Crown of Steel (Chaos Awakens)

by Heath Pfaff

  "There are some important differences." Xan answered.

  "Yeah, this place is hungry." Kassa replied, somehow articulating the unease that had been plaguing Xandrith. She was right. That was the key difference. The Tesserect passages were hungry, and Xandrith had just led a full meal directly into its gaping maw.

  As if aware of the disquiet spreading amidst their group, a low rumble rolled through the gray halls. It caused the ground to shake and undulate in an unnatural way. Xandrith teetered, as did some of the others. He reached out to the nearest wall to steady himself, and then almost fell entirely when he touched the surface and felt how cold it was. Even just brushing his fingers against it for a second had sent an icy chill all the way down his arm and into his shoulder.

  "Fucking hells, what was that?" Crow cursed, his hand wrapped so tightly around his sword hilt that his knuckles had gone white.

  "It doesn't matter." Xan snapped. "Just keep moving. This place wants us to stop and turn around. Let's not give it what it wants."

  From somewhere in their wake a deep and wavering tone growled down the passageway sounding a great deal like an animal groaning in the last minutes of its life. This went on for several seconds before it stopped and a chill breeze swept down the corridor, strong enough to rustle the fabric of Xan's shirt. The wind smelled of decay.

  "This place is fucked." Crow muttered, but he had started walking forward again.

  "Funny, I was going to say that we were fucked." Xan replied snarkly, though he wasn't particularly feeling the humor. He was keenly aware that they were in terrible danger. He hadn't necessarily saved them by opening the Tesserect passage. They may have been much better off fighting the horde of metal and flesh monsters, at least they were something that one could stand against and attempt to defeat. The gray corridors were something else entirely. They were a force unto themselves, a trap with their own set of rules. Xandrith couldn't shake the sense of dread climbing up inside of him, and he guessed the others felt much the same. Death was coming for them, and it was getting close.

  Chapter 3

  Gray Times

  "Kassa." The voice drifted through the air, a whisper that emanated from the walls, the floor, the ceiling, the very fabric of the gray world. "Kassa, come here." They all heard it. It wasn't some illusionary voice picking away at the mind of an individual. The voice was clear for all to hear.

  "Why is it only calling her?" Crow asked. He had drawn his weapon a few minutes before and refused to sheath the blade. "What the hell does it want?!" There was no illusion of calm left in his voice. Little Crow was quickly becoming completely unhinged.

  Xandrith didn't have any answers for him, but if he had to guess he was fairly certain the gray halls were attempting to fracture their group. They were trying to get them to argue, split up, and run in different directions. If it divided them, they would be easier to deal with. "Just keep moving forward, Crow. We'll be out of here soon enough, and then none of this will matter."

  "Kassa, you remember us, right? Kassa." The whispering voices rattled down the halls.

  "I wish it would stop." Kassa spoke for the first time since the voice had started calling her name. "I'm not embarrassed to admit that it's scaring me."

  Xan was scared as well. "It's scaring all of us, Kas, but you can't let it get to you. This place is just a means to an end. If we keep moving we will get through it and then we'll never need to come this way again. Remember, lots of people have passed through these passages and come out the other side just fine."

  "I don't think you should have brought us here." Haley spoke, her voice strangely calm emanating from her fox mask. "This place is far more dangerous than those metal things were."

  Xandrith was more than a little surprised to hear her speak out against his decision. She'd always taken his side before. "That's easy for you to say now Not-Daisy, but while were fighting out there our lives seemed less than assured." Xan felt the urge to swallow down some unnamed emotion at having Haley’s old nickname slip from his lips. The name seemed sad and somehow inappropriate now.

  "You pretend to care so much for us, but you keep putting us in danger's path." Haley snapped. "If you really gave a damn for us, would you have brought us to this place?"

  Xandrith couldn't even protest. The anger in her voice forced his jaw closed.

