7

MatthewTaurone

Honors English 3

Mrs. Bystrom

Abomination

He crept through the hallway, the strange alloy of his armor making nary a sound upon the dark stone on the floors and the wall. A torch in a nearby room cast a flickering light upon the corridor, revealing strange artifacts and symbols strewn about the hall. The man sneaked about, reaching a door with strange light and sounds being emitted from within.

He peeked inside and withheld a gasp, for bound and gagged were many of the men he had come with, their arms and armor stripped from them. The men looked about wild-eyed, not noticing their companion, as they struggled to free themselves from their bonds. The man began to unsheathe a large sword, but stopped as he noticed several, possibly seven or eight, men in deep black robes troop into the room and surround the man's company.

The men raised their hands, revealing scars and symbols inscribed into their flesh, and began chanting in a strange tongue, causing pain to the men bound within the circle. Soon the men bound in the circle began to move, three stepping back, leaving five who moved into some unknown position. The three who were now outside withdrew strange tomes from their voluminous robes and open them to a preordained page and read, their voices growing deep and reverberating through the outside man's body.

The five men still in the circle began to convulse, their eyes rolling far into their skull, and began to bleed freely from the sockets. The blood ran smoothly down their robes onto the floor, where it began to flow into a pattern, a pentagram under a twisted goat's head. The symbol filled as the cultists continued their chant, heedless of the fact that they bled endlessly. The three on the outside turned the pages of their tomes and increased their fervor in the chant double fold.

The men continued, the convulsions of the cultists upon the symbol becoming increasingly violent; the blood began to adopt a red glow, becoming brighter and brighter until the man outside was forced to avert his eyes. The blood became viscous, flowing slowly in the pattern, although the blood from the men of the occult within the symbol flowed as before, diminishing not in the least bit as it drained them of their life essence. The man outside chanced a look inside, only to see his comrades writhing in pain, one of them with blood flowing freely from his lips he was biting down upon the gag so hard.

Suddenly those of his company looked sickly, and their skin seemed to sear itself as it erupted into boils of revolting hues of green and others that spread about so rapidly it seemed it would consume the man, but before that instant came they burst showering each other with juices comprised of only the gods know what. The man outside began to draw his sword once more and planned to charge, but a large man in black plate mail walked in with a rune-encrusted bastard sword in hand. Outside, the man strained his eyes to continue watching as the blood continued to glow, and watched as the newest entry began killing the cultists within the circle, hewing the first man's head in half crosswise, walking away as the two part of him slid to the floor in a pool of blood.

He walked around, killing the second man by slicing him through the gut and from there through the side half of the body so as he fell his intestines spewed over the floor when he struck the ground. The third he sliced clean in half vertically, leaving the sides to fall in whichever order their deity decided. The fourth man he butchered, slicing him to ribbons before he struck the floor of the gristly abattoir. As for the fifth man, last of the poor lot, he withdrew a ceremonial dagger, and with one swift motion, inserted the bastard sword through the man's skull into his spine, splitting both in twain, and stabbed the dagger into his heart and twisted it, emitting a fountain of blood from the man's body.

The black warrior left both the sword and dagger in the man's body, and stole from a nearby altar a chalice made from a man's skull and spine; he filled the chalice with the acolyte's blood once and drank it, and filled it once more, pouring the elixir of gore on each of the soldier's heads. The strange blood flowed easily, almost consciously, covering the men's bodies by manipulating itself until it reached from scalp to heel, irritating the large boil sores upon the men's bodies, causing them to writhe more violently. Upon seeing this the black warrior chuckled, a twisted, malevolent sound, and said in a callous voice, "Yes, squirm, for as your physical torment nears its end, that of your wretched soul shall continue through the ages."

