by D. M. Almond
“Do not look at him,” Isaac warned.
Corbin snapped his head forward and tried to focus on the path. Don’t look at the man, just keep your eyes forward, just focus on your destination, he thought over and over again.
As they passed the rambling man, like two ships in the night, he froze in place. Corbin could see in his peripheral vision that the man turned to face them.
“Help me,” he whimpered.
Corbin started to turn, and Isaac grasped his hand hard enough to crack his knuckles. Corbin winced and scowled at the mage.
“Do not give in to their tricks and manifestations,” Isaac intoned. “These lost souls would like nothing more than to drain the essence of your living soul, that they might enter your empty body and access the mortal plane once more.”
“But…he said he needs help,” Corbin said, hearing how stupid the words sounded.
“He’s a liar,” Isaac said firmly. “Just another lost soul in the land of shadows.”
“But if he’s lost, shouldn’t we at least help him find his way?” Corbin asked, feeling deep pity for the man, who was now nowhere to be seen, swallowed by the mist behind them.
“They’re not lost in the way you’re thinking,” Alma said, sounding as if she desperately wanted them to be quiet. “The things trapped here, in the in-between, are forsaken for a reason. Everyone here is lost due to their deeds, not through some trickery.”
“We’re here,” Corbin said, “and we’ve done nothing wrong.”
“Let’s just keep our thoughts to ourselves for a bit, shall we?” Isaac said.
Corbin left it at that, though he hated the silence between them. Talking gave him some small measure of comfort in this place.
The rambling man was not to be the only person they encountered journeying through the Gralok. Periodically strangers would pass them. Some would not pay them any mind, while others would come directly up to them, demanding they help or pleading for them to look at them. All the while Isaac muttered to his companions, “Do not listen to them,” or “Avert your gaze, they have no power over us if we do not give them any.”
They had just passed a screaming woman who looked as if her skin had been charred in a fire. She had not noticed their passage, but Corbin needed to speak or he felt he might go mad.
“What kind of power could they have over us?”
“We are walking between realms,” Isaac said, “alongside lost souls. The darkness has consumed this place, corrupted it beyond all that it ever was, opening a rift from which the Shadow Lord’s damned have seeped through. Right now, we are like motes of light to them. Not all notice us, but some, a very few, those that are stronger of will, sense something is here. And so they try to trick you into acknowledging them.”
“Because to acknowledge them gives them access to us?”
“Correct,” Isaac said. “And once you do that, they can see you. And once one of them can see you, they all can.”
Butterflies fluttered in Corbin’s stomach. He found the swirling fires of Isaac’s eyes suddenly unnerving and needed to look anywhere else. He flinched to the right and thought he caught a glimpse of something white and wispy beside him. His eyes flickered over the space for only an instant, but nothing was there. He cursed himself and forced his eyes forward.
Why is that weeping so close? he wondered. The sound of it was only unusual in that now it seemed on top of them. It took him a few minutes of staring out into the fog before he realized it was Alma. The gnome priestess was sobbing uncontrollably as they walked.
“Be strong,” Isaac said. “It’s this place. It’s trying to consume your light.”
Alma nodded, though tears still rolled out of her eyes. She put on a brave face and tightened her trembling lips together.
Fear seized Corbin to see the priestess losing it. He thought the sight of her breakdown might be more than he could take. “I-Isaac…where did this place come from?”
“The Gralok?” Isaac brooded. “No one knows, at least none that I’ve encountered. It just always was, except nothing like it is now.”
“Could you be more cryptic?”
“You know of the Nine Worlds?” Isaac asked.
“Sure, through myths and legends,” Corbin said.
“The Nine Worlds are no myth, lad. I forget how sheltered you’ve been, growing up in that propaganda mill. The Nine Worlds are very real, and long ago, in ancient times, they were still connected. That was before the Corruption, the Second Rising.”
