Lux Aeterna
by
Steven Mayo
Book I ~ The Meager
Chapter 11 ~ A Mending of Ways Pt. 2
"What are they, Seville?" Edrick gasped, eyes wide and lip trembling. His two frantic hands anchored to his paralyzed friend, grabbed around his arm and there held tightly. Seville groaned at his pain. "What are they, Seville? What are they?"
The shuffling feet brought creatures. Human creatures, except with lax flesh of morbid grays, browns, and subtle greens, and the skin about the head was wrinkled and cadaverous. Several wore armor, but the mid-straps were eaten away, and the long plated metal hung a skewed angles. The suits seemed more confining than shielding. Others wore only clothes, or what was left of them; the tatters seemed simultaneously earth-soaked and moth-eaten, and some were of astonishingly dated fashion.
"Seville..." Edrick's mouth still chattered. The humanoids came slowly, not dodging trees when they came to them, but just slamming into them and pressing around them in time. They grunted and moaned, but the sounds were low at this too short distance. The wraith was calling them, it's shrill cries bringing the monsters to Edrick and Seville. It seemed they had come from nowhere; the priest looked up to find them off in the trees, dully moving towards him, their gaunt arms held out and the thin fingers grabbing the air.
"Se..."
"Zom..."
"What?! Seville, can you speak?" Edrick dropped his quivering head low, but still didn't drop his eyes from the approaching ghouls. Seville's voice was sorrowfully dim.
"Zombies..." the rogue said finally.
Edrick whimpered and panted. He darted his eyes all around. They were coming faster now. They could smell the humans.
"You ... you stay back!" Edrick yelled, of course to no avail. "What do I do, Seville? What do I do?"
Coming through the final trees the zombies put speed in their step, their withered, filth-ridden hands reaching out for the prey, the food. The circling ghost stopped calling; it raised high in the trees and looked down with its cruel glittering smile as its children came into the attack. There were so many of them, a dozen on the brink and more behind, and they had been hungry for so long. Their guttural sirens were angry and syrupy so close.
Hand shaking awfully, Edrick pulled one of Seville's daggers free and pointed it in the air like candy on a stick.
"I can't do this," he said, and the zombies closed in.
********************
It was the same, everywhere the same. Endless gray trees, endless death, hopeless bounds of distance. So infinite was the path that he developed some lateral kind of vertigo. He felt like his eyes would set to the pattern; that this lifeless forest would burn onto his vision forever. The knight had shrunk to nothingness behind him, and that same nothingness lie ahead.
"Edrick!" Sylum called. "Edrick!"
It was all in vain, he knew. They were gone for good, and so would come the death of the greatest hunter of all time, Herrik Gipson. One more thorn in Sylum's insignificant side. What was one more failure? That thought made him stop, and he stood eerily motionless and let the stifling air kiss his neck. Pain and fear subsided, and anger moved in. He slumped his back against a tree and breathed heavy. What was that feeling? Was it just anger? Was it nervous? That same crawling sensation that hadn't left him all day, like his veins and arteries were filled with caterpillars. Could it just be nerve? Or was it ... realization. A final understanding of one's intent; one's capabilities. He just couldn't say.
Sylum gripped down as hard on the Werebane as his numb hand would allow and launched from the tree with a vehement growl. He looked every direction and spited the emptiness.
"Edrick!" he pierced into the sky, and started moving again.
********************
The dagger did nothing. So useless in his pitiful hands, Edrick gouged the first zombie in what remained of its belly but the blade only gashed in slightly and then scraped across the surface. Completely un-phased, the looming zombie stomped Edrick sideways and draped its feasting hands onto Seville. The rogue yawped mutedly, and strained despite the pain to move, but could not. Two more of the lurching zombies circled onto Seville and hunkered to feed
"No!" Edrick cried, pushing himself up and fishing the dagger up out of the dirt. With frenzied mind he charged and tackled shoulder-first into them, and he just managed to topple them back. Contrary to their rotted features, they were incredibly heavy and dense. And relentless, the zombies began to stand immediately, and one of them chose to crawl to the rogue. Edrick changed his grip on the knife and then like an ice pick stabbed it down into the crawling zombies back. But it just kept scuffling along its course, as if nothing had happened.
