Lux Aeterna
by
Steven Mayo
Book I ~ The Meager
Chapter 12 ~ Temple of Fiends
They moved in silence and by the dim blue light of Herrik Gipson's dragon sword alone. The knight took point, with Sylum following him and Seville and Edrick guarding the back flank together. With nothing but Drâco's tranquil aura to fight the blackness on either side, Seville came under the strangest feeling of comfort, as if he'd been placed miles and miles away in the catacombs under the Lux tavern and had not a care. It was suddenly foreign, this yearning for homely welcome, but that made him want it more. Now inside a palace of evil, he wanted to go home, and wondered if the others did as well.
Dangerous this feeling was also. The lulling glow of the long sword made apparent just how tired they each were. The previous day had been long and gone late into the night, and this day was growing even longer. The battle strains of the haunted forest ached in their arms and legs, the tumultuous pain of the wraith's presence had fallen past that comfort zone and it made Seville slightly dizzy, and Edrick also was especially drained, having summoned such a wealth of magical energy from within. Doctor Sylum was weary from many things; the battle certainly, but also these undesirable feelings of anger in him. He didn't trust this brief resolve of the light warriors, if the past days had been any indication of their cohesion. There was a lot on the line in this temple, more than maybe even he knew at the time. Only Gipson was still moving on stamina; not blinking every few seconds and trying to doze in this quiet. His body was not so strong as he would wish it, but his mind was still there, his eyes alert, his ears perked, his sword ready. The others were likely thinking of the goal, of a princess or completed journey. But Herrik Gipson kept his brain where it belonged: on the corner up ahead and what might be around it. They thought of results, he thought of fiends.
"It's unreal..." Seville said as quietly under his breath as he could and still be heard. He referred to the depths.
What seemed a minor palace from its outer façade became a labyrinthine congestion of hallways, pillars, and arches. Doors lead to nowhere or were locked, and halls also lead to nowhere. The knight kept his eyes ahead of them, examining every black corner of every high ceiling, searching behind every fashioned suit of armor standing endless sentry along the wall, checking the frayed and gray tapestries, tapping the gargoyles to prove they were stone, and occasionally just stopping right out to follow a whisper in the dank, cryptic air. The blue Drâco lead the way as much as anything, and the knight moved very slowly and deliberately so as to quiet its eager, sweet song.
"Unnatural to be sure..." Gipson finally answered. He looked for stairs, something to take them up to that candlelight they'd seen from outside.
The evil, the ghastly rancor saturated the ancient walls. Looking down any long path was harsh on the mind, like the ridged arches were swirling, spiraling in the distance, and then expanding and contracting like an artery. A heady, palpable sense of disorientation washed over them as they challenged the deeper dark caverns. Everything was multiplied; every breath was as tiring as ten, every moment as long as an hour, and every step a million more away from home. When even the great Herrik Gipson got tingling chills up the spine, it was definitely best to get it over with as soon as possible, whichever way their caution would allow.
"Do you know anything more about this place, professor?" Edrick asked in a whisper, the amalgamation of tense and tired playing vexatious games with his concentration.
"There would be nothing but second-tier stories, myths within myths, since that's what this place used to be. Just a myth..." Sylum tarried off a moment to study a nuanced gesture of Gipson's marching composure, a slight bending of the head forward, but then continued. "Most stories say that no one ever returned to the temple after Lichern's defeat, afraid it was still filled with the worst of the demon's fiends. Other stories say that those that ventured in never returned."
"What kind of fiends would those be?" the priest asked.
"Can't say for sure, no specifics are documented, even in tales. Likely there is nothing here except..."
"And likely the forest isn't haunted," Seville added, to which Sylum was silent a moment. Then he picked up his thought.
"...except what we came for."
"They would be prepared for us, wouldn't they?" Edrick was getting louder and stumbling over his words. "There's going to be a defense, you think?
"Quiet, Edrick," Gipson said without turning back. "Everybody, quiet."
Edrick's last words were left to hang on the atmosphere, new thoughts to tempt the nightmarish cavities of the brain. Sudden death was felt to be around every corner, but at least for once the light warriors were most truly one, a single trembling but also steadfast body descending into surreal landscapes of uncharted evils; fear has that effect, one of togetherness. They stopped when Gipson stopped, and he didn't stop until ducking into the unusually wide portal of the grand foyer.
The great double staircase ascended forever into a canopy of uncandled chandeliers wrapped in silver and rod-iron, and the sweeping balconies curved like stenciled ornaments around the breadth of the obsidian dome. The towering columns supporting the stair were laced through with black silk that hung in dead arches from pillar to pillar. And either side of the expansive room housed a mighty, ash-choked hearth long dormant but eternally terrible. The mind's eye put the dimmest red glow in their gaping maws, hell fire waiting to breathe once more. But most apparent, most violent in their being, were the three lofty doors leading away from the staircase. Their surfaces were each etched with the same mural, a skeleton wreathed in billows of earth and fire, and also flesh and a tattered cloak. One hand it held above the horned skull and the other it pinched in front of the rib cage as if it were casting a spell. Giant they were, twenty feet high at least, and the room so much larger than that; everything finished in the not-so-gentle fashion of Cornerian gothic. The dragon sword, so small now it seemed, fought to bring light to every nook, but all that responded, and in great brilliance were those three doors standing above them. Standing and waiting.
