The creature was a man, or at least manlike. His clothing was tatters and his skin was as pale as milk. Around his ankle was a long, heavy chain, snapped at one end. It was this which gave him his lurching gait. First a jerking lunge forward with his free leg, then the leg still bound dragged slowly after. Manacles chained his wrists together and there his skin was the pink and yellow of a deep bruise rather than white, as though a bone had broken beneath the surface. His nails were long and jagged, though half of them were missing; broken scrabbling against stone. His hair was long too, and brittle. Every step broke a small cloud of them free and sent then drifting about. It was a wonder he had any at all. His eyes were watery and pink, and the irises themselves were completely clouded over.
There was no light in those eyes, no glimmer of recognition, no window to the soul. The man inside had long been snuffed out. He moaned and it was then I truly felt fear. Not fear from the man himself, he was pitiable, wasted, chained. A single sword could end him in an instant.
No. It was the pain and sorrow in that moan. The hopelessness and desperation. The unending wail so deep I could hear it tearing at his lungs. The hiccough and coughing sob at the end. I feared him because I feared becoming him.
To kill him would be to strike the madman down on the street for accosting me. And yet, he continued to advance.
“Sir, please, slow yourself. You are frightening me.”
Not even a twitch. The man continued his advance. A moment later he let out another throat-tearing moan. Others answered him from within the chamber. I shared a glance with Gunhild.
“Let’s keep out of his path, perhaps he only means to pass through,” I suggested, though without much hope.
Sure enough, as we moved to the side of the room, the chained man slowly changed his path to angle towards us. It almost felt accidental, if not for his unerring accuracy.
The man wailed again, and this time it was a scream of whispers, a thousand voices susserating in a thousand different directions. A cacophony of silence which left my mind buzzing and my ears ringing with emptiness.
Resurrecting Hammer
I blinked free of the echoes. Gunhild was shaking her head, hands held to her ears. She looked at me, fear in her eyes, “Did you hear that? What happened? What is a resurrecting hammer?”
I frowned, my eyes narrowed. How had she heard that? What did that mean? Was she a warlock? What warlock would admit to feeling the dark magic so freely? “Dark magic. Dark magic of the blackest sort. Abandon the whispers if you can.”
She smiled weakly, though complexion looked nearly as sickly as when the altar had poisoned her, “It is already gone. Not even the echoes remain.”
Our conversation was interrupted by the lurching man. We stepped back further, then took a wide arc around him to avoid being cornered. I was starting to be concerned by him. We couldn’t allow him to follow us forever, but I still wasn’t sure if he truly meant any harm. Perhaps it was merely help he needed. Help to free him from his chains. There could be any number of sorcereries woven there. A spell similar to Levitate but with a different intention could free him in an instant, but I didn’t have such a spell available. I needed more time. Time to think free from the screams and moans echoing about me.
I sent one of my blades forward and struck down suddenly. My aim was true and my (recorded) arm strong. The blade sunk directly through the centre of one of the loops of his chains and into the floor below.
The chained man stumbled to a halt as his chain refused to move. At the same time, a ghostly apparition of his chain rose and began snaking through the air towards Gunhild. I sent a pair of swords to intercept. Both blades struck true, and one of the links was severed. A second ghostly chain rose from the first, this one targeting me. The two pieces of the first ghost-chain did not remain still for long, instead both flowing around my sword and continuing on to Gunhild.
Gunhild’s eyes grew wide and she took an involuntary step backward, caught her foot on the end of her robe and fell backward with a scream. A fourth chain, this one shadowed flashed beneath her robes in the instant she fell and she let out another scream of panic and spun about rapidly on the floor.
The chains meant to bind us along with the rest of their victims.
I still wasn’t overly worried. I had fourteen swords and there were only four chains. Thirteen swords if you didn’t count the one pinning down the prisoner. I sent three swords to pin each chain. Two chains were pinned by the first sword to strike it, the third was pinned by the second. The chain assaulting Gunhild seemed to have either disappeared or been dealt with in some way, for she was no longer screaming, instead huddled against the far door in a crouch.
A fifth chain rose from the prisoner’s bounds in that moment, which avoided my remaining sword for a moment, then was quickly brought down by reinforcements from my others. Unfortunately, pinning the fifth chain merely gave rise to a sixth, the sixth to a seventh, seventh to an eighth, and I was rapidly running out of swords.
It was only after the eleventh chain was pinned (ten if you counted those cut in half as a single chain) that the prisoner’s chain stop summoning more ghostly apparitions.
“Are you alright?” I called to Gunhild, “Did that chain hurt you?”
“Chain? I... what chain?” she asked tentatively.
“I could have sworn I saw a chain dart beneath your robes as you fell, or perhaps it was the chain which fell you.”
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
Gunhild let out a shaky laugh, “No, no chain. No chain. Don’t know what you saw.”
I rubbed my face, I could have sworn... No matter. The point was that she was safe.
The chained man continued to moan and thrash at his bond. It was a wonder he hadn’t lost his voice before now.
“What do we do with you, I wonder?” I murmured, eyeing the oozing flesh where manacle encircled ankle.
Gunhild drew cautiously closer, “Kill him,” she said simply, “look at his eyes, he’s already dead.”
