It's amazing how it seems like your writer's block taken a vacation during the summer. Let me just say that I really enjoyed writing this chapter…I think Kail might had finally lost his bad feelings for Ollan…hmmm, Moran finds uses for an old skeleton…applied some gore here and there…and the Iron Wolves get to play a big part in the game. Enjoy!
Chapter 17: Sacrificial of Life
Calm down, calm down!! Her brain screamed endlessly as she tried to control her yells of terror. She was still hanging by three limbs from the ceiling, and what pain she had already felt was now a burning fire that ran down her legs.
"Ugh," she said, blinking rapidly as her eyes started to cloud over from the blood pouring inside her head. She tried to raise her body but found out she can't.
If I don't die from terror first, all this blood rushing through my head is going to kill me.
Grunting, she clenched her stomach muscles and tried to grab the chains. Her fingers brushed the cold metal before her body flipped back down.
She felt something warm oozing from her nose. Blood, rushing from her head down her nostrils.
Terror rushed over her again. If she didn't manage to get her body to stay upright again, she would die.
With a final heavy grunt, she managed to swing her body up and grabbed the chains. She was now in a rather freaky position, her one free leg hooked around her other leg and her hands grasping the chain. She resisted the urge to look down and tried to find a way out.
She examined the chains and found them to be very old and rusty. Breakable, she thought. The ledge…her eyes wandered.
"It's now or never…" She yanked with her leg that was still in the cuff with all of her remaining strength.
Crack…
Ring…
Her leg was free. She gasped as her body slid downwards without her leg suspended. She swung, let go of the of the chains with both her hands –
The remaining cuff on her arm broke free and she tumbled down.
"UGH!" She cried out in pain as she managed to grab the ledge just in time. The shock ran through her body, sending ripples of astonishing pain through her arms and legs. She swung her leg up and managed to climb up to her sanctuary.
She fell on her knees, panting, and clutching her heart.
You mustn't break down now.
She reached for the door's handle, grateful that it wasn't locked.
The door swung open.
She cried out, as her body was blast backwards. She tottered on the edge for a second – and fell down towards the darkness.
"NOO!"
Someone clutched her wrist and pulled her up again. She was whirled down on her knees with so much force she rolled to absorbed the impact. She stood up and swallowed down her scream. She clutched her throat and tried to force down nausea that was traveling up her hot, burning throat.
Whatever it was – towered above her about five feet above her head. It had a skull that resembled a human's – although much larger and had a pair of horns spurting from each side. Sinews, veins, and a bit of flesh clung to parts of the dirty skull. She could see its windpipe, a little more than cartilage and blood. A sunken, decaying chest with the protruding ribcage glowed dully at her. And down below that were the remains of the spine…and nothing else expect for frayed flesh and dripping, decaying blood.
Looking closer at the chest, and trying to control her stomach, she saw a small blue stone, like a cross between a sapphire and a black opal embedded in the remaining flesh. It glowed with its own fire and throbbed like a heart.
It opened its mouth. "Welcome to my temple, Sorceress."
"Who are you?" She stumbled backwards.
"Mephisto," it said.
"You?" Moran took another step back and she felt a jabbing pain in her one of her boots. She stopped.
It felt like a jagged blade.
"Your Necromancer lies in your same state, although he wasn't as smart as you to tried an escape," Mephisto took a floating step towards her. "He may be dead now for all I care."
"Where's Kail?" She bent down, pretending to clutch at her ankle. "If you – "
"If I what?" Mephisto looked down at her. "What if I…murdered him?"
"You and your brothers will go to Hell!" She slid her fingers inside and wrapped it around the hilt.
"You're too late, Sorceress," Mephisto said. "Diablo is no longer here."
She whipped the blade around and found it to be so small, so small it couldn't do much damage at all, but it was her only hope. With clenched muscles and as much force as she could, she surrounded the blade with lightning and flame from her elemental storage in her body and threw the blade.
It struck Mephisto deep in the chest, just above the embedded jewel. He gave a scream loud enough to shatter her eardrums as she ran into the black tunnel.
She didn't care where she went; she only wanted to be as far away as she could be from Mephisto.
"This place is a maze," Moran whispered to herself in the darkness, feeling the damp wall (damp with water or blood, right now she couldn't careless) for guidance in the dark. She was too afraid to cast her Shiver Armor upon herself, fearing that the light would bring in unwanted demons.
After about ten minutes of half-running, half-walking through the tunnels or hallways, she came upon an old, cracked and fading door. Summoning all of her courage, she opened it a creak and looked in. It was pretty empty except for three torches burning on the wall, a chest, and a mangled skeleton with blood on it hanging from the ceiling. After checking twice for anything hiding in the darkness, she slid in, shut the door, and bolted it.
