"Watch out!" Saracen roared and tackled Larrikin to the ground as a sizzling energy stream seared above their heads and hit a necromancer square in the chest, killing him instantly. Coughing from the dust their fall had swirled up and wiping dirt off of their faces both men remained on the ground hiding between the corpses of the fallen.
"We can't stay here!" Larrikin shouted over the turmoil of the battle raging on around them. "This is no good, we are outnumbered and our troops are pegging out in hundreds. We have to retreat!"
Saracen only looked at his comrade grimly, cheek badly burnt from a fireball that had hit him but he knew, Larrikin was right. They would be wiped out before the sun kissed the earth and that was less than an hour off. "Get the soldiers' attention! Tell them to run for it! Regroup at rendezvous point! Go!"
"What about you?" Larrikin almost wiped the ground with his nose as he evaded a spear that was aimed at a woman behind them. Frantically he looked at his friend not daring to follow the spear's course to see whether it hit his mark for it probably would.
Saracen closed his eyes for a moment and heavily sucked in a lungful of air before he grabbed the jester's shoulder and gave it a small squeeze. His brown eyes shone with dark determination as he looked at Larrikin.
"I will get Ghastly." Before his friend could do anything to stop him, Saracen had pushed himself up from the ground and sprinted towards the mad frenzy of two hostile groups of mages staging a fight.
"Saracen!"
But Rue did not turn back, he trusted his friend to round up their army and high tail it the hell out of this skirmish while he himself concentrated on the task at hand. He barely evaded a scythe and almost lost his footing in a pool of blood but managed to balance himself and run on. The faces around him became a blurred mass of agony and despair, mouths torn open in anguished screams, eyes opened wide as they felt Death stare into their souls before taking them with her. Still Saracen pounded on until he finally broke through a small circle of sorcerers and called out to Ghastly who was standing in the midst of numerous broken corpses.
The tailor had changed over the last two weeks since Skulduggery's demise. To be fair, all of them had, the spirit of the soldiers was dented and had taken severe damage upon seeing their leader killed and burnt at the stake and his family butchered like nothing. What was more, it was not just their fraction of the army that was in a poor fighting state; around the same time Skulduggery had been killed by Serpine, other leaders had been caught, tortured and assassinated all over the world in front of their soldiers. With the fingers of the steering hand that had coordinated assaults and imprisonments gone, sorcerers were causing havoc in their own ranks. Wrath and hatred now held their hearts captive and they attacked blindly in random groups, effectively killing themselves. Although new lieutenants had been elected for each regiment of the troupes, they had not even survived long enough for everyone to remember their name and now the queen of chaos was ruling the battlefield with an iron fist that no fire seemed capable of melting.
Saracen watched Ghastly punch a black robed necromancer whose torso and shoulders were protected by pieces of steel armour and sent him sprawling. The necromancer did not get up.
"Ghastly!" Saracen shouted over the roar of battle and sought to make his way past quarrelling fighters. "Ghastly! We are retreating!" He grabbed the broad man by his shoulders trying to get his attention but the tailor swatted his arms away and turned to run a mage through with a sabre, letting him fall where he stood, no emotion showing in his features.
"Dammit, Ghastly! We are being butchered here! We are pulling back, NOW!" Saracen roared and grabbed his friend's arm.
"He did not die so we could run with our tails between the legs", the tailor said almost too quietly to be heard by Saracen who gaped at him, mouth wide open in disbelief. Did Ghastly really think Skul had died in vain? Anyway, if Ghastly wanted to discuss this matter they could do it later. In the distance he heard Larrikin's magically amplified voice thundering across the plain ordering the troupes to retreat.
"This is not the time to talk about this! He died so we could continue fighting and fight we will! Just not now! We regroup and launch another att –" Saracen stumbled back and disbelievingly looked down at the black-feathered shaft protruding from his belly. He shook from the impact of the second arrow that penetrated his right lung and crumbled to the ground before Ghastly could send an irate stream of orange fire towards the masked archer, killing him instantly.
Saracen was pale and his breathing hitching when Ghastly knelt down beside him with tears beginning to swell in his eyes. "Can … we retreat … now?" he asked, managing half a smile and coughed out blood that splattered over his chin and neck while his face screwed up in pain.
"Dammit, Saracen, this is all my fault! Had I not been totally out of my head this wouldn't have happened. You wouldn't have –"
"You snapped … out of … it. I am … willing … to take ...two arrows … if I just got you … back."
Tears streamed down his scarred face as Ghastly conjured a powerful pulsing air shield around them before carefully picking up his comrade who cried out in anguish as the arrows shifted inside him. "I got you. Don't worry, we can fix this."