The dark warrior stepped back, and the bodies of the acolytes began to liquefy, adding to the symbol a deeper color within the sludge. The glow became brighter and began searing the outside man's eyes as he turned away, screaming his pain and anger inside his mind. The blood began seeping into the men's bodies by its own will, burning its mark deep within them, making them its own. Suddenly the chant of the remaining three acolytes became louder, and although it was in a strange tongue still, the man outside could comprehend what they said, "As once before, may now be done, their minds destroyed, their bodies one, their will now ours, as foes they run, their souls devoured, the end begun."

The man outside looked up, and through the haze of pain saw his friends rising into air, the bonds about their bodies passing through their persons as though ethereal, the gages falling uselessly to the ground, and for the first time, the men opened their mouths and screamed, chilling the man outside to the bone, but fueling the fervor of the acolytes. The men in the air looked wildly, screaming, crying, praying, shouting, anything to show their pain; the men stopped emitting cries of torture, leaving an eerie dead silence save for the acolytes' chanting. Suddenly, some unseen force began ripping the men apart, limb from limb, like a pack of ravenous wolves dividing up a kill, until grisly chunks swirled in midair; the parts of the man's former squad began violently converging, as though attempting to mold with one another through sheer force.

The pieces began to meld to each other, rotting anywhere this unholy bonding took place, turning green, black, white, or yellowish, and emitting a smell foul enough to make a cadaver rot just as badly merely by being in the presence of it. This unholy ritual continued until a large being, looking eight, nine, possibly ten feet tall, stood in the center of the symbol, the unused limbs falling to the blood-stained floor with a dull squashing sound, splattering blood wherever they fell. This thing, this abomination, stood hunched over, a sick mismatched child's puzzle of rotted limbs and chinks of men, standing dumbly, awaiting orders from its master.

The black warrior spoke, saying, "Rise my beast, rise and serve your master." The creature's eyelids shot open, revealing maggot infested black eyes, giving to them the appearance of constant movement.

The blood of the symbol slowly began evaporating, bringing to the nostrils of the man outside the smell of the beast, causing him to vomit within his helm. The dark warrior turned his head towards the sound and saw the man, and pointed at him, shouting to his monster, "Go, my beast, destroy the intruder, let him know your pain!" without a second's hesitation the man was off, running through hall after hall, his armor now ringing off the strange black stone. The creature was off after him after spending a moment grabbing strange curved blades and weapons of torture; it broke through the stone doorways with its massive bulk as it gave chase to the man. The man moved faster, but the creature had dark eyes watching over it, controlling its path, eyes that knew the lay of the castle.

In a moment the beast cut the man off in a corridor, and he turned and fled down the nearest hall. He ran down, looking behind him for the creature made of what was formerly his allies, and slammed into a large barred door, falling backwards. He soon returned to his feet, but the beast was already upon him; he withdrew his greatsword with ease, as one who had mastered the weapon with years of combat earned experience, and stood ready to fight, knowing full well he stood no chance against such a monster. The creature closed the distance between them and began to swing madly at the man in front of it as he parried the blows one by one.

He swung the large blade and cut a large gash over the creature's midsection, causing organs to tear the rest of the hole open, revealing a maggot infested rotten heap inside the creature. Many of the organs began to slop onto the man, almost causing him to vomit once more, but he suppressed the urge and swung a heavy blow at the creature. The creature took the blow with the shaft of a strange spear, catching the greatsword's blade within it, and swung an oddly shaped blade into the man with its awesome strength. The blade cut through the man's armor leaving a deep gash in the man's right side, which immediately began to fester and spawn maggots.

The warrior, severely weakened, attempted another swing at the abomination, but it was too late, for the creature took an enormous club and smashed the man against the wall, shattering his spinal cord and ribs. As the man looked up in his final moments, he uttered one word, "Why?" But the men he used to know, the men he fought alongside with, were no more, only a giant walking fetid corpse controlled by a cruel man through the dark art of necromancy. The man watched in his last moment as the creature brought down the huge blade and ended his life, the life of their former captain, without thought, and without remorse.

Kudos to the Blizzard Entertainment team for creating the creature known as the abomination for Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos.