“Fine!” I pleaded, desperate. “I’m not even arguing! Let’s have a duel, by all means, but first I have to save the city because you would not believe what’s going on down—”
Keen shook me, a quick snap that whiplashed my head around and sent stars though my vision.
“Hey, you!” Ramsey was advancing on us. “You can’t just come in here and snatch people like that! Let her go!”
“Oh, but I can. Unless you’d like to go file a complaint. Oh no, whatever would I do if someone complained!”
“I’m going to do a lot more than that, you bast—”
Keen gave one contemptuous glance over his shoulder and flung out his left hand. A dark bold shot from it and launched into Ramsey, sending him sprawling backwards like a kick to the chest.
“No!” I yelled.
Garret spared one angry glance at the vampire, but did not move his hands from Marrisa’s temples or interrupt his chanting. Sarah balled up her fists and took half a step forward before looking wretchedly back at her mother. Unhappily, she moved to stand between Keen and the salt circle and said nothing. Everyone else was watching the scene unfold with wide eyes and open mouths.
Keen turned back to the wall and began drawing a doorway on it with his finger. Scorch marks singed into the marble and sent up small tendrils of smoke. Behind him, Ramsey struggled to his feet.
“Ramsey, don’t!” I implored as he started towards us again. “You have to warn the temple officials!”
I struggled again, this time not to get away, but just to free one of my hands. Cummon…
[Escape Artist check: Partial success]
It was enough. I got out the illusi-frame in one hand and flung it towards Ramsey. “Catch!” I yelled, as it spun toward him in a gilded arc. Ramsey dove forward. “Take that and—”
Keen completed his doorway, which rippled and then went black. He turned around, arrested Ramsey’s forward dive with one more dark bolt, and turned back to the dimensional door as the illusi-frame shattered on the marble floor.
The vampire stepped into the darkness, taking me with him.
By the damp, stale air, we were somewhere deep beneath Triport.
“This isn’t the arena.” I hazarded.
“No, it’s not. It’s just a little place I found, that no one ever comes. You can scream all I’d like, down here.”
I struggled against his grip again, to no avail. “Fine! Have your dumb revenge, then, but the city’s in danger, so just get on with it!”
“Don’t worry,” he said, moving forward. I could still see absolutely nothing but the twin red embers of his eyes, hovering in the void like fireflies from hell. “I’ll kill you eventually. But your policy doesn’t expire for a whole month.”
“You can’t—”
“Oh yes I can.” He slammed me up against something wooden, a wine cask maybe, and shifted his grip, pinning my hands above me by my wrists.
[-2 Hit Points: Bludgeoning damage]
[Hit Points: 18/20]
“I bought you, you little imp. I own you.” His other hand reached out and felt my clothing, sliding up my torso. Searching. “And before we’re done I will teach you what that means.”
His fingers found one of my daggers. Stopped. Slid it out of my wraps, and stabbed me through both palms, impaling my hands to the cask.
[-5 Hit Points: Piercing damage]
[Hit Points: 13/20]
I screamed. I screamed like it hurt worse than anything I had ever felt, because it did, and Keen laughed at my screaming, high and delighted. Blood streamed down my hands, through my clothes, and dripped off my toes.
“Oh!” he exclaimed. “Did you have an accident? They can happen to noobs so easily!”
I clamped my mouth shut, and my scream became a whimper.
“What was that again? ‘Let me go’? Well, alright. If you insist.”
He did let go, and my body sagged downwards, putting all my weight on my hands.
[-2 Hit Points: Piercing damage]
[Hit Points: 11/20]
Red streaks of pain danced behind my eyes, as I kicked my legs feebly against the casks, trying to take the weight off, trying to negate the damage. Not my hands.
Keen pulled out the dagger, and I collapsed to the ground. The blood continued to drip down from above me, leaking from the wooden cask. Flooding at some point had filled the room with sand, and it still covered the floor. The grains rubbed into my knees and worked their way into the soles of my sandals, cold wet drops turning them to mud.
The casks are filled with blood. I realized, sickened. This is some kind of larder for him…
Cradling my ruined hands to my chest, I gathered my feet beneath me. I oriented myself by the vampire’s chuckling, then tapped down my heels and launched forward, up and over him.
“What the…?”
I meant to aim myself at a diagonal, but it was all guesswork in the dark, and either the ceiling was low or my jump was high.
[Jump check: Failed]
I smacked my head into stone above me and thumped back down.
[-3 Hit Points: Bludgeoning damage]
[Hit Points: 8/20]
“And just where do you think you’re going?” Keen sounded genuinely amused, by which I guessed that I wasn’t headed towards the doorway. The horrible thought then occurred to me that there might not be a doorway, here in this forgotten place. Not one that I could use, anyway.
“You bastard. This is kidnapping.” I almost said you’ll never get away with this, but bit back that inanity before it could escape with the screams. “There’s something wrong with you!”
