The sound of deep, gurgling screeches echoed in the distance, breaking Terico’s train of thought. All at once, Terico heard at least a dozen monstrous cries, their grating noises overlapping one another in a horrendous racket.
“The forsaken,” Jujor said. Terico looked back and saw Jujor’s disconcerted expression. Even in the dim red light, it was clear to see how pale and worried the old man had quickly become. The sound was likely bringing back memories of his first and nearly fatal encounter with the undying creatures.
Terico unsheathed his sword and held it tight in his right hand, and picked out the indigo soul catcher from his pouch of Nexi stones.
The liquid shrieks grew louder, and for a few moments Terico thought he heard them coming from multiple directions. He stared down the dark cavern and readied himself to attack. The beat of his heart quickened, moving in harmony with the constant screeching of the forsaken.
Beneath the screams, Terico could hear the pattering of feet and claws. He took a deep breath, gritted his teeth, and raised his soul catcher forward.
Seven forsaken charged into the light of Jujor’s red Nexi. They ran on all fours. Fleshy, long-limbed, and wolf-like, the forsaken rushed in with the force of paws larger than a man’s head. Dim red light glinted off their massive claws, their fanged teeth, their dark glossy eyes, and the metallic scales sticking out of their backs and limbs.
Terico aimed his Nexi stone toward the nearest of the forsaken. With all the energy he could muster, Terico forced a burst of indigo light to shoot out from the soul catcher.
The beast snapped its jaw at the light, and leaped straight for Terico, completely unhindered.
Terico stepped back and shoved his sword forward, jabbing his blade straight through the forsaken’s neck. The creature snarled and swung a giant clawed paw for Terico’s face.
“Turn!” Jujor yelled.
Terico leaned back and turned. A burst of flame blasted into the forsaken’s body, forcing Terico to let go of his sword. A stream of indigo light crashed into the burning forsaken a moment later, but Terico couldn’t watch to see if it worked.
He turned to the next two nearest forsaken and fired his soul catcher at one, while slipping out his green Nexi and aiming it for the second. Using two Nexi at the same time was difficult, but Terico was caught up in the heat of the action. The first forsaken snapped at the blast of the soul catcher, but Terico managed to tie up the legs of the second beast with vines.
The free forsaken pounced toward Terico, who grabbed the first Nexi his hand could reach. He wrenched the stone out of his bag and released its energy against the forsaken’s torso. Ice covered the sprawling creature instantly, and the beast crashed atop of Terico before he could step out of the way.
The other forsaken bit off the vines tying its legs, having no problem with tearing off portions of its own flesh in the process. As Terico pushed aside the frozen—now only half-frozen—forsaken, he caught a glimpse of the other four creatures rushing for him.
“We’re not strong enough to catch their souls right away!” Jujor said. “Disable them, and then use the indigo Nexi. Shut your eyes!”
Terico complied just as blinding white light burst from a Nexi stone. He opened his eyes immediately after he heard the snap of Jujor’s attack. Jujor wrenched Terico’s sword from an unmoving forsaken at his feet, and tossed it to Terico while the rest of the forsaken screeched and moaned from the light. For their eyes, the flash had to be far worse than it would for a human being.
While one forsaken was still struggling with the ice on its body, Terico aimed his soul catcher and tried once again to defeat it. The indigo light dived for the creature, and a moment later Terico felt a surge of energy rush back up his arm. The Nexi stone glowed a little brighter, and the forsaken stopped struggling to break apart the ice covering it.
The creatures recovered from Jujor’s attack, and Terico immediately used his white Nexi stone to blind them again. The nearest forsaken leaped for him anyways. Terico skewered the forsaken in the chest, and the creature boomed a raspy, watery laugh.
It laughed.
Before the forsaken could claw Terico apart, Terico blasted indigo light against it, pulling the soul out of the creature and into Terico’s indigo Nexi. He shoved the forsaken from the blade of his sword and aimed his green Nexi for a forsaken charging at Jujor, who was releasing fire at another of the creatures.
