They burst into the hallway and started to move fast. At this pace, they would probably ram right into their enemies before seeming them. That seemed to be just fine by the two of them that were so well trained for close combat, so naturally those two led the way in the darkness. Though, at the speed they were going, their guide had to yell out directions as they ran so they didn’t encounter a wall before encountering an enemy. They turned the corner to the next nodule of passages, and there they were.
Max and Pelos stumbled back a little bit at the sight of them, their compatriots continued headlong into them. It was dark in the chamber, but here’s what Max could see: beings with wide mouths and something looking not quite so rigged as teeth rimming them, what he would best call arms that were lined the entire length with something akin to fingers, there were two wide holes on their chins that might be part of a nose, and finally they were no visible legs, only many thousands of strands almost looking like hair from their waist level that did not appear to hold up their weight.
The ramming attack that the two close combatants dealt would have rendered normal men prone and reeling in pain. Unfortunately, these targets were far from normal or men. Instead, upon running into them, both of their targets simply glided backward as if they were not in contact with the ground. This sent Pater and Phaedra nearly face first into the ground as they stumbled. Phaedra broke into a tumbling roll to save herself the embarrassment. This carried her all the way to the new spot her target now stood. Pater was saved only by the sacrifice of his axe to the sky, his solitary hand planted in the ground pushing his entire body sky high and off the floor with amazing strength.
Max wasn’t stunned for long. He pulled the ray gun free of its holster and quickly manipulated a couple of the settings. The knobs and dials were easy enough to do with the free hand while the weapon hand readied to fire. He acted on a quick hunch upon switching the settings and then fired. As the bright beam of energy hit his target, it not only burned a hole there as would normally be expected, instead the alien being’s waist exploded in a ball of flame that enveloped the rest of its body. Now its body freely collapsed to the ground, or at least what was left of the charred remains.
“Fire works well!” Max exclaimed just as the flames from the explosion were dying down.
He looked back over to the two melee combatants just in time to see that Pater did not carelessly or desperately throw away the axe. He saw it arc down so that the blade just missed his outstretched arm as he was in mid leap. As soon as he landed, the pommel fell into his hand. The momentum was still carrying the heavy thing forward, but he made it look like it was all part of the plan all along. He simply used his only arm as a lever to guide the weapon. He planted down in his position and the axe lodged itself in the lower torso of the alien. A wheezing sound filled the air as the creature halved in size before their eyes and collapsed to the ground in a heap.
Phaedra got into a bit more of trouble and was in dire straits. She came up out of her roll ready to slash at the alien, but it moved with graceful precision without a single step. It was out of her way and two more aliens were there to replace it. Both of them wielded pole-arm looking objects. These things would probably be impossible to disarm. These particular weapons grips were from almost one end of their arm to the other with all the little fingers wrapped around them. It made Max think a little bit of thousands of little bugs crawling all over something you wanted to pick up but just couldn’t get the motivation to reach in through the prickly icky things.
The two beings slashed down upon her, and she survived, just barely parrying one blow while twisting her torso so that the other missed her, for the most part. The sound of blade tearing flesh resounded through the chamber. It was a sound totally different from that of killing the alien beings. She grasped at her side as she performed a spinning parry to knock away both blades. She now stood at the far hallway.
Another one of the aliens that was free from engagement put a clear circular object over its head. Max dived for the ground, fearing the worst. Pelos was not so quick to react, and Max yelled as he fell, at the man, but he did not seem to have comprehension. He started moving forward towards one of the tunnel exits. Was this his moment of betrayal? Max experienced it before, but he never felt such intentions on the man. The man seemed to be very skilled at preventing people from reading him, so it could mean anything really.
The object on the aliens head glowed a bright blue color and a beam of energy shot out from it. It struck Pelos! That must mean this was no last moment betrayal. They would have to find their own way back to the station. Then the energy stopped, Max could see a shimmering bubble of energy that surrounded the well-dressed man, and when he looked back, he was fully in tact with no sign of injury. “We’d better high tail it out of here, we are pretty vastly outnumbered.”
They finally broke away from their pursuers. It was obvious that their guide through this foreign place was out of his comfort zone. He looked around for what would be the right passage as he spoke to himself, eliminating options and then adding them back in again. Max heard someone groaning in pain and suffering. He told his friends to quiet down. They asked what was going on and then they all started to hear it as well.
Pelos was first to form an opinion, as usual, “oh no. We are not going that direction. Do you remember what I told all of you about the former inhabitants of this place? Yes, I know that doesn’t sound like an unfriendly alien, but that doesn’t mean that we should flock towards every such sound. It could just be a trap.”