"Found the way up," Seville dribbled out of his blank stare.
"It's amazing," Edrick followed, equally stunned. They turned to Gipson, and he thought a moment with his eyes cast out.
"It's a big room," he said, and he spoke more to qualify the confused looks he received. "Very open. Dangerous."
Seville readied, Sylum shook his head meaninglessly, and Edrick gulped.
"We'll go slowly and carefully. And silently."
Gipson sheathed Drâco and a more voluminous darkness crawled over. He tested his vision against the foyer and the distant hearth had vanished, along with most of the stairway, but still almost glowingly real was the shimmer of the three doors, like sailor's beacons calling them through a storm, like constellations in summer sky, a north star.
Gipson took his lightless longsword in hand and said, "It comes to it, gents. Now or never. Let's do it."
They got to the stairs, each conducting his own investigation of the surroundings and shuddering under his breath, but nothing came of it. They relaxed their weapons a little and climbed the majestic staircase like travelers expecting bandits to waylay them at every turn of the road, but nothing came of that either. They reached the bridge calmly and moved to the left door.
"What if it makes noise?" Edrick propounded. But no one voiced a response and Gipson only shook it off. He took the door by its handle firmly and pulled. The collective sigh was frightfully audible when the massive stone panel swung free ghost-silent. Seville even had to choke down a laugh. They entered the west wing of the temple.
The chasmal depths of the palace were now truly boundless. Somehow the second floor was built larger than the first, more endless passages and doorways set the light warriors' path into quandary. In time, now well into the night, they even lowered their sense of caution, rearmed Gipson with the dragon sword, and just walked as nomads walk, lankily and simply. Stepping into another hall, and then another after that, the inkling of something direly wrong with this situation grew. They were lost, but it felt like they were lost clambering up and down the folds and crevices of a madman's brain. They were tired and tireless at the same time. That intangible tether, that lifeline that had brought them back together through fear and hope would begin to dissolve in the face of failure. Leaving another empty room, Doctor Darrin Sylum was clenching his fists.
"There's nothing here," said an aggravated Seville, his voice perilously close to its normal level.
"We saw the candlelight," Gipson tried to defend, voice still low.
"Probably just some kind of trick the temple plays to lure travelers inside."
"Even if that were true it wouldn't invite us here for nothing, would it?" The knight returned, still egging their feet down another path. "We'll go a little longer."
"I'm telling you there's nothing here, we've walked enough to cross over every hallway twice by now. How do we know we haven't already been here before? Everything looks the same!"
"I don't recognize it." Sylum added suddenly and then tacitly added a grunt of anger with his eyes. "We've come all this way; it won't hurt to make sure. I wouldn't want to risk the forest again this night, anyways."
"Well, then we should try to mark our path, because I swear we've been here before." Seville looked around for something to alter. "Here, this."
He went to a suit of armor guarding the hall and spun in on its base to run its shoulders perpendicular to the wall, accompanied by the piercing metallic screech.
"We'll just do that in every..."
"Quiet!" Gipson exasperated under his breath, and then he dodged up against the stone wall and concealed the dragon sword as well as he could between its sheath and his leg. The final echoes of metal and stone didn't drift into nothingness but into a sound of shuffling, the heavy motion of legs and feet, somewhere down the hall before them. The knight wafted his hand twice, and the others joined him in hiding behind one of the steel suits.
"Happy now?" asked Gipson only half-seriously to Seville, and the rogue just rolled his eyes. Still, he pulled both his daggers and hunched low to look along the line of the wall.
The uncautioned footsteps continued and grew louder, seeming to near a ninety-degree turn from the warriors' hallway. The knight leaned forward and stretched his neck up to get the clearest look. The sound of wide pant-legs rubbing together and of bare feet scratching along the stone floor became more and more distinct. Seville caught eyes with Edrick and gave him a slight nod which the priest understood. He recognized that sound, that lethargic but ceaseless march, and he started rubbing his palms together.
But even when the noise was clear enough to put the creatures just before them, nothing had turned the distant corner. The disturbing movement of dead feet started to surround them, the slap of cold flesh popping on their ear drums, but not a single motion in sight.
"What is this?" Edrick stammered quietly, pressing his palms to the sides of his head.
In answer Gipson freed Drâco and swung a wide arc swiftly across the middle of the hall, and then did again just to be sure.
"Not invisible..." he said matter-of-factly and crouched low once again behind the suit of armor.
"Then what?" questioned Edrick once more.
"Fake," Gipson said confidently. "Just in your head."
"Sure?" Seville asked with an uneven slant of his eyebrows before he checked down both directions of the hallway.
