His sigh of relief greatly displeased his unseen host, but not half as much as the following commentary did. “Even a blind man can see the truth when it is so obvious. What more illumination do I need when you’ve told me everything?”
The darkness hitched and fractured with crackling energy. Artorian would describe it as the sound of lightning, if it happened in reverse. The voice came again: “You know nothing.”
Artorian nodded at such a sagely statement. “Truer words were rarely spoken.”
Irritation clashed all around him. Not in flashes of light, visible clues, auditory snippets, or sensory stimulation on his skin. He didn’t have to hear the psychic wailing to know it was there. Silence was not the strong suit of the personality he was undoubtedly surrounded by. In fact, silence was a sign that all was well! If he could hear the voices… his defenses were breached.
Since he could not, Artorian safely inhaled the stale cavern air as his thoughts leaned to the conditions required to bring him from the top of the mountain. That’s where he had last been, as far as he was concerned. The shift to somewhere much further down was jarring.
The emergency escape plan, the one that would bring him here without him doing so himself was only for the direst of circumstances. If he’d woken up down here, it should have been with a significant portion of Jian, or at least the students. The stench of blood was an indication that Jian had certainly accompanied him… so why had he been excluded from the event that put them in this state?
“I will rend your flesh, tear your bones, break your muscle, and chew you until you’re goop. All that’s going to be left of your mind is chunks of wispy screams that neither remember fresh air, nor the tenderness of a kind hand.”
The voice was too physical. It carried a similarity to a different familiar voice. One devoid of charisma, steeped entirely in jealousy and self-entrapment. Artorian couldn’t see, and so couldn’t be certain, but the idea had manifested and would likely hold true. Artorian’s reply came as a whisper. “…Cataphron?”
After a moment of silence, a heavy footstep fell onto the bloodied floor. A second footfall joined it, the weight behind it nearly nonexistent. Enough to be, but not enough to mimic true corporeality. The charismatic tones responded in a mixture of voices, each morphing halfway into the next. “I despise you so. The name you call both is, yet is not… present. Alive, but dead. Assimilated.”
The arrangement of voices made Artorian clutch his robe. Not merely Cataphron mixed in the whirlpool of voices, but the three prior masters of the academy each lent their own voice to the amalgamation of sound. It seemed that Cataphron had found his old masters after all. Or what there was left to find, at least.
Still, the amalgam did not pursue him. How strange… had the positions been reversed, he would not have allowed his opponent to wake from slumber merely to trade words or deliver a fancy speech. An idea struck Artorian: what if it was not a matter of choice? Were there any circumstances that would make this action so unfavorable that it gave merit to avoiding it outright?
The fresh puzzle set his mind alight. New information could be pulled from recent happenings and important events. Think, old boy, think. What had the amalgam said? What does an old man not know about, and why is illumination encouraged? This was the Caligene of blight, phantoms, and shadows. Light would be its bane, and the creature’s words seemed to instigate him to activate abilities that would cause it harm. Artorian straightened as a piece clicked. He was upright, his fists balled up even though he could not discern his surroundings, still the anger flowed. “Cataphron!”
The surreptitious smile schmoozed out a very un-Cataphron-esque response. The kind of delighted smirky tone that signaled a plan was about to see fruition. How the Blight craved the satisfaction of seeing its plan come to a rewarding conclusion. “Ye~e~ess?”
Artorian stomped the ground with his foot, splashing a wet wave of ‘red water’ all around. “You blithering fool! You absolute squirrel! How could you let the Blight take you? Why didn’t you fight!”
What had been a slimy smile dropped to flat unamusement. The old man just wasn’t playing along. Come on… light up the place. It knew the old man wanted to do so. It’s what he was good at; he made that awful lance which caused shudders of unpleasantry and destroyed his reaching thoughts! Had this clown been any better at the skill, there might not have been enough information returning to formulate the plot. Some persuasion was required, and the amalgam slipped right back into the drawl of a charismatic salesman. “Oh, he tried, old student. He tried.”
The voice swirled around Artorian, not bound by bodily positioning or physical factors. Clouds of blight shifted and moved within the cavern they fully occupied. They just had to make sure that they didn’t cross the rules, and they’d be fine. “See, I ate him easily. There was no external Aura to prevent me from gulping him right up. You already know nothing else defends from mental assaults! That’s why you’ve layered it on so thick. You didn’t wake to any of my normal words, but when I began using the mimicry of a voice box, here you are…!”
Artorian had not expected to learn anything from this conversation. Especially not that a thick enough external Aura blocked out mental prodding and assaults. He’d file that away for a time where that knowledge could come in handy. “I… I see. Did you also eat whoever got me down here? Let’s not pretend it’s not blood I’m standing in. Hmm. Hopefully nobody I know. I’ve grown tired of mourning again and again. It’s more of a dull ache at this point.”
He cut himself off as he started to ramble. It was a terrible time for reflecting.
Chapter Two
The cave laughed; at least what was in the cavern did. There was no distinction. The general area rocked and reverberated the age-old pathways. “They were all snacks to savor, and savor I did. Though I admit I had quite the gluttonous streak while waiting for the main course to wake. There is nothing that compares to a truly unburdened mind.”
