Disclaimer: I do not own Ranma ½™ or Sacrifice™ or any related characters, terms or concepts.
Author's Notes: Okay, the very first reviewer to figure out the references was Necrovore, who got both questions correct. In other news, quite a few people liked the idea of a parallel-Ranma get-together, so I'll use it. I've got two votes to have in Necro-Ranma's castle (as well as one request I do a few chapters focussing on Necro-Ranma first- if people want that I'll do it, otherwise no), one for Nerima and a suggestion from Xtor49 to do it in Mystic-Ranma's world (to quote him; "If you can't trust a Ranma who serves Righteousness and Justice to keep his word, who can you trust?"). But I'll need a few more votes before I decide; Necro-Ranma will show up two chapters after this one, so please review.
Part 18: Showdown in the Boneyard!
The thick, almost black clouds above and the dull booming of thunder heralded the birth of a storm. Ryoga took one long look at the sky, twitched as a streak of lightning flashed overhead, and then turned to Ranma.
"Alright Ranma, cut it out!"
"Cut what out P-Chan?"
The Slayers turned to watch as Ranma and Ryoga began to argue.
"You know perfectly well what! Call off the rainstorm!"
"It's a natural phenomenon! Nothing to do with me!"
"And exactly why are you blaming him anyway? Nobody can control the weather."
"Actually, I can control the weather, but that's besides the point. The point is that I'm sick and tired of him blaming me every time something goes wrong. I'm not the harbinger of apocalypse, I'm just an ordinary guy!"
Whether it was sheer coincidence or something else, it was at that exact moment Ranma was struck by lightning. The moment he finished harmlessly absorbing the electrical energy, he glared at his travelling companions.
"Nobody say a word."
Neither trusting themselves to speak nor liking the look on Ranma's face, they remained silent as he stalked off ahead, still wafting a faint smell of ozone. The storm was growing more ominous, a fact that, coupled with the late time of day, prompted the group to seek shelter for the night.
"Hey, there's a place to spend the night."
Gourry called. His 'shelter' turned out to be a very run-down, ramshackle and poor-looking inn. Ranma took one look at it and then spun on his heel.
"Stay there? Are you kidding? I'd rather chance the storm."
"Fine, you do that, we're going to sleep somewhere dry."
Lina called back to him. Ranma stood and watched as they disappeared through the battered doors, finally conceding to follow them when the storm broke, although his Water Repulsion spell meant that he remained bone-dry, despite the torrential rains. The furore inside made him wonder if perhaps braving the storm might not have been the wiser choice.
"What kind of inn doesn't have any food? I'm hungry dammit!"
"Hungry you are and hungry you shall stay; all we offer is a place to sleep for the night. If you want something to eat, you should have brought it yourself."
Ranma watched the colour-changes of Lina's complexion with the dispassionate interest of an artist reviewing his own work, trying to decipher the odds that Lina would go ballistic and blow the place up. To some disappointment, Lina simply clenched her fingers so hard her knuckles cracked before gritting out between teeth clenched hard enough to crush granite to powder.
"Can we at least get some rooms?"
"That we can do."
Ranma watched silently as Lina haggled with the innkeeper for rooms and then went to tell the others about there being no food. Once Gourry and Amelia regained consciousness, Ranma slipped into the group again.
"Okay, they only have two rooms left, so you guys will share one while me and Amelia take the other."
Gourry and Zelgadis looked ready to protest, but a snarl and a barely-audible growl from Lina made them catch themselves very quickly. To try and smooth things over, Ranma shared out the meagre rations he had stored in subspace, which, to tell the truth, would have barely sated his hunger, left alone five others. Especially when three of those five were Lina, Gourry and Amelia. Their miserable meal finished, the group went upstairs to try and sleep; the sooner they had rested, the sooner they could leave this wretched place. The boys looked at their room with disdain; it was filthy and empty of anything except the beds, which consisted of little more than empty, filthy sacks on the bare floorboards.
"This is the pits!"