Terico tied up the forsaken’s legs and charged for it. He jabbed the creature in the back, but it reacted faster than Terico anticipated. The beast slammed the back of its massive paw against Terico’s side, knocking him against the cavern wall and forcing the Nexi stones from his hand.
Another forsaken charged for Terico as he tried to regain his footing. His vision was dizzy and the upper half of his body ached with giant bruises, but he managed to grab the dark blue Nexi stone from his bag. He shot out water against the forsaken, pushing it back long enough for Terico to grab the soul catcher off the ground and aim it for the tied-up forsaken he had stabbed. Terico shot off the indigo light and caught the creature’s soul, then turned for the forsaken recovering from the blast of water.
As the roaring forsaken regained its footing, Terico rushed for it with his sword drawn forward, his entire body burning with the intensity of the moment. The forsaken leaped for Terico, who turned to the side and slammed his blade straight into the beast’s face. The creature fell to the ground, but was immediately back on its feet—now standing on only two feet. It stood nearly a half-meter taller than Terico, and that was even with its abnormally thin, lanky torso curved down from a shriveled, hunched back. The forsaken’s face was nearly torn in half, black and red blood streaming from the gash stretched from one wolfish ear to the other. And still it swiped its claws toward Terico’s chest.
Terico leaped back to avoid the creature’s freakishly sharp talons, then blasted a stream of water against its pallid, fleshy body. It fell to all fours and shoved against the water, still strong enough to keep fighting.
Another forsaken charged for Terico from the side. While still pushing back against the first creature with the dark blue Nexi in his left hand, Terico turned to the second creature, his sword drawn forward in his right hand. The forsaken leaped for Terico’s head.
Terico drove his blade into the forsaken’s heart, then shoved it into the stream of water rushing from his Nexi stone. The stabbed forsaken crashed into the other forsaken, and both collided with a giant stalagmite reaching toward the ceiling. Jujor ran toward the two creatures and used his indigo Nexi to catch both of the forsaken’s souls.
The deep screeching and gravelly roaring stopped all at once, and Terico fell to his knees from sheer exhaustion. All seven of the forsaken lay still—a few of them covered in terrible burns—but completely still, nonetheless. The cave turned silent, but Terico felt his head ringing for several long minutes afterward.
“You used the Nexi stones a bit too much there,” Jujor said. “You’ll need to rest a bit.”
Terico nodded, too tired to say anything. Jujor picked up the stones Terico dropped and put them back in the small bag tied at Terico’s belt.
Terico shakily looked over the forsaken lying around him. They had looked a lot like wolves when they ran in for the kill, but now it was clear they had a very human appearance. There were only a few patches of ragged fur poking out of their torn-up skin, and though their limbs were freakishly contorted, Terico could still tell they were arms and legs. The forsaken even still had on the tattered remains of clothing in various states of disarray. The very idea that the most sinister and lethal of monsters were in fact humans was... It was disgusting. But here they were, something not quite human, not quite monster—and not even quite alive. Even with a fatal blow to the face, these creatures lashed out at their victims, laughing all the way.
How had human beings fallen this low? Where had these men and women come from?
When Terico thought it over enough, it seemed the most likely explanat
ion was that these were the citizens of Emoser Helena. They had somehow become creatures of the darkness.
Jujor had Terico sit on the ground until Terico stopped shaking.
He had never faced so many creatures all at once. The forsaken’s hideous cries echoed in his head, as if even now they were still alive, still hoping to shred him into pieces.
He stared at the still-open eyes of the nearest forsaken—a man who couldn’t have been much older than twenty before he transformed. His eyes were no longer human, the whites of his eyes now black, and the retinas and pupils a lightly glowing red—and still glowing, even now. The thought that the creature could still be alive in some form made Terico shudder, but he couldn’t look away. He wished it hadn’t fallen with its eyes open.