The priest pulled the dagger free and kicked at the zombie's head, and then did again and again. The creature was unstoppable. Spinning he saw that another four had arrived and bolted and lunged into another group that was circling around Seville. They fell and rolled as before, and just as before began approaching instantly after.
"Back, you devils!" he screamed, punching his small arm into a tall zombie. It landed with a meaty thud and Edrick flinched back with a hurting wrist. The zombie took only enough notice to slap Edrick away to the side before it continued on to Seville. The priest landed hard on his head, and the trickling blood soon fell into his eyelashes. He smeared the gash on his forehead to stop the flow and then looked. So soon, Seville was completely lost behind the gaggle of hungry creatures. Edrick saw only a mass of rotted legs, arms, and backs scrounging into the center.
"Seville!"
Edrick rushed them with the dagger-point forward and collided abruptly with one of the hulking creatures. Nothing. Furious, he freed the blade and went in again and two more times after that, and finally the zombie turned and swung its lanky arms in a surprisingly quick pivot of the waist. The gust of air from the swing startled Edrick, and he stumbled backwards, but he just as quickly regained composure and went into the zombie once more. Striking its side hard, Edrick forced the monster back and into a group of others. Moaning and horridly thoughtless, they crumbled to the floor and clamored over each other for a foot's grip.
There was the gap, and Edrick thrust himself into it, pressing between two undisturbed zombies. It wasn't as bad as he thought it would be; Seville had not taken any severe damage but only minor cuts. The zombies were having trouble digging through his leather armor. Still the rogue gurgled and hiccupped at all the pain tearing through him. Fighting to impress his way in, boxing himself against the mesh of arms and heads, Edrick dropped his pleading hands onto Seville and squeezed as tightly as he could to whatever material he could grab. And then he started pulling, screaming relentlessly at the undead abominations, resisting the gnashing faces. But he could not move Seville from his spot, lodged among the soon-to-feast villains.
Pulling, pulling with all his might, Edrick was suddenly aware of the many feet around him. More had arrived, so many that only the greediest few could get into the paralyzed rogue, and the others either attempted to muscle their way in or circled the feeding mindlessly. Edrick's back was arched out, his feet scuffling through the dirt as he tried to gain leverage enough carry Seville away from the zombies, but it would seem hopeless. The zombies were too many.
Then without any expectation, Edrick cried out to the horribly sour pain of rotten teeth tearing into his arm. He'd not even seen the head shoot in to strike. With another yelp as the teeth began to chew, his right arm twitched, raced in and out of his control, and flushed brightly with scorching blood. Instinctively he reared his injured arm back, but the anchored teeth kept their prey, and the flesh tore free. Edrick received back against his chest a swollen red rod of flesh; with a laceration so deep across the outer-forearm the bone was revealed. Before his mind could register the true pain, before it could consider the sanguine sluices drenching his mottled robe, before it could translate any action beyond cupping his left hand to the gory wound, that same zombie struck Edrick across the face and put the priest prone into the soil. So sudden it had been, so instantly an unimaginable horror had overtaken him; his eyes filled with tears and he coughed at the rocky itch of inhaling the ground's dust into his throat.
Reverberating pain was superior to everything; grievous sickness came from his torrential arteries. The world around, the trees, the dirt, the creatures, the gray, all spun and motioned and filled him with noise, and sparkled like chattering sequins. Edrick knelt his head into his ragged arm and felt his tears mix with the blood, both loose and hot. He thought he could smell the rottenness of the teeth in the wound.