Ryoga said. Ranma nodded with agreement as he leant against the wall. A creaking noise suddenly split the air as a great crack appeared in the roof, sending a deluge of water down upon Ranma's head. Ignoring the way the others stared at him, Ranma's eyes glowed with energy and the stream of water froze rock-solid, Ranma reaching up to break the icicle free before lying down upon a 'bed' in the corner and using it for a pillow. As the other boys settled themselves down for the night, Ranma spoke up.
"Say, Zelgadis?"
"Yes?"
"I don't mean to pry, but can you tell me why Rezo turned you into a Chimera in the first place? That is if he even had a reason."
Ranma wondered for a second if he'd gone too far or offended the Chimera, as Zelgadis remained silent for several seconds. As Ranma began contemplating how to apologize, Zelgadis sighed and finally spoke back.
"It was several years ago. I was only a young boy at the time. All my life, I had been a sickly child, and our lands are no place for the weak. I practised swordsmanship and Shamanism, but I just couldn't get strong as fast as I wanted. Then, Rezo came to me with an offer. He had a new spell he'd developed, one he said would grant great power to the one it was cast upon, but he hadn't been able to test it on a live subject yet. He asked me if I wanted to be that test subject, to be the first to receive the great power he promised."
Zelgadis sighed again.
"I should have suspected something, it sounded way too good to be true, even back then, but I was blinded by the promise of power."
"If it helps any, I know what you went through."
"Oh?"
Zelgadis sat up and looked at Ranma, whose own eyes were staring upwards unseeingly, lost in his own reminiscence.
"Take it from me; there are few things so tempting, so blinding, as the promise of power. The training manual for the Nekoken my father found promised that anyone who went through the training would become invincible, and you know how that turned out. Even I have been blinded by the promise of power; I can't think of any other reason why I would let two of my drunken friends lead me to the top of a mountain in the middle of the night and then let them cut my heart out."
"Wait a sec, what! When the hell did that happen?"
Ryoga said, Gourry nodding in agreement. Even Zelgadis looked a little stunned. Ranma sighed, and pulled off his shirt, revealing a long, jagged white scar on the left side of his chest. Idly tracing it with the fingers of one hand he continued.
"It was part of a magical ritual, intended to bind my soul with that of my demesne, an act which would grant me greater powers. And it did, though I was lucky. Given how drunk they were, there was a very real chance I would have died, blood gushing from the ruins of my chest. But it was worth it… oh yes, it was worth it."
Ranma's smile sent a shiver of fear down the spines of those present. Ignoring his common sense, Ryoga asked a question he shouldn't have.
"But if your heart was removed, how come you're still alive?"
Ranma stared neutrally at Ryoga for a second, then materialized a dagger from subspace. Before anyone could say or do anything, he rammed it the hilt in the very bottom of the scar, drawing it upwards until he'd left a deep, strangely bloodless, cut. Making the blade vanish again, he made a gesture reminiscent of a stage magician preparing to conjure a rabbit from a hat before plunging his right hand into the wound with a grotesque squelching sound, wriggling it deeper before pulling forth something and gently throwing it at Ryoga.
"That answer your question?"
Ryoga didn't speak; in fact he couldn't speak. He was too preoccupied staring at the still-pulsing organ nestled in his hands. It resembled an ordinary human heart, but one made from jet-black bedrock and deep blue-silver ice, the two materials cunningly interwoven so that it was almost impossible to tell where one began and the other ended. Arcs of lightning emerged from it and surged across its surface at seemingly random intervals. Gourry swallowed hard at the sight of it.
"Th-that's… that's just an illusion, right?"
"Illusion?"
Ranma's tone was totally blank, something that should have warned Gourry what was about to happen. But Gourry, as he would readily admit, wasn't the brightest of people, and he didn't really know Ranma that well. Thus he had no way of knowing that, in return to that question, Ranma would stand up and walk towards him, grab his sword-hand and then plunge it into his wound.
"Does that feel like an illusion to you?"
In the next room, Lina and Amelia sat up with a start as Gourry's terrified scream suddenly split the air. As one they rushed to the boy's room, barging through the door to find Gourry lying on the floor, gibbering mindlessly while Ranma stood over him, pulling his shirt back on. Lina looked back and forth between the two before shaking her head.
