Chapter Ten: Death and Resurrection
"Dekar!" Tia's cry cut the copper's dying call short. Tears streamed down her face. Her rainbow jewel winked furiously. Then a shine engulfed its every facet in radiance. Open-mouthed, Lexis backed away from her.
As the jewel's resonating aura grew brighter, Tia's sobs quieted. Her eyes' luster faded. It was as if she stared into fathomless nothingness. "Dekar… No!" Tia screamed in a voice that was not at all her own. A wave of power exploded from her body, setting her hair and dress to billowing in the windless chamber. Sorrow in her face melted away to rage. Lexis's stomach dropped. Never had he seen Tia so furious.
Tia then spoke words of arcane that left the scientist dumbfounded – and there were few languages that evaded his grasp. They rattled like bones upon bones and rasped like the threats of ancient, bitter women. When she had concluded her incantation, Tia closed her eyes. The jewel blazed white from every facet. A wave formed of every color of the spectrum crashed out of the gem, striking every dragon in the fearsome circle with a sound as furious as the splitting of earth from earth. Ghostly rainbow mist held the dragons suspended. At the slight crooking of Tia's fingers, an orb, pulsating, living, humongous materialized at the center of the circle. Lightning hummed and hissed at its edges. Like the opaque wave from before, the orb and its lightning were tinted in the brilliance of the rainbow. The lightning's frenzied dance grew more and more frantic. The orb trembled, and a rumbling shook the stale air. The dragons' eyes closely followed the sphere. Lexis felt a pall descend upon his heart. The ancient wyrms feared this strange new magic which was Tia's to command.
Tia whispered yet another sentence of enchantment, whereupon the orb broke apart. The rainbow storm broke upon the dragons in a flash of white. Dragon screams filled the air as the power of the jewel charred their flash. Fountains of black blood flooded the hall.
{****}
"How do you know the fate of your companions with such certainty?" M'hana questioned Artea. "It completely defies common sense! You even said yourself that your comrades entered separately."
"It's not really a power that's based in common sense," Guy said defensively. "Artea and I share a powerful bond with our comrades."
"It is of an almost magical nature," Artea added, "which is why can easily transcend barriers like those that we perceive in the physical world."
"You know, if it had been Maxim or Selan down there, we would have known which one of them had fallen," Guy mused.
"True," Artea agreed. "But I can't figure it out… I guess because neither Lexus, nor Tia, nor even Dekar has strong enough ki for us to really discern whether it died out."
Guy chuckled to himself. "I'm going to have to tell Dekar that one. Won't he be surprised? Strongest man in the world, yet lacking noticeable ki."
Artea looked at Guy almost in revulsion. "How do you know he isn't the one who fell?" the elf snapped at him.
Guy's eyes widened to the point where he almost looked stricken. "Oh gods," he said. "I didn't think…"
"Obviously. Let's go," Artea said with brisk disgust. He stalked down the corridor at a swift pace. Guy, more inclined to brood after the crass thing he had said, fell behind. M'hana, for a change, kept pace with the elf.
"Can't you dim those?" Artea asked M'hana irritably as he caught sight of her glowing pack.
"No more than you can douse yours," M'hana said bleakly. Her threadbare pack poorly eclipsed the light of the Iris treasures. "Maybe," M'hana suggested with a snide look at Artea, "you should stash your ring away."
"And risk having you steal it?" Artea countered. "Not a chance!"
"Dammit," M'hana muttered.
A racket like a full suit of armor clanking down a flight of stairs rang in both of their ears. It was Guy, hurrying to catch up with them. "Artea, there's something following us!"
The elf's violet eyes narrowed. "Do you have any idea what it could be?" His hand shot to his bow.
Guy looked imploringly from M'hana to Artea. "You're going to think I'm crazy," he said at last. "But it was that archfiend from up above. I know it's impossible because monsters just don't follow you down the stairs. But I saw the twin Thunder Beasts it summoned! I swear it!"
"I believe you, Guy," Artea said
reassuringly. "I have heard of strangely
intelligent monsters that can teleport and cast advanced magical spells. Sometimes they learn of Providence
from travelers they attack. They then
teleport inside of treasure chests to look for Providence
and progress through each floor, preying on adventurers and other monsters."
"If any monster fits the description,
it was that one we fought," Guy said.
"Twin thunder beasts! I haven't
even seen you cast that spell before,
Artea."
"And the archfiend was trapped inside of a living treasure chest," M'hana added. "I wonder how it managed to move upwards though…not that it's really important. The point is that it's here chasing after us."
"What should we do?" Guy asked Artea. "I don't think I can fight that thing again. And it certainly didn't look like it was slowing down the last time I saw it."
"We'll have to hurry," Artea said. "That is really the only course we have, if we wish to lose it."
"There's one problem," Guy pointed out. "All it has to do is look for these lights," he gestured at the Iris treasures, "and it will have a clear lead to follow."
"That's a chance we'll have to take," M'hana said brusquely. "There's no way I'm leaving four years of my life to shine on the seventy-fourth floor of this stinking hell. Besides…" She leered at Artea. "I'm certain that your elf friend is much too attached to his ring to leave it here. Lust for riches is rare among the elves, as I understand it. However, Iris treasures merit a special…exception...even in passionless races"
Artea's temper flared. He despised the thief for being right, even if only a little bit. "If we can turn a suitable number of corners, the light won't shine where the arch fiend can see it."
