“They’ve come to kill and murder and rape don’t LISTEN to them they’re just like the others just like the ones who put us here just kill them send them away eat them consume their flesh…”
The chilling whispers came out of the darkness around them whilst the dead man was speaking, and Dormael tensed, looking around. The temperature suddenly dropped, and Dormael’s breath misted in front of his face. Goosebumps ran up his arms and he could feel a presence in the room with them, something evil and alien.
“We come seeking answers about the Nar’doroc,” D’Jenn said, trying to speak over the whispers that were running through the room.
“Nar’doroc?” the dead man repeated, his face scrunching up as if trying to hear them from a long distance away, “I…do not know what you die speak of.”
Dormael was chilled to the bone as the old man hissed the word in the middle of his sentence. It was out of place with the rest of his voice, as if it were something different entirely, speaking though him.
“Were you a priest here? Are there any archives in the temple? We come here in the utmost respect,” D’Jenn said.
“respect respect for who respect for death respect death respect no one comes here no one leaves here there is nothing here nothing but bones and blood nothing but us come join us no one leaves no one leaves…”
“A priest? Yes…I was…I saw them…oh, Gods above I tried to stop it I tried to make them stop I tried to save them I had to watch them all die like…,” the old man shook his head, “I…there were no archives here. There are only us.”
“Great,” Allen murmured. D’Jenn silenced him with a scowl.
“We mean you no harm or disrespect…” D’Jenn began, but the old man silenced him.
“You must…leave…this place. It is not safe for you here.”
“Safe for you here safe for you here safe for you anywhere I will find you you will die you will all die you will become me I will become you will join us will die here die here die here…”
“D’Jenn?” Dormael said; a warning implicit in his tone.
D’Jenn was slowly reaching to his side for his morningstar, backing away from the dead man step by step as he kept his eyes on the spirit. Allen and Shawna tensed, gripping their weapons and looking around as if something was about to jump them from the shadows. Dormael released Bethany’s hand and readied his own weapon, falling into a ready crouch as he did.
“Stay close to me,” he whispered to Bethany. She nodded, her eyes fearful.
“I tried…to stop it…,” the old priest said, one pale hand rising to his head, “I tried to…to make them…stop stop I tried to make them stop the killing had to watch the killing had to see the blood blood as it washed into the mud the mud the women…raped raped then hung from the gate…they killed…the children…oh Gods above make it stop! Make them leave make them dead dead make them dead like US dead like everything make them join us…”
Suddenly Dormael’s light grew slightly dimmer, and D’Jenn whipped his mace from his belt. He could feel his magic being seeped away, eaten by the spirit that stood before them as it gained momentum and went into a frantic fit of whispering and convulsions.
Then it began to change.
A wound opened in the ghost’s belly, spilling gray entrails and ichor over the dusty stones as it continued to whisper, apparently unconscious of its body’s pain. Fingers emerged from the wound, pulling outward and crawling over and through the wound. Teeth appeared from the gash, attached to a mouth made of the remnants of organs and rent meat from somewhere inside, and it began to eat at the flesh of the body.
The spirit screamed, but the whispers continued to issue from the dark. Other body parts emerged and began to meld with the body of the old man, distending and contorting his flesh. Eyes gazed out from odd places as flayed skin was ripped back and replaced by other things from inside. When it subsided, the thing that had attacked them on the stairs stood in the old man’s place, regarding them with two different colored eyes set deeply into the semblance of a head that seemed to be made of hands clasped into the shape.
D’Jenn took action immediately, moving forward and swinging his morningstar downward in a crushing blow at the thing’s head. The creature reached up with one of its almost-hands and caught the haft of the morningstar. Flesh undulated wetly around the weapon as the creature grasped it, and it turned its strange eyes on D’Jenn. Dormael heard his cousin start to speak, but his words were cut off as the spirit slammed one meaty fist into D’Jenn’s chest. A clang issued up from his armor and he was flung backward, sprawling across the stones to land at Dormael’s feet.
