Drys
Drys leaned back in his chair, arms hanging limp at his sides. The rings on his fingers began to glow an eerie red. Soon after, so did the walls of his office. All throughout the prison the bones in the walls began to glow, unseen within the bricks of stone. If Hallek and Verris had stayed to look at where they cracked open the wall open to release Illeth they'd have seen the tips of them glowing, a few red sparks sputtering away from the broken infusion.
Dryss closed his eyes in his office and opened them in a guard post. One of the guards jumped a little, reaching for his weapon. The older guards just snapped to attention.
“Relax lad,” one of the guards said. “It's the Lord Warden.”
Well Drys couldn't really blame the guard. Even he had to admit his projections looked unsettling. A ghostly dinonychus formed from glowing red energy was designed to be unsettling. Much like the black leather uniforms of his guards were designed to intimidate.
“To what do we owe this visit, Lord Warden?” The squad commander asked.
“Someone got into the prison.” All the guards winced. Hearing a human voice echo from somewhere inside the apparition probably wasn't any more pleasant than seeing it in the first place. Or maybe it was just the situation. The guards patrolled the halls only rarely, since Balrok's special properties meant that it was more likely for someone to attack the prison from outside than for a prisoner to break out from within. And since the prison had no windows, only torch sconces placed to light into the cells, and the only entrances were around the bottom of the pyramid more than cursory examination around mealtimes seemed excessive. “I felt someone break one of the doors.”
“We'll pull guards off the perimeter immediately,” the guard commander said.
“Do that. I'll see if there's anything left for you to detain after I find them.”
And that was the other reason the guards didn't bother going into the halls much. They were just men with swords, after all. In Balrok prison Dryss was a god. And with a single thought he was all seeing, his eyes appearing in every corner of the prison to spy on the empty halls until he found places of interest. Here a wall crushed open. Here two cells open, and Akko the Abomination heaving like a sick man on the ground clutching his gut. And here, the intruders. He'd deal with them first.
And suddenly he wasn't one ghostly dinonychus but dozens of them, running snarling down the halls. Yes it was harder to control this many at once, at least from a distance. His mind was too split up. But the souls of the dinosaurs still had instincts. They knew how to hunt and fight, so he set them on the prisoners. And, to his surprise, he felt them die.
He hadn't thought much of the intruders at first. Hadn't even bothered to really look at them, the way a worker at a slaughterhouse doesn't really bother to look at a meat animal. They were about to be dead, so who cared? But the raptors he'd summoned were cut down, one by one. It took powerful infusions to even affect them. And as his awareness was split over fewer and fewer bodies he got a look at them.
He recognized his escaped prisoners, of course. Then there was a woman with daggers and a man staying out of the fighting who he didn't recognize, but they didn't really draw his attention anyway. He recognized Verris from the young man's time at court. The emperor said he'd been surprisingly strong, but he'd also said Verris was killed in the battle. Even that was secondary though, secondary to the one Drys had never seen but who was unmistakable through the ghostly saurian eyes of the body Drys was inhabiting.
Hallek
The last of his projections was destroyed but it didn't matter. He sat for a moment at his desk, considering this new opportunity. Hallek! A chance to be the one to claim the Fang weapon! The mind boggled. Drys had no interest in becoming emperor, but he wouldn't mind a little more power and prestige. Which is what he'd get if he could deliver the Fang weapon to Lekarik. Not to mention, possibly, money.
And with his own powers what could he do with that kind of weapon? The power—personal, not political—had always been his favorite part of being named the Lord Warden. Rumor had it Fang weapons were capable of some pretty spectacular feats of their own, and combined with his own abilities...well, he could see himself having some fun. Especially if there were going to be rebellions to put down. And it looked like Lekarik was turning into the kind of emperor who was good at finding rebels. He found them everywhere he looked.
Of course rumor also said—backed up by plenty of evidence and Drys's personal experience with Milkaamek's Axe—that Fang weapons were notoriously picky about who got to wield them. Even the Emperor, with his own Fang weapon, hadn't been able to get Hallek's sword to cooperate. The general consensus was that the most reliable way to claim one was to personally kill the former owner. Well that didn't sound too hard. He leaned back and lost himself to the projections again, appearing before the guard commander.
“Lord Warden! Is something wrong?”
“No, things are excellent. They're on the third floor right now, but they musthave gotten in on the bottom. I want the ground floor flooded with guards and I want them moving up. And while you're doing that, I'll send the guards at my office to fetch me a certain prisoner...”
