“Nivin, no. Don’t do it,” Rialta said.
And with her words, Nivin stopped moving, looking vaguely confused.
“Reveal yourself!” Remmy shouted again, and a golden light issued from his open palm and struck Sera in the chest.
“What are you talking about?” Lorenza said, stepping forward and looking frightened as she reached Remmy’s side. “Just wait a minute! Just, please, don’t hurt her, whoever she is!”
“This isn’t Sera, Lorenza. This is a bottom-feeding parasite of a demon. Something that lurks in the shadows, eager to feed off wayward souls,” Remmy said. “You were near this place when Sera died, weren’t you?”
“We were…” Lorenza said.
“It stole her soul before she had a chance to pass on to the next realm. You two didn’t notice at the time because, well, how could you have? We can’t see souls so long as we’re alive,” Remmy explained.
“This could have been so easy for you,” Sera said mournfully. “I just needed one, cleric.”
“I know what you are,” Remmy snarled as he continued to cast his spell. “Reveal yourself to be the abomination you are. Release Sera’s spirit in the name of the gods. Let her soul rest in peace. I command you!”
Sera looked up at Remmy with a sickly sweet smile. “I could have quietly taken him away in the night, and you’d all have been none the wiser,” she said, her voice becoming gradually deeper. “I could have had him, and you would have lived, you idiotic slave of the gods,” she continued as she stood up. And now several guttural voices joined Sera’s as she spoke. “But you are so arrogant, so foolish, that you would force me out, just so that I might have the pleasure of killing you all instead?”
Rialta inched toward Remmy. “Remmy, what is this thing going to do?” she whispered.
“Reveal yourself!” Remmy shouted, and the golden light intensified.
Sera’s spine snapped backward, her head craning up to the sky. A horrifying chorus of screaming, undead voices tore through the air, and Sera’s features began to bubble and warp. The wind picked up with a screeching howl, and a fresh wave of snow began to pelt them all as they watched the terrible transformation.
“What’s happening?” Rialta shouted over the wind and the screams.
“It’s a soul-hoarder!” Remmy shouted back, desperately trying to keep his tome open against the wind. “This is dangerous magic! We need to split up right now! It’s going to attack!”
Before Rialta could react, Remmy grabbed her arm and led her away from the writhing form of the soul-hoarder. Rialta spared the demon one last glance as they ran away. Her eyes widened in shock as Sera’s human form twisted and transformed into a tall, thin creature with rotting skin and nothing but sunken craters where its eyes should have been. She instinctively began to run even faster, now leading Remmy in their retreat. Remmy tripped, causing them both to fall down.
“Rialta! I’m sorry!” Remmy said as he got to his feet and stooped down to help Rialta off the ground.
“No time for that!” Rialta shouted as the din of screaming voices closed in on them. “Branwacht!” she shouted, pointing her wand up into the air. Her fire ward formed a column of flames that enveloped them both but did not burn them. Rialta searched through her flames to find where the soul hoarder was coming from. She spotted its silhouette just when she was starting to get off her feet. But as she was getting up, the demon seemed to flit out of existence. Rialta looked around in confusion.
“Over here,” a voice growled from behind her.
Rialta screamed and fell backward into Remmy, knocking him over. They both looked up at the soul-hoarder, which stood inches away from the barrier of Rialta’s fire ward. Rialta instinctively crawled backward away from the demon.
“Your flames will die out in seconds, and when they do, I will gut you like a pathetic little lamb,” the demon said.
Rialta’s breathing became shallow and frantic, but she kept her wand pointed at the demon nonetheless. The demon laughed, then disappeared.
Rialta looked from left to right, but she could not find the beast anywhere.
“Remmy, where is it?” she shouted as she backed into his legs. Just then, her ward went out, leaving them both defenseless. There was a faint snapping sound from behind her. Rialta turned just in time to find the soul hoarder lunging toward her, its mouth open wide.
