“Ha-ha-ha!” Nytmar chomped at Vincent. “You can’t even chip them.”
While fighting all three Dwellers at once, Vincent said with shocking surprise, “I can cut through steel and solid rock.” His striker blazed. “What are you?”
Black, sickle talons clanged against Vincent’s striker in reverberating sounds, loud and powerful. Hard hits jangled and clacked like metal blades, each hammering against the other with rough, harsh, and deflecting blows. Vincent, more nimble than the Dwellers, sidestepped their overeager stabs.
With a quick strike, Vincent’s luminous blade severed one of the Dwellers’ arms. It fell off and dissolved into gooey mixed splats of pus and scuttling bugs. Yet the Dweller’s black, tar-like talons remained intact on the ground. Holding its shoulder, the Dweller howled in pain, soon swiping back and forth with its other arm, nearly piercing Vincent’s skin.
Vincent recoiled a cartwheeled jump high into the air. He swung forward, springing over the injured Dweller, and while in midair, he landed a decisive blow, splitting the injured Dweller’s skull in two, its body fell limply to the ground, and then dissolved into a larger pile of scattering bugs and juicy pus.
Vincent looked upon the mess with diverging wrinkles.
The remaining two Dwellers, along with Vincent, paused and gawked at the death scene for a brief moment. The Dwellers ceased their advance. Then Nytmar saw another Dweller arrive from far behind the immortal. Unlike the other Dwellers, Nytmar was patient for an opportunity. Vincent appeared unknowing of this fact, so Nytmar diverted the immortal’s senses by plunging its black talons forward, thus renewing their fight.
“And here I thought you demons had no weakness.” Vincent smirked. “I guess I was wrong,” he taunted.
Gurrhr. Nytmar growled. “You are an arrogant immortal, just like the rest of your kind. No wonder humanity is so haughty.”
“What can I say—I’m perfect.” Vincent thrust out his open hand, his fingers spread. Swoosh! He moved air, sending it forth. He pushed one of the Dwellers with an invisible wave, hurling it backward many feet onto the ground. “Psst.” He looked squarely at Nytmar. “Somebody’s getting stronger.” He winked with a grin. Training had enhanced his abilities. He now had the advantage.
The newly arrived Dweller dove from high above. While launching itself airborne, its ten razor talons protracted. The Dweller landed against Vincent’s back, propelling him forward. Shocked, Vincent braced himself, digging his striker into the ground for balance and support. The Dweller pulled back its elbows and then drove all its talons deep into Vincent’s muscles near his spine. Red, immortal fluid spilled onto the street as the Dweller clawed into Vincent. With fangs smiling with glee, it readied for a bite.
“Ahhhhhh!” Vincent’s head and neck flung upward as he screamed. He flipped the Dweller off him, sending it tumbling end over end down the road.
The Dweller recovered to its feet and licked the immortal’s blood from off its talons, eyeing him as it did. “That tastes good, better than human blood.” The Dweller roared at Vincent.
Nytmar backed off and away. It watched with pleasure. The immortal seemed stunned and injured.
Vincent winced, hunching forward. He reached at his lower back, pulling in front of his face a palm full of wet, red liquid—his own immortal blood. He had only seen his own blood one other time, and that was a scant amount compared to this.
“So immortals do bleed,” Nytmar delightfully said. “You!” He pointed to the other Dweller. “Get up and get him. And you…” he said to the newest arrival. “Where’s Killian and M?”
“They will meet us at the aperture.”
“No, they won’t.” Nytmar growled. “Let’s take this immortal down.” The three Dwellers converged. “He’s injured. We can take him.”
Stunned, Vincent blinked several times. He shook his head and refocused his eyes. “Don’t be so sure. I’ve already begun healing, and now I’m pissed off.” Beaded sweat formed at his hairline. His dual-bladed striker blitzed with lightning. The sword’s ethereal light smoldered with a hazy mist. The striker buzzed and flowed with sporadic bolts of blue voltage.
Whirr. Nytmar threw his bola—a long cord with heavy spheres meant to entangle legs.
Vincent cut the cords in half. The bola dropped to the ground on each side of him.
