The doleful dirge droned in the large nave —echoing off the smooth, cold stone. A voice joined the lament, and then another, until a choir wept in woeful unison. Ben’s ears began to ring. The mournful song became a hum in the background as he stared at the lifeless corpse of his friend. June collapsed beside Kieran’s body, clutching at his robes with deep, haunting moans that caused his throat to tighten. Her wailing went silent to his ears as the rumble of the beast’s growl caused his whitening knuckles to tremor, their grip tightening on the smooth haft of his black halberd.
He willed the Faceless to him, and they obeyed, swarming in a perpetual whirlpool-like circle around their position. Pale, spindly bodies poured down from the ceiling, walls, and rafters to create a defensive barrier of flesh around the party.
The world went silent. The slow beating of his heart and deep breaths were all he could hear. The sorrowful voice spoke, yet Ben ignored it. He lowered himself to a knee and turned Kieran, who laid face-down, over to his back —June began to choke and cough through tears as if the gesture shattered any denial she had clung to. With an unsteady hand, he ran fingers down his companion’s face and closed his eyelids.
“And you,” said the mournful voice. “You, forgery of life, will taint these consecrated grounds no longer. Your presence is a mockery to Her will.”
Ben felt a flash of energy in his periphery before a sharp pain assaulted the corner of his mind. He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth as several dim lights, representing the swirling mass of his subjects, faded out of existence. The loss was but a fraction of their number, yet the pain was substantial nonetheless. He stood before taking a deep breath and met June’s gaze; her brows were slanted as she knelt beside her partner. Ben couldn’t find the words to comfort her. To comfort himself. Their eyes remained locked on each other in the eye of the storm that was the hurricane of terrors.
“Stay here,” he began, and the Evoker opened her mouth to protest, yet no complaint came. “Watch over him, please.” He gestured to Kieran’s body, and after two heartbeats, June sniffed and dipped her head in acknowledgment.
He turned on his heel and walked toward the source of the beam of energy, which he estimated to be somewhere above the altar, roughly forty paces away. The roiling legion of Faceless parted to allow unhindered passage as he directed a group of them forward to the altar, commanding one of the tall creatures to walk in front of him as a shield. He watched in the dim light as a group of the terrors scuttled forth, slender bodies low to the ground, claws chittering against the stone and debris. Their jittery movements were spider-like —apt, Ben thought, as they were the hunters and the Matron would be prey.
The lack of light in the nave caused Ben to strain his eyes before he abandoned the futile attempt and opted to try and sense the Matron’s presence. The same chilling unease washed over his form as he focused on the area before him, probing, feeling for any trace of power that he had been able to sense instinctually in the past. He opened his eyes to peer at the curved wall above the altar. There wasn’t so much a presence as there was a lack of one in the space.
“Sisters. Purge the unworthy.”
Silence. The keening song ceased. Abruptly, several pulses of auras echoed from all directions. He halted his approach to the altar and spun as his gaze swept the dark rows of dilapidated pews surrounding him. Movement in the corner of his vision drew his attention to a cowled form —blood-red robes obscuring its features— that rose to stand from behind a blackened bench. Slowly, figures dressed in the same hooded attire appeared from behind debris, standing from sitting on pews and from deep shadows that he had thought to be unoccupied only moments prior.
It's an ambush, he thought as his breath caught in his throat.
He hesitated for the split second it took for the twenty or so figures to move. Their twitching strides were uncannily quick, and if not for the adrenaline coursing through his veins, he doubted he would have been able to track them. Ben dropped into a defensive stance and directed several of his subjects to intercept the attackers, yet they deftly dodged claws and lunges, their movement unimpeded by the evasive maneuvers, as they leapt straight toward-
“June!” he cried.
He realized that their quarry was neither him nor the Faceless horrors that were his subjects. The Matron of the Hand intended to kill another one of his companions. The crimson-robed figures were the infamous assassins of the order.
He sprang into motion as he heard a pained shriek of an assassin Priestess, who had tried to leap above the thick wall of creatures surrounding the Evoker. Either she had misjudged the reach of the tall creatures, or she had willingly thrown her life away in an effort to create an opening for her sisters to penetrate the defensive circle. A portion of the swarm of Faceless converged on the prone, screaming form of the woman, who was dismembered and eviscerated in sprays of blood and entrails, and Ben glimpsed a wide-eyed June, exposed.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Three figures darted into the breach, and Ben’s muscles screamed as he sprinted to intercept them from several paces away. He reached down within himself and began to muster the concept of Overwhelm as the hairs on the back of his neck stood, and his throat swallowed involuntarily. A lightning-quick pulse of arcane force was expelled from the albino woman’s body, followed by a loud crack, a flash of light, and a rapidly expanding dome of crackling blue-white energy. In a small radius around her, bodies of Faceless and assassins were propelled backward —robes smoking and flesh singed— slamming against the floor, spasming and twitching.
