Chapter Eight
Prison of the Dead
Charles ran ahead, his torch bobbing, Grubsuckle clinging to the back of his tunic as if the boy had become his personal savior. He expected at any second that something would jump out of one of the alcoves, or ambush them from a side passage. He could hear the crunch of something heavy walking on bones, still trailing those heavy chains behind it. Constant shrieks permeated the corridors, their echoes making it impossible to tell where they were coming from. Or was there more than one? Startled by that thought, Charles ran blindly on.
Confused by the echoes, Charles was taken by surprise when the hideous abomination came out of the darkness, parting the light with its huge bulk and casting ghastly shadows down the length of the corridor. The skeletal form was larger than the monster Charles had defeated in the entrance, fleshless but writhing with slimy brown bags of pus that snaked around its spine and dangled out of its ribcage, dripping and oozing some unidentifiable foul ichor. Ending in a blackened claw, a bloated purple tongue lolled out of its bony jaw. It flickered back and forth as the monster came forward, slowed by thick chains that had broken away but were still shackled to its ankles.
It was a tormented creature, twisted by a lifetime of committing evil deeds and warped even further by its perverse and unnatural existence. Although neither the boy nor the goblin knew it, the creature was a mohrg, and it despised all life.
The mohrg let out a howl that sent shivers of fear right into Charles' bones. He started backing up, holding the wand out in front of him. "Back! Back!" he screamed, brandishing his torch as panic began to set in. T his time the wand did nothing, and if the mohrg was fazed by the leaping flames, it didn't show it. Charles fumbled with the wand again, but never got a second chance as the thing closed in. It lashed Grubsuckle in the face with its terrible tongue and slammed him against a sarcophagus, leaving the goblin dazed and stunned.
"Grubsuckle?" Charles called out, backpedaling. His companion didn't respond.
The boy lashed out with the torch, but the mohrg was just out of his short-armed reach. The huge creature brought a heavy claw down and raked it across his skinny chest, launching him through the air at the same time. Charles hit the wall and landed in a broken, bleeding heap on the floor.
The torch landed in front of his face, still burning. The pain was greater than anything he had ever experienced, even worse than getting his fingers chewed on by the zombie. He fought to stay conscious, but his vision inevitably darkened, as if a black veil had been pulled over his eyes. The last things he saw before blacking out were a familiar pair of boots stomping on the mohrg's chain, and a broken human skull, still threaded with that glistening purple tongue, as it landed beside his still-burning torch.
"Odie?" Charles wheezed, the name rattling in a throat that was quickly filling with blood.
"Tenacious little bugger," he heard someone say. He tried to open his eyes, but all they would do was twitch uncontrollably, so he surrendered to the blackness and tried to rest. All at once, the pain flooded back to him, as if his entire torso had been rent asunder. He gave a weak moan to signal his distress, but no one seemed to hear.
"He's going to need some emergency surgery or he'll die right here on the table." Even with his eyes closed, he could sense dark shapes flickering over him. He blinked. Liam was there, holding a needle and a scalpel. Then the blackness reasserted itself.
"Did you check the goblin's pack?" said a voice above him, Liam, presumably.
"One healing potion. Likely to drown him, in the state he's in right now."
"Pour it directly onto his wounds, then."
He felt a soothing tingle run through him, but the sensation only lasted a moment before the pain defeated it. _Agony_ was the only word that came to his mind. Were they cutting him open now, or stitching him shut? The question had barely found purchase in his addled thoughts when it was kicked out by a fresh wave of throbbing pain. Agony, agony, agony. He felt cold and dizzy, almost outside of himself.
"Hand me that needle. The less rusty one."
Was he dreaming? Something seemed out of place, unreal. The voices. They sounded like Liam and Odie, but the words...
Charles drifted back into unconsciousness.
"I can feel the disruption of the natural order here," Shidamae whispered. "It is as if someone has taken hold of my soul and twisted it."
"Those growling noises up ahead are a pretty good indication, too," Liam quipped without humor.
"Any chance you know a rhyme about killing undead, Odie?" he asked the dwarf, who had fallen oddly silent. Of all occasions, this was the one time he would have found his companion's singing comforting.
"No rhymes," Odie responded hollowly, trudging on ahead without a backward glance.
"Prepare yourselves," Parethiel said. "They are close, in the next room, I believe."
