Prince of Persia: Dark Destiny
Chapter 3: The Catacombs of Babylon
The Prince didn't trust Darius, he couldn't afford to trust the pirate - and yet he had no choice. Darius was offering them a way to escape by using his boat that was protected from the sands by special wards.
The winding corridor plunged into the darkness, lit only by the red light of torches. A dripping noise was in their ears.
"We have to continue in this direction" Darius explained. "Once we reach the bay my ship can get us out of here and away from this place. It's the fastest on the seven seas!"
"I hope so," Kaileena muttered. "We'll need to be gone fast… Azarael - he isn't…there's something wrong with him. He isn't part of time - yet he's integrated into it deeper then he should. I sense he both exists and doesn't at the same time".
Darius gave her A Look. She ignored him. Her dress was slightly tattered now and she looked rather irate, her black hair now cut off at shoulder hight in a jagged curl. The strings on her bodice were beginning to stress. The Prince shook the thoughts of her alluring beauty from his mind.
Just as well he did. The hissing monster lurched from the darkness with a snarl. Darius whirled and slashed it back. The Prince performed a back flip and landed in a fighting stance. He charged.
It had been a prisoner once, dressed in tattered rags with the remnants of a beard on its face, it was gaunt and thin…barely fed - that made it insane with hunger as it had been before the sands had taken it.
From the cages came the creatures, unlike the ones from the Palace of Azad these did not move in blurs of motion, nor did they come from above and about as they had on Kaileena's island. They formed from the sand clouds with a twisted blackness in them. But they moved at human speed - some had already been formed before that. It seemed they had tried to devour each other…
Kaileena swivelled and kicked on aside before slashing it open. The sands whirled around her and entered her ruby amulet in a flash of gold. She slowed down time and spun, slashing open two enemies as the freeze ended.
Darius ran up a wall and flipped off it into a downwards hack that slashed in two his opponent. He pivoted and sliced the head off a sand creature before stabbing his dagger into its chest. There was a click and the blade filled up. "Thank you" he smirked and slashed another monster with the blade, turning it grey and leaving it in a flip off into the air. He flipped up onto it's chest slamming it down as he rammed the blade into its chest, straight down.
It exploded into black and gold specks.
The Prince's blades sliced monsters down, gathering them into his amulet effectively and without a pause. He ducked the swinging arms of a prisoner and kicked it down. He was amazed that it couldn't get back up, instead it rolled over and crawled along the ground trying to bite and grab his legs. With a stamp he ended its existence.
"These sand creatures are unlike others, a cross between those touched by the sands of time and the sands of the empress" Kaileena said. "I don't understand how they came into existence..."
"He opened a bottle" responded Darius he leapt into the air, spiralled around and slammed both feet into the face of a monster giving him amble time to stab down with his dagger and gather the sands. The trio's movements were rapid and effective, they slowed down time and hacked and slashed the enemies gathering the black liquid and gold sands the monsters turned into in their amulets and daggers.
"And that is that" Kaileena said as she holstered her blade. "Come on, we have to hurry" she added. They rushed down the hall. Four blades dropped fromt he ceiling, thin lines from the floor to the roof that slid forwards and scythed the air before retracting.
"I can't make it between those" The Prince said.
"Never send a man to do a woman's job" Kaileena sighed. She cartwheeled forwards between the blades and nimbly stayed ahead of them as they moved forwards. She ended her cartwheel smoothly on the button, the blades slid back into the ceiling. "Now we can move on perhaps?"
"Women" Darius muttered.
"Indeed" sighed the Prince. Kaileena was faster on her feet then Darius and the Prince, she was also equally as agile, matching their wall runs and flips - however she was unable to lift heavy gates like the men her strength was great but not enough to match the heavy lifting...such as was proven when they came to the Great Tower
"These crates must be moved into position on the buttons" Kaileena muttered. "But those gates prevent us from doing so". The dungeon area was a steep spiral upwards, however the staircase was at the very bottom of a deep dark pool which was filled with sharks that spread the sands as they swam about.
"We have to raise the steps" nodded The Prince. Kaileena looked up, there was a broken staircase nearby. "There" she pointed to a lever. "If you give me a boost I can make it up there and pull that lever"
"How do you know what it will do?" asked Darius with a raised eyebrow
"Only one way to find out" responded Kaileena. The Prince took his position near the wall and Kaileena ran at him, he gave her a boost and she soared up onto the metal platform. "One moment" she shouted back as she grabbed the lever with both hands and pushed down with all her might, the lever resisted but eventually it creaked into place.
