Honor and Blood

by James Galloway

  Tarrin backed away from it as it tried to chop him with that sword, trying to puzzle out this strange turn of events. He Summoned his staff back to his paws and used it to fend off this attacker's blows in sudden wariness. What was this thing? He retreated faster than the thing could advance, then turned and scampered up the pile of loose rocks, to force it to come at him over uneven ground. It did so without hesitation, slipping more than once, but continuing to advance.

  Tarrin looked down at it, and saw Jegojah standing some distance behind, trying to recover itself. The afternoon sun shone over Tarrin's shoulder, striking the swordblade of this new enemy in a way that made it reflect back the reddening sun's light in his face, turning the blade red to his eyes.

  Like fire.

  No! It couldn't be! Tarrin looked more closely at his advancing opponent. Though the armor was blackened and dirty, the design and shape of it was unmistakable, the heavy-shoulderded design used by the Knights. The rend in the breastplate of the armor was visible now that he was looking for it, and he saw the black wisps of curly hair extending out from the bottom of that burgonet helmet.

  This new undead foe was Faalken!

  The dream hadn't been a symbol or metaphor, it had been literal!

  It was impossible! They had animated the dead body of his slain friend to attack him! Tarrin backed away, shaking his head in disbelief, stunned at this turn of events. He kept backing away as the dead body of Faalken advanced on him, still swinging that broadsword to try to take off Tarrin's head. They couldn't have! They must have robbed Faalken's grave, stolen his body and taken it back to do this to him, to disturb his rest and force his body to seek out Tarrin and destroy him! Had they no honor, no shame? Faalken had died a heroic death, one filled with honor, and they defiled everything that death stood for by reanimating his body, denying him the peace and rest he had so greatly deserved. No! This couldn't be, it couldn't be happening!

  But the undead form of Faalken stalked him relentlessly, stepping forward for every step Tarrin took back, up the uneven slope and further away from Jegojah.

  No! It couldn't be! Not Faalken! He'd have to fight his own friend, and destroy him! Those bastard ki'zadun!

  Tarrin's backwards motion stopped, and his shoulders literally shook from rage and consternation. Not like this, not like this! How dare they defile the memory of his friend! How dare they use him as nothing more than a playing piece to get to him! First Jula, now Faalken! They were animals, using people until they had nothing left, then throwing them away like garbage!

  The dead body of Faalken reached Tarrin's point and raised its sword, then chopped it down at the shoulder of its larger foe--

  --and the blade stopped some safe distance from Tarrin's body, stopped by the palm of his paw, a palm nearly cut all the way through. Tarrin's radiant green eyes seemed to waver in their color and intensity, and a look of abject indignation appeared on his face.

  "You...BASTARDS!" Tarrin shrieked, finally breaking his silence. The Weave seemed to writhe at his bellowing cry, and it started to shift in ways that he could feel. He reached out to the Weave, felt it, sensed it, became one with it, then, instead of reaching out and touching it, he drew it inside of himself.

  However differently it was done, the end result was still the same. Tarrin's eyes shifted from green to incandescent white, and the unmistakable ghostly aura of Magelight surrounded his body. Tarrin was absolutely livid, but this was not the mindless fury of the Cat. This came purely from his Human side, a rage at what injustice had been perpetrated upon his dear friend that it absolutely could not be allowed to remain. This was an icy fury, a cold anger of purpose, and that control was what allowed the Human in him to do what the Cat now could not.

  Summon the power of High Sorcery.

  Where before there had been rage and pain, now there was nothing but purity, sweetness. The raging torrent of High Sorcery filled him, filled him in an instant to his maximum potential, but then it struck the dam created by his transformation, a dam that would not allow it to threaten his body. In that moment he understood how his power increased, for before he could only hold a portion of his maximum potential safely. Now, he could hold it all with no danger to himself, no threat of being destroyed by the power. It still required effort to use, but it would not kill him.

