I gripped my ax tight and charged for it. I would slay it before it even left its massive coffin.
“Look out!” Vixerai shouted.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw a great flash of haunting white light. I whipped around enough to put my ax between it and me, but I was hurled back in an explosion of arcane power. My ax head absorbed much of the damage, but the embers of this white ghost flame licked all around me, scorching my flesh here and there as I ricocheted off the ground, bounding like a stone skipped on a lake. I leapt to my feet and saw that it had been another of these pig demon skeletons that had assaulted me, this one with arcane ghost fire that burned on its halberd’s blade. The one with the bladed helm and the mace came stomping out of its coffin, lurching toward me with cruel intent. “Vixerai! Leave me be with these beasts!” I barely finished the words when I had to duck—my elbow couters clanging on stone as I rolled away from the giant mace smashing the ground where I had stood. “Find the key to the treasure rooms! I’ll take care of these bastards!”
“As you say!” Vixerai screeched and went flying about the chamber looking through books.
The two pig skeletons came lurching toward me. They had heavy plate armor around their chests, but their biceps, thighs and heads were less armored. The one with the magic halberd hurled another gout of ghost fire at me. My greaves slid along the stone floor, sending me dashing behind a stone pillar whose long smooth form was silhouetted by the ghost fire’s pale glow crashing upon it. When the gush of flame was finished, I came running at the one wielding the mace. While his legs plodded slowly, once he was ready to unleash a blow it was as if his arms became catapults, sending his mace blurring down at the ground with stone-shattering strength. I leapt at him and the mace went blurring under me, inches from crushing my legs. My pig friend had missed, and I was sailing through the air, my eyes unflinching, locked on his giant skull. It was strange—even with only small ghost fires for eyes, and unmoving bone for a face, he still registered wild shock as he saw my arching ax blade come flashing toward him. The sound of shattering bones rang in the hall. Like a bucket of bones thrown out from a butcher’s shop for dogs to feast on, his jaw went twisting through the air, as did neck bones and the top half of his skull.
As soon as I landed, the other pig skeleton was aiming his halberd at me. I snatched the fallen skeleton’s helm by one of its spikes and swung it in front of me, letting it absorb the stream of ghost fire. I tossed it away and went charging for the halberd pig. He was already aiming for me once more, the halberd glowing ready to spew its burning spit at me. “Not this time!” I lashed my chain claw out, sent it flinging at him. Its claw coiled around his halberd’s haft. Just as he was about to unleash a torrent of flame upon me, I yanked my chain gauntlet across my body. It pulled on his weapon, and while it was not enough to yank it from his grasp, it did throw his aim entirely askew. His halberd’s flame became a wild torrent, like an injured snake writhing all over the room. When the halberd had spent its flame for the moment, I willed my chain to retract, but it kept its clawed end coiled around his halberd. My feet left the ground. My chain clinked at lightning speed as it pulled me to the pig demon faster than a hawk flies. Just as I was about to crash right into the pig’s chest, I gripped my ax tight with my free hand, locked my eyes on his skull, and swung. This pig skeleton had even less armor on his skull, and so it exploded into a thousand pieces as my ax blade cleaved through it.
I went crashing into his chest, making his now twice-dead corpse slam into the ground. Bones fell all around me. I rolled with the momentum, my chain claw whipping back to my gauntlet, and I was on my feet once more. Something like the sound of fluttering was coming from inside his chest armor plate, perhaps a bone still cracking or even his groaning spirit.
“Vixerai! Have you found the key?”
“I think it’s within this book! But I’m not certain...” I looked to her and saw she hovered by the top shelf of a colossal book case.
“Then be certain!” I began walking to her, letting my ax haft rest on my shoulder.
