Soft leather padded footsteps and gracefully placed paws made hardly a sound as the three traveled down the corridor. For all the brooding danger Jess could sense, she had never felt more exhilarated, never felt more alive. Flashing her companion a quick glance, Malek's answering smile let her know he felt exactly the same.
Every sight she took in filled her with awe. To actually be here, in the heart of Regio, immersed in a dream of the past, or a figment of madness, perhaps; made every bit as real as the world she had left behind. Alight with sweetest anticipation, Jess reveled in the thought of discovering lost wonders and untold treasures. Artifacts and knowledge lost to the living realm for ages, for all they knew, waited here in these dark eerie corridors, needing only one with the courage and resolve to claim them.
Just up ahead the corridor opened up into a large chamber, ancient glass globes flickering with an azure magelight radiating a silvery blue luminescence from the corners of what appeared to be an ancient hall.
Jess felt a chill race down her spine as eerie notes of ancient music began to wind their ghostly way through the hallway, and she caught odd glimpses of dancers twirling about the great floor out of the corner of her eye.
Dresses of elegant silk and lace, faces maggot eaten masks of rotting flesh. As one they suddenly turned and bowed, flashing Jess their rictus grins.
She gasped and lurched into Malek.
“Jess, what’s wrong?” Her friend's face was filled with concern.
Jess blinked, and noted the great chamber was empty of all inhabitants, though several tables appeared freshly laid out with silver and linen. There was not a speck of dirt or fold out of place, Jess noted, and to her wonder, the candelabra even had what appeared to be freshly lit beeswax candles, for all that there was no trace of a living soul.
“Nothing." She shivered. "I just thought I saw or heard... something." But the room was utterly silent. "It's odd, though. Isn't it? These tables laid out fresh as if for a grand dinner, but I don't see a soul."
Malek nodded. “Odd as hell. Silver serving platters and all. I wonder what they were expecting for dinner?” With that he strode forward and lifted one of the sterling serving lids, steam wafting from the lifted tray as if the food was still hot, freshly prepared but moments ago.
Jess felt a chill as she watched Malek gazing upon the platter with growing horror, gasping and dropping the silver lid to clang upon the fine tiled floor. “By all the gods!” Malek cursed.
“What is it?” Jess felt her heart start to race from her friend’s sudden panic. His eyes stopped her in her tracks.
“It’s someone’s face!”
Almost as if she were in a dream Jess approached, gently lifting the lid Malek had slammed back down. But hadn't it fallen to the floor? All she saw when she lifted it was steam so thick her eyes instantly watered, and she put the lid back down. But she had thought, for a moment, that she could hear the flicker of faint screams tickling the back of her ear.
She shuddered and backed away.
“I don’t think this tower is a good place.” She found her free hand gently gripping Malek’s own, and he squeezed in agreement tight enough she could feel it through her armor. Jess took a deep breath, resolute. “It’s strange, though. I see no chords echoing through the chambers. If this were enchantment, I would hope to be able to sense it.”
Malek gazed at her in renewed wonder. “That’s right. You can see the bindings of magic, can’t you? For you, weaving a spell isn’t just a metaphor, it’s something you can see firsthand. It’s how you knew the door wasn’t magically warded.”
Jess nodded and smirked. “Let me guess. You thought that gift was as real as Twilight.”
Malek had the grace to look embarrassed. “Well, yes. I mean, I know you had a nose for magic, at least. You could sense that a mage was manipulating forces, which would be a mighty fine gift in any battlefield commander, but to actually see the ethereal energies being gathered into chords and woven into webs of power? There I had my doubts. I would challenge any man who dared to mock your claim, but I didn't really think such a thing was possible. No one did, Jess. No one has even heard of a power like that before. Only Alex was completely open to the possibility. But when you were drawn to Master Rens’s artifacts like a magnet, even sensing their purpose, I knew you had a pretty fine gift indeed. To be honest, I’m almost jealous. A gift like that, and you would think the college would bend over backwards to keep you, not throw you away like rubbish, thanks to one proctor's bloody lies."
