Galen Vesa
Wait until I come back. That’s what I said. Since when was I so full of myself?
The moment I stepped over the all-consuming flames, my world changed. Sunken in darkness, a lifeless, desolate plain opened before me. Where once blue sky carried puffy clouds over my head, now a murky void threatened to snuff all beneath it. Green, majestic trees became nothing but rotting stumps. Moss, grasses and ferns vanished, replaced by a sprawling bog while caustic ash rained from above.
Holding my breath as not to inhale the rancid stench of rotting sewage, I trudged on to the grim walls I saw in the distance. My hand locked tightly around the blazing shaft I held in my hand anchored me within what little left of my sanity. The instance I would let go, I would become like those trailing behind me, seething, howling shadows, cursing those that remained and unable to free themselves from this darkness. So thick it seemed that even the light of my lantern did not travel beyond my body.
And I walked as the crowd behind me grew. Each step taking me deeper into that hopeless night. Yet I walked. I walked while my legs sunk up to my knees into this putrid bog. I walked while creatures I could not see, slithered underneath the greasy surface, brushing against my feet. But I moved on, pulled by the alien will I held in my grasp. As if all those that held this shaft in their grasp before me, pushed me further into the hearth of this forsaken place. Moved by such unyielding force, I arrived at the gates of Danshur.
Runes of ancient magic, sullied by whatever dwelled inside, made me stop at the threshold. Their power, alongside a curtain of black miasma obscured my path. The murmur behind my back changed into a steady roar of hate from which I could no longer distinguish singular voices. Red, burning eyes, appeared before me and there I suddenly was, in a cave of blood. Standing between the altar on which the sacrifice bled, and the throne of the one clad in blood. Her eyes pierced into my soul.
She rose, gore dripping off her naked flesh, and she moved descending from her throne towards my frozen body. Her claws stretched out in an embrace. Her lips opened in a silent snarl. Her aura crushed the life out of my beathing hearts. Not even my mana could oppose her. In that single moment forever frozen in time, I knew. I saw my own death.
“Never fear.”
A palm, hot and burning like fire, closed around my shoulder. At the same time the bloody wraith vanished when I turned my head to face the newcomer.
“That what cometh forth from beyond the gate has no power over anything unless you surrender it thyself.”
Tall, almost as tall as my teacher, she stood towering over me. Her fur covered palm shined over my shoulder. Her inhuman, yet beautiful smile calmed my trembling body. Like all others, she gripped her lantern in her palm.
“Aeree?”
“Ah, so you know me? I thought that boneheaded grouch would never admit it.”
She chittered, pleased with herself. Her large ears shook as she laughed.
“The entire village knew how he looked at me but still I had to blackmail him into confessing his love, otherwise he would never say a thing. I cannot believe he told anyone. Back then he would choke on his words or bite off his tongue before he would admit it.”
Her eyes lost some of their warmth and became filled with sadness.
“I wish you could have seen the side of Rooth he showed me. Warm, caring. I never had a chance to say how sorry I was. Perhaps that is my punishment for pushing him onto a path of unwilling sacrifice.”
Pain of a broken heart reflected withing her mesmerizing eyes. I could feel she made a choice that brought her nothing but regret and misery. Blunt rage boiled underneath her skin, resonating with fire that dwelt inside my veins.
“Come we have work to do here and no time to waste.”
“Why?”
“Because it has to be done. Because someone must do it. Because you’ve already done it countless times. It does not matter why. Ask yourself for who? Who is so important in your life that you would give away everything for that person? “
Someone precious? How peculiar. Why did so many people come to my mind? There were quite a few I wouldn’t want to see crying. One I already buried in a different world. One... How peculiar. Out of them all, how did it happen she was the one I valued above all?
“My oh my, the famous queen of blank stare is blushing. So you do have someone important. World indeed must be ending.”
I what? That is not... possible. Faint, almost imperceptible, but it appeared true. As I slid my fingers over my cheek, skin underneath my fingertips felt hotter.
“Love’s a mysterious creature. It sneaks up on you from behind and sinks its teeth and wham, you’re it. Well, the sooner we’re done here the faster you’ll be back with her. Come.”
She slashed the curtain of darkness with her staff and unafraid, marched into the bellows of hell.
I don’t know what tore me worse. The horrid smell of tacky, tar like bile and rotting excrements making my guts roll into knots or the dissonant howls of all those corrupted souls as if something stole all their happiness and hope.
Wraith like beings blocked our path. Their scabbed, ulcerated grey flesh melted as uncountable army of maggots feasted upon their diseased corpses. Their condemned souls wailed in misery, chained inside their decaying bodies.
“These are not undead and no, nothing can be done for those. Not anymore. Best if you ignore them. They got what they deserve.”
Aeree’s voice answered my questions before my mind could form them while I made a mistake of looking too close at one of the apparitions. Way too close for my stomach to manage. I had to stop and wait out the resulting sickness.