The Dwellers flinched and shrunk back. Dwellers felt fear only when caused by danger, which was not often, and this was now one of those times.
Vincent’s body trembled as his adrenaline surged. Like a skilled craftsman, and in a blur of charging speed, he wielded his striker, removing parts and pieces from the three remaining Dwellers. Hands and fingers came off like gloves and jackets on a warm day from each Dweller.
“You will not touch me again!” Vincent shouted indignantly. He was now in a position of control, and at the height of his power. His muscles flexed in aggressive defiance.
Empowered, he twisted and turned, and eluded all attacks thereafter with eager anticipation. He threw a Dweller airborne. With another slice of his blade, Vincent ran his sword through the intestines of one of the Dwellers, and again, it dissolved into maggots and pus.
“And then there were two.” Vincent leered as the slimy liquid remains bubbled and hissed, while his sword burned off the last remnants of goo like water dispersing from a scalding saucepan. “The fight’s over. Tell me what Malum’s up to and I’ll let you live, vile monsters.” Vincent glared at them with hatred.
“Go now! I’ll hold him off.” Nytmar turned and pointed at the last Dweller. “Tell our master what you have seen here.”
“Wrong answer!” With his blazing striker, Vincent decapitated Nytmar with a single, rapid removal of its head. “Come here, you.” He waved the last Dweller toward him with his index finger.
But the Dweller leapt toward the rooftops. It shot from the ground like a cannon and ran along the roofs.
Vincent sighed, wincing again. His backside began a painful reaction to the Dweller’s talons. He reached and grabbed at the aching in his lower back. He felt a swollen abrasion. It felt like an abscess. His skin was inflamed and burning. It stung at the site with ooze. He was having a reaction to whatever toxin was on the Dweller’s sickle talons. Spasms contracted his back muscles. The nerves went numb. His legs grew tingly and prickled. He felt death pangs, similar to when he was bitten by a pit viper once, but this was much, much worse, because his body was not healing.
Dizzy and blurred, Vincent focused on Noemi. He discovered enough power in her love to give chase. He had to catch the Dweller before it reported to Malum.
Vincent braced himself and flew atop the roofs as well. He pursued the fast Dweller. He began to catch up, but the Dweller, looking back in fear, tossed objects, some heavy and small, some large and light, yet all were torn in half by Vincent’s blazing striker.
Several blocks, the Dweller ran, and for blocks more, Vincent chased until the end of town opened into a great, dark forest.
The Dweller soared high through the air, swinging its arms as if in water. Into the woods it fled.
Vincent, his adrenaline flowing, readied for his own jump, but something held him back. It wasn’t physical, it was mental. He slammed his feet to the rooftop surface, clutching the knee-high raised part of the building. He bit his lower lip and punched a hole in the cement rooftop wall. Vincent gazed despondently out into the dark woods and sighed deeply several times. He watched the Dweller until it disappeared into the thick, dark forest below. He shook his head. He did not know why he did not make the jump. It was not hard, and he could have easily made it, yet something did not feel right. Nevertheless, he regretted not trying. Flapping his arms to his side, he was removed and tired. Then an unusual smell for the time and season fanned through the air—smoke.
Vincent sniffed for a direction. It was coming from the wheat fields, where Noemi was toward the south, so he ab
andoned his chase and raced toward the cabin, many miles away from where he presently stood.
Through the woods, he sprinted at full speed, ignoring the unbearable pain, and gasping until he reached the edge of the wheat fields in mere minutes. With the sting in his back now growing and spreading to his side, he held his stomach, while dragging in a single, productive breath.
The cabin was a torched inferno.
It was marked with red and orange flames, which rapidly burned an intense shine in the darkness. The firestorm was high and hot. The cabin completely consumed like a furnace. Smoke rose up as flames reached into and seared the night sky.
Vincent reached the burning stack of wood he called home, screaming, wailing, and bawling a single name. He let out a thumping cry, “NOEMI! NOEMI!”
Vincent dug through the agonizing heat, which cooked the flesh from off his body. It melted away his skin in distress, which only losing Noemi could evoke a deeper woe. He looked everywhere and cried out. The roof began to creak and pop over his head, so he fled outside the cabin just as the roof collapsed, flattening their home into a pile of scorching regret.