“Leave her alone!” Nivin shouted, thrusting one of his blades between Rialta and the soul hoarder, blocking it from coming any closer. The demon instantly flitted away once again, disappearing into the darkness. Nivin held his blades out in front of him in a defensive stance and waited for the demon to strike again. Rialta watched the soul hoarder flit all throughout the valley, appearing and disappearing at will. It launched several more attacks at Nivin, who was just barely able to keep up with its movements and parry its attacks before it disappeared into the night.
“Remmy I—I think this is it,” Rialta said between panicked, gasping breaths. “I think we’re done for.”
“NO!” Remmy shouted, and to Rialta’s surprise, his eyes were wild with defiance and determination. “I’m not giving up! And if you’ve given up, then I’ll believe in you enough for the both of us!” he shouted, once again opening up his tome. He grunted with the effort of holding it open against the force of the wind. Rialta shot furtive glances between Remmy and the erratic movements of the soul hoarder in the distance as it closed in for another attack.
“Now is the time for us to do whatever we can to rid the world of this evil,” Remmy said, his voice unusually calm, yet fierce. “And you’ve got nothing to lose now, do you?” he said, holding out his free hand to Rialta. “Take my hand, and keep your wand aimed at that thing with the other,” he said. “Just listen to me while I pray, and I promise you’ll know what to do.”
Rialta hesitated, but Remmy was right. There was no time for thought on the matter. There was no time to consider his instructions. Her only options were to trust Remmy or suffer a guaranteed death at the hands of the demon. She held his hand with her free arm, then turned her attention back to the valley and did her best to watch for the wild, erratic movements of the soul reaper.
“Dearest gods above, hear our prayer. You know me very well by now. You know I do my best to offer you tidings of cheer and humor. If I were in any position to do so now, I would. I promise you, I would. But I must instead call upon you in our hour of need. We face an evil far greater than anything we’ve ever seen before.”
“Remmy, please hurry,” Rialta whispered.
“And so I ask that you inspire my friend, Rialta,” Remmy said. “Inspire her to bring forth a holy, righteous fire to burn away this evil. To vanquish it from our presence… if not for us, then for my parents, who succumbed to this terror in an act of duty to you.”
“Remmy?”
“In other words…” Remmy said, and he gritted his teeth and squeezed Rialta’s hand as hard as he could, shouting the final words of his prayer: “Rialta, light it up!”
And without warning, an overwhelming heat seized Rialta’s heart. A power she had never known began coursing through her, demanding to be loosed in the form of a spell. Somewhere above, the clouds had cleared, and revealed the moon. She caught a glimpse of the demon’s shadow flitting through the moonlight. Remmy’s righteous hatred for the abomination resounded within her, and their mutual fury against the demon lit a fire within her soul. She pointed her wand in its direction, and without any conscious thought, an incantation sprang from her lips:
“Burn!” Rialta and Remmy screamed in unison.
An explosive energy arced through the air from where they stood, and a column of blinding white flames erupted above the soul hoarder, lighting the surrounding terrain around them as bright as day. A discordant din of undead screams echoed through the night air. Rialta did not know what magic this was, nor did she care. Their blazing inferno shone against the onslaught of snow, wind, and debris cascading down upon them. She continued to channel
the spell with all her might, holding Remmy’s hand tightly in her own as she concentrated her thoughts on nothing other than destroying the evil of the soul hoarder. It screamed and flailed, but its ability to teleport seemed to be bound within Rialta and Remmy’s flames.
“Nivin! Now’s our chance!” John shouted as he and Lorenza finally caught up to them. “Come on!”
Nivin didn’t waste any time. He fired arrow after arrow at the stunned demon, each of which slammed into the creature as it seemed to struggle to regain its ability to flit about the valley. John hurled both of his daggers at it, then threw the half-time spear straight through its chest. Lorenza played a song of healing and resilience, doing her best to keep everyone in the party stable as they fought.
“Keep going, Rialta! Don’t let it escape!” Remmy shouted, and he continued to channel the power of his prayer.
“I know!” Rialta shouted back, willing the fire to continue to imprison the soul-hoarder. But within seconds, the soul hoarder fell to its knees, and then to the ground. Remmy’s grip loosened, and Rialta took it as a prompt to release her spell. The flames plumed up in one final burst of light, and then everything went dark.