He had to right himself, had to do something. He couldn't stop now when nobody would have stopped on him. Imagining that the pain lie just in the one arm he tried to roll over, and when succeeding found himself stared down by a hungry zombie, its maw shimmering scarlet still from its first bite.
The grabbing hands lowered.
Edrick kicked it away, not forgetting, but overcoming his anguish for at least long enough do that. He scuttled backwards, like half crab-walking, still caressing his hurt arm in the other on his chest. Challenged, the zombie tottered forward to take another taste, and Edrick racked his brain to find a use for his time. Then, summoning more power than he thought he could muster, he kicked both legs into the trailing zombie's abdomen and it faltered back and fell. It of course returned to its chase as readily as it could, and Edrick knew that such strength he might not find again in his condition; not with the gaping injury of his forearm. He had to cure himself; had to test his true weakness as a priest of the church.
Like a mother, precariously releasing her safe child into the world, Edrick released his comfort grip on the injured arm and held the red-blotched fingers of his good hand up and rubbed them together, summoning the magic. He chanted, the runic words coming infantile from his shaky throat, and he tried despite everything to keep his eyes straight up, reading up the straight rails of the bare trees, concentrating, heavily concentrating. His tongue was too dry, his lips inoperable, they couldn't find the words. His eyes swayed to the impending zombie hastily, and then back up, and then back down. Like this, the magic would never come.
A pained moan from Seville then struck him viscerally and the grumbling zombie left his thought. The direness of the situation finally set him into a moment of clarity, and shimmering glades of white air circumscribed his shuffling fingers. They heated up, and the transparent foam of the white magic began to bubble. Edrick belted out his cantrip frantically, not noticing that the zombie had stopped approaching.
A single burst of vibrant snowy warmth shockwaved out; the cure was ready. Beside himself with marvel, Edrick brushed the spell across his injured arm and instantaneously the frayed fibers of muscle stretched and connected, and the shield of skin expanded and melded back into its place. Light feathery steam rose from a healthy flat where had once been a pit of flowing blood. The injury was completely gone, along with the pulses of pain.
It was more revitalizing than anything he'd ever felt, and it seemed the zombie, if such a thing were possible, had been put into fear by it. It stood with its closest example of a dumfounded look planted on its face, its legs still, its arms to its side. No attack. Overcome with zealous excitement and confusion, Edrick made to stand, and went hot with revelation when he realized the stunned creature was following every motion of his glowing hand with its cocked head.
"It fears me," Edrick thought. "White magic!"
The priest advanced.
The zombie shuddered and clumsily back-stepped, but Edrick was far too quick for it. Benign energy radiating from his hand, he slapped his palm flat into the rotten monster's chest and sent the magic in. It sounded as if every petrified bone in its body had shattered, and looked as if the shrapnel had pelted into the inside of its skin. It slumped to the ground a broken, puffy mass; and laid still. As the last willows of white dissipated from his hand, Edrick was immobile, paralyzed with the most wide-eyed, awestruck gaze imaginable aimed at his righteous fingers.
The entire army of feeding zombies stopped and turned. Their vacant eyes found the priest, but the legs didn't chase. They stood and feared him.
Coming down, Edrick saw them, ready for his attack. He breathed heavy, confused and nervous of own power. This was something he'd never seen. Edrick brought his hands finger to finger and then pressed them flat, closed his eyes, and chanted the spell once more. With a surprised spark through his chest, he opened his eyes and saw the holy cure wrapped around his digits, channeling in hot currents, ready to cast. The magic had come instantly, instantly.
He looked at the zombies once more, watched their dumb stares, and caught that same sound of his friend hurting on the ground. Edrick gritted his teeth and then growled ferociously. He charged them.
********************
"That sound!" Sylum said under his breath. "Screaming!"
His chest heaved, the fatigue washed through him, waves of gut-sickening tiredness tried to drop him to the ground. But hanging on the air, the sound of a voice, high and angry, and joining it crisp crackling sounds he couldn't identify. It was close. So close.
