by Garon Whited
Interlude
Halar picked himself up from the floor, slowly, as though every movement was an effort. He looked around and nodded in satisfaction. The dead prince on the other side of the grating seemed to grin at him, face twisted in a rictus of agony and death. Halar chuckled and stretched.
Boss? Firebrand asked. Are you all right?
“I’m fine. Let’s find the rest of the royal family and their magician.”
I don’t hear anyone nearby.
“Then we’ll look.”
Okay. What happened?
“I ate a Prince. He disagreed with me. Now shut up. I’m concentrating.”
Sorry, Boss.
Halar sheathed both swords and moved through a perfunctory search the rest of the floor. No one seemed to be present. Quickly, then, he ascended to the next floor and skimmed through it, as well. He found three guards and dismembered them with his hands, bit chunks from their flesh to swallow blood. He laughed in delight as the blood from the bodies flowed and rippled to him, soaked into his skin.
He entered the room they guarded. The young man inside brought up his sword and assumed a guard stance.
Halar ripped him limb from limb and laughed again as he watched the blood crawl into his skin.
“I think that does it for the family,” he observed, tossing most of a desiccated arm aside. “Let’s go look in the basement for the magician.”
Rakal.
“Yes.”
Rather than go down through a tower full of flaming stairs, Halar simply stepped out a window and dropped to the courtyard. The courtyard was almost well-illuminated. Several mirrored lanterns added to the light shed by the burning towers.
He stood amid a small hail of missiles; they veered subtly to either side, missing him. The men on the walls continued to shoot at him anyway. He ignored them and went to kick in the nearest door.
Moments before he reached it, the door exploded outward. A smoking-hot statue of solid bronze emerged from the inferno beyond. The flames had spread from the towers to other areas of the palace.
“Oh, well,” he said, shrugging. “Any sign of Rakal?”
Bronze stood still for a moment and regarded him. Her ears perked forward sharply and her nostrils stretched wide. She sniffed at Halar, advanced a step, sniffed at him again. Halar stood still, waiting.
Bronze stopped and laid her ears back, down and flat. Her eyes widened. Her lips rippled back from her teeth.
“Bronze!” Halar said, sharply. She snorted fire and backed away from him.
“Now, that’s just unacceptable,” Halar snapped. “Get over here right now!”
Bronze blew fire at him and wheeled, running. Halar watched her go, perplexed.
“Well, what’s gotten into her?” he wondered aloud.
Got me, Boss. She didn’t recognize you.
“Hmm. Maybe she ran into some sort of confusion spell while we were separated.”
Could be. Would a spell like that work on her?
“Depends on a lot of things. Well, it’s not important. I can deal with her later,” he said, darkly.
He continued around the palace until he found a door without flames behind it. Hurrying in, he moved quickly through the palace to one of the stairways below. Once under ground level, he negotiated the sublevel to the magician’s chamber. He paused to knock on the door.
Rakal opened the door and did a double-take. He recovered and stood silent, watching for something.
That’s him, Boss! Firebrand declared. Halar did not reply, but addressed Rakal, instead.
“Are you going to just stand there?” Halar demanded. “Or do you plan to let me in?”
Rakal stepped aside. Halar pushed the door open and marched into the magician’s laboratory.
“Did it…?” Rakal asked, hesitantly.
“Of course it did,” Halar answered. He drew the second sword and held it by the forte, gesturing with the hilt. “If it hadn’t worked, where do you think this would be?”
“Probably in my guts,” Rakal admitted, relaxing. “I’m glad we’ve finally—” he began, and Halar moved, faster than the eye could follow. The swordpoint took Rakal up under the chin and out the top of his head. Halar twisted the blade in the wound and flicked it forward, out through the middle of Rakal’s face, cutting it free of the brain and skull.
Rakal’s body collapsed to the floor, twitching and burbling.
“I regret that you can be of no service to me,” Halar said, smiling. He gestured with the blade and what was left of Rakal’s head came off at the neck. Blood swirled on the floor, slithering to Halar’s feet.
Still smiling, he watched the blood on the blade slide down, over the guard, and find its way into his skin. Then he flicked the weapon to remove everything else from the blade. He sheathed it and drew Firebrand.
“Let’s burn the place down,” Halar said, “and then go to the mountain. I have ever so much to do.”
Epilogue
It’s never cold, at least. Hell doesn’t freeze over all that often. This is a good thing for a naked animal on the run in a world of terror and death.
The landscape in which I live is a twisted ruin, a festering mockery of a world descended into the pit of decay. Skeletal steel beams mark the corpses of buildings; crumbled piles of masonry lie like rotting flesh around the bones. Unwinking eyes, glassless, stare mournfully from other structures, overgrown with carnivorous ivy. Streams of I-know-not-what flow down the middle of ruined, rubbled streets, twisting and turning among the burning trash heaps of forgotten dreams and rotting middens of the mind.
The dark thing that invaded my mind empowered everything that ever hurt me. Every memory that makes me cringe, every forgotten slight, injustice, or cruelty done to me—or done by me—rose up and dragged me down with them. All the fears, hatreds, insecurities, and jealousies I have ever known pursue me constantly. Bitterness and pain stalk me in the dark and twisting alleys of my dreams. These things lurk in the shadowed, twilit landscape of my undermind, the basement beneath my mental study. Occasionally, one or more of them will cross my path and flay me with the whips and lashes of guilt and fear.
Sometimes, I think I catch glimpses of Bronze in the distance. I don’t know if she is really in here with me, part of me, somewhere, or if what I think I see is merely another torment. I know the flock of harpies that sometimes dive at me, screeching and snatching, are real enough; they are the embodiment of terror wearing the faces of the women I love.
I am almost always on the move. If I stop for longer than a few moments, they find me. They are always following me, for my feet hurt from the rough ground and sharp debris, and leave bloody footprints with every step. Little things emerge from the wasteland as I pass; they lap up the blood as I run.
Once, I looked back to see what they were. I don’t look back anymore.
Where are the stairs? If I could find them, I could go up, try to force the door, perhaps even finish what I started. I do not dare to climb a building, nor venture into any dead end or cul-de-sac. I have to keep routes of escape open to evade the things that hunt me.
The sky is an unrelenting black. There is no sun, no moon, not even stars.
I do not sleep. I’ve tried being tricky, splashing through rivulets to wash away the blood, swinging up into hidden alcoves and shadowed holes, there to try and rest. I can rest, yes, but sleep will not come to me. So I try to remember to look up whenever I can, to keep one eye on the sky. When that door opens, it will be a pillar of light in a world gone to gloom, and I will ascend through it.
Will the memories that pain me come with me? Will they seize me and drag me down with them again into this quagmire of agony and heartache? Or can I rise above my darker nature—not that of the vampire, but that darkness that lurks in the depths of every heart?
I must believe I can be better than that. I must! But it is so hard to believe in anything, here, where the darkness itself tastes of despair and guttering fires give off the smoke of desolation. T
his is not a place for hope, or faith, or belief in anything.
Immortality implies the potential of forever. In an infinite length of time, I will have an opportunity. I must.
Somewhere in the length of eternity, I will rise again.