I’d already seen that dim light in his eyes, or rather, the lack of one. I’d seen it in others. Broken people. People who had given up. Who need care for the rest of their life, and never truly recovered. Perhaps in the middle of a rich village, with healers and kind-hearted merchants aplenty he could be kept alive. He’d never smile, never rekindle the lost spark, but at least he would be comfortable.
To free him to the tender mercies of the dungeon, with no one to care for him... It would be a kindness to kill him.
A kindness I could not bring myself to deliver.
“If you can’t do it, give me your cutlass, and I’ll finish him. I’m stronger remember. Strong enough for this.” Gunhild held out a single delicate hand. Delicate appearing. I knew better than anyone how looks could be deceiving.
I didn’t hand her my cutlass. Shirking the responsibility, handing it off onto another. It was the same as doing it myself. If I was willing to allow the man to be executed, I would be the executioner.
“He’s done us no harm,” I decided, “It’s his cursed chain which attacked us. Perhaps if we free him he’ll be restored.”
So saying, I sent a sword to strike at the edge of the manacle. The first blow chopped into the edge of the manacle, the second widened the cut. The third slipped, twisting and warping the metal, nearly striking the man’s leg in the process. The fourth missed entirely, at which point I was worried about harming him. I readied my blade for a fifth strike all the same. There was little for it.
The blade struck home. For a moment I thought I had done it, then the man collapsed like a scarecrow free of its pole, and a ghostly chain rose from the severed manacle.
My first blade missed its mark, but I had ten others. The second one struck home, pinning the new chain to the floor along with the others.
Thus sorted, I immediately ran forward and crouched by the man’s side. I put a finger to his neck to check for a pulse, then drew back with a hiss of shock. He was ice cold.
“What is it?” Gunhild asked.
I put a finger back to the man’s neck, then a palm to his forehead and chest.
“He’s dead. Cold as stone. His heart hasn’t beat in days.”
My mind was racing as I spoke, seeking alternate answers. Perhaps he wasn’t human? He certainly didn’t look it. He looked more like... like a corpse drained of blood. A troll might be as cold, and perhaps some of the elves, but neither explained the man suddenly collapsing.
I checked his ankle for the wound I’d delivered him and found none. Instead, the manacle was severed all the way through, and his collapse had pulled it free from his leg. He must have dropped the same instant I’d freed him.
“The chain seemed to have been animating him. Either keeping him alive or letting him move in death. He’s been dead for days. Weeks even.”
Gunhild crept forward, “Can you destroy the chain then? The original?”
I studied it more carefully, now that I was able to. Strange runes were carved into the chain, every other link had one.
“Perhaps if I disrupt one or all of these runes. Stand clear.”
The sun rose as I gathered my swords. It would have to wait.
I looped a second link on the far of the chain around another of my swords and moved it until the chain was once more stretched out tautly. Then I sent all but one of my remain swords to scourge the chain from above, aiming in particular for the runes. A minute of lashings sufficed to mar or break all of them.
A dreadful chorus of wails rose from the room which had housed the chained man the instant I was finished, followed by a sudden silence and series of soft thumps. Further wails from deeper in the dungeon echoed the cries, but the cry was not taken up again by its originators. I whipped my remaining sword around to the entrance, ready for whatever may come through. Nothing came.
I sent a fireball through first, and followed only once the light elected no response.
The chamber beyond was massive, one of those strange six sided rooms I’d seen before. It might look almost like a cell in a bee’s honey comb if viewed from above.
The walls were lined with ghostly chains, the twins to those still in the room behind me. They had not dissipated with the ruin of the runed chain. Neither had these.
Bound in the chains were corpses. Dozens of them. Some crumpled and broken, others sagging as though sleeping. Many were at the very ends of their tether, as if they’d be pulling against it a moment prior. None appeared to be in any state of decay, though none wore clothing which wasn’t worn and tattered.
Part of the ceiling had collapsed on the right hand side of the room. Several of the hapless souls had been crushed underneath, severing their chains, but failing to free them. The chained-man we’d encountered must have been one of the lucky few. This then also explained how Conan and the others had managed to navigate the room. They’d not been a threat before I’d disrupted the ritual.
All the same, I noticed from how the map was drawn they’d approached from both sides, and the details were sketchy at best. They may have never truly passed through, or only passed through once. Given the option, I’d have done the same.
“It’s safe,” I called back to Gunhild, “Steel yourself, but it is safe.”
Gunhild crept in behind me, leaving nothing to chance nor trust, and was still brought up short by the sight within.
She swallowed, “Who were they?”
I bent to study their clothes and features, “No idea. Experiments of the warlocks. Long forgotten captives. Or perhaps the chains take their own prisoners. They may have been here before even the warlocks.”
“My sisters and I have always heard their cries, but,” she hung her head, “we’ve always avoided such places.”
I lifted her chin with a finger, “Better that than be captured along side them.”
She shrugged, “Maybe.”
I let my hand fall to rest on her shoulder. Then I remembered myself and was about to withdraw, but she didn’t shy from my touch. I let it be. Arguments bubbled to the surface of my mind, ready to convince her of her righteous path. I let them be as well.
Instead I stood there, hand on shoulder, until we were ready to go on.