Artorian folded his hands behind his back. “Unburdened indeed. Can’t help but notice I can breathe decently. How odd that an entity controlling and occupying the entirety of the space I inhabit is allowing me such a relaxing awakening. Uninterrupted, even. Why, for all that talk of eating me, it doesn’t feel like I have as much as a scratch on me. Curious…”
The Blight bit its lip, monologuing in attempt to throw the academic off balance while regaining its own. “The greatest curiosity has yet to come across your notice! If only you could see the complexity of what I’d prepared for you. Were you not on the menu, you might have even found it beautiful. Art only an advanced mind is able to appreciate…”
It was too late; Artorian had the amalgam by the hanging satchel. “I suppose that hinges on a single question.”
Phantoms wailed in disgust, but none of it reached the intended target. No screams of mental anguish could breach an Aura that was changing to increase in effectiveness against their specific influence. What a terrible matchup this old man was. In disdain it spat out a retort, using a body to utter the guttural vocalization. “That being?”
While the Skyspear headmaster wasn’t at all pleased about the current situation, it did bring a smile to his face to test the conditions under which this war was operating. “Who are you?”
The cavern trembled and shook. The Blight hated, despised, and loathed this terrible, annoying, unyielding living creature. Could it not just die already? The Blight knew all too well that the answer to this question meant two things. One, this despicable wrinkled cockatoo knew. Two, the reply would determine vulnerability. Being an amalgamation of every mind it had consumed, who it was remained a matter of… sensitive nature. A fact so crucial to its own preservation that it knew better than to reveal the unembellished truth.
Deflection was in order. “Who am I, indeed! Who but the stuff of nightmares? The walker of the pale? The whispers one hears in the dark? The reason one does not remember why they entered a room? I am the missing sock in the wash, the full stomach
after someone becomes lost in the woods. I am that which one bumps into when there should have only been empty space, and I am what watches you from the creeping corners of the dark. I am the reason one cannot fall asleep at night, for danger is nearby and it is unsafe to rest.”
Pausing a moment to relish, it regarded the aged old bat. “I am hunger. I. Am. Death.”
Artorian cackled; that was good enough for him! “Not Cataphron. Confirmed…!”
Relish turned to ruin as the sound of a heartbeat coupled with an outward pulse of plasmic light rippled in spherical form from the starlight cultivator. Refined Essence was compressed into the effect as Artorian combined several ideas. Costly, but if he was only going to get this single effect off… it might as well be one for the ages!
Echolocation, luminescence, moss, and stickiness exploded from his presence. The Blight shrieked as thick, crawling, growing patches of light developed over the smoky layers just like lichen and moss did. Simply much, much faster.
The effect clung to the walls, spreading, glowing, shining. Providing a natural illumination to the cavern as his pulse extended in reach, until eventually it struck the ceiling. What a colossal hole in the ground this was. Artorian almost wished he’d remained ignorant upon being greeted by the sight that awaited: thousands of bodies littered the ground that must have once been a pit. While he indeed stood upon a layer of blood, he somehow hadn’t guessed that the soft ground he was traversing… was bodies. Bones littered the cavern halls as far as he could see, and he knew in his heart… that if there was one thing he should not do… it was to look up.
For all the love contained in the heavens and the earth… do not look up.
The effect of his Essence hadn’t ended when it left him. There were instructions contained in the pulse that still tore through underground pathways, sticking its effect to the walls where it could self-replicate in limited form. Costly, sure. However, if his guess was correct and he shouldn’t attack his foe in the near future, the near-natural lighting hopefully would not count as such. Artorian wasn’t going to get away with this twice, and he needed all the information he could get his hands on. That meant…
Artorian’s chin tilted before his eyes did.
He should not have looked up.
What does an amalgamation of several tens of thousands of minds, corrupted, blackened, and blighted look like? Turns out, like they still had hands and faces contorted in screams as they tried to escape a slimy, moist, glossy leather bag that stretched but never broke. It wasn’t even a physical, solid body. Yet the shadows were so dense, and the infernal energy harvested from the torment and continual anguish so packed, that it may as well have been.
“Ew.”
The ‘burning’ effect of his pulse of Essence was superficial, and had been extinguished by the Blight. A body in the endless, sickening floor-pile of meat… no… Cataphron rose. His eyes were the same ghastly hollow that had been so prevalent in Artorian’s nightmares that very first night in Birch’s company. With the candles… how sweet the candles made by the Wood Elves had been. But much like oils, they did nothing to alleviate the true problem.
Cataphron’s steady, familiar voice spoke up in the charismatic cadence of the Blight. “How. In the name of the Abyss. Did you figure it out?”
The academic snapped to the question. The words had been so… human. So steady. So believably from a real body that, had he not known better, he’d have thought the body walking towards him without a shred of effort was actually alive. “Oh, Blighty… you told me, by not telling me. Unsurprisingly, waking up at all was the first big giveaway. Being able to breathe the second. Threats without action the third.”
