Chapter Eleven
Sylphiel stood her ground, barely a twinge at the corner of her eye betraying her reaction. Her jaw was set, brows furrowed and eyes narrowed in determination, rather than anger. "Young man..." she addressed him without looking.
"It's Aric," he supplied, in the midst of watching the geezer help himself to more rotten melon with a half-glazed look that wasn't a product of bad old eyes.
"Aric, then," she acknowledged simply. Then she looked sharply over her shoulder, her hair swaying gently with the motion as she nodded. "Run."
"Wha--?" he started, his eyes involuntarily straying up in search of a place to look away. They were just in time to catch the last sliver of sunlight disappearing below the peak of a roof, the rays that had been silhouetting a rooster-shaped weathervane disappearing as though swallowed up by the darkness.
Looking back down, he felt his eyes go wide and round. The old melon merchant had tossed his rotten wares over his shoulder, and was even then in the middle of crawling over the wooden planks that served as his counter, strangely spider-like. His joints creaked and popped as he moved, and even as Aric watched, his thinning hair began to fall from his head. First one eye, and then the other rolled listlessly out of their sockets, striking the ground and decomposing on contact. As he looked around, he saw that not just the remaining merchants, but all the remaining townsfolk were undergoing the same change; window shutters were clapping open as decaying men, women and even children crawled out of the windows and down the walls like insects, doors could be heard unlatching or simply being hammered off their hinges. Aric swallowed, hard, slowly tensing and half-bending his knees again.
Zombies.
Mazoku pets, usually, though humans could also use the Black Magic that caused the process. It was usually only a Mazoku tactic, though, for only the most vile and evil of humans would inflict the horror of living death upon another soul, let alone a large population such as this. Mazoku, of course, fed on the suffering, woe and anguish of such tortured souls, as surely as they did on fear and hate and all the other most negative emotions of material creatures.
"Run!" Sylphiel repeated, more firmly, as she stood her ground and brought her rod from thin air once again. "Find your friends!" Aric hesitated, frowning. Ell and Selaena were still somewhere in the middle of all this, and he really needed to find them, but...
"You're joking, right? Freeze Arrow!" Lifting his hands cupped together and drawing them apart, he released a swarm-burst of frozen projectiles, which sailed neatly past the White Sorceress and caught the undead merchant square in the chest and shoulders. Being undead already, the ice itself barely phased him--but it weighed him down, and since rotting and unresponsive muscles were hard enough to move already, it was significant. "I still need your help! I can't find them and get out on my own, and neither can you!"
Sylphiel simply watched him, for a moment, as he glanced warily about for the next closest shuffling creature...and then reluctantly nodded. "Right, then. If you can keep them away, I will search for any other sources of life in this place. But..." He glanced over his shoulder at her when she hesitated, and when he frowned a touch impatiently she went on. "...try not to kill any of them unless you have to. These poor creatures are still people, and killing them will only redouble their torment before they rise again." Sinking to her knees, she lifted her rod up...and released it in midair, the stone at its head beginning to glow as it hovered between the spread fingers of her two hands.
He reluctantly acknowledged that, but while many of the spells he knew were non-lethal, they were also not very practical for crowd-control of many dozen shuffling corpses out to kill you. Still, he resolved to do his best, and that he did, even as the legion of dead peasants began to close in on them in a slow but ever-encroaching circle.
At first, it was a simple enough matter. He slowed as many as he readily could with Freeze Arrows and low-power Freeze Brids. When one or two creatures came too close, he pushed them back with various Wind spells (Largely Diem Win and Bomb Di Win). Occasionally, when one slipped by him he would send it on a flying trip with a Dill Brand spell. But the sheer numbers were overwhelming, and it wouldn't be long before more drastic measures were needed.
Fortunately, Sylphiel was as good as her word and apparently as skilled as the townsfolk had made her out to be, and so the circle of clear space around them was still significant when she finished her divination. Lowering her hands, she watched the rod balance on its pointed bottom for the briefest second...slowly wobble left, then right, and then left again...and finally fall sharply right. Raising her hand, she pointed in the direction the stone was facing. "That way."
Aric fell over. "You've got to be kidding me," he mumbled as he pushed himself back up. Realizing his mistake, he threw a few hasty air spells about to fling away zombies that had not paused during his moment of comic slapstick. Once they had some breathing room, he narrowed his eyes. "This is going to be a problem. Before we can even go looking for Ell and Selaena we'll have to go through them." He gestured encompassingly to the steadily moving tide of undead. "You're going to have to let me blow them up. Otherwise we're stuck."