"What else?" the knight responded. He stood carefully and walked with a readied step towards the turn of the hall. Seville bounced his daggers twice in his hands and stood to follow, discounting Gipson's waving him back. Nearing the corner they even heard the anguished grunting of the undead, the useless breaths and lurching. Yet it came from before and behind, so convincing that Seville even had to turn back once to be sure a zombie was not at that moment sighing on his neck. He also gestured with his hands to keep either Edrick or Sylum checking with a stern eye behind them, and by the time he'd returned his watch to the path he could swear he felt the slime-ridden, clasping hands all around. Painful tingles of suspense percolated through his veins, jittering up and down his spinal column, he tripped over one step into the next. Gipson, far more headstrong, made no reactions.
They flattened against the wall and stilled; the sauntering feet were imminent, steps away, as real as the stone floor. With a flash of eyes and a nod the knight conveyed his plans to Seville, and then looked around the corner, expecting full well to smash his face direct into a zombie's chest. But then he spun back around with a complete mask of confusion and jumped around the corner. Nothing. Another passage barren of life. Gipson sighed heavy.
The echoes of stone-clapping feet did not cease. Instead they grew louder still.
"What is this?" Seville asked Gipson, forced to yell over the racket. Before the knight could answer he twisted and swatted the air with his blade, jerked by a slithering feeling of the atmosphere on his back. Nothing there.
"The temple! It's in our heads!" returned the knight gruffly.
"Then..." he paused and cocked his head. "What the..."
"What is it?" He followed Seville's gaze.
"Eddie?"
Edrick and Sylum were gone; just a hall of statuesque armor and dark.
"Dr. Sylum?" Gipson called. "Edrick?"
"Eddie?" followed Seville, and then he chased the knight down the hallway, to the very spot they'd been left waiting. There were no signs of struggle, no signs of anything.
"They're....gone..." the rogue mused.
"What foul..." but Gipson was then distracted by Seville tapping on his arm.
"Look! The armors!"
Each of them for the entire run of the hall, as far as their eyes would take them, was turned ninety-degrees to match Seville's. Gipson reared his long sword and slashed the nearest suit across the helm, and it rattled, limped, and fell, but stayed motionless after, along with the rest. Gipson growled and sent two more to the cobbled ground with broad swipes, but to no illuminating effect. The edges of awareness flickered and bulged around them as things were set into a still-life motion.
"Dr. Sylum! Edrick!" Gipson tried once more, and the tunnels about them answered back with freakish perversions of an echo. The intonations shifted to higher registers, the inflections drooped on the back end, like a child's chant, mocking him. He scraped the dragon blade across a stone wall, emitting cheery, effervescent purple sparks in the air, but the smoke didn't smell like steeled flint, but rather like rottenness, decay.
"What the hell is this retched place?" Gipson asked the breezy, whispering currents forming around them.
"It gets better," answered Seville, pointing.
As if Gipson had scored the flesh of a great beast, the stone wall was dripping with fluid, inky black, but warm as blood to Seville's cautious touch.
"Wipe it off!" Gipson commanded directly and the rogue obeyed. It had not felt particularly peculiar. Seville raised his head to impart that fact when he was caught off by another confused look from the knight.
"Listen!" Gipson said. "The sounds..."
The sound had died almost completely away, down to the solitary footsteps of a single brave undead, somewhere in the vacuous black. But somehow it was the more imperative a noise, and the two men, enthralled with its domineering presence, its arrogant quality, struck out again at the surroundings; searching for it, bent on its destruction. This maddening essence kettle-drummed their ears; every step a cacophony of wrenching demons, wailing and gnashing, but somehow not even there at all. Gipson's throat snapped open and shut; he twisted for balance, and then the stone floor came up and hit him in the face.
Seville stomped dizzily down a corridor, which heaved greatly to and fro like a sailed vessel in a tempest. The ceiling bounced; barreled, then arched and flattened, then plunged. His bearing upended, spiraled until he stood on the walls and lost his footing into hungry tapestries. Knotted textile smothered his skin; harsh abrasions like the fibers were knives. His face met that of a painted one in the velvet cloth, like his own only crying.
No, weeping.
No, yelling and disintegrating into flecks of incandescent powder that sifted over the air towards the sky like dazzling stars. The particles sparkled and taunted him and he pressed up and reached, reached miles longer than his arms could surmise, though the exertion kept the liquids in skull churning like breaking waves on a cataract. He was neither lifting nor falling, but not sitting or floating either. He was being.
Being one versus this universe, this small collection of dust in the great nothing. The purple glitters above him, below him, within him, shuttled into lines and figures, spheres and cubes, prisms of every light distorted into singularities of impact. Then he was lost to the opaque blackness, feelings detached, senses stifled; a being, a robot, a drone consciousness somewhere between existences; somewhere between the worlds. Again the amethyst candles moved, moved in hive-minded configurations, moved in serpentine ribbons into figures both intimate and impossibly huge. So big the small cavity of his cranium could not fit around them and understand. Figures terrible and breathing; alive.
