Agony
The vapor had lifted me up to the height of perhaps twenty yards if not more, but the third tier still remained to be beyond my reach.
The walls around my gliding body were totally bare, with no signs of ledges or platforms to hang onto, so I exerted all my efforts to stay aloft, manoeuvring myself in the blasts of hot steam like a kite.
With every passed foot the fumes that were carrying my bulk kept on slowly losing their intensity, reminding me that I would not be able to maintain such altitude for much longer.
Mercifully I soon met a set of hydraulic pipes that jutted out of the surrounding brick fundament and at once caught at the thickest of them all.
Having pulled myself up on the pipe I sat down on its round surface and leaned my back against the wall it was concealed into, letting my legs hang low. Although the contact with the vaporized gas didn't steal that much of my soul energy, the flight I had taken was still very concentration-consuming, so I decided it would not be too bad if I let my body and my mind rest for a couple of minutes.
After having reconditioned myself I started clambering up the wall by snatching at the other pipes above me and in the short run got on the top of the next tier's platform.
The recognition of another ascent being finally over felt refreshing, though deep inside I perfectly understood that it was way too early to celebrate any accomplishments. Indubitably the Zephonim had infested this edifice up to its pinnacle, which meant that it was hardly the last time when I would have to conquer an arduous summit like this one. And since the steam coming from below could not carry me any higher than here, it also meant that I would have to get tangled into more charades to make my further progress possible.
The platform I stood on was well prominent over the ground of the tier, so from this vantage point I could perfectly observe the entire area below me.
Just like in the lower tier it was very dark here, almost as dark as if this was the spectral realm, but some details of the surroundings were still distinguishable: there were two uplifting tracks either side of the floor, each one passing into a long corridor with transparent glass walls that begirded the whole tier from both sides.
In the midst of all the traces of disruption I had already seen it was even surprising to behold something that fragile to be left untouched by the Zephonim.
The walls carried different traceries and tassels, their forms resembling some kind of a bell, but still looking like no other. Behind these walls the corridors seemed to be completely empty, however, there were several doorways visible through them, which indicated that the presence of these exotic extensions was no accident.
There was also a passage-way looming in the middle of the distant side of the hall, but right now I was more concerned with these unique glass aisles and decided to make my first move toward them.
I jumped off the platform and ran through the thick veil of blackness to the right end of the glassed passage. As I approached it I saw that the door leading to it was made of glass as well, the bell-like traceries on it looking even more distinct than on the lateral side of the wall. When I tried to open the door in a gentle manner it didn't respond, so without any further ceremonies I coarsely slashed it with my right hand.
To my amazement the blow proved to be thriveless: not only it failed to crash the door, but it didn't even leave a single scratch or cleft on it.
A little bit puzzled and enraged I hit the door several more times, but again to no avail. Either this was some sort of glyph magic that shielded this whole glass construction from any physical affects or it was simply made of some transparent but steadfast material other than glass. At least now it was understandable how this structure remained standing here scatheless amidst everything destroyed by the Zephonim. Whatever lay within these translucent walls had to be of great significance if the humans had provided for such a dependable enclosure of this particular place.
Anyway this area was impassable for me right now and I would have to go other way until I would find means of gaining entry here.
Now that I had little variety of options I ran toward the central passage I had caught sight of while standing on the top of the platform.
This corridor was not as dark as the exposed area of the tier as it was illuminated by a couple of wall-hooked torches that sometimes interchanged with different weapons that hung nailed into the walls.
Before passing round the first corner I abruptly detected some rustling noise coming from the right wing of the passage.
I stopped short and leaned unto the wall, then carefully began to chasse-step closer to its edge, still listening to the strange sound.
As I peered out of the wall I saw that it was a Zephonim, a fledgling, constrainedly traipsing a huge hasp of grey webbing toward the other end of the corridor.
The devolved vampire must have been so much busy hauling whatever it had wrapped in its thread that even failed to sense my presence here.
I decided to make use of this abstraction, so I quietly took off a spear from the wall near me, then raucuously leapt out of the corner and threw it directly into the ghoul. The weapon got right into the Zephonim's head, piercing all the way through its skull in a rabid spurt of blood. The beast screeched and tumbled down in convulsions, its soul at once breaking loose from its dying body.
