Avarice

Chapter 10: The Crawler

I have to block out thoughts of you,

So I don't lose my head,

Crawling like a cockroach,

Leaving babies in my bed.

"Hate Me" – Blue October

Reaver was running.

Around him, the cacophony of screams rose in crescendo, as their owners screamed for mercy, mercy from things that knew no such thing as they pulled them away, killing them if they resisted, or worse. He didn't care about them. It was never about them. They were pointless, faceless unprivileged atrocities in the face of what he was trying to find.

He felt as though he were supposed to be remembering something. As though this was never important to begin with. What? Why? When? Where? How? Such things seemed as if they were important but at the moment, within this hellish monstrosity of circus screaming and burning homes, Reaver cared for nothing.

He was trying to find something. Someone.

Something thicker than tears ran down the contours of his cheeks, as he ran, passing alleys and impish monsters that carried away blurred faces. It may have been blood. Reaver couldn't remember if someone had throttled him hard enough for that. Or rather, if he had let them.

Somehow he found himself in front of their home.

She was there, splayed across the front steps, her body contorted into viciously grotesque angles, her face vapid with pain, with horror and terror, and her skin devoid of any color. Reaver ran to her, kneeling above the woman he was trying to find, moving her from the steps and out into the streets of Oakvale. Holding her in her arms, something more began to run down his face, mixing with the crimson blood of his cuts.

He was crying.

The dying woman's eyes opened slowly, and gasping, she clutched at the collar of his shirt, her skin burning his, fingertips like the butts of cigars against him. She lay limp in his arms, trying to pull herself upwards with the stability of his shirt.

"Sibyl, Sibyl, Sibyl," He said, quickly, the name melting into itself with repetition. He clutched her tightly, as though she were a doll that might soon break within his arms. "Sibyl, Sibyl…"

Please don't die, he wanted to say, but the words never came, never touched his lips.

The shadows came, black impish little creatures with yellow eyes. Reaver swung his arms, but they went straight through them, and they were untouched by him. He could not bat them away, and he was helpless in the face of what was to come. Furiously, he continued, however, trying to force the shadows away as though they were dogs, something less than sentient.

They grasped at Sibyl's broken body, and soon, she went through his touch as well, taken by the shadows. He knelt there, his hands in his lap, the full realization of what cost he had just paid cast fully on his tear and bloodstained face. He watched as they took her away, her youth seeping from her as slowly as it could possibly, and Reaver watched as she grew older and older, and farther and farther away, until there was nothing left but a speck on the horizon.

He sat there until Oakvale burned, razed fully to the ground, and the ashes were scattered about him.

"Dorian!"

"Reaver!" He heard Naveena cry, but it wasn't her voice. It was something more distorted, darker, and more… sinister.

"You let her die! You let us take her! But you don't care, do you? Yes, we see into your heart, we see the darkness in your soul. Tainted, tainted, tainted! You don't care about a single thing, do you? You would like what we've done to her, you would revel in her pain like the twisted man you are!"

The shadows grasped at him, and Ace bit viciously at their ankles, trying to help Reaver. He swung the torch, sweat rolling off his forehead, his eyes wide with terror, just as Naveena's had been before the shadows had taken her away. He reveled in the recoils of the atrocities, the screams of the 'Children'. Shooting at them, he tried desperately to ignore the voice that hissed loudly in the air around him, as though it were everywhere and yet nowhere at all,

"She's calling your name! She's cursing it, cursing it! How could you, she says, how could you let them take me!"

The shadows curled, shattering like pieces of glass in the air and Reaver began to run, his long legs taking him through innumerable hallways, past avian-like statues of monsters he had never seen before. Ahead of him, he could see nothing but darkness, despite the brazier held in his hands, and he could hear nothing but the screams of his name.

"Reaver! Reaver!"

Reaver stopped, in front of one of those triangular doorways, Ace stopping beside him as he gasped for air, for breath. Somehow, the ground beneath him became a dirt path, and the ruins around him became burning buildings, familiar with every groove and curve and flame. Raising his brown eyes and lowered head, he saw a flash of blue, a caring smile, an outstretched hand.

"They call your name! They ask for your death, they ask and we will give!"

Ace latched on to one of the buckles of his boots, growling, trying to pull him forward. He gasped, the flames of Oakvale disappearing around him, becoming the ruins once more. The torch fell from his grasp, falling to the ground with a loud, resonating clatter. And suddenly, there was a gust of numbingly cold wind, and the torch guttered out, wrapping Reaver and Naveena's constant companion in total darkness once again.