Akko the Abomination
It had taken over thirty of the city guard to arrest him. They'd been mounted. In the end they'd tied him with rope enforced with infused rings and dragged him through the streets tied to the back of a zuni. His family's blood had still been on his hands.
At his trial they'd asked him why he'd done it. He hadn't been able to answer. He'd felt like killing, that was all, and there were people there to kill. The fact that he slept with one of them hadn't really mattered, any more than that three of them had been his children had mattered. He hadn't had a real reason why he'd eaten the bodies either. It just seemed a waste to let them rot, that was all.
After that they called him a monster. Seemed logical to him. He'd always been a creature of destruction. He was champion of the arena because there were no bigger monsters, no monster slayers to take down Akko. He'd taken pride in all of it. In the death, in the horror, the way the crowd loved and feared him. Taken pride in being Akko the Abomination.
And then he'd been dropped to the ground with a single fist to the gut.
He hadn't recognized the man who did it. Some mercenary maybe? Or this was a jailbreak, maybe he was a bandit. It didn't matter. He was dead. Akko was going to kill him. Because he was Akko. Akko the Abomination. No one did that to him. No one. Like he was nothing. Nobody. Like he didn't matter. Well whoever he was this was Balrok. His little jailbreak was going to fail, and Akko would get a chance with him in the arena. Unless, that is, the guards managed to kill him before Akko got the chance. That was unacceptable. Unthinkable. He couldn't let it happen.
He was starting to come back to reality now, the world no longer swirling around his head as he climbed to his feet. The guards were there, standing over him. Two? Three? It didn't matter. They'd have weapons.
“Sweet gods! How did Akko get out of his cell? And why'd they take him out just to beat him up?”
“Who cares? Get him back in while he's still out of it. And hurry up, we're supposed to be advancing up the floors to hem in the intruders.”
Too late. Akko elbowed the guard who tried to lift him in the gut. When the man staggered back Akko took his sword away and used it to cut the other guard in half, then stab its former owner through the gut. With that done he examined his blood weapon. Deinonychus bone, pretty common fare for a soldiers weapon. His own sword, locked away in the arena somewhere, was allosaurus. Stronger, but a little harder to handle, and not good for working in a group. That's why soldiers used pack predators. But the sword felt a little stronger than a normal soldier’s weapon. Well he'd seen Drys's projections. That probably had something to do with it. Maybe prison was some kind of deinonychus paradise.
It didn't matter. What mattered was finding the man who'd humiliated him and putting the sword through his gut. Up the floors, the guard said? That's where he'd find his prey.
Verris
They had to climb a few floors before they found Fylati's cell. Almost to the top of the pyramid. If there were signs or notes besides the numbers on the cell doors to indicate who was where their little party never found them. Every cell they looked in made Verris more anxious as they stared at zombied prisoner after zombied prisoner after zombied prisoner. Perhaps it was a relief, when they finally found Fylati's cell, that he didn't have to see her like that. He didn't know. He was too busy being furious.
“There you all are!” said the voice that came from the glowing deinonychis sitting in the empty cell. “I'd started to wonder if you were coming. I take it you are here for the merchant girl who's been sleeping with Jajess's bastard?”
“Where is she?” Verris snarled.
“I have her here. In my office. It's the top room of the pyramid. You'll have to come and get her back...well, Hallek will. I'm only interested in fighting the Fang warrior. Once he's dead I'll round the rest up with my projections, assuming any of you manage to survive my guards. They're working their way up the pyramid to make sure you don't run away—I couldn't be certain you'd agree to fight me just for the hostage, you understand. The only way you have to go is up.”
“And what happens when we kill you?” Verris snarled.
“You won't kill me. You honestly don't matter. But the Fang warrior here, if he should kill me, will almost certainly be able to walk out of the prison unopposed. I doubt the guards will be able to bring themselves to fight someone carrying my head. Of course I want to fight you, so I could be just saying that, but what other choice have you really got?”
The dinonychus winked out of existence. Verris paced back and forth, clenching his fists. He had never been so furious in his entire life. Bad enough they'd taken Fylati. She was his woman. His lover. But getting discarded like that, looked down on, that COULD not stand. Hallek was talking some dungpile that didn't matter, but Verris caught an all important phrase.
“...back down the pyramid,” Hallek said.
“This is a bad idea,” the scarred whore sounded worried. “Did you see that projection? How stable it was? And how long he must have had it there? That's not normal. Someone with the essence to conjure something like that is terrifying.”
“That's why I said...”