“The only true course of action would have been for me to be part of this meat-floor you’ve decorated your hole with. It sickens me, and I wish I knew how to tear you from existence with great vengeance for what you’ve done to all these poor people… all the Elves you’ve hunted and harmed… all the lives you’ve consumed and cut short!”
Cataphron gleefully smiled a sickly grin, snickering. “But you ca~a~an’t…”
Artorian didn’t move from his spot as a Blight-infested and puppeted Cataphron came face to face with him. He held back a wince; what a few years of rot and decay can do to a person. Hiding his rage, Artorian mimicked the mocking tone right back at the ‘creature’.
“Neither can you~u~u…”
The Blight laughed through fleshy vocal chords. “Oh, the land law you have with this man may prevent me from ravishing your mind like a snack bar at the royal palace, but unlike before… you’re in my house now. You can’t leave unless I want you to leave.” The Blight sucked in a breath, and it felt like all the air in the room moved into it. “Perhaps I can’t harm you directly… but I don’t have to feed you, or let you sleep peacefully, give you time to think or explore the caverns. I can rearrange them, loop them, maze them. I can befuddle you while I deny you the light from your star, and walk a few paces behind as every day I slowly watch. You. Die.
“Maybe you’ll even make mistakes and drop your Aura too low, and then… I’m in.” Cataphron practically giggled, “What fun we will have.”
Artorian *tsk’d*. The land law was exactly what was preventing the Blight from tearing him open, and what was preventing him from full bore erasing the heart of this thing with the butt of his starlight pencil. “Someone else will come and get rid of you.”
Cataphron smiled from ear to ear and laughed like a mad hyena, cackling in delight at the absurdity of the claim. He bent over, slapped his knee, and enjoyed the visceral feeling a body provided through infernally-altered senses. This body was perfect as a physical host; no external Aura to prevent any takeover or interference!
Cataphron had been the cleanest snatch up ever. No damage to the host, perfect for replacement and inhabiting. The Blight adored having a body this suitable to play with, and play with it he would. “Oh, you can’t begin to understand how wrong you are there… You might have had a chance, but the memories from your ‘old friend’ told me everything. A flawless counter against my most specific problem? How could I resist? Sure, you achieved the position of Headmaster, but what threat is that when I have you so conveniently in my box?”
Artorian raised an eyebrow. Achieving Headmaster was a threat? Now that didn’t fit any narrative so far; why would that be of note? Earning the position itself is likely due to being quite powerful, but type mattered more than amount for this problem. Catty here had also mentioned quite snootily that ‘he’ might have had a chance.
The power of erasing starlight was good, but while it accounted for some of the facts, it didn’t account for all of the facts. Time to dig! “Ha! I could have defeated you as an academy student! I don’t need some fancy title. Had Cat and I gone another round before he went under, I’d have won!”
The laughter burst out once more; bubbly and thick as the raucous hilarity struck the multiple minds contained in the Blight, all using Cataphron as a mouthpiece. “First of all, Shinebug… no, you couldn't have. Secondly, this body would have wiped the ground with you so hard, you’d have been the courtyard’s new paint scheme.”
Artorian grit his teeth. “Where there’s one, it’s usually not done.”
The Blight ignored the strange phrase. “I can’t wait to see if you cave in to your baser needs. There is food for you here in plenty… I’ve left the bodies for you. They were never for me. I eat minds. No, my ‘old friend’ these…”
The infernal body moved its arms about, gesturing at the thousands of bodies. “...are for you! Will you go hungry, or will you force yourself to suffer, and survive? I don’t have to feed you, but can you stop yourself? I’ve learned that you’re as big of a glutton as I am! Think of that; we have something in common after all…
The academic felt poorly for all these people, but he couldn’t help them now. Not even to clean up their bodies. His most common Aura effects would incur the land law violation. Any use of cleansing effects or something s
imilar were going to harm the Blight, and since the Blight was currently Cataphron… that was the first snag. The second snag was that there wasn’t just one land law at play.
He surmised there must be a second one that specifically had to do with the Headmaster position, or rather, the landowner. If he was the landowner of the Skyspear above, this Blight must be the owner of the below. That created quite the tension, and while the details were unknown… needing to be a landowner to face a landowner had a reasonable sense to it.
Artorian recalled an old passage from the Skyspear creation myth. He’d thought it was silly for someone to carve a menhir from the moon and launch it planetside to… entrap? An enemy. Not defeat it? How… annoyingly fitting. Sounds like someone else may have lacked a means to kill ol’ Blighty before. He recited the memory in a whisper while the phantom Blight cackled at him. “Only the highest spear may pierce the deepest depths.”
That was good and all, but he was stuck in the kitten’s box. Blighty still had him trapped, and his light-moss didn’t have a long duration. Still, it had given him the information he needed. That was generally worth the cost. Next came the hard part:
Waiting.
Chapter Three
Several hours in a deep dank cave did much to dim the spirit. There was a fringe benefit to this, as the initial panic had faded from the Skyspear student body. Those that survived, anyway. From a rough headcount, a third of the students had survived. The whereabouts of the remaining two thirds remained unknown until some rudimentary exploration, then telltale blood streaks leading down sporadic and numerous paths took away the hope that they would find the students alive.
Artorian's Archives Omnibus Page 79