Jess saw several of the robbed figures laugh, apparently delighted with the child’s pain. And to Jess’s horror, she saw the crumpled form of Lady Vaila, curled up and moaning, stripped utterly naked so that the wounds to her flesh and dignity were utterly plain to all.
The hideous creature, covered in patches of scales and leathery skin, possessed the frame of a massive bear, though one long dead maggots and festering ooze dripping out of its pockmarked flesh. A face like the skin of a rotting corpse stretched over the head of a massive bat stretched its horrific features into a ghastly parody of a smile. Its crimson eye sockets glittered with malevolence, the abomination chuckling evilly as it moved to stroke fair little Louise’s tear stained cheek, maggots and worms dripping from the rotting appendage.
And instantly there was a flash of light, and the fell beast shrank back and hissed, scores of maggots searing instantly to ash, the demon's dark talon smoking where it had tried to caress the shrieking form of Louise.
It then turned to the suddenly shaking diabolists, for what else could they be, Jess thought, and roared its furious outrage in a cackling tongue full of hisses and clicks. In a dark shudder of understanding, Jess realized she could puzzle out the secret meanings of the foul tongue tickling her awareness. Somehow, she understood what it was saying.
“You have failed me, fools. This child holds the key to freeing our prize, and yet she is protected still! Another lays claim to her. You swore upon your souls none save that which I shall not speak aloud and her mother had claim upon her!” The creature’s snarl turned vicious even as its eyes began to visibly glow. “The secrets of Highrock and the prize which you seek have been surrendered to you. If you pathetic excuses for infernalists cannot make good on your promise, your souls are forfeit!”
“Great Lord Alkazaar, please understand, we have done all that you have asked!” protested the trembling voice of one of the hooded figures. “The sigils have been inscribed upon her flesh; the bile of stillborn babes and the bitter tears of fallen women both in the brew! Her mother lays sundered and broken at our feet, spirit shattered and her virtue corrupted. The child's soul should be yours for the taking, dread lord!”
The demon roared, great shadowy tendrils lashing out from the liquid black mound of its back, shattering random bricks and tiles, the diabolists huddling and protecting their heads, though none dared step out of their protective wards. “Then break the wards that protect her! Shed the blood of her mother upon her flesh, and let that foul brew poison all love and hope. Then we shall see if the wards stand! And if they do, it is your souls I shall take as payment.”
The creature's smile flashed dark and hideous then, coal black fangs dripping vile ichor. “And if you think your sigils potent enough to withstand your own oaths to me, you shall deserve every exquisite shriek of agony I shall wring from your souls for your mortal pride and arrogance!”
Near the entire robed assembly seemed to quake at the raging demon’s threat.
“At once, dread lord!” Declared the trembling voice of the one Jess took to be the leader, immediately gesturing to two of his hooded underlings. “Spite. Retribution. See to our lord’s commands at once!” With that the two men quickly hurried over to the moaning Lady Vaila, and Jess hissed to see how horribly they had mangled and broken her fingers and shattered her jaw, no doubt having decided to cripple her abilities to cast magics in the most agonizing of manners. Cruelly they twisted her arms back, arching Lady Vaila over the shrieking form of her own daughter as one man took out what looked to be an obsidian knife, the pair of them beginning a low chant that Jess was horrifically certain was a prelude to ritual sacrifice.
“Jess. Its time.”
Jess felt her familiar’s cold words wash over her, somehow focusing the terrible inhuman rage now consuming her. The thought of these monsters being responsible for the slaughter of near a score of innocent children who had only been so foolish as to dream of the feast they had enjoyed the night before would have been enough to send Jess into the darkest of furies. Yet her enemies had just begun to reveal the depravity of their attack; using darkest enchantment to bespell her entire school, sending troops to butcher her friends even as they slept, monsters who at this very moment were intending to murder both mother and child, right before her very eyes. All of it fused into a hatred so black, so terrible, that Jess shook with the intensity of it, feeling chains unseen suddenly snap free.