Nearby a grill opened and Darius rushed over to it. Inside the small cell was a box, Darius pulled it across the room and pushed it against the button on the wall. "There, one button pressed" he shouted with a laugh. "Can we continue?"
The Prince nodded, the button had opened another grill in the wall revealing a button. "Are there any more crates?" he shouted. Kaileena helpfully pushed one from her platform so it landed near him. "I imagine that was meant to land there"
"Whatever keeps you on your toes Prince" she laughed musically.
The Prince shoved the crate onto the switch on the floor. This time a door near Kaileena opened. "I'll get this one" she shouted as she entered the small room. There was a hole in the wall and a dead body nearby. The Prisoner Sand Creature hadn't noticed her.
She sliced its head off as she crept up behind it.
There was a switch in the wall but when she went to move the heavy stone block she found she couldn't. With a curse she looked through the hole in the wall. Sharks swam in the flooded chamber below but fallen columns made a path across for her.
"Kaileena?" shouted the Prince. The stench of death hung in the air of the chamber and the magic of the sands crackled with a new heat around him. He was avoiding having to speak to Darius. The young pirate was examining the dagger of time closely.
"Hello Prince" Kaileena called. The Prince rushed to the grating in the wall. Where he found Kaileena, standing on a fallen pillar in a flooded room with her arms akimbo. "There's a switch up there but the only moveable block is imoveable to me. There's a lever in this room I want to see what will happen if I pull it."
"Be careful" warned the Prince. Kaileena laughed and leapt onto another pillar and made her way across the chamber on the columns. The sharks snapped at her below but to no avail.
"She's quite something" mused Darius as Kaileena reached the platform and ascended to the lever on the broken blocks from the roof. "Where did you meet her?"
"On my travels" the Prince grunted. "How did you meet Azarael?"
Darius flinched. "He found my father in the Vagabonds Cove, a Den for pirates, offered him power and immortality if he helped him. So he hired my fatehr and by extension me...that was when he saw the dagger and flew into a rage. This was after the invasion - I realized he was mad long before but he had Nadina drag my father away and Jafar tortured him. They decided that since every time the touched the dagger lightening hurt them they would make me as much a tool as it was...and I couldn't refuse or my father would die" Darius turned away. "Think what you wish of me, I don't care".
The Prince watched Darius and then looked back to Kaileena. The lever had drained the water from the room, she dropped down and finished off the flapping sand creatures. Their sand-bleeding grey bodies thrashed about hopelessly until the Empress finished them.
She turned the lever in the middle of the hall 360 degrees and a the gates opened allowing the Prince and the Pirate to meet the Empress in the room. They leapt up the steps and Darius easily pushed the stone block onto the switch. There was a loud splash as torrents of water fell off the steps and allowed them to reach the darkness. Two torches lit up on either side of a pair of doors.
"We fell for miles" Darius mused as they climbed the stone steps, killing the sharks unfortunate enough to have been lifted by the steps. "Who knows how far we are from the surface..."
Kaileena touched her forehead as golden sands swirled in her pupils. "Not far" she murmured. "We're nearly at a great room of suffering" she whispered. Darius looked at her, she opened her eyes, they were normal once more. "Yes?"
"What happened there?"
"It is none of your concern" she stated as she strode past him. The doors ground open as the Prince and Darius pushed with Kaileena. What met their eyes was beyond belief.
A forest of crosses with corpses mounted on it, men and women of all shapes and sizes. All dressed in aristocratic garb from various regions of the Kings Kingdom. "By the Timeline" whispered Kaileena. "This is Barbaric" there were some stakes with burnt bodies in smouldering stacks of wood lining the walls... in the forest of crosses there was nothing but dark light from hanging baskets of flame and the dim embers of the pyres.
Shuddering the Prince walked down the neat rows with the travelling allies following him. Then his eyes bulged, his breath froze in his lungs along with his blood. Hanging on a cross set in a stone altar decorated by dead and diseased flowers was a beautiful young woman.
"Farah" he whispered. "No...it can't be"
He rushed forwards, the world spinning as he staggered up the steps and climbed the platform before the cross. His blades slashed the ropes away and he took her lithe body in his arms. "Farah?"
Kaileena hurried over to meet him as he descended the steps. She touched Farah's face. "She has not yet been severed" she said. "She is alive". The relief in the Prince's body was a burst of life and then Doubt crept in as he heard the cackle of laughter.
In the poisonous greem robes she wore, brandishing her three pronged swords, Nadina appeared. Her green face paint glowed as she walked towards them. "Do you like the Princess' floral arrangement? I did it myself, for you to find her...I foretold your return and found her - all for you... beautiful is it not? That you should find her and die before she does. You can't defeat us Prince...it's futile"
The words were sharp and true, rending the bodies of the heroes...Darius readied his blades. Nadina laughed and in a blur of green she was standing to their left. "I'm more powerful then all of you put together" she spat. She snapped her fingers and the soldiers materialized around her in blasts of sand and black liquid. "Kill them!" she shrieked.