Alma was sobbing again, though she was trying to conceal it. Corbin and Isaac shared a silent exchange, deciding it would be better for them to continue talking in the hopes that it would distract her from the overwhelming sorrow that assaulted her.
“Once, these halls were said to be the byways between those lands. And many a traveler would take them. The dwergaz were said to have crafted all manner of marvels in these intersecting corridors, places for the weary to rest their heads and marvel at the beauty and simplicity of the light. However, there has always been great debate over whether they created the Gralok entirely or crafted their wonders on top of it.”
“So these are actually halls?” Corbin asked, searching the mist for some hint of a wall.
“Verily,” Isaac said. “Some are even wide enough for entire carriages to pass through, while others seem to be built with the wandering traveler in mind.”
“How did this Shadow Lord corrupt them so?” Corbin asked.
“That is no tale for these halls, lad,” Isaac said. “Perhaps we can save that for some other time, under the light of Themis.”
“Wait,” Alma said in a shrill voice, stopping in place.
On Alma’s side of the path, Corbin could see the wall. He wondered what it must have looked like in the days Isaac mentioned.
The thought was short-lived, as a dark, huddled shape caught his attention. Only a moment before, he could have sworn the naked old man was not there. Now he saw him in stark detail. He was skinny in a sickly way, emaciated, with each section of his spine and ribs showing through his tight, tanned skin. The old man crouched on the floor, rocking something in his hands as he wept. Corbin wondered what this poor soul could have possibly done to be stuck here in this land of shadows. What if he was just another traveler, like them, who had lost his path?
Alma gasped when she heard the unmistakable sound of a baby crying underneath the man’s sobs. Corbin realized the old man was not sobbing, he was praying.
“Please save my child, take her from here,” the old man said, the words rushed and frantic, pleading to some god. “Lord, don’t forsake her to this nightmare. Please, I beg of thee, save her from this torment.”
Alma reached out with her free hand, moving to pat the pitiful creature’s shoulder. “Oh, you poor dear,” she said.
“Don’t Alma!” Isaac shrieked, wrenching her away from the man. Corbin did not understand his distress.
Then he saw the creature.
The old man snapped his head in their direction. He had no face. Smooth skin covered where his eyes and mouth should have been, and in his hands was something from the darkest recesses of Corbin’s nightmares. Corbin did not dare put the quivering, tentacled monstrosity into words, for if he did, he feared his mind might break then and there. The only thing he knew for certain was that the old man was not real but actually an extension of that thing, used to lure in prey.
And yet Alma fought Isaac, trying to break free and go to the old man. He screamed for her to get a hold of herself, to see what was really there. In the commotion, Corbin fell sideways to the ground as Isaac was forced to wrap both arms around the struggling gnome priestess. He turned her to look him in the eyes and yelled for her to wake up.
Out of the corner of his vision, Corbin saw the white wispy thing snake past again. This time it whispered his name as it passed.
The hysteria faded from Alma’s eyes.
“Do you have control over yourself again, woman?” Isaac asked, shaking h
er with each word.
“I do,” Alma said. “Thank you…I almost lost my way. I could swear I saw a starving baby that needed help.”
“There is no baby,” Isaac promised.
Corbin tried to find the white swirl, but it had disappeared again. He got to his feet and brushed off his knees as Isaac directed Alma’s gaze at the hideous creature that had almost taken her. She curled her lip and turned sharply away from it.
The flash of white startled Corbin again. This time he turned his head in time to catch a glimpse. A lump filled his throat and his head felt dizzy.
Down the corridor, only twenty feet away, stood his mother wearing a white, flowing gown. Her face was sad and lonely, and she turned away. “Do not follow me, Corbin,” she sobbed softly.
Her white gown spun as she ran away.
“Mother!” Corbin screamed, reaching out for her. She slipped down a side path, and Corbin ran with all his strength to catch up.
“Corbin, no!” Isaac yelled after him.
“It’s my mother! She’s lost in here. I have to save her!”
