Read Online Dark Gods Rising by Mark Eller, E A Draper - Free Book Online Page B

workmanship like these ‘ere chairs just rot in the street, now can I?” Carrid grunted at Larson. “Stuff cost’s money, it does, an’ getting Robar Joiner to do the work is harder every week.”
    He kicked a decapitated head out of his way.
    Now, only ten minutes later, the bar owner’s statement still floated around in Larson’s head as Carrid continued his search for unbroken furniture. It was a conundrum of irrationality. What in the name of the Seven was wrong with these people when death and hellborn had so little impact upon them? If this had occurred anywhere else but the Downs of Yylse, any normal citizen would have immediately fled upon seeing hellborn inside their favorite tavern, but obviously, from what Larson had seen tonight, the Hellhole didn’t have normal citizens as patrons. Instead, what the tavern had were harlots too new or too old to sell their goods anywhere else and thieves looking to fence stolen goods either unusual in nature or needing to be moved out of Yylse quickly. Then there were the drunkards who were too poor or just plain too stupid to go somewhere else to feed their addiction, con men and woman looking for an easy unsuspecting mark, and a tourist, perhaps ignorant of the ways of the darker paths in Yylse, who had come to the city specifically to prove or disprove rumors that the Downs were awash in the trappings of Hell. As a knight of Anothosia, Larson knew he was supposed to feel sympathy for the lost and the unwise. He was supposed try to bring them back into the light of the virtuous gods. Maybe so, but over the last few years all the blood, the horror, all the good men and woman and children he had seen devastated by Athos’s and Zorce’s lies, those cursed gods of Hell, well, it had piled up on him spiritually, especially tonight. He felt tired at heart and sick of soul for the shit-assed stupid people like Mathew Changer who thrived in these conditions, and god forbid, their own King Vere who seemed on the verge of inviting more of this into his kingdom. The lies, the deceits, the deaths, they had become a gray blur of putridness to Larson, a mass of undisguised, unrepentant filth. All of them were fools, all of them damned. Maybe Calto was right. Maybe these people deserved the end that was coming to them, especially those now lying in their own blood in the middle of this street. After all, they had instigated the riot. They had challenged Hell.
    “Looking a bit off there,” Carrid observed to Larson. “Maybe you need a spot of drink to settle your nerves.”
    “No,” Larson answered, wondering where his mind had gone. He had a job to do so he could get home to his secret family. He needed to investigate further and see to exterminating the guilty hellborn.
    “Hold,” he told Carrid as the man turned back to his tavern doors, three chairs stacked in his arms.
    Stopping, Carrid turned back to Larson, cocking one eyebrow. “Hold?”
    “I have questions. Tell me what happened— in your words— not repeating what others have told you.”
    “Sorry, got work ta do,” Carrid said, gesturing at the furniture with his chin.
    “I do have a sword.”
    Carrid set the chairs down and scratched his head. “Point taken. Okay, here’s how it was. Three demons and one devil, they come out of the hole in my cellar. Now they wasn’t big hellborn— little guys all, or maybe medium big, none of ‘em taller than five or six feet. Definitely not bigger than seven. I wasn’t paying too much attention to their size when they was sitting down on account of a fellow named Harlo looked to be challenging Robar Joiner to a fight. Once the action started, I was too busy ducking to bring out a measure. Anyway, they come up just before twelve bells. Shortly after that I heard the young devil bragging about the vast supply of diamonds what pave Hell’s corridors. One brag led to another, and soon enough three or four fools wanted proof so the devil, he pulls out a bunch of diamonds