Her battle cry rang forth, echoing endlessly in a frozen moment even as her brilliant blade, crimson with her blood, slammed against the ruby prison of magic and light that somehow trapped Jess between realms of Shadow and the living world. In that shuddering moment of endless possibilities, Jess took one fateful step into that chamber of horrors, charging from her nightmare into the den of foes she hated with every fiber of her being. Her beloved Malek, roaring his fury, matched her stride for stride; transforming from nightmare hound to fearsome comrade-in-arms as he too leaped from dream to reality.
As one they moved, furious avatars of death, even as the shocked diabolists stumbled back, no few reaching for their sheathed swords in a desperate effort to defend themselves, even as those more versed in the darker arts shouted out incantations or gestured with bone wands, and Jess could feel the dark infernal magics her enemies were desperately trying to weave into webs of deadly power.
Jess roared with a berserker's mad howl as time itself seemed to slow, her foe’s desperate gazes seeming to orient so slowly, droplets of sweat hanging suspended in the air even as her longsword lashed out in terrible tight arcs, shearing free upraised arms and grimacing skulls from backpedaling bodies with effortless ease, her white-hot blade cleaving into flesh with an artist's brilliance. Hearts ruptured and skulls burst with every stroke of her weapon, screams of sweet bitter sorrow filling the air as Jess reveled in her dance of death, embracing the one instrument she loved above all others, piercing her foes with the clarity of her terrible vision, even as Malek's furious crimson strokes fell in perfect counterpoint to her own. For in that pristine moment of madness the avenging pair were like dark lords embracing the blackest of revels, laughing at their enemy's horrific screams with a berserker's abandon, even as they danced and weaved about the battlefield with a hellion's grace, butchering the confused and demoralized mob of diabolists who had dared to target those they loved.
For all that their foes had begun to collapse in writhing heaps, the macabre dance had only begun. With terrible grace and utter mastery of that most primal art, the one true art, Jess and Malek began to weave their concert of death ever faster, their blades acting in perfect unison, expertly blocking frenzied strikes even as their counterpart lashed out with brutally effective blows, the pair tearing through their foes with rage fueled savagery. Jess took cold delight in rupturing her enemies’ desperate enchantments with furious slashes of her white-hot blade, somehow burning with her rage, even as Malek lashed out with vicious Oberhau strikes, cleaving deep into the skulls of the panicked diabolists, dropping them like swine to slaughter.
Jess lost herself to the glorious madness of battle, feeling a shriek of fierce joy every time her longsword tore into her enemy's shuddering flesh. All was a cacophony of madness. Heads were cleaved from bodies, fleeing diabolists viciously run through to the hilt, the madly grinning berserker only vaguely reminiscent of a onetime Highrock student gleefully tearing her sword free of yet another terrified foe with a well-placed kick and ruthless twist, her dying enemy propelled into the cleverly waiting arms of the horrific demon the diabolists had themselves summoned. Shrieks of agony transcending death could be heard as the foul creature began to laugh and devour his still struggling prey.
“Quarter! Quarter!” Screamed the shaking man stumbling away from his greatest nightmare after her blade snapped his bone wand to kindling, the very same man who had ordered the ritual slaughter of Lady Vaila.
"I will give you the same mercy you gave my friends, you wretch!" Jess roared, even as her blade cleaved through de
sperately raised arms and skull in one terrible blow, Jess cursing him in tongues so dark and foul that her dying foe instantly burst into blackest flame, his doomed soul sent shrieking to Hell, even as the hideous demon gorging upon the fallen diabolists laughed with darkest mirth.
“Jess!" Malek's sharp voice snapped her back into focus. All the diabolists near them had fallen to the brutal effectiveness of their blades. Their ability to weave and dodge in perfect unison, to parry and strike as if their minds were one, had given them complete mastery over foes armored only in the flimsiest of enchantments, caught utterly by surprise by what Jess realized must have looked to them like dreamed apparitions suddenly sprung to terrible life.
Jess hissed, able to sense the dark tendrils of abyssal power from the hulking demon that were even at that very moment dragging the fallen diabolists to its terrible maw. The vile creature was devouring not only their dead flesh, but the hideously screaming souls trapped within their corpses.
