“What’s going on?”
“We’re being attacked. Come on.”
We followed her downstairs and outside to see an army of undead attacking the city!
“Are these the vampires that you melted?” Lorena asked Yndra.
“No, these are different,” the one standing behind us answered. “These have been summoned.”
“Then we must find the summoner,” I announced, charging into the thick of battle.
Zombies and skeletons poured into the city like a mass of hungry cannibals. The elves tried holding them back from completely overrunning the city, but it was clear there were too many to hold back for long.
The two sultry dragon women didn’t take their large serpentine forms but had black wings extend from their backs. They flew close to their targets so not to spit their deadly toxin on the elves they were protecting.
The elves shot enchanted arrows that produced a variety of effects. Some froze their target completely in ice before shattering them into many pieces. Others caused the target to catch fire that was so hot they burned to ash in mere moments. There were arrows that pierced several targets, creating a magical tether that drew them together. Some arrows were powerful enough to break the hold the summoner had over his minions, causing them to turn against the others or even collapse where they stood.
The zombies were best dispatched by severing the brain from the body, but the skeleton warriors were resurrected using a different spell. Although it wasn’t seen, I knew dark magic held their bones together. Detaching them wasn’t enough since they could reattach them. Their bones had to be made unusable or their magic dispelled.
The enchantments my swords possessed were of no use against these monsters since they had no circulating blood for the curses to take effect. I attempted to turn three sword wielding skeletons that surrounded me with a thought, but the magic binding them was too powerful.
“Looks like I’ll have to do this one at a time,” I said while defending myself from attacks.
I plunged my swords into the ground to free up my hands. I grabbed the arm of one of the skeletons and forced him against the side of a house where I sent a powerful thought into his bones. I saw the necromancer who resurrected it, and he saw me! He was a Dark Elf! “It cannot be!” I gasped and fell away from the skeleton. It was Pop! I saw Ambrosius! Or more precisely, I saw Byron, the man from the journal I read at the World Council Palace.
I retrieved my swords and severed limbs only for the skeletons to reattach them. I then decapitated them one by one. I sheathed my swords and snatched up their skulls, juggling them while staying just out of their reach.
“I have your heads. I have your heads,” I teased. “Want them back, do you?” I asked while laughing at the sight of three headless skeletons clumsily grasping for their skulls.
I let a skull slip past my hand, and I kicked it off into the distance. “There it goes!” I announced, and one of the skeletons scurried off to retrieve it.
I jammed the other two skulls under the ribs of the skeletons, cracking some of them in the process. They attacked each other to retrieve their head.
I ran to Lorena, who was holding her ground against approaching zombies not far from me, showing great skill with the blade. The enchantment on her sword didn’t affect them either, but she didn’t let that slow her down.
I pulled her away from the fighting. “While Yndra is distracted, we should go back to free Takarha.”
She nodded her approval of the plan, so, with no opposition between us and the black tower, we hurried back.
I opened the tower doors to find the obsidian egg broken from the bottom, the unborn dragon dead on the floor in a puddle of the milky white, magical elixir. We could hear someone upstairs.
I motioned for Lorena to stay there for a moment, and I quietly made my way upstairs. Takarha was lying on the floor, still bound and gagged. There was a pale, dark-haired man filling a satchel with things from Yndra’s long table. The necromancer who commanded the army of undead was also there. He was leaning over the opened obsidian egg, examining its construction.
“It’s you,” I blurted out, startling the two intruders.
The man at the table turned quickly, throwing a telekinetic force at me, but I shielded myself from the energy. Getting a better look at him, I recognized the human from my childhood.
“Dirk, why have you brought war upon us?” I asked, shocked that he had returned to Ashwood with an army.
“No offense, but I’m here to rid the world of your race,” he spat bitterly.
“But Dirk, don’t you remember me? I’m Ambros, Eve’s friend.”
“Then you should not have come back.”
He leaped at me, conjuring a glaive from the ethereal plane to strike me down. My swords blocked the fearsome weapon, but he took me off balance and kicked me down the stairs.
