Chapter 15 - Z
"Enough with the bats!" I yelled. Seriously, if they intended to create a haunted mansion, they should have put more of a scaring factor and less of an annoying factor.
I brushed some of the glass off of my jacket. Wait, I'm not holding his hand anymore. I turned around with a slight smile, hoping he was scared out of his wits so I could hold him again, but instead I found him sinking into the floor. "YURICK!" I screamed, reaching out towards the only part of him that hadn't disappeared. I fell to the floor and he was nowhere to be seen. "DAMN IT!" I hit the floor as hard as I could. How could I have lost him? I felt like my heart was going to be ripped out.
"Oh no!" cried Horace, "At this rate, we'll be gone too!"
I didn't care. Maybe then I'd be taken to where Yurick and Dagran were. I lost my brother, my friend, and my love, and now I was stuck to deal with this pathetic old man. I rose to my feet, with anger running through me. "Shut up, Horace. We are going to find them if it's the last thing we do." He looked scared so I added, "You brought us here to find your wife, the one person you love more than yourself, and yet you seem more concerned about your own well being than with hers. If you truly love someone, you put everything aside if they are in danger. Nothing else matters." I began walking forward, my sword firmly in my grasp. "I don't care what you do, but, if you don't come, after I find my loved ones, I'm leaving." He followed behind me silently. Pathetic.
As we opened the door at the end of the hallway, I heard laughing. It was a child. The next room was another bedroom, but this one had a huge bed and only one large bookcase. On the bed was that boy I saw in the window on our way into the mansion. I didn't mention him because I knew Horace couldn't see him anyway. The entire room had a creepy vibe, but I would put up with anything to find Yurick and the others. I walked around the room and found another mirror on the other side of the bed. Maybe if I'm taken I'll find them.
I looked around a little more before I touched the mirror, partially to decide whether or not it would be smart to do so. I found a book on the bedside table, but as I reached out for it I heard Horace scream and glass shatter….. again….
There were two more skeletons to fight. I defeated one of them easily, but Horace was injured. I ran over to help as the second attacked me. I fought him over to the other side of the room and defeated him as well, but I was too late. The one from the mirror had taken him. The little boy was laughing, still.
I was all alone, wondering whether or not I would be taken, too, or whether or not I would want to be. I ran back over to the book, hoping in some wild side of my imagination that it might have a clue in it. I was desperate at the point.
Diary of the lady of the house 10 September
I am increasingly unable to understand what he is thinking. Even at meals, he is rude and makes no secret of his hostility towards the master. Oh, how I wish that he would put an end to his thoughtless ways.
I skimmed the next few pages.
12 October
The servant, Henrietta, is no longer at the house. Upon asking my husband why, he said he had expelled her due to rudeness. What's going on? She is the fourth servant he has let go this year. They all left without removing their effects from their room or bidding me farewell. What could possibly have happened to all of those young women?
Now I was getting somewhere. People going missing.
17th October
The deeds in which he engaged in that room were truly abhorrent! He is pure evil! I detest him from the core of my very being!
That was even more confusing than I thought it would be. I wondered what acts this man caused, and whether or not it was the husband or the master. I couldn't think of how it related to my problem so I ran, with the book in hand, towards the mirror. I touched it, but nothing happened. I stared into it like I did before, but nothing happened. WHERE ARE YOU?!
I ran back out into the hallway. There was nowhere else to check but that grave yard that Horace had pointed to earlier. As I ran towards the door, a sword from a crest on the wall flew towards me. I dodged quickly yelling, "Not funny! Who does these things?!" I felt that heart attack Yurick had mentioned before. Oh no. Yurick. My heart was going to shrivel up and die. I had to find him. I ran faster towards the door. "Man eating mansion…. This place gives me the creeps…" The door to the grave yard opened by itself. I hesitated, then ran through, hoping for the best.
The first thing I saw was a circle of coffins. "Coffins, lucky me." I ran around the yard until I saw that one of the coffins was opened slightly. I pushed the top off and found…. "DAGRAN!"
He sighed, "The bastard caught me off guard, is all." He wondered into the center of the circle and looked around. I gave him a quick, very unmanly hug and sighed with relief. He didn't complain. He was probably pretty freaked out, but wouldn't admit it on his life.
If he was in one then the others are probably here, too! I opened the next one, going counter clockwise. "Lowell, are you okay?"
"I'm not bad. Old Black Bones must be off parting with the other skeletons." He laughed.