Reaver, acting quickly, bent over the torch, and looked for the matchbox. His fingers stumbled ungainly over the lapels of his clothes, and he remembered, his shoulders trembling slightly, that he had no more matches. He jumped back up, stumbling backwards slightly at the sudden action, his back bumping against something sharp, full of angles.

"The light always dies… everything that you are will die!" The voice, distorted, was closer now, by the shell of his ear. Ace growled, lowering himself to the ground, though unable to see just what had spoken in the darkness.

Reaver whipped around in the darkness, his brown eyes wide with something that was never usually present in the deviant: Fear.

In front of him, was the scariest, most abhorrent thing that had ever graced Albion with its presence.

The thing, monster, atrocity whatever you would call such a thing as the Crawler, could have neared six feet tall had it not been hunched over like it was. Three pairs of eyes blinked at him, beetle-black, glistening slightly. Its skin was stretched thinly over its bony, angular form, and was a gross, discolored light gray. The Crawler tilted its head, parts of its face flaring like the mandibles of a grasshopper. Reaver raised his Dragonstomper .48, stepping backwards, grinding his teeth as he looked upon the Crawler's horrific visage and he shot at it.

Like a candle that was about to die out, it flickered and disappeared. Smoke curled delicately from Reaver's pistol, rising to the ceiling. Reaver, unsure of what he had just seen, started back to run through that doorway he'd seen, looking out at the darkness with uncertainty before darting, Ace running beside him.

"Broken! Undone!" Came the Crawler's voice, distorted, disembodied. "She is ours! Ours!"

Reaver stumbled a bit, tripping over his hastiness to find a way out of this nightmare. He cared not for the fate of the princess of Albion, nor gave any thought as to where he was going, all he knew, and all he truly wanted was to leave this place.

Dark, thin hands pulled languidly at his arms as he ran past, trying to keep him there, to keep him within the darkness. He shot blindly at them, reveling in their recoils and hisses, his full lips parted as he tried to breathe in air. It seemed, to him at the moment at least, as though all sources of oxygen had been purged from the halls.

Ace barked, trying to pull him forward as he stopped for air, hands on his knees. In front of him, the area around him, it all became flames and memories again. Two pale hands grasped at his gloved fingers, running gently over the leather of his gloves. Reaver jerked them away, shooting at the woman ahead of him. She screamed, in the Crawler's strange little voice,

"She screams! She cries for your pain!" The shadows began to attack him, and he shot back. "We will break you!"

Rivulets of sweat ran down his face now, and dirt was swept across Reaver's usually immaculate skin, blackening its porcelain surface. The shadows cut him, and his own blood spattered across the flagstones. Brandishing the Dragonstomper .48, he killed them, listening to their shrieks, running through the darkened labyrinth known only by the name Shadelight.

"The eyes are gone forever…"

Reaver, with growing trepidation, found himself running through a sand-filled hallway. Below, the grains of sand shifted with each step, and Reaver stopped at the edge of a small cliff. His eyes darted behind him, his trembling becoming worse and worse with each, shaking, shattering breath. Something thick and tar-like fell from the ceilings, and the yellow eyes of the shadows watched eagerly as he vaulted the cliff.

Feet slapping against some archaic symbols that had been engraved into the stonework, Reaver looked up, hearing a dark circus of guttural gasps. He braced himself for something horrible, but Ace ran past him, barking happily upon seeing the small, doll-like figure at the back of the room.

"Naveena!" Reaver let out an unwanted cry of surprise and sprinted through the room, passing an array of avian, almost raptor-like statues that guarded the area like a spectral sentinel.

When he reached Naveena, he stopped himself short, just before reaching the dais upon which the Hero stood. Her arms were outstretched, palms upward as though she were praying for something, and her mouth gaped open like the gob of a goldfish that had been hooked. The tar-like liquid that he had just seen trickled lazily from her mouth, and she was covered in it, the lower body drenched in it. She seemed to be cemented there, by some unseen force.

"Uah… gah… rah…" She made sounds of pain, her eyes sealed shut, as though to open them would bring Naveena great pain. "Ah… gwah…"

Ace, crouching beside his pained mistress, whimpered, looking up at her with wide eyes. He had never before seen such an aggrieved look on Naveena, and even as a dog, he knew she was in great, terrible pain.

Taking a slow, almost reverent step towards her, Reaver forgot all sense of his identity as Reaver. For a moment, the man that had not yet destroyed Oakvale was laid bare, and Naveena could not see it. The eyes that fell upon her stressed body did not do so in pleasure, and the shaking hand that tried to grace her face did not have an ultimatum.