I lowered my cowl, taking the released vampiric essence, as my right arm spasm slightly with the return of the Reaver's projection, making me feel whole again.
When the emptied Zephonim's husk burned to ashes I slowly approached the webbing hasp that remained lying on the ground. I turned it over to have a better look at it and to my astonishment and horror found out that enlaced in this thread lay a human, his body imperviously covered in tenacious substance from head to toe with only one small trench around his nose and eyes.
The human appeared to be barely conscious, but when he saw me standing hunched over him his orbs widened in pure terror and he started feverishly trembling and mumbling with his glued lips.
I unclenched the talon on my left hand and mildly cut through the web-tissue where the human's mouth was. The ensnared mortal instantly began to ravenously gasp with air, still eyeballing me with a glance of catatonic fear.
"No… please, no…" he spoke hoarsely as if trying to scream, but lacking breath to do this.
"Fear not, human, I mean you no harm." I said in a cold, but tempered voice and continued to slit the coat of web he was enshrouded in down to his legs.
"No… you don't…" he went on croaking suffocatingly, but I ignored it, thinking that he was simply scared of me.
While I kept peeling the clammy stuff from the human's body I saw that he was encased in heavy scarlet armor with black pauldrons and gauntlets. Clearly this man was a warrior but his vestment looked different than the one I had seen on those vampire hunters gathered around a campfire not far from the cathedral. I did not yet know if he somehow related to their squadrons but he must have definitely invaded this edifice around the same time they did shortly before my arrival here, otherwise he would not even have been able to cross the main entry. Anyway, if he had managed to make it this far he had to know the cathedral's exterior pretty well, which gave me hope that I could obtain from him some useful information.
Suddenly when my claws tore through the thread in the area of the man's thigh he brusquely twitched and squalled.
I sharply took my hand away, unable to make out what was the warrior so much horrified with when all at once a blood steam sprang from under his right fauld, precipitately beginning to fill the web-tissue beneath it with red.
The human moaned and turned his pale sweaty face away, squinting in a grimace of pain and despair.
Still feeling rather befuddled I leaned over the ensnared mortal again and hefted the crumpled fauld of his to study the source of this unexpectedly profuse bleeding.
"My God…" I exclaimed aloud, failing to hide the feeling of shock that my discovery had given me.
Underneath the ragged piece of armor I saw a huge avulsed wound, some of its hardly healed edges still cleaved to the torn fragments of cobweb. The wound was so deep that it almost reached the man's thigh-bone, all the tattered veins and arteries around it bleeding like crazy.
"I was… trying… to explain." the injured human murmured again.
It appeared that the thread the warrior was muffled in did not only prevent him from moving, but from bleeding as well, serving as a sort of tourniquet to stop his wound, and now that I had disentangled him I had accidentally made it open anew. This was, however honest, a gross mistake of mine, and though this man's life was of no concern to me, I could not help feeling faulty for my lack of attention to his warnings.
"I'm sorry, I didn't…" I tried to apologize to him, but he quickly took me short.
"Don't blame yourself... I never planned to live forever anyway…" he mumbled and drudgingly screwed his livid lips into some kind of a smile as if flabbily attempting to joke. "Listen… I have no idea what you are, creature… but if you're really here to help then you have to save my brothers…"
I wonderingly raised my eyebrow in response to the warrior's entreaty. It was not the first time when a human asked me for help, but again and again this didn't fail to surprise me. What was it about me that made all these pathetic mortals believe they could so simply trust me and even ask me to come to their aid? I used to think that a being of my appearance was supposed to pose only hazard and terror to their kind and not confidence. I wondered if that was some paradox of their nature to despise everyone who was regarded as a stranger to them and at the same time so easily confide into someone they had been knowing for only a couple of minutes.
"Your brothers? What happened to them?" I asked the warrior, getting straight to the point without any excessive wrangling.
Though I had neither time, nor desire to once again get involved into the humans' affairs, now I was forced to admit that I owed this man some retribution for my mistake, and the best way to make it up to him on my part was to accept his request for help.
Besides, I was still up to inquiring him of the building's inward, which I hoped could rather make this benevolent-like act into mutual assistance.