“No,” he snarled, “this is a duel. And you are the one who dared to challenge me!” The darkness around me grew thick, condensed. “Isn’t this what you wanted?”
Where it touched me my limbs grew weak, shuddered and gave out. Icy stabs of pain ran through me, sharp as daggers.
“Because this,” he continued, stepping forward, his voice looming over me, “is what you asked for.”
I collapsed to the ground, all of my effort going into not giving him the satisfaction of hearing me cry. It occurred to me then that I really was going to die. Even if it wasn’t today, he would keep me here, trapped and blind and far from everything I loved, until the day he came to have his fun and played a bit too hard.
Keen reached out and touched my cheek, almost softly. His hands were cold.
I wondered if he would really bring my body back to the Temple. I wondered if they would be too overwhelmed to honor the resurrection if he did. Accidents happen so easily during natural disasters…
He slipped out one long, vampiric claw and sunk it into my face just above my cheekbone, and then drew it down as carefully as sculptor carving clay. It felt like he was ripping apart my soul.
[Spell effect: Enervation]
[Negative levels bestowed: 1/4]
[Withdrawn (1d6) Maximum Hit Points: 5]
[Hit Points: 8/15]
I gasped and thrashed away but didn’t get far, my body wracking with bone deep shivers as I gave everything I had to resist the energy drain. I suddenly, desperately, missed the sun. I hadn’t seen her since I came to the city. Mother, I am so cold. Why did you kick me out? Keen reached down to touch me again.
Around me, the smallest of whirlwinds stirred the sand.
For a moment, I stopped breathing. Did I really just feel what I think I just felt?
The sand grains danced against my forehead, oh so lightly, and the revelation hit me like an avalanche. I have not been kicked out, I have been SENT out.
And the sun has not been out because she has been in; in my belly, in my blood. In my soul.
I reached out one blood-soaked hand and grabbed a fistful of sand, then rolled over and flung it into Keenfang’s face.
“Shaziri!”
[Minor Magic spell selected: Light]
The tiny grains flashed, bright as stars, bright as miniature suns. The vampire scr
eamed and staggered, fell back, clawing at his face. In the brief brilliance, I saw the room was not featureless; there was a doorway on the far wall. I dug my Talarian Sandals in and leapt for it, over the shrieking Keen.
“So long, sucker!”
I ran out the doorway and paused, blind again. “Shaziri.” I whispered, and a faint glow dawned around me.
What is?
Much to my surprise, with the aid of the light I recognized the tunnels, though I had never been here before.
[Intelligence check: Success]
It was along the path that the dwarf had taken before he died. The one in his pictures. To my right it led to the surface, and freedom. To my left, a dark altar of bones, and a fractured leyline. I looked back at Keen, who was quickly recovering, and then back down the tunnels. It was time to make a choice.
Sent out, huh? Very well then. I will take the light into darkness.
I turned left.
Behind me I heard Keen stumble out the doorway, cursing my name and my lineage and various personal parts of my body. He wasn’t going to have any trouble following me. Good.
I sprinted down the passageway, trailed by the enraged vampire. The tunnels split and turned, and I tracked my way by the remembered illusi-frame, following the dwarf’s exodus in reverse, wondering if the path led to hell in both directions. Here was the maze of ancient piping, here was the hidden turn off, and here was the opening into the big room…
…which the pictures had not indicated was an opening in the floor. I stumbled and tumbled through, landing on a pile of moss and bones. The space was huge; ancient ruins melded into natural stone cavern, and strange lichens and moss covered the floor and intertwined on marble pillars. Waterfalls trickled down around me out of the shrouded shadows of the distant ceiling.
[Jump check: Success, falling damage negated]
Oh shoot indeed. The eerily glowing room was packed full of goblins, all looking at me.
“What?” I hissed.
Above me I heard Keen make exactly the same mistake I had, and dodged out of the way just as he thumped down next to me.
“These are the goblins that are going to destroy the city!” I told him. “Now do you believe me?”
The surprised goblins got over their shock, and a huge one decked in stolen finery raised his garnet studded scepter. “Squishy skins!” he announced. “Yummy yummy squishy skins!” And hundreds of goblin voices cheered and swarmed towards us.
I staggered to my feet, still dizzy and weak, but pulled out my daggers anyway. I prefered to go down fighting.
The goblins reached the bottom of the bone pile.
“Oh no you don’t.” Keen stood up and faced the horde. He raised his hands, made a complicated wrapping motion with them, and spoke low, guttural words. The goblins’ own shadows reached up off the floor and grabbed at their progenitors. The cut on my cheek ached; a sapping, sucking, hurt that blurred the vision on my left side. I rolled away, down the bone pile, and gasped against the pain.