"No," she insisted, shaking her head with a firm frown. "We can't do that."
"Well, we can't fly," he retorted, a touch irritably. "Even if you know a flying spell, we wouldn't be able to land without coming down right in the middle of them!"
"Just keep them away a few moments longer," she replied, remaining on her knees and clasping her hands, bowing her head prayerfully.
"Now is not the time for religious appeals!" he snapped, bordering on frantic as he began hurling spell after spell once again. His endurance was beginning to wear down--one could only cast repeated back to back spells for so long, unless one perhaps happened to be Lina Inverse or something. "The gods help those who help themselves, you know!"
But Sylphiel was not praying. After only a moment, he recognized the faint echoing tones that signified an incantation, and his eyes slowly went wide.
"You, who are roaming forever;
Pitiful, twisted souls;
With our purifying light,
Go you far away to the place that lies between the Universes!"
Large indigo eyes opened, and the White Sorceress' arms lifted high over her head as pure, shining, whiter-than-white Magic power gathered around her hands. Taking in a final deep breath, she drew back as if hefting something incredibly heavy, and then cast her hands in the direction her rod had indicated, Aric diving to the side just in case. "Megiddo Flare!"
The bolt of White Magic power lanced from her hands, hurtling right into the thick of the corpses shuffling toward them from that direction. After a point a short distance away, it exploded in a bedazzling blast of whiteness, blinding Aric momentarily even though he shielded his eyes and squeezed his lids shut. When he could see again, he stood in shock.
Where there had been a portion of an army of soulless walking corpses, bent on nothing less than killing, potentially violating and then devouring them (very likely in that same order), was now a field of bodies. Very human bodies, without the grotesquely exaggerated decay and mangling of their zombified selves. Rising to her feet, Sylphiel clasped her hands again and murmured softly, "May your souls now rest in peace; you need your bodies no more."
As Aric continued to watch, wide-eyed, the shrine maiden scooped up her rod in one hand and then took hold of his elbow again with the other, quickly leading him through the wide area that still resonated with White Magic power, keeping the remaining zombies dazed and disoriented. When they finally got their bearings, about half of them fell upon the now very lifeless and soulless bodies, while the remainder decided to forego fighting over an immediate meal in favor of a potential future meal that may or may not be. By that time, however, Aric and Sylphiel were well on their way.
Making headway was possible now that the circle around them was broken, even with zombie villagers continuing to stumble after them--and worse, because of its greater speed, to crawl along the walls and paving stones like great insects--because the undead were limited in their attack range…but Aric was not. Sylphiel just continued to run, perhaps winded from her spell or perhaps simply not knowledgeable in more combative forms of magic, but Aric was still able to hurl spells on the fly, mostly ice spells intended to slow now. As they stumbled upon an intersection, Aric hesitated--but the shrine maiden did not. She immediately tugged him to the left, an Icicle Lance barely grazing the fringe of her cape as he let it fly past her.
Aric allowed himself to be dragged, trusting the White Sorceress' powers of divination to lead them to his companions, and focused himself on preventing the ex-villagers from either catching them or cutting off their escape. There were three or four more intersections in their path, but Sylphiel rounded them unerringly and unhesitantly
Ell, you'd damn well better be alright after all this... Aric found himself thinking, somewhere in the back of his mind, in the midst of hurling another Freeze Brid.
Snarling, teeth bared to expose elongated fangs, Ellisia tore the head off another once pleasant villager and sent it tumbling over her shoulder, pushing the body back into a small crowd of his fellows and knocking them all down. As uncivilized as it was, she had to admit that deep, deep down there was some small (and entirely too human) part of her that was vaguely enjoying the carnage. If Selaena hadn't been around, in fact, she would have probably been able to wade her way right through the center to the inevitable source of all this.
But she couldn't just leave the girl, nor could she dare to approach the thick of these creatures with her in tow. While the White Sorceress had been in something of a state of shock, at first, she had actually recovered admirably. In fact, even as Ell glanced over her shoulder to check on her, pulling a wing out of her line of sight so she could see (for her disguise had long ago been shed when the first townsperson had attacked), the girl wound back and let fly a terrific swing of her staff, the bells on the end jangling as the head made contact with a zombie head and sent the creature toppling to the ground.