Hedonistic ritual fire fell in tears from mighty pagans and landed Armageddons on the burnt soils of this world, that world, all worlds. Each laughing heathen danced about the purple flame and beat the cat-skins to staggering triplet rhythms. He pilfered oceans of knowledge from the liquid smoke, was thrust into the breadth of the pyre and forced like a diviner to gaze within and judge humanity. Among the element, tinder scorching away his body speck at a time, he fumbled the globes, the many planets of being, jostled them like a blind prophet. The tribesman rose in trills of laughter and dipped him deeper into awareness, where the satellites encapsulated him, and he was quartered by their gravity. Each planet matched the rare fire in hues of crimson and emerald sequins that ran in marathons about the wide bellies of the orb. The laughing rose into murderous hilarity as the planets failed, each its own apocalypse to contend with, burned and slashed away to nothing by the final design of all things.
He resisted, struggled against the clamoring hands, tried to yell at them and swallow them away, pull them into the heat and let them see their hubris, but the strength of more divided him from revelation and left him to cold. He lay paralyzed at the image of trembling children and cursing mothers as the final ritual began, where soft blood was delivered up to the will of ancients and amends were put to rest, and soon the hair of every happy man and pouting woman was as purple of evil as all else, and the dirt on his legs, feet, and hands turned gray. The medicine man approached and mourned the dead planet, blessed this divination of flame, and circled the being. He was scared, so amazingly scared; then he sunk to bowels of darkness deeper than ever before thought real as the shaman quaked his throat and sang a dirge of such terror it is hard to describe in the language of man.
********************
"Uhhh..." was Seville's waking moan, battling the invisible iron weights that must have been pulling down his eyelids, or his whole head for that matter. His hair, slinking around his face, was the first he saw as his vision focused. Then his legs and chest came into view. Licking his lips they felt raw and puffy, and his skin burned lightly down to his chin, like acne scars. His head felt empty; he couldn't remember anything; just a series of long hallways, suits of armor, and then a heavy funk.
He fingered around for the memories in his mind, and they came in mosaic amalgamations like his sight. He remembered that Sylum and Edrick had vanished like nothing, that Gipson had trailed off in his grunting anger and collapsed onto the floor. He remembered trying to run to the knight and getting lost on the way, stuporing into the unknown wings of the temple with only an ounce of brain. He fell, he thought, fell into a mountain of clothing, but he wasn't certain. He could dig no deeper, and doing so only turned up gray mist like that in his orb of earth.
Finally, Seville sat up and risked his surroundings, quick to find he could barely move.
"What the..." he said quietly and jerked around with his legs, which he discovered were bound very tightly. His arms also were tied behind, attached to a chair he couldn't escape.
"Welcome back," came a familiar voice.
"What?! Ow!" The moment he raised his voice the most splitting, jarring pain shot from one side to the other of his skull. For sure it would burst and spill out with enough pain to kill another, he thought for that one intense moment, but it dwindled then to a numbing reminder of what had been. He sucked air in and out.
"Might want to keep your voice down," that same familiar squeak informed. Why had it not occurred to him to look, Seville wondered, twisting his rust-stiff neck to his right to find his three companions lined up with him, each equally bound.
Edrick, next to him and clearly the one who had spoken, seemed dim but healthy, while Gipson and Sylum wore pained faces, empathetic faces, showing they'd been there before. Their eyes, Gipson's and Sylum's, were held at a squint, and after only moments Seville came to realize why: even the gentle, wavering torchlight hurt inside his head. The pain ebbed and flowed, and at peak it was like ratcheting bones in his brain.
"Everything hurts..." he offered as quietly as he could and still be voicing.
"Tell me about it," Gipson answered just as unenthusiastically, and then he asked, "Any good with ropes?"
"'Course I am, but don't know if I can concentrate."
"You can try," Gipson matter-of-facted.
"I can try," Seville gave back and fidgeted for a grip on the circulation-robbing rope enjoining his wrists. Then he chose, for once, to look around.
Though he regretted it immediately. The glow of the four torches throbbed brighter as his eyes swayed from side to side, the light seeming to lance into his retinas like the sharp beams of sun as it rose over distant mountains. The room was small and windowless; a dungeon room most likely, but void of any particular clues like shackles or old blood. Before the four, pushed against the opposite wall, was an unburdened wooden table. To his front right a path opened and lead a little distance to a metal door with no apparent lock from the inside; making the dungeon scenario more clear. Discerning what he could from a squinted looking-over, the stonework was crypt-dry; this piece not supporting the hypothesis. And that was all, plain and simple.
"Eh..." Seville said, having little luck with the rope bindings. "What happened back there? What happened to you Eddie? Professor?"
"I already told you; the temple." Gipson answered first.
"We don't know that for sure," entered Doctor Sylum, "But it's as good a guess as we've got." He scrunched his eyes as another vibration of hurt waved by, then he sighed. "Everything I know about myths has been proven fact so far. I'd say it's a reasonable assumption then that we can take it to the next level."
"Next level?" asked Seville.
