Immortal

by T Nisbet

Chp. 39

  The stairs ended in a large circular chamber filled with various implements of torture hanging from the curved wall. Dried blood coated several thick, wooden chairs sitting in a row in the center of the torture chamber next to a large crudely made cage. A dozen or more chains hung suspended from the ceiling dangling down like spider webs above the bloodstained floor. The sense of evil in the chamber was tangible. I found myself holding my breath as we made our way over the sticky tiles to the dark elves guarding the passage on the far side of the horrid room.

  “Hold,” one of the guards said drawing his wicked looking sword and stepping in front of the tunnel.

  “You dare draw your weapon on the King’s Champion?” Guldan asked drawing his own blade. “I’ll have your head for this.”

  “Mi Lord,” the guard said, taking a step back, eyes wide as he realized who stood in front of him. “No one is to use the passage to the Chamber of Sacrifice unless accompanied by a priest or priestess Lord Guldan. By order of the King.”

  Guldan nodded making to sheath his sword, then at the last minute lunged forward quickly piercing the guard’s chest and slicing his heart. The other guard hesitated for a second seeing his companion fall to the floor in a heap. That hesitation cost him his life, as Guldan’s sword opened his throat. He choked, but was unable to call out for assistance and slumped to the floor, his lifeblood pumping out over his tunic.

  He struggled for a moment, then was still.

  “Quickly, drag the bodies over there,” Guldan said, pointing to a pile of rotting clothing stacked against a wall.

  I grabbed the first dark elf’s leg without thinking about it, and dragged him over to the pile. Guldan, carrying the second dark elf, joined me after a second. We piled the smelly rags on top of the two bodies and returned to the entrance to the passageway.

  “Hurry, we have to complete this part of our plan quickly. If their replacements arrive and find them missing the alarm will be raised.”

  Saying this Guldan sprinted off down the torch-lit passage. Ivy and I ran behind him. My heart was pounding with fear, waiting unreasonably for an alarm to sound behind me. Even as the wrongness I had felt in the torture chamber faded behind me, a malevolent, sickening presence assaulted me from the front as we ran towards the Chamber of Sacrifices. The weight of the evil we ran towards pressed against my chest, growing with each step. My breathing grew more and more restricted.

  Ivy began to slow. I could hear her whimpering beneath her hood.

  “I can’t!” she sobbed, stopping. She bent over and held herself tightly.

  I reached out and placed a hand on her shoulder.

  Guldan stopped and turned back towards her.

  “Worry not little mage,” he said more kindly than I’d heard him speak since we’d met. “It’s time. Give Jake the stone.”

  Ivy nodded and reached into her tan leather pants. A moment later she withdrew the egg sized red stone. Needles of heat lanced into the palm of my hand as I took it from her.

  “Stay here Lady Ivy.” Guldan soothed. “We’ll be back for you shortly. Come Immortal, lets finish this.”

  I shook my head , looking at Ivy. Tears were flowing down her face.

  “Go Dearheart!” Ivy pleaded. “Hurry back to me.”

  “I can’t leave you!”

  “You must!”

  Guldan grabbed my shoulder roughly pulling me around so he could stare into my eyes.

  “If you stop now all is lost and she will endure a fate much worse than death, we all will!”

  “Go Dear Heart!” Ivy sobbed.

  I took a deep breath and gave Ivy a quick kiss on the cheek, then turned and followed Guldan.

  Leaving Ivy behind was the most difficult thing I’d ever had to do in my life. Doing my best to keep up with the sprinting elf, I was bombarded with images of her being swarmed over by malevolent blood elves and their hideous swords. The horrible thoughts and the overwhelming need I felt to get back to Ivy as soon as possible gave me purpose as Guldan and I ran down the empty, torch lit corridor towards the Demon’s chamber.

  The palpable presence of evil continued to grow with every step, squeezing my chest like a vise. My breath became even more ragged, and I had to slow my pace. It hadn’t been more than a couple of hundred yards since I had abandoned Ivy, but it felt as if I’d been running for miles. I tried to draw in enough breath to tell Guldan to slow down, but realized I didn’t have too. Guldan’s normally light footfalls had become heavy and exaggerated. I could hear his labored breathing as he struggled to keep moving forward.

  After another fifty feet I had to stop and fight for breath. The heat of the stone in my hand, had grow into a molten fire that throbbed with each rapid heartbeat in my chest. In front of me, Guldan lurched to the side and stumbled into the wall of the corridor nearly collapsing.

  “I fail,” he choked, falling to a knee, grabbing at his chest as if he was having a heart attack. “Go! You must… trap the demon, nothing else matters.”

  I tried to nod, but my senses were reeling. Groaning aloud, I staggered forward past the wheezing elf, my heart threatening to explode out of my chest. The obscene pain in my left hand radiated up my arm constricting my chest. An oddly detached part of me wondered if I was having a heart attack too.

  Wave after wave of hatred and malice pulsed through me from the passage ahead growing in intensity with each shambling step I took. I stumbled drunkenly to the side reaching out for the wall, overwhelmed with sudden nausea. My fingers grasped at the cold stone surface only a moment before my stomach heaved, and its contents sprayed out of my mouth and nose showering the dark stone floor with my last meal. I groaned, unable to summon the energy to wipe the vomit off of my face, and staggered past the slippery puddle, continuing towards the Chamber of Sacrifices using the wall to help keep me upright. My stomach continued to clench and unclench, but I had nothing left to throw up. I knew if I turned and fled, the pain, pressure and revulsion would subside, but I couldn’t stop.

