riding a purebred brown stallion. He tossed me a coil of rope that I slipped over my arm. I wore a long-sleeved cotton shirt with a leather vest and black denim jeans to match my black boots. Equipment and clothing is no issue for a psionic. We’re able to change clothing as well as physical appearance on a whim. We call it swapping. You still have to have worn anything you want to change into.

Another perk of being a psionic is our inventory. The inventory is a spell I can cast in my mind that allows me to look left and see the shelf of my choosing. My inventory was still the wooden shelf my dad had made in our garage at home in North Richland Hills, Texas. On the far left were the three school books my curriculum required me to memorize before the summer was over. Next to that lay a knife Harriet had given to me for my birthday last march. There was a neatly folded set of sheets that I used for various reasons, but mostly as a soft place for delicate objects. You’d be surprised how many I come across during quests.

On top of the cloth was my MIDAS stone. MIDAS stands for Magical Interface Display and Archives System, which allows me to access a conical holographic display that gives me stats, maps, and other information. It was mostly offline until my quest was completed. Next to the MIDAS stone sat a small sliver of the minotaur horn I had used to shatter a gateway to Hell, and several port cards I kept on me in case I fell a long distance and needed to escape in a pinch. On the other side of my shelf were piles of my parents’ food rations and water-bottles so that I’d stay hydrated and well-fed on my quests that occasionally took me to some hairy places.

I followed Miguel out to where the cattle had been scattered. When we slowed a few of the stragglers, I asked him why he didn’t go after them earlier. Miguel shook his head with a worried look on his face. Nomamistad.

I’d never heard anything like that in Yuctaz or anywhere else. Mano regas Nomamistad?

Nomamistad regas Nomamistad. Miguel replied. I still didn’t get it. Miguel pointed toward a herd of his cows milling by a copse of trees on the shelf of land above the rush of the river nearby. I watched as an unnatural bump in the land rolled toward the cows. The land broke open and a giant mouth seemed to swallow one of the cows up. Miguel took a step back and stammered, N—Nomamistad!

So, Nomamistad was the local language for ‘demon’, because that was none-other than the largest earth demon I’d ever heard of. I’d never seen one in real life but had read about them in one of my teacher’s books. This was a problem because I was going to need magic in order to prevent the creature from coming back to Miguel’s lands. We watched it roll over to another cow and swallow it whole without the cow making more than an exclamatory, MOO!

I looked to the sky above and wondered why I had been given a quest with an impossible stipulation attached to it. After the third cow was taken, I gigged my horse forward and we galloped over the land. I jumped off at a safe distance and channeled orders for my horse to get Miguel and his horse out of here. Speaking to animals is a simple nature spell we learned in our first year.

I opened my inventory and grabbed the knife that Harriet had given to me. My MIDAS let me know that I was nearing disqualification levels of magic-use for the quest bonus. Finishing the quest was necessary, but I didn’t expect to get the bonus xen for doing it without magic. It was eleven-thirty in the morning back home. I had to wrap this up anyway in order to get to Gramburg by one this afternoon for Andrew’s Paladin christening. Sounded like a waste of time, but Andrew’s help had been invaluable when he helped us take down a minotaur last year.

I heard Miguel protesting to his horse as he intended to help me, but this was not a fight for a mortal. I raised my hands to the ready. JI’JIN! I called, feeling a painful twinge in my forehead as a psychic ripple of earth fired from under the ground from my position. I touched my temple as the ripple struck the demon underground. It blasted a monstrous, rotund earthy creature out of the ground that immediately vomited the blood and gore of several recently consumed cows all over the deadpan grass of the field. I had been hungry minutes earlier, but not anymore.

Rlo, Dlaej! I called and the earth demon turned to face me, blood dripping from its mouth that was like a tear in its wide toad-like expression. Its eyes were giant yellow circles in shadowy holes within its face that was part of its upper body. I took a step back and charged a shadow-bomb, but the demon was angry now. It curled into a ball and began rolling straight for me.

Being able to port would be really helpful! I yelled and jumped out of the way as the earth demon barreled past me. My horse had been skirting the parameter of the field in case I needed help, but galloped closer to me at the jerk of my head. I then noticed the big red circle with a line through it glowing on the back of my hand. Ignoring it, I climbed atop my horse and pursued the demon that was rolling across-country toward Miguel’s house. I charged my shadow-bomb once more as we rode up next to the thundering demon, passing into a small grove of trees. GU’RIM POK’TAN! I heaved the ball of condensed shadow energy into the earth demon, which was more destructive than I remembered it being. It literally blew the demon and me and my horse away from a smoldering green crater between the trees.

I had been working on my own holy light over the summer as holy spells were my weakest and needed to be my second strongest. I cast holy light upon my horse as the monstrous earth demon struggled to crawl away from the consuming green fire of the shadow-bomb. The flame was neutralized with holy energy. After making sure my horse would live, I jogged over to the monstrous earth demon while casting my demon-sealing spell upon Harriet’s knife. The knife-blade began to glow purple.

The demon turned and raised a hand in protest, but I plunged the glowing blue-purple blade into the creature’s stomach under its face. A shockwave fired me backward as the knife remained suspended in air. The earth demon’s form turned into purple sand and collected into the knife that became searing hot. Once the creature had disappeared, the knife dropped to the ground. It immediately exploded, and the demon materialized within the field in front of me once more.

With a big earthy hand, the demon slammed his fist into me, sending me sprawling. No sooner had I hit the ground before I was wrapped and curled in tree-roots as the earth demon staggered toward me. My whole body was bound in vines and roots from the trees around us. If I wasn’t restricted from porting then I’d be able to get free, but for now I was preparing my fire spell. ELGAR CENTRIFEOUS KING! It gave a guttural croak. I was surprised to hear it speak, that it knew how to pronounce English, and much, much more that it knew my middle name. YOU HAVE BEEN SUMMONED. THREE DAYS! It held up three fingers before reaching into its own mouth and withdrawing a faded amber scroll that had a coating of cow’s innards all over it.

The creature then dropped the scroll and dove back into the Earth and disappeared completely. A few seconds later, the vines let go, dropping me painfully to the ground. I got up and looked around, utterly baffled at the battle’s unexpected ending. I bent over and plucked the dripping scroll from the yellow grass and unrolled it to see the painted porcelain face of a Korean woman in traditional clothing. Korean symbols lined the sides of the scroll as well as the slightly stylistic Magul runic characters. Magul was our magical language that was derived from Hangul Korean characters. I hadn’t known that last year, but the origination of psionics in the world today came from Korea back when it was one country. I could read the characters, both Hangul and Magul, but it didn’t make very much sense to me.

"Elgar Centrifeous King

You have been summoned by

Ie Min Hie

Central Mudang Services — Seoul, South Korea"

I lowered the scroll and looked around at the empty grove around me as the wind gently caressed the tree branches and fallen yellow leaves. What is this? I asked, holding up the scroll as if someone might appear and explain everything. Three days? Three days until what? There was no answer.

I put the scroll in my inventory and rounded up Miguel’s cattle.