by Darkbringer
Crystal started to wander curiously over to the door to see what was going on, and I forcibly swapped bodies with her, walking her back away. ‘We don’t need to see that,’ I thought to her, causing my own body to laugh girlishly. Mongo stared over at my body, puzzled at the odd sniggering I was making, and I swapped back over. It was a little disorienting to change places with our souls inside each other’s flesh, but it was becoming easier and more natural to do as Crystal and I both adjusted to our bond better.
“Aren’t you the least bit curious about what they’re doing in there, My Lord?” Crystal asked, teasingly.
“Oh, I am! I am,” I lied shamelessly. “Unfortunately, I need you to help me with something vitally important in here that I almost forgot about.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
“Help gather up all the broken pieces of our little forest statues,” I commanded.
“Are you planning to repair them? It’s a shame to see them destroyed like this,” Crystal replied, sadly.
“Even better,” I told her, putting on my ‘evil madman’ look and wringing my hands together furiously, “I’m going to use them to take over the world, Pinky!” Stopping from where she was bending over and picking up a shattered fragment of one of the tiny deer statues, Crystal raised an eyebrow and looked baffled in my direction. Even Mongo had a stupefied look on his face, which caused me to once again burst out laughing. “Never mind! It’s just a joke. I’m sorry,” I apologized.
“Child of Chaos,” Crystal muttered.
“Yep,” Mongo agreed.
“I keep telling you guys, I’m really not!”
“Yep.” “Uh-Huh.” Crystal and Mongo spoke at about the same time, took a moment and nodded to each other, and then replied in harmony, “We believe you…”
They totally didn’t!
Muttering under my breath, I used magic to help sweep up the rest of the scattered fragments of the broken statues that I’d worked so painstakingly hard to perfect and bring into existence in the dungeon down here. “Toss yours in the pile,” I muttered to Crystal while pointing to the pile of dust and stone shards. Nodding slightly, Crystal gently bent and put the pieces she’d collected into the debris heap, so they didn't break into any more fragments, and then she took a step back.
“Megan! David! Dark Corruption that controls this place!” I shook my fist all around and summoned my magic into it, creating a shining light that lit up the whole room. It was nearly time to head out, so a minor show of force and enthusiasm wouldn’t affect the dead any, but it might just give strength and courage to the others.
“You bastards of Darkness hear me!” I used my magic to amplify my voice and echoed it around us. (I’d like to claim it was to intimidate the darkness, but truth was, it was mainly to drown out the sound of the two healers discussing how best to insert the seed, in the other room. Some things a man doesn’t want to hear!)
“For many centuries, you’ve sat here, trapped and dormant; waiting for some hapless prey to fall into your clutches and release you upon the world again. You’ve tainted the soil! Corrupted the dead! Destroyed the forest and ruined all that you could get within your grip!” With a surge of energy, I blasted the door leading out into the hallway, sending it crashing into the opposite wall. Honestly, it looked impressive, but it truly required very little force; the door had already been weakened and damaged from the dead’s constant scratching and the rune which had exploded outside it earlier. The resounding bang that it made when it slammed into the other wall was quite satisfying, though.
“Be warned, Minion of Darkness! We are not easy meat! We will not fall, falter, nor allow you to have your way. You have slain our friends!” I send tendrils of air magic arcing out the door, mixed with a spray of chaotic color just to make it visible for Mongo and Crystal so they could see it as it blasted out in a torrential rush. “You have tainted our souls! You have committed evils against us that cannot and shall not be forgiven!”
Using the power of earth, I gathered up all the broken fragments of stone and lifted them into the torrent of rainbow wind. Like bullets, they hurtled forward, accelerating to an unbelievable velocity, and were rocketed by the wind out of the room and down the hall in either direction. The sound of bone and flesh being blasted apart by the impact with the fragments was loud and clear.