Ben clenched his jaw at the pain that blurred his vision. Only a few subjects died in the blast, yet several convulsed on the stone around him.
An oddly muffled chaos ensued, and June began to assail her attackers with bolts of arcane energy. The desperate grunts of the albino Caster periodically punctured the sounds of fluttering fabric and clattering of claws against the stone. The Priestesses, who hadn’t been in the blast radius, evaded with near-inhuman acrobatics and sudden pivots in their movements. In a brief moment of light cast by one of the Evoker’s attacks, Ben glimpsed glints of steel in the hands of one of the cowled figures. He advanced with light feet, roughly five paces from the Evoker, and thrust his halberd at a Priestess who had sidestepped a clawed attack from one of his subjects.
The spearhead of the sleek black weapon plunged into the unarmored chest of the woman. Another flash of light illuminated the wide brown eyes and raised brows on a pale face. The assassin regarded him in what he could only interpret as shock. The Priestess coughed blood as he ripped his weapon from her chest; her limp form crumpled to the ground in a heap of red fabric, and a pair of curved daggers clattered from her grasp to the stone.
“Champion?” wailed the sorrowful voice. The sound echoed amidst the arcane impacts, hisses, and scuttling of clawed feet. “Have you been led astray from the path of absolution?”
Ben ignored the voice and swung his weapon in a lateral arc, missing a robed figure who flowed with the strike in a back handspring, billowing red cloth seemingly caressing the blade along its trajectory.
“You are not him,” the voice moaned. “The Mistress will be disappointed.”
The oppressive feeling of unease began to emanate from the dark space above the altar, and the dozen remaining assassin Priestesses beat a hasty retreat toward the far end of the room, vanishing into the deep shadows. Ben struck a fleeing robed woman to the side of the temple with the butt of his weapon, sending her tumbling across the floor before he willed his subjects to tear into her flesh. The gurgling scream of the Priestess echoed out into the massive chamber as the clinking of chains drew his attention to the arched ceiling above.
The screeching of rusted steel and creaking of wood preceded a loud, hollow snap. Several more of the sounds reverberated from the rafters as dull thuds against the curved stone wall behind the altar accompanied a massive form. Thick, heavy chains dangled from manacles around the midsections of eight chitinous legs as the dark, arachnid-like form descended to the floor of the nave. Ben’s eyes strained to discern the enormous creature’s features in the near-total darkness; the flickering orange glow from burning benches —thanks to June’s errant bolts of energy— was the only light source in the cavernous chamber.
Ben made out a humanoid shape, female, atop the giant spider that approached with a slow staccato of loud thuds and the clinking of chains. He glanced back at the entrance to the nave and then back at June, who stood protectively over Kieran’s body. He wasn’t confident he could fight the creature while controlling his subjects to defend the Evoker. He bit his tongue hard, forcing himself to resist calling upon his concept, as to use his only real power too soon would possibly spell the end of them. Even with Kieran, it dawned on him that he had bitten off more than he could chew.
“June,” he called out to his companion. “Run. I’ll cover you.”
The Evoker met his gaze for a brief moment; her expression was contorted into a snarl. She looked down to the form of the Apprentice Necromancer, and her brows softened. “We can’t. We shouldn’t leave him here,” she said pleadingly. “There might still be a chance, right? He can’t be-”
“Listen,” Ben interrupted after moving toward her and grabbing her arm. “We can come back for him.”
A prickle at the back of his throat caused him to instinctively pull his companion by the arm, causing her to stumble before he caught her. A flash of red light and a dull pain in his temple told him that a Faceless had taken the brunt of another beam attack from the creature. He instinctively ducked and pulled her close before whispering. “Don’t make me drag you out of here. I said we can come back… I need you to live.” He met her gaze. “Please.”
The loud scuttling footfalls of the Matron began to increase in tempo, and Ben stood to see the creature closing the distance.
June shivered and glanced at Kieran once more before returning his stare. “You promise?”
“Yes. Now let’s move.”
The pair sprinted toward the exit as Ben willed his subjects to attack and delay the Matron. A cacophony of pain rang out in his mind as his subjects were destroyed in droves. The dimming lights in his vision spoke of their number dwindling to less than a hundred. Ben stumbled. The feedback of the deaths of the Faceless, though lesser than the loss of the human subject he had experienced, proved too much for him to handle. His muscles stiffened, and the cords on his neck drew taut as he felt pure agony.
The skittering footfalls drew closer, and he heard the panicked pleas of June urge him to stand. Abruptly, the creature’s approach halted. Ben slowly opened his eyes to see the form of a massive black spider. Attached to its thorax, he saw the body of a nude woman, from the waist up, with pale skin and long black hair; multiple eyes dotted the creature’s face as it stared at the entrance to the chamber. It took slow steps backward, fear on its inhuman face.
“What in the fuck do we have here?” drawled a low husky rasp.