The soldiers surged forwards. The Prince placed Farah gently on the altar and in a spinning move slashed the head off a monster and grabbed its axe. He spun and hurled it at the head of another, catching it in the neck and severing it from it's body.
Kaileena flipped over the swords of a guard and landed behind it, she slashed her sword through its back and then spun around, stabbing it between the shoulder blades with its own sword.
Darius kicked a monster away and flipped backwards, twisting to slash the next attacker in two with his blade.
They fought and fought but there were eternally monsters surging forwards. Nadina laughed and walked forwards. "It's futile, existence is a realm of failure for you! NOW DIE" her blade swung at the Prince but Kaileena swung her blade out and blocked it. The women stared at each other...then attacked, blades flashing and clashing. Nadina went on the offensive, Kaileena backflipped and rolled to avoid the strikes trying to block but was unsure of her best manner of assault.
With a shriek of laughter Nadina kicked Kaileena into the altar. "You are nothing Kaileena, you are simply an hourglass for what we want released... die for us Kaileena"
The heavy vase of flowers shattered over Nadina's head. Kaileena looked up. Farah was leaning on the side of the altar. Nadina's focus on Kaileena had failed to register Farah sitting up slowly and grabbing the vase of flowers near her head. Kaileena vaulted to her feet.
"Who are you?" Farah gasped in a weak voice
"The Spirit of Good Hope" snorted Kaileena. She helped Farah off the altar as Darius and The Prince were pushed back by enemies. "We have to get out of here!" Darius exclaimed.
"There's a well in the next room behind us" Farah said. "It's attached to an under ground river..."
"The underground river leads to the bay" Darius nodded. "Hurry!"
"Who are you people?" Farah murmured.
"I am the Prince of Persia and this is Kaileena my companion in travels and..."
"Darius Prince of Thieves" grinned the pirate. "The greatest acrobat and swordsman on the seven seas"
"And braggard" Kaileena snorted as she slowed time against her enemies. "Me must go!" she paused as she noticed Farah being unaffected by the slow time.
Farah wore her gold jewelery and the (now tattered) red outfit the Prince remembered but not her amulet...instead she wore a golden crown with a red gem wrapped in golden lattice on her forehead, dangling diamons in gold down on her brow.
"The Crown of Time belonged to my mother" Farah said. "It warned me of the sand creatures coming, they cannot touch water we must get to the old well beyond here where I sense water flowing...I'm not strong enough to run..." her body was shaking fromt he sheer fatigue brought on by feigning strength.
The Prince nodded and swept the girl up in his arms as they entered the room with the huge well in it. The sand monsters and Nadina were storming towards them. "We have to get out of here" re-iterated Darius. "Really, we do!" Farah nodded in agreement and pointed towards the huge doors beyond them. They ran towards the well as Nadina burst through the doors in a blur of speed.
"Not so fast!" she shrieked as she raised her hands, the black sands swirled around her. Darius leapt into the well first. The Prince dropped Farah in, she shrieked in surprise but splashed into the water...he spun around ----and was mesmerized by the shifting black sands around Nadina.
"This is no time for trivialities" whispered Kaileena beside his ear. he turned around, forcing his body to move as the black tornado close in on them with Nadina at the core. The sands razed the air over their heads as he was carried away in Kaileena's green eyes...the slap of the water awoke him. Over head Nadina screamed in frustration as her prey was swept away.
Out into the bay of dark, lifeless ships, where on estood illuminated by the moonlight...the ship of Darius. Their escape from Babylon the place he'd spent so much time trying to return to.
TBC
Thanks to my reviewers.
Now some points:
I saw the full ending on which my story was based: The Dahaka only takes the Amulet from the Prince when you DON'T kill it. I killed it, it died and I kept the amulet and Kaileena lived.
I'm a master at sarcasm just so you know but the 'joke' tag to any line doesn't mean its funny. I'm not talking about this any further I liked the compliment I hated the joke-slating it was irrelevant to me and just annoyed me...I was annoyed but then I got bored and decided to play Sands of Time and vent my frustrations on The Geezer...I mean Vizier! Vizier! I Meant The VIZIER...okay maybe not...
NEXT CHAPTER: The Naval Bay. Kaileena points the group in the right direction as they embark on their adventure to destroy the Undefeatable Foe. Something that exists both in and beyond time. Azarael. All will be revealed soon...and not in a pretty manner.