Decadence

by Matthew Ashworth

  Within minutes he managed to regain enough strength to walk normally. His vision was no longer blurry, and he saw everything clearly. The graveyard was empty. He remembered where its exit was, and slowly but surely headed towards it. Once he reached the gates, he discovered that they were locked. Feeling frustrated, Garridan felt rage building up in him, giving him energy. He took a couple of steps back, and then applied some force to his legs. In an instant, he leapt into the air, right over the gates, and landed on the other side.

  Now that he found himself on the edge of the woods, he began recalling the way back to Walden’s mansion. It wasn’t too far from the graveyard. Within minutes he exited the woods and saw the mansion some distance away, standing tall and protected by a lot of guards. The wall surrounding the mansion was relatively low, and Garridan knew that with his newly acquired abilities he’d be able to jump over it without any problems. However, being driven by fury, he wanted to kill everyone who was associated with his former sire. That even included the guards, who betrayed him as well, despite fighting by his side for years before.

  - “You will all die.” Garridan stated under his breath.

  Since he used to be the captain of the guards, he knew their exact guarding locations and patrolling routes. It was unlikely that Walden changed any of those. Garridan reached the mansion fairly quickly and hid behind a nearby tree, when he saw one of the patrolling guards approaching. The guard wasn’t aware of anything and continued strolling. Once he passed the tree Garridan was hiding behind, Garridan pounced on him from the back. During the pounce, Garridan covered the soldier’s face with his hands, and then quickly twisted his neck, before the guard had time to realise what had happened.

  Feeling no remorse for the deceased soldier, Garridan picked up his sword and began approaching the gates. He made sure he stayed out of the line of sight of the two men that guarded the gates. Slowly creeping along the side of the wall, Garridan kept getting nearer to them. It required a lot of patience, something that wasn’t exactly a problem for him.

  Once he was close enough and confident in being able to bring the two soldiers down, he made a move. The two guards only had the time to see a menacing dark figure suddenly come out of nowhere. By the time they drew their weapons, Garridan sliced their throats and was ready to get going further. He knew there were two more guards patrolling outside the mansion but within the walls. He climbed onto the wall, making sure to do so in a dark area, where he wouldn’t be spotted, and began watching for those guards to appear in his line of vision.

  Within half a minute he saw one of them. Once again, Garridan required patience as he waited for the guard to draw near before taking any action. As soon as the guard passed right below him, Garridan jumped down onto him and slammed the man’s face against the ground. Without taking a time out to rejoice, he quickly dragged the body out of view and hid in the shadows, waiting for the second guard. The second man made an appearance after about a minute. Just as he walked near Garridan’s hiding place, he had his throat sliced and bit the dust.

  Now that the job was done outside, Garridan headed towards the mansion itself. At first he was heading towards the front door, but then decided to gain entrance through one of the windows. None of the windows on the ground floor were open, but there were a couple on the floor above it. Garridan decided to test his newly found strength. He walked up to the wall, just below the window, and looked up. Then, remembering the betrayal, he felt enraged, which caused lots of energy to flow into him. Once he was ready, he made the leap and was thrown into the air. The nature of his jump was unnatural, and as a result he propelled himself quite high, managing to grab onto the window sill. Pulling himself up, he momentarily crawled inside the mansion through the window and found himself in a small room.

  He knew his sire’s chamber was on the floor above, and he also could remember that there were six more guards to take care of. Silently, Garridan made his way downstairs into the armory. Two of the mansion’s guards were there. Upon hearing the door opening, they turned around casually and saw Garridan. They instantly went aghast and lost their speech. In a quick succession Garridan decapitated one of them and then stabbed his sword into another.

  - “Garridan… could it be you…” were the soldier’s last words just before he passed away.

  Garridan left the sword inside the man’s torso and began searching for his signature blade among the other items in the armory. He found it discarded in a pile of old swords and felt even more insulted. Grasping his familiar blade, Garridan felt slightly at ease. He touched the edge of the blade to make sure it was still sharp, then sheathed it, and headed back for the exit. Just before he left the armory, however, his eyes stopped on a long chain that used to be a part of one of the weapons but got broken. Garridan picked it up and decided that it would come in handy.

  Right after exiting the armory, he ascended back upstairs. The next three guards received the same fate as all the others before them. None of them had enough time to react to Garridan’s presence. Only the last floor was remaining now, and Garridan knew exactly where the last soldier was. He slowly and courageously went up the stairs, and then along a short corridor, leading to Walden’s private chamber. As expected, the last guard was defending the entrance into the sire’s room. Garridan quickly hid behind the turn in the corridor and made a faint pounding noise against the wall.

  - “Who’s there?” the soldier asked almost immediately.

