Deathstalker 07 - Deathstalker Return

prepare them for the grim reality. The trees just fell away suddenly to reveal a massive clearing, carved raggedly out of the jungle by crude tools and brute force. And in that clearing, the city. Lewis and his people stopped and stared at it in disbelief, as they realized what it was. Brett made choking sounds. Jesamine shook her
    head slowly.
    "No. This is just too much. Lewis, I can't do this…"
    "You can do it," Lewis said firmly. "We all can. Just… tough it out, Jes. You're stronger than you think.
    Try breathing through your mouth, see if that helps. And Brett, control yourself. We really don't want to upset our hosts."
    "Oh, hell," Brett said miserably. "Just look at it…"
    The city was a nightmare, a necropolis, a city born out of death. A great sprawling place of rounded dwellings and blocky towers constructed entirely out of bone and meat and sinews. The fleshy parts had been roughly cured to make them last longer, but there were signs of slow decomposition and constant ongoing repair everywhere. Dead monsters hundreds of feet long had been cored out and turned into halls, and the towers were lattices of yellowing bones. The whole place stank of the charnel house; of blood and death and corruption only temporarily held at bay. Nothing normal or sane could have lived in such a city—only monsters. It grew larger and larger as Lewis and his party walked unsteadily towards it, stretching out before them, a dwelling place for the damned, a city of crimson and purple and festering yellows.
    "We had nothing else to build with," said the albino. "The trees are too hard to be worked, and what stone there is, is buried too deep for our crude tools to reach. The Empire left us nothing. So we made our city out of the remains of the fallen. It has grown much in two hundred years. Nothing lasts, of course. Everything decays eventually, and it all has to be replaced, over and over. But on a world like this, there's never any shortage of raw materials."
    Lewis was stunned by the sheer size and scale of the city, by the great towers of bone and gut, and the long low buildings of discolored meat with dark veins still marbling the glistening surfaces, and his mind boggled at the thought of how many dead bodies must have gone into creating and maintaining the city down the long years. Jesamine clung tightly to his arm, staring fixedly straight ahead, murmuring quietly to herself a litany of prayers and expletives. Behind them, Lewis could hear Brett whimpering. The albino led the way through the main gate, formed from the distended skull of a creature so huge Lewis didn't even want to think about it. Beyond lay an open square packed full of monsters, and as they saw Lewis, every one of them kneeled or bent the head to him. A low murmur moved among them. Prophecy, prophecy…
    "Stop that!" Lewis said sharply, and the sound cut off immediately. All kinds of eyes studied the Deathstalker as he stepped forward to face them. He took a deep breath, and tried to tell himself he was doing the right thing. "Look, it isn't fair to you, to give you false hope. Yes, I'm Lewis Deathstalker, but I'm here only because Jenny Psycho asked me…"
    "Yes!" said the albino. "Jenny Psycho! We remember her. From Silo Nine, Wormboy Hell. She delivered us from that place. And now she sends you here, to deliver us."
    "But…" said Lewis.
    "Save it," Jesamine said quietly, sharply, just to him. "Whatever you say, they'll find some way to make it match what they want to believe."
    A few of the more human-sized monsters crawled towards Lewis on all fours, grim and ugly shapes that looked like they'd been pieced together out of disparate leftover parts, and it was all Lewis could do not
    to retreat from them. They stopped a respectful distance away, and stared up at him with pleading eyes.
    One of them stretched out a trembling hand to him, speaking in a soft, disturbingly ordinary voice.
    "Have you come to take us home, at last?" it said. "Is it over now? Please, I want to go home."
    "Oh, Jesus," said Jesamine, pressing her hand against her mouth.
    "I cant help you," said Lewis, almost desperately. "I've been outlawed."
    The creature nodded its head slowly. "Just like us. It is the prophecy…"
    Lewis made himself crouch down before the hideous creature, so he could meet its mismatched eyes.
    "When this is over, if I'm still alive, I promise I'll do what I can for you. I'll talk to the King, and to Shub.
    I'll get some kind of justice for you. It