The Devil's Grasp Read online

  The

  Devil's

  Grasp

  The Vengeful Prince Saga – Book 1

  by CHRIS PISANO and BRIAN KOSCIENSKI

  an imprint of Sunbury Press, Inc.

  Mechanicsburg, PA USA

  an imprint of Sunbury Press, Inc.

  Mechanicsburg, PA USA

  NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2015 by Chris Pisano and Brian Koscienski.

  Cover Copyright © 2015, 2018 by Sunbury Press, Inc.

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  ISBN: 978-1-62006-566-2 (Trade Paperback)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2015933713

  FIRST HELLBENDER BOOKS EDITION: April 2018

  Product of the United States of America

  0 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55

  Set in Bookman Old Style

  Designed by Crystal Devine

  Cover by Amber Rendon Cover art by Koa Beam

  Edited by Janice Rhayem

  Continue the Enlightenment!

  Prologue

  Wyren watched.

  From the precipice of Mount Mythos, Wyren, the mad wizard, peered into the lush valley below and watched.

  The sunlight glared down upon a swarming sea of armored men, bristling with purpose like beetles discontent within their carapaces. Plumed helmets, whetted swords, and polished armor glittered. Unit commanders barked out orders, their stentorian commands a clarion rising up amongst the rock outcroppings.

  And Wyren watched.

  The army below was searching for him. Word of his nefarious deeds had reached the ear of the king, and his Majesty responded by sending this army. Pondering this fact, a smile of self-satisfaction nestled onto Wyren’s craggy face, and he ran his fingers through the few scraggly hairs that hung off his chin—an effigy of a beard. No army could oppose him now. No creature of flesh or bone, no matter how numerous, could stop him. His smile widened as he began the madness.

  Wyren prepared for battle by stirring the contents of a cask, half his size, with the staff he worked so hard to construct. The wooden staff itself was all too modest; half as thick as his leg, but just as long. Five wooden fingers clenched as a fist formed the crest. The staff warranted little construction time, needing only a sharpened dagger and patience. What cost Wyren decades were the five stones the clenched fist protected—many years of traveling and researching, learning the spells to enrich the stones with the necessary power, sacrificing what little sanity he had.

  Looking into the cauldron, Wyren admired the blood, impressed with the amount he drained from the dragon, slain by a ragged band of mercenaries that he had hired. A minor consternation passed through him, thinking about the rumors of this band of sell-swords having a conscious and wondered what they would think if they knew the true purpose of the prize they gave to Wyren.

  The army came.

  Wyren laughed.

  As he watched archers take up positions, he stirred faster. When his thin arms became tired, he lifted the staff out of the cask and used the dripping blood to draw circles upon the ground, small at first. The first round of arrows rained down around him as the archers tested the distance between them and the wily wizard. The projectiles fell short, but not by much, and Wyren knew the next volley posed a viable threat. But as the ground melted and bubbled within the circles, Wyren no longer needed to worry. Again, Wyren laughed.

  Within the crimson perimeters, the ground fell away as if devoured by an abyss. Crawling from the small pits scrabbled fist sized insects, demonic in look and purpose. Swarming straight from the holes down the side of the mountain, the creatures made their way to the archers. A wave of mandibles and pincers shredded flesh and bone.

  Wyren laughed.

  Giddy with power, Wyren used the blood-dripping staff to make more circles, larger and larger, on the ground, on the rare tree, on the rock wall of the mountain. More minions poured forth, larger monsters from larger circles.

  Shaggy moths droned from the drawn maw of hell, a cloud forming over a small section of regiment. As the soldiers attacked, the moths burst into a nebulous miasma, devil dust clogging the men’s eyes and throats.

  As the commanders tried to regain order amongst their trained troops, Wyren drew larger circles upon whatever surface seemed solid enough. Within seconds, Wyren had new troops at his disposal, winged creatures the size of men, but with leathery skin covered in pustules and ridged horns. He commanded them to seek out the order-barking sergeants and carry them off; bat-like wings beat a steady rhythm as they carried the officers high into the air, then dropped them like stones upon their own troops.

  Soon the valley floor was strewn with the broken bodies of dead men. Dismembered corpses outnumbered those who had succumbed to a bludgeoning death. Wyren considered the twisted grimaces of the fallen and surmised that asphyxiation was likely a blessed way to die for those few who had found death in that manner. Wyren smiled.

  With plenty of blood left in the cauldron, Wyren traced a circle as tall as his arms could stretch and just as wide. Ice petrified his veins as he watched the newest additions to his horrid army stride forth.

  Arising from the great circle a monstrous beast emerged, bovine in the leg, though bipedal in its enormous stance, an abyssal lord looming impossibly large and eclipsing the wizard, who shrank into a huddling mass of flesh. Furry legs stretched into a thickly muscled, human torso, then gave way to a mangled face forged from sadistic rage, topped with two ram-like horns, one shorn from a battle waged millennia ago. Its maw split in speech, its voice so deep that pebbles and stones dislodged themselves and rolled down the mountainside. The monster was Ar’drzz’ur, lord of endless toil and general for the armies of hell. He announced his presence, then the blasphemy strode towards the army in the vale below, followed by a legion of equally misshapen demons.

