Path of Ruin

by Tim Paulson

  “I tried to keep the pace up but we ran into difficulties,” Harald said as he dropped from Mia's shoulder to the ground.

  Behind him Mia collapsed. Asleep or dead, it was impossible to know. Henri feared the worst.

  “What's happened to her?” Henri said.

  “Please, don't put me away. It's been so nice... I can be useful, I-” Harald said, his arms waving frantically but the movement ceased when the old woman lifted a finger and the green stone tore itself from the inside the doll and returned, floating through the air, to land inside a leather pouch bound to the woman's belt. The doll dropped to the ground, inert.

  “Why would you do that to him? I know he's a pain in the ass but he saved us several times. He brought us here.”

  “If you knew his crimes you would not speak so freely on his behalf,” said the old woman. “Now come, it's past time.”

  Henri glanced again at Mia's motionless body lying crumpled on the ground and then back at the old woman. “I don't trust you. You use other people like play things. I don't-”

  “I don't have time for this,” the woman said. She reached into another pouch at her belt and took out a handful of bones which she threw to the ground. In seconds, to Henri's horror, the bones exploded into sharp stilt-like creatures with long thin iridescent black appendages. Their heads were skulls.

  “Bring the man and the boy inside. Put the girl in holding,” the old woman ordered. The creatures complied instantly, scrabbling toward their targets with deadly efficiency. Henri tried to flee but it was too late. They were too fast.

  Appendages that felt as hard as steel would soften, wrap around his wrist or ankle and then solidify again, trapping him like a vise. He and Adem were carried away bodily into the depths of the building.

  “Daddy? What's happening!?” cried Adem, awakened by the sudden jostling as he was wrenched from his father's arms.

  “It's alright Adem. I'm here!” Henri said, trying to calm the boy as they were carried down a long hall and into a great room crenelated with ribbed structures and twisted columns like a cancerous cavity. White lamps shaped like bloated maggots illuminated the black walls. They were carried toward the center of the room where a massive device of shining white stone waited silently.

  The device seemed at odds with its liquid black surroundings, like a beacon of hope in the center of a black abyss. Yet to look at it and its array of bright white translucent crystals, Henri felt afraid, for he had an idea what it might be. It resembled closely the veil engines he'd seen, only far more complex and smaller.

  “Why tell him that?”

  “I'm sorry?” Henri said.

  “Why tell the boy all will be well? You don't know that,” said the old woman whose image appeared to flicker and bend in his mind as if she wasn't really there at all.

  “So he won't be afraid,” Henri said.

  “It is prudent to be afraid of the unknown,” the old woman said as her image bent and twisted again. “What if I planned to kill you both? What then? Wouldn't it make sense to be afraid?” the old woman asked as she fiddled with some controls on the large white device.

  Adem was sobbing now as the black skull creature that bore him put him down in a chair. The chair then reached out with arms of its own and bound Adem's hands and feet to it. The child shrieked in terror.

  “That's the spirit!” remarked the woman with a cackling laugh.

  “What are you!?” Henri roared at the flickering old woman.

  “I suppose there's no reason to obscure myself now,” the old woman said in a surprisingly thoughtful tone. She touched something near her neck, a necklace, and her form dissolved before his eyes.

  What Henri had known only as an old woman appeared now as an emaciated man with gray toned flesh. Blood red eyes and a nose like an ice pick were all that could be seen of his face, the rest was obscured by a long black cloak, a tall black hat with a wide brim and a thick patterned scarf of deep purple etched with symbols that shifted slowly as you looked at them. The hands and arms that extended beyond the edges of the cloak were wrapped tightly in linen showing none of the skin beneath. Only the flesh of the man's fingers and nose could be seen and those were ash gray.

  “There. You now see me as I am blacksmith, for all the good it will do you. What stands before you are the remains of Vex Thibauld. I am the last Salmu wizard in existence, if indeed I exist at all,” the gray skinned man said with a slight flourish of his fingers.