Somewhere else but not too far off…
Skulduggery had been quiet for the past few hours, thinking to himself with Vile notoriously interrupting to remind him that he was still audible throughout his entire mind. It had taken him some time to figure out how to build and fortify a wall around his small remnant of consciousness to shield his thoughts from Vile. Only problem was that the second the last stone had been laid he had not only prevented Vile from listening in on his thoughts but he himself was suddenly unable to hear his enemy. At the moment that did not overly matter since Skulduggery needed time and peace to think of a plan to reclaim his mind and eliminate this dark fantasy immediately.
Recap. A subsidiary part of his consciousness that called itself Lord Vile had managed to take control over his mind, banishing him into probably the same crevice he had crawled out from. How ironic. He would have to fight to get his prior position back yet Vile had no chance of casting him out without killing himself in the process since they were still the same person, technically speaking. Now, that at least was some good news however disturbing it might be.
There was one more question that bothered Skulduggery as he squatted at the back of his own mind: why had Vile appeared? He had been comfortable with dying or at least that was what he thought. Perhaps he was not?
Images started to flash through his part of the mind. Serpine smiling as he cut Kara's throat, the shocked faces of his friends as he gave up to his arch enemy, the sound of Nemesis' neck breaking, Shudder crying as he cradled Kara at his chest, the beautiful smile of the faceless traitor lurking in the shadows.
No, Skulduggery sobbed. Stop.
Kara's innocent laugh, her first wobbly steps, her scurrying up a tree like a squirrel, the sweet touch of Nemesis' lips on his, her warm fingers entangled in his, their long talks about the future while their daughter cuddled between them and finally the silent respect the Dead Men had given his family.
His family. Nemesis. Kara. The words echoed in his mind ever growing louder until Skulduggery gave a long piercing cry of anguish, his sorrow and grief turning into hot flaming wrath. His mind filled with blending white light as Skulduggery screamed out his rage and desperation.
How dare Serpine? How dare he harm his family? How dare he turn him into a mumbling puppet with half the strings cut? He would have his vengeance!
Lord Vile. How dare this clown take his mind, his body away from him, how dare he claim his life as his own?
HOW DARE ALL OF YOU! Skulduggery roared and the light exploded outwards, blasting the wall to smithereens and shrieking it occupied every crack, every crevice of the mind, driving the wailing shadows back, cornering them. Above the turmoil rose Skulduggery, wresting the control over his mind and thoughts from Lord Vile who shrank back warily not having expected so strong an opposition from him. Skulduggery knew he could not get rid of Vile completely for he was and remained a part of his consciousness and so he simply banned him to the remotest and coldest place possible inside is mind. Solid walls were erected around his prison to cage him for all eternity.
As soon as Skulduggery was back in control, the armour of shadows began to dissolve and dissipated into the starry night without leaving a trace behind. All that was left was a pale skeleton with a broken soul wishing for revenge standing in the midst of the forest.
At the rebels' camp …
"Saracen!" Dexter came running towards Ghastly carrying the wounded man into the makeshift camp thy had set up in a clearing near the edge of the forest; they simply hadn't made it further with all their injured and dying. "What happened?" He paled when he saw the arrows protruding from his friend's body.
"Not now. Get Ravel – argh!"
Dexter watched the air shield flicker and vanish and lunged forward to prop Ghastly as he dropped onto his knees, completely drained and almost out of magic power. Sweat was pouring down his scarred face and he was clenching his teeth as he laid Saracen on the ground as gently as he could before collapsing next to his friend, unconscious. Without hesitation Vex sprang up to find Ravel. What the hell had happened? How had Saracen not known that arrows were flying his way? He pushed his worries aside when he finally located his friend outside a tent helping in the production of the healing mud. During the times of war sooner or later every soldier found himself aiding the doctors and physicians and Ravel had a knack at making healing mud.
"Ravel! We need you! Saracen is hurt bad!" he shouted over the pained cries of a mage who was covered in black thorns.
Erskine Ravel frowned and grabbed a pot full of freshly produced mud before following Dexter in a jog. "How bad?" he asked, his voice pressed and full of concern for his friend.
"Two arrows, one through the lung." There were no more words spoken until the men reached their wounded comrade.
Saracen was lying on his back, cold sweat forming on his brow and his eyes were shut tightly as he attempted to suck in lungfuls of air in between bloody coughs. Larrikin and Shudder were already kneeling at his side with Larrikin whispering comforting things and Shudder nodding in agreement.
"My, my Saracen, what on earth did you run into again?" Ravel asked with a smile as he joined Larrikin and Shudder into an kneeling position and placed the pot with the foul smelling mud aside. Although his friend looked worse for wear Ravel had seen that the injuries were not fatal if he provided medical aid immediately. "I would give you a leaf to dull the pain but I am afraid you would cough it out the second I laid it onto your tongue."
Saracen coughed and more blood spilled onto his already drenched collar.
