The mirror led them into a large, windowless chamber. From its architecture, it appeared that they were still somewhere in the manor. However, everything looked distorted and hazy, like there was something strange in the air. On the far end of the room stood a man wearing a tattered black robe. He was standing with his back to them over a table, tinkering with something Orin couldn’t see.
The warrior exchanged a look with Rus, who nodded and readied his bow. The warrior crept up to the man and blinked. He felt strange. There was no feedback from his feet, and he didn’t make a sound as he walked. Something was amiss, but he couldn’t tell what. However, the man before him was likely the master of this place, and they had the element of surprise. Neither wanted it to go to waste.
Once he had entered range, Orin readied his greatsword and nodded, indicating to Rus that he was ready. He drew his weapon back and swung for the neck. As he swung, his weapon felt unnaturally light to the point that it was almost weightless. At the same time, his muscles felt heavy, and it was all he could do to swing it ever so slowly. Confused and alarmed, he glanced over at Rus, who also appeared to be having trouble bringing his bow to bear.
“Sneaking up and attacking an old man,” a disembodied voice admonished. It spoke in clipped tones that reverberated through the room unnaturally.
Upon hearing the man speak Orin found himself unable to a muscle. Slowly, the old man turned around to face him. His face was skeletal, just a skull covered with a layer of parchment thin yellow skin. His eyes, however, were young and full of life as they examined the warrior approvingly.
“A necromancer,” Rus gasped from the other side of the room. “I should have known.”
“You have done well to come this far,” the necromancer remarked as he ran a bony hand along Orin’s armour. “Yes, you will make a fine addition to my forces… the new master will be pleased.”
“Release me from your foul magic so that I may pound you into dust,” Orin found speaking difficult but managed to choke the words out.
“You are no different from those knights upstairs,” The necromancer smirked. “Putting such stock in your physical prowess, yet helpless in the face of the God of Death’s power.”
“Release me from this spell and I’ll show you how pathetic your God’s power is,” Orin spat.
The necromancer chuckled derisively. “So proud now and yet soon, you will call me master.”
“Don’t hold your breath,” Orin scoffed.
Green energy enveloped the necromancer’s hand as he chanted foul sounding words. It radiated a sickly energy that filled Orin with revulsion. The warrior willed his body to move, but it would not listen. The necromancer held the hand to Orin’s face, and the warrior felt his perspective shift. As though his sight had become disconnected from his body.
“Oh Urdagon, Master of Death,” the necromancer chanted. “Thy humble servant beseeches thee, grant me this soul so that I might be able to better serve thy interests…”
The necromancer moved his hand to Orin’s chest and touched it. The hand itself felt deathly cold through his steel cuirass. Moments later, a searing heat engulfed the warrior. The heat was accompanied by the cacophony of unnumbered high pitched screams in his ear. He strained and struggled impotently to break free from the spell as the screams began to form a coherent voice.
“You may not have this soul, not even for a moment,” the voice said. “This soul is mine and mine alone.”
The screams and the heat were familiar to Orin, and his pulse began to race. Terror filled his mind. Primal and abject terror. The terror of death. This was the voice of death and that it was his fate to become one of the screams, one of an uncountable number in the God of Death’s choir. It was a fate he would do anything to avoid.
The necromancer’s eyes went wide, and he nodded in understanding. “I understand, My Lord. Thy will be done.”
The skeletal man drew a dagger and moved to draw it across Orin’s exposed neck. “I commend this soul into thy keeping.”
Terror overwhelmed Orin. Death was coming and try as he might, he could not avoid it. Soon, the heat would be his existence, the heat and the screams and the torment, and all he could do was scream in agony and fear for the rest of eternity.
“Only one thing can protect you,” a voice inside him said.
Orin knew at once what it was. Rage. White hot rage that burned even hotter than the damnation that awaited him. This man. This scrawny man, who would struggle to defend himself against a newborn pup, would condemn him to a life of eternal torment. How dare he? How dare he!
The warrior gave into the rage, and his rage shattered the spell that had been cast on him. Before the necromancer realized it, the warrior had snapped his arm like a dry twig and tore the head from his shoulders with his bare hands before hurling it across the room with such force that it was crushed into pulp when it struck the far wall.
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With the necromancer’s death, the spell was broken, and Rus fell gasping to the floor. Orin’s rage, however, had not been sated. His grip tightened around the hilt of his sword as he approached the hunter, but at the last moment, he regained his senses and steered himself towards the mirror.
“Where are you going?” Rus choked.
“Outside,” came the terse reply. “Wait a while before following after me if you do not want to get caught up in it.”
“Caught up in what?” Orin heard him ask before he stepped through the mirror and appeared back in the basement.
Orin felt red hot blood pumping through his veins as he climbed the steps out of the basement and into the manor’s foyer. Through the window, he could see it was now dark outside. In the back of his mind, he knew this was a problem, but he didn’t care now. All he could think of was finding an outlet to sate his rage.
“Where are you?” he roared.
It didn’t take long for an armoured figure to come barrelling out of one of the wings. There was something different about it. Before, it had been measured in its approach, but this time, it charged Orin carelessly. Caught off guard, Orin could only block its shoulder charge with the flat of his sword. To his surprise, the impact sent him flying across the room, sending him crashing through a solid stone wall before crushing the long dining table he landed on in the next hall.