Jess felt a gentle pressure on her foot. "To answer your question, Jess, it is because there is no spell being deliberately cast here," Twilight explained. "Remember, this keep lost in a sea of dreams given flesh and will. You are seeing echoes, reflections, moments in time all tangled up together. It is rare, I think, for multiple scenes to overlap and flow through each other. One can only wonder at the horrors that must have occurred here."
Malek shook his head in disbelief. "But that silver lid I had picked up, it felt as real as life!" Even as they gazed at the tables before them, spread with such horrific fare, they both caught sight of sudden waves of steam billowing up between the tray covers. Malek pulled Jess back with him as he stepped cautiously away, the tables suddenly overflowing with smoke and the stench of rot. Sparing a single glance for Jess's worried gaze, he quickly looked back and hissed a soft curse.
Jess felt a chill shiver down her spine. She didn't even need to turn around to know that she would find the tables completely gone, as if they had never been. A surreptitious glance back confirmed her dread suspicion, as not a trace of the richly laid banquet remained, save clouds of steam and smoke that faded away to nothing.
“Indeed," Twilight confirmed. "And had you clenched that silver tray with your will, Hound, had you gone so far as to drag it out of this chamber, to leave the tower entire and travel back to the mortal realm we call our own, it would have manifested as real and solid as any silver artifact in the college's collection. Yet now it is but a fragment of a dream, and an unstable one at that. Now if it's all the same to you, I believe it is best if we leave this chamber. Its instability is… less than soothing."
Jess looked down at her familiar, noting that his sleek coat was puffed and wild looking, for all that his demeanor was as calm and collected as always. “I agree, Twilight. Let’s leave these chambers for now. We will be returning soon enough upon our exit.”
"Why did you call me a hound?" Malek gazed curiously at Twilight a moment before shrugging and following Jess, the three proceeding as one toward the great archway at the back end of the grand room, pointedly ignoring the mist once again manifesting behind them, Jess's ears ever alert for the sound of trouble to come.
Yet they remained unmolested as they traveled down the dark passage seemingly carved straight out of the bedrock, as if the keep had somehow metamorphosed into tunnels long forgotten in the heart of Highrock mountain. The fey magelights had been replaced by sticks of pale wood, the tips of which burned with a fierce, crimson light.
Jess gasped when she realized those pale white sticks were actually thigh bones, jammed savagely into the bedrock, the very stone having cracked from the force that had hammered them in.
Jess could sense a dark power caressing the edge of her senses, the cold chill of dread causing her heart to race with apprehension, sickened by the icy frost of mounting horror numbing her limbs. She forced herself to swallow, throat suddenly parched. Clenching her fists tight, knowing how deadly a weapon fear could be.
In the heat of combat, nothing killed quicker than mind-numbing terror. But one reason why when tensions mounted, she so eagerly surrendered to a berserker's rage. Yet for all the times she had laughed in the face of death before, fear once more lifted scaly claws of dread, seeking to sap her strength like any raw recruit before her first battle.
“This is a terrible place, Jess. Can you feel it? By the gods, those are bones!" This from Malek, who gasped as he discovered for himself what had sen
t Jess's skin crawling. She nodded in curt agreement, taking it as a silent cue to unsheathe her blade. Their training immediately coming to the fore, Malek backed several feet behind and to her right, and she heard the gentle hiss of metal on silk that let her know he had just unsheathed his own well cared for blade. Black sheep he might have been, but his father had not stinted on his son's battle gear.
Twilight stopped and hissed. "Can you feel it, Jess? Something vile approaches around the bend."
Jess gasped and realized she could indeed feel something; a wave of twisted wrongness, emanating ever so faintly from the hallway ahead as it made its warped way through the bedrock. It was like sensing the heat of a burning ember inches away from her cheek, the heat replaced by waves of malice headed directly towards them.
Jess was suddenly utterly certain that whatever approached would be unlike anything either of them had faced before. Determined not to flinch from terror when it emerged, she found her heart racing in fear, and anticipation.
“Jess, what’s going on?” Malek’s whisper was urgent, confused.
“Something’s coming. Something awful that shouldn’t be. Can’t you feel it?”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about!”