"You're better than that, Seville, think about it."
"Man, I don't wanna think about anything. It hurts."
"If this is indeed a palace built by the dark fiend Lichern, a demon, a devil, then he would have infused every last brick and mortar with evil."
"Well, that sounds like our luck."
"Yes, it does. And if he can infect an, at the time, nonexistent forest posthumously then I wouldn't put it past him to curse this place. These walls ... they're just built of evil; built of madness."
"So I suppose that's what's with the headache? Ow!" Another crippling whelp, and Seville noticed as he righted himself Edrick watching childishly. "Man, why isn't anything wrong with you?"
"Don't know, but I like it." Edrick did his best to give a friendly smile, but the chills in his ribs and the tension on his brow was dominant. The way he said it, in fact, completely lost all effect.
Seville had more questions but feared to ask them, not for their content, but for the welfare of his aching mind. Even his thoughts were not free. They didn't hurt but always there was something to them, a tickle, a buzz he couldn't ignore. Trying to shut off his brain only brought the material to it faster and brighter. He was so tired of pain; never light it seemed, never that soft pumping like on a sliced finger, the kind you can almost enjoy for its frailty. No, always agony, always anguish, always so severe. The thoughts that chiseled through his gray matter were like scars: the day of the centennial when he thought he was sure to die, the wraith in the forest, the disgusting zombies, the wild hallucinations of the temple, the headaches. He wondered if it was something you got used to, and considered asked Gipson, but chose instead to get on with it. The fewer words the better.
"So, what's going on again? Are we like ... escaping, or what? How'd we get tied up in the first place? What time is it?"
"Don't know. Doesn't look like it. Don't know. And don't know." Sylum's answers.
"It is very early morning," responded Gipson. "Between one and two."
The three others rotated in watch him qualify with the deductive information, but he had nothing else to say.
"One day you're gonna have to tell me how you do that, big guy," said Seville.
"It takes a lot of work."
"Then don't tell me now. Damn!"
"What's that?" asked Edrick in an annoyingly normal voice. Seville visibly thrust his fingers out from the knots on his wrists and then let them limp down and rest.
"Can't get it," Seville explained, "These ropes aren't working unaided."
"An enchantment?" asked the priest.
"Somethin'..."
"Are you not sure?" Gipson questioned.
"Dude, I don't know! Ow!"
"Enchantments mean wizards," the knight said and then finished it in return to the waiting eyes he got. "I hate wizards."
"It's certainly looking that we can rule out the random creep theory," said Seville.
"Nothing says a powerful wizard can't also be a random creep. Just look at Chuck Domino," Edrick suggested.
"Damn!" cursed the rogue.
"Seville, watch it with the mouth!" the priest charged.
"We forgot to kill Domino."
"What?!"
"I meant to do that today, or technically yesterday, but you know what I mean. We forgot to kill Domino."
"I don't think that's the right course of action," said Edrick.
"If somebody hadn't been in such a hurry!" Seville chastised, staring as menacingly as he could with half closed eyes at Sylum. The professor looked at him and shook his head.
"If I hadn't been in such a hurry we might very well still be in Jrist, brooding like ownerless puppies in that tavern. If Princess Moira is somewhere in this temple then you could actually thank Domino for getting you here."
"I'll thank him with my dagger," Seville spouted, even through the dismal ache in his head. "If this is the place we've been looking for, then on the way back we've got to remember to kill Chuck Domino."
"And where is your dagger?" rang in Gipson with an odd question.
"What?" Seville responded mindlessly and looked down, realizing that his weapons were, of course, gone. "Shit!"
"Seville!" exasperated Edrick.
"What?! Ow!"
"Can the swearing! What's this you were telling me about change earlier?"
"Change?" broke in Herrik Gipson.
"Drop it, big guy. Eddie, can't this wait until after we save the world?"
"Kind of destroys the point, don't you think?" Edrick said.
"No ... well, yes, but ... listen, I have a headache, we'll worry about changing later, okay?" declared Seville, wishing so much that he could just hold his forehead in his palms. He couldn't decide what hurt more: his brain or the inability to comfort it.
"That's what people who don't change say," the priest summed up and sulked with a sigh.
"Words after your own heart, Master Gipson. Eddie is always full of surprises."
Gipson said nothing right away; he didn't join the back and forth of Seville and Edrick. Instead he mused a moment, thought in the silence, and then practiced something it felt like he hadn't done for years, knowing full well it had been but a day. He smiled. His favorite one; that sad salute to hope and loss. Then he said, "Yes. He's right, you know."
The timing gave pace to Seville's own slow answer.
"Yeah, I know."
Sylum didn't seem to be having it, he said, "What are these semantics? Change?"
"Don't worry about it, Professor. A lesson for another day, I think."
"And what day is that?" Edrick persisted.
"Would you drop it? One day. It's gonna happen one day. And I can't say what'll happen when it does 'cept that I can't wait to find out. That's all I know and all I can know."
"Fine, we'll talk about it later."