“COWARDS!” Verris roared. “Godsdamn cowards! So you're going to run away and hide now? Just leave Fylati to die? Let that arrogant prick--”
“Verris that's not what anyone's saying,” the thief said. “But some of us aren't fighters, we'll just be in the way.”
“You know what? Who needs you?” Verris grabbed his whip and felt the enraged brachiosaur's soul flow into him, felt its hate and pain. Fuel to the fire of his own burning, hateful rage. And hate made him strong. “I'll take care of Drys myself. Don't bother to follow me.”
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Hallek tried to say something again, but if the coward was just going to run away who cared? He raced through the halls. No need to check cells now, he just had to go up. At the bottom of one flight of stairs there were guards, but Verris just cut through them. One hand on his whip and one on his sword they were nothing to him. And then he was up the stairs, and through the doors, and into the room on the top floor. It was an office, but all the furniture had been pushed aside to clear floor space. Fylati was cuffed by one arm to a heave stone vase with handles in one corner. And in the center of the room stood Drys, long blonde hair flowing down over his black robes, the rings on his fingers glowing red. Another pretty boy who thought he was better than everyone else. Verris seethed.
“You?” the Lord Warden sneered. “Come to save your lady love, is it? I suppose the fang warrior was too scared to face me...”
“That's about the size of it,” Verris said, pulling the whip from his belt. No time to play around with swords now. He would fight this battle with all his hate. “But I'm more than enough to kill you.”
The Lord Warden raised his fingers and the room was filled with raptors, a glowing red tide that swarmed towards Verris. One crack of the whip, backed with all his hate, tore through them. But no sooner were they gone than they were replaced by dozens more. Verris lashed the whip back and forth but Drys's power seemed endless, and they came closer and closer...
There was blurred movement from the corner of Verri's eye and the waves of attackers ceased. Drys was diving out of the way of something. Hallek. Hallek was here, slashing down at the Lord Warden.
“I was trying to explain,” Hallek said. “I wanted them to head down and get out of the prison while the two of us with the most powerful infusions come and fight the Lord Warden. There's no way he can take both of us at once.”
“Oh,” Verris said. “Well that does sound more like you.”
“So let's kill this son of a bitch and get out of here,” Hallek said.
“That's a lot of confidence you don't deserve,” Drys laughed, raising his hands again. The room filled with ghostly dinosaurs again. Hallek and Verris cut their way through the phantom pack, but while Hallek made for Drys, Verris carved a path to Fylati.
“Are you alright?” Verris asked her.
“I'm fine,” she said. “The cell was...awful...but you came for me!”
“I did.” Verris said, gripping his whip. “I don't think I can break those cuffs, they're infused bone on leather. But I bet this stone isn't...there we go.”
The handle of the enormous vase cracked, and Fylati was free.
“Verris!” Hallek called out, hemmed in by Drys's projections. “Little help?”
Verris considered it. On the one hand, killing Drys would be immensely satisfying. On the other hand...
“What do you think?” He asked Fylati. She just shrugged. “Yeah that's what I was thinking. Sorry Hallek, I just don't think even if we kill him you've got much chance of getting out of here alive. I'd say it's nothing personal but, well, I hate you so it kind of is.”
“Oh you son of a--”
Verris didn't stay to listen to Hallek's whining and just threw Fylati over his shoulder and ran. They ran out of the room and down the stairs, into the hallway of the floor below, to a particular stone Verris had noticed on the way up. Where a draft was coming through the mortar. It took him three hits with the full force of his whip to blow the stone open, and the edges of the hole cracked with red lightning, but it was big enough for him and Fylati to fit through together. Verris leaped through, focusing on his hate and on not dropping Fylati. Through the Kuraga infusions he poured his hate of everything he'd ever hated. Hallek. His father. The Emperor. His father. The people who'd looked down on him because he was from Downwind. His father. He was, yes, beginning to notice a theme.
But it was working. The hatred and the power of the brachiosaur soul empowed him enough to run down the side of the pyramid with Fylati over his shoulder. He even left cracks and dents in the stone as he ran down. Not the only cracks and dents appearing in the prison, either. Something was happening inside, and he wanted to be far away when it did.
“You came for me,” Fylati said over his shoulder.
“Yes I did,” he said once they had reached the ground. He still carried her as they ran away into the palm forest together. She rested her head against his shoulder as they escaped.
“The emperor killed my brother. My father, too.”
“I'd guessed.”
“Now what do we do?”
“We kill my father. And the emperor. And then we go from there.”