“We are coming for you, Darkness! We fear you not! We do not quiver and hide, nor attempt to run and leave you to your devices! The Gods had mercy on you when they left you sealed here to learn from the error of your ways!” Sensing that the stone was no longer hitting anything, I knew that the hall had been cleared. With a flick of my wrist, I reversed the wind, pulled the broken fragments of my sculptures back into the room, and forced them to shape into a large naginata.
Basically a long staff, with a swords blade at the end of one side, I wrapped the power of Chaos magic around the fragmented and powdery stone to hold it together. By itself, nature would’ve scattered the stone pieces and the weapon would’ve crumbled into a pile of debris like it was originally; but Chaos holds the power to overwrite such rules. By infusing the wild energy in amongst the fragments, the staff and blade adhered tightly together; creating a weapon that was strong, sharp, and formed by dozens of sculptures of nature that had been destroyed earlier.
“Behold!” I grabbed the staff firmly in my hands and shook it at the ceiling defiantly. “Nature’s Wrath even descends upon you! You have ruled this place for too long darkness! Now….”
“NOW WE COME FOR YOU!!!” I amplified my voice and sent it echoing down and out the tunnels into the passage beyond, and deliberately directed it back up towards the surface and the way we’d came, and not down in the direction Megan had traveled. I wanted to raise my companion’s moral; not alert the enemy that we were still alive and coming for them. I don’t know that they know we survived the explosions, so I’m not going to go out of my way to tell them.
Boldly stepping forward, I led the way out into the hall, staff held high…
… and nearly screamed and almost pissed myself as a small floating orb buzzed around not five feet from the left of the doorway!
I’d forgotten about the little floating orb that had been playing with Tiffany and staying with her. Apparently, it had seen the wind, watched the rainbow, and grown curious about the stones flying down and back up the hallway. The little thing had floated out of the bars, was curiously meandering to the door where we were at, and I almost walked out and right into it!
Gods be damned! There goes my moment as ‘fearless leader’. Crystal’s gut-bursting laughter told me that she knew what had happened, even if no one else did.
Sighing slightly, I glared at the orb – it completely ignored me and was now playing with some of the shattered skeleton bones on the ground by lightly zapping them to make the bone smoke and smolder – and tried to regain as much of my shattered dignity as possible, as I slowly led the way down in the direction I had sensed Megan last.
One Step Forward, Two Steps Back
I didn’t walk very far down the passageway before Mongo clambered past me in his new armor and pushed to the front. “Warrior’s take point,” was his only response as he brushed into the lead position. Crystal laughed lightly and then moved up behind him as supporting second, which forced me to move all the way to the back of the group and take Dino’s old spot. I just couldn’t imagine the healers not having some sort of rear guard to keep an enemy from sneaking up on them from behind – they were simply too valuable to leave unguarded like that.
One problem that I discovered quickly was that I really wasn’t cut out to stay in the rear like Dino had. Every time Mongo and Crystal engaged more than two of the dead, I had to stop myself from rushing forward and entering the fray. Father had trained me to be a swordsman, and he’d wanted me to follow in his footsteps as a respectable warrior. Simply waiting in the back wasn’t something I was good at doing, and it made me fidgety and nervous.
To distract myself from the
battles going on up front as much as possible, I unleashed Nature’s Wrath upon anything that so much as twitched behind or to the sides of us. Megan would probably never realize it, but she’d help me acquire a very useful and versatile weapon. By shattering my small engravings into fragments, I’d enchanted those fragments with a strong magically attraction to each other – similar to a magnetic force. The magic held all the tiny pieces of Nature’s Wrath together and made it into the naginata that it was, and it gave me a powerful projectile weapon with almost unlimited ammunition.
By using a little earth magic, I could grab a few shards of broken statues from the staff, and fire them outwards much like a bullet. The amount of energy I expended was actually quite small, and the impact the stone made could be quite impressive – it was a very effective way to fire stone at a target at range. And, the best trick of all was the fact that the chaos enchantment would pull the stone back to its proper place in the staff after I released the earth magic that forced it apart.