Isaac watched helplessly as the boy slipped around the corner, disappearing into the grey mist.
Chapter 21
The library walls rattled and dust spilled out of the cracks. Something large and angry was in the hall, and Logan knew it was only a matter of time before their barricade came loose.
“Thank the scholars for those extra shelves,” he yelled, slipping off his pack and sliding it across the floor to his brother’s feet.
Bipp answered, but his words were lost under the sound of the pounding. He stood clenching and unclenching his free hand, holding his trusty hammer in the other. Nero held his bow steady and true, aimed at the doorway. Outside the castle, the war drums had stopped, and he could hear the sound of clashing steel. The cobolds were fighting with someone.
Logan thought he was prepared for the moment when the undead would breach the room, but it all happened at once. The doors burst apart, wedged shelves were knocked aside, and tables crushed. Sharp, bony fingers raked aside the remaining rubble, and a group of skeletons charged inside the library with rusty weapons in hand.
Nero lodged an arrow between the ribs of one, and Logan flung Gandiva at another of the fiend’s heads. He cursed when it ducked under the flying boomerang. Bipp grabbed a nearby wooden chair and twirled about, letting it crash into a rushing skeleton’s legs. The creature came down hard on the stone, its axe sliding out of reach. Bipp was on it before it could rise, repeatedly smashing its skull with his hammer. It took nine hits before its skull lobbed off and the undead creature grew still.
There were still seven more of the undead attackers to contend with, as well as something large and angry still trying to get through the barricaded door. Logan jumped back as one of the skeletons swept a spearhead where his waistline should have been.
“You’ll have to do better than that,” he taunted.
The skeleton shifted its stance to skewer him just as Gandiva returned to Logan’s hand, crushing the undead creature’s shoulder on its way. The skeleton’s arm hung by a thin strand of sinew, and it reached down for the spear it had dropped with its good hand. Logan stepped on the shaft of the weapon, pinning the skeleton’s hand against the floor.
“Tut tut,” he said. Using Gandiva like a club, Logan battered the side of the skeleton’s face, shattering the bone and knocking it loose. “Isaac would love this,” he snickered, knowing how upset the mage got whenever Logan talked about using Gandiva as a bludgeoning tool.
Nero was not having much luck with his archery. Normally his aerial assaults proved deadly to their foes, but the skeletons had little that an arrow could pierce. He finally managed to lodge an arrow in one of the skeletons’ eye sockets, but the creature did not stop moving. Instead it continued going after Bipp, who was locked in battle with another. Although the arrow did not kill it, it did seem to have a strange effect. The skeleton jerked forward a few steps then paused as if someone had frozen it. With a jerky motion, it resumed trying to get at the gnome. Logan wanted to take out the skeleton, but two more were closing in on him fast.
Bipp fell onto his back, trying to stay out of reach of his attacker’s short sword. He saw the strangely animated skeleton behind it, slowly jerking toward him, but there was little he could do.
Nero moved to join the gnome, but Logan shouted for him to stay where he was.
“We need you to protect them,” Logan yelled, narrowly avoiding another spearhead.
Nero understood, but he was not providing any assistance against the skeletons. His arrows were the wrong weapon entirely for such a battle. He directed his attention to the thing in the doorway and unleashed a barrage of arrows at it instead.
Bipp rolled to the side as the skeleton’s rusty sword chipped the marble floor. He immediately shifted back and splintered its forearm with the head of his hammer. The skeleton tried to lift its sword, but its arm broke the rest of the way, and then Bipp was back on his feet, laughing at the weaponless creature.
He checked for the one-eyed skeleton and was shocked to see it had closed the gap between them. He ducked under its swiping claws at the last possible second. Bipp rolled sideways in a ball and came up with his hammer raised. The weapon crushed the flank of the first skeleton, which immediately crumpled sideways upon impact.
His victory was short-lived however, when he realized his weapon was firmly lodged in the broken ribcage, and the one-eyed skeleton made a creaking noise as it reanimated and lunged in for another swipe.
