Author's note: hello everybody! Thanks for the reviews. :)
Now, thanks to my carelessness, an old lesion finished my archaeological adventure one week earlier... ._. And since I came home earlier, my intention was to write a bigger chapter, but frustration isn't exactly a writer's best friend.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy it.
Eclipse night, Yefimovich mausoleum
It all had gone wrong.
Kroenen had been kicked around and ultimately smashed under a giant cogwheel.
The Sammaels had been turned into ashes.
Rasputin had died and the Octopus of Doom that had crawled out of him had smashed Ilsa with a tentacle.
And now even the Octopus of Doom had exploded...
Alma had seen it all, as a terrified raven hidden in the shadows.
As soon as the enemy was gone, Alma threw caution to the wind and shifted into human again, in «Kroenen's chamber». She did her best not to look at his blades, still stuck on the floor, with his prosthetic hand holding one of the hilts, and managed to jump into the pit where Kroenen was, avoiding the spikes. Old bones cracked under her jackboots. In the deafening silence, the girl could hear clearly the weak sound of Kroenen's clockwork heart:
"Karl? Karl, please be alive... Karl!" she begged, her voice reduced to a whisper as she knelt between the spikes. There was a huge puddle of blood, next to her. With tears burning her eyes, Alma bent forwards and peeked under the cogwheel.
Kroenen's head was turned to her, a blue eye looking at her from the destroyed mask on his face. His body was shaken by weak convulsions, and he was bleeding. Bleeding too much, suspended above the ground by the spikes. The only good thing was that, thanks to the spikes, the cogwheel hadn't smashed him at all; it was just trapping him. The scent of blood and iron and rust was horribly strong and Alma grimaced, disturbed:
"K-Karl?" she called again. His chest rose a little, suddenly:
"Take me out!" he hissed angrily. Alma wiped a tear away:
"How?"
But as an answer she got a series of very, very wrathful German growls and curses. Alma felt Kroenen was not in his best mood, and she couldn't really blame him. The girl stood up and looked around nervously, trying to figure out how to lift that huge cogwheel and then pull Kroenen off the spikes. No brilliant idea came to her mind and Alma, in panic, felt tears run down her face:
"A lever, stupid girl! A lever!" Kroenen roared furiously from under the cogwheel. Alma looked around once more; a lever, how was she supposed to find a lever? Then it hit her; she could summon a lever! Or anything to work as a lever!
She slipped her shaky hands into her pockets, but nothing came out. She bit her lower lip nervously:
"H-how am I supposed to find a lever?" she asked sadly. Kroenen replied something in German, something surely unpleasant:
"A hydraulic jack, take a goddamned hydraulic jack from your goddamned pockets!" he finally instructed after his rant. Alma kicked the giant cogwheel angrily, resulting in instant regret and anger:
"Don't you fucking talk to me like that, fuck!"
"Do you want to switch places, you idiot?"
Alma cursed under her breath and slipped a hand into one of her pockets again:
"A hydraulic jack, please!" she whispered.
This time her pocket gave her what she asked for. The girl hurried to slip it into the space between the cogwheel and the ground as closer as possible to Kroenen, realised she had to unlock the locking mechanism first and then finally began to move the lever up and down. The cogwheel began to lift, slowly:
"Faster!" Kroenen roared impatiently. Besides tears, Alma felt sweat drops run down her face. The hydraulic jack creaked ominously, but she opted to ignore it:
"Fuck you!" the girl hissed in return.
She had lifted the cogwheel just enough to get under it, crouched, but Kroenen saved her from doing that; he finally had space enough to move. With a gruesome howl and a brute movement, Kroenen raised his impaled leg and released it from the spike. Alma felt suddenly sick with that and with all the blood gushing from his leg, and when she understood he would use the same method to release his torso, she scrambled to her feet and gave a few steps back, stumbling on old bones and the remains of Kroenen's gramophone.
Another horrid, gruesome shriek.
A moment of silence, and Alma's heart skipped a beat when the sound of Kroenen's clockwork mechanisms seemed to decrease significantly.