“Sah, what kind of man are you? Here,”
She slapped her own rump sending waves through the soft, fluffy roundness. Her odd, translucent skirt with gaping side cuts left little to my imagination. Although her fur did hide what her attire failed to protect.
“Keep your eyes here and ignore the rest or we’ll never get there.”
“How...”
“How do I know all this? Sah? Hasn’t she told you yet? I’m sure I felt...”
She stopped so abruptly I bounced off her back. Her hand grabbed my chin and pulled my face so close to her that our lips almost touched.
“Hmm, open your eyes so I could see better.”
Huh?
“Your eyelids, lift them up.”
Well, I tried but with no success. In the end, she let her lantern rest against the bend of her elbow and forced my eyelids up with her paws.
“How peculiar. She’s in there alright, but I have never seen one so silent. Dejected even. How did you do that? Mine never shuts up. Not even now. It may explain why you are so clueless... A? What in the name of light is that?!”
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She let go of my face when blood began trickling from my eye. Her paws were covered with fresh frost. Speechless, she glanced at her numb hand. Then again at my face. Her tail made a worried swoosh behind her.
“I’m sorry but I can’t follow...”
“That I can see.”
She chittered, again happy from her own little joke then flicked my forehead before straightening up.
“Knowledge. Rooth gave you his song. It’s nesting along the others inside that garden of yours. Perhaps it is waiting for something? Another life? Either way, ignore what I said for now and come. We need to close the leak before something troublesome gets out. Remember, eyes here and try to keep up.”
Aeree once more slapped the familiar spot and marched ached one me, cutting a path in thickening crowd. For some unknown reason, the deeper we went into the town the more suffocating it felt. As if my own lungs were disobeying me. As if some invisible hand tried to crush my throat. And yet, I could not stop panting. Thick beads of sweat dripped off my face as I gasped for air that brought no comfort. On the contrary, the longer I spend in this cursed place the more my condition worsened. With each step I took, invisible burning rods stabbed my dragon heart with blinding pain and choked it to a stop. Time after time, my human heart kicked it back to life and the whole cycle began anew.
“It smells like it’s somewhere around here.”
The ancient hagguru mumbled to herself, her nostrils flaring up. I think she was up to something. One whiff sent me to my knees, retching blood.
“Ah, here we are.”
She kicked in one of the several doors within the alley we stopped at. Only the lantern’s will, holding my mind in its grip like an iron vise, stopped me from blanking out as torrent of sickly darkness assaulted us from within.
“You’re doing good. Just a little bit more.”
Aeree’s hand hoisted me up as if my body weighted nothing at all.
“What is wrong with me?”
White spots were dancing before my eyes while now and then I coughed out blood.
“Nothing. You are fine. Too fine I’d say. Its influence is strong within this place. It corrupts whatever comes near. That’s the only way it can inflict its will upon this world. Your body has been cleansing itself ever since we stepped into this mess. Rather violently at that I must add.”
At this time, black boiling blood kept on oozing from my nose and my eyes.
“How come you are fine?”
“Because I’m not quite here nor there. If I were, I would be horking out bloody hairballs right now. As my conduit into this time, you are getting a dose of what otherwise would be mine to suffer through. Please accept my condolence for that.”
We entered into the disgusting dark of the deserted chamber, sinking into miasma as thick as mud.
“Hmm it’s here but not here.”
Aside from several broken chairs and an overturned table I found nothing remarkable inside. That is until Aeree kicked the table aside. A trap door carved no to long ago in the stone floor and held in place by iron bolts, strained and bulged under the pressure from below. Sickly greyish glow emanated from the cracks in the wooden door.
“Oh my. This will not be fun.”
Fun? What part of this misery seemed fun to you before? I thought of asking when she brought down the tip of her lantern onto the reinforced hatch, shattering it in one go. Then, as if knowing who knocked, ~it~ welcomed us with a hateful cry. Twisted, jarring wail akin to metal plates being torn apart or claws raking over a blackboard. A sound of something condemned to a fate worse than most gruesome tortures and barred for eternity from freedom in death.
Unfettered by such display, Aeree descended into the depths hidden beneath us, her boldness a cause for even greater distress of whatever sat there. Even I with my lacking knowledge could feel the fear it tried to mask by continuous outbursts.
It is afraid.
That thought smacked me like a whip and drove my body back into obedience. In that moment, everything calmed as if taken away by some invisible hands. Part of me still registered the power spewing from a hole gaping in the floor but it no longer mattered. Like a mad dog trashing inside a cage, it could only bark at those standing outside, waiting for its chain to yank it back into submission.
Even the wraiths gathering outside lost something in my eyes. No longer intimidating, they stood and waited for their approaching fate. True, best not to stretch this misery any longer. Guided by the light of my lantern, I’ve descended onto the hidden staircase.
It made no sense. Somebody put an awful lot of effort to dug out this place. Even to my untrained eyes the polished walls and spacious steps looked out of place. Not to mention the expensive light crystals set in ornate chandeliers I passed by every dozen steps or so. Why would someone go to such lengths? I’m sure those curving steps run no less than a hundred feet beneath the streets.