Sylum put vigor in his burdened steps; all that remained.
********************
Edrick slapped them to the side, and the heavenly transfer of energy thrust them back. The undead clamored and writhed among each other get away from the murderous priest, but their slow legs could not grant them solace. The white foam of the cure spell was so potent it leaped off his Edrick's fingers like short tails of lighting. He rushed into two more zombies and left them flailing through the air and colliding back into the dead trees.
The spell faded, but even before the last sparkles of white were gone Edrick put his hands together and chanted the next one in its place. It came into being even before the words were done; so natural.
He tore through them like paper, reaching for the nearest and launching it forcefully back and returning it to its long past death. The furthest zombies recoiled so violently they even managed a sort of run, though on their questionable legs they mostly fell to their stomachs. Edrick would get to them soon.
He made his way to Seville, knocking back every fleshy obstacle in his way. Edrick jolted onto the rogue and straddled his feet around him, and then he spun his arms every direction and ended five zombies more. So quickly the daunting army was put into retreat, but the priest wouldn't allow it. He chased them down, and with a single pat on the back the entire inner-structure of a given zombie collapsed along with the creature itself. Rearming his spell once again, he followed further into the trees and downed ten more in the surrounding area. They put up no resistance to his holy magic.
If they had emotions, it seemed then they were moaning with anger, bitterness as the priest took time to kneel low to a crawling zombie and grab it by the head, zapping its skull through with white bubbles and leaving it still. Sure, his heart pounded, and he was dizzy with kinetic electricity, and the draining exertion of such incessant casting was starting to reveal itself, but the battle was his. A smile even found his lips as he ran down the final few.
They were done, twenty, no, thirty, maybe even more. Unholy creatures of beyond the grave put down in a matter of minutes by a hack priest, Edrick was beside himself. He let the last cure drift off and ran to Seville. Coming onto him he saw the blood and heard the groaning, and the purple shine of the rogue's arm still stuck out like an ominous beacon. It wasn't until Edrick dropped to his knees that the whelps of fatigue set on him. Heavy gushes of bodily drooping, as if all his muscles relaxed in a single instant. He shook his head and stretched his eyes wide, as if he were about to go to sleep. And just then, when he was going to set himself to Seville's aid, he was pressed down into his friend's chest by the screeching wail of the banshee.
He'd forgotten it, floating silently as it chose up amongst the treetops, granting only a grinning stare to its children. Edrick rotated himself around so that his head lay on Seville's stomach but at least looked up, and the ghost was there; just above him, with its smile turned to an enraged scowl and its incorporeal scythe bared and readied. It screamed again.
Edrick tensed and his throat closed up, and when he brought his hands together they stayed cool. He attempted the evocation again but got nothing. The poltergeist drifted lower and grinned once more, its bony fingers of its hands crawling together and preparing a sweeping strike. The scythe shot up.
The priest rubbed his hands together frenetically and yelled out the words as if possessed by a demon and darted his eyes straight into those vacant, orange sockets of the ghost. Then it hit, the exorbitant hotness of the magic, just as the wispy blade fell. No time to move, Edrick put his palms up and out and scrunched his fearful eyes.
A bright flash above him and the radiating, mechanical sound of the scythe grinding against his palm above. The boiling wraith slapped the reaping point down twice more, but the incredible force that the priest put against him bounded it back. Then Edrick grabbed the airy blade, felt the cold metal in his powerful hands and clenched it to himself. The ghost flapped up and down on the shaft of its weapon and spun in circles around it, creating voluminous winds, but Edrick held fast to the blade. With a final scream the wraith banished the scythe in ribbons of smoke and flew off through the trees and disappeared.
Edrick lay panting and aghast, gazing blankly into the dormant canopy. Not until the last echoes of the banshee's wails had come and gone did the priest bring his sweating hands down and release the strained muscles throughout his body. He thought he would pass out that moment; the tiring wallops of thinning adrenaline pummeling his limbs. But then he thought of Seville and wedged his eye lids open for a little longer. He sat up and turned.