  “Why have you brought us here?” Henri said, struggling to free himself from the iron grip of the two skeletal beings that held him. “Was everything you told us a lie?”

  “Not at all,” he said. “I lie no more or less than any dead man.” He laughed then, a morbid chuckle.

  “What the hell does that mean?” Henri said.

  This creature was exactly how they'd described witches in the sermons of his youth. They'd terrified him back then, he'd been a child after all, but now that this creature held his son captive all he wanted was to tear it limb from limb.

  “Enough chit chat. Let's get things moving shall we?” Vex said. He gestured toward the chair that held Adem and a new arm extended itself from behind, this one with a long needle at its tip.

  It pierced Adem's leg. The child screamed.

  “Damn you!” Henri bellowed, struggling with all his strength against the creatures that held him.

  The lights in the room brightened and Vex, who had been somewhat stooped, now straightened, stretching his arms out from his sides like a man long imprisoned feeling the sun on his face for the first time.

  “It's so much! Perfect!” Vex clapped his ashen hands together. “I think this will be enough... Yes, definitely! Let's start the emuq kagal!” He said.

  Something shaped like a spider on the far side of the room oozed out of hiding in a dark corner and crawled atop a bright white podium that adjoined the large white machine. The podium along with the rest of the massive white crystals had begun to glow from the inside, presumably filling with power from Adem's body.

  “What is this? What's happening?” Henri said, hoping his poor boy would not be hurt in the process.

  Vex paused, cocking his head. “Would you like to see?”

  “Yes!” Henri cried. Or did he? What was he asking for?

  “I suppose it can't hurt. Just be quiet.”

  The black cloaked wizard nodded and strode to where Henri was held, pulling a pair of veil goggles from his pocket. They looked to be the same ones he'd stolen days ago from Mia while disguised as the old woman.

  “Here,” he said and placed them on Henri's head.

  Grayish skin touched Henri's face and ears as the creature slipped the goggles over his eyes. It felt eerily cool, unnatural.

  “It should be quite a show!” Vex said with a smile that made the corners of his mouth pull back just enough to see the edges of some very sharp teeth.

  With the goggles the whole room came alive with symbols and colors all over the walls and columns, the ceiling and floor. Henri could see streams of veil energy flowing like translucent golden serpents from his son's body directly into the crystals of the great device which now glowed yellow as filtered through the lenses.

  “Milton, I can hardly believe it but it's fully charged! I knew this boy was the one... Turn it on!” Vex said.

  The spider creature used one of its fuzzy appendages to press something on the podium. Then it used it's whole body to push a lever slowly all the way forward. There was a loud hum and a crack as a yellow glowing orb appeared at the center of the array of crystals.

  “Yes!” Vex said, clenching his thin ashen fingers into fists. “Now,” he said “It's time to have a chat.”

  * * *

  “I don't like this place,” Liam said. His eyes were staring off into the distance at a relief on a broken arch

  Celia smiled. It appeared to depict four beings in various acts of coitus. None were fully human.

  “Really? I kind of like it,” Celia sa
id.

  She wondered what such a relief might mean. Was it purely artistic or perhaps religious with some deeper meaning? Deeper. Celia chuckled to herself. She could surely use some deeper meaning.

  “What are you laughing at now?” Liam said.

  That boy was bothered by pretty much everything. She couldn't believe she'd found him interesting earlier. Sure he was a physical specimen, no doubt of that, but also an obnoxious whining nit.

  “Nothing, never mind,” she said.

  When they'd entered this ancient city of broken statues and absurd buildings she'd been able to tolerate Liam but now she found herself wishing they could just find Aaron and be done with it. As tedious as Giselle’s husband could be, she was sure he'd at least have something useful to say about this place. His younger brother in law seemed to grimace and grouse at every sight they encountered no matter what it was.

  “So you're sure if we follow those people we'll find Aaron and get out of here?”

