by C. M. Carney
He rushed to his friend and tried to tear him away from the table, but his hands phased through as if Wick was not there. This close he could hear his friend’s wheezing breath. It was as if his lungs no longer inhaled enough oxygen to fuel him.
Gryph turned and raised his spear. He poured Mana into the spear adding it to that stored in the spear. The adamant tip glowed as bright as the noonday sun and Gryph hurled it at Ouzeriuo with every ounce of strength he had.
His aim was true, but the weapon passed harmlessly through the old man and hit the wall behind him. A cacophonous explosion tore outwards, smashing a massive hole in the wall. A breeze drifted into the chamber, bringing the sweet smell of spring with it.
Ouzeriuo didn’t seem to notice as he took another bite, this time it was some kind of custard. More pulses of Wick’s soul oozed down the tendril with each cycle of the old man’s jaw.
Gryph rushed to Simon and grabbed the kid by the arm, tugging him backwards before he could deliver another dish to his soul-eating master.
“Let go. I told you I don’t like being touched,” Simon screamed, struggling to pull free of Gryph’s grasp. But Gryph refused to let go. Fear dug into the boy’s eyes and tears streamed down his cheeks.
“How am I able to touch you, but not the others?” Gryph screamed at the frightened boy. Simon said nothing, just tried harder and harder to pull away. “How?” Gryph screamed.
“Because I have no body,” Simon screamed and his eyes widened in realization. Gryph knew, right then, that until that very moment Simon had forgotten this terrible truth. More tears poured down his face and a cold calm came over the boy. “I am stuck here, because Morrigan gave me to him.” Simon pointed an angry finger at Ouzeriuo. “Gave me to him to be a sacrifice. I watched them experiment on me, slowly killing my body as they sought to understand my soul.”
Simon shook as the terrors of his past came rushing back.
“No, no, no, it is all my fault. Because of me that Ouzeriuo and Morrigan understand how to feed on souls. I was the first.”
Gryph knelt and shook the boy. “Listen to me Simon. It is not your fault. They used you. They abused you.”
“They murdered me,” Simon said. “But, they did not consume my soul. They used, used me it to build this place.”
Simon walked over to the hole in the wall that Gryph’s spear had made. A small smile came to his lips. “This was my home, long ago. It’s why I made it again. I wanted to go back home.”
Gryph knelt by the boy, pain fighting against compassion at the thought of what he'd suffered. “How can I help?”
Simon looked up at Gryph with sad eyes. “I do not know if you can, but I may be able to help you.” He looked at Wick. “And your friend.”
“How?” Simon said in a voice full of desperate need.
“You must kill me.”
50
G ryph backed away in shock. Every fiber of his being recoiled at the idea. But, he was also desperate to save his friend. There was no training that could help him make this decision.
“I thought you said you were already dead?”
“Yes,” Simon said. His demeanor had changed. He was no longer a scared child, but a being who had existed for untold millennia. “My body died so long ago that I’m not even sure that this is what I looked like.”
“I don’t understand. If you are already dead how can I kill you?”
“You must kill my soul. It enables this place to exist. Without it, the Barrow King cannot survive and he will cease to be. You must sacrifice me to kill him. While he is still weak.”
“No.”
“It is the only way to save your friend. And I no longer want to live this half-life.”
Gryph paced back and forth in anguish. He could not destroy a soul even to save one. He looked from Simon to the Barrow King and then to Wick.
“Think. Think. Damn you.” Gryph bashed the palm of his hand against his forehead, marking the palm with a mirror image of the inlaid runes of his new torc. Something tickled at the back of his mind. Then it came at him like a tsunami wave, and he knew what he had to do.
“I may have another way, but I need you to do something for me,” Gryph said.
“What?” Simon asked.
“Stop feeding this old fuck.”
“I’ll try,” Simon said. “But he is able to compel me.”
“Try. That is all I can ask.”
Gryph turned to the Ouzeriuo, the ancient evil that had destroyed countless lives. He was already looking younger. Gryph had no idea how much longer Wick could hold out, but Gryph suspected he did not have long. “Hey, old man. Your days are done.”