The passageway ended at another warped wooden door, which Odie broke down with uncharacteristic apathy. He found himself in a chamber accessible from two sides, currently occupied by five skeletons. The dwarf raised his axe and charged into the group. Liam and the others flooded into the room and came forward, flanking the dwarf. Odie swiped one with his axe, obliterating it, and cleaved a second with little effort. The remaining skeletons, wielding various rusty instruments of torture, took repeated stabs at him, but did little other than scratch his tough hide. Shidamae joined the fray with a ferocity that surprised Liam, smashing a skeleton to pieces with one hit of her bastard sword. Liam and the other elves quickly hacked up the remaining two.
"Whew," said Liam, taking a swig from his waterskin. "That was a pushover." He looked over at the dwarf, who was standing perfectly still, staring silently at his boots. "Odie?" Still the dwarf didn't respond.
"Crypt madness," Sansorin said authoritatively. "Some people can't handle the sight of the dead walking. Though I wouldn't expect the dwarf to show any unusual effects from a mental affliction."
"Odie can't help Charles," the dwarf said mournfully, shaking his head. "Odie can't help."
"What do you mean?" Liam demanded. "Do you know something, Odie?"
Behind him came Sansorin's patronizing snort. "I doubt it," he remarked.
Shidamae bent down in front of the dwarf's face. "Odie, can you hear me? What do you see in your mind?"
Odie pushed her away with surprising gentleness and picked up his axe to bash the next door down. "Time to go," he said softly, lifting his chin. The elfmaid was startled to see a solitary salty tear roll down the dwarf's cheek.
"Go get Meatgrinder and give him the vial of vitreous humor," said the voice of Liam, out of the darkness and the void of sleep. "He won't last much longer without the ogre's salves and his expertise at handling them."
The other voice grumbled. Charles heard footsteps receding. He managed to open his eyes fully this time, and found that his head had fallen to the side. He was lying on something hard and bumpy. There was stone under his elbow. He looked out and saw a sarcophagus at eye level a few feet away, a familiar form resting upon it.
"Grubsuckle," Charles rasped. He could not tell if the creature was alive or dead.
In response, the goblin began to twitch. Grubsuckle's mouth fell open, as if it were trying to speak, but only a faint gurgling sound came forth. Finally the goblin managed to twist its head around to face Charles.
The boy let out a shocked cry that ended in a pitiful spasm. One of the goblin's eyes had been gouged out, leaving a wide, gaping hole slick with blood and tissue.
"Be still," said the voice. The figure loomed above him. Liam's face. What was happening to him?
Charles drifted in an out of consciousness, until finally becoming aware of footsteps approaching. There were three voices now, one unfamiliar. Suddenly, the realization that these were no friends of his, an idea that had been fomenting in his clouded mind, filled him with a nameless terror. He struggled to get up, only to find himself held down again by an infinitely stronger force. He started to scream.
"Sew his mouth shut," said the one who sounded like Liam, in an icy tone that Liam never would have used.
"Did you hear that?" Shidamae whispered from the darkness.
Outside the range of his torchlight, the elves were invisible to Liam. His eyes danced with afterimages of the flames. Odie, slogging along beside him, stopped in his tracks.
They heard it again- a crescendo of crying and shrieking, almost inhumanly anguished and as chilling as the squeal of a dying rabbit. Odie covered his ears and began shaking uncontrollably, nearly dropping his axe.
"That was the cry of a living being," Parethiel said softly, after the sound died down to a low, muffled sobbing. Liam could barely see him, but he felt the elves' presence, and took comfort in their quiet resilience.
Suddenly, he heard a scuffle in the blackness, the impact of metal on bone, and a moment later, a skeleton dropped to the floor just at the edge of the radius of Liam's light source, its brittle bones shattering on impact. Parethiel's sword flashed in the torchlight and he emerged from the darkness for half a second before melting back into the shadows, cloak trailing behind him. Then all was quiet again, save for the crunch of bone fragments beneath Liam and Odie's booted feet. Even the pitiful wailing had ceased.
They came to a narrower stone passageway, with no exits on the side. The five companions continued single file, with Odie leading and Shidamae at the rear. Enormous, irregular stones formed a tenuous-looking vault that came to a peak high above their heads. The walls revealed a glistening reddish tinge in the torchlight. Liam reached out and tentatively touched the wall. It was moist, as if the stones themselves were weeping.
As his fingertips grazed the wall, a ropy appendage came out of the stone and snared his wrist. Liam yelled out when he saw the slimy brown tentacle clutching him, crushing the bones in his wrist. He flailed wildly, trying to cut its grip with his sword, but another arm leapt out of the wall and pinned him fast, pulling him in as if to absorb him. His face was inches to a wall that had somehow become gelatinous, almost fleshy. An enormous black eye winked open, staring at him glassily. Liam saw his own face in its reflection, twisted with horror.
