Dillon walked along the stone bridge towards the looming Central Tower, Evan and Milos not far behind. Dillon observed the environment he had been in only once before with striking blue eyes. Below them was a yawning abyss that was forged from the darkness of a moonless midnight, a maw ready to swallow them up. Three other bridges ran towards the Central Tower, including the one they were on. The fourth of these bridges had shattered the last time his team had been to the place. The sky was ominously grey, and over the Castle hung unnatural silence.
Dillon increased his grip on the SN3A2 Carbine rifle he held. Evan walked with a sabre on his back, while Milos, the last member of the team, walked with what resembled a downsized minigun. Milos found it hilarious that a weapon of its size was labelled 'minigun'. They entered the Altar Room through the archway before them. As they did, Milos took one last look over his shoulder before entering the cold interior of the Altar Room.
Within the Altar Room, they stood on an outer central ring. In the centre of this elevated ring was an indentation that separated the outer ring from the conical pillar of stairs in the exact centre of the room. An eerie light descended upon these stairs from a hole in the roof high above. The cone-shaped structure ascended higher than the outer ring.
The General had told them their mission details before the single helicopter hand brought them here: to retrieve Etrius' body and take it back to Base. The General had not gone into detail regarding the events surrounding Etrius' demise. Dillon could recall the General not wanting to mention his name at all during the briefing. Etrius had been their team leader - a soldier skilled with a variety of weapons from across Earth, a master of all trades, the one who had infiltrated both the First and Second Castles - this was the Third, where Etrius had entered, not to leave again.
Dillon remembered some tension from the time they had last stood in this immense chamber - Beecher's yell from the top of the Altar, Lloyd pulling his sword out on the General, the whole expedition being overshadowed by impending doom. And then, they had been attacked by endless waves of the undead, undead that had smashed their way out of the walls around and pulled themselves out of the rifts which had opened in the ground. Several Soldiers lives had been taken in the process, and Lloyd, the team Swordsman, had been left on another side of a great chasm.
Dillon knew what Lloyd looked like - the Swordsman had hair of a dark, almost black colour, striking light brown eyes, a coarse five-o'clock shadow, and was clad in black flexible armour designed to deflect blows. The Swordsman always carried a katana-like sword around with him. That had been the secondary objective: to locate Lloyd, and if alive, bring him back to base.
The General had sent these three, and these three only, as he believed that a small party would attract less attention from the denizens of the Castle. When Dillon had requested for Beecher at least to join the party, the General had only said that, "Beecher was potentially unreliable and unstable, a danger to the outcome of the mission." and had refused to allow it. Boomer, having arrived from the Castle three days before, was in no condition to go.
Dillon turned around and spoke to the other two members of the team, speaking in the accent of someone who originated from the mid-east United States. "You two, stay here. It'll probably take one of us to speak to Etrius and tell him what the plan is. I'll go up and check if he's up there." Evan nodded, while Milos turned to look at the wall, reading the glyphs that had been engraved into it.
Dillon set off down the stairs to the centre of the room, wondering what would be said to Etrius. If he had not left the first time, there must have been an obstacle. Evan was alert and ready for action, not letting his guard down. The memory of the ferocious battle which had taken place within these walls was fresh in his mind. He heard the footsteps of Dillon dying away as he went in search of Etrius around the Altar.
Milos looked up - the high ceiling was shrouded with a darkness even his dark blue eyes could not penetrate. There was six ways out of the room, which seemed nonsensical to Milos, seeing as there was only four bridges between the Central Tower and the outer sections of the Castle. He began to imagine the Central Tower revolving periodically to allow access to places that were out of reach before.
His thoughts drifted back to when they had been here last time. The entrances had been sealed shut by thick stone slabs soon after Lloyd had stepped in the way of the general. If this had not happened, Milos guessed they would have left the Altar Room before the lockdown. Boomer's explosives had come in useful blasting an exit open - that exit was no concealed by a mass of rubble. Were the slabs designed to keep intruders out, or keep thieves in?