The forsaken closed its eyes.
Terico jumped to his feet and unsheathed his sword. The forsaken continued to lie there, motionless. For several long seconds, Terico held his position, his heart beating frantically. He waited for the forsaken to leap up at him, but the creature did nothing but lie there. It wasn’t breathing, but Terico didn’t think the forsaken breathed when they were alive, either.
“What’s wrong?” Jujor asked.
“It closed its eyes,” Terico said.
Jujor looked at the forsaken, keeping a safe distance from it. “And you’re sure you captured its soul?”
“Yes,” Terico said. He backed away from the creature cautiously, hoping to put some more distance between them.
The forsaken stood up on two legs and took a few steps back.
Terico raised his soul catcher, but the forsaken didn’t do anything more. It simply stood there, its eyes still closed.
“Are you doing that?” Jujor asked.
Terico glanced back at him a moment. “What do you mean?”
“Well, technically we’re the owners of these creatures’ souls, now.” Jujor took his indigo Nexi and stared at one of the burnt forsaken he had defeated. The creature stood up, placed its arms behind its back, and bowed toward Jujor. The image seemed to epitomize the definition of surreal, considering how only minutes ago it was an insane beast intent on tearing them limb from limb.
“We can control them?” Terico said. He gripped his soul catcher tight and looked to each of the forsaken he defeated. With just the force of his concentrated thoughts, Terico caused the four creatures to stand upright, then flex their clawed hands in and out in unison.
Terico smiled. “Things just got a lot more interesting.”
It took some time to navigate the deeper chambers of the cave, but Jujor was tired and Terico was still recovering a bit from his overuse of the Nexi stones. Fortunately it took very little effort to keep the forsaken walking in front of them, making them act as bodyguards in the event that more of the creatures came to attack.
In the dim glow of Jujor’s red Nexi, Terico caught sight of an open area at the end of the tunnel. He and Jujor followed their forsaken to what turned out to be a wide, deep pit. Grafted to the roof of the cave were eleven spiral staircases which worked their way down the massive hole. The steps were long and wide, and there were several meters of empty space between each of the metal stairways.
“This will lead us down to the city, I imagine,” Jujor said. “It’ll probably be a long way down.”
“I guess we pick a stairway, then,” Terico said. Each of the staircases looked pretty battered and dented up, and there was no telling which one might have a bunch of forsaken working there way up. Terico listened for any sign of the creatures below, but couldn’t hear anything.
Jujor led his three forsaken down a walkway leading to the fourth metal staircase. It was one of the better-looking stairways, so Terico decided to follow Jujor down it.
“You should take a different stairway,” Jujor said. “If a hundred forsaken rush up the one we’re on, we’ll both get killed. Might as well have one of us survive, if that happens.”
“A hundred?” Terico said.
“There’s a whole city down there,” Jujor said. “I imagine the citizens became these creatures somehow. Over the centuries they’ve dug tunnels far and wide, attacking miners in caverns for kilometers around. But as long as their souls aren’t captured, they can live on forever, it seems. For all we know, there are a hundred thousand forsaken waiting below us.”
Their army of seven forsaken didn’t seem so useful if that was really what they were going to be up against. Fortunately they didn’t need to fight all the creatures—they only needed to find the Elpis and get out of there.
Terico led his forsaken down the fifth stairway, which looked about as safe as the one Jujor took. There was a good twenty or so meters between the two stairways, though.
He walked cautiously down the metal steps, and made his forsaken tread lightly as well. The staircase squeaked and grated with each step, but the echoes were light and dim.
“Hopefully these things hold,” Jujor said. “I think there used to be a staircase between the ones we’re going down.”
Terico looked at the giant, dark gap between him and Jujor. There was no way to see how far the stairways went, and Jujor’s light gave little for Terico to see by. He hoped that there weren’t steps missing, though he felt he’d be safe following his forsaken. If there was a hole ahead, they’d fall for him. Terico made them hold their arms out so that they’d be able to grab on to surrounding steps in the event that one of them fell.