"I don't know and I don't know that I want to know. Just keep the noise down all right? Some of us need our beauty sleep!"
After the girls had left, the boys themselves settled down to sleep, Ranma casually tossing Gourry's sack over his twitching form as though he hadn't just driven the blond-haired swordsman catatonic. Other than that, the group enjoyed a peaceful night's sleep… until somewhere around the middle of the night that is, when someone stealthily slipped in through the door, closing it behind them, and snuck over to Ranma's bed. Now, this was perhaps the worst thing they could have done; while Ranma was and still is something of deep sleeper, his time in Otherworld has enforced in him an ability to stay alert whilst still asleep.
Even prior to Otherworld, Ranma has had a deep distrust of anyone who tries sneaking around him whilst he is sleeping, a state of affairs no doubt hammered into the fabric of reality by the rude awakening he got when Shampoo first snuck into his bed to sleep beside him way back. As a result, he instantly snapped awake the moment this person crept into the room where he was sleeping, his gaze hardening as he, or she, or it, moved to his bedroll. Under the cover, his hand moved in certain mystical gestures as he whispered the invocation to a spell under his breath.
"Thunderclap."
Now, all the various magical disciplines of Otherworld have both offensive and non-offensive spells in their arsenals. Mysticism favours non-offense, whilst Sorcery favours destruction, but both aspects of magic are represented in all of the disciplines. The Thunderclap spell is a non-offensive spell of Elementalism, effectively causing the sound of its namesake to emanate from the caster. Though not outright deadly, it is still somewhat startling. Especially if you happen to be sleeping next to the caster when he casts it. Ryoga, Zelgadis and even Gourry, trauma apparently forgotten, shot awake with a great deal of confusion to the sight of Ranma grappling with some stranger.
They struggled to free themselves from their so-called bedding and grab their weaponry, but Ranma broke his victim's spine within a matter of seconds. No sooner had they sprung to their feet, too late to intervene, than they clutched their noses, the fetid stench of decay and plague-wracked flesh suddenly infusing the room. Ranma muttered something under his breath and then clicked his fingers, creating a crackling ball lightning to shed light on the situation. He gently rolled the corpse over onto its back, revealing a face with jagged, slime-caked fangs for teeth, a swollen tongue covered with a thick fur of mould and rotting, sore-coated flesh. The others recoiled as Ranma took a hissing breath.
"Plague-Spawn. Damn it. These filthy wretches travel in packs, so where there's one there's bound to be more, and lots of them too. I wouldn't be surprised if everyone else in the inn is one."
"What are we standing here for then? We gotta warn Lina and Amelia!"
Gourry rushed to the door and pulled it open… to reveal a snarling mass of Plague-Spawn standing outside it. He instantly slammed the door shut and spun around so that his back was pressed firmly against the door, which reverberated as the Plague-Spawn began to thump and bang against it.
"Guess we're not going that way!"
"Why bother going that way anyway? The direct approach works much better in these sorts of situations."
Gourry, Zelgadis and Ryoga all stared at Ranma, who sighed in return before gesturing emphatically, first at Ryoga, then at the wall between their room and Lina and Amelia's. Ryoga blinked before comprehension dawned. One Bakusai Tenketsu later and they were in the girl's room, where Ryoga Bakusai Tenketsu'd the outer wall before the group leapt free of the hotel. As the Plague-Spawn began swarming into the now-empty rooms, Lina and Ranma hurled a Fireball and a Gale Bomb respectively into the building, bringing it crashing down. The very irate adventurers quickly picked off the few Plague-Spawn who managed to struggle free, Ranma grabbing the last surviving one.
"All right, where is your master? Tell me and I'll give you a quick death, refuse and you will scream, that I promise you."
The Slayers and Ryoga looked amongst each other questioningly whilst the Plague-Spawn suddenly twitched, stiffened, and grinned, a sepulchral voice, more like a chorus of voices speaking just barely out of unison with each other, emanating from it.
"If you would throw your life away mortal, come to the north-east. The boneyard will claim your remains."