But then, slowly, he dragged himself from under the cogwheel and around the spikes, breathing slowly and clearly with immense difficulty. Alma began to sob:
"Oh my... Karl!" she cried and fell on her knees. Stubbornly, Kroenen dragged himself towards her, leaving behind a bloody trail. Alma cried harder when her eyes locked on the wound in his back:
"Master... where's Master... Ilsa... where's Ilsa..." he hissed and immobilized completely next to Alma, having no more strength or energy to move. Alma's hands were shaking uncontrollably, but she managed to slip them into her pockets:
"Dead...! They're all dead, don't you d-dare dying too, you fucking gobshite!" she exclaimed. Kroenen's ruined body tensed up:
"Dead..." he repeated, and Alma only heard him thanks to her accurate hearing. From her pockets, the girl removed two rolls of bandages and gauze:
"Dead."
Crying, feeling disgusted and with her hands shaking so much it was nearly impossible to move them, Alma covered the wound on Kroenen's leg with gauze and managed to bandage it. But when she moved to try to make something for the wound on his back, he tried to move away, unsuccessfully:
"Don't... don't touch me...!" he hissed angrily. They had lost. Again. Rasputin was gone. Again! And now he was stuck with Alma! Which one was worse, Ilsa or Alma? In that moment both options sounded horrible, but Alma, due to her inexperience, sounded the worst of all. "Leave me alone!"
"Shut the fuck up and stay quiet!" Alma yelled and out of frustration and despair she hit him with a closed fist near the wound in his back.
Kroenen's weak and ragged breathing caught in his throat; for surprise, for a wave of pain that was nearly unbearable and for another smaller wave of pain that was most inappropriate in that moment. He stilled nonetheless, even because that was his only option, and allowed Alma to cover his back and chest wounds with gauze and then bandage him.
Then they stood like that for a moment, Alma crying and looking at her bloodied hands, and Kroenen slowly getting used to the horrible pain in his body. And as he began to get used, some of his common sense came back; if Ilsa and Rasputin were dead, they couldn't stay there. Yet he wanted to see... wanted the proof...
He tried to push himself up, but he failed:
"W-what are you doing?" Alma asked between sobs. Kroenen sighed and tried again:
"We can't stay here... Master... I need to see..."
Sniffling, Alma managed to help Kroenen to stand up, but he had to support all of his weight on her; and, disregarding his slender appearance, Kroenen was heavy. After a little argument on how to take him out of the pit, Alma ended up wrapping ropes around Kroenen, shifted to a raven and flew to the upper floor. Then she wrapped the end of the ropes around her own neck, but left them lose enough for a horse neck. She shifted into a mare, concluded it was a little too tight, but still pulled the masked man out of the pit.
Kroenen groaned tiredly when he finally found himself in safety. Alma shifted to human again and pulled his abandoned blades from the floor, together with his prosthetic hand, stubbornly holding the hilt of one of the blades. The girl returned the blades and the hand to their owner, and shifted to mare again. Then the black mare knelt next to Kroenen, patiently, and the German man frowned under the remains of his mask. Yet he accepted the offering and, slowly and painfully, he managed to curl his fingers around Alma's mane and drag himself to her back.
The smell of Kroenen's blood together with the wrath and malice of his being, so close and so raw like that, was terrifying. The black mare stood up, the most carefully she could, and tried hard not to shake with fear. The thought of having the masked man's blood all over her wasn't pleasing, either.
Finally, with slow steps, Alma left the destroyed chamber. It took them a while to reach the catacombs, because she was constantly feeling Kroenen slipping off her back, and his ineptitude of doing such a basic thing that was holding onto all that mane was annoying him a lot, and he began to be brute when trying to hold on, and went on an almost endless ramble about how Alma was useless and couldn't do anything right, ramble he only stopped when she yelled at him at the top of her lungs that she would shift into a raven, go away and leave him alone.
After what seemed an eternity, they reached the catacombs. Kroenen, using all the little strength he had gathered until the moment, forced his arms to push his torso to an upright position, which was quite difficult, with the damage done to his spine. He looked as graceless as Don Quixote while he looked around, to the remains of the dead Behemoth. And were those Ilsa's legs, coming from under one of the tentacles...?