Tired and weary, she slid down to the floor and hugged her knees, letting the tears fall. Kail was as good as dead, and the others back in Kurast…and how long was she going to last? This…temple, as Mephisto called it was worst than any labyrinth she could think of. And what will happen if she did find a way out? The Flayers and the jungle beasts would probably bring her down before she could even get anywhere.
She lifted her head and walked over to the chest, pulling the rusty chain off and lifted the lid. She pulled out a cloak, worn and torned, worst than a rag, a few pieces of gold, and a crossbow.
She picked up the crossbow and found it to be quite sturdy, the string having survived the wet surroundings. She slid her foot in the stirrup, grabbing on the base, and with all her strength, pulled the string back and slid it into the correct place. She held it up and pressed the trigger.
She gasped as her entire body was lurched backwards because of the impact. She clutched her shoulder in pain, but the awe left her nearly forgetting about her muscles. It was a powerful crossbow, probably could do more damage than even a shotgun would.
But what good is it without bolts?
Her eyes wandered to the skeleton.
With a cry of rage, mixed with the slow insanity that she thought was developing somewhere behind her cerebrum, she pulled the skeleton off its chains and hurled it to the floor with one rugged motion. Luckily, it was quite breakable. She pulled off the fetus and smashed it against the wall, releasing the small sharp spikes from the foot.
She picked up the bits of bone, some of them longer than her index finger and the others a little more than her pinky. She kicked at the skeleton again, releasing sharp pieces, and sharpening some dull ones on the stone floor.
After she was sure she had enough crossbow bolts, she fashioned a small bag out of the cloak to hang from her belt.
"Better than nothing…" she fitted a cracked finger bone to the crossbow and kicked the door open.
"If this was another "dance of death", this would be in Latino mode," she grumbled inside her head as she slid on blood, running through an empty hallway. If she wanted to find Kail – she needed to be quick.
She felt every hair on her arms prickle and heat rushed through her head.
With a shriek, she pushed with her legs to send her body away from the place she was standing. She grunted as she rolled and came up on her knees.
A flying rock blackened and covered with fire, like a minuscule meteor came tearing from the ceiling and landed right on the very spot she was standing a second ago. She covered her face as the stinging embers exploded from the rock and sprayed its flames over her. She was up on her feet faster than she could think and began looking for her intruder.
A hooded figure stood in the corner, holding a large staff.
For a moment, she thought it was a perfectly normal-looking man, until she saw that the hemline of the black cloak was floating more than a few inches off the ground, and there were no legs.
"Die," she said, releasing the crossbow.
The bone bolt pierced…whatever it was right in the hand. It gave a scream loud enough to shatter her ears and raised its staff.
The crossbow was taking her too long to load. Instead, she used it to bash against the staff as the creature tried to bring the head of its burnished staff down on her head. She stumbled backwards and it grazed her cheek excruciatingly.
"What the – "
The moment that the staff touched her cheek, the bone bolt from her crossbow that had implanted in the creature's hand fell off and the wound sealed over the pale, sallow flesh.
It was stealing her life.
"Or no, you don't!" She gave the creature a hard kick right in its stomach and it floated backwards. She jumped and brought the crossbow down on its head, bashing it with the heavy wood and punching it hard in the stomach with her other hand. The creature dropped its staff and tried to grab her hands. Pulling a fist back, she rammed it into the head.
The creature dropped to the ground.
She clutched her fist and looked down at her knuckles. Even in the dim light she could see she had cut her knuckles badly, probably from the creature's teeth.
She bent down to pull the hood back and see what the creature really was.
She covered her mouth in panic as she dropped the cloak. There was nothing but cloak…and blood.
Burning, hot blood that hissed on her fingers like acid.
She quickly spat on the blood, trying to neutralize it, and thankfully, it stopped. She didn't really want a pair of hands without any fingers. Not in this temple, not anywhere in this world.
After running through tunnels for about two minutes, she stopped to rest, breathing hard and loudly. She ran a bloody hand through her hair.
Telekinesis…
The ability to move things with your mind, the ability to move yourself to another place…
She stood up straight. Maybe if she…
She focused on Kail, his green eyes…his face that was usually burning with pain and anger, or both and at the same time she tried to keep an image of a stake through his heart of her mind.
"Please…"
She felt lightning crackle on her fingers.
Static lightning and energy crackled and exploded around her and she felt every hair on her body rise.
In an explosion of light, she found herself in an isolated room.
She covered her mouth and tried to force the nausea down her throat. It was the largest room she'd ever seen – even larger than Andariel's chamber. It was lit with torches on every wall, and right in the middle was dug out to form a large lake-like container, filled to the brim with blood and bones, with stairs leading down to it. A platform had been built of carcasses, corpses, and bones leading out to the middle of the blood pool to a portal-like structure of two black arches, although it was empty of light.