“Sounds good,” Fylati said contentedly.
He was glad they'd gotten down when they did. Somehow, with Fylati in his arms, he found it that much harder to focus on the hate.
Akko
Sure, killing the guards was fun, but it wasn't getting him anywhere.
He needed to kill that kid who'd punched him in the gut. He had to. That was all that mattered in the world. Because he was Akko the Abomination. He hadn't lost a fight since he was twelve years old. No one could do that to him. No one. If he let the kid live, it would mean...would mean...
He couldn't put the feeling into words. He'd never really felt loss before, never cared enough about anything to miss it. But now he felt it like a knife digging into his soul. If only he could describe what he was losing. If he wasn't a monster, wasn't indestructible, wasn't the most powerful fighter in the world, then he was...
A killer. A prisoner. Just another murderer.
The thought vanished as soon as it come, forgotten like leaf passing by on the wind, because Akko the Abomination could not think it. Could not face the truth of that question, no matter what. But the bruise on his stomach kept bringing it close, oh so dangerously close, to the surface of his mind. He was glad when he saw people he recognized come around the corner.
“You,” he said, pointing his sword at them. “You were with him, before. Where is he? He needs to die.”
He didn't recognize them all. There was the tribal woman who's neck he'd almost snapped, and her cowardly little thief friend. The guy they'd been rescuing was up and had a sword, too. And woman with weird limbs. He was pretty sure he could take them all. He'd bet he could take a thousand just like them. As long as it got him closer to killing his target.
“He's not with us,” the tribeswoman said. “Wouldn't you rather escape? You're not going to get an opportunity like this again.”
“Screw escaping, I want his head!”
He'd expected more talking. From the look on her face so had the scarred woman. But the strange limbed woman vanished, and only experience and instinct made Akko dodge to the side. The claws cut deep into his neck, but missed his jugular.
“I guess we're fighting now,” the thief sighed, although he didn't move as the others closed in on him. Akko didn't mind. He would meet the coward who hit him carrying the heads of his friends. It was just that proved to be a little harder than he thought. The big barbarian had speed and power, kept him busy, while the woman with the claws and the scarred woman dashed around him biting him like compies. They'd have killed a normal man in seconds, but he was Akko. Akko the Abomination. They fought until the walls started to shake.
He didn't realize something was wrong until the ancient bricks behind him blew open in flash of red lightning. The shaking wasn't their battle. The entire prison was shuddering, like it was about to tear itself apart from the inside.
And in his moment of confusion they were running. Cowards.
“COWARDS!” He shouted, turning to chase after them through hallways that shook and flashed, stone cracking away to reveal bones in the walls glowing ugly, unstable red. He chased them all the way out of the prison and into the palm forest. He was still standing in the doorway when the world went reddish white.
Hallek
The glowing red fangs and claws were only one of Hallek's problems.
The air was wrong. It prickled at his skin, felt too heavy when he tried to breathe. It made his tattoos itch, like they were crawling against his skin. The phantom pack was endless, and all Drys did was stand behind them waving the glowing rings on his fingers and grinning like a maniac.
How can he be doing this? Hallek thought. Everyone knows projectors use themselves up when they project! How can he just....just stand there sending out phantoms over and over again? He'd need the essence of...
Of hundreds of people.
Oh sweet gods, now I know what's in the walls.
“The prisoners!” Hallek shouted as he cut through another cluster of phantoms.
“Very good!” Drys laughed. “This entire building is a machine to suck the essence out of them and give it to me. Through my rings, of course.”
“The power of hundreds of people,” Hallek panted, “and all you can do is throw dinosaurs at me?”
“Oh you want to see a trick?” Drys laughed. “Alright, you can see a trick.” He waved his fingers and the pack vanished, replaced by a wave of bubbling red energy that flowed from his fingertips. Snapping jaws and slashing talons appeared in the shape and disappeared, melting back into the liquid glow. Hallek tried to cut through it, but all he did was make a hole that closed around his arm. The wave sent him flying into the wall, leaving a trail of spattered blood on the floor as he flew and landed in a crumpled heap.
“The archives say this used to be a temple,” Drys said. “A temple to Saurus. They'd put dinonychus in all the cells and the priests would channel their essence for rituals. Doesn't say anywhere how they did it of course, but I'm just as glad. If there were dozens of places like this I'd feel less special.”
“I thought you wanted a fair duel,” Hallek climbed back to his feet.