  Garridan didn’t respond and instead made the noise again. A second later he could hear the guard’s footsteps, indicating that the guard was approaching. The moment the guard made the turn in the corridor, Garridan impaled him on his sword and then just as quickly took it back out. Now not being constrained by any of the guards, he had his former sire all to himself. The sire’s wife was out of town for a few days, but Garridan was not interested in killing her, since she took no part in his death.

  The resurrected general came up to his sire’s door and kicked it open with all the vigour. The moment he went inside, he saw Walden scramble to his feet from the chair, feeling absolutely alarmed. At first the sire didn’t recognize the man that came to kill him. He just saw an intruder and quickly picked up his sword to defend himself with.

  - “Who are you?! What are you doing in here?” Walden yelled, demanding to know who the intruder was.

  - “Your mansion seems to be defended way too lightly for a traitor.” Garridan said without replying to his sire’s questions.

  Walden took a closer look at Garridan. He recognized the armor, and then looked carefully at the face and noticed that it was grotesquely burnt.

  - “Garridan? I thought you were dead.”

  - “Well I thought so too, but turns out I am not.” The vengeful knight responded with a hint of rage in his voice.

  - “Please understand why I had to do it.” Walden said, trying to justify his sinful actions.

  Garridan, however, wanted to hear none of it. The moment his sire opened his mouth and began explaining the situation, Garridan roared out loud and instinctively shot a big ball of fire from the palms of his hands. The fireball struck the noble and set him alight.

  - “How did you… why?” Walden yelled whilst screaming from intense agony of being burned alive.

  Garridan couldn’t believe himself what he just did, but once he accepted it, he was satisfied with it. His former master fell to his knees, screaming, as the flames began engulfing him. Garridan slowly walked closer and looked down on him with disdain.

  - “Ironic, isn’t it?” he said with gratification.

  Within seconds the treacherous noble was dead, at which point Garridan picked his body up and took it out of the room. The corpse was severely charred and there was no life in it, but Garridan was not yet done.

  Once back at the stairs, Garridan tied the chain he had around the corpse’s neck. Then, without further ado, he tied the other end of the chain to the railing, and finally tossed the body over the railing as a menac
ing sign to all those who would come across it in the future.

  At that very instant Garridan heard the hoarse voice in his head again.

  - “A job well done, Garridan.” It said satisfyingly, “Now if you want justice to be served everywhere, go out there and kill more wicked people.”

  Chapter 6

  Trouble Outside

  Back in the Underworld, Adelais was pacing nervously whilst waiting for Azrael to summon everyone to Hades’ chamber. Ethel was sitting on a big rock not far from him, just some distance away from the Hades’ palace itself.

  - “Adelais, what’s bothering you?” she asked softly, breaking the quiet atmosphere between them.

  - “I don’t know. Just have a lot of things on my mind.” He said whilst still pacing.

  - “Like what?”

  - “Don’t worry about it.” He wasn’t feeling like explaining it.

  Adelais was worried about many things relating to the current issue with the creature attacks. He was mostly concerned about how his good friend, Malakai, was related to it. He was hoping that Malakai was not playing a part in it, but the more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed that Malakai at least knew something about it. The words they exchanged during their last meeting carried a certain sense of unease and disturbance.

  - “Just sit and try to calm down.” Ethel suggested eventually, “I am sure this issue will be dealt with very soon. We’ve faced problems like this before.”

  - “Yes, except this time my friend Malakai is a suspect.” Adelais pointed out.

  It was clear that Ethel understood what he meant, and hence didn’t argue. She had an aptitude for knowing how others felt and why they felt that way. Still, she did not just sit idly when her friends were anxious. Within seconds Adelais saw her get up and walk up to him.

  - “He’ll be fine. We’ll sort this problem out in no time.”

  Her tone of voice was very reassuring, and Adelais eased off a bit. He stopped pacing and just glanced at a distance, at the structures on the horizon and the machai soldiers walking not far. Ethel stood right next to him, gazing in the same direction.

  - “I hope you’re right.” He spoke quietly here.

  A few seconds later they heard Lazarus calling them. They turned around and saw him standing next to one of the structures behind them.

  - “Lazarus, what is it?” Ethel asked.

  - “Lord Hades wants all the angels in his chamber.” Lazarus responded instantaneously.

  On that note, without asking any more questions, Ethel and Adelais headed to where Lazarus was and joined him shortly. Then the three of them approached the palace and began ascending its steps. A couple of other dark angels landed by the palace just a few seconds later and followed them up, and some more were still coming. At that instant they all saw a beautiful entity fly out of the main doors of the palace. Adelais recognized it straight away. It was Seere, the greatest messenger of the Underworld, who looked like an elegant human on a graceful winged horse of blinding white colour. Seere was actually a demon who made a choice to start serving the Creator many centuries ago. The demon and his horse were pretty much inseparable and represented one being. Within fractions of a second Seere passed right above them at an astounding speed and disappeared into the gloomy sky.