Anyway, Alma was right; both Master and Ilsa were gone. For now. The German man sighed sadly, he knew the drill; run, hide, recover and wait. His arms ran out of strength and he fell over the mare's neck, but then rolled to the ground and fell on his back with a hiss of pain. Alma shifted to human and knelt next to him. Her makeup was a mess; the eyeliner and mascara had been washed away by the tears, and had drawn long black lines down her face, and her lipstick had teeth-marks from where Alma had bitten her lips in distress. Her clothes were dusty and bloodstained. With Kroenen's blood. Her hair was getting messy, too.
Kroenen shook his head, slowly; Alma's appearance wasn't important right now:
"The book... the book Master carried around... find it," he told Alma. Her green eyes filled with tears again:
"But there's octopus' goo everywhere! I don't want to-"
"I didn't ask if you wanted to, I ORDERED you to! Now stop complaining and find the damned book, stupid girl!" Kroenen yelled. Then he began to cough. Alma opened her mouth to yell at him in return, but no words came out of her mouth. Instead she cried harder and ran to the center of the catacomb, to where the altar and the book where supposed to be. Kroenen felt blood running down the corners of his lipless mouth and chin, making its way down his neck and out of the destroyed mask; seemed that had made Alma do what she was told.
The Irish girl cried and cursed while looking for the book. She did her best not to look at Ilsa's lifeless legs. Had this been the something big and important the raven had talked about? This was nothing like Kroenen had told her! Kroenen had told her they would win, but failure was all she saw. And damn it, she knew Kroenen was in an horrendous ammount of pain... but did he had to talk to her like that? Couldn't he understand how terrified she was with all of that? And confused. And lost. And yet all she wanted to do was to somehow help him and leave that horrible place with him.
Finally, she found the book. It wasn't far from the destroyed altar, right under a fleshy piece of a tentacle. Alma felt like puking when her hand touched the slimy thing to remove the book from under it. Instead of puking she cried harder and ran to Kroenen, falling on her knees next to him:
"There, the fucking book!" she sobbed and threw the book over his chest. Accidentally, it landed right over the impaling wound. Kroenen snarled in pain but managed to hold the book and open it:
"Get chalk," he grumbled and found the page he was looking for. He placed the open book over his chest, carefully, and his mechanical hand rested over it with the index finger pointing the engraving. "Draw this. And make it correctly!"
Alma sobbed something but did what Kroenen told her to do. Kroenen sighed exhaustedly, wondering if only the two of them... well, mostly if Alma would be able to open the teleportation portal to take them back to the castle in Moldavia. Lying there, wounded and useless, he regretted deeply having wasted time teaching her German, and fencing, and all the absurd quantity of time they spent talking to each other; he should have taught her useful things, like opening portals, invoking spirits and shadows and demons...:
"Done," Alma said, bringing Kroenen back to reality. Slowly, he moved his head to look at the circle with runes Alma had done in the ground, and concluded she had done it around him. Clever, he had to admit. She came to kneel next to him again:
"For your own good, this better be perfect..." Kroenen grumbled ominously:
"What if it isn't?"
"You die," He grinned under the remains of his mask. "For the two of us, since I have a mechanism keeping me in this world..."
"Shut the fuck up!" Alma began to cry again, terrified, and looked from the drawing to the book frantically; it seemed like the one in the book, but was it enough? Where the runes perfect enough? Was the circle round enough? Kroenen ignored her:
"Put the book in front of you, in the ground, and give me your hands. You must focus to open a portal to take us back to the castle in Moldavia, are we understood?" he asked and coughed again. More blood, this time he could taste it. Alma nodded, the makeup on her eyes ruined beyond repair.
They held hands and Kroenen grumbled the formula in the ancient language.
Then Alma felt like someone was vacuum cleaning her with a giant and hyper-powerful vacuum cleaner, and it was so powerful it wasn't only sucking at her skin, but also underneath it. It was painfull, like the vacuum cleaner was slowly peeling her skin inch by inch, and then the flesh under it, and then the bones, and then the empty space left by her bones. It was horrible, especially because she found herself unable to move, even though she wanted to move and try to escape whatever was causing her pain:
"Karl-" she opened her mouth to protest, to beg him to stop, but he squeezed her hands harder, using his last useful energy:
"Shut up and do one thing right, once in your life!" the German man snarled.