  Kassa spoke instead. "We came searching for him, Haley. We chose to come here. Xandrith never asked us to join him. We're here because we are his friends. Perhaps you've forgotten that?"

  Haley didn't reply, and for a moment there was silence.

  "Kassa." The voice whispered through the walls again. "Kassa!" This time it came as a growling scream which made the entire group jump.

  "How much further do these tunnels go?" Crow's voice shook as he spoke.

  "The passage is different every time. When we exit six hours will have passed in our world, but time inside of the Tesserect passages is impossible to gauge. We just need to keep moving forward." Xan tried to sound confident in his reply, but the passages were getting to him as well.

  "I should have never opened these roads." A voice spoke from behind their group and almost as one they all swung their heads to look back. A figure in red robes was walking behind them. He was an old man, his skin worn thin as though he hadn't eaten in weeks. His eyes were sunk so deep into his skull that they looked black. "They know about us now. They know and they're looking for us." His voice was a dry rattle.

  Xan snapped his head away from the figure. "Everyone look forward. Ignore it. It's not real." The others turned away as well and they resumed walking forward, but the old man's footsteps didn't fall behind.

  "I thought I would bring the world together, but some things weren't meant to be tampered with." He was speaking again. "Six hours. That is how long it takes to draw one living thing across the threshold of our existence and into theirs. That's why it takes six hours to go anywhere. That is exactly how long it can hold you before it has to let go, but time doesn't work the same here. Six hours."

  "Shut up!" Crow snapped, not looking back.

  "Tell them, Kassa. Tell them what waits for them beyond the gray." The old man ignored Crow.

  "What does that mean?" Crow responded. "Kassa, what is he talking about?"

  "I don't know." Kassa replied. "It's just trying to get to us."

  "It's working." Haley answered, and she sounded almost as agitated as Crow.

  The path ahead of them split into three different directions. "Take the right most path and keep going." Xandrith instructed. "It doesn't particularly matter, but the less we hesitate the better. Any time we come to a branch we'll go right." The group walked down the right most path, though the corridor seemed to be slightly more narrow than the one they'd previously been in.

  "I wouldn't have gone down the right path." A young female's voice spoke from their backs. Xan resisted the urge to look behind him, but Crow's head snapped immediately.

  "Emmie?" His voice cracked and his forward pace stopped. Xan grabbed him by the shoulder and turned him around.

  "It's not real, Crow. Keep walking." Xan told him, but there was a haunted look in the boy's eyes.

  "Crow? Is that what they're calling you? That's funny." The girl’s voice came from behind them again. Xan looked across at Crow. His face was ashen. "I suppose you are kind of like a crow, though. You just circle above it all while terrible things happen below. Remember when those men raped me and cut off my head, Crow? You saw it all from your little hiding place under the floor. Did you like to hear me scream? It was really painful. Daddy was right about you all those years. You're worthless."

  "Emmie, I was just a little kid. I couldn't do anything. I wanted to save you but ..." Crow started to turn again but Xandrith grabbed him by the shoulder.

  "She's not real. Keep your eyes ahead and just ignore what she is saying." Xan kept his voice level and as calm as he could, but for the first time ever he felt sorry for Crow. Whoever Emmie was, it was obvious Crow fe
lt a lot of guilt about not being in a position to protect her. The pain on the young man's face was clear for anyone to see.

  "You could save me now." She spoke quietly. "Just take my hand and help me leave this terrible place. You could fly me free from here, Crow. Please, save me!"

  "Steady, Crow. It's not real." Xandrith said again.

  "I know." He answered quietly. He looked defeated, broken on a level that made Xandrith feel for him, perhaps for the first time. The loud-mouthed youth had been beaten into submission by the ghosts of his past. Xandrith could understand that.

  Emmie spoke again. "You don't know anything. Being dead is cold and terrible. Every minute of my existence is filled with the memory of how my life ended and you just sat watching me die. Now you just keep on walking with your back turned to me like I don't even matter. How many years did I take care of you? I cleaned your wounds after father beat you, tought you to read when he refused to let you go to school."