A creepy laugh echoed through the night as Ranma tossed the Plague-Spawn to the ground, where the flesh rotted into a putrescent liquid and the bones crumbled into mouldering fragments. Ranma scowled and wiped his hands together before walking to the northeast.
"Wait just one minute! What was all that about?"
"Plague-Spawn are created as Necromantic Minions, which means all Plague-Spawn have a master. Now, considering the nature of Plague-Spawn, do you really think that this master of theirs is going to be peaceful? I wouldn't bet on it. So that means that I, at least, have to track it down and kill it. If only to avenge having my sleep interrupted."
"Now hold up! That's three times in a row we've fought monsters' that we've never heard off, but you know all about them! What's the deal?"
"The only logical explanation is that we aren't the only ones to have come from the Hidden Lands."
Ryoga blinked in confusion; how did Ranma know about the lie he'd concocted to deceive the Slayers? Ranma's eye glinted in his direction as the Slayers looked confused at Ranma's explanation. He heaved a rather melodramatic sigh before explaining himself further.
"The lands we came from, the Hidden Lands, have been cut-off from the outside world for eons. Common knowledge is that the barriers were erected to keep others out, but some believe they were actually erected to keep us in. Wizards here are regarded with respect, yes? They often have a strong political presence, correct?"
He waited for Lina, Amelia and Zelgadis to nod in reply before continuing.
"Things are different in the Hidden Lands; wizards do not have a political presence; they are the political presence. It is we mages who rule the Hidden Lands; we have absolute power over all non-magic users in the Hidden Lands, and have controlled them for eons. But that does not mean we have ruled peacefully, oh no. We have warred amongst ourselves for almost that long, breeding legions of monstrosities beyond anything you've seen here and devising devastating spells to further our goals of conquest. The Plague-Spawn are creatures created by Necromancers, and that means that one of them must also be in your lands."
"That's twice now you've mentioned something called a Necromancer. What are they?"
"In the Hidden Lands, we have developed… different magics to the ones you use. You have only three classes of magic; White, Black and Shamanism, simple and direct. But we have five classes of magic, each one unique. Mysticism is… well, it's the Magic of Life basically, magic to control plants and animals and even the living soul. Sorcery is a magic with which you would be quite comfortable, as it is the Magic of Fire, Heat and Metal. Geomancy is the Magic of Earth, the power to control rocks and stones and the soil beneath one's feet."
Ranma suddenly stopped, yawned, and stretched until his joints cracked before resuming speaking.
"I myself am a practitioner of Elementalism, the Magic of Storms, which grants me control over winds, the weather, frost and lightning. The final discipline of magic is Necromancy, the Magic of Death. Its dominion lies over death, decay, corruption, pestilence, madness and the demonic. Its practitioners are feared throughout the Hidden Lands for their vileness and the sheer repugnance of their spellcraft. If one of them is here in your lands, then it can only spell trouble. Now that this game of twenty questions is over, can I go? I don't know how much ground I have to cover."
"Yeah, yeah, you can go. And we're coming with you; nobody, but nobody interrupts the beauty sleep of the beautiful sorcery genius Lina Inverse and gets away with it!"
"Suit yourself."
Several days later, after several days of being randomly attacked by Plague-Spawn, Cannibal Zombies and other, weirder, things, the group reached where they figured whoever was sending these creatures after them was hiding. A deep cave, guarded by about a dozen Plague-Spawn, stood before them. By now the group were tired and hungry; they hadn't had a decent night's sleep since that inn incident, with bands of monsters attacking them at least once every night, and for the last mile or so there had been nothing to eat; animals caught had turned out to be decaying walking corpses, whilst fruits looked healthy but when cut open revealed an interior of liquid rot and writhing maggots. Suffice to say that none of them were in a particularly good mood.
"If he's not here then I'll eat my cape! Let's get him!"
"Hold on Lina. While I understand your enthusiasm, and even appreciate it, we really don't want to let our enemy know we're here. Let me take care of those guards; your spells are too noisy."
"Okay, but I don't see how your spells are any quieter."
