Clan Dominance - the Sleepless Ones 2

by Dem Mikhailov

  “Kyre! Hold on for a second!”

  “Ros? There’s not that much left to go,” Kyre’s hoarse and tired voice would never be used on any of Waldyra’s advertisements. It could be used for a cautionary jingle about modern games addling people’s brains, though.

  “Stop,” I said, dropping down on one knee. “Something weird’s happening here. Look under your feet.

  “I don’t want to!”

  Now I got scared, looking at the girl’s stooped figure. She looked completely unlike herself.

  I must have missed the moment of Kyre’s transformation from a proud paladin into this broken creature with a doomed voice. Was this the location affecting her? Or did she need time to get back into shape after the recent events? Damn!

  “In that case, just stand still,” I commanded, looking at the strange pulsating dots and taking a sideways glance of Kyre, standing obediently still. The dots definitely looked larger. “I wonder...”

  I made a careful gesture with my hand, grabbing some ash and bringing it closer to my eyes. That was it! There was something like a fountain excreting tiny pieces of ash every now and then. I watched it for another second, realizing it wasn’t spitting them out; the thing was sucking in the smallest particles of ash like a tiny vacuum cleaner.

  While I gazed at this wonder of nature in deep amazement, the fountain became ostensibly fatter, now occupying about a quarter of my open palm. It sucked in some more ash and... grew something resembling four tiny feet. I shook my head as I stared at the fountain of ash with limbs again, and was surprised to see the inscription over its head: Devourer of Hopes, Level 0.

  “Kyre!”

  “What? Ros, let’s keep going!”

  “Kyre, I’m tripping balls! I have a Devourer of Hopes, Level Zero, sitting on my hand”

  “So throw it away or squash it! It’s just a prop. Let’s keep on going and finish it. I’m so tired now.”

  “All right,” I said gruffly, closing my palm and crushing the pile of ashes with the tiny mob inside. “They could have found a less scary name for a living prop. Damn! I’ve just received XP for it! This isn’t a prop! This stuff is real!”

  I knelt to the ground, finding another fountain and hastily grabbing it with my hand. So, what did we have there? A dark gray blob with nothing remotely resembling limbs, but labeled Ash Spawn clearly. And it was a higher level now.

  Having squeezed the thing with my fingers again, I waited for the message about having gotten XP, cursed, and fell onto all fours, gazing at the writhing gray mass.

  The fountain that had twisted itself into a tightly-wound spiral fell on its newly-grown paws and raised its snout upward, still forming as I was watching it, with black pits for eyes. It was as big as my fist now, with the legend, “Devourer of Hopes. Level Four.”

  “Ros?”

  “They keep on growing!» I yelled. “In level and size! Damn!”

  A really long millipede made a rustling sound as it crawled across my bare foot; a creature of ash and snow. It raised its mandibles, which were still growing, in a menacing way, and there was a soft crimson flash before my eyes, with a few HP taken off. The millipede was called Crusher of Hopes; it raised its head for another attack, but I managed to jump away, landing on the slowly crawling Devourer of Hopes and squashing it completely.

  “Let’s get out of here!” I turned around and opened my mouth to scream again, closing it somberly the very same instance and moving toward my partner. There was no point shouting in vain; things were clear enough already.

  It was all useless. For as far as we could see, the ash kept boiling, spawning new tiny monsters growing with every second, only taking little nips at you and taking off no more than 1 or 2 HP, but there were over a thousand. Plenty of material for growth and construction. Something like a fat worm hissed as it passed by, the creature’s blind head turning around every second. The worm’s name was Solitude. Level 12. Curiouser and curiouser.

  “We appear to have arrived,” I smiled widely at Kyre and spread my hands, pointing toward the chaos around me. “The final station. In a few minutes , they’ll eat us up, and we’ll both go to bye-byes. To tell you the truth, I’m kinda happy about it.”

  “Steel alone won’t defeat them,” Kyre muttered, looking at the Devourer of Hopes growing from the ashes slowly. First at Level 23... And now at 24.”

  “It sure won’t,” I didn’t quite get her, but still nodded, just in case. “If you want, though, we can try to break through. They’re not attacking deliberately then, but things will change for the worse very shortly.

  "No. Everything is just fine.”

  “Are you in your right mind?”

  “I am.”

  “Are you completely sure?”

  “Ros!” Kyre drew out a weary sigh. “I’ve told you. Everything’s all right. Don’t attack them; it’s pointless. This must be the obstacle of grief and solitude. Those two didn’t know it, or couldn’t figure it out... They tried to force their way through.”

  “Grume and Myrne? But they certainly came well-equipped.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It does, in some cases!”

  “So... They are beginning to move.

  I turned my head around to look at an endless carpet of spines, claws, tails, and tentacles. This whole mass was moving toward us, getting ever larger. A real tsunami; a tidal wave, and we were standing right in its way.