“Hush up, wise guy.” Pater said as he looked to the man he owed a great debt to. “What’ll it be, Max?”
He was thinking as he looked at the different tunnels around them. He laid eyes upon each of his companions to try to get a feeling for what they really wanted to do. “Do you know the way back to the train station from here?” Max addressed the stubborn Pelos.
A long pause was followed by quiet words, “No. I don’t know the way back from this particular nodule. Soon though, just a few more intersections and I will have my bearings.”
He looked towards Phaedra, “What do you think?”
“I think we could learn vital information from someone that has been captive to these things for a while. And I know that if I was in these people’s shoes, I would want someone to come for me. At least to see me and to know that I was worth a small journey out of the way.” She started to walk down the path that the sound was most likely coming down.
“That settles it then, majority outweighs the few.” Max followed her.
“You know,” Pelos said louder to be heard as he chased after his new friends, “that adage is not always the wise way to go, especially when dealing with people that won’t listen to reason.” Pater shot him an annoyed look while using his only hand to put the pommel of his axe. “Oh whatever, majority rules, more like the guys with the biggest guns rule.”
They moved down the tunnel –like hallway single file as they had been and with haste. The groaning got louder until it echoed about them as they entered the next major chamber. There was a figure, collapsed on the ground up ahead. They all approached together and their eyes mostly fell upon this woman. The volunteer guardian of Max, Pater, started to hold back a bit and keep his eyes on the access ways leading to this chamber. As the ambient light became enough to make out more than just the form of a bipedal being, the three that approached all gasped.
Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
“You see, I told you that we should have just left this be. We’ll never get this sight out of our heads. Have you ever seen such an atrocity, is this thing still even a person?”
Max interrupted Pelos, “Quiet, you are scaring her.”
“I think she has every right to be scared, just look at...” before he could finish Phaedra actually cupped his mouth with one extended hand.
Max leaned over. He could feel the pain and fear in the waves of energy that flowed off the poor girl. When Pelos finally gave the signal that he would shut up, he also leaned over to examine the girl medically. He started with her face, not touching her, but giving her basic commands so that he could observe her. She listened, but the look of fear in her eyes made Max blanche.
Pelos finished his examination and backed off from her. He took a few steps away and turned his back to her. He motioned for the others to come over to speak with him. Phaedra did not listen, she removed her cape and wrapped it around the poor girl who sat up, but she appeared too weak to stand.
“Those things have done something to her. What’s perhaps stranger than that,” he looked over his shoulder at the girl, “is that her kind are not those that used to inhabit and rule Spire before the creatures from beyond came.”
“Is it possible that she could have traveled here afterward or that her family was a rare one that lived here among the others that belonged?”
“Well, such things are always possible. I don’t think that it is the case currently. I’d have to hear her speak to be certain, the dialects of where she is from and this place are quite different.”
Max approached the young woman. She wore the clothes of a member of a lesser class. Now that he took a good long look up close at her, she also carried some sort of beetle, almost a scarab, looking monstrosity in her chest. It was dug in there and it looked painful. “Can you speak? Are you alright to move? We can try to help you.”
She slowly and painfully got out a response. The words were slow and confused. Putting her thoughts together into speech did not help much for answering the questions.
Pelos nodded fervently after hearing her speak and backed up from her. He motioned for Max to come back over to him. “She is not from here, I am certain of that. I would say she comes from the Wild Plane if I were to place a bet on it. And by the way, I would bet quite a bit on that guess.”
“What do you think it means?” Pater said over his shoulder while the two of them were hunched together in quiet conversation.
“I think it means that this poor looking lady is not as innocent as she would have us believe.” Pelos said with great belief behind his words.
Max responded after glancing over at the girl briefly, “In a way, I know what you mean. She is certainly scared, but there is something else there. Some surety as though this position she is in now is not totally a random incident. Almost as if it is her own fault.”
Pelos rubbed his chin, where some grey black stubble was starting to form, “She was here with others. She was here for a purpose. For a quick, precision mission that I cannot pin down.”
Max approached her. She was still holding on to Phaedra’s cape and Phaedra was holding onto her shoulder to comfort her. He got down to one knee in front of her and made sure his ray gun was out of sight on his belt. “Please be honest with me. I know that you were here for a purpose. What was it?”
She shook her head and her eyes went wide, “No no no no.”
“Calm yourself, we will help you. You can leave this place with us. Please just tell me the truth.”