Minute after minute passed, and Terico felt a little more anxious with each turn of the giant staircase. The further down he went, the darker and quieter things seemed to get. There was always the constant creaking of the old metal steps, but the noise eventually turned dim in the back of Terico’s head.
How long he walked down the stairs, he couldn’t imagine. Perhaps an hour passed—perhaps two. But still he continued to walk down the steps, further and further into an underworld that seemed to be made more out of darkness, rather than stone.
It was difficult to concentrate, step after step, hour after hour. The utter monotony of the spiraling descent was tiring, and the fact Terico was accompanied by a group of forsaken gave the situation an especially foreboding atmosphere.
Every now and then he called out to Jujor, whose voice would always echo from the opposite staircase, generally from several meters above Terico’s elevation. The old man was a bit slower than Terico, and that would put a good distance between them every ten, twenty minutes.
Terico had to keep a bit of concentration on his forsaken, but he would still think of other things as well. Journeying through the caves reminded him of his times with Turan, and how they would sneak out of class to go look for rare rocks, plants, and creatures underground. Sometimes it was to earn a bit of money or to help someone out with some task, but the main reason for it all was for the sake of adventure.
Terico’s journey with Jujor didn’t have the same kind of feeling as his brief treks with Turan, however. Though Jujor had some wit about him, he lacked Turan’s gift of gab and lighthearted nature. Plus Terico couldn’t be truly certain where Jujor’s loyalties lay in all this, while he never had to worry for even a second whether or not Turan had his back. At times Terico felt he and Turan were more like brothers than friends, just from the sheer amount of time they spent together.
Thoughts of the past reminded Terico of what this endeavor was for. If he could get the Elpis fragment, he’d be able to meet with Delkol—and likely be able to reach the murderer’s brother Augurc as well. Terico would never forgive Augurc if anything happened to Turan. The sooner Terico found Augurc, the sooner he’d be able to stop the effects of the madman’s experiments on Turan—assuming that was what his friend was captured for.
Jujor eventually called back to Terico, which let him know how far away the old man was. They were at about the same level again, so Terico got his forsaken moving again.
Yet another hour seemed to pass, and still they continued down the stairway.
Terico looked up over the railing to the
endless spiral above him, then peered down to the infinite vortex below. A part of him wondered if he was caught in a loop that would magically go on forever. What if there was a point on the staircase that sent him back a few hundred steps, and he was actually just walking down the same few hundreds steps again and again and again?
He payed careful attention to the steps beneath his feet. It was too difficult to really see anything, but he could feel the bumps and dents in the thick sheets of metal. After completing a few more circles of the staircase, Terico noted a couple more unique-feeling steps—one that made a sort of loud pop when he stepped on it, and another that had a thick, jagged cut in the middle.
Terico watched for these two steps to come again. He walked on, following the plodding movements of the forsaken in front of him.
He started counting the steps, and he was almost at the four hundredth step when Jujor called out to him again.
“The echoing has changed.”
Terico listened carefully, and sure enough, the sounds of everyone’s footsteps was slightly different.
It took a while longer, but they soon reached the final step of their staircases without any problems arising. It was a relief to be on the ground again, though Terico knew there wasn’t much reason to feel safe.
Though it was too dark to see far, Terico could tell he was standing in a massive, expansive cave. His footsteps didn’t echo, and the ground felt a lot more stable beneath his feet. Jujor brightened the light of his red Nexi so they could see a bit further around themselves. The floor was flat and smooth at first, though later became littered with rocks and boulders. At first Terico thought these were just random stones, but on closer inspection he realized the ground was covered with rubble. It was hard to see much, but there was evidence of great stone buildings all around him—all in complete disarray. It was as if a great earthquake had wiped out the entire city.
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