I rolled my eyes and opened the next one. An armed skeleton jumped out at me. "Ah!" I yelled, hitting it with my sword. Lowell and Dagran laughed at me. I killed it as easily as the others and continued to open the rest of the six coffins. Yurick, where are you…
The next one had Yurick in it. "Yurick," I could barely speak. I was so relieved that he was okay. I pulled him into me and held him for as long as I could. "Thank god you're alright. I was so worried," I whispered to his hair.
He was shaking so much. "I-I- I'm fine." He wrapped his arms around me as I pulled him out of the cold stone case. "Thank you. Are you alright?" I nodded and just held him.
Lowell opened the second to last coffin to find an explosion, which we all laughed at as his face was covered in ash. He smirked and wiped his face. Then in the very last one we found Horace. "You alright there, mate?"
"Th-Thank you!" He was shaking so much that Dagran had to lift him out of the coffin.
"I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you might want to look at this." Lowell was staring at a tomb stone. We walked over to see what he was looking at.
Here lies Lowell
I walked around and saw that all of the stones were like that. "Zael, Yurick, Lowell, Syrenne, Dagran, Mirania, Horace, and Meredith." I stopped in front of the one I did not recognize.
Horace ran over to me, "Meredith!" he cried as he fell to his knees in front of the stone. Must be his wife. Speaking of wife… I walked back over to Yurick and stood right behind him, which was good because he looked like he was about to faint from seeing his own name on one of the stones. I placed my hands on his hips and held him up right.
"My only concern about this is how they had Mirania and Syrenne's names." Dagran walked around the yard again. "What's this?" he bent down and grabbed a pair of glasses.
"Those belong to my Meredith!" Horace cried, again falling to his knees, the glasses clutched in his hands. "Please, Master Zael, you have to save my dear, sweet, Meredith!"
I sighed. "I know, just calm down. We should head back inside."
As we headed back towards the door, Lowell said, "You look moody, Dagran. What's up? Oh yeah, didn't you promise Mirania…"
"I said," Dagran cut him off, "I'd buy her all the muffins she wanted after that last fight, the pig."
"Come on, mate, what girl's gonna like you if you act like that?" Lowell put a hand on his shoulder and winked. "You made a promise, so you keep it."
Dagran looked at him like he was stupid. "She ate 214 of them!"
Lowell looked intrigued and I just snickered and kept walking. "I see… Oh my, she can really put it away, can't she?"
Yurick turned quickly towards them, "Can we forget about that now? Let's just finish this and get the bloody hell out of here!"
I smiled at him from behind Dagran's shoulder.
"That's right! We need to save Meredith!" we all looked over in surprise to see Horace too eager to continue into this house. I wondered if it was to save her or his own arse.
"Right, back on track." I stopped when I saw the boy walking down the hallway towards a door. My eyes followed him.
"What is it, Zael?" Dagran turned to me. I shook my head and followed the boy, even though it looked like I was leading the way to the rest of them.
The next room was yet another bedroom with a fairly large bookcase and another large bed. The only difference in this room was that the bookcase looked like it could be moved. There was a groan coming from the other side of it.
"It might me Meredith!" Horace yelled.
I ran my hand over the wall next to it. "A key hole? There must be a key somewhere."
"Well let's find it then," Yurick pushed open the next door which led to a balcony.
I shrugged and followed him. I wanted him out of here just as much as he did.
Out on the balcony, the black skeleton came back. "Shit, he's back!" Yurick yelled.
Dagran, Lowell and I jumped in front of him and began attacking. I kept Yurick behind me, terrified to lose him again. With the three of us, it didn't take long at all to kill him so we continued on to the next door. This one was a main room. Sort of like a lounge. It had two couches and a small table and a decorative rug. We searched around the room for anything that might house a key. On the table, we found another book. Yurick picked it up, opening to a random page and read:
Diary of Master Denos 12th November
The lord is truly despicable! I will make him pay for what he has done! The time of the ritual is near. Now I need only to prepare the sacrifices and wait.
"Sacrifices?!" Yurick paused. Dagran grunted and searched around more.
3rd December
His demands grow daily. That demon has already been offered four lives! But it will not be long now. Soon I shall be immortal and command an entire legion of the undead!
Yurick's hands were shaking. I stood next to him and read over his shoulder.
24th December
I do not know who I am anymore. I have offered all that I can offer. Even the lives of my family! I feel that I have now become inseparable from that demon. My soul is corrupted and my heart darker even than the night of a new moon. There can be no turning back. I shall now do the one thing that remains to be done. I shall offer up this mortal body and fulfill the eternal curse.