"Kail?" She whispered. Maybe her telekinetic powers weren't powerful enough yet – maybe it had led her to somewhere else where she didn't want to be…
Her eyes roamed the room and came to the arched ceiling.
A pair of chains and handcuffs, rusted and broken hung from the dripping ceiling.
Her eyes looked down to the pool of blood.
"Oh my god!" She kicked off her boots and stumbled down the stairs, trying not to slide on the blood. She splashed into the red essence of life and death itself and cried out in pain as she stepped on something sharp. She leapt back.
This place is full of sharp objects…
Fear rose in her throat as she thought of Kail. If he did manage to break his bonds but if he fell in this lake with all the sharp bones…
"No!" She waded out to the middle, avoiding the sharp, stinging pains on her feet. "Kail!" Oh god, no!!"
She saw a pale, white hand, and sobbing, she dove for it. She screamed as she saw it to be hacked arm and nothing else.
She tried to calm her senses, reminding herself that it was too pale to be Kail's hand, and that it was way too skinny and shallow. But her teeth chattered and every nerve on her body seemed to spark and crackle like a circuit even as she told herself to calm down.
Then, she saw a large white bone, almost like a thin elephant's tusk protruding from the center, probably only a fraction of it.
She waded in more until it was too deep for her to swim and wrapped her hand around the bone. She slid down, took a deep breath and went underneath the surface.
With her fingers, she searched.
She felt a face, and a ring on what was probably the eyebrow.
Keeping her panic down, she pulled and yanked, and kicking through the dank, thick liquid, she pulled the body up.
It was Kail, Kail, with a long white bone, like an elephant's tusk pierced above his heart.
She pulled him above her, locking her arm around his head like she was taught in survival classes and pulled him up on the stairs. She laid her ear against his nose to hear if he was breathing.
He coughed once, spewing blood over her face and she grabbed his uninjured shoulder.
"Kail!" She cried. "Are you all right?"
"Moran?" He said, but his voice was so soft she could hardly hear it. "Moran how did you – "
"Kail…" She touched the bone gently. "Are you – "
"Can't feel a thing," he said and gave her a tired grin. "Thought I'd drowned."
"Kail…your shoulder…" She tried to keep the fear down in her voice.
"If I die…" He shut his eyes.
"KAIL!" She slapped his face hard.
"Found him so soon, Sorceress?
She flinched and turned.
Mephisto grinned down at her, his fangs glimmering dangerously on his jawbone.
"I shouldn't have doubted you, little Sorceress," he threw her something and it clattered at her feet. It was the blade.
"The Gidbhin! The Blade of the Old Religion!" Kail gasped.
"Shhh," She cradled his head against her arm and looked at Mephisto. "I thought you were dead."
"You couldn't kill me with just a blade, although I have to say that thing is rather powerful for its size, just like what they say with men," Mephisto chuckled. Blue light exploded on his arms. "So now I have a good excuse to kill you."
"Moran, run," Kail said.
"Shut up, Kail," she hissed. "You die, I die too."
"Is there a good reason?" He hissed back angrily at her. "Save your life while you can!"
Mephisto raised his arms.
Moran buried her face next to Kail's and cast Shiver Armor over both of them. She clutched onto him and prayed.
"AHHH!"
She opened her eyes.
"What on earth?"
"Miss us?" Thorn grinned down at them.
"Nikan?" Moran gasped as the she saw the Amazon hurl a spear at Mephisto. The beast screamed in pain and lashed out angrily.
"The Iron Wolves?" Kail coughed.
"What will you do without us?" Asheara cried out in rage and threw the snake that was hanging around her neck straight at Mephisto. It curled around his neck, glowing in a green light and sqeeuzed. A throng of ironclad men brought their swords on Mephisto and releasing either inferno or balls of burning flames, while other released bolts of ice.
"I don't believe this," Kail slumped against her shoulder. "How on earth…"
"The Assassin, Natalya," Moran said as she watched her bring down her talons on Mephisto whom lashed out angrily. "She – I guess she escaped the Flayers."
"He's not dying!" One of the Iron Wolves cried.
"The soulstone!" Kail coughed. "Get the soulstone!"
"I'll do it!" Moran let go of him and ran, ignoring his angry bellowing.
"Thorn!" She shouted. "Give me the extra boost!"
She jumped up and grabbed the Barbarian's large shoulders before he could think what she was going to do. She stepped down on his belt, which was thick enough to support her feet, and climbed on his shoulders. She crouched down, trying to find her balance.