Gather a little earth magic, use it to fire a small hunk of stone from the staff – like one of the broken rabbit sculptures – and then I could rocket it much faster than any arrow at a target. If I hit the target, the impact was something memorable; skeletons usually simply shattered with one blast. If I missed the target by some odd chance of targeting, all I had to do was release the earth magic on it and it’d rocket back with just as much force as it rocketed away, much like a boomerang.
If I missed a skeleton from the front, I could blast it from the rear with the return shot! And, as fate would have it, I was distracted by experimenting with this new means of attacking targets from the rear, when a new opponent swarmed our front lines!
Mongo was slashing and chopping his way diligently forward, with Crystal picking off any stragglers which tried to move around his side, while I was playing with skeletons well behind us and practicing my ‘rear shot’. Things had settled more or less into a routine of slow, but steady progress. Mongo’s heavy armor was easily able to deflect anything the boneheads could toss at him; when suddenly Tiffany screamed and Mongo flew over my head and clanged end over end down the passage behind us.
Something large and black, looking almost lizard-like and almost human at the same time, was on his back and raining massive blows down upon his still form. Take my eyes off the front for just a moment, and all hell breaks loose! ‘You Okay up there?’ I didn’t feel any wounds or problems with Crystal, except for a feeling of raw shock, but I wanted to check to make certain.
‘Fine. Busy,’ was the only response she shot back at me as I unleashed a torrent of Nature’s Wrath upon the creature. Dozens of stone fragments shot from the blade and side of my new toy and blasted into the creature, knocking it off Mongo and down the hall. I was certain that much firepower would destroy it, but I was proved wrong when it slowly got up, shook its massive lizard head and crouched down on all fours to study me. We were a good thirty paces or more apart in the hallway, but as I waited for the fragments of my naginata to return back to rejoin the whole, the creature flicked a long forked tongue across its face and then leaped towards me.
How something so big could move so far or so fast was beyond me! Like a rocket, it closed the distance instantly and had its massive claws wrapped around my torso; the force of its momentum barreling me into and past Jess and Tiffany just as Mongo had been. End over end I flipped down the tunnel, and only by using my magic to change the shape of my staff instinctively, was I able to keep the creature’s massive fangs from my throat. Pain poured into my shoulders, and it felt almost as if I was going to have my arms torn completely off by the beast before I released a burst of raw panicked magic which…
Hell if I know what it did, to be honest. I wasn’t thinking of anything in particular except maybe, “AAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!”, and I didn’t form or shape the magic at all that I hit the creature with. Its fangs were inches from my throat, its claws were deep into my shoulder, I could feel some nasty poison burning into my bloodstream, and it felt like I was being torn in half! I didn’t think. I didn’t focus. I simply unleashed pure, raw, unadulterated power in a burst as I’d never unleashed before.
And the creature simply wasn’t there anymore. Did I disintegrate it? Teleport it? Turn it into air? Melt it back into the eternal nothingness that was the universe before the Gods?
Damned if I knew!
All I knew was that I was in agony. What felt like liquid fire poured up my arms from my shoulders to my hands, and spread down from the massive gashes in my shoulders to light my lungs and heart a fire. Every breath was an agony and my vision grew dim and hazy. Honestly, I think it might’ve been the end of me, if it wasn’t for Crystal.
As the pain got too much for me to bear any longer, I suddenly found myself standing upright in Crystal’s body, with several of the fleshy zombies still around. She was giving me a much needed moment to catch a breath, get a few seconds respite from the pure agony that was the creature's poison, and recover my will. Knowing the agony that she was facing for me, I slashed out and bisected one zombie in two, and then swapped places with her again.
Pain once again filled my being; I honestly couldn’t tell if it was worse or less than it was the last time. Is a thousand bee stings any more painful than a hundred? Who knows?! Once you reach the point of pure agony, the scale doesn’t matter any longer. I steeled my will as much as possible, and once I found my awareness trying to leave me, I swapped bodies with Crystal again.