Gryph built up Mana and cast Telepathic Bond. He reached out with his mind and found the wisp that was the mind of the Barrow King. It was a tainted oily pond of scum and sewerage. It’s rancid taste nearly made Gryph vomit, but he would not fail.
Their minds touched and Gryph showed the Barrow King his Godhead. The spectral creature pulsed and morphed, rushing at Gryph with a hunger unlike any it had ever felt. Gryph held fast as Ouzeriuo’ mind swam into his own, burrowing to the deep recesses where the Godhead resided.
Gryph pushed forward, digging deep into the foul center of the Barrow King’s mind. He was gambling all and knew that if he didn’t find what he sought, and then all was lost. Gryph pushed through memories of atrocities, nearly drowning in their pain and the utter joy Ouzeriuo had taken in inflicting them.
It was like swimming through toxic mud. He burned and was suffocating under the wretched onslaught. But he kept swimming. He knew what he sought was there. He kept moving.
He was getting close. He could feel it like a blind man felt heat. He dove deeper, and the world became blacker. It was down here, the knowledge he needed. The knowledge the Barrow King had guarded for millennia.
Then he saw it. A mote of silver light puncturing the black crud. He swam deeper and deeper and reached out. At his touch the world exploded in silver and he was standing in some kind of laboratory.
He looked down and saw hands clad in an arcane robe. He looked up and saw a reflection looking back at him from a mirror of burnished silver. He was Ouzeriuo. A younger Ouzeriuo, for sure, but the man all the same.
There was another man with his back turned from Gryph. He was sharpening implements.
“We are close my friend,” the man said, and the voice was familiar. Like something from a distant dream or an often heard radio commercial.
But the man did not turn around and Gryph discovered he had no control over the body he now inhabited. He was living a memory.
He felt himself look down and there, tied to some kind of operating slab was the boy Simon. A gag stoppered the terrified boy's mouth. Some skin on his torso had been flayed and burns and sliced flesh dotted other parts of his small, quivering body. As Ouzeriuo moved to his side, the boy shivered and shook his head in a desperate no. Tears poured from his eyes. Gryph could feel what Ouzeriuo had felt that day, and it made his blood turn to ice.
The man had felt nothing that could be deemed a decent human emotion. No pity. No shame. No hesitation. Just anxious excitement.
Gryph felt himself smile down on the boy and he lightly pet his forehead. “Everything will be all right,” he lied. “Soon it will be all over.”
“Would you like a turn,” the familiar voice asked.
“Why not Morrigan," Ouzeriuo said. “After all this will be my crowning achievement.” He lightly stroked Simon’s head, and the fear exploded in the boy’s eyes. Ouzeriuo looked up at the man holding out a scalpel like device of torture and Gryph knew why the voice was so familiar.
“Alistair Bechard,” Gryph said in horrified wonder.
“Yes, yes it will be,” Morrigan, the man those of Earth knew as Alistair Bechard, the god worshipped by millions across Korynn as the High God Aluran, said. “Yes, I will remember this day forever.”
Then Gryph felt this body that he could not control torture Simon until the boy’s body died.
As a small part of his own soul died, Gryph’s reached out with Assimilation. He had defeated the Barrow King in the Realms. Now it was time to claim his prize.
Gryph dug into the mind he shared with Ouzeriuo and grabbed the pulsing silver beacon. His mind exploded with knowledge. It was as if 1,000 hands made of acid, rotting death, plague and pestilence dug into his mind and forced the knowledge to stick.
You have learned the skill SOUL MAGIC - Levels: 1 - 25 - Tier: Base - Skill Type: Active. You can now wield the power of Soul Magic. Soul Magic is the rarest and potentially the most powerful of all the spheres of magic. Soul taps into the essence of the immortal soul for a wide range of abilities. Note: Soul magic, while powerful, is also easy to abuse.
Gryph would have vomited had he been in his own body and the fact that neither Ouzeriuo nor Morrigan did, told Gryph everything he needed to know about these two men.