That hurt. More than him being rude and yelling at her, and even more than whatever was happening to her in that moment. Alma burst into tears and felt like the invisible super-vaccum cleaner was even stronger. She began to whimper in pain, and even though she seemed rooted to the spot her entire body began to shake.
Slowly, a small purple flame rose from the book. And the worse the pain was and the more Alma screamed, the bigger the flame grew, until it was steady and the pain was gone.
Alma fell forwards and hit her face on the cold stone ground, completely drained of energy and unconscious.
Kroenen looked at the flame. He let out a chuckle, his hand still holding Alma's in a lifeless grip. They stood like that for a while, until the masked man managed to hold the girl's hands again and, painfully slowly, dragged himself and her through the purple flame in what felt like a lifetime.
But they were finally in the dinning room of the castle in Moldavia, and Kroenen let go of Alma's hand to hold the book and bring it to their side. With a last effort, Kroenen closed the book.
The purple flame vanished.
Kroenen and Alma were alone, in their old headquarters.
The German man inhaled deeply and slowly, and concluded he would have to stay there for a while. And as he laid there, looking to the ribbed vaulting ceiling above and feeling his body build up a little bit of energy and strenght, he felt guilty. Slowly, he turned his head to look at Alma; the girl looked like a tossed ragdoll and her face was covered by her messy ponytail. She surelly had been terrified with all of that; afterall, she had been told and promised something that hadn't happened. The masked man looked at the ceiling again and forced himself to think; that was the only way to keep himself conscious, and he by no means could afford falling unconscious and literally bleed out. The black magic would make him live and the clockwork heart would keep pumping, but Kroenen had no idea of how his life would be. So he had to stay awaken...
He grinned bitterly, thinking about the previous happenings; he had failed. He had displeased his Master. He hadn't accomplished his mission of stopping whoever crossed the bridge, and probably because of that Rasputin's plans had failed. Kroenen didn't know what happened, he would have to ask Alma to tell him, but it surely had been his fault. Slowly, he looked at the unconscious girl lying next to him; Alma was his only way of redemption. If he taught her well while waiting for a sign of Rasputin, maybe his Master would forgive him, and the next time they had to face their enemy Alma would be ready to help, and maybe having someone else by their side, someone with her powers and capacities... maybe that would make the difference.
The guilt felt heavier. Kroenen hadn't only failed Rasputin, he had failed Alma, too. He could barely believe he had regretted all the relaxed conversations they had, because now the masked man knew that, if it hadn't been for all that time they spent together in a friendlier environment, Alma wouldn't have saved him. She would have left, gone back to Ireland, because there would be nothing left for her.
And if it hadn't been for her... The masked man shook his head, he didn't want to think about how he would have to manage by himself.
Kroenen rolled over his side, then over his stomach. He reached out for Alma and petted her head clumsily:
"I'm sorry, Pooka. I really am," he mumbled, even though he knew she couldn't hear him, and that later he would have to repeat his apologies. Slowly, feeling like there was a sharp blade digging deep into every inch of his body, Kroenen dragged himself away, to the dungeons. "I have to fix myself, then I can fix you."
Alma opened her eyes; her head ached... no, her entire body ached. She felt dizzy. Briefly forgotten about what had happened, the girl changed to a sitting position and looked around. Memories from the recent events flooded her mind with the brutality of a powerful blow, and she even lost her balance and had to lay down on the cold stone floor again.
But she didn't take long to stand up completely, looking around with wide eyes; where was Kroenen? Then her eyes caught the trail of blood he had left, and, limping, the girl followed it.
Yet she stopped at the entrance to the dungeons. She knew the German man was terribly wounded and in pain. But Alma was hurt with the way he had spoken to her, she couldn't understand what reasons he had to be rude at her. So the girl decided to leave him alone.
She went upstairs, to her room, had a shower and went to sleep, feeling exhausted. The exhaustion and the memory of Rasputin dying made it difficult to keep her old tormenting memories at bay, and Kroenen's voice insulting her echoing in her head didn't help. Somehow Alma knew she should be in panic and devastated about Rasputin's death... well, it was bad, yes, and she had no idea of what to do know, but Kroenen was still around, and as long as Kroenen was there the girl felt like there was no real reason to panic.