“Ambros!” I heard Lorena yell while I tumbled down the stairs.
Dirk leaped from the top step to attack me before I could get up, but Lorena was there to protect me. The strength behind Dirk’s swing pushed the tip of her blade to floor next to me. Their weapons were so close to me, I was afraid to breathe.
“This doesn’t concern you, woman,” Dirk announced, holding his glaive against her sword.
“You hurt my friend, and I’ll—” KA-POW! Lorena punched Dirk right in the mouth. “—kick your white ass,” she finished the warning, her eyes burning with anger.
Blood oozed from the edge of a smile cracking across Dirk’s face. “I believe you’re a keeper,” he commented, licking the blood from his mouth. “But I’ll have to get back to you about courtship.” He then extended an open hand and magically threw her against the wall!
During that brief moment Dirk was distracted, I grabbed my swords and rolled out of reach of his ethereal glaive. Back on my feet, I made a quick glance at Lorena to see that she was only stunned by the push before having to defend myself from Dirk’s relentless attacks.
Lorena soon returned to the fight, but Dirk held us both off with his bladed staff. After blocking both of my swords, he spun around and knocked Lorena’s sword from her hand. Before he could bring his staff around to defend himself, I sliced up, splitting his chin and lips with Scourge, the green sword of insanity. He instantly lost concentration on his weapon, causing it to leave this world, and he voiced a terrible scream. He grabbed Lorena with an unseen hand while she was retrieving her sword and hurled her and it into me. The red obsidian sword pierced my right shoulder. Its powerful enchantment caused the blood surrounding the blade to have a violent reaction, and my shoulder exploded, dislodging the sword!
I howled in agony and fell to the floor, my cries quickly turning to grueling laughter. I saw Byron rush down the stairs carrying a thick book and a glass orb. Holding the orb out to us, a magical barrier formed around me and Lorena, blocking Dirk’s attacks against us.
“I want to take them back with us,” I heard Byron say to Dirk, but he continued to punch the force field that imprisoned us. Ripples spread across the surface from the points of impact. Byron slid his book into a satchel and placed his hand on Dirk’s shoulder. “Calm yourself.” And he immediately began to relax. “I cannot use this dragon to break the spell holding Magnus. We must get out of the city; our army won’t distract them for much longer.”
Within the magical sphere, Lorena held me while she cried. “Don’t you die on me, now.”
“What a delightful phrase,” I said to her as my vision began to blur. “You know, I can’t think of a better place to die than on you.”
She laughed through her tears. “I think I’ve become a bad influence on you.”
I reached up to feel the damage done to my shoulder and found that my right arm was completely gone. The damage was so extensive, I could feel a lung beyond broken ribs!
“Oh, don’t touch it,” I heard her say, pulling my hand away.
Her face drew close, and I felt her lips touch mine. And then, I lost consciousness
.
CHAPTER X
A SADISTIC JOKE
“Will he become one of us?” I heard a cold voice ask.
“I hope so,” another voice spoke out from the darkness.
“He looks absolutely delectable.”
“QUIET! HE’S WAKING UP,” many voices said in unison.
My eyes opened to find myself in a chamber illuminated by small magical orbs that gave off wonderful green light. The orbs were held by skeletal hands that extended from the walls. My wrists were shackled and chains held my arms out. I hung naked, chest-deep in a large cauldron of blood set into the floor. The walls, floor, and ceiling were completely covered in a mass of corpses that whispered to one another.
“This place is wonderful!” I said aloud, wide-eyed and excited. I then remembered that I had lost my right arm, but it was back as if nothing had happened to it. “This must be the afterlife. I must have died.”
“YOU DID DIE, AND YOU CAME TO US,” the undead that surrounded me answered.
“When I came here, was a woman with me?”
“SHE WAS SACRIFICED TO HELA.”
“What? I need to see her! Release me!” I ordered them, pulling at my chains. “Please, let me see her.”
“WE MUSTN’T. THE KING COMMANDED US TO WATCH OVER YOU WHILE HE’S GONE.”