Something caught his eye and he froze. He walked over to it, seeing that it was an entrance, once filled by a stone slab. The slab had been ruptured and shattered by some kind of explosion. Even as a soldier who had worked with explosives and other ordnance, Milos could not work out what had caused it. Through the ruins of the slab, he saw the black abyss outside, and no bridge.
He deduced that it was one of the entrances that led to no bridge, but he called Evan over. The look of the entrance made an unease rise within Milos. Almost as if something had broken its way out... His mind went back to one of the massive, black hulking creatures that had burst through a corridor wall during their escape from the Third Castle. Looking around, he saw Evan looking into the darkness of the chasm. Evan looked up towards Milos, and his yellow eyes scanned the remains of the entrance behind him.
"There's something out of place here. Only an explosive could blasted through one of those slabs, for Christ's sake. And even if they had been managed to blast through this door, they would have fallen to their death outside." said Milos, unnerved. Evan thought carefully, before giving an answer.
"You don't need to tell me this. Even if they climbed up to the windows somehow, they would have still fallen to death. Lloyd didn't have explosives - he kept away from the stuff like me. Boomer doesn't drop spare explosives all over the place, and Etrius doesn't carry explosives. He relies on stealth to achieve the objective. In saying that, he would have broken out using any means available. But...could something have broken in?"
Milos' expression changed to hear this suggestion. "Why'd you have to say something like that? Damn you and your strategic mind..."Milos said half-jokingly, and then drifted off, thinking about Evan's words. "If neither Etrius or Lloyd got out, shouldn't they have noticed us by now?" Milos said, almost to himself, and then spoke to Evan. "This must mean we're looking for corpses."
Evan shook his head in disagreement. "I don't know...since we've been here, in this room, I'm sure his presence is here. It's at the side of my consciousness somewhere." Milos looked up at Evan, and asked "Whose presence?"
Dillon had almost reached the summit. It was a few steps away. He stopped to sit down and rest, breathing heavily. He looked across to see Milos and Evan standing near the archway to the left of the archway they had entered through, in a discussion of some kind. They probably thought this second visit was a waste of time...thought Dillon. Something caught his attention to the right, and he turned his head to look at the entrance they had used. He saw a figure holding something in its left hand. Dillon raised his rifle to look through the scope and take a better look, but the moment he had raised the scope to his eye, the spectre had vanished. He lowered the rifle, brow creasing as he tried to recall something...
The thought had gone totally. Dillon turned and shook his head. Once he was sure he could go on, he got up and continued to the top of the high cone-shaped structure. The 31-year-old could feel an unmovable tension seeping through his being as he tried to prepare himself for what he would find.
And then, he reached the summit.
If a body had been here, it had gone entirely. Dillon stood motionless. As he had descended the stairs from the outer ring, a thought had played on his mind, a thought that had taken root since his return to the Base. Could the General have been wrong about Etrius' death? But he stood there now, looking at a scene where a struggle had taken place. the floor beneath was red with blood, and bits of a vaguely human body and armour. Leaning closer, Dillon saw something silver in the pool of blood.
On closer inspection, Dillon identified the silver object as a Magnum 44. bullet. Only one person could have fired the gun that discharged this bullet, and that bullet could have had only one target. The General...Etrius...murder...Dillon could not move. Had everything the General told them been a lie? Had Etrius absorbed the 'resource power' the General spoke of so commonly? Had this second visit just been to reclaim the power, and find closure for the General's conscience? Did the General even have a conscience?
It all worked out: Lloyd pulling his sword out on the General, the General's strange behaviour on the bridge they used to escape, Beecher's contempt towards the General on the helicopters back to base. Etrius' earlier apparent distrust of the General. Boomer going straight to the General's office after returning with the survivors from the Castle. The gunshot. The voice he had heard. "But why?" said Dillon aloud.
Dark thoughts clouded Dillon's judgement. Why had their commanding officer lied to him, to Milos, to Evan about Etrius' death? This could mean only one thing: Etrius had found out something about the mission, and the General had gunned him down because of that knowledge. "It shouldn't have take Etrius all that time to figure out something was wrong." Dillon said again, as if he expected a reply from Etrius himself.