  With almost no thought, Tarrin wrapped the dead body of Faalken up in flows of Air and picked him up, then literally pinned him into thin air some fifty spans overhead, getting him out of the way of the object of his rage. Jegojah. The aura of Magelight around Tarrin coalesced into a coherent sheathe of light as Tarrin rose up into the air himself, carried by his own power, looking down on the Doomwalker with utter fury, looking for all the world like an avenging god bearing down on the subject of his wrath, surrounded by the concave, four-pointed star symbol that truly represented his Goddess.

  With a primal shout, Tarrin unleashed a blasting bolt of raw magical power, that same weave of Fire, Water, Air, Divine, and token flows of the other Spheres to grant the weave the power of High Sorcery. The incandescent bolt lashed out from his outstretched paws. The bolt was magical, but it depended on Tarrin's aim, and his fury had made his aim short. Jegojah dove aside as the bolt slammed into the ground, causing an instantaneous explosion as superhot magic struck and detonated when coming into contact with something it couldn't instantly vaporize. A vast weave of Air slammed the Doomwalker to the ground in mid-dive, and it rolled to the side just in time to avoid being burned in half by another of those powerful magical weaves.

  "How dare you do that to him!" Tarrin raged in a voice so powerful it could be heard at the edges of the city. The Doomwalker sank into the earth just as the body of Faalken had arisen from it, but Tarrin wasn't about to allow it to get away that easily. Weaving together a powerful weave of Earth and Fire, with token flows of the other Spheres to give the weave the power of High Sorcery, Tarrin sent it into the ground and caused it to infuse the ground beneath him. It began to tremble and shake, and then the entirety of the arena floor erupted in a vast explosion of dust, sand, dirt, rocks, debris, sending it hurtling in every direction, raising a cloud of dust that billowed up into the sky.

  The body of the Doomwalker crashed to the broken ground a moment after it had been hurtled into the air, and it remained still as small rocks and other debris rained down upon it. Tarrin had literally yanked the undead creature out of the ground.

  The power inside was exhausting him, and doing it quickly. He realized that it took effort to draw that power now, where it had come to him unabated before. He had to reduce the power he was drawing in. He made the necessary adjustments, slowly lowering himself to the ground as the star surrounding him wavered and vanished, but his paws continued to be surrounded by Magelight. He stalked the prone Doomwalker like Death Herself come to claim it, and it rolled over in time to raise an arm in feeble defense as the Were-cat's paw lashed out, grabbing it by the neck and heaving it off the ground.

  "How dare you do that to Faalken!" he raged, his eyes burning into the Doomwalker's face.

  "Jegojah had nothing to do with that," it said weakly, holding onto his wrist with both bony hands. "Wrong, it was, but Jegojah has no choice but to obey when they say go with your friend."

  Wrong? Wrong? Tarrin looked into the Doomwalker's shattered face, and remembered that the creature often exhibited signs of honor. He remembered what Dolanna and Phandebrass told him about Doomwalkers, that they were undead creatures created when the souls of slain men of great fighting prowess, like Faalken or Jegojah, were trapped in the mortal plane. They had said that those souls were of evil men, but they had to be wrong. Faalken was not an evil man, and yet they had managed to raise him as a Doomwalker. The soul that animated the body he now held was a long way away, and that was the reason why Doomwalkers could not be easily destroyed. The animating force simply abandoned the current body and sought out another, controlled by that soul from its remote location.

  "Be done with it," the Doomalker
said calmly. "Jegojah grows tired of this. Soon Jegojah's soul will belong to a Demon, and Jegojah will trouble you no more."

  The soul. Of course! That was how to stop Jegojah once and for all! All he had to do was either destroy or wrest the soul of Jegojah from the clutches of those who used it for their own ends. He had made a brushing contact with that soul once before, the last time they fought, when he charged Jegojah's body beyond the bursting point with magical power. He remembered that there was a magical connection between the Doomwalker's animated body and its soul, a connection that he could follow back to the soul's location.

  That was how it could be done. That was what he needed to do.