Ranma whispered two words that Lina made out as "Gore Storm", before flinging something at one of the Plague-Spawn. A faint flicker of light surged across its form, but then nothing. Lina turned to Ranma with a mocking tone to her voice.
"Some spell."
Ranma said nothing, but his eyes suddenly developed a reddish glow. Lina turned back to the guards just in time to see the Plague-Spawn Ranma had struck explode into a swirling crimson vortex. The glow in his eyes intensifying, Ranma's gaze flickered towards the next nearest guard. Before anyone could say or do anything the vortex shot across the ground to hit the guard, emitting a faint sound that could be likened to a buzzsaw cutting through wood. As Ryoga and the Slayers watched in horrified fascination, the vortex literally ground the guard into the organic equivalent of sawdust, growing larger and spiralling faster as it did so.
As they watched it shot towards the next target, leaving not so much as a drop of blood behind where its first victim had been. Growing larger, faster and stronger with every kill, it chased down each guard, shredding them into pulp. When the last guard had been disposed off, it stopped moving, spiralling faster and faster, its shape distorting until it was no longer a spiralling vortex but a floating globe of blood. Energy rippled across its surface before it suddenly exploded into action, a pseudopod erupting from its surface and arcing through the air to strike Ranma in the face.
The crimson fluid poured down Ranma's body, but had they looked they would have seen it halt somewhere around his lower legs before flowing back upwards. As they watched in repulsion the gore flowed through the air and down Ranma's casually opened mouth, until all that was left was a faint trickle at the side of Ranma's mouth. He licked it up then exhaled, an ecstatic sigh of a sound before he laughed.
"I'd forgotten just how good that spell felt."
"You are… disgusting!"
Ryoga spat. Ranma turned and smirked at him.
"You think that was bad? This Necromancer we go to face will have far worse, believe me. Besides which, it's not the act that gives me pleasure, nor do I derive any nourishment from it, it's the rush from all that collected life-force energy surging into the very fabric of my being that I enjoy. Now are you coming or what?"
Somewhat hesitantly, Ryoga and the Slayers followed Ranma into the cave. He held up his hand to stop them just before a thick wall of stone dropped from the ceiling to seal off the passageway they were approaching. Ryoga smashed through it with the Bakusai Tenketsu, and then followed Ranma. Several times they were ambushed and several times more the way on was sealed, but the group smashed their way through every obstacle, carefully noticing that, as they went further in, the floor became coated in an ever-thickening carpet of bones. Finally, they stood in a chamber stuffed with bones, a strange and ornate stone tablet sitting on a pedestal at the far end.
"This is it? After all we went through, all those nights with little sleep and less food, all this way to meet that stupid challenger, and he's not here?"
Lina screamed with frustration, a sentiment her travelling companions echoed. Then her eyes went to the tablet and she grinned a tired grin.
"Ah well, even if he's not here at least we won't go away empty handed!"
She approached the tablet and reached out to grab it- which was when the bones surrounding them suddenly began to leap into the air and hurl themselves at her, driving her away before forming a swirling barrier around the tablet. The same laugh they'd heard that night at the inn filled the air, and then streamers of a sickly-coloured mist began to rise from amongst the bones on the floor, forming into a cloud before them. Within its depths, they could see a multitude of decaying, tormented visages, flittering in and out of visibility. The group instantly slid into fighting postures, readying themselves for the next assault as the creature spoke.
"We are Geist, lord of the restless dead. And you will join our legions now."
Its form contracted in upon itself, then it flared outwards, sending a buzzing swarm of flesh-eating insects hurtling at Lina's face. Lina didn't even have the time to think of a counter before Ranma froze them solid with a gout of frost. She turned an eye his way, but his attention was fixated solely on Geist, shouldering his way past Lina.
"First we settle our debt, Mazoku!"
"Do we know you? We don't think we do."
If Geist had been human, Lina would have sworn he was nervous. But as he was a Mazoku, she dismissed that concept right off. Ranma was starting to look angry.
"Do you think I'm some kind of an idiot? And you stay out of this Ryoga! Did you really think I wouldn't recognise you? You're going to pay for stealing that Nullstone from me!"
"Gak! You! You're supposed to be dead!"