The lavender-haired girl was showing significant mercy to the walking corpses, and had urged Ell to do the same...but Ellisia's options were frustratingly limited at this point. All she had was her brute strength, claws and tail and even occasional jet of fiery breath (her hammer was too difficult to grasp properly with these claws, which were sharp enough to pierce even her own hide if she wasn't careful). Normally, when she changed form manually, the half-Dragon form was simply too difficult to maintain while casting spells and she would simply revert. She had reasoned at first that under the circumstances things should be different, but apparently not--she still couldn't cast any working spells. Even if she could, the ones she had focused on studying were made specifically for destroying such creatures, not incapacitating them. Perhaps if Aric were around...
She shook herself in frustration, chiding herself silently. Why was she so quick to rely on that lazy, self-interested half-pint of a human sorcerer? He was probably still sleeping through all of this somewhere. If she ever got her claws on him...
"Hit the deck, ladies!"
Aric?! Without even thinking, Ell threw herself to the ground, hoping Selaena had the good sense to do the same and not question.
"Megiddo Flare!"
Ellisia didn't recognize the voice that had shouted this time, other than that it was distinctively female. She knew of the spell, though, and even as it impacted she moved her arms and wings both to cover her head, shielding her eyes from the explosion of pure white power that would expunge the dark power from the magically warped bodies.
She also knew about how long it would take to clear, and when enough time had passed she uncovered her head and pushed herself up to her knees, scanning instantly for Selaena. The girl seemed well, still covering her head until bidden otherwise. Ell tugged gently on one of her sleeves, and the lavender-haired girl hesitantly lifted her head, her braid slipping to fall over her shoulder so the emerald clasp at its tip clinked on the paving stones. Both of them rose to their feet, then, and turned.
"Mister Winterbourne!" Selaena let out a sigh of relief, leaning heavily on her staff, and Ell's tail lashed behind her as she watched Aric and the strange new woman with indigo hair approach.
"What kept you, Aric?" Ell huffed, crossing her arms and shifting her weight from foot to foot. "Overslept?"
"Oh, stow it, Ell," he replied absently, waving off her ire as he gestured to the woman with him. "This is Sylphiel Nels Lahda. She's a shrine maiden, and she's the one who helped me find the two of you in all this mess, so show a little gratitude."
Ell nodded offhandedly, taking a brief glance to measure Sylphiel up against her usual standards (herself, of course). In the back of her mind, she warily filed this woman away as "competition", in the same mental folder as Lhynn.
"A former shrine maiden, actually," Sylphiel said humbly, bowing her head slightly to them as she curled fingers tightly around the rod in her right hand. "I serve no one church now, only the public. Anyway, I'm glad to see you're both...alright." She gave Ell a hesitant glance at this, but politely moved her eyes onward before she could begin to stare. "If I'd known there were other living people here, I would have helped you to leave sooner."
"What...exactly has transgressed, here?" Selaena asked hesitantly, glancing around at the temporarily empty streets with clear trepidation.
"I believe you mean 'transpired', Miss," Sylphiel offered politely.
"That's what I said."
The shrine maiden opened her mouth to speak, bemused, but Aric lifted a hand and shook his head. "Just go ahead and answer. It'll save time for all of us."
Nodding, the indigo-haired woman closed her fingers tighter around the rod, taking her own glance around. Once she saw the others doing the same, she began to speak. "This town has been dead and cursed for a long, long time. No one has left Bordertown since...since the second fall of Sairaag." For a moment, the woman had almost choked--even Ell could tell that--but she had recovered swiftly. "All word from the villagers simply ceased, and the few messengers or others who dared to investigate did not return." She sighed, slowly lowering her gaze for a moment, before returning to scanning for more encroaching undead. "With no Sairaag military to come and investigate this strange breach in communication, and lesser attempts yielding no response, it came to a point where no one dared to attempt. I came suspecting something sinister, and it did not take me long to discover the curse of this place. For some weeks I have remained here, leaving the outskirts of town to camp a safe distance outside at night, and by day returning to perform what good I could for them in their misery. I had hoped that by spreading enough positivity here, I could undo what had been wrought."
"Didn't work, huh?" Ell blandly stated the obvious for the record.