Seville was breathing; just looking up and breathing, letting the comfort of the most immense of pains suddenly vanishing lull him into a state of floating, as if he was drifting down some timeless river, forgetful of past and future and only enjoying the moment. Each open and welcome breath seemed to carry his healthy blood further into his hands and feet and returned the life to him. It was a marvelous climax to such an infinite pain.
But Edrick was aware of things. His scan of Seville was more positive than he'd expected, but still his friend was not in good shape. Mostly he would bruise, the punching motions of the zombie being most commonplace, and never did the monsters get in a bite like Edrick had known, but Seville had been slashed twice down his left arm and there was some blood seeping up from a crease in his leather armor. Also his lips were cut and the spotted blood dressed his teeth and gums. His eye was already blackening.
Edrick took Seville by the hand and was relieved to feel it grasp back.
"Can you sit up, do you think?" he asked.
"Heh, why not?" Seville responded with a light chuckle. The priest had to help him do it, then he began to ready a cure spell, but Seville called him off.
"Don't worry about it!"
"You're hurt. You can trust me..."
"There might be more, save what you have left. I'll be fine."
Seville wasn't sure about that, but couldn't really offer anything else. He wanted to lay back down.
"By the way..." said Seville, catching Edrick's eyes, "That was ... pretty good."
"Only pretty good?" returned the priest. "That was amazing! You couldn't see everything, Seville. Look! Look! I got'em all!"
Indeed, there was quite the collection of fallen bodies fanning out.
"I never thought you had it in you."
"Heh, I got plenty. Let me cure you..."
"No! I'll be fine. This is what I get for running off."
"I don't think you can..."
"Quiet!"
There were footsteps on the air, lanky footsteps like those of a zombie. The lack of barriers to every direction made all sounds mysterious; the source was always jumping from side to side. Though beaten and well drenched with his own blood, Seville quietly pulled his remaining dagger from its sheath. Edrick gave him a concerned look and shook his head disapprovingly.
You can't, he mouthed, but it didn't matter. From two rows over, and looking the most pathetic that man had possibly ever looked, appeared Doctor Darrin Sylum, beaming with sudden relief.
"Professor!" shouted Edrick gleefully, though the sudden rush gave him exhausted pains again. It looked however, that his exhaustion in no way compared to Sylum's. The professor hobbled over, the Werebane armed in his left hand, and he was scratched with battle, and his right arm and legs seemed to droop.
"Eddie, stand back!" Seville commanded.
"What?"
"Professor, where's Master Gipson?"
Sylum didn't answer; he could no longer move and speak simultaneously. He came in close and rested down on the eerily dull Werebane, wheezing and gathering breath. When Seville asked again Sylum raised his index finger and waved the question off.
"You're hurt, professor," Edrick asked, already moving to cast the cure, but Seville called him back again.
"Eddie, stand back!"
Sylum flashed hurt to Seville and finally recaptured enough oxygen. His speech came in gasping bursts.
"What's ... that ... about?" But then he waved off any answer. "Edrick ... Gipson ... needs you ... now." It was barely more than a whisper.
"He's hurt?!" Edrick exclaimed.
"Yes ... bad ..." Sylum turned. "We go..."
Edrick looked at Seville nervously.
"Wait," said the rogue. "I'm coming."
"Seville, you can't stand."
"I can make myself stand." Then Seville pulled Edrick down and spoke very quietly into his ear, "I'm not leaving you alone."
Edrick shifted his face, rotated his neck slightly, and seemed confused, but he decided to trust a man who owed him his life. The priest nodded and took Seville by the arm.
"Help me," Edrick asked of Sylum, and the professor rolled his eyes and shook.
"Sorry!" he uttered.
But Seville finally got to his feet with the priest's aid and staggered as best he could. It turned out he could pace Sylum well enough, and they started they're sluggish trek to the fallen Knight of the Coast.