Tentacles started sprouting out of the walls on both sides. Monstrous, leering faces appeared where rough stone had been before. Shidamae was pulled off her feet, dragged by her ankles. She stabbed out with her sword and plunged it into a great eye that had opened in front of her. Her blade punctured a sack of fluid, and a thick stream of gore gushed over her, smelling of rot and desiccation. Shidamae wiggled free of the tentacles and rolled to her feet, hacking furiously at the walls.
Parethiel had reacted instantly to Liam's distress, launching a series of daggers and plugging them into the eye in a neat pattern around the man's head. Then he drew his swords and set them in motion, expertly severing the tentacles that had snaked their way around Liam. Sansorin and Odie were ahead of them, the elf spinning a circle with his blade, the dwarf merely chopping and hacking, springing from one wall to the other with reckless abandon. Bits of fleshly parts flew everywhere, spraying blood and ichor.
Shidamae and Parethiel helped the shook-up Liam get his bearings, and then they ran. They ran until the corridor opened up into a wider chamber ending in a wide flight of stone stairs, and then they paused to catch their breath.
Shidamae gave a startled laugh at Liam's face; he was completely covered in gobs of lumpy, foul-smelling goo from when Parethiel had exploded the eye right in his face. Shidamae and the others were little better off. With morbid fascination, she crept back to the edge of the passageway and saw that the walls had run down from about six feet from the ground, puddling into a pool of reeking, rancid flesh. Wrinkling her nose, she turned away and headed back to the group, finding Liam and Odie staring at living likenesses of themselves. Parethiel and Sansorin were nowhere in sight.
"So, you are the one who is known as Liam," Liam's double addressed him, coming down the stairs. He, too, carried a torch and a long sword, mirroring the man's every movement with subtle grace and a perpetual sardonic smile. Behind him came a shorter figure, who stopped beside his companion, bouncing an axe in his palm and grinning sadistically.
"So, you are the one who is known as the fool," he said to Odie, coming forward.
Shidamae ran forward to cut off the one advancing on Liam, fearing that he was strongly overmatched. Her bastard sword came up to parry a blow that surely would have slain her fumbling companion, the enchanted blade sparking as it connected. Her arms ringing with pain, Shidamae was driven back by the sheer strength of her opponent, well concealed within his average-sized frame.
As Liam brought his sword up and moved in to help her, a slender form flew out of the darkness and slashed at the back of the man's clone. Sansorin hit him four times before he turned around and brought his sword down in a devastatingly powerful chop. Sansorin dodged, suddenly wary. The clone lashed out with its elbow, catching Liam, creeping in from behind, in the gut and knocking him backwards. He skidded across the floor at the bottom of the stairs, only to look up and see an ogre stomping down toward him, wielding an enormous steel-enforced meat hammer, its handle longer than Liam's sword.
Odie met his own clone head-on, axe against axe. He was joined by Parethiel as the elf struck simultaneously with Sansorin. Parethiel came in with both blades singing, slicing neat ribbons across the clone's back that hardly slowed him at all. Enraged, the clone whirled around with unexpected speed and struck out at the elf. Parethiel moved quickly to avoid being disemboweled, but the side of the axe struck him in a glancing blow on the arm.
Pain shot through his wounded limb, and Parethiel lost his grip on one sword. He heard it clatter to the floor as he dove out of the way of the axe. Grimacing, he staggered back into the fight, one arm hanging broken and limp.
Liam scrambled to his feet, dodging a heavy steel-toed boot as the ogre prepared to kick his face into the stone floor. The ogre roared and dropped the meat hammer down on him, but Liam moved quicker, darting forward with his sword. He slashed open the monster's bloodstained leather apron, taking off a tuft of hair with his blade in the process, but the attack didn't stop the thing. The ogre backed up the stairs, launching one arm back to get a powerful swing with the hammer, and Liam followed, keeping within its reach. As Liam lunged forward to take advantage of the ogre's exposed abdomen, it howled and dropped a heavy punch on him, knocking him back down the stairs.
Shidamae stalked back into the fight, keeping a wary eye on the Liam-clone's back. Sansorin ducked and dodged, keeping well away from the clone's long sword, but although he had hit him perhaps a dozen times, the wounds seemed not to faze him. Then Shidamae lunged forward, her sword in a two-handed grip, and plunged it into him with all her strength. The clone whirled around and the elfmaid, startled to see her opponent still standing, let go of her blade, still embedded in his back, and hopped backward. He gave a fierce yell and came after the unarmed elf, sword leading. Shidamae, in her terror, didn't notice that her opponent was staggering, hardly able to stay on his feet. But it was Sansorin who leapt upon the clone, slicing his head off and sending it into its final throes.