“Congratulations master,” Morrigan said, as he eased himself as fluid as a snake around the slab where Simon’s body lay to face Ouzeriuo. “You are truly the greatest mage alive.” Gryph felt a smug smile form on Ouzeriuo’ face as he drank in the praise. Then, Morrigan moved with incredible speed and Gryph felt a dagger puncture though the underside of his neck and up into his brain.
Ouzeriuo died.
Armed with the knowledge he’d come for, Gryph pulled from the Barrow King’s dying mind and swam towards the surface. Compared to the vileness of the last scene, the acidic sewerage he now swam through felt like a dip in a pool on a hot day. He slogged and swam, all the while desperate for release from the terrible despair and pain he felt. Simon’s pain.
He saw light above and emerged from the recesses of Ouzeriuo’ foul mind and back to the lighter realm of his own mind, when a piercing agony, worse than Morrigan’s dagger exploded in his head. He squeezed his eyes shut trying to force the feeling to abate. Then, suddenly it did.
Gryph opened his eyes, and he was somewhere else. It was dark, and he was running. A gunshot rang out behind him and he dodged to the right, rushing around a corner. Ahead in the distance he could see an illuminated tower. He recognized the memory that Ouzeriuo had dredged. One that he had desperately tried to bury.
He was in Seoul. The place where he’d been left for dead.
More gunshots rang out as he sprinted and one caught him in the leg. He tumbled to the ground as a gasp of pain spat from his mouth. He got up and hobbled. He took a quick turn into an alley and moved as fast as he could.
But it wasn’t fast enough. Another shot took him in the back, high near the shoulder blade and he went down, tumbling over. He tried to scramble back behind a rot filled dumpster, but the man with the gun caught up with him.
Gryph held his hands out, but he did not plead. The man grinned, raised his pistol and took aim.
“Hold,” came a voice that could not possibly be there. The man lowered his gun to his side. A dark shadow moved up behind him and gently eased the gunman aside. The man came into a halo of light from an overhead bulb and Gryph gasped.
“Hello son.”
“Colonel,” Gryph heard his former self, the man named Finn say.
“Still can’t call me Dad?”
“You were always the Colonel and never my father.”
The Colonel took off his hat and passed it to the gunman. His aged face was determined and Finn could see a future he would never live in the man’s eyes.
“I wish this wasn’t necessary,” the Colonel said.
“I suppose we always knew this is how things would end up,” Gryph said.
“I suppose we did,” the Colonel said as he pointed a gun and fired.
The muzzle flash tore Gryph back to the tower. He looked down on Ouzeriuo, who now grinned at him with full awareness. The man was no longer old nor decrepit, but as young and vital as he was in the torture room with Morrigan and Simon.
Gryph’s eyes snapped over to Wick, slumped over and aged near beyond recognition. He didn't move.
“No,” Gryph screamed and his mind summoned up his newfound knowledge. He poured the power of his own soul into his hands and launched himself at the Barrow King. He was unsure what he wanted to do, but knew he had to.
“Your own father betrayed you. Left you for dead. Forced you into hiding. Oh, the torture you must have gone through. The need to know why? An answer you never received.” Ouzeriuo laughed at him. “Well I know what you won’t admit. He shot you, tried to kill you because you were a failure. You failed then and you will fail now. I will take the gift you have brought me and then I’m will take all of Korynn.”
Ouzeriuo flashed at Gryph and sunk a spectral hand into his chest. He felt fingers twine and dig and branch into him, seeking to extract the Godhead, the gift, the curse, the burden he bore.
“And what’s more, I will find … Brynn.” Ouzeriuo, cocked his head to the side. “Your sister.”
“You bastard,” Gryph said through gritted teeth and a burst of spittle.
Gryph arched his head back in pain as the revenant dug into his body. He felt small bits, strands of the Godhead being ripped from their roots deep in his mind, his body and his soul. The Barrow King was dragging them back to him like a fisherman pulling nets from the sea. Gryph could feel their paths and see them enter the mind of Ouzeriuo.
Then he knew what he had to do. He focused his will and flashed up the tendrils, borrowing deeper and deeper. As he passed a threshold between his mind and the mind of his enemy. Deep inside the foul mind of the Barrow King he found the one point of light and pushed towards it.