Logan parried a blade swipe with Gandiva and jumped back as the second skeleton he fought tried to stab him with its spear. The duo facing him was deadly, and he was hard pressed to defend their attacks, let alone find an opening he could use to his advantage. The sword came chopping in at his chest, and Logan had to drop to the ground to avoid it. As soon as he did, the spear came down, and he screamed, throwing his hand up to block it. The metal tip clanged loudly against his mechanical fingers, only inches from his face.
At this rate, I’m going to be dead before Corbin even gets back, he thought, as he grasped the spear and wrenched it away with all his might. The skeleton’s grip was firm and unyielding. As Logan pulled the spear sideways, the fiend moved with it, directly into the path of its sword-wielding partner. The sword crushed through several of the creature’s vertebrae, severing it from the waist up.
The broken skeleton fell forward onto Logan, still gnashing its teeth at his face. He had to drop Gandiva to grab both its wrists and keep it from raking those long, bony fingers across his skin. Logan howled and tossed the creature to the side, where its bones rattled loosely against a bookshelf.
Bipp yelped and ran away from the stuttering, one-eyed skeleton. When he reached the window, he turned to see it had frozen again. He tried to gauge the distance between him and his stuck hammer, but the skeleton began to jerk forward again.
“You don’t give up do you?” he groaned.
The skeleton ran forward and reached out for him. Bipp flipped off his backpack and battered its groping claws. They were so sharp that the canvas fabric tore apart. Bipp let out another squeal as he barely hopped away in time and the contents of his pack spilled out across the floor. The undead monster froze again, and Bipp eyed his frying pan lying on the floor. He jumped forward and snatched it by the handle. He felt the weight of the cooking utensil in his hand as the skeleton reanimated. It tossed his pack to the side and came in with swiping claws.
Instead of jumping out of its path, Bipp lunged forward and brought the frying pan crashing into the skeleton’s kneecap. The rounded bone shattered, knocking the frightening monster to the floor.
“Logan, I believe we are in trouble,” Nero called out.
Logan was doing whatever he could to stay out of reach of the sword-wielding skeleton, who pressed in on him, while also slowly trying to make his way back toward Gandiva. He did not know how they could possibly be in worse shape than they already were.
The entire frame of the library doors buckled inward in a cacophony of cracking stone and splintering wood. Logan had just enough time to glance in that direction before having to jump out of the swiping blades path again. What he saw in that glance gave him little doubt of the validity of Nero’s claim.
They were indeed in trouble.
Corbin chased after his mother for some time. They ran past all manner of phantoms, some of which turned their heads to see what was happening. All the while she begged him to stay away, telling him no good would come of his chasing her.
“Mother, please, let me help you! Let me take you from this place!” Corbin pleaded, wishing she would only stop and listen.
When he lost sight of her again, he felt his heart might burst and that he might just lie down and wait for the darkness to consume him. And he might have done just that, if not for the sound of her voice coming from the mist to his right.
Corbin took a long step forward, and the fogs parted, revealing a tight alleyway just wide enough for one person to travel down. He passed beneath an arch with the bust of a lovely young woman at its center. The alleyway was short, and when he came out of it, he was in a circular courtyard before a pair of chained metal gates. At its center was a round, tiered, fountain with a Valkyrie on top, spouting clear water from a horn. The water flowed down in clean waterfalls, and he could see fat, golden fish swimming around in the pool at the fountain’s base.
His mother sat at its edge, watching the fish swim and running the tips of her fingers across the surface of the pool.
“Mother?” Corbin said.
Melinda frowned and averted her gaze from him. “Corbin, you should not be here,” she said softly. When she spoke, it sounded as if she had been sobbing. “Do not look at me, you must not, lest they find you here.”
Corbin looked around for some sign of another lost soul. “Who, Mother? Who would find me here, in this place? We are all alone.”
“He would,” she said, still refusing to look at him.