Fury catalyzed terror into frenzied madness but a heartbeat away. She would not let fear claim her, no matter the foe. Jess raised her blade in unicorn stance, point centered for the demon's eyes, prepared to wage war even against a creature of Hell.
Yet for the moment it was content to gaze upon her, crunching upon the flesh and souls of those who had fallen to her and her shieldbrother’s blades.
Grimly, Jess approached the diabolists huddling around the stone pedestal upon which Lady Vaila and her daughter lay. Both, Jess relieved to see, were very much alive, even if the worse for wear; Lady Vaila was even now futilely attempting to protect her shrieking daughter with her naked body, mangled fingers still managing to hold her child close.
Jess felt a terrible growl vibrate through the chamber entire, several of the diabolists visibly quaking, even the vile summoned monstrosity gave pause in its eating, gazing at Jess in increasing fascination. It was then Jess realized that the sound had emanated from her own form, an echo of her own black rage. Slowly, deliberately, she pressed her pitted sword against her bloody cheek once more, and grinned savagely as it burst into white hot flame.
One of the diabolists shrieked as she approached.
Jess savored their fear and dismay, and sensed as well that Malek and she were in tune once more, that they would soon lash out in unison, seizing the Vor, butchering these last diabolists even as they stood in shock, almost hypnotized by the duo's terrible presence, like mice watching a snake slowly closing in.
But a few more paces.
Jess grinned in savage anticipation.
“Stop, Jess. You want to stop, lest you’d have me slice open little Louise’s throat, right here and now!”
And one of the hooded members immediately grabbed hold of little Louise, whose soft moans of terror immediately turned to shrieks.
“Mommy! mommy! Help me, Jess!”
Louise’s terrified eyes met Jess’s own.
Jess stopped.
“Bloody hells. I’d recognize that voice anywhere.” Malek cursed, blade still at the ready.
Jess nodded coldly. She recognized as well the voice of the hooded diabolist. There could be no doubt.
It was Mord de Plaga.
Her nemesis since the very first day she had attended the college and he had deliberately broken her leg with vicious thunderstrikes when she was already down, destroying her chances of beating him in a later rematch, and killing her ranking that very first day. And for all that she had risen far in the ranks of apprentice commanders after she had recovered and been chosen to serve among them, specialists who would lead shock troops to devastate Erovering's enemies, she would never be able to earn the rank and freedom of a lordly knight, which had once been her greatest dream. For a Squire of War only became a Knight of War after years of leading troops into battle, his or her ties to the Crown all the tighter, too valuable a tactician ever to taste any semblance of freedom, particularly as she was a girl. Certain freedoms she would never taste, all thanks to the arrogant monster before her. He had been her enemy since her first days at Highrock, and for all that she might have forgiven him, one day, there could be no turning back from this horror. Mord was showing his true colors at last.
Mord laughed. "So, you've figured it out, have you? Or have you? For all you know, I am a diabolist whose magics allow me to imitate the voice of an innocent student, one of pristine character and temperament, who would take grave offense if he were to be slandered in public, my dear Jess."
Jess flashed a terrible grin. “That’s all right, Mord. Once I thrust my sword deep into your gut and twist, I’ll tear off your pretty little hood and we can see if the face matches the screams.”
Mord chuckled softly, though his fierce clench of the struggling Louise did not waver, even as Lady Vaila wailed plaintively for her daughter, receiving a stunning smack from the taller diabolist to Mord’s left. “Shut up, wench!”
Jess's nostrils flared. It made so much sense now. "Lord Plaga. Like father, like son."
The other man hissed, and Jess caught the glare of his coal dark eyes, so like his son’s, but he said nothing further.
Five other men, Jess noted; two pairs of hooded men appearing utterly demoralized, standing almost in the shadow of the father and son gazing so confidently at Jess, as if they thought they held all the cards. The seventh and final diabolist was gazing at Jess with reddened, hate filled eyes while fingering his bone wand.
