Chapter 18
The Keep
The wagon stopped, as did the curses and the torture. They carried Raphael on the board to a large fortress-like building. It was very similar to the palace of Plegia they had tried to get the gemstones from when they had first attempted the Awakening ritual back in his time, but this had one major difference; the bones of Grima were there. The Grimleal had rebuilt their fortress on the bones of their fallen god in hopes that he would see it as an offering. Weird… Raphael thought, why would they just move their entire fortress so they would be near their master's bones? They're more messed up than I thought. He chuckled.
"You think something is funny, mutt?" One of the Grimleal guards said to him after hearing him laugh, "Maybe you should take it up with the Sorcerer Supreme. I hear he has 'special' plans for you. Heheh… now I'm the one chuckling! How does it feel, maggot?" He leaned over Raph to get in his face.
Raphael spit on his face.
The guard wiped his face and looked at his hand. He turned on Raphael and became enraged. He unsheathed his sword and prepared to chop.
"STOP! For my plan to work, I need him in one piece."
Raphael couldn't see many people, but he could make out the voice; it was Perelous.
"Forgive me, Supreme. Please show your wrath upon this man." The guard said with a bow.
"What I do to him is out of your control!" Perelous barked, "Take him to the dungeons until the preparations are complete."
Raphael was moving again. He rounded a few corners, went through a few doors, and traveled down what seemed to be an endless staircase until he stopped. He could hear other prisoners in the cells around him and he could see the dim light of a few torches down the hallway.
His stretcher was straightened and he was unbound. At that moment, he attempted to make his escape by brute force. He punched the first guard square in the jaw, then he elbowed the next in the crotch. Both went down with a grunt and a thud. The dark mage instantly whipped out his tome and ran with the fighter watching his back. Raph chased them down the hall until he found himself weak and dreary, no doubt an effect of a dark mage. The two guards dragged him back to his assigned cell and locked the door. He stood up and got to the door and shouted after them, "You will regret doing this! You cannot hold me forever!"
"They don't need to." Said the prisoner who was already occupying the cell, "They just need to hold you for a few days and then, you're nothing but a rat to be experimented on."
Raphael turned to see a man sitting on one of the beds. He looked normal, but something with his voice seemed off. He could only see half of the man due to the dim lighting, but he appeared to be dressed as a Feroxi fighter.
"And who are you?" Raphael asked.
Without turning his head to look at Raph, he spoke, "Pal, I'm your new, and last, friend… My name is Esbern, but names don't really matter. You'll forget the name…" He turned to look at Raphael. Raphael shuddered slightly when he saw how disfigured this man was. One half of his face was completely gone with only his eye, which was glowing red. The other half was not doing much better. He had burn marks and scars all over his arms and face, and his entire body was an odd, purple hew.
"…but you'll never forget the face…" He said solemnly.
Aaron walked through the crowd of New Shepherds, carrying an odd looking suitcase with him.
"Where have you been?!" Severa yelled, "We were supposed to stay together! You left me in the Plegian deserts, you dastard!" She unsheathed her sword and charged at him. He had not expected this kind of a reaction from Severa, but it was probably his own fault. Fortunately for Aaron, Gerome intervened by grabbing her by her sword arm as she got close.
"Save your strength for the enemy, Severa." Gerome said.
She continued to try to squirm free of Gerome's wyvern-tried grip, but with no success.
"I wasn't going to hurt him…" She huffed. She returned her glare at Aaron, "…badly."
"Aaron, what are you doing here?" Lucina asked, "I thought that you would just want to live for yourself when we got here."
Aaron laughed, "Who said I wasn't?" Aaron opened his suitcase, just barely, and pulled out a small paper and held it up. "This document that I obtained from a Plegian who was trying to rob supplies from me says that the Plegian treasury was never touched when you guys killed Validar. I think someone needs to do a little cleaning in there." He put the paper back into his suitcase and closed it. "Helping Raphael is just an added benefit to this expedition."
"Helping Raphael is the priority, Aaron!" Lucina said in anger, "If your priority is for yourself, then travel by yourself!"
"Sheesh, Princess. Chill!" Aaron said, "I'll help you get Raph out, then I'll rob. 'Kay? Sound good?"
Lucina rubbed her forehead and sighed, "Yes, Aaron…"
The door opened once again, but this time it was several people. The Defenders had been told to meet with the New Shepherds in the mess hall by Priam. Silence fell on all in the hall until Aramis spoke up.
"Where's the head honcho of this group?" He said with his chest puffed out, "I want to clarify a few things about this mission."