Odie fared better against his own clone, and while perhaps not matching him in sheer strength, the real dwarf made up for it in ferocity. As Parethiel came stubbornly back in to launch an attack on the clone, Odie chopped the back of his knees, hobbling him and making him an easy target for Parethiel's precise strikes. The clone stumbled, momentarily helpless, and the elf darted in and slit his throat. The dwarf-clone slumped over, spilling its life-blood on the stone floor.
Liam knew he couldn't get up quickly enough this time. The ogre had knocked the wind out of him, but he felt like his back had been broken in about three places. He watched helplessly as the ogre raised the meat hammer over him--
--only to see a hand axe come whistling through the air above him, to embed itself in the ogre's chest. The monster tipped forward, falling down the stairs, and Liam rolled out of the way of the tumbling behemoth. This time Odie didn't issue any rhymes or battle cries as he came forward to collect his throwing axe.
Liam nodded his thanks and clambered to his feet, finding Shidamae and Sansorin looking at Parethiel's wound. The elf dismissed the Liam's look of concern.
"It will heal," he said stoically, but there was pain written all over his face.
Shidamae was fashioning a makeshift sling when they heard a moaning sound coming from the top of the stairs. Parethiel broke away and cautiously started up the steps, the others in quick pursuit.
"Charles!" Liam exclaimed when he got to the top of the stairs and saw the boy lying on top of a stone sarcophagus, with an array of crude medical devices surrounding him. Curiously, there was a goblin lying on the one next to him, but Liam didn't note that at the time. "It's Charles," he said to the elves, but they needed no explanation. Odie had already rushed forward, cradling the head of the half-conscious boy and making strange, choked up sounds that could have been sobbing.
Shidamae came over to his side and gasped when she saw his ghastly wounds, the stitches on his mouth. As she cut the stitches off, Liam came over to her.
"My gods," he said softly, examining the deep claw marks that had ripped into the boy's chest.
Shidamae was sniffing the ointments the ogre had left. "I fear to cover his wounds with a poultice," she said, her brow furrowed. "The marks have an unnatural festering in them, and they must be allowed to drain."
Sansorin came over to look at them. "The infection may kill him, even if the wounds themselves do not. If so, we must be prepared. Some undead creatures can create spawn by killing the living."
Liam stared at him, not sure he understood. "You're saying if he dies, he'll become...an undead thing?"
"It is possible," was all the elf would say.
Shidamae gently rubbed ointment into the boy's wounds. "I wish Diellin, or Aurilea were here. They could fix us all up."
"Look at his hand," Sansorin remarked. He had unraveled the dirty bandages around Charles' fingers, and was holding them up for inspection. Shidamae let out a horrified cry.
The fingers were green and purple, ending in darkened stumps where they had been bitten off right above the first knuckles. Shidamae soaked a fresh bandage in a bowl of water the ogre had left and cleaned the wounds as best she could, but her hands were trembling as she did it. "These are no battle wounds," she said, a quaver in her voice. "These are the scars of deliberate torture. How could anyone do such a thing to a child?"
Liam shook his head. "Such questions are always asked when confronted with the atrocities one human being can visit upon another," he said. "There has never been a satisfactory answer."
"This boy is no human," Parethiel observed quietly, from the side. He had been studying Charles' face the entire time.
Liam's head snapped up. "What do you mean, `no human'?" he asked in dread. He had had enough surprises to last him a lifetime.
"He is a half-elf. To a human, it might be difficult to see the difference. But look at the structure of his face, the shape of his eyes. He has elven blood in his veins."
Liam didn't know what to think. He couldn't refute it, for the boy had been raised by foster parents ever since he'd known him.
Shidamae had hardly been listening. "We have to get him out of here. I hope the way is clear behind us, because someone is going to have to carry him in their arms. It's the only way."
As Liam gathered him up as gently as he could, Charles opened his eyes and stirred.
"No!" he screamed, struggling futilely. "Get away, get away, get away!"
Liam muffled his cries in his sleeve as Shidamae stroked his hair to calm him down. "Charles, can you hear me? We're not going to hurt you, Charles," she soothed. "We're going to take you back to Andalast, and you can see the Queen of the Elves. Would you like that?"
"Let me go! You're not real! You're going to...you're going to..." the rest of his words were lost in a fresh wave of sobbing. Then he looked over and saw Sansorin, holding his sword over Grubsuckle's skinny form. The half-blinded goblin was twitching uncontrollably, trying to speak.
"No, no, don't!" Charles shrieked, squirming as Liam picked him up.
"Miserable goblin," said Sansorin. "Half in the grave, anyway." And then he plunged the sword down into Grubsuckle's chest.