  “Ros? “

  “Hm-m?” I mumbled, still staring at the host of approaching monsters in fascination, most of them twice as tall as a human by now.

  “Hold me near to your heart and kiss me.”

  Cough-cough-cough. “Come again?”

  “Hug me and kiss me! I’ve just told you!”

  “Hold on... Is this what the quest requires?” I stood baffled.

  “Yes it does! What are you thinking of? Get to it, Ros! Does it always take as long for a girl to talk you into kissing her?”

  “It does, when the girl in question looks like a horror film character all covered in gore! You haven’t even got any lips to kiss!”

  “Ross! Kiss me! Right now!”

  “All right, you’ve talked me into it,” I took a step toward the girl, hugging her clumsily, and making a fish mouth like an inexperienced first-grader. I shut my eyes tight, kissed her, and at that moment a silence fell, ringing like a bell in our ears; there were no other sounds left. The soft rustling of the ash was heard no more; the chilly wind became a warm wave, ruffling our hair gently, and some soft light could still be seen through the closed eyelids.

  I shuddered inadvertently. There was the sound of an ocean tide reaching from far away, and a barely-audible song in a woman’s voice; something melancholy making one’s heart skip a beat.

  We stood there hugging for at least a minute; I decided to risk opening one eye, only to discover that Kyre had her eyes shut, too. First-grader puppy affection for sure, damn and blast it all...

  Without breaking the kiss, I glanced around to see the monsters that had encircled us melt down and fall apart slowly, becoming a mass of ash again and receding like a tide. All the specks of dust had gone; the air was crystal clear again. The heavy storm clouds had parted, and we were standing in a pillar of sunlight. That sure was...

  “Yre! I mumbled, without breaking the kiss. “Kywe!”

  “Hm-m?”

  “Pewhaps it’s nuff... Monstews... Aw gone...”

  Kyre seemed reluctant to open her eyes. Then she looked around and pulled herself away. She sobbed, wiping her eyes with her palm angrily, and said in a barely audible voice,

  “The endless ocean.”

  “Eh?”

  “Nothing... Why are you staring at me like that?”

  “My kiss has healed your wounds,” I smiled.

  All the horrendous scratch marks were gone from Kyre’s face without so much as a single droplet of blood left.

  “And mine has gotten that ugly smile off your face,” Kyre grunted
melancholically. “OK, let’s move on. We’re almost there.”

  I looked the girl in the eye, thought for a moment, and nodded, shrugging.

  “Let’s go. It’s time to finish it.”

  “The armor no longer gets eroded,” my partner said, turning away from me sharply. “So you might want to pull some pants on.”

  “That’s good news!” I said happily as I took the pack off my shoulder.

  I put on all of my old stuff, and nodded again. “It’s done. Damn... The ashes.”

  “I see. Let’s go.”

  We had nothing but pure sand under our feet. The ash was no longer in the way, having formed a narrow path leading to a snow-covered hill crowned by an icy peak.

  “Neither ash, nor the dust, nor the cold, nor the darkness,” the girl, who’d been walking in front of me, muttered under her voice. “None of them will keep the lovers from reaching those gates.

  “Kyre! Are you all right at all?” I barked, losing my patience. “What are you saying, come on?”

  “It’s OK, Ros. We just gotta keep on moving,” Kyre waved her hand without even turning toward me. “We keep on going.”

  I looked at the back of my partner, who was moving away from me, and followed reluctantly. Kyre was definitely far from OK. We should really finish all this stuff before too long and send the girl back. Then I’d call Gosha and ask him to check up on her.

  There was more hoarfrost on the sand with every new step; it kept getting covered with more and more hoarfrost with every step, making an unpleasant creaking sound under our feet, being replaced by white snow. The road itself disappeared, too, ending at an untouched field of pristine snow. The girl kept mumbling something; she didn’t so much as slow down.

  I stayed silent, following Kyre all the while and trying to copy her every action, literally following her footsteps. You never knew what the conditions were. It would be a bugger to screw up at the very end, having gone through so many challenges. But there was no discernible system in my partner’s actions; she just kept plodding onward, ascending the slope becoming ever steeper stubbornly, me following her. And it kept getting more unpleasant with every minute and with every step I’d take.

  I was surrounded by snow and ice. There were pools of still dark water covered by a thin layer of ice. The skies, that had cleared just recently, grew dark again. Snowflakes appeared in the air. I shrugged and stopped for a second, but still forced myself to keep on going. There wasn’t that much left, after all, and then we’d leave this domain of cold and ice forever.

  Forty paces later, we were at the foothills of an icy peak hidden by a snowy tornado whirling all around it.