There was a great, wet plopping sound, like the sound of bare footsteps trudging through thick, rainwater drenched mud and Reaver looked behind him, his pistol brandished high in the air.

He caught a glimpse of the Crawler as it vanished, leaving behind a smoky darkness that set solidly in the air before being carried by some sort of wind.

"We have waited… centuries for you…" Said the Crawler. Reaver moved towards the center of the room, his eyes looking angrily around, the broken parts of himself that had shattered during the torture of the Crawler, coming back together seamlessly, as if sewed by some excellent seamstress.

He regained himself, his eyes closing, his breathing steady once more.

"Such a commotion, you've caused, princess," He thought to himself, severing the emotional connection he had just attached to Naveena by calling her by name. "I do expect to be fully remunerated for my services once all this shadowy claptrap is over and done with."

"Did you really?" He asked, knowing the Crawler was there, somewhere. For some reason, unknown to him, he felt like taunting the ugly thing. "I do hope you and your children had a good party or two, I imagine that it's dreadfully droll around here."

The tar shot upwards, like a fountain, and Reaver stepped backwards, preparing his Dragonstomper .48 by reloading it, the bullets rolling easily over his palm. As he always had, he enjoyed the adrenaline that pushed through his veins before a good scrap.

Shadows, the Children, poured from the pools of tar by the dozens, flaunting swords not made of steel, or silver, but something much solider.

Rolling backwards to get away from the shadows quickly, Reaver steadied his hand and shot, catching two of his enemies in one, brilliant blow. Smirking to himself, in that same, self-satisfied way that always preceded him, he shot again, watching as they crumbled away in midair.

"The Children hurt! They bring death to your kingdom! They bring destruction and death upon all you've ever known!"

The Children caught him slightly, slashing their swords across his exquisite waistcoat. Reaver made a disagreeable sound, smacking the shadow across the face with the butt of his Dragonstomper. The smirk on his countenance grew wider and wider, twisting his cheeks in that wolfish manner of his.

He continued to blast through the seemingly endless battalion of shadows, until they had all turned into smoke at his hands. Brushing a few strands of inky hair that had found their way out of his perfected and sculpted piece of art behind his ears, Reaver awaited whatever other challenge the Crawler would throw at him.

And, yes, he did so stylishly.

Moving out of the way, he watched with slight eagerness in his features as the tar flourished in the middle of the room, spanning out like the flower of a big, black rose, covered in some of the purple shimmer that had been present in those blasted fields. With slight horror, Reaver watched as orbs, like little violet fireflies, flung themselves from the middle of the black rose, gravitating towards the raptor like statues that had been standing guard the entire time.

"They have bodies now! Bodies… can tear you asunder!"

Suddenly, they rumbled to life, moving stiffly as though they had awoken from a long, centuries-long, slumber. Reaver stiffened, watching as four of those raptor statues unveiled long, sharp swords that were attached to their arms. He shot at them the smoke of his pistol rising in the air as one of the statues lumbered backwards slightly, struck by the power of the Dragonstomper .48.

Reaver, rolled backwards as two of the statues lumbered towards him, shooting at them and, being the ex-Pirate King, never missing once. A third statue found his way behind him, and gyrated its body, swinging the swords at him in a motion that almost made it appear as though it were dancing. One of the blades found its mark, and Reaver was sent staggering backwards, tripping over his feet. Reaver managed to get himself back up before falling to the ground, narrowly avoiding yet another attack from one of those horrid blades.

He shot again, and watched as one of the raptors stood still, before finally crumbling away, pieces of the former statue clanking loudly against the ruined ground. Reaver rolled, and then shot, and then repeated that. He watched as another statue fell apart thanks to him, and the pieces of both defeated statues crumbled away, like a sand sculpture.

Faced with the last two statues, Reaver felt himself beginning to grow incredibly tired, he gasped for a bit of breath, rosy lips parted. The blades of one of those avians cut him, ripping a long, elongated hole in the sleeve of his shirt. Suddenly, a ridiculous idea struck Reaver.

Rolling in between the two raptors, Reaver crouched low to the ground, and waited, watching as the two statues attacked each other, the blades hovering above him as they ripped each other apart. The statues stiffened again, and crumbled, collapsing to the ground, defeated.

Reaver rose again, palms spread out against the flagstones, his head turned towards the captured form of the princess, and he watched, with ever-growing awe as the tar let go of its hold on her and she fell to her knees, heaving slightly.