"If I could beat your stupid partner to a bloody pulp without getting so much as a scratch-"
Lina decided that it would better for her not to mention the fact that Valmont had put a hole you could see through in Ranma's stomach and then bitten his hand off.
"-Then what makes you think a measly blow like that would kill me? It's payback time!"
Ranma slipped into a fighting posture that looked really impressive- until he sailed right through Geist's body when he tried to attack him. Lina's eyes narrowed as she threw a Fireball at the Mazoku, which also passed through its insubstantial form. She ignored the dirty look Ranma threw at her after deflecting the Fireball, choosing instead to unleash a barrage of Flare Arrows, again to no avail. Ranma dodged frantically, using his agility in conjunction with an Air Shield to keep himself from being blown away by his own ally.
"Will you WATCH where you're aiming please!"
Geist laughed his sepulchral laugh before taunting his foes.
"You fools! We have progressed beyond the world of flesh and blood. Mortals such as you cannot touch us! Make peace with your gods, for now you join us in the afterlife!"
Geist laughed again, failing to notice the sudden glint in Ranma's eye.
"Physically incorporeal… a Mazoku… Zelgadis, Amelia! Hit him with the Ra Tilt! He's a creature composed entirely of tainted spiritual energy, your Spirit Shamanism spells should wipe him from existence!"
The visages with Geist's depths looked frightened, Zelgadis and Amelia's faces broke into twin grins as they began the invocation to the most powerful spell of Spirit Shamanism. Geist pulsed, levitating and hurling an array of bones at the two wizards, but Ranma, Gourry and Ryoga blocked, deflected and smashed them all.
"Ra Tilt!"
Calling out the name for their spell, Amelia and Zelgadis unleashed the blast of spiritual energy, lancing from their hands to smash deep into the "heart" of Geist's form. The Mazoku shrieked in a chorus of voices as its form dispersed into nothing. The group waited for a few seconds, then sheathed their swords- both physical and metaphorical.
"Well, that was easy. I really was expecting something a little tougher."
Said Lina. Ranma nodded, stroking his chin thoughtfully.
"I agree. A creature like that would have had immense reserves of magical power. So why didn't he use it?"
"Who cares? Let's just grab that tablet thing and get out of here; we've stopped the Plague-Spawn haven't we?"
Said Ryoga. Lina nodded in partial agreement, and then went to pick up the tablet. Which was when the place apparently decided to explode. The entire mass of bones carpeting the floor leapt into the air as one and began to smash themselves against the group, who frantically tried to defend themselves. Lina could see a strange group of flying… 'things' made from assorted bones grab the tablet and fly away, but was unable to do anything to stop them, being too busy trying to keep a pack of flying skulls from cracking her skull. Oddly enough, it was Ryoga who saved them. For perhaps the first time in his life, Ryoga pulled a Ranma and invented a brand-new martial arts technique on the spot.
"Shi-Shi Hokodan Burst!"
The blast of green, depression-charged ki erupted from Ryoga's body in all directions, overwhelming the magic imbued within the bones and smashing them into powder. It also knocked Ryoga's comrades silly, but better bruised then dead. Once they extracted themselves from the walls they gathered around him, Ranma looking at him with something that looked uncannily like respect. Lina looked at the now-empty pedestal and sighed.
"Twice now these Mazoku creeps have stolen something from us. Just what is wrong with us?"
"Oh, don't sweat it. These things happen. Besides, third time's the charm, right? We'll find them, and whatever they're planning. Now it's personal!"
"Wasn't it personal before, when they hit you over the head and stole the Nullstone?"
"Shut up Ryoga."
Sighing over their pseudo-victory, the tired group made their way out of the bone-littered caves to the light of day.
Is it just me? Or am I getting worse –or darker- as I further this story? Ah well, please review and let me know what you think! Before anyone asks, Zelgadis made up that explanation he gave to Ranma, to make Rezo seem like more of a villain. As to how Ranma overheard Ryoga's explanation… I really haven't a clue. Maybe he was semi-conscious while Ryoga told it? Still, it's not that big a plot-hole, and a story this warped was bound to have one sooner or later.