Jess didn't spare him even a glance, so focused she was on the dark presence she felt just then making its way around the bend. She could sense Malek's alarm, however. "Just keep yourself ready, shieldbrother. I fear we are going to fight in earnest, this day."
Jess heard it just before it emerged from the shadows. A hideous sliding scrape, the sound of a dying man dragging his rotting body across endless stone tiles. The sound of a plague victim giving up his last breath in a hideous sigh.
And then it appeared.
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Before them stood a twisted caricature of a man covered entirely in scaly gray skin. Its face was a skull-like mask of seared flesh crackling with steaming pus, its entire tumorous body dribbling caustic ooze. It gazed upon Jess with eyes like twin embers, lips stretching impossibly wide, jaws unhinging like a snake's, revealing multiple rows of jagged teeth.
Even from twenty feet Jess could smell the sickly-sweet stench of rot emanating from the horrific being before them. The twisted creature began to whisper then. Hissing terrible echoing words that hinted at madness, chaos, and agony never-ending.
Malek snarled, clenching shut his eyes, having only the discipline to grip his sword tightly. Twilight hissed his displeasure, and Jess found to her utter shock that she understood the creature’s hideous utterings.
“Dinner, it has arrived!” cackled the ghastly apparition. “I felt the sweet reality of soulflesh puncturing the dream, raping its pristine purity with the stench of blood, and life!” The creature emitted a gurgling hiss Jess realized was laughter. “Sweet blood and life! Sweet, sweet suffering to embrace. The rapture of flesh. More souls to torment, for me and Master!”
Jess felt mind-numbing terror turn to hot rage, a fierce boiling fury that such an abomination would dare to set foot upon her world, would dare even to exist within her dream. Obeying the cries of her heart in a gesture of defiance as old as Erovering itself, she raised her blade up high and cried out her challenge. "What twisted mockery of flesh and bone addresses me? You who seek to feast on flesh and pain will instead sup upon steel, when I ram my sword down your throat!”
Her words seemed to break the creature’s pull. It blinked, suddenly focusing its blazing orbs upon the one who dared to offer challenge. Its smile widened, though whether in hunger or pleasure, Jess could not say.
“Ah. One who knows the true tongue. Very good. Your soul has potency. I can feel this, yes, I can! I shall feast well indeed upon the exquisite agony I shall render for you. Just for you. My sweetest gift!” The vile mockery of life cackled hideously, ebony black claws erupting from shattered fingers as the twisted being slowly stalked toward them, as if to savor the dread it hoped to inspire, dragging its claws to cut great furrows into the bedrock as it approached.
And Jess could sense the creature’s terrible strength, waves of awful, inhuman power radiating from the apparition before her. A dark matrix of energies she could feel it embracing; tightly wound chords of bilious essence winding through flesh and bone. Somehow, she could sense the great pulsing ruby where the creature’s heart should be, throbbing in tune with the dread magic that kept it upright, eyes hot with the burning fires of hate.
The creature suddenly hissed, eyes sparking, and Jess could sense the sudden hot chord of dark red power, utterly alien to the azure blue strands of Elemental magics, lash out and cut deeply into Malek’s arm. He screamed, dropping his blade, clenching tightly as blood oozed from his wrist. The monster laughed, even as Malek slowly backed away in horror.
“Don’t worry, boy. That was but a taste. Go on, pick up your toy. I WANT to see you dare to LUNGE at me with your sorry excuse for a true weapon! I WANT to feel your blade SHATTER against my immortal flesh before I plunge its metal fragments into your EYES and SCOOP out your brain as I savor your SCREAMS and feast upon the dribbles of your soul. Pick up your blade, boy. I command it!”
Malek clenched his ears tight, eyes streaming with tears, and Jess could taste the flickers of madness the horrific beast's abyssal words inspired.
“Malek!” Jess’s curt words snapped through her friend’s dazed look of horror, bringing him back into focus. “Ignore its hissing. Pick up your blade, damn it!” This she said even as she snapped her hand forward with an abrupt jerk, somehow disrupting the crimson casting, and the creature hissed in surprise and fury.