********************
"Gipson! Master Gipson!" Edrick left the others behind the moment the gory battle scene and the body of Herrik Gipson came into view. Doctor Sylum offered his shoulder to help the unsteady Seville along, but the rogue gave back a cold look and took to his own feet for better or worse. It was mainly for the worse.
Edrick ran haphazardly, giving little attention to the ground before him, and was caught funny by a sudden numbness in his right leg. Looking down it appeared that it had been bleeding, but it felt like nothing. After two more steps the tingling dead feeling caught him so off guard he tripped and fell to his chest, just at the knight's side.
"Master Gipson! Master Gipson!"
The knight was motionless and his eyes were closed. The wound was awful, like his entire left arm had been almost bitten off and that three lances had been thrust into his side, into his liver where the blood flowed black. The blood no longer flowed, but either from clotting or because the unconscious knight had no more to bleed, Edrick couldn't say. He studied the piercings a few moments longer and then clapped his hands together, with so much energy the first time he misgauged his balanced and fell to his side. It was difficult with his numb leg.
Edrick righted himself and rubbed his hands together; saying the words as calmly as possible and praying with his entire soul, but no magic entwined his fingers. Sylum and Seville finally arrived after a long route around the dark pools of magenta, but they were quiet and respectful of the priest. Crumbling under the terrible pressure of failure, tears came to Edrick's eyes and he shook his head as if defeated. He tried again and again. Was there nothing left?
Then finally he screamed, "Aw, come on!" and the familiar but brilliant flash of power illuminated the dead gray around. Then he muttered under his breath with absolute conviction, "Please," and laid his palms on Gipson's chest.
The bubbles transferred slowly at first, and then faster and faster until a complete waterfall of healing light was cascading from Edrick's hands. His shoulders reared up and he tightened throughout as every chink of his soul streamed into the knight, each of his powers and prayers brought together in a single hope. And then it stopped with a final surge of intensity and things were still once more.
Two terrible beats of silence were all it took, and Gipson awoke with a frantic bout of coughing. The wounded pits molded over and were gone and refreshing life percolated through him. Resplendently joyous but unbearably tuckered, Edrick fell and lay on his back. He couldn't take any more of this. Despite the cure, Gipson didn't try to sit up.
"You gonna make it, big guy?" said Seville with a sudden return of his smile. By now Sylum had a better hold of his lungs.
"It's the paralysis, it needs more time to fade. I can still barely move my hands."
Gipson just managed to turn his head and he looked Edrick straight in the face.
"Master Edrick," he said with a weak kind of bow, "That is a good cure spell." Then he rested his head back down on the soft earth.
"I can't feel my leg," was Edrick's choice of answer.
"It's the blood," Sylum responded. "It paralyses. It'll go away, in time. Here, let's get Gipson against a tree."
Seville and Sylum worked together and lay Gipson up against a dead stump. Then Edrick crawled over and sat next to the knight, and next to him Sylum was more than happy to collapse. And finally Seville plopped down last, and the four of them sat in a row, lucky to be alive.
"Have a bit of trouble, did ya?" Seville asked, surveying the scores of shriveled pink worms.
"More than a bit," Gipson said humorously.
"Yeah, well, we had zombies and ghosts. So don't be talking about no pink ... whatever they are. They smell awful."
"Wasn't at the top of my list, Seville, I was too worried about the biting. I mean, what kind of creature has blood that paralyzes?!"
"What kind of forest has zombies?!"
"A haunted forest," Edrick said blankly.
"I don't care, man," Seville said, "Something's not right about this place."
Nobody spoke for a little while after that. They were happy to be quiet and restful and entirely pathetic. It was one pitiful, almost debilitated warrior right next to the other. And completely against that, Seville suddenly got the most irrepressible grin on his face.
"What are you smilin' at, boy?" shouted Gipson playfully. "I could'a died."