"We spied into the edifice several days ago, intent upon regaining it from the monsters…" the human clucked in reply, swallowing hard after every uttered phrase. "But we… we had no idea there were so many of them… they ambushed us, slaughtering our squadron man by man… capturing everyone they could seize… I tried to run away, but they… they caught me anyway…"
The warrior shrank with his whole face, and then tears came on the verge of his eyes.
"Do you have any idea where they could have taken your brothers?" I asked him, still looking to obtain more relevant information for my own quest.
"No…" he sobbed. "But they have to be somewhere here… they got captured by these ghouls just like I did… they might still be alive… P-please, you have to help! My soul will never find its rest if I let my brothers down…"
I couldn't help but chuckle at the mortal's bare mention of his soul 'finding its rest'. If only he had the slightest notion of what awaited his spirit after he would die, regardless of his good intentions…
"I will do what I can, human." I replied in an assuring tone, seeing that the man was earnest in his desire to save his brethren.
The wounded mortal took a deep sigh of relief after hearing this, his watered eyes for the first time expressing some sort of hopefulness.
"Th-thank you… Thank you, whoever you are, creature…" he began to repeat in a nearly crying voice. "I… I really do wish I could return you this favor…"
"Actually, there is some way for you to do this." I said, interrupting his avalanche of thanksgiving.
The human cast at me a silent look of incomprehension and quizzically knitted his trembling eyebrows together.
"I require some information, and by now you're the only one who can provide me with it." I proceeded.
The warrior frowned at this phrase of mine and then again attempted to force his lips into a wry ironic smile he had given me just seconds away.
"I should have known better than to believe that you're helping me in all sincerity…" he told me sarcastically, a new-born note of distrust sounding in his voice. "But if that's what it takes to have my brothers saved, I'll tell you everything I know…"
The so sudden shift in the man's attitude startled me greatly, but right now I was too focused on business to give heed to this.
"I want you to explain to me how you managed to get on this tier." I spoke to him suspiciously. "I've seen a construction near the pipes that probably once served as an elevator, but it was already destroyed by the time I have discovered it. So how were you able to ascend here then?"
"I could ask you the same thing…" the human replied a bit giggly even despite being little more than half dead.
"I don't have time for jokes, human, and neither do you!" I retorted angrily.
The corners of the warrior's mouth immediately turned down at this line and after clearing his throat he again started speaking in a serious vein.
"When I was running away from these monsters I used the elevator to take a lift upwards in order to distance myself from them…" he began to narrate. "Then I fractured the elevator so they would not reach me… but I… I did not know these creatures could climb up there…"
"Great." I reacted with asperity. "And I guess that this elevator for sure used to be the only way of reaching the summit of the cathedral?"
"It did…" the mortal responded fatefully and a bit bashfully.
I hardly refrained myself from calling this man an idiot. Even taking into account the complexity of the situation he got into, destroying the only means of attaining the cathedral's pinnacle was the stupidest idea one could possibly imagine.
"Then why did you ascend only on this tier and not on a higher one if you were so desperately trying to get away from your chasers?" I continued to inquire him.
My question made the human gulp hard with his eyes beginning to shift uneasily.
"I… I… I cannot tell you that…" he muttered all shivering. "This is a holy secret… I swore to guard it with my life… I… I'm sorry…"
Having my patience exhausted I coarsely grabbed the warrior by the armor plate and pulled him closer to me, staring with my glowing eyes straight into his.
"I'm afraid that right now you are in no best position to choose, mortal one!" I snapped at him. "So either you will have to break your oath or your brothers will become food for vampires!"
The human's orbs again widened fearfully just as they did when he saw me for the first time, but then his glance sweepingly changed to a more scornful one. He turned his face away and pursed his lips as if being disgusted, then sharply looked at me one more time with contempt.
"Fine, I'll speak the truth…" he spat, grinning at me like a dog. "My brothers and I have infiltrated this edifice with one and only aim – to activate the ancient organs and thus clean this place of this vampire scum that has infested it… When I got left alone in this raid, in the names of my brothers I attempted to fulfill the task on my own… so I ascended on this tier to get to the mechanism… here is where it is located… I knew that even if I would not be able to make an escape afterwards, our next squadrons could still recapture the cathedral once it was uncloistered… then and only then we could have a hope for victory in this war…"
The warrior's explanation at once raised a dozen questions in my mind, all striking me simultaneously like a blow.