  “You have come...” A soft voice said, coming from the icy peak, when the whirlwind of snow started to subside, revealing a transparent layer of ice.

  “I have come,” Kyre replied just as softly, without raising her head.

  No one’s mentioned me here, and I was happy that way. I didn’t want any part in this strange play, be it as an extra or anything. But it was so cold there... Or was it just me feeling that way? I wasn’t too fond of the snow and the cold... But, after all, I wasn’t alone there.

  The final snowflakes fell on our heads, and it took me a huge effort to keep my face from showing any emotion. There was a woman frozen into the ice in a way that made it seem she was standing or even floating inside her icy sarcophagus. She was at some twelve feet above us. The name over her head was easy enough to read, and it was Myrthe Sureblade. We’d been standing next to the icy grave of a legend.

  * * *

  Not all of her body was completely frozen into the ice — there was a head, hanging impotently, jutting outside, likewise her hands; the face remained invisible, covered by strands of icy hair. I could, however, see drops of blood falling from her chin, falling onto the ice, and coloring it bright red. Myrthe was bleeding.

  “Stand closer to me, child,” Myrthe commanded in a hissing voice, still paying me no attention. “Stand in the circle that has been drawn here.”

  A bright line of cerulean blue ran over the snow laying at the foothills of the snowy peak, forming a circle. Kyre stepped inside; a shiver ran up the snowy hill. There was a sound of something cracking, barely audible, and the circle with the girl inside started to raise itself upward. It wasn’t a pillar of ice, as I’d originally thought, but a levitating circle of ice with an ideally even surface. A huge hole remained in the sand, with no one but myself near, my head raised in bewilderment.

  Myrthe waited for Kyre to get high enough and said in a husky voice,

  “You know what to do. You know what I want.”

  “I do know what to do,” Kyre agreed, placing her hands on her neck. The chain of gold glittered softly, as did the iridescent gem. “I do know what you want...”

  “You have passed through my soul. You have felt the flames of my ire...”

  “I have.”

  “You have felt my sorrow and known the bitter taste of my tears...”

  “I have.”

  “You have seen my dreams and my love fall to dust.”

  “I have.”

  “You have weathered the darkness of madness approaching me.”

  “I have.”

  “So are you ready to say your oath?”

  “I am.”

  “That’s good. In that case, accept my anger.”

  The girl bent forward a little and placed the stone underneath a drop of blood falling from Myrthe’s face. There was a flash of red making me cover my eyes. Enchantment? A ritual similar to the one done in the temple above? The gem on her chain changed its color from milky white to pale pink with red veins.

  “Accept my sorrow...”

  Kyre placed her gem under the drop of blood again; there was a flash, and the stone changed its color again, turning a menacing shade of red.

  “Accept my love...”

  Another flash, with cerulean flickers appearing in the pulsating flame.

  “Accept my darkness.”

  There was another flash, and a hideous black ink blot spread out through the glittering gem. I felt a wave of cold hit my chest, making me shake a little and step back.

  “My passion will never leave you; my soul will always be near.”

  “So it will.”

  Myrthe shook her head heavily. I could not see her face still, but I felt her gaze upon me; the heavy and bitter gaze of a woman who had once been betrayed by a man.

  “I, too, used to believe once. My whole heart was devoted to a single man, who’d always been near... My support... My pillar of rock... My love... My hope... And yet all of that’s an illusion. It’s deceit!” There were notes of fury awakening in the cold voice. “Deceit!”

  “Deceit,” Kyre echoed softly.

  Myrthe turned her head toward the girl, and whispered softly,

  “They are all the same. Each one has a spark of betrayal glowing in his chest. I could give you real power... The power I’d entrust my chosen one with. But it would not be given to a blind puppet in another person’s hands. You will have to renounce him forever... Make your choice. Right here; right now.”

  A heavy silence filled the air, and my anxiety mounted as I was looking at a frozen Kyre. I looked back, where waves of ash started to form. I wanted to call the girl, but I refrained from it; my interruption may have changed the course of events.

  Kyre, who had become mobile again, looked at me briefly from below; it looked to me like she was sobbing for a while; I gave her an encouraging smile and waved my hand at her shortly. Everything should be all right...

  Party disbanded!

  What the...

  “I resign!” Kyre exhaled hoarsely, looking at Myrthe’s lowered head. “I do!”

  “An uneasy choice... but the right one,” Myrthe’s voice screeched as Kyre looked at her lowered head jerking upward, revealing a face crisscrossed with slashes and covered in blood. “You are free now! No one will ever betray you!”

  “I am free. No one can bet
ray me,” Kyre nodded in acquiescence.

  What the hell was going on?

  “Accept this power of mine,” Myrthe rumbled, and it was only then that I noticed a golden tiara on her head, near-invisible due to all the blood sticking to it, covered my strands of frost-covered hair.”