  Crow didn't reply and so the Emmie figure went on. "Do you remember all the nights I gave you part of my dinner since you were in trouble and weren't being fed? I even spoke up on your behalf. Do you remember the beating I got for that? This is how you repay me?" To his credit, Crow didn't reply to this taunting, but Xan could see the weight of the words resting heavily upon his shoulders. As suddenly as they'd begun, the footstep at their back ceased. Instead of filling Xandrith with relief the new silence only worked to set the assassin further on edge.

  "There’s something ahead." Haley called out.

  "Ignore it, keep walking." Xan answered from behind her.

  "I think it's a body, and it's right in the middle of the path." She added a moment later.

  "It's definitely a body." Kassa added. "Looks like a woman."

  "It's just another attempt to get us to stop. Walk around it and keep moving." Xan instructed, though a shiver was passing down his spine. This was obviously another trap being set by the gray halls, but who was this one aimed to attack? "Don't look at her if you can avoid it. I'm sure one of us will know who she is." Xandrith added after a moment's thought. He should have heeded his own advice. The others listened and everyone made a point of not looking down at the decaying woman in the middle of the path, though missing her scent was impossible. Xandrith looked. He wasn't really curious, but he had believed himself beyond such easy emotional influence. Of course his foolish superiority was sundered the moment his eyes met the sunken sockets of the corpse.

  It felt as though it had been a lifetime since he'd last seen Leahn. So much had changed for him in the time that had gone by. He hardly felt like the same person at all anymore, but in reality it hadn't even been a full year. The months of decay had not been kind to her. Leahn had been a warm eyed, slightly over-weight, and sweet woman when Xan had last seen the deceased mage. Leahn had set Xandrith on this quest to begin with. Xan had come to end her life and she'd known it, but still she'd treated him as a friend and set him on the start of the tasks that had led him to where he was. She'd had faith that he could be more than just an assassin, and her faith had ended with a knife through her heart. Those dead eyes stared up at him, seeming to follow him as he walked past her rotting corpse.

  Xan knew there was no way she could actually be there in the halls of gray, but at the same time her dead, penetrating gaze felt like a completely natural accusation. Those eyes said, "I let you kill me, and I only wanted one thing from you. Look how you've failed me. Are you even human anymore? You're a monster. You were a monster when you killed me and you'll always be a monster." Xan forced himself to look away, but it was already too late. Those dead eyes were haunting his mind now. Leahn's voice filled his head, reminding him of his failures and the waste he'd made of his life. She'd given him a second chance, and he'd blown it.

  "It's not real." He muttered beneath his breath, just loud enough to hear himself, but the words felt flat and lifeless. He didn't believe them. These gray halls knew him. They knew about his failings, and they were reminding him of the mess he'd made of things. Her head turned and a terrible smile spread across her dead face.

  "Give up, Xandrith. You've already lost." The words were hollow, a hoarse echo of the voice Leahn had possessed in life. "You've brought us exactly what we need to destroy you."

  "You're not real, damn it!" Xandrith yelled and his voice echoed from the halls around him. The words slammed into him with even more volume than he'd given them to begin with. As the words struck him, clarity also assailed the assassin. He looked up sharply and found himself standing alone in the hallway and facing the wrong direction. He spun back around expecting to see his three companions just a few feet away, but they were gone and he found himself facing an impenetrable gray wall with halls branching both left and right, but nothing going forward.

  Laughter trickled down the gray halls, a masculine chuckle bouncing from surface to surface and filling the horrible silence of the other worldly plane in a disturbingly unnatural way.

  "We've searched for you for so long, Xandrith. We never thought you'd come to us yourself." A voice spoke from behind him, but Xan didn't look back. He started walking down the path to his right at a fast pace. He'd broken his own rules. He'd stopped and looked back, and now he was lost in the gray. That had been stupid. The deception was so obvious that Xan felt painfully stupid for falling for it. It had appealed directly to his humanity, and he'd been only too eager to fall into that trap.