"Finally..."
At last it was left at that, and having run out of things to say and becoming too fatigued by the stress of the unfortunate three, a calm, unburdened quiet followed. Herrik Gipson most appreciated the silence so that he could keep his ears on whatever might perk them, especially directed for outside noises, though judging by how even soft voices rebounded off the stone, the room was effectively soundproof. What nightmares he had seen in his last moments before the blackness settled over! Now if only he could remember them or did he even want to? For possibly the first time in his life, for the first time he could recollect over the whole course of rigorous adventures he'd known, Gipson was tired. Not like that of creaking bones or a weakened lung capacity, no, he felt full-on beat; mentally and physically. He fought against it, prohibited it, mind-over-matter, like he usually did, but this time it showed him little rejuvenating caress. His body would have no more.
Darrin Sylum didn't know what to think. That morning he had been furious enough to end the world himself, rash enough to thrust his group into the deathly peril of the haunted forest, and then after that he was just confused. He saw his final hope at life's success break away and melt into the dark tendrils of the woods, he spouted his fears to this knight, this man without a single empathetic concern, and he choked on gulps of hatred. But then, something good happened, a battle won, bonds restored, greatness. But now the confusion crept in again; confusion and suspicions of failure. He could not fail again, would not fail again. If there was something in this world for him, and for each day after the first he had doubted that more and more, it was going to be in this temple.
Edrick Valance chewed on his bottom lip for the duration, wishing desperately to bide away his nervousness with random hand gestures like usual, and painfully unable to do so. He kept his eyes occupied on the maze of fissures lining the bricks from floor to ceiling, not wanting to commit to anymore speech. Like the rest he was lost in his thoughts, but only his thoughts were about someone else; about his good friend and project, Seville. He sought deep inside for what it was he was trying to accomplish, what it was that he thought he could accomplish, and what it was that was out of his hands. This kid, Seville, this young man, this rogue; what could he teach him now that he hadn't already tried and failed to teach him. Edrick successfully put his concern on someone else; he cared little for his fate in this rank palace, but only desired that Seville return to Corneria a changed man seeking a finer path. If nothing else he wanted that.
Seville just wanted something to happen...
********************
"Hey, guys," Seville breathed, stirring the others from their droning trances. Sylum and Gipson were able to blink a few times and snap back into the moment but Edrick had to shake himself awake. Not much time had passed, but time quickly lost meaning in the meager stone room.
"What's that?" Gipson answered.
"D'you see that?" Seville asked them, carefully nodding his head towards the direction of the table.
"See what?" Edrick wanted to know, discovering how difficult it was to rub his eyes without hands.
"Under the table."
Gipson pressed his eagle eyes into the flickering shadows of the table but didn't see anything more than that. Judging by the lost expressions of the priest and scholar, they hadn't seen anything either.
"Where?" Gipson asked authoritatively.
"It's gone now, just give it a second."
"Give what a second, Seville?" Edrick said. "What is it?"
"I couldn't tell..." Seville started and then trailed off as he concentrated his sight. His vision, slacking off into dreamlike states had for just the briefest glimpse caught sight of something before them under the table, some creature, he thought, but now couldn't be sure. Knowing the temple's propensity to illusions, he feared it was more games inside of his head. "Some kind of creature I think it was, but barely more than a shadow. And quick too, I'm lucky I saw it."
"If you saw it," Sylum clarified, those analytical urges ever-present.
"I saw it..." defied Seville, faking his certainty. For an instant he perceived an ethereal drift of something like a forearm, only small and smooth, black, but then it returned to invisibility within the shadow. If only his eyes were not so tired, he thought, not realizing that he was trying to scoot the confining chair forward, but it was too tightly jammed in a ridge on the ground.
"Not seein' anything, Seville..." Edrick said playfully.
"Yeah," said Seville, willing to concede some failure to his closest friend. "Maybe your right." He sighed.
"No." Gipson interrupted. "There."
They looked closer and this time could not mistake the trailing fragmentation of the light as the translucent being hunkered under the table. Amoeba-like, its form was too indistinct to follow, but its movement was apparent, crawling, floating, slithering, whatever it did, from one table leg to the next, almost as if it were afraid to bear the ground beyond its low ceiling. Without a recognizable head it certainly seemed eyeless, but still it felt like the thing was watching. Trickling tension spiked on the warrior's backs, that rare, sixth-sensual kind that can only be described as a feeling, a hunch, an instinct. Gipson, living on his instincts for all his remembered life, tensed and strained against the difficult bonds. He didn't trust it.
"What is it, Master Gipson?" Edrick asked. The transfixed knight took a few seconds to hear and comprehend the question.
"Dunno..." was all he could give back.
The spectral apparition rested from its dance, and motionless only the barest outline of its presence could be detected. And then, not detected.
"Is it gone?"
They'd each seen it differently. Gipson and Sylum would swear the thing had dissolved into the cold floor, but Seville and Edrick would propose it had evaporated into the air.
"Eh," Seville said, following with a matter-of-fact inflection, "I'm tired of this."