“And who, may I ask, is your king?
“WHY KING BYRON, OF COURSE,” they answered.
“Ah, I’ve met him. Is he a Dark Elf from the city of Ashwood?” I asked, curious why he looked exactly like my pop but goes by the name Byron.
“That body was gifted to him by Magnus the Red,” one of the skeletons answered.
“Does Magnus still live, or is he somewhere in this wonderful afterlife, too?” I asked, already knowing he was cast into the Abyss of the Dead, but I wanted them to tell me what they knew.
“HE LIVES. A POWERFUL SPELL HAS INPRISONED HIM DEEP WITHIN THE EARTH. ONLY A WORTHY SACRIFICE WILL FREE HIM.”
“And what would make a worthy sacrifice?”
“A DRAGON, BUT NOT A BLACK ONE, NO. A BLACK DRAGON WILL NOT DO.”
“Where is the King, now? Is he out looking for a different kind of dragon?”
One spoke out, “No, he left to speak with Magnus who dwells within the dwarven…”
“SHH, HERE SHE COMES!” the others interrupted.
“Who? Who’s coming?”
The undead wall divided, allowing a woman to enter. It was Lorena! She calmly strolled into the room, her beauty all the more potent against a backdrop of corpses.
“Lorena, you’re alive! I was afraid you had been killed. They said you had been sacrificed. Or are we both dead, spending eternity together in this paradise?”
“What else did those useless imbeciles say to you?” she questioned, her tone ringing stern, cold, ghostly.
Something terrible had been done to her. Had she been poisoned? Is she under a spell? I finally asked her what was wrong.
By raising her hand, my chains lifted me out of the pool and eye level with her. Blood from the pool dripped from my naked body. She stepped closer, and I could see her head was crowned with stitches. “I am not your beloved Lorena. I am Queen Hela, and you will address me as such.”
Knowing something had been done to her felt like a punch in the stomach. “No,” I coughed. I raised my head and gasped for breath.
She floated over the small pool of blood and felt of my shoulder. “It appears you have mended well. My husband will be pleased.” Her hand slid down my stomach, and she whispered seductively, “But I believe I will enjoy your body more than he.”
She turned quickly to leave the room. “Say nothing to him,” she ordered the dead. “And change these lights!”
The green-lit orbs immediately turned to white, and the bones shifted to close off the doorway. “WE DON’T LIKE HER,” the dead announced. “SHE’S A TWISTED, EVIL QUEEN.”
Hanging from my chains, I took a deep breath of the cold, stale air. “Well, since I’m here, I suppose I should introduce myself. My name is Ambros.”
The bones that covered the walls moved to allow more and more skulls to reach the surface. “WE’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO TALK TO YOU.”
Ignoring the command they were given, I told them with a nod, “I’m pleased to meet you all.”
“HE’S PLEASED TO MEET US!” the skulls said happily to one another.
“May I have your names?” I asked of the countless undead that surrounded me.
The skulls turned to look at those around them. “NAMES? NAMES. DO WE HAVE NAMES?”
“I believe I can help you remember who you are,” I told them. “Can one of you step forward?”
The walls began rolling like the sea, and the magical orbs that lit the room bobbled along the surface causing the room to dim and brighten. A single skeleton finally pulled free of the mass. Rising from the floor to stand tall, its bones were thick. The magic that held it together created a green aura that emanated from its joints. It wore bits of ancient armor, tarnished and dented. It wielded a large, rusty battle axe with a bone handle and kneeled before me. I suddenly saw, not a skeleton, but a man kneeling before me. The room was quiet, and I looked into his old bones.
“You were a great warrior in life, a general in Byron’s army. You had a wife and three sons. You died in service defending Byron’s keep against the dragon army. Your name was and always will be Galenos.”
He stood and looked at me with his cold, empty eye sockets. For a brief moment, I caught a glimpse of him as a living man again, and he was shedding tears. With a nod of his head, he stepped back into the wall.