"The mechanism is located here on this tier?" I asked him again incredulously. "I thought it was the boiler at the bottom of the lower floor that creates vapor, which then starts up the pipes."
"I see you're thoroughly enlightened, creature…" he reacted with little acrimony in his voice. "But the vapor alone cannot produce a sound loud enough to spread across the entire Nosgoth… The mechanism I'm speaking of opens air vents at the bottom of the organs which can amplify the power of the rising vapor a hundred, perhaps thousand times… Only when the air lift becomes that enhanced can the organs send their holy song of doom…"
I listened silently to what the man was telling me, every new detail pushing my conscience to its limits. The mystery of the deadly hymn that I thought I had already unraveled appeared to be a little more complicated than how I pictured it to myself, although I had truly managed to come to grips with the right answer to it. If everything really was as the warrior had described then I still had a chance to reach the topmost tier of the cathedral.
"But what's the point in activating the mechanism now when the pipes are destroyed?" I put another question to him.
"Damaged, not destroyed…" he objected. "As long as at least several organs are still standing, their power can still suffice to liberate the territory of the cathedral from the ghouls' presence… For now it's the most we can at least count on…"
For a second I looked aside in contemplation, while the warrior, being short of his breath, began to have a bad cough. The profuse blood loss must have enervated the mortal so hard that even a short conversation was like a torture to him.
"Has my answer satisfied you at last?" he snorted again with effort.
"Not yet." I returned steadily. "I want you to tell me where exactly I can find this mechanism."
The human's eyes again started getting shifty.
"How do I know you're not going to use this kind of knowledge against my own people?" he asked me with an uptight tang in his voice.
"You don't." I replied coldly. "You remember the deal: you give me the information that I need and I save your brothers. So I guess you have no other choice but to believe me".
The warrior took another deep breath, his Adam's apple nervously going up and down in his throat. Seeing that he was still hesitant to tell me his 'holy secret' I leaned closer to him and nearly whispered him in the face, slowly walking through every word, "Where is the mechanism?"
The wounded mortal continued to be silent for several more seconds, but then finally gave up.
"Very well… it is located…" he started talking, when all of a sudden some breezing noise filled the deadly stillness of this place, causing me to switch my attention to it.
"Hush!" I ordered the warrior and anxiously raised the Reaver, turning my head back and forth in search of the source of the rustle.
This time the sound didn't resemble the rattling spidery legs but was more like a sough of the wind blowing from an opened window.
I strained my ears in an attempt to track down the rustle until all at once it got diluted by some odd voices beginning to echo inside my head,
=You're not welcome here…=
=Take your kind with you and leave this holy place…=
One tone was overflowing into another, all coming out of nowhere as if the place itself was speaking directly into my mind. There seemed as if somebody was projecting the words right into my brain… so much like when using the Whisper ability.
The voices kept on gathering their intensity, getting me more and more distracted and confused.
In order to abstract from the deranging sounds I closed my eyes and sniffed the air with my nose, shifting my concentration to my sense of smell instead.
I instantly detected the distinct scent of several human beings but no signs of vampire's odour whatsoever, which made me question whether it was the Whisper I was hearing now.
The scent also felt rather untypical, like the kind of scent I could not link to any other human I had met before, even different than the one the warrior's body beside me was exuding.
Audibly I was dealing with some hidden agenda here.
"What's going on?" the ensnared man referred to me, his gaze reflecting a mixture of fright and puzzlement.
"Quiet!" I cut him off sternly and then shouted into nowhere, "Whoever you are, show yourself, I know you're here!"
The breezing noise again sounded behind me, and as I swiftly turned around to spot its maker a dagger was already flying through the air right into my face.
It was the instinct forced through centuries of combat that helped me sidestep the whirling blade a fraction of a second before the impact with it.
The swishing weapon hit the distant wall and fell on the floor with a clang, while I immediately turned my eyes to the side from where it was thrown, but only managed to catch sight of some eluding shimmer as if a shadow had just slipped away round the corner.
=You were warned…= one of the voices again rang in my head.
At one sweep I bolted toward where I had discerned this shady blink of a movement, the trail of my assailant's smell leading me like a clew.
Whoever these stalkers were they moved very fast, but with such a trenchant tale of scent they were leaving behind themselves I could easily track down their direction.
