Stave 4: The Last of the Spirits
"Let me guess... future?"
The faceless man nodded.
Caleb looked upon the floating apparition. Its form was that of a lean man, no gargoyles or grotesque monsters here. He wore a long olive green raincoat with red stains at the ends of the sleeves, and dirty gray pants. Across his breadth he held a staff with a crescent moon at its end across his breadth. Through the coat his torso was uncovered by flesh. The body's protective rib cage was completely visible through the coat's slitted opening, encapsulating lungs, heart, and other vital parts. His entire head was covered in a white cloth, secured around his neck with a cord. Caleb wondered why his face was covered, if he could see through it or breathe, to say nothing of the fact he was floating in the air over him or appeared to have no skin.
"You really that ugly?"
The spirit said nothing.
"So what do you got to show me?"
The phantom slowly and smoothly took the staff from its prone position and pointed its crescent end out at the far wall. A faint beam of violet light streamed out at the wall and formed into a vortex, swirling purple and ebony, like a black hole. The phantom shifted his staff back to a resting position.
"Go in there, huh?"
The spirit nodded once.
Caleb let forth a sort of grumbling sigh and walked forward. The ghost floated along side him and the two walked through the rift. A shower of glimmering green sparkles and then they emerged.
A bitter chilling wind was the first thing he noticed. Caleb pulled up the collar on his shirt for protection. He was in a circle of stone pillars. The air was thin, like they were on a mountaintop.
"Where are we?"
The floating phantom pointed with his scepter below. There was a pile of ashes ahead of them on a slab of stone that looked like a funeral pyre.
"It's a rock," Caleb commented.
The phantom pointed onward to the pile.
"Don't say much, do you?" Caleb said as he approached the debris. Not quite sure of what to do, he looked down at the pile. Seeing nothing, he pawed through it. A glint of gold caught his eye. He picked it up. It was a brooch or a large amulet of some kind splotched with char marks. This had to have been what the silent spirit wanted him to find. Why, he had no idea. He didn't recognize it as anything special. Though it was the same size and shape as Oph-
"No... NOOOOOOO!" Caleb screamed as though he had fallen through the chasm of death himself. He threw the brooch down in the ashes and turned to face the phantom. "No, this is not true! This is not going to happen!"
The spirit did not respond vocally, but waved his scepter in an arc over their heads. The scene changed from an aerie to a cold underground lair, walled in stone. Cobwebs and clumps of spider silk coated the walls, clutched in every corner, every crack.
"What's this?" Caleb angrily demanded.
The phantom lifted the staff and pointed behind him. He turned and saw a gigantic cocoon nestled within a niche in the wall blanketed with sticky silk. The cocoon was split open, ripped down the middle in a gory bloody mess. Stringy entrails and blood-soaked strands of silk were spilt out. Caleb bent down to a knee in the dirt for closer inspection. There was one mass that wasn't just a random organ, it was a hand draped out of its prison, and despite the dried blood it was covered in, he could tell it was very muscular and had dark brown skin.
"Gabriel."
Behind him the spirit waved his scepter again. Before Caleb's very eyes, where he was still on the ground, the scene morphed into a fiery sulphourous grotto. The heat was sweltering as the lava pits to the left and right boiled and bubbled over. Instead of a bloody chrysalis, there was now a bloody stain on the rocky cavern ground. Giblets and bits of meat littered the floor, like some great animal had exploded here. In front of him he noticed a single dismembered finger, a finger with an emerald ring still around it. Ishmael's ring.
Caleb jumped up and looked away in disgust, running into the body of the phantom, still and solid like a wall, floating with his toes dangling just above the ground.
"Who did this?" Caleb said, clutching onto the phantom's coat lapels. "Who's responsible? Who killed them?"
The phantom turned around and shot another crimson vortex out at the wall. Hastily, Caleb ran towards the rift. Not even waiting for the phantom to precede him, he jumped through.
Strangely, when Caleb exited, he felt like he had no body, no fingers, no hands, no arms, no feet. He was floating and he was floating over the Hall of Epiphany, with himself and the three other Chosen ones standing before the throne of Tchernobog. But he could feel what he felt down below. No control, but feeling, the feeling of the ground below him, the feel of the dry, musty air, and the feeling of confidence and power in the presence of a god.