"What the hell?" Lowell crossed his arms. "That man is off his rocker."
"We should continue," Yurick stood by the next door until we were all near, and then opened it slowly. It led back to the grand hall that we first entered. In the middle, there was the broken chandelier with…. Something shiny… I approached it slowly and saw that it was a key.
"I found a key!" I held it up in front of me to show the others. Yurick was pointing behind me again. I sighed and turned quickly, drawing my sword, just in time to see… a suit of armour? "What the-." It swung at me. I blocked. "How did I guess these things would move?! They're so creepy!" The others joined me as more of them came out of the alcoves, all of the alcoves, to fight us.
"Zael, have you seen something like this before?" Dagran asked, fighting two at a time.
"A sword hanging on the wall in the hallway flew at me before I found you," I broke one of the pieces of metal and it fell to the floor. Then I turned to the next one.
"Looks like the sword was for starters. Now we're getting the full course!" He charged at a suit and it, too, fell to the floor.
"What's this light?!" Yurick pointed to a blue ball that left a suit of armour and possessed the next.
"I think it's a soul," I replied while trying to avoid being thrown on the floor. "Every time we break one of these things, it flies up to the next one that wants to kill us."
"If we smash the suits first, the lights won't be able to use any of them," Yurick began to fight another one with his fire circles.
"Then we'll just have to destroy all of the armour!" Dagran lunged and took out another suit.
I ran around the room looking for the suits that hadn't been possessed yet and destroyed them. "Can you hold them off while I do this?" I pulled out my cross bow after knocking down all of the ground level ones.
"Yeah sure, take your sweet time," Lowell replied sarcastically.
"Thank you," I hid behind one of the pillars and fired burst arrows at the unused suits. Each one crashed to the ground. One of them I shot at a bad time. Yurick had been cornered and I didn't see him there until I saw the course of the falling shield. "YURICK!" I ran towards him and was able to knock him out of the way just in time to have it fall on me instead. I fell to the floor, the heavy iron shield on my back. "Ah, that hurt," I murmured. I tried to get up but the shield was extremely heavy. Either that or my back was broken, but I hoped that it wasn't the latter.
"You idiot! Hold on!" He cast a fire circle that kept the armour away from us by a small distance, but it was enough. He bent down to me and pushed the shield off of me. Then he wrapped my arm around his neck and pulled me to my feet, but I couldn't stand, so I just fell right back down, pulling him with me. He leaned me against the wall. "Shit, what made you do that?"
"It was about to fall on you because I wasn't paying attention. I couldn't let that happen." I smiled at him.
"You really are an idiot," he ran a hand through my hair.
"I have a favour to ask," he nodded at me, "will you hand me my crossbow?"
He rolled his eyes. "You are in no condition to fight right now." I gave him my best stubborn 'I'm not going to do as you say' look. "Fine." He handed it to me and I pulled my quiver off of my belt.
"I can still hit the armour this way." I pulled it up to my face and targeted the nearest suit, breaking it to pieces. He shrugged and began casting again, but as he made another circle, the one we were in disappeared.
"I can't! If I keep attacking them, I can't protect you." He looked back down at me and cast the circle around us again.
I shot at the two suits right outside the circle, causing them to back up, but not breaking them. "I can hold them back as well. You do what you need to."
He nodded reluctantly and the circle around us disappeared again. I shot the last few suits in my field of vision and started shooting at the ones who came to close to Yurick. His fire knock out a few more and Lowell and Dagran began teaming up on the last few until they were all gone. I dropped my bow on my lap and panted. It hurt my shoulder more than I thought it would have.
"Zael, are you okay?" Dagran kneeled next to me and placed my bow on the other side of me so I wouldn't accidentally shoot my foot.
"Here's the key. Go save her, then come back for me. I just need to rest for a minute. I'll be right behind you."
He nodded then stood and pulled Lowell and Horace out of the room with him. Yurick kneeled down and kissed my forehead. It was extremely warm and it coursed through my entire body. I smiled at him.
"Keep this with you. I don't trust this place." He put my crossbow back on my lap and propped my quiver on my leg so I could reach it easier. "I love you."
"I love you more."
He ran off after the others.
Side-Note: Again, I want to apologise for the idiotic mistake of messing up these chapters. I had switched thumb drives in the middle of writing them and I guess they just didn't transfer correctly. so the chapter 15 that you thought was chapter 15 was actually chapter 17... brilliant, right?... very sorry, again. please continue enjoying and reading.