  Celia sighed.

  “No Liam, I'm not sure of anything but I don't know what else we can do. Giselle is right, it seems very suspicious that they happened to arrive just after Aaron was taken.”

  “Well, I have no idea which way we should go. It makes no sense. There's all kinds of dust and debris everywhere here but they don't seem to have left any tracks.. That big tower is too far off and looks like it's surrounded by a moat or something. I don't know how to get to it,” Liam said, adjusting the angle of the hand he held up to shield his eyes from the reflections of the evening sun that seemed to come from every direction in this place and in every possible color.

  “Let's go back to that big black ball,” she said, turning around and walking off.

  Liam jogged to keep up. “Why? I hated that thing!”

  “Think about it. Bad people wear black right?”

  “Uh, sometimes.”

  “So if anyone would steal Aaron and whisk him away to some part of this city it would probably be the black part,” Celia said.

  “I don't like the black buildings, they have those twisty things on them, they look alive. I think someone smashed them flat for a reason.”

  “Exactly! Evil right?”

  “Demonic,” Liam said, shaking his head.

  Celia ignored him. They turned a corner and crossed a smaller plaza with the remnants of what appeared to be a fountain at its center, the basin of which no longer contained any water if indeed it ever did. So bizarre was this surreal landscape that nothing could be taken for granted.

  Up ahead she saw the black sphere with the large crack that separated it into two ragged half moons of dark stone. It looked as though some great beast as tall as the clouds had cracked it with a hammer the size of a castle. She doubted even the largest goliaths with their most monstrous veil infused weapons could shatter that gigantic black sphere. It had the look of implacability, like it was made to last forever. Yet here it lay, cracked in half.

  “Look at all those demonic symbols on it!” Liam said, his voice wavering like a little boy's.

  It made her want to slap him.

  “Could you shut up? I'm trying to think,” she said.

  “Oh,” Liam said, ignoring her as he carefully walked in a wide arc around the gargantuan cracked sphere. “There's something here.”

  “What is it?” Celia said, walking over to where he was, careful to avoid the ubiquitous debris that littered the streets.

  Liam picked it up and showed her. It was a patch from the Halett stenridder corps. The blue griffin with a sword in its paws was clearly visible on the dark gray patch material.

  “Did Aaron have one of these?”

  Liam stroked his chin. “He must have, though I don't know why. He's never piloted a goliath, not successfully anyway. I have, several times. Actually my father told me-”

  “Save it!” Celia held up a hand. She couldn't handle even one more story of the boy's prowess. “So I was right. It's this way,” she said indicating the darker road bounded by black sinuous looking buildings that, whenever they weren't completely demolished, appeared to be trying to crawl up out of the ground.

  Liam shuddered. “I guess so...”

  It wasn't long before they found the one structure in that part of the city that wasn't wholly destroyed. A black spiral shaped building, uncanny in appearance like a great curled mollusk covered in thorns. It was anything but inviting.

  Celia couldn't wait to see what lay inside.

  Unfortunately milling about in front of it were two... somethings. It was hard to put them in any kind of box. They didn't look alive, yet they moved, flowed almost, on stilt-like black appendages. For a head, each had a unique white skull.

  “What the hell are those!?” Liam said as he clung to a crumbled hunk of black marbled stone that had once been part of a series of tentacle shaped columns.

  “They're monsters, just like that troll we fought.”

  Liam shook his head, grimacing. “Oh no! This is nothing like that. I have no idea how you can kill those... those... things,” he said, a tremor of fear in his voice.

  “They've got Aaron. They must have, else why have guards? Look we'll just cut off their limbs or something. How hard can it be?” She said, drawing one of her favorite long daggers with one hand while her other reached deep into her cloak and produced a fine steel chain with a thick barbed hook at the end.

  Liam looked at her wide eyed as if she were the craziest woman he'd ever seen but as soon as she stood and began to advance he followed. The boy wouldn't want to be outdone by a woman, surely. Men, most were so predictable. It was sad really.