“Come on. We need to make sure it’s finished,” Remmy said.
“Right,” Rialta said, following him as he put away his tome and ran toward the demon.
John, Nivin and Lorenza followed closely behind them. Remmy arrived first, holding up a hand to stall Rialta and the others. They all approached the thoroughly charred soul hoarder with caution.
“You’ll die a fool, cleric,” it managed to wheeze out when Remmy approached. It slowly writhed on the ground as it spoke.
“Wait, Remmy, be careful,” Rialta said. But Remmy did not stop.
“You’ll die without any semblance of respect,” the demon said with a faint laugh, “You’ll be begging for mercy when they—”
Remmy tore the half-time spear from the demon’s chest. He stared down at the defeated demon with rage in his wide eyes, holding the point of the spear just above its head.
“So weak,” the demon uttered. “You can’t even—”
Remmy stabbed it straight through its skull, then threw the spear aside. The soul-hoarder’s body crumbled into ashes, but a bright, blue light glowed within its corpse. The blue aura rose out of the ruin of the demon, then ascended into the sky.
Nivin collapsed to his knees and began to sob into the snow.
Remmy walked to his side and knelt down. “You did a good thing, Nivin,” Remmy whispered, placing a hand on his back. “She’s free now.”
A torrent of snow relentlessly cascaded through the valley, propelled by a stiff wind. Rialta huddled close to John and Lorenza, her shivers so violent that she felt as if her bones were almost rattling against each other.
“Well, I don’t know about you all, but I’m awake,” John said, his voice hoarse and hollow. “I know it’s the middle of the night, but maybe it would be best if we just packed up and got moving from here.”
“John, don’t be insensitive,” Rialta whispered, nodding to Nivin.
But Nivin stood up at once and shook his head. He nodded toward the mountains in the distance, a fierce determination filling his bloodshot eyes.
“You know, Rialta, it might help us all keep our minds off of things if we go ahead and start heading toward our destination,” Lorenza said flatly. “John’s right, there’ll be no getting back to sleep tonight.”
“Are you sure?” Rialta said, placing her hand on Lorenza’s shoulder.
“I’m sure, Rialta,” she whispered. “We just need to get out of this place, okay?”
“Of course,” Rialta replied. “Let’s just be on our way then.”
Chapter 28
The Ancient Temple
The first light of day broke across the horizon just as Rialta spotted the faint outline of an impossibly large building in the distance. Its architecture was unlike anything she had ever seen before. The structure itself must have been hundreds of feet tall, and its style was utterly bizarre, akin to something she would have expected to find in a dream. Towers and spires jutted off from the monstrous building seemingly at random, each of them a different size, shape, and height. Either side of the massive temple flowed seamlessly into the mountains, almost as if the gigantic structure had been carved from the natural formations.
“This is incredible,” Rialta shouted over the torrent of wind and snow raining down upon them.
“Don’t be fooled by its grandeur,” Lorenza said. “Ancient and mysterious though it may be, there’s no good to be found here.”
“I’m just about done discussing the mysteries and majesty of Tyntala,” John shouted over a fresh gust of wind. “Let’s just go into the damned temple and grab the scroll so we can go home, okay?”
“Can’t argue with you there,” Lorenza shouted back. “The less time we tarry here, the better.”
Within an hour, the five of them stood at the foot of a massive staircase leading up toward an enormous set of stone doors, each of which stretched upward high above their heads.
“How are we supposed to get inside?” Remmy asked. “We can’t possibly move those doors just by pushing on them, can we?”
Nivin stepped forward and jogged up the stairs. He withdrew one of his swords and slashed at his right thumb so that it began to bleed, then he wiped the blood across the entrance to the temple. The ground beneath their feet began to tremble, and the two massive stone doors slowly swung inward.
“You don’t want to know how long it took us to figure that out the first time around,” Lorenza said as she led the others up the stairs.