Be Kroenen in a good mood or not...
In the next day Alma woke up late in the evening. She was starving, her body still ached and she still felt dizzy. The girl didn't bother to change from her pajamas to something else, and didn't even bother to comb her hair or to put on her makeup. Yet as she passed by the dressing table, a huge hematoma on her forehead caught her attention for brief seconds, then she shrugged and went to the kitchen.
She mentally thanked Kroenen for making her practice by summoning canned food, otherwise she wouldn't have anything to eat. And in that moment she surely wouldn't be able to shift into a raven or a mare and feed herself as an animal. Even though the girl didn't know how to cook, three cans of tuna fish and two cans of sausages proved to be enough to calm her hunger for a while. Alma then considered going to the dungeon and find Kroenen... but she was still hurt with him.
So she went back to her room, and for the next three days that was her routine; wake up, eat canned tuna and sausages, go back to the room and sew a little, eat canned tuna and sausages again and go to sleep.
On the fourth day, Alma, still wearing swimming shorts and a tank top as a pajama, slipped her feet into her ballerina flats and decided to go to the dungeon and check on Kroenen.
Unlike the last time she had visited the dungeons, there was no music in the air. Only the weak light at the end of the corridor. And a strong scent of blood and iron that made the girl flare her nostrils like a spooked horse. Quickly, Alma crossed the corridor and found herself before the heavy wooden door that separated Kroenen from the world. The scent of blood and iron was stronger now. At the other side of the door, everything was silent.
Too silent.
With a frown, Alma opened the door and stepped in the cell.
It was exactly like the last time she had been there... with the difference that, instead of finding Kroenen standing, about to peel himself alive, the young girl found him unconscious on the ground, with a horrid stitch on his naked chest and a less horrid stitch on his leg. He had ripped the suit around the wound, so that he could work on his leg. Scattered on the ground around him and over the table were various metallic pieces, chains, screws, blood-drenched cloths, his ruined mask and an old first-aid kit. Kroenen was still holding the needle with thread, so apparently he had passed out little time before Alma appeared.
The girl just stared at him in mute terror. Without eyelids, and lying like that, over a small puddle of his own blood, Kroenen looked like a decaying corpse. It was the worst thing Alma had ever seen, and for a second all the girl wanted was to turn around and run, run away from that nightmare and never see such thing again.
She began to sob. Poor Kroenen, how could she even consider turning her back on that unfortunate creature? He was always bragging on how he could manage by himself, and look at him now! Crying, Alma moved closer to him. She could hear his «heartbeat», even though his chest didn't rise or fall. Alma recalled when he told her he was impregnated of black magic, and the girl decided she didn't really want to know the details. Carefully, she moved around him and held his arms, and even more carefully began to drag him away.
Discreetly, Kroenen's chest rose and fell, slowly. His glassy eyes twitched and stung for a few seconds, before getting used again to the lack of eyelids to blink the dryness away. That alerted him to the fact that he didn't have his mask on.
Kroenen found himself staring at the ceiling of his room. Of his bedroom, not his cell.
Yet he could swear he had gone to his cell... Yes, he had gone there, had washed the wounds and had stitched them closed, so that he would have less troubles while repairing himself. In fact, he actually managed to successfully re-open the wound in his leg, replace the shattered bone with metal and stitch the muscle and skin again. Then he had intended to do the same to his spine, that was always complicated to work on, but he had also succeeded in replacing the damaged vertebrae, nerves and ligaments with metal, wires and a few variations of spells that he knew by heart from the "Book of the Dead"* to help him to progress. Yet the German man had realised he wouldn't manage to keep repairing himself without resting first, so he had left his hapless internal organs and sternum for another time and had stitched the wound in his chest closed again.
And that was when he had passed out.
So... how did he end up in his bedroom...? Confused, Kroenen raised his head to look around; he was lying on his bed, still had what was left of his suit on... and noticed Alma, sleeping on the recamier at the other side of the room.
Kroenen's sleepy brain took a little to finally realise what had happened. When he did, he groaned and allowed his head to fall back on the pillow; there, seemed Alma was doomed to see him in his worst moments! Poor girl, it was a miracle that she hadn't had a heart-attack.
Or ran away...