Phaedra looked up at Max with deep eyes that showed she was not exactly pleased that he decided to ask this victim questions like an interrogation would.
The trembling woman in the simple clothes also had one other curious possession. It was a belt that carried a hilt for what would be a very thin blade, thinner than any Max ever saw. “I cannot tell you our purpose. I belong to a cult. One that searches and hopes to bring back a dead god and another god receives our prayers that may have ways to bring him back.”
Phaedra let go of her slowly and started to back away. She seemed disturbed by the combinations of what she heard, “You seek the help of the god of undeath. The one who can empower his worshippers to bring anything from the beyond?”
“Yes, but the god we love and cherish, the god who is dead, he would be a great boon to all the peoples of the old world.”
Max thought quickly, “Do you believe in prophecy? What about destiny?”
“Yes... Of course. Our leader, a mortal being, he...” she started to groan in pain and grabbed at the scarab on her chest. As soon as her fingers made contact with it, she screeched even louder and her fingers bent in strange ways as her arms waved into the air.
“Shut her up or knock her out!” Pater looked furious and concerned. “We need to start moving. They will have surely heard that.”
“She should tell us more before we try to save her. She won’t tell us another word once we get her out of here!” Pelos’s eyes looked as if they would pop out of his head as the stress was getting to him.
Max looked upon the woman who was at eye level with him on his knees. He tried to shout out a few questions. He tried them again. She was doing nothing but letting out a squeal that pained him through empathy and made the small amount of hair on his arms stand up. “Forget it. We need to help her. Let’s go!”
During their journey through the last few hallways, Phaedra starting nursing her side a bit more. Max came along her side, helping the young woman to walk with one arm. It was apparent now when he got closer, her wound was grave. Her face was usually rather pale, but now it was nearly stark white. “Pelos, take this girls arm. We need to work together if we are going to make it.”
He reluctantly came over, muttering something about frustration and death. He brushed his black hair behind his ear just before offering an arm and shoulder to the ailing young woman. Max offered first and then insisted in aiding Phaedra with walking the rest of the way.
With one last direction from their guide through this dark place of alien nightmare, the chamber opened up. In the distance, the light of the train they rode here on was the only beacon to show them the way. Pater took a long lead on the group to engage any enemies that might lie on the path between them and the train.
With that beacon of hope in sight, all hope was immediately lost. Phaedra collapsed unconscious suddenly and crumpled to the ground. Max could not hold her. Only seconds after, the young woman also collapsed. Her face was awash with suffering. Her hands quivering just on the edge of the scarab that was attached to her chest.
She started to complain of a pressure building from inside her skull and going all the way down to below her waistline. Distant screeches of alien sound pierced their ears.
Pater stopped on a dime and quickly sprinted back. “They are closing in from all the exits. It would not be surprising if a patrol of them was ahead as well. We’ll never make it with these two.”
Max looked towards Phaedra, her side covered in blood, then to the wailing woman who now wore tears upon her face. He knew he must make a decision soon, but it seemed so heartless or stupid no matter what of the three decisions he probably made.
“I’ll make this easy on you Max. Just remember, I’m a tough bastard.” Pater leveled his only arm at Max with an empty open palm. Max took it in the gesture that he learned what seemed so long ago. They shook hands; Max was filled with waves of regret and indecision. It was easy to find a path with what happened next. Pater pulled the great axe off of his back and started to run down to the nearest tunnel opening. Pelos looked on in silence, perhaps not wanting to be volunteered for any unsavory tasks. Max looked at him, motioned towards Phaedra for his cowardly compatriot and they switched places.
Phaedra’s eyes fluttered open just enough so that she could see to stand, all her minimal weight was pressed on the well-dressed guide. Max offered an open palmed approach to the estranged young woman and then threw her over his shoulders and started to carry her. The contact of the thing in her chest with Max’s body was not pleasant to her, but it was necessary.
As they hobbled quickly towards the train, their ears were filled with the solitary sound of Pater charging and screaming as loud as he could through the corridors that they so recently vacated.
Upon entering the train, they nearly all collapsed in a pile from either injuries or exhaustion. There was still no time to rest. Right before coming into the doors, the sound of shuffling on the ground gusts of wind in the air, made obvious that they may not be alone for long. The distraction, hopefully not sacrifice, that Pater gave them got them to the train in one piece, or at least in the pieces that they were in at that time. It would not last long. The beacon of the interior lights would show every one of their movements.
Max prodded Pelos, who lay next to the two women. “We’ve got to get this train rolling.” A pause, “Come on.”