*****
Prison of the Dead
Charles ran ahead, his torch bobbing, Grubsuckle clinging to the back of his tunic as if the boy had become his personal savior. He expected at any second that something would jump out of one of the alcoves, or ambush them from a side passage. He could hear the crunch of something heavy walking on bones, still trailing those heavy chains behind it. Constant shrieks permeated the corridors, their echoes making it impossible to tell where they were coming from. Or was there more than one? Startled by that thought, Charles ran blindly on.
Confused by the echoes, Charles was taken by surprise when the hideous abomination came out of the darkness, parting the light with its huge bulk and casting ghastly shadows down the length of the corridor. The skeletal form was larger than the monster Charles had defeated in the entrance, fleshless but writhing with slimy brown bags of pus that snaked around its spine and dangled out of its ribcage, dripping and oozing some unidentifiable foul ichor. Ending in a blackened claw, a bloated purple tongue lolled out of its bony jaw. It flickered back and forth as the monster came forward, slowed by thick chains that had broken away but were still shackled to its ankles.
It was a tormented creature, twisted by a lifetime of committing evil deeds and warped even further by its perverse and unnatural existence. Although neither the boy nor the goblin knew it, the creature was a mohrg, and it despised all life.
The mohrg let out a howl that sent shivers of fear right into Charles' bones. He started backing up, holding the wand out in front of him. "Back! Back!" he screamed, brandishing his torch as panic began to set in. T his time the wand did nothing, and if the mohrg was fazed by the leaping flames, it didn't show it. Charles fumbled with the wand again, but never got a second chance as the thing closed in. It lashed Grubsuckle in the face with its terrible tongue and slammed him against a sarcophagus, leaving the goblin dazed and stunned.
"Grubsuckle?" Charles called out, backpedaling. His companion didn't respond.
The boy lashed out with the torch, but the mohrg was just out of his short-armed reach. The huge creature brought a heavy claw down and raked it across his skinny chest, launching him through the air at the same time. Charles hit the wall and landed in a broken, bleeding heap on the floor.
The torch landed in front of his face, still burning. The pain was greater than anything he had ever experienced, even worse than getting his fingers chewed on by the zombie. He fought to stay conscious, but his vision inevitably darkened, as if a black veil had been pulled over his eyes. The last things he saw before blacking out were a familiar pair of boots stomping on the mohrg's chain, and a broken human skull, still threaded with that glistening purple tongue, as it landed beside his still-burning torch.
"Odie?" Charles wheezed, the name rattling in a throat that was quickly filling with blood.
"Tenacious little bugger," he heard someone say. He tried to open his eyes, but all they would do was twitch uncontrollably, so he surrendered to the blackness and tried to rest. All at once, the pain flooded back to him, as if his entire torso had been rent asunder. He gave a weak moan to signal his distress, but no one seemed to hear.
"He's going to need some emergency surgery or he'll die right here on the table." Even with his eyes closed, he could sense dark shapes flickering over him. He blinked. Liam was there, holding a needle and a scalpel. Then the blackness reasserted itself.
"Did you check the goblin's pack?" said a voice above him, Liam, presumably.
"One healing potion. Likely to drown him, in the state he's in right now."
"Pour it directly onto his wounds, then."
He felt a soothing tingle run through him, but the sensation only lasted a moment before the pain defeated it. _Agony_ was the only word that came to his mind. Were they cutting him open now, or stitching him shut? The question had barely found purchase in his addled thoughts when it was kicked out by a fresh wave of throbbing pain. Agony, agony, agony. He felt cold and dizzy, almost outside of himself.
"Hand me that needle. The less rusty one."
Was he dreaming? Something seemed out of place, unreal. The voices. They sounded like Liam and Odie, but the words...
Charles drifted back into unconsciousness.
"I can feel the disruption of the natural order here," Shidamae whispered. "It is as if someone has taken hold of my soul and twisted it."
"Those growling noises up ahead are a pretty good indication, too," Liam quipped without humor.
"Any chance you know a rhyme about killing undead, Odie?" he asked the dwarf, who had fallen oddly silent. Of all occasions, this was the one time he would have found his companion's singing comforting.
"No rhymes," Odie responded hollowly, trudging on ahead without a backward glance.
"Prepare yourselves," Parethiel said. "They are close, in the next room, I believe."
The passageway ended at another warped wooden door, which Odie broke down with uncharacteristic apathy. He found himself in a chamber accessible from two sides, currently occupied by five skeletons. The dwarf raised his axe and charged into the group. Liam and the others flooded into the room and came forward, flanking the dwarf. Odie swiped one with his axe, obliterating it, and cleaved a second with little effort. The remaining skeletons, wielding various rusty instruments of torture, took repeated stabs at him, but did little other than scratch his tough hide. Shidamae joined the fray with a ferocity that surprised Liam, smashing a skeleton to pieces with one hit of her bastard sword. Liam and the other elves quickly hacked up the remaining two.