  But what to do? Tarrin looked at the battered body of Jegojah, considering. Jegojah had killed Faalken, had attacked his family, had tried to kill him three separate times. But Jegojah was an unwilling participant. He understood that now, looking at the battered undead body. He was doing what he was told to do, because his very soul hung in the balance. The Doomwalker had never acted with any spite or malice, he realized when he looked back on the encounters they had had. Sure there had been posturing and threats, but never outright malice. The Doomwalker had always fought with a kind of honor, and Tarrin felt that the Doomwalker probably didn't like what it was being forced to do. But that was the key of it, it was being forced to do it.

  He had felt tremendous hatred and rage at Jegojah, but now...it was slipping away. He realized that that hatred had been misplaced, badly misplaced. The hatred he felt for Jegojah should have been affixed to those who created him, created him and sent him out to attack him and his family. Those were the ones to blame, not this imprisoned soul. He blew out his breath. He didn't want to let go of his anger towards Jegojah, but it was too late for that. Helping Jegojah now seemed wrong, but on the other hand, he had to do something for Faalken. He couldn't leave Faalken's soul in the clutches of those inhuman monsters another moment longer. If it meant freeing Jegojah as well, then so be it. Either way, at least Jegojah would never attack him again afterward. And in the end, that was the most important thing.

  Closing his eyes, he reached within himself, and found his own connection to the Weave. Then he assensed the body of the Doomwalker in his paw, still held up, and found the mystical connection that linked it with its animating force. It represented itself in his eyes as a black current running through the Weave, a dark magic that flowed from that source and into the dead body before him. He quickly and effortlessly joined with the Weave and followed that foul magic back, racing through the Weave until he found its headwater. He pushed out a projection of himself from the Weave and occupied it, and then opened his eyes. He wanted to see this place where Jegojah's soul was being held.

  He was standing in a very large chamber of gray stone. There were braziers and a large chandelier holding globes of soft glowing light, magical spells of some sort, and the room was strangely bare and cold. It held little more than a large desk, a bookshelf that dominated the wall behind that desk, a large door of wood bound in brass on one wall, and a door of glass panes that led outside to a balcony on the opposite wall. The view through those panes of glass was wavery, but it was obvious that rugged mountains stood outside that doorway. Upon the desk, standing on elegant golden stands, were two strange crystal-like devices that glowed from within with a strange light.

  Soultraps. Those were what held the souls of Faalken and Jegojah.

  Tarrin moved the projection closer to the desk, which was bare aside from those two strange jewels and the stands that supported them. They were ugly things, no matter how pretty they appeared, for the foul stench of their purpose stained them in his magically-augmented sight. He looked at them, into them, starting to work out the powerful magic that had created them. It was very strong, and it entwined the souls it trapped in such a way that the disruption of the magic would also disrupt the soul, destroying it. Looking at them, he realized that the Soultraps could not be destroyed.

  He leaned in and looked closely at the two devices, studying them with eyes that looked directly into the magic that constituted them rather than into the gems they appeared to be. Using force against those prisons was out of the question without destroying the souls inside, so instead of breaking the bars, perhaps he'd have better luck trying to open the door.

  There was a connection to them, and that connection allowed passage of energy both into and out of the Soultraps. That was the controlling energy used by the souls to control the bodies they animated. All he had to do, he saw, was attack that portal into the Soultrap, attack it and render it incapable of stopping the soul within from leaving using that portal. Destroying the Soultrap was impossible, but this was just as good. He wouldn't be disrupting the magic of the Soultrap, only interdicting it in one very narrow place, causing it to lose what it contained without breaking down the spell. The Soultrap would still be functional, it would just contain no soul. The souls, when freed, would be carried down the magical connection between body and soul, and the souls would enter the bodies they were currently animating.

  He could do it. The necessary mixture of flows to counteract the Wizard magic sprang to mind, and they seemed to be proper.