So I passed round the corner in pursuit of the trail, when all out of the blue a soul-chilling howl broke forth from the previous wing of the passage and halted me.
I skidded to a stop and then at once ran back to the hind part of corridor, but just as I dashed there I realized I was too late: the thigh-wounded human that I had left here was lying on the floor petrified with his hands motionlessly clasped around his neck.
His face was even paler than before and his eyes had frozen in a glazy glance of agony.
Two dark bloody patches were splattered around his head and traveling down the floor to his feet.
The warrior had just been murdered.
The shocking spectacle left me standing like a statue for a second or two, but then I came to myself and rapidly approached the warrior's dead body.
In a closer look I saw that his throat had been cut literally from ear to ear, blood trilling down his front armor.
Beyond all doubt this had been nothing but a set-up: one of those shadowers was expressly sidetracking me, while the other one used this distraction of mine to kill the warrior and then disappear. There could be only one possible explanation - they didn't want him to tell me the exact location of the mechanism, which is why they ambushed us before he even managed to finish his last sentence. I should have known better than to leave him here alone, but my impetuosity had once again caused me to act heedlessly.
It was another foolish mistake of mine, and this time it had cost this man's life.
A yellow shining ball of energy rose above the human's corpse and started flying around me, illuminating the dark space of the corridor with its spiritual light. This was the warrior's soul, finally released from his body after the long torment he had just endured.
I looked at the dashing comet-like shape of this spark and took thought: ever since I was resurrected I had not even once devoured a mortal's spirit - not because I was purposely avoiding this, but rather because there had not simply been such a need.
Right now there was neither the need, nor the desire of mine to do so, and yet I knew too well that letting the warrior's soul escape into the spirit world would not set it free, but only condemn it to a fate far worse than oblivion.
Although this human was doomed anyway, I still bore the fault for failing to protect him when he was defenseless, and perhaps only spinning his spirit into the cycle of life, death and rebirth could at least partly make reparation for my wrong.
I had no idea how exactly this whole mechanism of the Wheel of Fate worked, but it was the only hope that once the warrior's soul was absorbed by me it could have a chance for reincarnation, and maybe, just maybe, this man's next life would be a better one.
"The Wheel must turn…" I fatefully said to myself and held away the shoulder cape from my jaw.
The soul tortuously flew up through the air into my maw and disappeared there, the Reaver's flaming blade as always twitching in response to the feeding like a candle's light.
The warrior's cadaver, however, remained lying on the ground without any alterations – unlike the corrupted vampiric carcasses the human corporeal shells did not burn away even after their spiritual essences left them.
Now the human's spirit was truly released, and even if it was not released, it was at least safe from becoming the wanderer of the world of the dead.
Feeling an odd combination of desolation and relief I took a deep sigh and shifted my thoughts to my next move.
Now I had to track down those assassins and find out who they were and what they were so desperately trying to hide from me. I knew I promised the warrior that I would seek out his entrapped brothers first, but until I had the other secrets unthreaded this task was like a needle in a haystack for me.
The only problem was that the odour of those stalkers had already dissolved in the air and I had to devise another way of spying them out.
In search of a hint I cast another glance at the human's dead body and noticed several tiny bloodspots on the floor near it that stretched forth to the hind part of the corridor.
Apparently the killer managed to escape unseen, but failed to do this clear, and now this trail of blood he had left was my clew to him.
Wasting no time I darted round the corner, heading back to the open area of the tier. This way was a dead-end and therefore the assassin could not have run too far away.
As I stepped out of the passage my nostrils again reflexively dilated in reaction to the already familiar smell. There it was, the tell tail scent of one of those assassins, and this time it was coming from somewhere close round.
I started turning my head back forth, trying to catch sight of the lurking presence in the darkness, but once again I was the first to get descried: on the spur of the moment somebody jumped on me from behind, gruffly gripping me around the neck in an attempt to jugulate me with a dagger.
The blade, however, only barely cut through the tissue of my cowl without touching my flesh – the assailant was unaware that I was missing the lower jaw together with the throat.
Using the sloppiness of the instant I seized the attacker by the arm and hit him in the stomach with my right elbow.
The blow forced the attacker to release its hold of my neck, as I nimbly turned around and blindly shot forth my right hand, aiming for a clutching move.
