The Sanctuary Series: Volume 03 - Champion

by Robert J. Crane

  “I see,” he whispered. “When we were in Termina, I tried to show you how I felt about you, and regardless of whether you feel the same or not, what I was trying tell you was that—whatever you’re going through, you don’t have to be alone unless you choose to be.”

  She laughed, a short, sharp, bitter sound. “But I am alone. My mother and father are now dead. The bedrocks of my life, perfectly fine only a week ago, when I was taking them for granted, are now gone, permanently. The home where I was raised, the place of all my childhood memories, is destroyed. Perhaps the Elves will reclaim Termina, perhaps not, but either way, it’s shattered. My sister remains at a distance—you are closer to her than I am—and I feel responsible for the deaths of at least two people in my guild.”

  She laughed again, and it was a hollow and frightening sound. “I didn’t even know one of their names, and the other I’ve been less than kind to for years.” She turned, pulling one of her legs onto the bed, and a tearing noise resulted as the cloth sheet caught in the joint of her knee armor. She looked at it dully for a moment and then grabbed at it with both hands, standing up and pulling the sheets from the bed, heaving them across the room toward the privy, where they came to rest in a tumble. “I didn’t even know the name of that warrior, or ranger, or whoever it was, who died at the hands of an assassin, right out in that hallway! And it was my fault!”

  Her words came out as a shout, and she lanced out with a foot, kicking her bed, which buckled under the force of her attack. The mattress flew into the wall and he heard shards of wood from the frame hit the stone. The door behind him opened and the guards rushed in, weapons drawn. “It’s all right,” he said them.

  He turned back to Vara, who was attacking the headboard with her fists, punching holes in the wood with each strike, over and over until it snapped in half. She threw both pieces across the room, where one of them splintered and the other broke a bookshelf, sending a shower of books to the floor. “Leave us,” he told the guards.

  He could read the eyes of the guards, both humans, both skeptical, but they closed the door and he could hear their voices in the hall along with the officers of Sanctuary who had been awakened by the din.

  Vara slid to her knees, her breathing heavy, face racked with emotion, but still she retained her composure, and he watched her. He knelt at her side and without conscious thought his arms slipped around her. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry about...everything. I’m here if you need me.” He reached around and touched her face, his skin against her cheek and felt wetness there. He leaned in and kissed her, felt the pressure of her lips against his, felt her return it for a moment, and then he saw her eyes open and she pulled from his grasp, standing up and walking toward the window.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, leaning on the sill, refusing to look at him. “I can’t. Not right now. Please...leave. We can talk about this afterward. I just...I’m sorry.” She turned and he caught a glimpse of the anguish behind her eyes. “I’m truly sorry.”

  “It’s all right,” he whispered, climbing to his feet. “It can wait. If there’s anything I can do—”

  “There isn’t. Please. I just need to be alone.”

  He nodded and left, shutting the door behind him. He passed Curatio, Terian, Longwell and Vaste in the hall, ignored their questioning looks and said, “She’s fine. Just...going through all the turmoil you’d expect her to be going through.”

  He shut the door to his quarters and leaned against the wall. I hope I didn’t make it worse. I hope she...at least asks for help soon. I... He clutched at his hands, entwining them to keep from shaking. I need her. I don’t know when that happened, but I do. He returned to the window and looked to his left, but hers was shut, and the quiet was overwhelming, as if everything that had been making noise just a few minutes earlier had died. He lay down upon the bed, certain he wouldn’t be able to sleep, but only a few minutes later, he slipped into unconsciousness.

  Chapter 47

  Cyrus’s sleep was restless and dream-filled. Shadowy figures with glowing red eyes harangued him, demanding the answers to question after question. When he finally awoke, he considered it something of a blessing that he had been able to sleep at all given how troubled his mind had been.

  The journey to the portal to the Realm of Death took all day to reach. It involved a long hike overland out of Sanctuary’s gates. While Cyrus and many of the others rode horses, there were not nearly enough for the entire army, as there had been when last he had been there. They reached the edge of the Bay of Lost Souls at sundown, where a group of wizards led by Nyad had been hard at work conjuring boats out of the sand.

  By the time they reached the edge of the sea, the army was tired, and they built fires and supped on stew that Larana fixed out of stores she had brought on a wagon train. They bedded down by the water, and Cyrus fell asleep listening to the roar of the bay after a short meeting with the Council to discuss strategy.

  The dawn broke over the eastern horizon and lit up the water with a thousand sparkles of light. The conjured ships were ready to carry them across the choppy seas, and after a breakfast of cold beef and hard bread they set out. The skies were blue, but the rocking of the boat made Cyrus feel ill, and he was thankful when the Island of Mortus appeared.

  After they landed and offloaded their personnel (the horses and wagons had been returned to Sanctuary by the least experienced wizard and a handful of helpers), Cyrus found himself staring into the portal. It was like any of the countless others he had seen but for one critical difference: whereas the ones in Reikonos had a center that was empty save for when someone teleported into it, this one crackled with dark energy, a blackness that seemed to suck all the light toward it. He shuddered and remembered that the portal to the Realm of Darkness carried a similar, ominous feel.

