The stench of iron stifled the survivors of the underground chamber. Streams of blood trickled in from above; black putrescent blood from the undead, green blood from spirits, blue blood from magical beasts, but overwhelmingly the red blood of humans who’d been slain. All of it slowly seeped down to this nadir of the dungeon, a room fitting to be called the Verge of the Underworld.
One managed to push himself to his feet, using a sword faintly pulsing with magic beyond mortal capability as a mere crutch. Sloshing over, he knelt back down next to his only comrade that drew breath, pulling him up out of the pool.
“Ah...ah….ah….shoulda just left me there a little longer. I’m not gonna die, not gonna die, don’t worry, but ah, this hurts.” Breathing sharply through his teeth, he appeared weak, but exerted a fearsome grip on the swordsman’s arm to keep himself steady. “Asher...set me back down… and check. He’s too slippery, make sure… “
“He’s dead. Mimring...he fused their souls together. The tie to his body is severed, and I can feel them fading away even now.” Indeed, once a light blue glow now became besotted with grey smears, its light ever so slowly dimming. The power from the Holy Blade would not fully dissipate, but the companion once found had already spoken its last words.
“No, check, check!” Coughing up blood, the mage clutched at his chest. “Mimring was a dear friend… I do trust him… but Asher, Yuviol is too… too tricky. Even in death…”
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“Tireces, you know he was not a man to plot after his death. Everything he did was in fear of—”
“No, not in fear. In hatred. Even were it one to a trillion, he would look for a way to escape it, and he would have pursued it long before making himself known. You must…” Asher thought his old friend to merely be rambling after exhausting body and spirit. Then a golden pulse shook the entire cavern.
Throwing himself from Asher’s hold, Tireces cried choking on blood “Go! Go!” Asher needed no encouragement, throwing himself in the direction of the source. A golden hemisphere of light arose in the center of the room. Asher limped up the raised dais, but even without a sea of blood, he could see nothing. No runes, no enchanted artifacts, nothing but a slowly expanding orb on a previously empty platform. Unsure of what to do, he grabbed the arm of Yuviol’s corpse, stabbing over and over as he tried dragging it away from whatever was happening.
“Just stay dead, damn you! Uriel, Elena, all of them went to their deaths with grace! Do even devils despise you so that they would throw you back once more?” Frothing, the remains of Mimring pierced the lungs, heart, and stomach, before Asher left the sword impaled through the head, focusing on trying to get away with the body.
“It can’t be…” Tireces murmured “There’s no escaping it Asher. That’s the focus of the spell.”
“The focus? Impossi…” Looking at the corpse in hand, he cut himself off. Then he looked back over to his friend, who’d shakily propped himself on a collapsed bit of the ceiling.
Letting out a shortened chuckle, Tireces seemed to have relaxed. Not the sort to give up in the face of death, it seemed there was still something the two could do.
“I don’t know how large it will get, but we should have some time...heh...anyways…”
Then the spell was cast.