"Moran? What on earth – "
"Shoot me up towards Mephisto!" She yelled. "Do it now, or this will never end!"
"Thorn, no!!" Kail shouted and broke off coughing.
"Do it Thorn, or I'll kill you again in the afterlife," she hissed.
"All right," Thorn bent down and leapt up. Moran released her hold on him and she flew through the air at a very rapid pace. She held out her hand…Mephisto's face was right in her face…he gave her a snarl…
Her fingers closed around the glimmering stone on his chest, and she let her bodyweight pull it off.
She felt an Iron Wolf grab her before both of them crashed on the ground and slid back several feet. "Thanks," she muttered, rubbing her spine.
"Look!"
Mephisto seemed to have frozen in midair, his arms reaching towards heaven. Then he exploded in a mass of light. The ground beneath her shook with a force enough to shatter her bones apart. She tried to stand up but the Iron Wolf held on to her.
"Stay still, Sorceress, let the force pass," he said.
Fire exploded from the ceiling and the blood in the pool seemed to scream with its own supernatural power. The empty portal started churning and unholy shouts rose from the carcasses. The portal turned red and glowed.
Then everything stopped.
The first thing on her mind after her body absorbed the shock of the confusion was Kail. She pushed away the Iron Wolf away and crossed the pool of blood to where Kail laid. She slid down on her knees and took his hand.
"Kail? Kail?"
"You did good, Moran," he grinned and shut his eyes.
"KAIL!" She gasped. "Someone! Someone help!"
"Anyone have a healing potion?" Nikan said.
"Wait, stand back," someone said.
"Ollan?" Moran looked up at the Paladin.
"I'll try to help him Moran," he said, placing a heavy hand on her shoulder. "Help me remove the bone."
"I – I don't think you should do that," she looked at Kail. "He's – "
"Moran?"
"All right," she said. Ollan motioned for her to wrap her hands around the bone. She shut her eyes and with a horrible, squelching sound, they pulled it out of Kail's body.
"Damn it!" He screamed as the bone was pulled out from his flesh. He gasped.
"I thought you couldn't feel anything," Moran said, trying to smile but she could feel her teeth chattering.
"Stand back," Ollan said. He pulled out his sword.
"Ollan…" Kail said weakly, holding onto his wound, his blood running through his fingers. "Don't do this…it's too much."
"Helping a friend is never too much," Ollan whispered.
Kail looked away. "I thought you shunned Necromancers."
"I shun the dark, not the victim of the dark," Ollan said.
Kail looked away again and this time he refused to return his gaze or say a thing.
Ollan wrapped his hands around the hilt of his sword, one knee on the ground the other raised, and his head bent over his folded hands.
"Father…" he whispered. "Who art in Heaven…"
A thin stream of light flowed down from the ceiling and Moran looked up, expecting to see a hole, but there wasn't any. The light turned Ollan's hard features into a soft glow – like a photograph taken with a pair of soft lens. Miraculously, his bloodstained field plate turned clean and glowed with the same holy light his skin reflected. Ollan, bowing over his sword and bending over Kail who was dying…
Moran felt her throat tighten.
Ollan ran his wrists over the sides of his sword.
Blood flowed from the deep cuts, but it wasn't like the dead blood in the pool – it wasn't like the lifeless blood that surrounded the hallways of Kurast – it was blood that resembled life – pure, holy blood itself. The redness also had its own glow to it, each stream, and each drop sparkling like a crimson ruby.
I'll keep this scene in my head forever, Moran thought as she watched Ollan. She couldn't help but think that the way light was streaming off his armor was like a pair of huge wings.
"Looks like an archangel, huh? Damn…" Asheara shook her head in amazement.
My thoughts exactly, Moran said as she watched Ollan's blood spill off his wrists and land on Kail.
"Ollan…" Kail said, gritting his teeth. "That's enough…"
Ollan kept his head down and continued to let the blood flow.
"Ollan, stop," Kail reached up with a hand.
Ollan stumbled and the light disappeared. He crashed down on his side, his armor ringing a clear, clear sound through the hall.
"What was that?" Moran asked Nikan as they rushed over to help.
"Sacrificial aura," Nikan said. "Giving a part of his own life to save Kail."
She rushed over to Kail and looked at his wound. It had shrunk down to a size of a small bullet wound and even though it still looked serious, it was nothing compared to what he had before Ollan had helped him.
"I hope you still don't hate him anymore," Moran smiled and helped him up with Thorn on the other side.
"That was what I'd afraid would happen," he groggily said.
"Look at Ollan…" Asheara whispered and covered her mouth.
Moran looked at the two Iron Wolves helping Ollan. He was purely unconscious, but what shocked her the most was his shoulder.
There was a puncture wound of the exact same shape and size as Kail's.