Remmy ran forward and muttered a quick prayer to seal the cut on Nivin’s thumb. Nivin gave him a nod of thanks and gestured for the others to go in ahead of him.
“Thanks, Nivin,” John said as he walked forward through the entryway. Rialta followed in close behind him, then stared in disbelief at the sight before her. The entire temple was lit by a magical blue aura which seemed to issue directly from intricately patterned stone walls, casting Rialta and the others in an eerie, pale light. The floor of the temple was made of perfectly smooth gray marble, its sheen so intense that it nearly doubled as a mirror. The relatively narrow corridor they had stepped into continued forward for several hundred feet, ending in an archway into a gigantic, wide-open room full of towering, evenly spaced pillars. Rialta looked upward in astonishment. There seemed to be no ceiling here; the walls simply drifted upward into an infinite abyss.
“What is this place?” Rialta asked, more to herself than anyone else.
“It’s a trap is what it is,” Lorenza said as they walked down the hallway toward the opening into the main atrium of the temple in the distance. “I don’t know for what purpose this place was originally created, and I sure as hell don’t care. Let’s just cut straight to business. If this is anything like last time, we won’t have any trouble till we cross through that archway up there,” she said, pointing to the end of the corridor. “But I don’t want to take any chances. Everyone be on your guard as we approach, okay?”
“Got it,” John said. “Let’s get going then. Hesitating will give us too much time to think about what we’re about to do.” He began to walk toward the archway.
“Right,” Rialta said, following him.
The group remained in silence as they walked, the only sound accompanying them being the sharp strikes of their boots against the floor echoing throughout the temple. Rialta continued to look around with a feeling of anxious anticipation. The atmosphere of this place was nothing short of bizarre. It was equally mysterious and sad and terrifying. But her thoughts were interrupted by a bright glimmer of light issuing from the huge archway.
“Hold on,” Rialta said as she came to a halt. Everyone else stopped and turned to face her. “What do you think that is?” she asked, pointing up at the glittering object hanging from the archway.
“I know this is going to sound weird, but it almost looks like a
pocket watch,” Remmy said, squinting upward at the small object.
“That does sound weird,” John said. “Who would dangle a pocket watch from that arch?”
Remmy stepped forward and held his hand out toward the distant object. “It’s no good,” he said. “It’s way too high up for me to summon it.”
Rialta felt a chill run down her neck. “Was that you?” she asked, turning to Remmy.
Remmy shook his head. “What are you talking about?” he asked.
“Do you think you can get it?” Lorenza said, turning to Rialta.
Rialta shook her head. “I’m a mage. My summoning spells are far weaker than Remmy’s. If he can’t do it, I can’t do it.”
“Then it’s irrelevant regardless of what it is,” Lorenza said, and she stepped out ahead of the group. She stopped just shy of the boundary between the corridor and the inner temple and looked up. “Unless one of you is able to jump a hundred feet in the air, that is.”
Remmy shook his head. “Maybe Nivin could jump up and get it?” he said, looking to Nivin.
Nivin simply shook his head and smiled in response. The chandelier in the caves was one thing, but I’m not a god, Remmy.
“But you still never explained how you got on the chandelier!” Remmy exclaimed indignantly.
“Hush!” Lorenza said, and Remmy snapped back to attention at once. “Now, I’ve got one last thing to say, so listen up,” she said as she paced back and forth in front of the archway. “The enemy that dwells within this place is brutal and unrelenting,” Lorenza said. “There are no monsters here, nor any humans that wish to do us any harm. Our opponents here—the things that killed Sera – they’re nothing more than enchanted automatons made of the same marble and stone as the rest of this place,” she said, gesturing around the temple.
“So… basically they’re enchanted guardians made out of stone?” Remmy asked.
“More or less,” Lorenza said with a nod. “They come in two varieties, so far as we know. Some wield swords—those are quicker and more dexterous. The other type use heavy axes. They’re heavier, more powerful. But what I want to emphasize more than anything else is the sheer levels of calamity to expect once we cross this threshold.”
A Quest for Chumps (Departed Dimensions Book 1) Page 24