  As Wyren scuttled away from the hideousness he wrought, he bumped the cauldron causing a splash of blood to spill over the side. At first, he cursed his clumsiness, but then he watched as a thick stream of crimson flowed down the side of the mountain from the plateau on which he stood. At this, Wyren smiled.

  Had the mad wizard known that he was about to be betrayed, he might have rethought his tactic. But as he strategically poured the contents of the cauldron down the side of the mountain in two rivulets, the very mercenaries he had hired changed their hearts, disgusted with themselves for seeing what accepting quick and easy coin had led to.

  Being a band of five, the sell-swords were so accustomed to each other’s fighting skills and styles that they no longer acted like five individuals, but one organism with five strong and dexterous appendages. With alacrity, they moved between the forest and the mountain base, doing their best to a
void the conflicts. And if some creature found itself in their way, then the mercenaries would send it back to the depths of hell from whence it came.

  Finding the mad wizard proved no challenge. He stood at the base of the precipice from where he began the battle, scraping at two oozing, crimson lines with the bottom of his staff. From the cliff where he started the war, over fifty feet above him, to the ground where he stood, two lines of blood, arcing away from each other, streaked down the mountain side. The two lines crossed at the top, but remained uncompleted at the bottom.

  Watching the wizard’s frenzied scraping, the mercenaries deduced the staff held the power over the demons and must be broken. However, a wall of these very demons stood between them and Wyren.

  Wyren howled commands.

  Four of the mercenaries formed a square, swords and axes spiked the perimeter while the archer stood firm in the middle. Arrows spewed into the air, a fountain of steel-tipped wood, piercing the marrow beyond the meat of the winged demons. A hurricane of bloody, shredded skin and broken bodies, ranging from massive to minuscule, rained from the sky. The other four warriors pitched throwing knives, daggers, and any makeshift projectile they had at their disposal to ward of the advancing monsters.

  Once the archer’s quiver emptied, the mercenaries relied upon hand-held weapons as they charged into the melee. Within the flurry of teeth and steel, claws and swords, they witnessed the completion of Wyren’s mammoth blood circle.

  The ground quaked, throbbed as if hell itself was expanding beyond its limits. Like a stone plunging into a lake, the mountainside rippled, changing hue from slate gray to fecal brown to apocalyptic black. All conflict ceased, eyes upon the gaping hole, even the demons stood awed.

  The blackness rippled again and parted, as fingers emerged, each longer than any man in the valley. Bile green and covered with coarse hairs, the rest of the hand, larger than most houses, appeared.

  The mercenary leader possessed the instinct to take advantage of the situation and snapped his attention back to the battlefield. Lopping the heads off the few demons in front of him, he rushed forth and drove his shoulder into Wyren’s back, knocking the staff from his grasp.

  Wyren shrieked.

  The mercenary crawled toward the staff fighting off the mad wizard’s desperate attacks, biting and scratching worse than the demons. Upon grabbing the staff, the mercenary rolled on his back and folded his leg to his chest, snapping the staff in half against his knee.

  Wyren screamed; his shrill voice echoing throughout the valley. The agony reflected both the destruction of his power and the revenge enacted against him as the hand from the mountain reached down and grabbed him. Wyren continued his scream as the hand retreated with the wizard in its grasp into the fading hole on the mountainside.

  The five mercenaries turned to examine the battlefield. Any demon left alive had fled. Bodies of monsters and soldiers blanketed the valley, scarred and charred from the fires of war.

  Nudging the staff with his foot, one of the mercenaries saw the cause of such mayhem. The staff’s crest, once a fist, now an open hand; the Devil’s grasp released five accursed gems: the Sun Stone, the Self Stone, the Spirit Stone, the Shadow Stone, and the Satan Stone. He tried to crush them beneath his boot, then split them with his sword, but to no avail. Not uttering a single word, each of the five mercenaries scooped up a gem. With nary a backwards glance, the mercenaries were no longer, now paladins as they walked in five opposite directions, making it their quest to vanquish the stones. …

  One

  “… And that’s the story of Wyren and the five stones.”

  Nevin Narrowpockets stared at the portly bard across the table, wondering if the story he had just heard held even the slightest iota of truth. The bard was an ugly man with round cheeks and a bulbous nose. His desperate smile revealed a piece of bread stuck at the base of his inflamed gums and did nothing to hide that a few of his yellowing teeth had gone absent. Drink froth bubbled from the corners of his mouth, and he had no facial hair to mask it.