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I can't help it." Seville chuckled, looking at the other three, watching them sulk and bleed and pant. "What a crappy day this has been!"
"Finally some sense," Edrick said, smirking himself.
"But you've got to admit," continued Seville, now with enough fervor to make hand gestures, "We are ... we're pretty good at this part."
"This part?" asked Gipson.
"You know. Battles, pressure, action. It's when nothing's happening that we suck. But in times of need? Wow! We can really kick some ass."
Then the four of them, even the gloomy professor Sylum, took to the most ridiculous laughter. Half of it was just the euphoria of life, but something else there was too. Maybe that malcontent Domino was wrong in the end. Afterall, what were the chances of Sylum finding Edrick in that wide forest, or that Gipson could survive his wounds for so long, and that not a single zombie's stroke had fatally wounded Seville. What were the chances of that? Maybe things really were going to work out.
"Now wait a minute, Seville," Gipson said, coming down from the joy and putting on a false visage of concern, "Are you saying you're a light warrior again?"
"I'm saying that after coming out on top of this, I believe. I mean, even Eddie did something good."
"Thanks, guy," said Edrick.
"I believe it myself," Gipson confirmed, rallying it to the man next to him, which Edrick instantly picked up.
"And I, too," he said. Then the three looked to Sylum, the mysterious, obscure, but vital Doctor Sylum. The professor realized he was singled out and faked a look of disgust before settling back into his usual scholarly haughtiness.
"Well, I... I guess I do, as well." They beamed at him. Seville spoke.
"Alright! So let's do this thing."
"Hold your horses, Seville" the knight said. "Some of us still can't move yet!"
"The path was already so thick. It will be completely overgrown on the other side, I think," Edrick mused.
"Then we'll cut a path," the rogue boosted on, "Mend the way and find this Temple of Fiends. Now that I think about it, the professor's right. That's exactly where the captor's would hide the princess. It's impermeable to an army's invasion. It's genius."
"Then give us a half-hour to heal, lad" Gipson said again, "And then we'll head out."
Seville seemed to be finally satiated after that so he returned to his back-sitting position and just talked of things. What had happened to Edrick and him, what he should know about what happened to Gipson and Sylum, what they should expect in the future. For once he wasn't look for change, or expecting it. Despite how passionately he egged on the team, he wanted to stay right there and enjoy this moment of connection while it lasted in case it should never return. He really wished Chuck Domino could be there to see them; the light warriors, whole again.
********************
It was magnanimous. The shining achievement of creepy architecture. The temple was there, huge and unmistakable in a clearing just beyond the edge of the haunted forest. It wasn't a particularly large building, not as castles of evil usually go, but every nook and cranny of each turret and every window and planting up and down its gaping mouth of a gate, with bars hanging down like teeth, added to the ominous aura it exhaled. Although evening was falling and the land was fairly dark, this temple was covered in more than its share of blackness. It was painted in preternatural shadow. Shadow cast down from the solitary tuffet of gray clouds helming the highest steeple. The grounds all around were long starved and dead, and were undisturbed. Footsteps had not trodden the hard soil for ages. But it was not empty.
Two windows, second floor by their looks, glowed with moody candlelight. The infrequent flickers, as if disturbed by some wind, caught their eyes in the twilight haze. Something was in there. Something...
Understanding where the real power in this kind of thing lie, three of them turned to Gipson, waiting for the command.
"Um ..." and he looked at the temple again. "Well ... we'll try to find away in around back. The front door wouldn't do any good, would it?"
"Right," they said together and moved they're feet. They moved like quiet silhouettes, shadows no more real than the daunting temple, over the field and around its stony walls. They looked to each other solemnly. They were tired, they were scared, they had had a really bad day. But finally they were here; in what each of them was certain was the answer to their quest.
No turning back now, at the beginning of night on the fourth day of the great journey, they hopped a ground level window, and entered the halls of fiends.