  The three of them entered through the doors right after Seere passed them, then briskly walked through the main corridor, and eventually made it to the private chamber. The three judges knew Hades was expecting everyone, and so didn’t bother stopping anyone. They just stood aside and let the dark angels in. Hades was carefully observing the entrance and glancing at everyone who went in. Azrael and a couple of other dark angels were in his chamber already, waiting for the others. Ethel, Adelais, and Lazarus joined with Azrael as soon as they came in, whilst other dark angels stuck with their troop commanders.

  - “Why was Seere here?” Adelais asked Azrael quietly.

  - “Something else just came up. Lord Hades is going to go through it. Just let me do the talking.” Azrael stated in response.

  Adelais decided to wait patiently. Once the last of the dark angels came in, the doors into Hades’ chamber closed, and Hades was ready to begin explaining the situation to everyone. There were just over a dozen of dark angels in the chamber. All of those were the dark angels native to the Erebus sector. Those weren’t all of Erebus’ dark angels, however, as more than half of them were already partaking on some missions and were elsewhere.

  Hades finally began summarizing the problem. Everyone was aware of what was going on, but Hades needed to introduce it nevertheless. It was good to make sure everyone was updated with the information and knew everything that was currently known. Once he finished explaining about the creature attacks, he rather quickly moved onto a different topic.

  - “You all are probably wondering why Seere was here. Well, he delivered some disturbing news of a terrible slaughter that happened in the External World very recently. He said that the demonic powers were used during that massacre. This means some of you will need to go to the External World and locate the miscreant responsible.”

  - “But what about the issue of creature attacks? We can’t possibly leave our home sector behind when more attacks could be on the way.” A dark angel by the name of Cael pointed out.

  - “Yes, absolutely correct.” Hades acknowledged, “Some of you will need to stay behind and watch the defences.”

  - “My troop can go and locate the attacker in the External World.” Gideon, who was Cael’s commander, suggested.

  - “We can lend a hand.” Azrael proposed straight after.

  There was silence right after that, whilst Hades pondered on who to send. Eventually he decided:

  - “Fine then. Gideon, take your troop and go to the External World. Azrael, you too, but with one exception. I’d like Lazarus to stay behind and to engage in a different task.”

  - “What is it, my Lord?” Lazarus responded to Hades’ query.

  - “I figured that perhaps it would be best if someone kept a close watch on Malakai, one of the dark angel commanders of Infernal Pit. I think it should be you.”

  Adelais’ fears began coming true. He knew well that Hades was very intelligent. If Hades decided that someone had to watch Malakai, it meant he highly suspected him.

  - “Lord Hades, could I please be the one to do this task?” Adelais instantly spoke up.

  Somehow Adelais could see that Hades knew he would say such a thing. It could’ve been because he was well aware of the friendship between him and Malakai.

  - “I’m afraid I cannot send you, Adelais.” Hades replied almost straight away, “You and Malakai have a strong bond. He would be able to sense your presence. I have to send someone he is not acquainted with.”

  - “It will be fine.” Lazarus placed his hand on Adelais’ shoulder, trying to reassure him.

  Adelais didn’t argue. He understood why Hades didn’t want to send him. It was logically the best decision and would not disrupt the mission. Still, deep inside he wanted to shout over to Malakai to be careful.

  - “Now then, just remember one thing, Lazarus…” Hades continued, drawing Lazarus’ attention once again, “…Do not engage in combat. Don’t even reveal yourself under any circumstances. I just want you to watch what he does, and if you find anything remotely suspicious, I want you to report back to me.”

  - “I will do exactly that, Lord Hades.” Lazarus confirmed with a nod.

  Hades then told everyone else to stay on defence of the sector, and finally dismissed them all. Some of the dark angels stayed behind to individually report to him about their most recent missions, whilst everyone else in the chamber silently walked out. They did not begin talking in the corridor. Instead, they absorbed everything that was said and contemplated on it. Once back outside, some flew back to their posts, whilst others began discussing the plan of action.

  - “I guess I am going to depart now.” Lazarus said to his teammates.

  - “I
pray for our Creator to guide and protect you.” Azrael said to him. That phrase was another common saying among dark angels. Whenever any of them wanted to wish another one to do well and to be careful, they said that line. Even though the angels knew that the Creator had already decided what’s going to happen to those who served Him, they still said it as a sign that they hoped He chose to protect them.

  - “And may He guide you as well.” Lazarus responded, wishing for Azrael and the others to succeed in locating the slaughterer in the External World.

  On that note, Lazarus flew into the air and headed towards the docks, from which he would take the boat. Adelais, Azrael, and Ethel, however, flew in the other direction, towards the Northern side of the sector, that would lead them out of the Underworld. During the flight they began discussing their approach. Azrael said that it could be hard to locate the individual they’re after, but suggested they all stuck together and attacked as one unit.