All of a sudden, a sharp pain seared into his head, and he had the sensation of his skull being crushed. He gasped in agony, the Carbine falling from his grip. He followed, falling onto one knee in the pool of blood. The pain increased tenfold, as if a vice had been applied and slowly tightened, and Dillon collapsed into the pool of dried blood. The blood suddenly began to become liquid again. Was this the power that the General said had 'killed Etrius'?
Dillon rose slowly. The air around him felt like what he imagined the air to be like in the Arctic Circle, slowly freezing him, seeping into his joints, rendering him unable to move. His eyes were screwed up, but he opened them as he stood in a crouch. His eyes locked with the eyes of another person.
Lloyd.
Dillon spoke, his voice hoarse. "Lloyd?" The Swordsman of the seem stood there, and Dillon took a moment to realise that he was covered in blood, the sword on his back, arms by his sides, standing tall. But the eyes struck Dillon, and his blood began to match the temperature of the air around. There seem to be something within those eyes that Dillon had never seen before. The eyes were illuminating from within, glowing with a white aura, presenting the light brown irises as grey.
Lloyd stood across the other side of the summit, about four metres away. Dillon squinted, struggling to focus on Lloyd, who kept blurring and flickering like an illusion. The only thing that remained in complete focus was the eyes. Lloyd evaporated, and reappeared in front of the Rifleman, who took a step back in confusion. For the first time in his military career, Dillon could fear genuine fear rising from within.
The pain in his head gradually increased again and he looked into Lloyd's eyes, unable to rip his gaze away. The Swordsman held the Rifleman in place through some devilish form of telekinesis. This must be something else, it couldn't be Lloyd... It was not some enemy who was going to end his life, but a member of his own team. He was rooted to the ground. His arms felt hollow. He dropped the gun, which hit the floor with a muffled clack. Lloyd's pupils had disappeared, leaving a blazing white.
A massive crack was heard from the ceiling, and a section of the roof detached and dropped, shattering to pieces on the steps behind Dillon with a deafening explosion. Dillon turned around, jumping from the impact, but when he turned back, Lloyd had disappeared, and so to had the headache and the voices within his head. He was snapped out of his trance-like state as a deep ominous rumbling filled the Altar Room.
Dillon picked up his rifle and began to run down the stairs as rubble was shaken free by the tectonic shift. More rocks fell, shattering into smaller rocks and rolling down the stairs after the Rifleman with deadly accuracy, almost as if they were being thrown by a telekinetic force.
Milos and Evan turned as the room began to shake beneath them. Milos nearly overbalanced, but he went to the wall for support. "Dillon!" he shouted, as Evan moved towards the archway they had entered through. "Get out now!" Milos heard Dillon shout from the lower steps of the amphitheatre. Evan and Milos came to a stop. Dillon raised his voice, running up towards the outer ring. "Evan! Take Milos and get the hell out of here before the exit's blocked!" shouted Dillon, his voice barely audible above the sound of the room thundering.
Evan had drawn his sabre, expecting swarms of Beings to fall with the debris above. He lowered the sword and said, "What about you?"
"Don't wait for me, just go! Get out of here!" bellowed Dillon, already some way up the stairs. Evan re-sheathed his sabre and seized Milos by the shoulder. Milos had sunken into a berserk battle trance, priming his minigun and scanning for enemies that were not present. Evan had to drag Milos to the door. This was made difficult by the fact that Milos had a taller frame and more in the way of muscle.
Dillon tripped on one of the steps. "Shit." He said under his breath. He grabbed his Carbine and stood to see a mass of rubble crash into the archway the remnants of the team had used. This place was sealed shut, like a tomb. In vain, Dillon ran towards the mound of rubble that blocked his way out. Something dropped down in front of him and he slammed the butt of his Carbine into its head, cracking it. Dillon slowed as he accepted the realisation that he would never be able to move the rubble out of the way. He was sealed within the Altar Room, and he would suffer the fate of all those who had entered it before.