"Whew," said Liam, taking a swig from his waterskin. "That was a pushover." He looked over at the dwarf, who was standing perfectly still, staring silently at his boots. "Odie?" Still the dwarf didn't respond.
"Crypt madness," Sansorin said authoritatively. "Some people can't handle the sight of the dead walking. Though I wouldn't expect the dwarf to show any unusual effects from a mental affliction."
"Odie can't help Charles," the dwarf said mournfully, shaking his head. "Odie can't help."
"What do you mean?" Liam demanded. "Do you know something, Odie?"
Behind him came Sansorin's patronizing snort. "I doubt it," he remarked.
Shidamae bent down in front of the dwarf's face. "Odie, can you hear me? What do you see in your mind?"
Odie pushed her away with surprising gentleness and picked up his axe to bash the next door down. "Time to go," he said softly, lifting his chin. The elfmaid was startled to see a solitary salty tear roll down the dwarf's cheek.
"Go get Meatgrinder and give him the vial of vitreous humor," said the voice of Liam, out of the darkness and the void of sleep. "He won't last much longer without the ogre's salves and his expertise at handling them."
The other voice grumbled. Charles heard footsteps receding. He managed to open his eyes fully this time, and found that his head had fallen to the side. He was lying on something hard and bumpy. There was stone under his elbow. He looked out and saw a sarcophagus at eye level a few feet away, a familiar form resting upon it.
"Grubsuckle," Charles rasped. He could not tell if the creature was alive or dead.
In response, the goblin began to twitch. Grubsuckle's mouth fell open, as if it were trying to speak, but only a faint gurgling sound came forth. Finally the goblin managed to twist its head around to face Charles.
The boy let out a shocked cry that ended in a pitiful spasm. One of the goblin's eyes had been gouged out, leaving a wide, gaping hole slick with blood and tissue.
"Be still," said the voice. The figure loomed above him. Liam's face. What was happening to him?
Charles drifted in an out of consciousness, until finally becoming aware of footsteps approaching. There were three voices now, one unfamiliar. Suddenly, the realization that these were no friends of his, an idea that had been fomenting in his clouded mind, filled him with a nameless terror. He struggled to get up, only to find himself held down again by an infinitely stronger force. He started to scream.
"Sew his mouth shut," said the one who sounded like Liam, in an icy tone that Liam never would have used.
"Did you hear that?" Shidamae whispered from the darkness.
Outside the range of his torchlight, the elves were invisible to Liam. His eyes danced with afterimages of the flames. Odie, slogging along beside him, stopped in his tracks.
They heard it again- a crescendo of crying and shrieking, almost inhumanly anguished and as chilling as the squeal of a dying rabbit. Odie covered his ears and began shaking uncontrollably, nearly dropping his axe.
"That was the cry of a living being," Parethiel said softly, after the sound died down to a low, muffled sobbing. Liam could barely see him, but he felt the elves' presence, and took comfort in their quiet resilience.
Suddenly, he heard a scuffle in the blackness, the impact of metal on bone, and a moment later, a skeleton dropped to the floor just at the edge of the radius of Liam's light source, its brittle bones shattering on impact. Parethiel's sword flashed in the torchlight and he emerged from the darkness for half a second before melting back into the shadows, cloak trailing behind him. Then all was quiet again, save for the crunch of bone fragments beneath Liam and Odie's booted feet. Even the pitiful wailing had ceased.
They came to a narrower stone passageway, with no exits on the side. The five companions continued single file, with Odie leading and Shidamae at the rear. Enormous, irregular stones formed a tenuous-looking vault that came to a peak high above their heads. The walls revealed a glistening reddish tinge in the torchlight. Liam reached out and tentatively touched the wall. It was moist, as if the stones themselves were weeping.
As his fingertips grazed the wall, a ropy appendage came out of the stone and snared his wrist. Liam yelled out when he saw the slimy brown tentacle clutching him, crushing the bones in his wrist. He flailed wildly, trying to cut its grip with his sword, but another arm leapt out of the wall and pinned him fast, pulling him in as if to absorb him. His face was inches to a wall that had somehow become gelatinous, almost fleshy. An enormous black eye winked open, staring at him glassily. Liam saw his own face in its reflection, twisted with horror.