  The army assembled in marching order behind him as Cyrus stared into the darkness. Will this work? Will we accomplish anything here or just kill another god’s army and take his pointless treasures? His eyes found Vara, still distracted, staring into the distance, beyond the horizon and the sea. Will she ever have room for happiness in her heart again? Or will it remain as black and gloomy as...His eyes flitted back to the portal and watched as it leached the light from the air around it.

  “General,” came Thad’s quiet baritone. He turned to see the warrior in red, who tossed him a quick salute. “Your army stands ready.”

  Cyrus looked over the host gathered before him, filling the island to the edge of the sea in a formation best suited to squeezing through the portal a rank at a time. He raised his voice, ready to give the last commands before they moved forward. “The last time we were here, there was no battle to be had on the other side of this.” He pointed to the portal. “We marched to Eusian Tower in order to find and defeat Mortus’s minions. I’m told that today, things will be different, that we’ll be opposed from the moment we enter Death’s Realm. And that’s fine.

  “The last time I was here,” he said, his words cold but clear, as though remembering an unpleasant memory, “it was for the purpose of depriving the God of Death of his treasures, to raise our fortunes by lowering his. Hardly a noble purpose. Today we come for a different reason. Two of our own have been marked for death by Mortus, and countless others stand at risk of a curse he has placed on them.” Cyrus kept his words vague, trying to keep the secret of the elves. “We come here today not to enrich ourselves, though surely that will happen as we storm Mortus’s Realm. We come here to try and find a way to protect those whom we hold dear, to save others who have been marked without knowledge, without reason—without sin.”

  He squeezed his fist tighter in his gauntlet. “There is no more noble goal than fighting for others. Remember that, as the servants of Mortus come at you. Their visages are horrifying, their strength is great, their numbers are countless, but we are not here for ourselves. You do not wield sword, or cast spell, or sling arrows for yourself alone. We fight for others, for life, for our comrades. R
emember that, when things grow grim. Remember that, when you become weary. No god can make you stand in a place of harm if you choose not to; but the bonds of fellowship have kept many a fighter from running when his heart was filled with fear.

  “For the last months, our comrades have been under attack from the servants of Mortus. Wounded. Chased.” He hesitated, overcome by memory and emotion. “Some have even died. All in his name. We can’t strike at a god, but today we can make the servants of Mortus feel fear. Feel death. We fight for others. And we won’t be afraid.”

  He drew his sword, raised it above his head, and howled a cry of battle. It was answered by thousands of voices, and weapons were upthrust with his. Cyrus turned, pointed to the portal, and charged through it, the feet of his army thundering behind him.

  Chapter 48

  When he appeared on the other side of the portal, the red sky drew his attention first, followed by the endless fields of faded grass that stretched off into the distance. The faint smell of decay was present under the scent of the earth wafting up from the fields. He could hear the wind rustling through the grass, watched it sway almost hypnotically, and felt the weight of his armor as the breeze slipped through all the nooks and crannies in the plate.

  The first howl started like a gust of wind, but persisted even as the breeze died. It was loud, high-pitched, and followed by a rattling noise that sounded like teeth clacking together. A skeleton sprang from the grass, its bones held together by nothing more than magical power. A light was awake in its eyes, and it sprang for him, teeth wide and a rusted sword in its grasp.

  The skeleton hacked at Cyrus, forcing him back more out of surprise than from the strength of its attack, which was formidable considering it had no musculature. Five more skeletons sprung out of the grass behind it, and another eight behind them, popping up in rows, an army springing from the ground. They clutched swords and maces, flails and hammers.

  After dodging the first blow, Cyrus attacked, hacking the skeleton in half with a swipe that avoided the ribcage and severed the spinal column. He started to fend off the next attacker when he felt a shooting pain in his foot; looking down, he saw the skeleton he’d cut in half had used its upper body to crawl to his leg and ram a sword into the gap in his boot armor.

  Cyrus swept his sword around, severing the head of the skeleton, and brought Praelior up to block the attack of the next three skeletons that fell upon him. More were rising in the distance and he heard the strains of combat beginning in earnest behind him as the Army of Sanctuary continued to flood into the the Realm.

  Hobbling, Cyrus stepped forward, sword swinging, bones flying as he tried to make every attack count. He felt the bite and sting of a hundred swords, finding the gaps between the plate at his sides, poking holes in the chain mail. At some point maybe I should get something like what Orion used to wear, he thought as another prodded into his flesh above his left hip. On second thought, I don’t recall it doing him all that much good last time we met.