“Not one I could ever actually lose. Honestly I thought this was going to be a lot harder. I've got better tricks than the one I showed you, you're just not impressive enough to make me use them. Then again most people I fight don't last through the first assault, so you can feel good about that! While you die.”
Hallek could barely stand. He was bleeding, broken, and drained. As the ghostly pack reappeared and darted towards him, he only had one idea.
And it was a very terrible idea.
He could feel the tingle in the air. Maybe because he was infused himself he could feel the essence Drys was using. So maybe, just maybe, there was a way to use it. He sucked it into his body like taking in a breath and instantly regretted it. The energy was foreign, alien. It squirmed in his body like worms, and his own body burned trying to expel the alien essence.
But he could stand again, and he could move. Orange lightning crackled out of his tattoos and the blade of his sword as he brought the weapon up to meet the phantoms. When red and orange light struck, the entire prison shook. Lightning crackled from the weapons. Sparks burst from the rings on Drys's fingers. The walls shuddered and cracked, red and white light bursting out of them.
“What have you done?” Drys sraring at the walls. “What have you done!?”
Hallek's blade came down in an arc trailing blood and orange light. Drys jerked away at the last second, so it was only one of his hands that went tumbling across the floor. As soon as it was severed the rumbling calmed, and the crackling lightning stopped.
I was trying to cut both his arms off, Hallek looked down at Dryss on the floor. I guess all the rings need to work as a set.
“Alright,” Hallek panted. “Enough! I don't like killing people if I don't have to.
“You cut off my hand!” Drys sobbed, clutching his bleeding stump. He'd crawled over to his severed hand and was cradling it in his lap like a baby.
“Yeah seems to be a habit with me.” Hallek was tired. His limbs felt like lead, and his bones felt like they wanted to vomit. Taking in all that essence from the air had obviously been unhealthy, and he could only hope there was no permanent damage. “For what it's worth I hear a really good healer can reattach that for you, if he gets to it quickly enough. Sew it with minmi sinews and infuse the whole mess, something like that. Once I'm gone you might want to call for one.”
Drys didn't seem to be listening, or at least he didn't respond. Instead he used his good hand to lift the severed one to his mouth, fingers first. He crammed the fingers between his lips and sucked. And then Hallek remembered an infusion didn't need to be worn, exactly, it just had to be in close contact with the wielder...
“NO!” he shouted, but it was too late. Drys swallowed, tossing the ringless hand aside. The prison shook again and red lightning crackled from the walls. Dris climbed to his feet with red aura flowing around him, ghostly jaws snapping out of it everywhere.
“You're going to die!” Drys snarled. “We're going to kill you!”
“We?”
“We can feel us now. Us. We. In the walls. The pack. We have been here since the temple was built. Since the days of Lost Pangaea. It is mortared with our blood. We remember the taste of ancient blood. We remember when the sky boiled and the seas tore open and the Twisted Gods shattered the land apart. We remember. We are many. And we hate you!”
The words turned into an animal scream. Light flashed around Drys's head, now a formless mass and now the head of a snarling dinonychus. A wave of raptor phantoms closed in on Hallek, so he called the alien essence into his body again. It slithered and burned, but it was the only way he could match Drys. The orange light around Hallek burst outwards and formed into a phantom of its own, a ghostly giganotosaur of orange light that snapped forwards, chomping down on raptor phantoms and tossing them aside. Giving Hallek room to move. He made his way to Drys across a floor that was cracking open beneath him. The orange phantom of his dinosaur self followed behind, killing the raptor phantoms before they could touch him.
“Drys!” Hallek shouted over the screams of breaking stone. “Drys stop! Look what's happening to the walls!”
The only reply was an animal screech, so Hallek thrust the sword into Drys's stomach. And for one infimitesimal moment in time, he was everything. He was the pyramid, he was drys, he was the giganotosaur, he was the ancient raptors. He felt the energy of the entire prison flowing through him, the walls, the Lord Warden. And he felt that it was toxic, and incompatible, and never meant to move this way, to flow the way it was flowing. He felt the disaster begin.
And then the world went white
Balrok prison exploded in a gueyser of uncontrolled power. There was a sound like a billion screaming raptors, lightning lashed out from the explosion and struck the forest like a thousand burning whips. And if anyone had been able to risk the glare to see, to look closer at the light which poured into the heavens, they would have seen the faces, hundred upon hundreds of them, human and dinosaur, barely formed as they rose and fell within the gleaming light like bubbles in a boiling pot. And then with one final scream, the pillar cut off like water stopped from a tap.
And then silence.