This time, we swapped while she was in the middle of a slashing spin attack that I wasn’t familiar with, and I almost lost my balance in her body. Falling to one knee, I used the momentum to help me continue the spin and I sliced the leg off the only remaining zombie. Knowing down with these creatures wasn’t the same thing as dead, I flipped forward to stab it…
…And was once again in the pure agony that was my own body.
This time, I could tell that Jess and Tiffany both were treating my wounds, but that certainly didn’t make things feel any better. Darkness clouded my vision as they worked their magics, and I swapped back into Crystal’s flesh once again. Taking a moment to rise her to her feet, I could see more dead already starting to approach and close the distance from wherever they’d came from in front of us. Glancing back, I was astonished to see Mongo rising to his feet and defiantly reaching for his blade once again. That creature had pounded him dozens of times, and had only gotten ahold of me once!
Then, I was back in agony. The pain was definitely starting to lessen, though, or else I was somehow becoming adjusted to it. Determined to hold on as long as possible, I gritted my teeth so hard that one of them popped and cracked. The healers were doing their best to get me on my feet, the danger was still around us, and trying to fight in two-second intervals was almost impossible to do. Crystal needed to remain Crystal for as long as possible. Her blade was needed, and I knew it.
But, even with the best of intentions and the greatest of will, the poison was too much for me. After several long and agonizing moments, I was forced to trade places once again. Passing out, with the poison straining my system so greatly, didn’t seem like a wise decision. I was truly afraid that doing so would be more than my body could bear, and it’d be a case of never waking again.
This time, I was puzzled to see that Crystal had moved down the hall and was standing in front of a door. I didn’t know her plan, but I trusted she was here for a reason. With a yank of the handle, I pulled the door open and a dozen skeletons instantly turned to dust – Heartblade’s aura still as effective as even on the ones that hadn’t been darkened by Megan. This room looked to be nothing more than a resting place for the dead, and since the skeletons were down, the room was clear.
“This way Mongo! Grab my body!” Crystal’s plan was obvious to me, as soon as I saw the empty room again. Mongo and his team had been forced to seek safety in the confines of an empty room. We needed to do the same now.
Tiffany yelled something about how it wasn’t safe to
move me, but Mongo ignored her and scooped up my body and stormed up the hall. Moving on into the room, I quickly stepped to the side and out of his way as he barreled in and the girls followed. The little floating orb was the last inside, and I slammed the door behind them.
We’d moved deeper into the tomb. We’d made good progress, in many ways; but now it seemed like we were almost back to where we started: trapped once again by the dead. Knowing that Crystal must be in pure agony and holding on as long as possible, I swapped back with her once again…
…Or at least I tried to. The poison, on top of Mongo grabbing my body and then roughly running along with it, was too much for her. She’d passed out and somehow I wasn’t able to force the swap into my own unconscious body right now.
We’d moved forward, but we weren’t back where we’d started. Crystal was unconscious, my body was poisoned, and I was stuck being a woman! Just what the hell was that thing?!
Recovery
“So what’s the verdict? Am I dying?” Odd to say such words while staring down at your own body, like a ghost.
“You’ll be fine in a bit, I think,” Tiffany answered with a giggle. Apparently she had no issues with Crystal’s body calling mine, ‘me’. I guess her own connection with Mongo helped with that, even though their ability to swap back and forth seemed much more limited than mine and Crystals. Still, the fact that I couldn’t swap back to my own flesh right now was bothersome, to say the least.
“Then is it the taint?” Gods, I hoped not! It was enough of a pain to remove a small sliver of taint from my spirit. I don’t think I’d be able to do it again, especially not with the amount of poisonous fire that I’d felt coursing through my veins. I honestly felt like I’d be more likely to just spread it than dilute it.