  They attacked the creatures head on. Celia slashed and stabbed with her knife, trying to catch her adversary unaware with a quick sweep at its legs with her chain. Nothing worked. She'd stab it, slash it and wrap it in chain but the creature's body seemed to shrug it all off. The chain couldn't get a good enough grip to hold, it would just step right out of it. The creature seemed to be made of soft pliable flesh one moment but then solidify into sharpened blades the next, it was infuriating.

  “I can't do anything to it!” Yelled Liam from her right.

  Celia had hoped that with his greater size and larger blade he might be able to do something but that was not the case. Liam's blows bounced right off when they didn't miss entirely.

  “I think we might have to run!” she yelled back.

  Then something changed.

  The creature she'd been trying so unsuccessfully to fight paused and stiffened as if receiving some important information. Then the structure in front of them began to hum as hundreds of tiny purple lights appeared all along the curling edges of its form. She looked over to Liam. His creature too was momentarily stunned but more importantly the boy's veil blade had begun to glow blue.

  “Liam! Your sword!”

  Liam broke into a grin and lunged forward with a wide slash that cut the creature before him neatly in two. Writhing black limbs dropped to the ground, evaporating immediately upon contact like smoke. The skull fell, clattering across the obsidian path.

  “Come and get this one too!” Celia said to Liam who was currently celebrating, reminding him she existed as he jumped up and down, pumping his fist.

  “Right!” He ran over but the creature she'd been fighting, having seen what happened to its brethren was already backing away. Two of its many limbs were held high above as if in surrender. Liam moved to pursue but she stopped him by grabbing his leather jerkin.

  “It doesn't want to fight. Let's not waste time. We're here for Aaron remember?”

  Liam frowned, clearly frustrated with her. “I don't get to kill monsters like this... ever... can't I just-”

  “A minute ago you were scared to even try!”

  “That was before they were scared of me!” he said with a flourish of his veil sword that made the skull headed creature cower in fright.

  “Let's go,” Celia said. “I'm sure there will be plenty more terrible things inside.”

  Liam
looked like he'd just accidentally swallowed a large juicy beetle. “Yeah...”

  She was right of course, as usual. The building was every bit as grotesque on the inside as it had been without, if not worse. It was amazing and she loved it.

  Just past the entrance, which retracted rather than swung, they a entered a small chamber with a series of ghoulish frescoes. In one a gigantic creature shaped like a worm with a segmented body and an enormous gaping maw reared up against a walled city as arrows of light rained upon it. In another the sky over a peaceful looking village was blacked out by swirling clouds of insects that tore the flesh from shrieking villagers trying in vain to flee. Celia couldn't help but stare at each, while Liam eyed her uncomfortably.

  The inner walls of the structure had a ribbed skeletal feel to them. It felt like they'd entered the inner cavity of what had once been a huge living being. Celia found it entrancing.

  “This place is disgusting!” Liam said.

  “Be quiet!” she said. “We don't know what might be in here.”

  At this Liam's eyes widened as if he'd suddenly imagined something terrible. “W...Where do we go?” Liam said, holding his sword aloft like a torch. The azure light revealed several dark hallways, drawing out the silvery iridescence of the walls, making them look almost membranous.

  “We should follow that sound,” she said.

  “What sound?”

  “You don't hear that humming?”

  Liam shrugged. “I just thought it was... normal in a place like this.”

  “It's getting louder. Down here,” Celia said, pointing ahead.

  They crept down a long hall that angled down and curved to the right. A sharp white light began increasing as they walked. It wasn't long before they came upon an opening with light streaming from it.

  “Let's check this out, but be quiet,” Celia said.

  Liam nodded. He wore his best look of determination salted with a generous helping of fear.

  “And put that thing away,” she said, gesturing to his faintly glowing sword.

  Silently they approached the doorway.