Suddenly a giant hand squeezed my ankle so hard it nearly crushed it. “What?!” I barely had time to grunt through my pain and look down to see what gripped me before I was swept off my feet by this giant hand. The world became a stony blur as I was raised high into the air—a feathery feeling filled my gut—then I was brought slamming down to the ground. “Grlllrk!” I choked out as breath wheezed out of me and my face slammed into hard stone. I could not know how many bones of mine were shattered as the pain was mercifully blinding. As I was raised up from the cloud of dust and broken stone floor, I realized it was the pig skeleton I had slain, the one with the mace I had decapitated just moments earlier. His skeletal body was taking form once more; each bone that had been scattered throughout the hall was sailing through the air and coming together as if guided by a ghostly hand. He held me by the ankle, upside down. I was weaponless—my ax having slid from my grip when he took hold of me. My blurred vision was starting to focus. His skull formed on top of his shoulders once more, and then he opened his jaws and began dangling me closer to them. The bastard was going to bite my head off!
Terror jolted me alive. I whipped my chain claw at my ax, latched onto it then brought it snapping to my grip, just in time that I lashed out with it. I immediately went falling as my ax blade cleaved his arm off—the one that was holding me aloft. My back thudded to the ground, but I took no heed. I rolled to my feet and slashed at him with my giant ax. His legs broke at the knees, sending the rest of his torso toppling over. Perhaps because I had not decapitated him this time the pig demon seemed to still have some kind of life in it. He crawled toward me with only one arm, relentless rancor on his giant skull face.
The other pig demon had reformed, about thirty paces from the legless one, and his halberd was beginning to glow with ghost fire once more. I was still dizzy from being slammed into the ground.
“Vixerai! Change of tactics!” I tried to steady myself. “Come! These bastards won’t die!”
Within a moment she came swooping down to me, a thick old book in her hands. “The key is somewhere within here,” she spoke hurriedly. “It’s Sombrala’s most prized magical tome.” The crawling pig demon had reformed his legs and arm and was beginning to stand once more.
“Vixerai! These pigs keep coming to life!”
“They’re regenerating…”
The reformed mace skeleton aimed for us, raising his giant weapon aloft. I shoved Vixerai aside and raised my ax blade to parry. It was a testament to my ax’s godly craftsmanship that it took the blow. They only met for an instant as I turned my body aside as I parried, letting the mace’s momentum carry it crashing to the ground next to me. Even so, the clang of our two weapon’s meeting vibrated through every fiber of my body and all throughout the room like a war gong. Even parrying the blow, my body had taken some damage, searing aches running through me. I ducked under his arm and went running to him. I unleashed an ax swing that shattered his thigh bone, sending the rest of his torso hobbling to the ground once more.
The other pig skeleton was aiming his halberd straight for me. I whipped my chain claw around one of the pillars and let it tug me away. His ghost fire missed as I soared through the air. I pulled on the chain, swinging in a wide arc around the pillar. I got a good look close in on him as I sailed in this strange way and saw that what I had heard earlier was indeed a kind of fluttering. Wings.
“Vixerai! There’s some kind of insect within them!” I landed and my chain coiled around my gauntlet once more. “It’s inside their breastplates! It must be what sustains them!”
“Of course! A moth of regeneration!” Vixerai swooped in a wild motion as the halberd skeleton aimed his ghost fire at her but missed, instead scorching the stone roof of the hall. “It’s a kind of demon that bonds with corpses. I’ll deal with it!”
She summoned two fire orbs and flung them as if she were throwing a spear. The two orbs went spinning toward the halberd
skeleton. They erupted in a burst of fire. The skeleton stumbled back in a panic and fell back.
“There! Now the other!” I shouted. She aimed for the skeleton who was reassembling its leg already. She had to take a moment, her hands held above her head, to summon more orbs. “Vixerai!” I shouted when I saw that the halberd skeleton was not dead but was lurching up, smoke rising from his bones. Vixerai’s orbs had not destroyed his moth demon. He was aiming his halberd at her.
A torrent of flame shot through the room. Vixerai turned just in time that the flame did not take her head-on but still managed to singe much of her wing. I sprinted to catch her as she came spiraling down, leaving a trail of smoke in her wake. I leapt and caught her in my arms.