"You don't think we've just been left to starve to death?" The priest asked.
"Actually, I hadn't thought of it. Thanks a bunch," the rogue said.
"Did you recognize anything in the creature, Master Gipson?" Sylum questioned of the knight.
"...It is unlike anything I've seen. Certain undead: ghosts, wraiths, those kind, share the incorporeal quality, but are unable to fade to nothingness. This is something new to me," an idea that seemed to shake Gipson a small bit.
"And what about those pink things from the forest? I forgot to ask."
"Those are also new to me, but I've met a close cousin I believe. Crawls the townsfolk called them, and they were similarly built, but purple and minus the acidic slash paralytic blood. Only about half as ferocious but the same basic creature. We've got a new breed on our hands; names anyone?"
"Crawls you said they were called?" Seville asked, game for the distraction.
"The weaker breed, yes."
"Then only one name would apply..."
"...and that is..."
"Creeps, of course." Seville looked to Gipson, interested to know whether his first attempt at the knight's game was a success. But Gipson barely had the chance to open his mouth.
"There!" shouted Edrick, catapulting injuries through the skulls of his companions. Lifting their heads, they saw the creature had returned, only fleshed out and ready.
The shape was unlike any conception they had made of it in their thoughts: humanoid for certain, very short and hunched, with two jagged antennae breached like horns from his head and scurrying across the ground frantically. The slender, pygmy arms and legs matched with the engorged head and bulgy abdomen split its frame between appearances of a child and a bug. Its dainty hands featured sharp spire-like fingers. Its coin eyes were bright yellow. But few of these things did the light warriors notice before the horrific emptiness of its hue. Save the two exceptions in its head, the thing was the most lusterless, complete, and absolute black. So much so that the torchlight was absorbed by it instead of reflected.
"Gipson?"
"Nothing..."
The dark child was silent, impossibly silent. Skittering from table leg to table leg made no sound, nor did the incessant scraping of the antennae across the ground. It altered its ominous gaze from person to person, and occasionally rocked its head up and back like it was sniffing. Then quickly, in short bestial hops and lunges it charged to just as quickly halt at Sylum's feet, eyeing them through its lidless orbs like they were riches. Bound both together and to each chair leg, Sylum couldn't hardly move his feet to avoid it.
The creature jumped to his lap and studied intensely; slathering its two feelers over everything they could reach. Like a cat on unsure footing the thing dug its claws into its stance, and the professor sucked in his breath. The antennae slowed to a stop, but the thing stayed, still eerily quiet. Its heavy eyes were so full and pressing it seemed to be looking through Sylum, looking into his chest.
"Uhhh.....little help...." Sylum quivered and directly the creature leapt from Sylum's lap and pranced into Gipson's. The knight lowered one brow and glowered at the small thing, but it only concerned itself with the antenna rub-down and a long look through Gipson's ribs.
"Pardon me, gents," Gipson said and then inhaled a great bulk and screamed, "Back!"
The crisp noise threw a shockwave into Seville's and Sylum's head, and self-inflected Gipson's as well, but the black monster did back away, dropped to the ground and capered a bit from leg to leg before continuing its search. It jumped into Edrick's lap in a swoop.
"Ah!" the priest cried and gulped down his tension. The creature commenced its routine but paused almost instantly. Stinging sweat flowed into Edrick's eye, and with only blinking to pat it away, the black creature become a garbled vision. To what extent its feelings could be guessed it seemed confused, perhaps even aggravated. It stared at Edrick's chest, hopping and cocking its head in violent jerks. The priest's chest heaved up and down, the crests so wide it was impressive his ribcage didn't split. The monster butt its head into Edrick and then started grinding its smooth black cranium into the solar plexus. Edrick coughed twice and then began to gasp for air.
"Back!" he squeaked with his massively reduced lungpower. "Back!"
The dark little thing however was not intimidated. It was angry now, pummeling its skull into Edrick's chest and thrashing the air with its clawed fingers. Not once did it truly hurt the young man, never did those claws strike, but appeared content to maintain that action forever.
"Back!" Gipson shouted this time, facing the migraine to help the cleric, but not even his voice could ward the monster.
Nearing hyperventilation and squirming through every centimeter he could muster, Edrick wailed, "What is this?!" He tried to knock it sideways with a curved swipe of his head and made only the thinnest contact. Again it didn't respond. "Back! Back! Back!"
Edrick's final call was punctuated by a metal and stone strum resounding from every corner of the room and originating from the cell door that had suddenly lumbered open. The black creature reacted swiftly with a turn of the head and a moment's thought, and then it pounced to the floor and slumped away into nothingness; gone like it had never been. Screeching just like something in want of centuries of use should, the door very tediously wedged over to the wall and hit it with another deafening clang. Despite vibrating aches potent enough to send feelings to the tip of every strand of hair on his head, Gipson remained with alert eyes and will, ready for whatever might come from the long awaited portal.
The footsteps were common and unlabored, and they carried in an odd-looking young man with peppered hair wearing a sky blue t-shirt and black slacks.