“WHY!?” he exclaimed loudly. “Why did this happen!” He watched the flames devour what was left of their home. He placed his badly burnt hands under the hollow parts of his arms beneath his shoulders.
A dead trance of grief ensued. His blue eyes turned red-orange as the flames glowed. Sinking to his knees, his mind instantly recalled how unkind he had treated Noemi of late. He loved her, and that was all she ever wanted to hear from him, but he refused to give a lone kind word, or touch, or gesture of any reassurance to that fact in recent weeks. It seemed so simple to tell her everything now. He could not understand why he was not honest with her. He just was not.
Everything seemed so utterly pointless. He blamed himself for this burning pile of carnage as he stared blankly into the fire, and this time, he learned the hatred of being right. His pervading mood and spirit were low at best, and all other things turned very displeasing as shock set in from every front. Vincent hurt inside and out. His body could no more endure and his spirit could no longer go on without his immortal love, Noemi.
A rustling in the woods at the edge of the wheat fields broke the somber moment. Vincent brought his hands to his face. Bloody, charred, and blistered, he was unable to bend them, thus unable to summon his blade. His active endurance was gone. Tears distorted his vision as the noise from the woods grew louder. He could not fight more of anything right now. His strength, skill, and stamina were all gone, along with Noemi, and his life lacked purpose. However, if he died now, not knowing what had happened to her, that thought also haunted his eternal mind, and he could not allow such a thing for Noemi’s sake. So, he fled the wheat fields and ran toward the east, averting his eyes away from the burning, bittersweet, loving abode that used to be theirs.
Days and nights had passed. Xander hung upside down, with a rope tied around his ankles and attached to heavy pulleys along the room’s back wall. His hands knotted tightly behind his back. Having been exposed to the elements from holes in the roof while deep inside the recesses of the Victorian Era insane asylum, he felt as worn as the building.
He continually drifted in and out of conscious hallucinations. Ever since he fought the immortal knight, Maximillian, and lost, he had discovered many new feelings and beliefs during the days of inactivity amid the hauntingly quiet asylum.
One such day, a crow flew in the room where he hung. The bird rested high above on one of the rotten wood beams. It appeared another delirium at first, yet the crow angrily cawed at him. CAW! CAW! It then began pecking at the rope that suspended him off the ground. A noisy trudging of heavy boots shook the floor from behind. This it appeared was not an illusion after all.
Xander’s eyelids expanded. He tried to call out, but a piece of tape remained, covering his mouth, so he made many other terribly incoherent sounds.
The footsteps got closer and the crow cawed louder, frantically flapping its wings in unison with the pair of stomping boots, and then…silence. The crow flew away, and the trudging ceased. Another hallucination Xander figured, but he was wrong again.
“Hello, Xander,” a single, gravelly voice spoke. A head dipped down sideways to look at him. “I’m not angry that you failed,” the crow flew back and landed on his shoulder, “but Alcazar is.”
The man walked in front of Xander. He was dressed in a monk’s robe, with a hood drawn over his face. In unexpected swiftness, his bony, knuckled hand ripped the tape from Xander’s mouth, and an unspoken sharpness of anger was felt by a stinging pull of adhesive from across his sore lips.
“Lord Malum, I tried my best, but he was too…”
A knifing reply cut into useless words. “Your best isn’t good enough.” Malum raised an index finger and Alcazar cawed, flapping and then after receiving a treat, tucking his wings up behind.
Xander tried again. “If you just let me…”
“No,” Malum gave another quick reply. “It’s time for the grown-ups to speak.” Malum walked around the room, circling Xander, talking as he did. “Let’s drop the pretenses, shall we?” He smiled. His hands cupped one inside the other behind his back as his body leaned forward, his knees sagged, and his chin jutted. “The humans, their mortal world, their governments, their armies, their politics, their commerce, they are all of no consequence to me.”
Xander’s eyes scrambled in confusion, they chattered worry. His mouth pallid, half-open, and quivering, he dared not speak.