  "You can try and run from us, but it's already too late. There are no missteps within our realm." The voice spoke again, but the tone and timbre had changed. It had possessed a masculine voice the first time, but this time the words rang with the clear and chiming tones of a powerful female speaker. "This place is ours. It is us. Tesserect believed he'd discovered a shortcut to pass through space, but what he'd really found was origin. We connect all points, we are all points. The delicate strand of power that lets you pass through here is easily broken and you've fallen from the route, little assassin. There is no point in trying to escape now."

  Xandrith kept moving. "If there is no point in trying to escape why do you keep trying to convince me to give in? If it were hopeless, you could just leave me to die."

  "Die?" The female voice had become the male voice again. "You won't die in here. Death is for your world. Here, we will devour your being. You will see. The hounds are coming."

  As if to emphasize the last words, a snarling sound echoed down the hall from behind Xandrith. "I've dealt with dogs before. I'm not impressed." Xan replied.

  "We shall see." The voice replied, and then it was gone. Xan wasn't entirely certain how he knew it was finished talking to him. It was as though a pressure that had been pushing against his back was suddenly lifted. Talking back to whatever it was would accomplish nothing. That didn't stop him from putting in some choice last words.

  "When I'm done with your dogs, where would you like me to shove the broken pieces?" He yelled, knowing there wouldn't be an answer. There was something satisfying about getting the last word in even if he was just talking to himself. An eerie howl filled the air, closer than the snarling had been before. "Damn dogs." He muttered to himself before increasing his forward pace.

  The path in front of him split and he went right without slowing down. He had no idea where he was going or if it even mattered that he was choosing directions completely at random, but he wasn't going to just stop and let the dogs get him. A particularly loud snarl from behind him coerced his steady forward pace into an all out run. He didn't bother to look back to see what was at his heels, if anything.

  Running down the gray corridors was disorienting. It was difficult to maintain a fixed perspective on exactly where the floor met the walls and where the walls parted into new lengths of hallway. Xandrith ran recklessly forward, careening down the blank pathways heedless of his direction of travel. Each time he rounded a corner it seemed he would lose his balance and careen into the nearest wall, but the assassin found himself rolling through the turns, his
body leaning and bending through the passageways with ease as though diving down the gray ways was completely natural to him. His feet felt light, and the pounding of his heart was a steady and forward driving beacon. He was filled with fear, but at the same time he felt alive. The long days of torture seemed a blurry vision into some unknown past and he felt like a remade man. He began to laugh.

  The sound was horrifying as it rolled up from inside of him, bouncing out of his chest to the beat of his footfalls. Even to Xan's own ears the laughter was a crazy sound. This was madness. This was insanity. It was wonderful and intoxicating, and it drove him forward even faster than the quickly approaching snarls creeping up behind him. Something lost was found again.

  The center of his spine tingled and Xandrith dove to the side in a roll. Something large and terrible sailed through the place where his body would have been if he hadn't dodged. It landed in front of him on four powerful legs. One of the gray walls stopped the assassin mid roll and he used the surface to straighten himself up and launch himself into a standing position as the dog began to stalk towards him again. It was a large canine creature with fur the color of smoke and eyes like shards of coal glaring out from beneath its heavy brow. The top of its head was level with Xan's shoulder and its mouth hung agape, impossibly wide. The beast would have no trouble putting all of Xan's head directly between its large white teeth and it looked like it had the jaw muscle to crack him open like a ripe melon. It had long, saber-like teeth, some of which were easily as long as a stiletto dagger. Its body was devoid of fat and was instead a mass of knotted and angry muscle, lean and powerful. It could have been called a wolf, but only if one was envisioning a wolf built out of the nightmares of lunatics. As the assassin came eye to eye with the creature he began to wonder if his earlier bragging about returning the creature in pieces might have been ill thought out. Fortunately he didn't have long to ponder the error of his ways.