The pain in his chest and in his mind grew to blinding and Gryph collapsed to his knees. With one final burst of effort he reached out gently with both hands and curled them around the glowing cocoon like a father with a newborn babe. Inside, curled in a fetal position, was a small, glowing figure. This was Wick’s soul. Black tendrils of oily darkness fired from the surrounding nothingness and borrowed into Gryph’s body worming their way towards the soul he protected.
The pain was excruciating and Gryph knew he would soon succumb. There was a way to survive. He could consume the soul he held and use its power. But that was an eternal death for Wick and there was no coming back from such an act.
Gryph closed his eyes and curled his body around Wick’s soul. “I am sorry. I am so sorry. I have failed.”
A brightness built up, one that burned though the paltry defenses of Gryph’s eyelids. Yet the light did not bring pain, but hope. Deep in the darkest of pits Gryph discovered something that neither Morrigan nor Ouzeriuo could ever know. A soul given freely is far more powerful than one consumed.
Wick’s soul enveloped Gryph, and the light expanded, burning away the stain of darkness. Gryph stood and launched himself upwards and outwards. He reached superluminal speed.
The Barrow King grinned as his extraction of the Godhead neared completion. Soon he would be all powerful. “I am coming for you Morrigan,” the Barrow King said, and he began the maniacal chortle of the truly insane.
The sound was like stone crushing flesh, horrid and unnatural. Then it suddenly choked off as a blazing light flowed from Ouzeriuo’s mouth. He released Gryph’s body and brought his hands to his throat. The blazing light was choking him and it was growing brighter.
Ouzeriuo would have screamed if he’d been able, but the light prevented him. It grew and pulsed and then exploded from the mage’s mouth, twined and spun into the air above him and then flashed downwards and into the center of Gryph’s forehead.
Gryph’s eyes snapped open, and they burned like two rising stars. Gryph stood and eased the Barrow King’s taloned hand from his chest. Ouzeriuo swung his other hand, but his strength was failing and Gryph caught and snapped the wrist with ease. The tendrils disintegrated, and the Godhead settled back into him.
The Barrow King struggled. Long bereft of life and with no stolen soul to sustain his long dead spirit the Barrow King’s true form was exposed, a desiccated corpse dry as tinder. The Barrow King’s mouth opened in a fin
al silent scream and then his body disintegrated to dust and fell silent as the grave to the floor. Gryph toed the pile of ash at his feet.
“He is truly dead,” said a voice that was both Wick and Gryph.
Gryph turned and walked to the slumped body of his friend. He gently took the gnome’s head in his hands and opened his eyes. Gryph’s hands glowed as he transferred Wick’s soul back to his body.
The glow faded and Gryph fell to his knees, weakened beyond any weariness he had ever felt. He considered taking a nap right there, but then he felt small hands turn his face upwards. Wick, young and vibrant and grinning like a dick, was looking down on him.
“Laying down on the job?” Wick asked.
Gryph said nothing. He laughed. He laughed like he had not laughed since entering the Realms. He laughed like he had not laughed since he was young. A vision of Brynn and he laughing so hard that breath would not come infused his mind, his soul.
A deep rumble built in the tower dragging Gryph from his reverie.
“What is happening?”
“This place is going,” Simon said.
Gryph turned to see the small, ancient boy standing. A look of sad resignation painted his face. Gryph walked up to him and knelt, taking his shoulders lightly in his hands. For once the boy did not flinch from his touch.
“What do you mean?”
“It may have been my memories and my soul that powered this place, but it was his will that kept it together. Now, it will fall and I will fall with it.”
“There has to be a way out,” Wick said, coming up to stand behind Gryph.
Simon lowered his gaze to the floor as tears welled up in his eyes. “For you maybe. You both have bodies waiting for you. Mine has long since turned to dust. There is nowhere for me to go. When this place dies…”
Simon looked out the gaping hole in the side of the tower drawing Gryph and Wick’s gazes along with him. The world was disappearing, the edges of the mountains and the forests were disappearing like the edges of a Polaroid photo tossed into flames.