Luckily I found my talons to seize the shadower right by the throat and as they did, I furiously picked him up high above the ground.
The assassin dropped the dagger and started snatching at my left hand, trying to ease the grip, until I rudely slammed his body into the wall behind, immobilizing him.
Once the assassin held still, I lastly managed to properly examine his appearance: he wore a blood-red robe with golden trims carrying different runic symbols and a decorated golden belt. His boots, greaves and gauntlets were golden as well. The only part of the killer's vestment that was not made of gold was the mask that covered his face – it seemed to be made of iron and had only two circular trenches for eyes and a weird sick-looking carving beneath them in the form of a smiling mouth.
Through the eyelets in the mask I discerned the shadower's eyes and skin and reassured myself that he truly was a human.
Yet something here patently did not hang together.
What could a mortal possibly be doing here, in a place that was infested with vampires from top to toe, unless only he was not a vampire hunter?
And why would he then kill someone of his own kind?
And, most importantly, what were those voices that I was hearing in the corridor?
Encompassed by all those questions I raised the sword and aimed with it at my assailant, the Reaver's nib burning an inch away from his masked face.
"Who are you? Why did you kill that man?" I asked him menacingly. "Answer me, now!"
The assassin began to fling hectically and murmur something in some strange language that was completely unfamiliar to me. I thought he was simply trying to befool me, pretending to be a foreign-speaker, and this got me even more enraged.
"You'd better stark talking so that I could understand you!" I snarled at him and squeezed my claws around his throat a bit tighter, causing the cartilages in his neck to ominously crackle. "Quickly, or I will reap your worthless soul!"
The masked human gasped and looked at me with eyes full of unfeigned terror, but still continued to mumble in his unintelligible language.
At first I even attempted to listen attentively to his speech and make out some words, but very soon realized it was futile and got rabid at him again.
With revulsion I rampantly drove my foot into his left greave and started pressing it with force against the wall.
The man's armor quickly gave way under my strength and then I heard his knee-joint snap.
The assassin cried out in pain and fell unconscious, my hand that held him by the throat sensing his whole body growing flabby.
I gazed at him one last time, now realizing that perhaps he could really speak only the way he did, otherwise he would have already told me everything plainly. But now this no longer mattered.
Sick and tired of this unsuccessful interrogation I roughly pulled the assassin's limped husk onto the wraith blade, impaling him straight through the chest.
The mortal whimpered and slowly slid off the flaming sword to the ground, the air becoming filled with the smell of burning silk and flesh.
As the dying carcass hit the floor I saw it beginning to turn to ashes just like that of a vampire when it was bereaved of its soul. There appeared that this human had somehow fallen under the influence of the corruption as well, but the likelihood of such an occurrence was hardly believable.
To inherit the Nupraprtor's poison one had to have at least some degree of kindred to the vampire race, in other words, to the clans.
But what kind of connection could there be between my former family and this or any other mortal?
This case was obviously far from clear yet.
In a few seconds there was already nothing left of the cindering assassin's body but a pile of steaming clothes and a mask.
I leaned over the remains of his former vestment and focused my attention on those runes pictured on the trims of his robe. Since I was no scholar I could not translate them, but as far as I could judge they definitely belonged to the written language of the vampires.
This conclusion made me wonder how such symbols could have possibly appeared on a human's garment. There could be no way that the mortals were competent in vampiric script, especially in such a specific one even a former vampire like me did not master… unless only they were not servants of the vampires themselves.
As I arrived at this idea I immediately recalled the conversation between those vampire hunters near the cathedral. They mentioned some "vampire worshippers" attacking them along with the Zephonim when they tried to besiege this pandemonium.
Could it be that these assassins I was dealing with now ranged among them?
And if they did, how did they manage to survive here in such a close vicinity to entire hordes of hungry demented ghouls?
Regardless of their worshipping the vampires or not the children of my brother were no longer sentient beings, but merely animal-like predators that did not distinct between an ally and a foe when it came to their appetites.
There were way too many mismatches in this story, and I felt nearly compelled to casting some light on them.
Unfortunately the killer whose spirit was now vested in me failed to divulge any information that could help me make further progress in this mystery.
My only option now was to trace the other assassin and just hope that he would be more amenable.