  Reaching out, Tarrin put his spectral paws directly inside the Soultrap holding Jegojah's soul. Jegojah first. If it worked without danger, he would free Faalken. Once he felt the magic in his fingers, he began weaving together the very complicated spell together to alter that Wizard magic without destroying it, changing a few features of the magic in ways that did what he wanted them to do, rather than what they had been designed to do. He wove it loosely, for it was a full six-flow weave, very large and complicated, just inside the boundary before High Sorcery would be required. He wove it loosely, then after making sure that all the flows were woven in the proper order, he snapped the weave down and activated it by charging it with magical energy.

  Then he stepped back and watched intently.

  The Soultrap seemed to shudder from within, and the light that emanated from inside it flared incandescently for a moment, then the light faded back to normal.

  "That's it," Tarrin said in his spectral form. "Come on, Jegojah, I opened the door for you. Find it. Find it and get out of there!" The light became bright again, and the Soultrap actually began to vibrate on its stand. The light within suddenly flashed brilliantly, so brightly that if Tarrin had actually been there, the light would have blinded him, and then it faded out completely.

  Tarrin clearly felt Jegojah's soul squeeze through the opening he had presented it, free itself of that hated prison and be carried along by the latent magic of the Soultrap, carried back to the body still being held in Tarrin's paw.

  "Yes!" Tarrin said triumphantly. It worked! Now for Faalken, he had to get Faalken out of that damned prison!

  Very quickly, Tarrin turned his attention to the other Soultrap. He wove the same spell, much more quickly now that he had done it once before, and after a quick check of it for proper weaving, he released it and let it do its work. Faalken's Soultrap did the same thing, flared in sudden incandescence, but unlike the first, this one went straight from bright flare to darkness. Faalken's soul had fled the Soultrap the absolute instant an opening had been made for it, and it too was carried into the Weave, carried to the body to which it was connected.

  It was done. Tarrin reached through his own body and assensed the corpse of Jegojah. It was still animated, but he clearly felt Jegojah's soul inside that mortal shell. All ties between Jegojah and the Soultrap vanished when the soul was freed, even the magical connection between Soultrap and soul were severed as the soul was carried into the animated body. The Soultraps were now empty.

  In a fit of anger, Tarrin smashed the two Soultraps with weaves of Fire and Earth, fiery lances that struck the gemlike lattices of them and disrupted them. In little tinkling puffs, both Soultraps shattered, leaving nothing but fine gem dust atop those polished golden stands.

  Snorting, Tarrin nodded firmly to himself. That was all h
e needed to do. He was starting to tire, and he had to get back before Jegojah took advantage of Tarrin's comatose state and cut off his head.

  When he opened his real eyes, he was absolutely awed at what he now held in his paw. It was Jegojah, but it was whole Jegojah, looking exactly as it did the first time he saw it, complete with armor. But this armor was silvery and shimmering, a brilliant blaze of relfected light from the setting sun. Tarrin let go of the limp body and took a step back, then instantly turned and looked up, where he had hung Faalken's body in midair. The body was still there, but the armor was still blackened, the body still unchanged.

  Tarrin brought it down and laid it on the ground. It wasn't moving. He knelt by the body and raised the visor, and found a face that he remembered, a face not eaten with maggots. The restoration of the soul had brought with it a restoration of the body as well, and he now looked exactly as he had on the day he died. But there was no soul in that body, he could tell. Where Jegojah's soul had somehow managed to remain affixed to the body, Faalken's had not. He reached out with his senses and felt it, felt the presence of Death Herself disappearing into the nether, and along with Her was the soul of Faalken Strongsword, Knight of Karas and beloved friend. Taking him home, where he was supposed to go from the beginning, delivering him to the Hammer Hall of Karas, the spiritual realm of the God of Sulasia, the God of Law.

  Tarrin looked down at the peaceful face of Faalken, and he began to weep. He had had no idea what was going to happen, but some part of him was hoping that Faalken's spirit would have remained a while, remained long enough for them to talk, for Tarrin to apologize for getting him killed, stayed long enough to absolve Tarrin for his part in Faalken's death. But he had not. And what was worse, Tarrin looked down at that cheeky face and desperately missed his friend, feeling him die all over again.