Dormael reached down and helped his cousin stand, and D’Jenn coughed as he tried to get to his feet, blood spraying from his mouth. Dormael noticed that D’Jenn’s morningstar was not in his hands, and he glanced quickly back at the creature. D’Jenn’s weapon protruded from its arm, the body seeming to pull the haft inside of itself, leaving the wicked spiked end free to use.
Allen moved forward, screaming out a battle cry and brandishing his large curved sword at the creature. He brought the sword down at the thing’s shoulder, but it simply swatted the blow aside with D’Jenn’s morningstar and threw a heavy punch at Allen’s face. Allen, though, was the quicker of the two, and he was able to dance backward out of range.
“How do I kill this thing?” Allen shouted, squaring off with it and dodging another blow.
“How in the Six Hells should I know?” Dormael answered, thinking furiously.
“You’re the Gods damned wizard in the family! Think of something!”
Dormael looked around, trying to search out a clue, but all he saw were dried bones and sarcophagi.
Sarcophagi…
“D’Jenn! Can you make a Lesser Circle and a containment box from one of the coffins?” he asked, watching Allen fall back from the creature. It stalked him like some horrid flesh golem, body parts undulating within its form.
“How are you going to get the thing inside of it?”
“Leave that to me. Just wait until it is to close the Circle. Can you do it?”
“Yes. Just buy me a minute to prepare the glyphs,” D’Jenn grunted, wiping blood from his mouth with one hand and clutching his ribs with the other. He shambled painfully off into one of the niches, and Dormael turned his eyes back to the fight as he felt the telltale tingling feeling of D’Jenn’s magic opening and being put to use.
Shawna had entered the battle now, and her style of fighting seemed to offset Allen’s. She turned and danced through the fight, skipping in and out of range with the grace of an acrobat. Allen yelled, screamed, swung, and chopped with almost animal ferocity.
The two of them began to work together, worrying the creature on two sides, first high then low, the way a wolf pack might harass their prey. Allen swung for the creature’s knee, forcing it to move its leg or have it severed, while Shawna moved around behind it to slash at its shoulders and the back of its neck. The creature was off balance, but it moved fast enough to avoid the blows of their weapons, though it could not throw any strikes of its own.
The two warriors kept up the pace, and kept the creature backpedaling and dizzy, but then it did something that chilled Dormael’s blood. Allen was able to score a devastating hit on the creature’s abdomen, spinning into a crouch as his heavy curved sword bit deep into the thing’s midsection. Blood and gore flew outward from the wound, but as it touched the air and left the creature it simply disappeared into black mist. It screamed in pain, but it used the momentum of the blow against both Allen and Shawna. Its upper torso turned in a quick circle, as if it was completely separate from its hips and legs, and it whipped D’Jenn’s mace out with deadly force as it did.
Shawna was able to check the blow, raising the sword in her off hand and ducking away, but only barely. Her sword let out a musical clang as it met the mace, and the force of the block threw her to the ground. One of her swords went clinging over the stones and out of reach.
Allen was not s
o lucky. His sword was much heavier than Shawna’s, and was still recovering from the heavy blow that had slashed into the creature’s midsection. The mace clanged heavily on the pauldron of Allen’s lamellar armor, and he cried out and dropped his sword, falling over on his side.
The creature hissed in triumph and raised the mace arm to bring down on Allen’s head, but Dormael acted before it could. He reached out with his magic and pulled the heat from the thing, attempting to freeze it in place. Its body wasn’t completely physical, though, and Dormael could feel the spirit attempting to absorb the power of his magical attack while simultaneously being affected by it. Dormael had to keep pumping power into the spell, pulling the heat out of the thing’s physical representation as it siphoned off a sizable amount. Ice crystals formed on the surfaces of the creature’s body and melted away just as quickly, but it slowed the thing down and caused it to concentrate its efforts on Dormael, which was exactly what Dormael wanted it to do.
“Get up! We have to push this thing toward D’Jenn!” Dormael called to his brother.
Allen let out a groan and pushed himself to his feet. One of his arms was hugged close to his side, the pauldron over that shoulder crushed inward against the joint. He scrambled out of reach of the creature and began trying to shake his injured arm out a bit, loosening it up and grunting against the pain.