"The Guardian will protect us..." The Crawler said, and all of the tar that was left from the battles, turned towards a different statue.

It appeared to be a hooded man with wings similar to those of an angel's. They waved outwards, the splayed feathers were gilded, and highly detailed. The hooded man held a scythe, as though he were some Grim Reaper character, and waved it around as he was given animation. Every movement he made was characterized by a groaning sound, the stress of slightly rusted limbs as they moved unnaturally about.

The Guardian lumbered towards him, the sound of his moaning limbs making every moment of his walking terrifying, strange. Suddenly, the monster stomped, and a fissure of sorts, a crack in the archaic tile jumped towards Reaver at a frightening pace. The fissure gleamed with a purple shimmer, and he rolled expertly out of the way, watching as the crack vanished, leaving no trace of it having ever been there.

Reaver shot at it, and his bullets almost seemed to deflect off the surface of the Guardian's golden skin. The eyes of the Guardian, indigo-colored, narrow things, seemed to pierce Reaver's soul.

The other hand, the one that did not hold the dastardly scythe, was raised quickly into the air. The slithering sound, the one that had startled both Reaver and Naveena mere hours before, resounded through the air like a death rattle, and the black tar crawled across the flagstones, reaching towards Reaver with greedy fingers.

A fountain of ravens burst forth from the tar, becoming the little black shadows that Reaver so detested. They flourished swords at him, and Reaver, with growing annoyance at the bastardly things, attacked them, forgetting almost about the Guardian. It was a tactic, one that Reaver failed to recognize immediately, a tactic to try and distract him while the bigger threat thought of something more creative.

"The Children hurt! They are angry!"

Reaver blasted through the shadows, while the Guardian found his way behind him, and after defeating the last of those damned impish monsters, felt the sting of the Guardian's scythe hitting his back. The attack flung him forward, and Reaver tried desperately to scramble to his feet, but the Guardian was too quick. It attacked him again, and he skittered across the floor, cursing his own idiocy under his breath.

While on the ground, his arm folded underneath him, and his own fatigue beginning to overtake him, Reaver looked up at the Guardian as he raised his scythe, high above his head, preparing to do something similar to publicly executing Reaver. It was then, that a ball of black and white fur, a bullet of sorts, jumped upwards and snapped at the Guardian's neck.

Ace, who had been at his mistress' side during Reaver's plight with the Darkness, had seen Reaver's current dilemma, and knowing that Naveena wouldn't have wanted the man dead, (Even though, previously, she had.) he proceeded to attack the Guardian.

Teeth latching onto the golden neck of the Guardian, Ace held on tightly to him. The Guardian, distracted from his previous attempt to try and end Reaver's long-lived and highly scandalous life, waved wildly around in an attempt to throw off the mutt. However, metal is not the same as skin, and easily, very easily, the Guardian was able to throw Ace off of him.

But it was enough time for Reaver to get back on his feet. Ace's body landed on the ground with a loud thud and the Hero of Skill continued his barrage against the Guardian, finger pressed tightly against the trigger of the Dragonstomper .48. The Guardian's movements became slower, his wave of the scythe became a little less exuberant, and finally, after many bullets, the Guardian fell just as the other members of the Darkness fell.

As his body crumbled away to ash, Reaver stood there, his shoulders shaking with each intake of breath, his eyes wild with enthusiasm and triumph and finally, after a few moments, the deviant turned to Naveena.

The tar left her skin completely, leaving her, though she was crumpled on the ground, arms splayed out above her. Reaver, slowly, with an elegant gait, walked to her side, a small but strained smirk on his lips upon seeing the usually prideful princess at his mercy. Her dog limped over to them, sniffing his mistress' face, and whimpering.

"My dear princess-" He started, attempting to pick her up, and she gave a sudden, loud gasp, her fingers jumping to the bunch of cloth at his throat, tangling them in his cravat. Reaver stopped, his eyes widening as she lifted her head up to look at him.

The skin around her ultramarine eyes was black, and cracked, with thin purple veins visible within the darkness of her eyes.

"I..." She began, her voice was cracked as well, tired. "I can't see!"

"She is ours... She is ours... She is ours..." The Crawler said. "She is ours... She is ours..."

"Reaver," She choked on his name, a sob starting in the back of her throat. "Reaver, please, please don't leave me here. I can't see! I can't see!"

Her eyes were sightless orbs staring at him.

"She is ours..."

And yeah. I did the last quarter of this on Wordpad, and while I was supposed to be working so mind the mistakes! :-D

Feedback is appreciated!