Her wrenched, pained face sent shudders of anger through me. “Vixerai!”
“I… I’ll live—ah!” A gasp of pain broke her words. I set her down and felt rage fluttering in my chest.
The halberd pig was already aiming his weapon at us once more. I began trotting toward him. “Come on, you pig snouted bastard! You call that fire? You think yourself a dragon? I piss hotter gouts than that!”
The skeleton somehow understood that I taunted him, and his halberd became an inferno as he let out a torrent of white hot ghost flame. This time, I was ready for him. I held my ax head in front of me and pushed into the flame. I summoned all my mental strength and willed my ax blades to absorb all the ghost fire. I grit my teeth, felt the blood on my jaws from my various wounds sizzling under the arcane heat around me. I kept pushing into the beam of fire, felt like I was walking into a ghostly sun, taking step after step, willing my ax to swallow this arcane power. The ax head became like a mighty candle flame, its arcane thirst being slaked so much that I saw faint images of skulls within the blade, their jaws wide open as beasts holding their tongues out to catch rain. The flames that were not swallowed by my ax still licked around me, still burned my fur and flesh, but I snarled and did not look away, did not flinch. Step by step, I kept pressing. I was a wall between him and Vixerai, and I would not break.
The pig skeleton’s halberd went gray and cold as he had used up his flame. Meanwhile, I held an ax that had become as a torch with how much ghost fire it contained within its head.
“You like fire so much, pig…” I snarled as I whipped my chain claw, sent it snaking right into his chest armor. He staggered as it latched on, then my chain pulled me right off my feet and straight to him. “Then burn in hell!!!”
As I went sailing through the air, I gripped my flaming ax tight, then buried it into his chest plate with all my strength. As it cleaved into the armor, piercing to the other side of the metal, my ax blade let out the ghost flame it had swallowed in a great gout of flame. It felt as if I had a dragon’s maw in my hand as I unleashed a great inferno into the pig’s chest armor. The pressure of the flame erupting inside this breastplate sent me reeling back off him, made the skeleton’s breastplate burst into pieces under the strain. The pig skeleton’s bones went scattering in every direction under the white hot eruption.
As the bones came scattering all about me, I stood and saw scorched moth wings fluttering down to the ground. Even hitting the ground in flames, it seemed to writhe with intelligence, desperately crawling as a salted slug. This moth demon was the size of my hand. I hurried to it and stomped down on it. Green ooze splatted. I snatched its broken wing and picked up the front part of its insectoid body that my boot had missed. I looked at it and saw that some of its hairy moth legs still squirmed with vestiges of life. “So you’re the little worm holding up this damned set of bones.” I held it to some of the remaining flaming bones, until it burned out entirely. Once it turned to ashes, so did the pig bones on the ground, leaving only its armor and halberd, now with no wielder.
I looked over and saw that the mace skeleton was chasing Vixerai all about, flailing his mace. My bird maiden swooped about the air, narrowly avoiding his mace blows that cratered pillars and walls. She flew in a kind of limp, and so her agility and the pig’s aim were much more closely matched than had she been fully healthy.
“Vixerai! I’m coming!” I ran to the skeleton. My ax had used up all its stored flame, so I had to find another way to get at the moth within the pig’s breastplate. I hurled my chain claw, latched onto its mace wielding arm. I pulled myself to the creature, yet apparently it had caught on to my abilities. As I sailed toward it, it yanked its mace arm and spun, sending me crashing into a wall. I felt another bone break somewhere in my arm. I unlatched my claw from it and fell to one knee.
“Vixerai!” I yelled through my pain as I readied myself. “Ready as many of your flaming orbs as you can! I’ll open up that armor for you!”
“As you say, my mate!” I saw her swooping above me, small fires beginning to take form around her.
“Come at me, you hog warted sack of bones!”
The pig skeleton’s mace dragged along the ground. The sound it made was as if a concrete block were being dragged behind it. He came lumbering toward me, slowly increasing his gait.