  Without warning my stomach muscles suddenly cramped so intensely that I tripped, falling forward hard onto the smooth stone flooring of the dismal passageway. As I lay there in a fetal position, unable to breath, images of the families sitting on the grass in the main square before the beautiful fountain in Lockewood flashed before my eyes. Their happy faces dared me to leave them to the horror that awaited them if I failed to stop the Demon from releasing the underworld spawn on their city.

  I took a shuddering breath and painfully rolled to my hands and knees. They would all die if I gave up now. With a supreme effort I somehow managed to lurch to my feet, leaning against the wall of the passage with my right shoulder. I could see stairs leading upward thirty or fourty feet ahead.

  “Make it to the stairs!” I challenging myself aloud. “Just to the stairs.”

  With all of the will I possessed I forced myself to put one foot in front of the other. My legs were shaking, powerless, and barely obedient to my instructions when the first vision hit me.

  My parents screamed something at me. I couldn’t tell what it was they were saying. I couldn’t move or speak. I was frozen in place as they started to melt. Their faces boiled, sagging as they screamed in utter, agonizing, soul consuming pain. I watched in horror as their skin started to slough off in chunks revealing the tissues and organs beneath.

  It wasn’t real! It couldn’t be them. They weren’t here. I was a world away.

  Ivy screamed out a throaty, lust filled sound that echoed off the walls of the passage. She was rocking frantically in the arms of my best friend, Toby, who laughed and smiled at me, his naked body straining with hers. I shook my head trying to shake the image away, but couldn’t.

  “Your not real!” I heard myself scream ,and the vision evaporated.

  In the instant before the next vision took me I became aware of the pain in my left hand. The stone. I focused on the excruciating pain…

  Guldan stepped back from me his dagger bright red with my bloo
d. I looked down at the redness spreading down the front of my shirt. The pain wasn’t coming from where he’d stabbed me, but from my hand. Why was…

  The vision shattered, and I staggered forward to the base of the stairs, gasping for breath. Black spots winked in and out of view as my vision swam and unconsciousness threatened to take me. Not knowing what else to do I squeezed the white hot stone more tightly in my fist and concentrated on the overwhelming pain. My vision cleared slightly, and I drew a shuttering breath and let it out in a growl. I could not fail! I couldn’t let this beat me. I’d crawl if I had too.

  “Please God!” I groaned, letting myself fall forward onto the stairway as waves of malevolent hatred slammed against me, threatening to unhinge my mind. I barely felt my knees smash against the stone. The horror before me was palpable.

  “It’s too much for you my son,” Thallium’s voice said in that grandfatherly way of his. “Drop the ruby and get out of here while you still can. Don’t worry, we’ll figure something out.”

  “Is that all you got Demon!” I screamed back at the voice.

  Crawling up the stairs on my hands and knees, something inside me urged me to start gathering magic. I tried, but couldn’t concentrate, the horror before me overwhelming my ability to focus. A part of me knew my mind was shutting down. I reached out again. There it was, the barest whisper of magic. My hand suddenly burst into flames, but I ignored it. I couldn’t feel anything more than a slight trickle of magic as I collapsed once more onto my stomach. Closing my eyes, I listened to my pounding heart and willed the trickle to become a stream. The oppressive weight of revulsion and malevolence crashing against me eased slightly as magic began to flow into me more steadily. The relief wasn’t complete, but it allowed me to take a couple of deep, shuddering breaths. Steeling myself against what was to come, I gritted my teeth together and scrambled painfully up the last three stairs and rolled into a huge, dimly lit room.

  The weight of evil doubled, smashing me to the bloody floor tiles, taking away whatever breath I had left in my lungs. My intuition screamed at me to take in more magic as my body spasmed. I didn’t have any time to spare. I closed my eyes, forehead pressed to the tile floor and willed the stream to become a flood, fighting to remain conscious.

  My skin began to prickle with energy, then burn. I managed to open my eyes just before my body ignited in blue flame. I needed to release it before the rest of my body matched the charred hand somehow still holding the Cardinal Ruby, but I couldn’t. My face suddenly smashed against the floor as I locked up in an agonizing, full-body cramp.

  Beyond the all-consuming pain, I felt Cardinal Ruby begin to pulse in my ruined hand.

  “Release the magic!” came an almost imperceptible thought. It needs to be captured. Countless lives depend on it!”

  My vision swam before me as I stared looked at the glowing ruby in my destroyed hand. I didn’t have long. I could feel myself about to lose consciousness.

  “Now!” the voice cried out.

  I thought of all the pain and suffering caused by the demon and it’s minions throughout the millennia as my vision began to fade. Millions of voices wailed for me to end the Demon’s reign.

  “No more!” I whimpered and willed the magic into the stone.

  I watched in morbid fascination as red light from the ruby in my hand grew and grew. The ruby pulled the magic out of me, faster and faster, slowly extinguishing the blue flames. The pulsing grew to a pounding. I cried out in agony, forehead pressed to the floor.

  And suddenly, it all stopped.

 

  I drew shuttering breaths into my burning lungs as I lay there trying to remain conscious. I wept as my blood joined the blood of those who had been sacrificed before me. There was no longer a sense of horrible, suffocating evil in the chamber. Opening my eyes, I looked at the ruby, expecting to find my hand completely ruined and instead found it undamaged! The egg shaped ruby glowed softly, but no longer burned my skin.

  I looked around the dimly lit chamber. Aside from a blood-soaked floor and alter it was just another room, if you can say that about a room nearly covered in dried blood.

  I couldn’t believe it. The presence of evil was gone!

  I rolled into a sitting position and wiped my face off, willing my breathing to slow. I survived it. I don’t know how, but I was alive and undamaged.

  Gathering my feet beneath me I stood up, tentatively, and found that my legs were answering my commands again. The weakness was gone, though I was shaken to the core of my being. I turned and shuffled slowly over to the stairs and out of the Chamber of Sacrifice.