Tentacles started sprouting out of the walls on both sides. Monstrous, leering faces appeared where rough stone had been before. Shidamae was pulled off her feet, dragged by her ankles. She stabbed out with her sword and plunged it into a great eye that had opened in front of her. Her blade punctured a sack of fluid, and a thick stream of gore gushed over her, smelling of rot and desiccation. Shidamae wiggled free of the tentacles and rolled to her feet, hacking furiously at the walls.
Parethiel had reacted instantly to Liam's distress, launching a series of daggers and plugging them into the eye in a neat pattern around the man's head. Then he drew his swords and set them in motion, expertly severing the tentacles that had snaked their way around Liam. Sansorin and Odie were ahead of them, the elf spinning a circle with his blade, the dwarf merely chopping and hacking, springing from one wall to the other with reckless abandon. Bits of fleshly parts flew everywhere, spraying blood and ichor.
Shidamae and Parethiel helped the shook-up Liam get his bearings, and then they ran. They ran until the corridor opened up into a wider chamber ending in a wide flight of stone stairs, and then they paused to catch their breath.
Shidamae gave a startled laugh at Liam's face; he was completely covered in gobs of lumpy, foul-smelling goo from when Parethiel had exploded the eye right in his face. Shidamae and the others were little better off. With morbid fascination, she crept back to the edge of the passageway and saw that the walls had run down from about six feet from the ground, puddling into a pool of reeking, rancid flesh. Wrinkling her nose, she turned away and headed back to the group, finding Liam and Odie staring at living likenesses of themselves. Parethiel and Sansorin were nowhere in sight.
"So, you are the one who is known as Liam," Liam's double addressed him, coming down the stairs. He, too, carried a torch and a long sword, mirroring the man's every movement with subtle grace and a perpetual sardonic smile. Behind him came a shorter figure, who stopped beside his companion, bouncing an axe in his palm and grinning sadistically.
"So, you are the one who is known as the fool," he said to Odie, coming forward.
Shidamae ran forward to cut off the one advancing on Liam, fearing that he was strongly overmatched. Her bastard sword came up to parry a blow that surely would have slain her fumbling companion, the enchanted blade sparking as it connected. Her arms ringing with pain, Shidamae was driven back by the sheer strength of her opponent, well concealed within his average-sized frame.
As Liam brought his sword up and moved in to help her, a slender form flew out of the darkness and slashed at the back of the man's clone. Sansorin hit him four times before he turned around and brought his sword down in a devastatingly powerful chop. Sansorin dodged, suddenly wary. The clone lashed out with its elbow, catching Liam, creeping in from behind, in the gut and knocking him backwards. He skidded across the floor at the bottom of the stairs, only to look up and see an ogre stomping down toward him, wielding an enormous steel-enforced meat hammer, its handle longer than Liam's sword.
Odie met his own clone head-on, axe against axe. He was joined by Parethiel as the elf struck simultaneously with Sansorin. Parethiel came in with both blades singing, slicing neat ribbons across the clone's back that hardly slowed him at all. Enraged, the clone whirled around with unexpected speed and struck out at the elf. Parethiel moved quickly to avoid being disemboweled, but the side of the axe struck him in a glancing blow on the arm.
Pain shot through his wounded limb, and Parethiel lost his grip on one sword. He heard it clatter to the floor as he dove out of the way of the axe. Grimacing, he staggered back into the fight, one arm hanging broken and limp.
Liam scrambled to his feet, dodging a heavy steel-toed boot as the ogre prepared to kick his face into the stone floor. The ogre roared and dropped the meat hammer down on him, but Liam moved quicker, darting forward with his sword. He slashed open the monster's bloodstained leather apron, taking off a tuft of hair with his blade in the process, but the attack didn't stop the thing. The ogre backed up the stairs, launching one arm back to get a powerful swing with the hammer, and Liam followed, keeping within its reach. As Liam lunged forward to take advantage of the ogre's exposed abdomen, it howled and dropped a heavy punch on him, knocking him back down the stairs.
Shidamae stalked back into the fight, keeping a wary eye on the Liam-clone's back. Sansorin ducked and dodged, keeping well away from the clone's long sword, but although he had hit him perhaps a dozen times, the wounds seemed not to faze him. Then Shidamae lunged forward, her sword in a two-handed grip, and plunged it into him with all her strength. The clone whirled around and the elfmaid, startled to see her opponent still standing, let go of her blade, still embedded in his back, and hopped backward. He gave a fierce yell and came after the unarmed elf, sword leading. Shidamae, in her terror, didn't notice that her opponent was staggering, hardly able to stay on his feet. But it was Sansorin who leapt upon the clone, slicing his head off and sending it into its final throes.