“Your spear!” Allen shouted, holding up his good arm. Dormael tossed it to his brother, and Allen caught it out of the air and readied it, moving only a bit slower because of his injury.
“Ready!” D’Jenn shouted from Dormael’s right. He was in one of the niches, holding his Kai in check and tossing aside a blackened piece of charcoal. The niche was a good twenty links away from where the creature stood now, and they’d have a good bit of ground to cover in order to push it there. Dormael nodded to him and turned his attention back to the creature as it gained a little ground against Dormael’s spell. He pushed power back into it, slowing the creature once again.
“Herd the thing into the niche!” Dormael shouted, and together the companions went to work. Allen stepped forward, shooting quick thrusts at the thing’s head and forcing it to step backwards. Shawna had recovered her sword, and she danced at the thing’s flank, directing its steps and keeping it from stepping out to the side. D’Jenn stood back, tossing spells that Dormael had never seen before – tiny explosions of bright white light that left spots over Dormael’s vision every time the creature tried to step to the other side, away from Shawna. The thing had only one option – to backpedal toward the niche, or face painful strikes from Allen, Shawna, or D’Jenn.
The entire time Dormael poured more magic into his spell, causing the thing to work to fight him off at the same time and keeping it distracted and slow. It began to grow frustrated, and the air in the vaults began to grow a little muggy with the heat that Dormael was displacing into the air around them. It hissed at them continuously, and Dormael even watched parts of the thing’s body began to unravel a bit – hands reaching outward from the thing or organs rising to the surface only to be sucked back inside with visible effort from the creature.
It placed one foot inside the niche, and Dormael spotted the lines and glyphs that D’Jenn had drawn on the ground and the sarcophagus inside. He felt D’Jenn reach out with his magic, and the heavy stone lid to the sarcophagus rose from the coffin to float in midair above it. Dormael smiled and redoubled his efforts.
“Push it into the coffin!” D’Jenn shouted. Dormael pulled harder at the heat inside of the thing’s physical body, and ice began to crackle along the curves of the body parts that the creature consisted of. Allen let out a long cry of rage, and scored a few thrusts high on the creature’s chest. He drew back and turned Dormael’s spear sideways, then rushed the thing, pushing it backwards toward the sarcophagus.
Its legs met the edge of the coffin and its body was too slow to react. It screamed as it pitched backward into the sarcophagus, and Allen ducked away quickly. D’Jenn slammed the stone lid back onto the coffin, pinching off parts of the creature’s arms and legs in the process. They fell, first becoming some sort of clear goo, then dissipating into that black mist. D’Jenn’s morningstar clanged loudly to the ground.
“Get clear of the Circle!” D’Jenn shouted, and Allen and Shawna rushed back out of the niche. An instant later, Dormael felt D’Jenn’s power whip out and alight the Circle he’d scrawled upon the ground. The charcoal lines suddenly exploded with bright light, and died slowly.
The creature screamed from inside the sarcophagus and began to pound on the coffin lid. No matter how many times or how hard it hit it, though, the runes and glyphs drawn on its surface would light up with every blow, and the lid stayed firmly in place. Everyone let out a collective sigh, and Dormael severed his link to his magic.
“What was that thing?” Allen asked, bent over with his hands on his knees and breathing hard.
“I’m not sure,” Dormael replied, feeling almost as tired, “It was obviously some sort of spirit, but I’ve never seen one that strong before.”
“I think it was more than one spirit,” D’Jenn put in, “I think it was all of them. They’ve been down here for ages, stewing in their own pain and suffering, which is what ghosts do, really…but this one seemed to have gained some sort of hive mentality. Perhaps it had become something more in the process, over time.”
“Can it get out?” Shawna asked.
“Not for days. Over time the magic I set into the Circle will fade, but I constructed it specifically to hold the thing for awhile. We’ll be long departed from here when it is able to escape,” D’Jenn said.
“Thank the Gods,” Allen said, and Dormael seconded his assertion.