"Domino!" shouted Seville and Gipson simultaneously, and both winced at the flushing pain.
Chuck Domino did not look at them, in fact, he was little interested in looking at anything. In his arms he held a wide, bulky wooden box that he quickly set down on the table and scooted to the center. The flat side facing the warriors bore a single hole a few inches across with a black mesh cloth attached from the inside. The box itself was poorly constructed, with nail heads jutting visibly out and adjacent sides lining up awkwardly. Domino took in hand one of the wooden dowels from his belt and made three quick gestures over the box with it. Then he replaced the dowel.
"Domino!" Edrick pronounced.
"Quiet..." Domino responded, very coolly and lowly. Each of the warriors was again surprised at how low the voice from this weasel of a man bellowed.
"I'm disgusted you have the nerve to show your face around us again!" Seville said as a threat. Domino took a beat from his examination of the shabby wooden box and looked up.
"Ah, what're you gonna do? Attack me?"
"What do you want from us?" pressed Seville.
"Quiet," Domino answered and returned to inspecting something on the backside of the box. More than once he used others of the dowels on his belt.
"What's going on here?" Gipson asked. Domino did not respond.
"I said what's going on here?" the knight ferociously demanded this time. The black mage stopped what he was doing and squeezed his brows together, then his shoulders sagged.
"Unfortunately, I conjecture that your...less than perspicacious wit will not consummately cognize the imperforate aim of our present employment. Ergo, I will capitulate that annotation for an impending....time."
"Damn it! Speak common for once!" commanded Gipson.
"That I do, but I elect expatiation via knowledgeable means, in lieu of barbarous ones."
Gipson grunted with anger and noticeably raged against the magical ropes, but their spell could not be undone. It just had to be a wizard!
"Did you kidnap the princess?" Sylum thought to ask, very calmly but directly.
"I did not," defended Domino, mimicking Sylum's manner and without the slightest conciliatory pause.
"Do you know who did?" followed Sylum summarily, like a lawyer to a witness.
"Yes, I do."
"And who is that?" The professor continued.
"He is not an acquaintance of yours."
"Who is it?!" Gipson barked, his agitation palpable. Again Domino stopped to squint and rub his forehead, combined with a thick exhalation. He looked up.
"If...said antagonist is not...constituent of your luminary lexicon then what consequence, I ask, is it that you be compelled to lucubrate the appellation of said antagonist?"
Gipson belted out a growl, but nothing could come of it. Domino raised his eyebrows and stared as if he were truly awaiting a response. Finally, he returned to the wooden box.
"So, would it be appropriate to assume that the kidnapper is not a Cornerian?" Sylum asked, hoping to return to the intellectual atmosphere where Domino was most charitable. He flashed a condescending and cautionary glance to the knight beside him.
"Not appropriate, no, but I'll resign and consent."
"And who are you to him?"
"Worker bee."
"And..."
"Chuck Domino the grunt? He's lying!" Seville accused, but Sylum retorted contiguously and with not-so-subtle fierceness.
"That is not something that we can control." It was short and abrasive. Seville went quiet obediently. Sylum continued, "How many in the hive, Chuck?"
"Just three." Domino's speech got softer in time and was aimed into the body of the box. His interest in the scene was almost humorously nonexistent.
"You, him, and who?"
"Queen Bee."
"The princess..." Edrick mused and whispered. Sylum nodded to him.
"Is the princess here?"
"She is, only not as you envisage."
"How..."
"If you hurt her..." started Gipson with a threat but he smartly cut if off. Domino once more caressed the folds over the bridge of his nose, but saved any comments he might have had for the knight. Another angry look passed from scholar to warrior.
"How not, Chuck?" Sylum asked.
"Pass."
The professor sighed.
"Alright, moving on: are the motives political?"
"The motives are everything."
Sylum sighed again and scorned the cryptic answer.
"Are we part of those motives."
"Everything is part of those motives."
From the corner of his own eyes, Sylum saw Seville roll his.
"Fine," Sylum said. "What is going to happen next?"
"Patience, doctor," said Domino. "Vigilance."
"Can you tell me more specifically our part in this?"
"Shhhh…" Domino hissed to quell the interrogation. "Enough."
The black mage took yet another dowel from his belt and made a final pass around the four corners of the wooden box and then he performed five languid messy gestures in the air and resheathed the stick. He passed over the box with one final investigation from all sides and then walked towards the door.
"That's it!" Gipson exclaimed. Domino, of course, paused and rubbed his now sweat-laden forehead. He looked at the knight and shook his head very slightly, like one of modest disbelief.
"Yep, that's it!" he said and turned back to the door.
"We managed to catch your article," Seville broke in and informed the mage just as he was reaching for the handlebar.
"Yeah, worked like a charm," Domino responded, superlatively quiet.
"Uh huh. You know, I promised my friends that I would kill you for it." But Domino refused to dignify that, and simply left. The hard iron door screamed to a shut and they were alone again.
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