Were the knights this strong when they last fought? Orin didn’t have time to think about it as he rolled out of the way just as another armoured knight smashed through the remains of the table with its axe.
Orin cleaved a third knight clean in half as he rolled to his feet. As the creature collapsed, he smashed the legs out of another before driving his sword through its prone helmet. This creature went limp. There were two left. At least for now. The knights were stronger, now, but their movements were feral and easy to predict. Orin sidestepped as one lunged and hacked the other’s head off before skewering the off balance knight from behind.
Unsatisfied with how easy defeating them had been, he took a step back and waited for them to regenerate. Minutes ticked by and nothing happened. The warrior clicked his tongue irritably. His heart was still pumping, and fighting made him forget his terror. He looked out the window and saw the skeletal villagers staring at him through the window. The warrior licked his lips and walked towards the manor’s front door.
The battle that ensued was long and brutal. All the warrior focused on was his breathing and swinging his sword as his foes fell around him. He moved like a whirlwind, shattering three or more with each swing of his sword. At times, they threatened to overwhelm him, but the warrior prevailed each time. Despite coming close to death several times, he felt his terror subside as he entered a battle trance, fuelled by his rage. He did not remember the object of his rage, only that it came in waves in the heat of combat, and that it was what would keep death at bay.
The warrior swung his sword until he lost track of time until he realized there were no more foes to destroy. His body was bathed in sweat and his breathing was ragged as he looked at the crushed bones scattered around him. None of them so much as twitched. There was a slight sense of disappointment when he realized the battle was over, but his fury was satisfied. At least for now.
“That was quite the show,” the warrior tightened his grip around the hilt of his sword until he realized the voice belonged to Rus. “Have you come to your senses?”
The hunter stood unmoving at a safe distance, eyeing the warrior cautiously and prepared to run should he feel his life was in danger.
“I think so,” Orin admitted at length. He then gestured at the bones around him. “We should have come at night. It would have saved us a lot of trouble.”
“That is likely because the necromancer is dead,” Rus remarked. He studied warrior for a moment longer before asking. “Do you need a rest before we set out for the gateway?”
Orin took several steps before nodding. “I believe I have discovered the limits of my endurance.”
“My camp isn’t far from here,” Rus said. “We can rest there.”
Orin arched an eyebrow. “You trust me now?”
Rus shrugged. “Not really, but this will be my last night in here, and I’d rather have a comfortable sleep after what we’ve been through.”
“Aren’t you worried about that army we saw last night?” Orin ventured.
Rus shook his head. “We’ll tread carefully of course, but I can’t think of anything they’d be interested in on this level. Chances are they have headed further up.”
“Doesn’t that bode poorly for you?” Orin ventured.
Rus shrugged. “I can only think of two reasons they’d be heading up. An army from the outside is laying siege to the dungeon entrance and they have been sent to repel it, or perhaps they’re laying siege to Verdant Meadows.”
“Verdant Meadows?”
“The nearest town to this dungeon,” Rus explained. “Either way, I want to get out of here as quickly as I can.”
Orin grunted. “Perhaps your demon went up with them.”
“Perhaps,” Rus allowed. “But I’m not telling you how to delve deeper until you take me to the gateway to the upper levels.”
“A deal is a deal,” Orin allowed.
They walked in silence as Rus led the way through the forest. Now that he was free from distractions, Orin’s mind strayed to the heat and the voices, and a chill went down his spine when he thought about how familiar it all was.
“Are you sure you aren’t hurt anywhere?” Rus asked suddenly, startling Orin.
The warrior removed his hand from the hilt of his greatsword and shook his head. “I was not.”
“Well, you look pale,” Rus observed. “Perhaps that spell he cast is still affecting you.”
“Your concern is peculiar,” Orin remarked dryly.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Rus said, shaking his head. “I just want you in top condition to get rid of that demon for me.”
Orin was about to brush the hunter’s concerns off, but his curiosity got the better of him. “Did you not feel anything down in that basement?”
“I felt plenty,” Rus remarked. “You’re going to have to be specific.”
“Did you feel a searing heat and hear screams when the necromancer was about to sacrifice me to Urdagon?” Orin asked.
Rus shook his head slowly. “No, did you?”
“I did,” Orin admitted. “I saw what lay beyond death’s veil and the strange thing is it felt like I’d seen it before, and it terrified me.”
“So, you’re now afraid of death,” Rus mused. “You are hardly unique in that respect.”
“That’s not it,” Orin snapped. “The God of Death knew me… He said my soul was his…”
“So what’s the big deal?” Rus shrugged. “The God of Death comes for us all, in time. The way I see it, the trick is to live a nice full life before He comes for you. That way, when he drags you screaming down into Hell, you’ll have fond memories to look back over your eternity of torment.”
Orin scowled but said nothing, wanting an end to this unproductive conversation. Whoever he was, he had gone beyond death’s door before, and try as he might to remember its details, they always seemed just out of reach. The raw, primal terror, though, he seemed to recall well enough.