Keen strode forward, all arrogance and arcanum, and the goblins’ cheers turned to howls as the shadows pulled them down. They cried for mercy, but the vampire only laughed, his robes sweeping amongst their crumpling forms. I heard snapping, wet, noises as the goblins bodies twisted into unnatural shapes. Some managed to break free and turned to flee, but fully a third of them went down, gasping and wailing, and did not rise again. Keen took some pot shots at the fleeing goblins, and got a few more, but the shaman and the rest got away.
“Hah, would you look at that! It’s been a while since I got so many at once.” Keen seemed to have temporarily granted me a reprieve. Maybe so that I could appreciate his slaughter. “But you know goblins, they’re like popcorn. You can’t have just one.” He then pulled out his own illusi-frame and took a picture of his handiwork. “Now where are you, you little imp, did I get you too?”
It occurred to me then, with a rising little flame of hope, that Keen was actually talking to himself, not to me. Maybe he would think I ran off with the goblins.
I settled into the bone pile and hid.
[Stealth check: Success]
He turned around and his attention was caught by the altar and the crystal. I saw his magician’s mind at work, coming to the same conclusions I had, only faster. Yes. Notice!
“What did the little shits think they were doing? Gah, morons.” He reached up and activated a sirenstone earing in his right lobe. “Tasha? Yeah, is Robyn on? Well, get her. Or go get the city council, we have a situation on our hands.”
I let out my breath in one very long, slow exhale.
“Yeah that’s what I thought. Well, wake them up! We all work overtime. What do you mean there’s a halfling already there making a fuss?” He listened for a bit. “Ok, fine, I’ll wait.”
We waited.
“Well I’m so glad the High Priest has managed to get up to speed. Tell him he’s going to have to reattune the second Temple leyline, there’s a Prot vs Pests down here under the city that’s going to turn into a full blown Death Shell and wreck havoc with the drainage system. It’s too late to actually shift the thing.”
What does he mean, “too late to shift”?
“What?” He put his hand back up to his ear. “Trust me,” he said, his voice heavy with irony, “I have the spell identified correctly.”
The crystal in the wall began to change color from the eye-wateringly wrong purple light to something brighter, and cleaner. The clean light pulsed in and around the purple, shifting, immiscible. “Yes, your grace, the spell is working, it’s changing color… hold on, you’re pumping too much energy into the leyline. It can’t take that much. I understand you have to overwhelm and counteract the negative energy, but what I’m telling you is this crystal can’t take any more.”
Another pause.
“No, I can’t! Do I look like a bloody divine conduit to you? Do you know who I am?” More listening, and even I could hear the angry squawking coming from the sirenstone in his ear.“Suit yourselves, but this thing is going to blow any second. And it’s not like the Death Shell is going to bother me.” Another pause. “Well, whatever then; it’s not my quest, it’s not my fault, and I’m not sticking around for it. I guess I’m done here. Hope you have a plan for the hurricanes.”
With that, Keen took his hand away from his ear, reached into his pocket, and removed a small moonstone. He climbed back to the top of the bone pile, held the moonstone in his hand like a trigger, pressed his thumb down on top, and began to ascend into the air, returning to the darkness above.
I stood up from my hiding spot.
I went to the churning crystal and laid my hand on the smooth surface. Divine conduit, huh? I summoned the little flickering in my belly, and
sent it out through my blood, into the stone. It grew hot beneath my hands, hot as the desert, hot as the sand in the summer, hot as a heatwave, as a mirage, as the very sun herself, when she touches the earth.
“Shaziri!”
I felt the completed circuit of divine power as the connection was made, anchored on a technicality by my tiny spell. The dark energies being subverted and channeled to the evil altar were overwhelmed, fragmented, and began to disperse. I felt the flaws deep inside this old, abandoned leycrystal that had been crushed and buried for centuries, but I pushed forward anyway, channeling the light. For a moment if felt like I could see the entire leyline and everything it touched; the Great Temple up on the hill, with Garret sweeping up his own altar, while Sarah and Marrisa, healthy and well, hugged each other and laughed and made plans for the future; Ramsey, standing in an opulent office at the top of one of the steep towers, arguing with a pinch-faced priest and Senator Brightmore over the broken shards of the illusi-frame; the little fisher girl, Minnow, feeding sardines to a silver kitten with great ceremony. I saw Hel, sleeping upright in the chair in her office, surrounded by maps on the table and old weapons on the walls, her hand still wrapped around a cup of tea, snoring gently; and finally I saw Isha, staring deep into the fire in the ovens of La Baliene. For just a moment, it seemed like he saw me back.
Yes! I thought as the last of the scuttering shadows were routed out. Take that! The shadows would not be defeated forever, of course, but they weren’t getting out into the world as a Death Shell, not today.
Not on my watch.
The pulsing colors merged, and for a moment, the crystal turned the same exact shade of blue as the zenith of the sky after a storm. Then it exploded, hurling me across the room, where I crashed into the far wall, headfirst.
[Save the Storm Drains: Quest – COMPLETED!]
A Fist Full of Sand: A Book of Cerulea (Sam's Song 1) Page 27