"Welcome, my servants..." The giant minotaur being tapped His bone-fingers on the armrest of His chair. "My slaves..."
The Apothecary shuffled into the room, wearing the brown hooded robe of a cultist, and walked between the throne and the Chosen. He slowly pulled back his hood, revealing his wrinkled disfigured face with empty black eyes.
"What is your bidding, master?" Caleb asked, addressing his lord.
The Apothecary straightened up like he was being stretched or held like a stringed puppet. His jaw dropped wide, wider than should have been possible, and he began to make horrible gagging sounds. His eyes went from pitch black to glowing ethereal white.
"You have failed me... I disavow you all."
"What th'" Caleb stammered.
"What?" Ophelia gasped.
The Apothecary's eyes returned to the color of coal. He tilted his head and grinned a toothless smile, as if he was pleased.
His skin stretched tight over his frame and shriveled to desiccation. The robe with no support fell around his body. His body dissolved into ash and powder, leaving behind the cracked remnants of a grinning skeleton before Tchernobog's glowing yellow eyes like the moon from the shadow of his throne. The eyes turned to the left.
Caleb turned and looked. The spider-demon Shial descended from her long thread attached to the ceiling and picked up Gabriel. The brave and fierce warrior screamed and flailed his arms as he was lifted off the ground shrieking "Get it off me! Get it off me!" and vanished.
A burst of heat seared up at his left. He looked and saw Ishmael enveloped in a fiery inferno. He collapsed on the ground with Cerberus and a pack of hellhounds approaching his scorched body to feast.
Caleb and Ophelia were so stunned they couldn't even move, confused and afraid. They could feel the ties that bound them to Tchernobog start to fray. From the blackness behind them emerged Cheogh, the gargoyle master. Before Caleb could react the demon grabbed Ophelia and whisked her off. Ophelia screamed out for a split second. Caleb jumped for her but she was just out of reach as the monster retreated into the darkness again.
"I've taken your love..."
Caleb looked back at Tchernobog and saw He was fading out. The entire hall was fading out, fading to inky blackness.
"...Now I will take your life..."
Darkness swelled around him, swallowing him. He could feel himself falling, abandoned, falling through the abyss, cold, black.
"Consider my power... in a hollow grave."
And they burn...
Caleb awoke, crouched into himself. Standing on one knee, huddled into a ball of agony and pain. The blackness surrounded him but he could see his hands and body as if it was pure day.
The phantom spirit floated up behind him. Caleb did not need to turn around to know he was there.
"And me? ... What happens to me?"
The light did fade in again, into the very same graveyard where they had met. The phantom floated past him and up a hill, while Caleb stayed in his curled position, not wanting to move, not wanting to feel a sensation at all. Until he couldn't take the numbness anymore and sprang from his place.
He ran up the hill path and into a large mausoleum at its apex. Tombs inside decayed on both sides of the wall. He turned the corner. The spirit floated next to an unmarked grave, not yet buried.
Caleb looked into it. There was an ancient coffin. He bent over and knocked away the sediment and cobwebs. Small bugs scattered as he thrashed blindly until he tore open the tomb's cover.
"NooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"
No! Caleb clawed away, shredding and tearing, flailing outward. Though his hands lashed at nothing but the abyss surrounding him. He scraped again, flailing for anything material. And he touched it and the darkness gave way to something soft and smooth.
"No! No!" he yelled.
The sheet pulled off him. Caleb looked upon the ceiling of his bedroom, the curtain overhang from the bedposts. He suddenly realized he was caught in a very undignified position with his hands motionless in the air like a dead bug and lowered them down.
Ophelia, who had torn of the sheet, flung it back over him, it fluttered down on his body like a shroud. "Go back to sleep, Caleb," she huffed.
Caleb sighed. "Not dead," he said with relief. "I'm not dead."
"I'm gonna make you dead if you don't shut up," Ophelia quickly commented and pulled the sheets tighter to her.
"Ophelia, what's today?" Caleb shook her about the shoulder.
"Eh," she returned sleepily.
"What's today?"
"Today?" replied the woman. "Why, Tuesday!" she put the pillow over her head. "Now shut up and go back to sleep or you'll never wake up again."
Caleb sat again in bed on his back and breathed out relief. The bright orange sun streaked out over the horizon, brightening their window, illuminating the room.