“It’s just an illusion!” Jess cried. “The stuff of dreams! Its spells are just suggestion. Coaxing your own mind to make it reality. Look at your wrist. The wound is but a paper cut. It’s nothing! Pick up your blade and guard thyself!” And Malek looked down in surprise. What he had obviously thought a great spurting wound upon his wrist was just the thinnest line of red, barely oozing a drop.
The creature’s eyes blazed. “You dare to thwart my power? To challenge me with your paltry mortal magics? I will make you SCREAM for that, bastard child of man! Oh yes. You will scream, little bitch, and I will keep you alive to feel the agony I wring from your flesh like the sweetest of melodies! Oh yes, I will let you linger, as I suck the knowledge from your brain, savor the marrow from your bones so you can FEEL the torments I favor you with. I will let you linger, vile mortal child. Let you linger, so that I can feast upon the screams of your broken soul for an eternity of hell in my sweet, sweet, loving embrace!”
Malek was whimpering, tears streaming down his face. With one hand he banged his helmet as if to free his brain of the abyssal words echoing through his skull. Yet for all that, his other hand held grimly onto his blade.
Her cat seemed to have slipped into the shadows all around them, but his comforting voice washed through her as if he were but a hair's breadth away. “Guard your mind, Hound. For it is the tongue of demons that caresses your ears. And such foul whispers remind you of horrors and inspire such wrath as you have been spared for a long time indeed.”
“Good counsel, Twilight,” Jess whispered, but she knew it was only a matter of time before her friend cracked, and she knew what had to be done. She gauged her moment, noted the twisted flow of words as the creature gloated and mocked them. Even as it turned, laughing at Jess’s blade with contempt, she struck.
In that instant, time seemed to slow to a trickle. Jess felt the fierce heat of wrath and exhilaration course through her she sprung forward with the speed of a striking adder, blasting through her foe’s hastily raised arm with a fiercely powerful Stechen thrust; charging forward, feeling her blade jar against flesh hard as bedrock. The jolt of steel against stone coursed through her arms even as she morphed her blow into a vicious Zwerchhau double strike, her longsword slashing into both sides of the creature's pustule-laden throat as she pivoted past him, her movements flowing naturally, effortlessly; the benefit of inborn talent and a thousand hours of diligent practice.
Yet even as Jess sprang away, pivoted blade raised in Ochs to counter any final blow, expecting to see her foe’s lifeblood spurting from its neck, Jess felt her chest squeeze tight with sudden dismay to see hardly a scratch upon the hideous throat she had hacked with such controlled fury, even as the creature quickly recovered its balance and hissed. Not even her deadly thrust to the chest, her full weight and fury behind the blow, had resulted in more than a bloodless dent.
Jess’s eyes widened with shock, even as the hellish thing cackled with contempt.
“What’s wrong, child of man? Surprised your mortal blows could not cut through the gifts of darkness that ward my flesh? Ha, mortal fool! You who would dare to raise your blade against me shall soon know the price of your folly!”
The hideous creature then lashed forward, ebony talons slicing the air with near inhuman speed, and it was all Jess could do to parry and weave away.
Only the benefit of diligent, near fanatical training kept her from losing her balance as she focused every ounce of her concentration to master the moves of this deadly dance of blade versus claws that could tear through stone.
So often she had fought blade against blade, self-sword and shield, messer and buckler, any combination of weapons she imagined she might face on the battlefield. She would accept any challenge with any weapon against her longsword. Even against pairs of foes, she would gamely face them and quite frequently triumphed. Even when Mord's fellow Knight Aspirants, many of whom were not her friends, got the best of her and mocked her defeat with contempt, she would never let it shake her confidence, she would never let it break her.
Her response when bested was to diligently train with other students, instructors, even Master Eloquin himself, striving to understand and master the nuances of whatever fighting style had defeated her. She would train until she learned to complement, confound, and counter all her opponent's moves; until she arrived at the point where, on her best days, sparring with any weapon set was as natural as breathing. Days she truly felt like she was a child of war, freer than she had ever been, striving for victory in the heart of battle, a fearless hellion who could spit in the face of death itself, and emerge victorious.
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