Sylphiel shook her head. "The villagers already exude an air of pleasantry and kindliness, to lure in those who would pass through and encourage them to stay at least until nightfall. Then, when the sun sets..." She needed little more than to gesture about with one arm, for even the buildings seemed to reflect the condition of the people. Shutters hung limp, their hinges having rusted to nothing; glass in windows that had been pristine but an hour or two ago was shattered, thick tangled cobwebs filling in the space between the rotten wood that separated the panes. Bricks that composed buildings were crumbling, powder flaking off them at the slightest touch, and the paving stones underfoot were worn and cracked, greenery growing up through the gaps.
"It makes sense," Selaena murmured, clutching her staff closer to herself. "Mazoku are only harmed by cheerful, positronic energy when it's genuine. If the people really are suffering inside, under all the altitudes of good cheer, it would still feed them...while, at the same time, luring in more victims."
Sylphiel started to correct the girl even as she shuddered slightly, but Aric interrupted this time before the shrine maiden could waste her breath. "Okay, okay, so we know the haunted village's ghost-story now. What're we gonna do about it? I vote we just blast our way out and put this place behind us."
"You would," Ell retorted, dark eyes narrowing. The lingering positive energy from the spell wouldn't keep the undead at bay for much longer--in fact, they should already be starting to close in again. Since there were none in sight, that meant something was wrong. "But we can't, can we?" She looked back and forth between the two present White Sorceresses, who both shook their heads firmly. "No...of course not." The half-Dragon sighed wearily, trying to fleck lingering ichor from her claws in a safe direction. "Hey, Aric, let me borrow your cape."
"Uh, sure thi--wait, no!"
"Wimp."
"Bi--"
"Please," Sylphiel asserted, sparing each of them an admonishing look over her shoulders. They lapsed into quiet, however reluctantly, and she nodded in satisfaction. "I may know of something to do, but I will need your help. May I ask the three of you to--"
"Assertively!" Selaena spoke up before either of the other two could, the bells of her staff chiming distinctively in the silence as she tapped the butt of it on the paving-stones underfoot. "Tell us what to do."
Aric and Ell exchanged a glance, but there was no help for it. It wasn't as though they would have said "no", anyway. Probably. Maybe.
The shrine maiden permitted a small sigh of relief. "We must act quickly before they attack again. I fear something suspicious in this sudden quiet."
"Like they're falling back to build up their numbers again," Aric started, dubiously, "or..."
"Like they're about to spring a trap," Ellisia concluded, tiredly. Even as the words left her mouth, paving-stones began to shatter and fly up all around, corpse-people bursting right out of the street in their midst, and all around. Without so much as a word, Sylphiel flung a hand up and a narrow white ray of light burst from her palm, striking an invisible point in the air some distance from the group and spreading into a dome of pure white around them, barring entry from the legions outside the defined circle. Those within, Ellisia tore into with a vengeance, Selaena contributing with her staff and Aric hurling spells at those not currently occupied by them.
They managed to dispatch the creatures inside the Protection Barrier (the fact that this Sylphiel was able to cast such a spell so soon after at least one Megiddo Flare, with barely a sign of fatigue, did manage to impress Ell...however grudgingly) in relatively short order, though with the barrier in place the only recourse had been to kill them in spite of the White Sorceresses' protests. It wouldn't be a permanent death, but it would buy time.
"Now what do we do?" Aric asked tersely, tugging his gloves tighter down over his fingers. "We don't have much time."
"I'll need a high place, easy to defend," the shrine maiden began without hesitation, clutching her rod tightly. "And I'll need the three of you to buy as much time as you can. I'm going to cast a large spell, but the incantation is very long, and even the slightest distraction will force me to begin again."
While Aric simply nodded, Ell and Selaena both blinked...then looked at Sylphiel with wide eyes. "You're not going to try a--" Selaena started.
Sylphiel simply nodded, her expression set with determination. The two women exchanged a glance while Aric looked baffled, but there didn't seem to be much choice. "The town hall should be good," Ell said with a frown, after thinking over some of the structures they had passed earlier. "The roof is sloped, so it'll be easier to knock them off. The only problem is it'll be trickier to maintain our footing as well."
"But at least two of us can fly," Aric supplied with a smirk, rubbing his gloved hands together. "I'll carry Sylphiel up; Ell, you carry Selaena."