  Trying not to stare at the bard’s lolling right eye or the raised mole at home on his left cheek, Nevin remembered listening to his Elven tribe’s elders tell tales of wonder and fancy even more improbable than the bard’s tale of an army getting slaughtered by a madman wielding a demon summoning staff over four hundred years ago. However, Nevin wanted a lighthearted tale of whimsy to accompany his drink of ale while visiting this tavern, not what the bard had offered. He turned to his partners for their reactions.

  The human who simply went by the name of Silver leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head, and propped his feet on the table. Long and black, his hair flowed over his shoulders like an ebony waterfall. He had a permanent squint, the bar’s dim light from the oil lamps made his eyes look like stab wounds. His perfectly white teeth glinted, catching what little light the room offered, as did the medallion resting on his chest, six silver rings encircling each other. The sleeves of his black shirt were snug around his shoulders, but billowed as they fell toward his wrists. His choice of jewelry also showed his affinity for the shimmering metal; a fist full of silver rings on one hand and silver bands hugged his other arm from his forearm to his palm. More silver speckled his body from his cloak clasps to his belt buckle down to even his boot buckles.

  Nevin looked at Silver, a wrier smile he had never seen. He knew very well that the human had heard only half the story, at most, while he drank his ale and wondered which woman in the bar would look better naked. And the half Silver did hear, he obviously did not believe.

  The elf turned to his other human partner, Diminutia, whose lip corners twitched as he tried to keep from laughing. Diminutia looked quite the opposite of Silver—his eyes were wide and bright blue, while his flaxen hair was short, except for the two shoulder length braids, as thick as his finger, sprouting from just above each temple. He chose his clothing, brown leather, not because the thinness allowed him to retain his agility, but because it made him look good. He, too, only paid attention to half of the tale, using most of his attention to flirt with the buxom serving wench.

  Nevin turned back to the bard and said with a smooth derision that only an elf can muster, “That’s quite an interesting story. However, I’m afraid my partners and I are not looking for an undertaking quite like what you are offering.”

  Disappointment forced the bard to slouch. “But, the map …”

  “Yes, we understand that you have a map. But what you are failing to grasp is that we are professional thieves. If you wanted us to steal a map, then we would do the job in a heartbeat. We don’t buy maps and follow them.”

  The bard reached in his rear pocket and pulled out the map in question. Unfolding it, he placed it on the table. “Look. Look at the markings and insignias of those who created it. Look at the ink and the parchment, the notes made by those who tried to follow it.”

  Picking up the map using only his thumb and index finger, Nevin tossed it in front of Diminutia. The blond man cast his leer from the serving wench to the map just long enough to say, “All I see are blood and burn marks.”

  “Half. Just give me half my original asking price,” the bard pleaded.

  “If the stone that this map supposedly leads to is so valuable, why are you so eager to get rid of it?” Silver asked.

  “Didn’t you listen to the story? This is a very powerful stone! One of the five that the mercenaries hid. Not to mention there are others looking for these stones, and they can be more dangerous than the stones themselves.”

  “Others?” Diminutia asked. “Who?”

  “A band of wizards for starters. I also heard that The Horde is looking for them. Rumor has it that the king himself has been researching the historical accuracy of the same story that I told to you.”

  “None of those points you mention are inviting us to go on this little adventure,” Silver muttered, accompanied by a sneer and an eye roll. “Quite the opposite effect.”

  “But if you sell
the stone to one of the parties you mentioned, then you could ask for more gold than you weigh.”

  “A king’s gold is very tempting indeed,” Diminutia said. “But forgive my skepticism. Exactly what is in this for you? I mean, clearly you had some interest and now …”

  “My interest is purely based on the historical. I am a bard with only one tale to tell. I just wish to add yours to my library. I do not have the build for adventure, but I do have the tongue to tell it. Half my original asking price and you spare no details when the deed is done that I might record the tale.”

  Despite the increasing alcohol content in his blood and the triad of lovely serving women whose attentions he garnered, Diminutia did not miss the way the portly fellow danced and shifted his weight from foot to foot, swaying like a pendulum. Nor did he miss the perspiration matting the rotund man’s hair. “Wenches! Another round of ale for the table on this man’s tab!” he ordered, using his index finger to identify the bard. Maps on vellum, kings, wizards, hordes, demonic stones, and the cloying scent of another man’s terror … definitely not their line of work, but he would be remiss lest he take full advantage of the situation.

  As the servers brought their drinks, Diminutia sought his tankard and drank deeply, the brimming liquid threatening to run down his chin. After using the bard for all he was worth, Diminutia was now eager for the stocky man to leave, but not sure exactly how to achieve that effect.

  “What would you do, wench?” Diminutia demanded without even turning to regard the nearest server. Perhaps she would laugh at the notion, cuing the bard to simply stagger away. “Should my friends and I buy this fellow’s map and follow it into what surely would be folly?”

  “Well, milord,” she said, “I must confess that I do find dashing heroes questing with their folded maps … well … very manly.”