Odie fared better against his own clone, and while perhaps not matching him in sheer strength, the real dwarf made up for it in ferocity. As Parethiel came stubbornly back in to launch an attack on the clone, Odie chopped the back of his knees, hobbling him and making him an easy target for Parethiel's precise strikes. The clone stumbled, momentarily helpless, and the elf darted in and slit his throat. The dwarf-clone slumped over, spilling its life-blood on the stone floor.
Liam knew he couldn't get up quickly enough this time. The ogre had knocked the wind out of him, but he felt like his back had been broken in about three places. He watched helplessly as the ogre raised the meat hammer over him--
--only to see a hand axe come whistling through the air above him, to embed itself in the ogre's chest. The monster tipped forward, falling down the stairs, and Liam rolled out of the way of the tumbling behemoth. This time Odie didn't issue any rhymes or battle cries as he came forward to collect his throwing axe.
Liam nodded his thanks and clambered to his feet, finding Shidamae and Sansorin looking at Parethiel's wound. The elf dismissed the Liam's look of concern.
"It will heal," he said stoically, but there was pain written all over his face.
Shidamae was fashioning a makeshift sling when they heard a moaning sound coming from the top of the stairs. Parethiel broke away and cautiously started up the steps, the others in quick pursuit.
"Charles!" Liam exclaimed when he got to the top of the stairs and saw the boy lying on top of a stone sarcophagus, with an array of crude medical devices surrounding him. Curiously, there was a goblin lying on the one next to him, but Liam didn't note that at the time. "It's Charles," he said to the elves, but they needed no explanation. Odie had already rushed forward, cradling the head of the half-conscious boy and making strange, choked up sounds that could have been sobbing.
Shidamae came over to his side and gasped when she saw his ghastly wounds, the stitches on his mouth. As she cut the stitches off, Liam came over to her.
"My gods," he said softly, examining the deep claw marks that had ripped into the boy's chest.
Shidamae was sniffing the ointments the ogre had left. "I fear to cover his wounds with a poultice," she said, her brow furrowed. "The marks have an unnatural festering in them, and they must be allowed to drain."
Sansorin came over to look at them. "The infection may kill him, even if the wounds themselves do not. If so, we must be prepared. Some undead creatures can create spawn by killing the living."
Liam stared at him, not sure he understood. "You're saying if he dies, he'll become...an undead thing?"
"It is possible," was all the elf would say.
Shidamae gently rubbed ointment into the boy's wounds. "I wish Diellin, or Aurilea were here. They could fix us all up."
"Look at his hand," Sansorin remarked. He had unraveled the dirty bandages around Charles' fingers, and was holding them up for inspection. Shidamae let out a horrified cry.
The fingers were green and purple, ending in darkened stumps where they had been bitten off right above the first knuckles. Shidamae soaked a fresh bandage in a bowl of water the ogre had left and cleaned the wounds as best she could, but her hands were trembling as she did it. "These are no battle wounds," she said, a quaver in her voice. "These are the scars of deliberate torture. How could anyone do such a thing to a child?"
Liam shook his head. "Such questions are always asked when confronted with the atrocities one human being can visit upon another," he said. "There has never been a satisfactory answer."
"This boy is no human," Parethiel observed quietly, from the side. He had been studying Charles' face the entire time.
Liam's head snapped up. "What do you mean, `no human'?" he asked in dread. He had had enough surprises to last him a lifetime.
"He is a half-elf. To a human, it might be difficult to see the difference. But look at the structure of his face, the shape of his eyes. He has elven blood in his veins."
Liam didn't know what to think. He couldn't refute it, for the boy had been raised by foster parents ever since he'd known him.
Shidamae had hardly been listening. "We have to get him out of here. I hope the way is clear behind us, because someone is going to have to carry him in their arms. It's the only way."
As Liam gathered him up as gently as he could, Charles opened his eyes and stirred.
"No!" he screamed, struggling futilely. "Get away, get away, get away!"
Liam muffled his cries in his sleeve as Shidamae stroked his hair to calm him down. "Charles, can you hear me? We're not going to hurt you, Charles," she soothed. "We're going to take you back to Andalast, and you can see the Queen of the Elves. Would you like that?"
"Let me go! You're not real! You're going to...you're going to..." the rest of his words were lost in a fresh wave of sobbing. Then he looked over and saw Sansorin, holding his sword over Grubsuckle's skinny form. The half-blinded goblin was twitching uncontrollably, trying to speak.
"No, no, don't!" Charles shrieked, squirming as Liam picked him up.
"Miserable goblin," said Sansorin. "Half in the grave, anyway." And then he plunged the sword down into Grubsuckle's chest.
*****