Malum continued. “Because you failed to bring me what I asked for, you should die!” he barked. “You see, all humanity is in a process of disillusionment. They want peace, but pursue war. Ha!” He laughed. “The only thing that unites them defeats them—death unites humans in a never-ending struggle of futility.”
Xander spoke despite his fear. “But aren’t we here to free them from the knights’ blinding lies?”
With a deep forceful breath, the desire for guise snuffed out of Malum’s only good eye. He squatted down face to upside-down face with Xander and just looked at every perfect pore on the young immortal’s skin. “Do you see how scarred and deformed I am?” Alcazar flew back up to the beam above, and began pecking at the rope that held Xander.
Malum’s nose touched Xander’s. Malum’s breath was foul as dung. Xander closed his eyes and turned his head. Malum grabbed his face, a hand on both sides and twisted it back toward him, then he pried open his eyelid. “Look at me! LOOK–AT–ME!!!”
Xander opened both eyes and straightened his head. Malum released his grip.
“What! What do you want?” Xander snapped back. “Just kill me. Get it over with.” He added in passing, “At least the knight didn’t torture me before he left me here to die.”
“I’m not going to kill you, but you will be punished for your errors. Severely I might add.”
“What?” Xander’s eyes shifted back and forth.
Raising himself from a squatting position with difficulty, Malum said, “Humans, they need to die, and lots of them.”
“Why?”
“Oh, don’t be so naïve.”
Xander stuttered, “Um, how?”
“Control their collective mind. Make someone in your region start a war, commit terror, or shoot up a bunch of people, or use pestilence, et cetera and so on. You get the picture?” Irritated, Malum threw his hands in the air. “Use your imagination, I don’t care,” he hollered.
“But what about the innocent…”
Malum laughed. “No one’s innocent.” Partly in cunning, partly in disdain, he said, “This is how you will keep your life and your post, but more importantly, this is how the Shroud grows stronger.”
Malum met Xander’s wandering look as Xander blurted, “This isn’t…”
“What? Isn’t right?” Malum snorted. “Isn’t true?” He wrinkled, furrowed, creased, crink
led, and puckered. “Quid pro quo, which means…you owe the Shroud something for something already provided to you.”
Xander knit his black brows together. “Why?”
“Why, why, why. I’m sick of that word. Kimi said that a lot before she…how should I say…left us.” Malum’s short, curled smile, high, arched forehead, and long, scarred neck told the tale. “When you were a knight, you learned to want more, so I gave you more.” He tented his fingers. “You and the other young knights that joined the Shroud were all haughty and full of pride, so sure you would save the world and make a difference. You arrogantly thought nothing would be asked in return for the fame and power that the Shroud has afforded you.” With a stiff upper lip, Malum glared down at Xander. “But you were wrong! It’s time to pay up now.”
The room took on a life of its own. The ambience grew darker. Shadows multiplied along the distant walls. Malum lit a candle, and soon, his own shadow came alive on the wall in triplicate.
At first, his shadows resembled his shape, but then, he spread his fingers apart and controlled his shadows like puppets. The shadows changed shape into many different things, and began telling his story between the splotches of light and darkness in the room. Even Alcazar stopped pecking and cawing for a time, appearing to watch the shadows on the wall.
Xander was aghast. His heart palpitated with the images presented to him. Like a set of explanatory notes, Malum centered the world’s view through his immortal eyes. Empires rose with bloody might, and fell with arcane friction. Each civilization thought they were the greatest, yet each fell by the waste side, forgotten in both written and unwritten accounts, in a cycle of nonstop contentious bouts, filled with arid, sterile, and thoughtless ideas up until today.
Malum dispersed the shadows and the room slowly mended its original light. “You see now.” He regained his calm. “I have experimented with every form of government there is for the mortals, and none of them work. We had an agreement with the knights.” Malum grew sullen. “If by the end of five thousand years the Shroud had failed to maintain order in this realm, then it would be handed back to the people. The humans would be set free from our direction. But I can’t let them go, just like I can’t let you go.” Malum turned a hard stare at Xander. “I’d rather see it burn than let it go.”
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