“Is that as fast as you can run? I run faster just to take a shit!” If his fallen brother understood my taunts, so must he. He increased his gait until his great lumbering form was charging toward me like a bull fifteen feet tall at the shoulder. I stood my ground. I could not flinch for this to work. His steps thudded as he sprinted. “Come then, you swine!” At the last moment, just as he raised his mace above his head, I snapped my chain claw back, gripped the fallen skeleton’s halberd, and flung it to my grasp. I held the gigantic weapon with all my strength, dug its butt to the ground to steady it, and aimed its blade at the charging skeleton’s chest plate. He neither had the instinct nor the speed to veer his massive weight off his charging path. He impaled himself upon the halberd, its blade piercing into the breastplate with a slicing crack and coming out the back side.
The creature let out a bestial squall, more a feeling of anger than of pain.
“Now, Vixerai!”
My succubus swept her hands around her, aiming them straight ahead, flaming orbs swirling around them. Her hands glowed bright as the flaming orbs went sparking from her delicate finger tips. A volley went sailing into the pig’s armor like flaming arrows. One after the other they exploded within the armor until the armor itself became as an oil lamp gushing with overflowing flames.
The pig skeleton came crashing down, first to its knees then flat on its boney face. The burning moth demon leapt from the armor, desperately trying to writhe free. Vixerai launched a remaining orb at it, turning the moth and the skeleton to ash.
“Look at you now, you pig headed bastard,” I grumbled, then I fell to one knee, keeping myself from falling entirely by steadying myself with my ax. “Though falling face first into endless rest does not seem like such a bad fate right now.”
Vixerai knelt beside me. “I can heal you.”
I raised my hand to her. “Heal yourself first. I heal with time.” What I did not say is that I feared we were running out of strength and that to revive me might take too much from her.
She closed her eyes and focused a moment. Her wings began shining subtly, and their black charred parts became whole once more. “I still have some energy to heal you.”
“You need to conserve your magic. You’ve already used much dealing with these skeletons. Who knows what you must do to reach what we’ve come for.” I looked to the large tome in her hands.
“As you say,” she said as she began flipping through the book, “I know the key to the rooms upstairs is somewhere here. If I only knew where. But Sombrala guarded it closely. It was only through much effort that I ever even found this place.” She went on looking and I focused on my body healing. I could feel bones knitting together, bleeding wounds turning to scabs. I was healing, but slowly. The pain felt like I had been whipped and stoned for half a night.
“I have it!” Vixerai’s crimson eyes locked on mine in triumph. She stood and stepped back from me. I mirrored her movement. She began intoning arc
ane words, reading from the book with concentration. It was strange to hear her speaking such diabolic sounding words, “Eshana ragaragam upetre ratakash…”
A glowing key began emerging from the book. Even the key, a part of this horrid place, seemed wicked and cruel, with sharp prongs and fang-like designs upon it. Vixerai held it in her delicate fingers, studied it with astounded glee. “Sombrala’s key…”
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The key. We were one step closer to finding the gem, and perhaps a nigh omnipotent weapon.
Suddenly, a wicked laugh echoed all throughout the enormous hall. It seemed to relish something, drinking in amusement as a drunkard drinks wine while the sound of arcane thunder rumbled around it. It went on laughing, coming from nowhere in particular. I knew whose voice it was, though I had only witnessed it through Charlotte’s crystal orb in the hidden city and not face to face.
“Sombrala.”
“Yes.” Vixerai looked at me with grave concern. “That is the sound of her using powerful magic. I heard it for many years. Something must have gone wrong, with Charlotte and the rest.”
“I never had any false hope she would be good hearted, but I did hope our ruse would last longer. Come, let us make haste.”
I hurried up the stairs, with Vixerai sailing through the air next to me. We reached the massive double doors at the top of the stairs. Vixerai worked the key and opened the lock. The doors parted open. We were greeted by a sculpture of a giant face that was crying real blood from its eyes, and catching it in its massive sculpted hands.
Wolf Blade: Chains of the Vampire Page 20