"I am she." Lucina said from her place in the middle of the crowd. She had been standing on a stool to get everyone's attention, but hopped down when the Defenders arrived. "I assume you're second in command to Priam?" She asked as she extended her hand to Aramis. Just as he was about to say something and shake her hand, Jack Interrupted and swatted his hand, "That position, I believe, was given to Raph; but seeing as he is not here, none of us are considered such." Jack bowed respectfully, "Jack, milady, is my name. My comrades are Aramis, Helen, Nathaniel, Tanuitia, and Clarisa."
"Thank you, Jack. I'm sure you will all soon meet our team in due time as we travel. But for now, we must make preparations for saving Raphael."
The door opened once again. Priam and Say'ri stepped through the door and made their way to the middle of the room.
"Those of you going on this rescue mission, gather 'round. Orders are about to be given." Priam said in a booming voice, "I've assigned Clarisa to be second in command of the Defenders, and Lucina will be lieutenant over both factions." He turned to both of them, "I suggest that you get to know one another. It's necessary that this army see eye to eye so both factions have been assigned to handle packing and inventory. This needs to be done BEFORE the sun comes up today. DISMISSED!"
Priam left to discuss tactics with the war council again, but Say'ri stayed behind to assist the group in any way she could.
"…Wait, did he say your name was Lucina?" Clarisa asked, "Like the Exalt's daughter?"
Lucina sighed; she had told this story too many times to count.
"Well, you see…"
"How can you just sit there? Give me a hand and we can both escape!" Raphael said as he tried to pry the bars apart.
"'Escape'?! Hah! Don't you think I've tried? Look at my hands; scarred and dirty from digging."
"But I can feel the bars giving!"
"There's a curse on the bars makes them feel that way, pal." Esbern replied, "They always feel like they're about to give."
"There's got to be some way out of here." Raphael muttered as he wiped the sweat from his forehead.
"There IS a way out of here, you dolt!" Esbern said through his cracked voice.
"Then why haven't you escaped?" Raphael asked.
"It isn't an escape. It's surrender. A surrendering of your soul."
Raphael turned to Esbern with a curious expression, "Say more."
Esbern sighed, "The Grimleal have discovered a way to get stronger Risen. Instead of their conventional method of summoning them from their graves, they discovered that they are stronger 'still fresh.'"
A guard came down to the prisons, unlocked one of the cells, and dragged the man in there out of his cell and up the stairs.
"Did you see that, friend?" Esbern asked, "He'll be their newest Risen Chief, I'm sure of it. He was a good soldier in life..."
"What? How are they able to do this?"
"They take a person up to those stairs and strap them to a worktable. The 'patient', as they call them, undergoes extreme amounts of torture while they are having their soul pulled from them and into small crystals they call 'soul gems.' As the soul is removed, a void fills the empty space left by an absent soul. The stronger a patients spirit, the harder it is for them to remove the soul.
"I am one such case. They tried for hours to pull my soul from my body, but it would not give in the slightest. A couple days ago, I looked just like you; a normal human being. But somehow they managed to amplify the process. They pulled me up there again and my soul didn't stand a chance. The only reason I still look like this and am not a roaming monster is because they just stopped halfway through. They were conserving their energy for something, or someone, bigger than me. I now assume that they were waiting for you."
Raphael was astonished. This all just seemed like a nightmare, wait, maybe it is… *pinch*…nope, still real…
Esbern continued, "The warriors they have here are my former regiment, sent by Khan Flavia to secure this keep. As you can see, we obviously failed…"
They heard loud screams and then the indistinguishable sound of a moaning Risen.
"Hmm," Esbern thought aloud, "that didn't take as long as normal."
This can't be happening…
HEY!...So I just want to clarify some of the new aspects to this story such as the soul gems. Yes, I did take the idea from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. I did not actually come up with it fully on my own.
Now that the technicalities are out of the way, I can talk about the plans for the next chapter. If you don't want any spoilers, STOP READING OR YOU'LL REGRET IT!...if you're still reading this, way to go!
I am going to have a section in the next chapter with Clarisa realizing that Priam is too old for her and I'm also going to have her fall for Jack while Jack hits on several other girls in the group. I'm also going to have a short conversation between Tia and Aaron talking about when she opened the Reeking Box that she bought from him.
SPOILERS COMPLETE!
Thank you so much for reading this originally fluffy, then depressing fanfiction. Please leave a review on what you think I could have done better or what I could do better. I write for reviews, just saying.
~TheSearcherer