Another skeleton gathered its parts to step forward. It stood naked with its hands clasped together, quietly waiting for me to speak. This one was much smaller than Galenos, and I saw her, too, as a healthy, living person. She was a pretty, young girl.
“Odilia,” I saw her name immediately. I suddenly felt fear and took a deep breath to remind myself that it was an old memory hardened within this creature’s bones. “I see you being led against your will to a courtyard filled with broken stones. You were sacrificed by your people to winged creatures known as Strigoi, an ancient race of vampires that guarded this castle.”
Odilia covered her expressionless face and returned to the wall.
For hours, I spoke to each and every skeleton that stepped forward from the wall of corpses. Most of the armor-clad skeletons died while fighting dragons alongside Galenos. Some were the King’s servants. Others were taken from their homes in nearby villages.
I felt overwhelmed by the lives they lived, bringing tears to my eyes. Recognizing the scent, I tasted the tears that streamed down my face to find they were blood. “What’s happened to me?”
“You’ve been healed,” a skull with a twisted jaw announced.
“HELA RETURNS,” they warned.
“Open this room!” I heard her command.
The bones shifted to create a hall leading into the room. The woman in possession of Lorena’s body floated into the room, not wearing Lorena’s clothes, but an extravagant, green dress.
“So what do you think?” she asked, turning around to show me the back.
Thinking it would be best to play along, I answered, “You look gorgeous, but I feel a bit overdressed.” I glanced down at my naked, bloodstained body.
She floated over and rubbed her hands over my stomach and up my chest. “You’re perfect just the way you are.”
She then kissed me harder than Lorena ever did, leaving my lip bleeding from a bite. Her nails tore at my back. “I can’t wait until Byron returns and possesses your body. I want you, now.” She kissed me again, tasting the blood she had drawn.
“Mmm. How ‘bout you take these chains off,” I suggested, trying to sweet talk her into freeing me.
“Why?” she grinned. “Do you prefer working with your hands?”
She reached around and smacked my ass, leaving it with a good sting.
“Oh yeah. Here we go. Punish me, hotnes
s. I’ve been a bad elf. Release these chains and have your way with me.”
“I most certainly will,” she warned seductively. “But the chains stay on.”
“Well, it was worth a try.”
She slid the straps of her dress off her shoulders to let it fall away from her curvaceous, tan body. “I’m going to put a hurting on you, you won’t soon forget.”
She wrapped her arms around me and began kissing and biting my neck. Extending a hand, she telekinetically pulled a rusty dagger from the wall of undead. “I love the smell of fresh blood,” she confessed, plunging the knife in my back, between my ribs, and pulling it around my chest.
Puncturing a lung, I gasped for breath.
“Do I take your breath away?” she whispered. “Don’t worry; you’ll heal,” she told me, kissing down my chest to the blood oozing from the wound. “And I will remain young and beautiful forever.”
“NO!” a rumbling voice swelled from all around. “WE HATE YOU, WITCH!” the dead walls yelled. “YOU MADE US FORGET WHO WE WERE! YOU CHAINED US TO THIS WORLD, IMPRISONED US WITHIN THIS MOUNTAIN, BOUND US TO THESE BONES AGAINST OUR WILL! YOU AND YOUR KING WILL NOT RULE OVER US ANY LONGER!”
The white light emitting from the magical orbs turned red, and the bones that covered the walls boiled with hatred. Swords and spears extended all around us, and the room began closing in.
Looking around at the enclosing blades, I began to laugh.
Hela yelled back at them. “I am your queen, and you will serve me! You will do my bidding! You will…”
“DIE!” the walls roared.
The shackles that held me unlatched, and I dropped into the pool of blood. I was unable to see within the dark liquid, but I could hear chaos above me and feel the turmoil through my body. I reached out for something to grab hold but felt nothing. I could not breathe but felt no need for air.
The roar swelled like an approaching tornado and then suddenly went silent. A boney hand found mine and pulled me from the pool. I found the room was back to the way it was. The skeleton that helped me withdrew into the ceiling.
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