He turned to see a sea of Beings - creatures forged of the pure blackness of some forgotten corners of the cosmos, perhaps not even originating from the Earthen universe. There were masses of the ink-coloured creatures, all with blazing white eyes and prolonged canines. Muscles rippled through their skin. Some stood hunched over, while others stood straight. None of them had cohesive qualities. They were a little more than an immense group of savage undead, the perfect ageless, lifeless horde. They had one objective - to kill in any way possible, even without limbs, even without teeth.
Dillon raised his SN3A2 Carbine and pulled the trigger. Bullets of a golden sheen plunged into the braindead crowd as he charged them, cutting a path through them. In his training days, Dillon had been given the nickname 'Pathcutter', for his willingness to charge into enemy positions, firing point-blank range. He lived up to his nickname now as he cut through the enemy, who advanced even as the bullets slashed through their limbs and their bodies. One Being's intestines came out of its back, rippling out in a likeness of ribbon, the bullet charging on.
He charged through the teeming mass down into the amphitheatre, jostling them out of his way as he slammed a new clip in. Empty shells hit the floor. Dillon sprinted down the stairs, which were free of Beings. He thought his best chance of survival was at the top of the Altar itself. That way, he could see just how many Beings he had to kill. He kicked on Being in the chest, hearing bones snap, and sprinted up the conical set of stairs to the summit. The summit was illuminated in a grey light, still drenched in blood.
Dillon thought, for a moment, that there was a chance Etrius had somehow survive the bullet wound, pulling the bullet out, and dragging himself out of the roof using one of the rifts to get to corridors beneath the Altar Room, or Lloyd had dragged him out. But remembering what he had seen or half-seen earlier, Dillon believed that Lloyd would have killed Etrius by now.
He waited for Lloyd to reappear, to land the killing blow, but nothing appeared. Instead, hundreds of Beings ascended the stairs, slowly, patiently. There was no way to escape. He imagined Etrius, slowly running out of blood from the wound and without weapons. Dillon briefly thought it strange how Etrius, usually armed for the mission, had gone to the Third Castle weaponless, and Dillon remembered the state in which Etrius had returned from the Second Castle. Dillon pushed these thoughts away, putting a fresh clip in and cutting more of the Beings down.
It was some time later before Dillon realised he was on his last clip, and then nothing. He chose not to carry secondary weapons, always having played the role of laying down cover fire, where he would be near ammunition. He had come close to death while reloading, but he had managed to take out the Being with a melee slam from the rifle. The stairs ascending to his position was littered with bloody bodies, but still, the enemy continued to relentlessly push on, climbing over the bodies of creatures just like them.
Dillon's face was set with fierce determination, that gave way to grim resolve. Without a strategy, death was inevitable. Perhaps he would kill enough of them to mass them up against the walls and climb up to the three windows above, finding some way to climb down to a bridge outside. Evan and Milos were probably lost in indecision. Lloyd could have handled the situation easily, without the issue of ammunition or reloading. But Lloyd was dead.
And you will be, soon.
"But I'll take some of these sons of bitches with me." said Dillon aloud. He was about to begin pulling the trigger again when time seemed to stop. There was no indication as to what was happening - the mass of bloodthirsty creatures seemed to freeze in invisible ice. Dillon turned to walk into three of the Beings who had frozen behind him, all three in lunges. A bright light lit the room, and all three of the Beings were knocked into the distance of the outer ring before exploding in midair. Dillon stepped back in shock, remembering the semi-invisible tentacles that had dismembered so many of the Soldiers.
A figure began to appear in front of him, faint at first, and Dillon raised his rifle, expecting Lloyd. But he lowered it in shock when he saw it for who it really was. "Etrius?" said Dillon, not daring to hope. The figure opened his eyes to reveal dark green eyes with even darker green pupils, illuminated from within in a way not too dissimilar to the Beings or the 'Lloyd' that had appeared earlier.