“Let’s have a look at your shoulder,” Shawna said, walking over to Allen and trying to get a look at the crushed pauldron.
Over the next few minutes, the companions took stock of each other, checking each other’s injuries and passing around some water. Allen’s pauldron was ruined – in fact Dormael had to use his magic to bend the thing back into a semblance of its original shape in order for Shawna to help Allen out of his armor so that they could get a look at his shoulder. It was bruised badly and sore, but otherwise he was alright. After removing the single pauldron and discarding it, he was able to don his armor once again.
D’Jenn’s brigandine had protected him more than Dormael thought it could. It was only slightly bent, but though he had a nasty bruise forming on his chest, D’Jenn’s ribcage seemed to be intact. He took a sip of water, washed the blood from his mouth, and waved everyone away with a grumble. He was able to use his own magic to push his armor back into shape, and somewhat to Dormael’s surprise, he put it back on. He must have been thankful to have it when the thing had hit him.
“The fiega is singing again,” Bethany said, and everyone stopped what they were doing to turn curious eyes on the little girl, then on the armlet still hanging from Dormael’s chest.
Bethany was right – it was singing. Its alien song lilted through his senses, and Dormael’s Kai awakened again to twine with it in harmony. The light coming from the ruby intensified a good deal, and the vaults were suddenly awash with its hue.
“What is that?” D’Jenn said quietly, his eyes peering off toward the back of the vaults. Dormael followed his gaze, and could also see something. There was a reflection there, as if the light were falling on some sort of glass or metal.
“Let’s go find out,” Dormael said, rising to his feet from where he’d been resting on his haunches. The rest of the party gathered their things and rose with him, and everyone moved to follow. Dormael walked carefully toward the reflection, shooting his eyes into the shadows warily as he went.
As he got closer, the crimson light of the armlet shone upon a large metal plate set into the stone of the back wall of the vaults. The thing was four hands taller than Dormael and wide enough to ride a carriage through. What struck Dormael’s fancy about it, though, was the fact that though everything el
se in this temple had decayed and broken down, this one plate was as smooth and shiny as it must have been on the day it was made.
It was etched deeply with the same large runes that he and D’Jenn had seen on the bas-relief carving on the upper level – the symbols they’d associated with the Nar’doroc. The armlet began to sing louder as he approached it, the song causing his Kai to flit about excitedly. Dormael had to take a moment to force it under control, though the armlet hadn’t caused that reaction in him since they’d been in Alderak.
“The runes,” D’Jenn said, “they’re the same as the ones in the stone above.”
“Yes,” Dormael agreed. The armlet was humming against his chest, and he had to concentrate to keep it under control.
“It looks like bronze,” Shawna said, running a finger over the smooth metal.
“This is where the magic we felt earlier is coming from, too,” D’Jenn said, “We would have felt it earlier if that thing hadn’t been distracting us.”
“What is it?” Allen asked.
“I’m not sure,” D’Jenn mused, running his own hand over the metal and tracing a few of the runes etched into it, “It could just be another decoration, but I doubt it. It seems like a…focus point of some sort. Maybe a portal, or a magical switch.”
At that moment the armlet suddenly lashed out with bright fire. Everyone gasped and jumped back from the metal plate, and Dormael tried to rein the armlet in with his Kai, but it was no good. The thing shrugged him off with a feeling that seemed almost…exasperated, and pulled his magic insistently at the metal. A slender tongue of flame licked out from the ruby, running along the bronze plate and then touching upon the glyph that represented fire.
Fiega.
The thought came unbidden to Dormael’s mind, as if someone had whispered in his ear.
The tongue of flame winked out, and the armlet subsided its insistent singing, but it left behind the tiniest bit of liquid fire swimming around in the depression of the rune it had touched. It gave the fiega rune the sense of being alight with an inner fire, and a miasma of power seemed to leak from it in a steady stream. Everyone was stunned into silence, and Dormael felt something shift inside of the bronze plate. There was a subtle change of energy, a difference in the flow of magic and the tones coming from it, as if something were drawing back from the plate.
The Sentient Fire (The Seven Signs) Page 91