“Never in my entire life have I met a species more despicable than humans.”
Aeree greeted me with such mournful words when I reached the chamber at the end of the stairs. True to her words, I could not explain the disgust I felt for my own origin when my eyes met the scene she saw.
“How could they do this to their own people?!”
Blind fury shook her entire body. Mocking us, a wooden arch stood in the center, surrounded by a ring of ghastly runs. The space within it, seemed distorted. The way light passed underneath that arch made it feel corrupt. Broken. But it was not the eerie light that made her tremble.
“Are they alive?”
“No. Whatever they are, they’re not dead either. Never be.”
People. No less than twenty people with gouged out eyes and cut out tongues hung nailed to the wood of that cursed gateway. Each stabbed with eight massive spikes and each screaming a voiceless scream. Were it not for their hewing chests I would call them corpses. Then something else struck me in that wiggling mas. There were no signs of restrains or torture on their otherwise healthy bodies.
“These were no victims.”
“No. They willingly took part in all of that. You have sealed one gate, they have made another one. The entire town put their hands to their own demise. Sadly, there is nothing here left for us but to cleanse this place.”
Something beyond the gate moved, enraged by the words she spoke. By its command, parts of the wall collapsed and broke into sharp chunks that rushed at us but none of it could breach the light surrounding us.
“Those who despise the light are destined to drown in their own darkness. ”
She reached out to me and I took her hand.
“Do as I do but take care not to step on those lines.”
With our hands joined and Aeree on my right, we crossed the boundary, leaving burning footprints among the bleeding runes. But we did not enter the arch. Neither did we sing for the souls lost to this wretched path. No. As one, our lanterns descended onto the ground, their tips sinking deep into the tainted stone.
“The gate is shut,”
“The gate is shut,”
I mirrored her voice.
“No one can pass.”
“No one can pass.”
“The gate is shut and no one can pass.”
We chanted in unison and I felt power channel through my body. Power that no mortal could have or order around. Even my mana cowered deep within me at that sight but then, then came the Light.
Not some flimsy flicker of a flashlight. No. More like a thermonuclear device, the infamous tsar bomb detonated at the end of my nose. In that Light I saw through my shut eyes my own heart thumping inside my chest. The only dark spot in this endless ocean of white.
I don’t have any recollection how we left that place. My mind went blank soon after the gate collapsed. When I came to, I found myself resting perched against a furry thigh. Somewhere over the second bank, sun climbed the sky as if none of what I saw took place anywhere else aside my mind. Perhaps I would believe in that if not for the crater which water of the Nine Springs river slowly filled up. Something told me I will soon hear a story about half a city vanishing inside a strange light.
“How do you feel?”
My face, my body, whatever left of my burned cloths all covered in blood mixed with bile. My arms charred to the bone.
“Not bad. Will take me a while to wash off the smell.”
My lantern choose to wrap itself around my ankle so, maybe not all was fine. Aeree chittered at that. Her body carried no sign of our fight.
“Thank you.”
She whispered after a while.
“Whatever for? For blowing myself up?”
“No dummy. For the cookies. For the cookies and...”
Tears were dripping from her beastly eyes.
“He is free now. Thank you for that.”
Her frame began to shine.
“You should go back now. They will soon wake up. Be careful. The one from beyond will have its eyes on you from now. Light always sticks out like a sore thumb among the ever-present darkness. For a while you will be safe but that peace will not last. The human empire if falling and it will pull others alongside. Before that happens, be sure to find your way into the tower of blood at the end of times and free your other half. She has been waiting for long enough. I’m sorry. I cannot tell you more than that.”
Her body vanished leaving me one final smile and a cold wet spot on my cheek where she pressed her lips. Whatever hid me from the preying eyes disappeared as well and an army of spirits and countless copies of Pellicora, swamped the place like a deluge. Among the cries of pain and anger, the queen of Water rushed to my side.
“Leave it.”
I coughed out. Her ring has been doing its best for quite some time and yet these wounds did not give up. I doubted her power could change much. My body needed time.
“Take me to the carriage and hide your presence. They cannot know.”
“As you wish my crispy master.”
Cora took me there and placed my kneeling body as I instructed her. Just at the edge of the space Fire protected from the blight. I shooed her away and waited with my useless arms hanging by my side.
After a minute or two, Fenella came to, rolling out of the carriage. She hit the ground with a thud and moaned in pain. Her body not wishing to comply. I sat there waiting, listening as she fought with herself, trying to crawl my way through the vitrified mud. Judging by the sound she was close by now.
“Karin? “
Her pale face appeared to my right. Now was my time. I turned to her and gave her the weakest smile, coughing out lots of blood which at this point wasn’t that hard. Then I fell back making a theatrical gurgling sound. That also wasn't so hard.
I think this should be enough. I closed my eyes and sank inside.