"Alright, there is no time to lose. Dexter grab his legs, will you? Larrikin, Shudder, the arms. Quickly!" Ravel ordered as his friends scurried to their positions. Carefully, he grabbed the arrow that had pierced the lung and slowly started to pull with Saracen uttering a gurgling scream and struggling to shake the Dead Men off. When Erskine was certain he would not do any more damage, he yanked the arrow out and threw it aside. Immediately, Saracen's lung began to collapse and he thrashed even more, his body screaming for oxygen. Ravel felt the air at the fingertips of his left hand and gently pushed until Saracen's lung was fully inflated again while at the same time he used his right hand to suck up the gases that had spread from the tear into his body.
"Larrikin, if you were so kind as to provisionally mend the hole in his lung with an air shield, the mud will do the rest once we stitched him up. It should hold for say half an hour, can you manage that?"
The sorcerer nodded and conjured a tiny air shield that clung to the small rip in Saracen's lung and hindered the air from escaping once again.
Saracen coughed and his chest heaved as he was finally able draw a deep rasping breath into his starving lungs. He moaned as the pain lashed through him with every breath he took.
"Here, chew this", Dexter said gently with a relieved smile on his lips and slid two leaves into Saracen's mouth.
The Dead Men waited until the leaves had worked their magic before Ravel ripped the second arrow out of the flesh and began to remove Saracen's protective combat clothes. He carefully probed the belly wound before nodding, satisfied that the arrow had not hit any vital organ that was beyond the healing mud's mending powers.
"So, how does it look?" Saracen asked while staring at the blood covering his torso. "Will it scar?"
Instead of answering, Ravel gestured in the air and suddenly hot droplets of water were swirling around his hands which he commanded to clean the wounds of dirt and blood. "All done. Dexter, would you stitch him up?"
"No!" Saracen cried, suddenly frightened. "Not him!"
"Why not?" Vex asked with a sheepish grin. "It worked like a charm last time."
"You stitched a unicorn onto my back!"
"Stitches from these tools don't scar so after you apply the mud it will vanish anyway. Poor unicorn, though; had to put up with your toxic criticism." Dexter solemnly produced a curved black needle and pushed it into a fireball Larrikin was holding out for him to kill any germs. "What would you like this time?" he smirked as he threaded the needle.
Smiling at Saracen's panicked expression, Ravel leaned over Ghastly and when he saw that the tailor was still non sentient he slipped out of his jacket and folded it to provide a makeshift cushion. "Help me find some coats to make comfy beds for Ghastly and this dork", Ravel said to Larrikin and Shudder.
When the three men were out of hearing distance, Dexter let his smirk drop and looked Saracen dead in the eye. "Dammit, man, don't you scare me like this. I thought we might lose another one of us tonight." Carefully he smeared the mud on a crudely stitched dolphin and a crooked tree before he applied some more on Saracen's burnt cheek.
Saracen ceased his mewling and smiled gently. "You won't get rid of me that easily, Vex. I still got many pranks planned with you being the victim."
"You're an idiot."
In that moment, Ghastly came back to his senses and groggily sat up. When he spotted his friend his face immediately wrinkled with worry and guilt but a warm smile stole on his lips when he saw Rue grinning toothily back at him.
"Thank you."
Saracen raised an eyebrow quizzically. "Why the honour?"
"Skulduggery was one of my best friends and we have known each other ever since we were children. When he … died I completely lost control and all I wanted was revenge. I strode down a dangerous road but in the end it was you … uh being injured on my watch, on my account that snapped me back into the here and now." Ghastly looked up as Larrikin approached, closely followed by Ravel and Shudder, each holding a bundle of coats, blankets and pillows in their arms. They sat down and Larrikin piled some sticks into a heap and ignited it with a fireball. The Dead Men made themselves comfortable, smearing healing mud onto their various bruised and burned and cut bodies as Ghastly continued.
"You are my friends and you count on me as much as I know I can trust you to watch my back. I behaved like a child the last few weeks, wanting to smash everything to smithereens but I see that this was not the right way to deal with grief."
"Everyone deals with sorrow differently, Ghastly", Shudder said. "We knew, you'd come around eventually. We all had or still have to overcome this, Dexter with his jokes for which I wanted to smack him on more than one occasion and Saracen fought without a shield most of the time. Ravel went on killing sprees as well as you did, my friend and Larrikin would not stop going on about that one girl he met in Russia about a month ago."
"What about you, Anton?" Vex inquired.
"I tend to think too much about what could have been and has not come to pass."
"What about the best way to cope; reviving?" A voice as smooth as velvet asked from the shadows of the trees and a skeleton walked into the view of the Dead Men who stared at the apparition in front of them, eyes blinking unbelievingly while they gaped in total silence.
"I am back", Skulduggery Pleasant said.