Ell spared a brief moment to look back and forth between the two White Magic users. Then, frowning, she crossed purposefully over to Aric and bashed him one across the back of the head, sending him face-first to the street. "I'll carry Sylphiel and you carry Selaena," she corrected loftily, as he lay twitching on the ground. "And mind where you put your hands when you do."
An identical bead of sweat rolled down each purplish-haired woman's temple, and Sylphiel additionally lifted up a finger, with an awkward little laugh. "That's really okay. I can Levitate, myself."
It was Ellisia's turn to smirk, as Aric stood and dusted himself off. "All right, then," she proclaimed, in the same lofty tone. "I'll carry Selaena, and the two of you can fly yourselves up."
Aric took a moment to grumble self-pityingly to himself. Then the three positioned themselves in preparation, Ell standing behind Selaena with hands under the somewhat mousy woman's arms, Aric and Sylphiel on either side and tensed in preparation. On a three-count, Sylphiel let the barrier drop, and all three launched themselves skyward in their respective manners.
Aric shot ahead, his Raywing bubble flickering barely-perceptibly around him, and upon reaching the rooftop in question he angled down to dive-bomb the corpses who had already crawled up in anticipation of their plans. While he couldn't hurl any spells and still maintain enough concentration for a Raywing flight spell, the shield-bubble of wind itself made an effective weapon in the right circumstances, especially since it deflected low-level offensive spells. And zombies, as the case may be.
Thus it was that by the time Ell flapped the distance (to the discontent of a rather queasy Selaena) and Sylphiel glided to join them, the rooftop was nice and clear to set down. Sylphiel took place as close to the center of the roof as she could manage, knees placed on either side of the corner in the middle that divided the sloping sides and hands clasped prayerfully. Aric, Ell and Selaena moved to occupy triangle points surrounding her, readying various methods of combat.
"Something just occurred to me," Ellisia said with a frown, as they waited for the first legions to start working their way in. "With all these zombies around, shouldn't there be a Mazoku somewhere nearby responsible for all this? Feeding on them?"
"Ah, I dunno," Aric replied--a little hastily, she couldn't help but notice. "I doubt we'll have to worry too much about that."
"I confer," Selaena put in, casting doubts on Ell's brief moment of suspicion, hefting her staff horizontally across her body. "For the moment we will be too busy with intermediate matters."
"I think you mean..." Ell started, but then shook her head and rolled her eyes, giving it up.
"She's got a point," Aric acknowledged, somewhat gratefully. "Zombies now, powerful demonic entities later."
Laughter from above startled all three of them, jerking their eyes up and away from their thus far fruitless lookout duty. Cold, quiet, but mocking feminine laughter, much more impressive than Emilio's usual trite sound of melodramatic amusement. The laughter trailed off as the three spied a figure floating high above, at first little more than an indistinct spot of darkness against the moon, but it began to descend even as they watched. "I beg to differ," the speaker announced in a soft voice that nevertheless carried clearly through the night air, gazing down at them from above. "In fact, I'm quite insulted you would disregard me to dance with my puppets."
It was an unmistakable introduction, and one that needed confirmation by none of them.
"Y'know what?" Aric blurted, suddenly, startling the other two women as he curled a fist up at his side. "To hell with this! I'm sick of it! You wanna fight, lady? You've got it!" Turning to Ell and Selaena in turn, he gave them each an intense look. "Can you two keep Sylphiel safe long enough?"
Ell was dubious, but Selaena instantly nodded. "Absolvently!"
"Right." He reached down to his belt, causing Ellisia to blink in confusion for a moment when he retrieved a simple brown flask and popped the top off with his teeth. It startled her even more when he flung it in a wide arc, sending its clear contents spraying out. Water? Then, however, he reached his empty hand out with fingers spread, and his voice took on a sudden echo. "Dolf Zoke!"
The droplets of flying water froze where they hung in midair, seized by invisible tendrils of Black Magic power she could feel in her bones, and drew together as though compelled by gravity. They adhered, expanding into an oblong, amorphous blob of water floating in midair, and then began to define into sharp edges leading up to a tapered point and down to a rounded grip. Aric closed his fingers around the grip once it was relatively solidified, and as he dropped the flask he held in his hand a blade of solid water. Then, lifting his empty hand above his head, he snapped his fingers. "Levitation!" Lofting skyward, he floated slowly to confront this new antagonist. Selaena and Ell exchanged another glance. There was a moment of silence.
"I didn't know he could Levitate," Selaena said.
Ellisia fell over.