Supporting his weight on his elbow, Kroenen pushed himself up and cleared his throat:
"Alma?" he called in a hoarse, raspy voice. He cleared his throat again. "Alma. Pooka."
Alma opened one eye, tiredly, and saw Kroenen was finally awaken. Without knowing how, she found herself sitting at the edge of his bed, her arms wrapped tightly around him and resting her head on the crook of his neck. The scent of blood and iron lingered on him.
She burst out crying for the umpteenth time in those two days Kroenen had been unconscious.
Kroenen tensed up, too many things coming to his mind; he was unprotected against the germs (the germs! The germs were everywhere now!), Alma hadn't disinfected and was touching him!, and she was breathing on him!... but then he relaxed, slowly; he still had the antiseptic that burned the germs, there was no reason to worry about that... and after all Alma had done for him, Kroenen decided he could stand her breathing and crying and clinging to him like her life depended on that. For a little ammout of time, of course.
And, deep inside, he was glad she was there.
So he wrapped his free arm around her shoulders, and they stood like that for a while, until she calmed down a little and pulled away to look at him.
The German man frowned his hairless eyebrows; no neat hairstyle, no makeup, no pretty clothes, no jewelry... and her face seemed thinner, and her skin yellowish, and her eyes were reddened, puffy and with huge dark circles under them. Kroenen laid down again, and let out a joyless laugh:
"Seems we both have seen better days..." he commented. Alma offered him the saddest smile in the world, and Kroenen concluded he didn't want to see it again:
"Guess so..." the girl replied. Her voice was hoarse, and that made Kroenen's frown grow bigger:
"What happened to your voice?"
"I spent nearly two days yelling at your ear, but you... you wouldn't wake up," Alma shrugged, like it hadn't been important at all. "You... you didn't have a pulse... you weren't breathing... but your heart was working... so, I decided to let you be."
Kroenen would have shut his eyes if he had eyelids. He felt touched, because the Irish girl had truly worried about him, and he felt terribly guilty again because of how he had treated her. The German man looked at her, studying her exhausted face:
"I'm sorry, Pooka," he mumbled, at a loss of words. "For everything."
"Nevermind..." Alma mumbled and shrugged again. Well, Kroenen had apologised, that was something. "Just stop... dying, or whatever... and then coming back to life all miserable and stuff like that..."
"Then stop finding me in inappropriate situations," Kroenen replied and his lipless mouth offered Alma the brave attempt of a smile. But the girl wasn't in the mood for smiling, and Kroenen had to admit that seeing Alma like that was getting on his nerves. "So... if I was out for two days... it has been... a week or so since..." His voice became bitter. "... since the eclipse."
"Aye," Alma sighed and started to play with her fingers. Kroenen noticed the black nailpolish was missing too, and he concluded Alma had to be a complete wreck inside. "Karl, what do we do, now?" The masked man sighed, tiredly; well, he had... almost fixed himself. A whole day of work would be enough to fix the mess in his chest. That had time, now he had something else to fix. Gently, he took Alma's hands between his:
"We recover, we wait... and in the meantime you are going to learn from me," he said softly, hoping those glorious plans would make Alma feel better.
The young girl just nodded and her eyes filled with tears again. At this point Alma didn't even know why she was crying, and how she hadn't already spent all her tears. Kroenen was about to try to sit when she swung her legs over the bed and lied down next to him, hiding her face again in the crook of his neck. Kroenen wasn't particularly comfortable with all that too sudden and too intimate contact, but... fine, just this time. Maybe if he stirred her hair she would get better quicker and would stop invading his personal space like that.
But her warm body against his didn't feel that bad. And Alma had probably taken a bath, she couldn't have that much germs on her. And her hair felt nice against the scarred skin of his fingers. The sobbing stopped, gradually, and her breathing against his neck steadied. Kroenen looked at her by the corner of his eye:
"Pooka?" he called. "You didn't fall asleep on me, did you?"
She did. Kroenen sighed, but he would allow it this time. He looked up at the ceiling and decided to rest a little longer too, and it didn't take him long to fall asleep.
*The "Book of the Dead" is an Ancient Egyptian funerary text that contains spells to help a dead person during their journey through the Underworld and into the Afterlife.
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