The monstrous beast slowly approached from the corner where he had been devouring the fallen diabolists, bat-like nose of rotting flesh sniffing, hideous wings flapping a spray of slime and maggots as he cautiously circled Jess and Malek from a half dozen paces, his massive putrefying form oddly graceful as he did so. “I recognize you, mortal. Your scent. Your markings are what denied me the sweet lush fruit of that child. You protected her!" It emitted a throaty, guttural laugh. "Who would have thought a mortal had such power. How very fascinating! What a worthy challenge you will be, mortal wench. For should you fall to me, I would gain the prize of both your power and the child. And through her, I will gain access to that which must not be named!"
Jess smiled coldly, seeming to focus entirely on the terrible demon, backing up a step, feeling Malek tense, sensing the hairs on the nape of her neck tingle with the sense of magics slowly being summoned. Jess suddenly spun around, lashing out with her blade in a tightly arcing Scheitelhau strike, sacrificing power for blistering speed, her blazing longsword like a streak of light as it cleaved deep into the diabolist who had been slowly readying his wand, the man gazing at the blade that had just sliced open his skull in a moment’s horror even as he died, his weapon falling to the cold stone tiles, a clattering counterpoint to the dull thud of his body.
Mord gasped, eyes widening in sudden surprise and fear. Jess grinned fiercely, realizing that her decisive elimination of the enemy slowly readying the metaphoric dagger at her back had caught even him off guard.
“Careful, Mord," Jess taunted. "Should you lose your nerve and hurt that child, you will have no bargaining chips at all, and then my brother and I will happily disembowel you, and stomp upon your writhing corpse!"
Jess’s cold warning was enough to still her longtime nemesis. She could hear his furious hiss, but save for his cruel clamping even tighter upon a screaming Louise, he did her no harm.
Immediately, she snapped about once more to face the twisted amalgamation of diabolic hate that appraised her so carefully, sniffing and snuffling with its hideous nose of rotting flesh, even as its terrible claws raked the stone tiles, shattering them effortlessly, the air now stinking of blood and brimstone both.
“So tell me, dear Alkazaar, do you truly think you are a match for my mistress?"
Jess blinked, surprised to hear her familiar so boldly address the hideous creature before her, even as he gracefully leaped from her shoulder, his every movement declaring his utter ease as he loped softly several paces forward before sitting himself quite calmly before the hideous creature whose massive frame reache
d almost to the ceiling. Twilight's sapphire eyes seemed to flash, and Jess could swear his feline grin was one of cold amusement as the creature hissed and stepped back.
“Midnight of the Moonlit Realm!”
Twilight flashed a toothy smile. “An ancient name, dear Alkazaar. Do you truly know the history of its origins?”
The creature began to growl, and Jess was amazed to sense its hesitation. It glared at Jess balefully for a moment before turning once more to her familiar. “You play with dangerous forces, cat.”
Twilight tilted his head. “Ah, but you see, dear Alkazaar, it is a game that I relish playing. The question is, do you wish to play with us, or will you leave the field?”
It let loose a hideous wail of rage and frustration, a completely unfazed Twilight gazing at it with an expression of bemused contempt. “Well, Alkazaar?”
“I keep the souls I claimed! They forswore themselves to me as they were never bound to this realm by oath, but given free will! Contract supersedes free will.”
Twilight sighed and nodded. “And Right of Conquest supersedes all.”
Jess was hit with a sudden terrible understanding. “Those students who fell, who fell at the college! Their souls were sinking, sinking down here! To feed you!”
The demon known as Alkazaar roared, eyes flashing a dark, bilious red. “Those souls were promised to me!”
“But not by the souls themselves. Thus you have no claim to them, lest you’d challenge my mistress.” Twilight’s grin was fierce. “Of course, should she defeat you, she has claim to all the souls you’ve ever devoured in all your millennia of existence, not to mention you will be permanently extinguished yourself.” He turned his appraising sapphire gaze back to Jess, eyeing her carefully. “She is young still, but perhaps it’s time I allowed her to sink her teeth into something far more satisfying than these pathetic excuses for diabolists.”
Shadow Knight Page 4