Dillon increased his grip on the Carbine. He could see nothing of the wound that had supposedly killed Etrius. The Magnum. 44 bullet still lay on the floor between them. But in spite of this, Dillon began to put his doubts aside, and he spoke. "Etrius...you survived? The General told us that...some kind of power had killed you...that had possessed you..."
Etrius stood in silence, gazing levelly at the Rifleman, and then replied, inclining his head and raising his arms. "You can see for yourself, Dillon, can you not? I am very much alive." Dillon shifted.
"Where were you when we came in?"
"When who came in?" asked Etrius, and then answered his own question. "Evan, Milos, and Lloyd."
"No, Lloyd didn't come in with us. He was left behind in the Altar Room...with you."
"I did not know this. I seemed to...ascend." said Etrius, his eyes narrowing. But his facial expression returned to normal and he said, "It's good to be back."
And then, he smiled. A chill ran down Dillon's spine - the smile did not reach the eyes. The smile seemed almost sinister in the half-light. But Dillon shook his head, believing it to be a trick of the light. I've spent too long in this place. Dillon heard whispering from his left side. He turned to look in that direction, to see the Beings still frozen in place. A louder whispering came from the right, and Dillon snapped his head around towards the source of the sound. None of the creatures moved - they were locked in place by a powerful, unseen force.
Dillon looked back at Etrius, and raised his Carbine in a swift movement, although in his mind, he questioned why he did this. The smile dropped from Etrius' face, and his gaze narrowed slightly. "Did the General send you here for any other purpose, Dillon?"
Dillon responded. "Only to find you and Lloyd, and bring you back to base."
"And bring you back to base." Etrius echoed thoughtfully.
Dillon did not lower his rifle. It was as if he could not move. His team leader stood before him, and yet he stood on the opposite end of a barrel. As he had once before. Etrius' face now appeared emotionless in the light that descended from above.
"Where is the Sphere?" he inquired.
"The Sphere? It isn't here. The General has it." Dillon explained, and then he said, "Why do you want that?"
"It is rightfully mine." said Etrius flatly, and from that moment, Dillon began to see what he called the truth. The General and Etrius were the same, using the team as a tug-of-war game to their own ends. Both wished to demonstrate their authority over the team, and undermine or overpower each other. Something seemed to click into the back of his mind - Etrius could prove to be far more volatile. Dillon could just not understand the nature of the scene, and of Etrius' appearance. An flicker of impatience flashed across Etrius' face in the darkness.
He could not place his mind on what distracted him; a flickering movement of some kind, from just behind Etrius. Dillon's finger applied the trigger, thinking that Etrius had lost patience completely and had telekinetically thrown one of the Beings at him. The muzzle flashed as the small stream of bullets left the rifle, and Etrius' eyes blazed white. As quick as lightning, a hand snapped up as the bullets slowed and snatched them out of midair. Etrius lowered his hand, the bullets that been inbound for him neutralised, and he spoke in a slow, deadly tone, his irises reappearing momentarily. "That has been done once before. It will not be done again."
Opening his hand, Etrius dropped the crush bullet to the floor. The events of the past few seconds confirmed what had been on Dillon's mind - Etrius was being controlled by a higher entity, his body no more than a vessel for what could be a hostile power. Dillon made to empty his clip into Etrius, now seeing a greater threat in what stood before him instead of what surrounded him. Etrius' eyes flashed, and the Carbine was wrenched out of Dillon's grip and crushed in the air between them, the barrel splitting and the clip falling out. The wreckage hit the bloodied floor, now impossible to use.
Dillon looked from the crushed Carbine to Etrius in shock. Etrius' irises disappeared, and he began to ascend from the ground. "Etrius!" shouted Dillon, but his voice seemed hollow. Etrius continued to ascend, as if on an invisible pedestal, and as he did, the tremors began to rise up from within the ground. Cracks in the walls of the Altar Room followed the ascent of Etrius as he began to break out of his own catacomb. Behind him, he would leave many bodies. Before him, he would have the General, on his knees, and his superiors behind their playing piece, and the world behind them. All would answer to Etrius.