"Ah, but that's assuming we know which corners to turn," M'hana said and shifted the weight of her pack.
"Speed will more than make up for that," Artea said. "We'll see if you can keep up, thief."
{****}
Her spell completed, Tia sank to her knees. Meanwhile, the dragons began to die. First fell the coppers and the then the silvers. Tia's eyes did not return to normal, however. Lexis swallowed and gently touched her shoulder. "Tia, we can leave in safety now." The words rang heartless and hollow in her ears.
"No," Tia said in a harsh tone. "There is one whom you have forgotten. I will not leave without him."
"A miracle won't work if there is no body for the soul to return to," Lexis said. "Come, Tia. Dekar is irretrievable. We must go now!" Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed the gold dragons. They had withstood even Tia's spell. They were gathering, injured but not defeated. Murder shone in their eyes. To the intruders who had killed their kin, the gold dragons would grant no quarter.
"Fool," hissed Tia. "Make your escape if it pleases you. I'll not leave him behind." Again Tia began to chant words that Lexis could not fathom. He looked to the hall ahead, empty of copper and silver dragons and back again to the woman who was and was not Tia. He started to cross the distance alone but paused, torn.
Tia's spell this time materialized only as pale white smoke. It drifted past the dragons to the place where Dekar had fallen. Lexis could not look away from the sight. Before his very eyes, Dekar's body – the grisly remains of it – was mending.
First Dekar's skeleton rose from the ground. Wrapped in the smoke, the skeleton hovered above the ground. The blackened skull was sightless; what remained of the skeleton was pathetic. Slowly the other bones assembled in their proper places beneath the skull. Lexis took off his glasses and rubbed at his eyes, not believing what he was seeing. Tia barked another command at Dekar's remains. The skeleton, for the most part as dark as its cavernous eye sockets, began to shimmer. Slowly the ash fell away, leaving every bone moon white. Tiny particles, like pinpoints of stars twinkled around the restored skeleton. The work they did was subtle but swift. Before Lexis could blink, organs filled the chasms between bones. And still Tia droned, the language of her spell rising in pitch. Six blinks and red muscles eclipsed the pure white of Dekar's bones. Like rivers of blood, they gleamed and rippled, almost alive. Finally appeared what resembled a cloth banner. It wrapped around Dekar's naked muscles, concealing them.
All through the restoration of Dekar's body, Lexis had watched, transfixed. In that brief, yet lengthy time, however, the gold dragons had begun to cross the distance to them. Blood drained from Lexis's face. Tia concluded her spell with a flourish. Dekar's body, just as he had left it, lay cold and lifeless on the ground. Tia crossed her arms and looked at Lexis expectantly. At the chill in her glare, Lexis's skin crawled. He reached into their item bag and withdrew a miracle. He upended the blue bottle over Dekar's body, conscious all the while that the gold dragons were getting closer. Dekar jerked upright with a gasp as if he had been submerged in a bottomless lake of icy waters.
"Finally," Tia said with a voice still not her own. "I've about had it with this place." She spoke one final incantation, a short, simple one. A brief sensation of disorientation flickered through Lexis's body. When it passed, he gasped. The party had miraculously crossed the hall. The stairs were in sight! Lexis could have wept for sheer relief. When he looked back, the fire of the golden dragons flared like the light of a thousand fireflies. Despite the sudden distance that had opened between them, the vengeful wyrms had not forgotten the party.
"Fool!" Tia snarled at Lexis. "Run!" she commanded, all but pushing him and Dekar down the stairs. Almost reckless, she bounded down the staircase, paying no heed to its structural integrity. Lexis supporting Dekar on one shoulder somehow managed to stumble down the grand staircase, hurrying like a contender in a hellacious three-legged race. At the bottom, Lexis could see Tia fairly bursting with impatience. Gulping breath after painful breath, Lexis finally managed to lug himself and Dekar to the bottom. Once there, he felt compelled to look back. Up and up and up went the stairs, a wide frayed ribbon wound about a crystal column. Easily this was the longest flight of stairs the party had descended in the entire dungeon.
"Examine your calculations, Scientist," Tia said, her voice dripping with scorn. "You will find that we have indeed reached the one-hundredth floor, or rather, the wings of its stairs."
At the mention of the one-hundredth floor, some of the tension drained from Dekar and Lexis's faces.
"But…Tia…you aren't Tia, are you?" Dekar whispered. These were the first words he had spoken since his miraculous restoration.
Tia's distant eyes clouded over, but she said nothing. Instead, she stared at her beloved jewel.
The jewel, Lexis thought, must be a container for the spirit of a mage. That would explain many things. Yet what mage commands such power – a wave that obliterates and a spell that restores a shattered body?
"Tia," Lexis finally mustered his courage to interrupt. "Just who are you?"
"I'll not tell. Foolish humans, questioning all that is! Can you not simply give thanks and accept the way things are? Control was never meant to be yours, so why do you pursue it?" Tia sounded angry enough to unleash her wave attack from the floor before. Before Lexis could answer, Tia said, "I'll return your precious 'Tia' to you for now. But mind you, Lexis Shaia… We shall meet again!"
{**********************************************************************************************************}