  There was a roar behind him and Fortin broke forward, wading into the bony defenders of Death’s Realm. His arms flew one after another and a rain of bones filled the air. Arrows whizzed by Cyrus’s ears, knocking skulls from necks, driving the light out of the eyes of the undead. A healing wind ran over him, chasing away the thousand stings and leaving only mild pangs in their place as he bolted ahead. Fortin had a half-dozen skeletons hanging from him as he turned, and a hand came around, swatting at them like so many flies, breaking them to pieces.

  A shriek in the distance caught Cyrus’s attention, and he smashed two more skeletons as he saw the next threat; wendigos, their gray flesh visible through the army of bone. He could smell them approaching, the same stink of rotting flesh that he’d caught from Hrent in the bar, and he remembered the teeth that could rip out a throat with little effort.

  They hit his vanguard with a fury, pushing the Sanctuary force back into their fellows still coming out of the portal. Wendigos leapt into their midst and screams filled the air, from friend or foe he could not tell. Three skeletons and two wendigos made their attack on him. He hit two of the skeletons so hard that their bones were smashed to powder and the wendigo that caught the sword blade was hacked almost in half. It staggered and made to attack him again, but fell, bloodless, to the ground, where it struggled to return to its feet.

  The fiends fought with more strength than their small bodies showed. Cyrus spun out of the way of a wendigo’s claws and struck two skeletons, knocking the head off one with a solid punch and caving in the skull of the other with the pommel of his sword. He saw another wendigo driving an unnamed warrior to the ground, teeth sunk into the man’s neck, blood squirting as the undead creature pressed his attack with feral savagery. A lance speared through the middle of the beast, allowing the Sanctuary warrior to drop to the ground, clutching his neck. Longwell appeared wielding the weapon and threw the wendigo through the air to the far side of the battle as though he were tossing a piece of fruit from his blade.

  A fire sprung up before him, washing in a wave over the undead; large enough to surprise him, but not nearly as big as the inferno Chirenya had summoned in Termina. It rolled forward, pushing a ten-foot gap in the middle of the battle, giving Cyrus room to maneuver forward and allowing the other Sanctuary fighters space to wield their weapons. Cyrus pressed ahead, following the flames until they dissipated a few hundred feet away. He struck at the wendigos that flooded from behind it when it vanished, bringing Praelior to bear as quickly as he could wield it, cutting and ripping through his foes.

  He felt Terian bump into him a few times and even looked back once, exchanging a nod and a smile with the dark knight in the heat of the battle. Longwell was nearby, the area around him cleared by his massive lance, and Vara carved a path of her own, along with Alaric, whose magical blasts sounded occasionally and were followed by a rain of bones as the force of his spell punched through the skeleton army, destroying all in its path.

  He caught sight of a few others as the chaos prevailed; Scuddar In’shara of the desert, his blade sweeping wendigos before him like a reaper cutting through stalks of grain; Menlos Irontooth the northman felling skeletons by the dozen as his wolves swept through their ranks, depriving them of legs and arms and spines, crushing them in their jaws and howling as they brought them down. Odellan attacked with particular fury, battering skeletons to pieces with sword and shield, alternating between slashing with his blade and bashing with a large shield that bore the heraldry of the Termina Guard.

  When Cyrus had thought the battle nearly over, a horn sounded at the far edge of the fight and he remembered the last of Death’s defenders. The demon knights stood nine feet tall, with muscles bulging in grotesque ways. Cyrus had never seen anything akin to them, even in the Society of Arms, where warriors turned pride in their muscles into a fierce competition. Their skin was tinged red, stretched over faces that were more teeth than anything, and their ears stood straight up, pointed in the air. Each of them carried a weapon of their own and rather than the rusty blades and cudgels of the skeletons, they were steel or better, shined to rival Vara’s armor, wielded by an enemy who was familiar with them.

  The howls of the demon knights broke over Cyrus and his front rank as they faced the last wave of skeletons. Others had broken through their line into the Sanctuary army and a melee was being fought as the last of the bony undead were falling upon them. Wendigos were still in ample supply, leaping back and forth from target to target, striking with quickness and disappearing to find their next victim.

  Cyrus was bleeding from a dozen wounds, and a wedge of skeletons had cropped up between their lines. No healer was near him, as no spells were forthcoming. He fought off the next attack by a slew of skeletons, hacked the head off three wendigos, and then the demon knights were upon him. As they strode into the fray, they swept aside their allies that got in the way; Cyrus watched one swing a sword to clear its path, cleaving a wendigo in half and sending it through the air.

 
He dodged the first strike of the demon knight and brought Praelior down upon its leg, hacking into the muscle and bouncing off the bone. He spun and withdrew his weapon, watching as the demon knight fell to a knee, where it was impaled through the face by Longwell. I hate to assume this is going to be easy, he thought, allowing himself a smile, but—

  The blow from the next demon knight was not telegraphed, and he didn’t see it as he spun to face the creature, but somehow when he had completed his turn, there it was upon him, too close, and the cudgel landed under his side. His armor slammed into his ribs and he felt bones break along his flank as his side seemed to catch fire. The demon knight followed up as Cyrus dropped to a knee, causing the warrior to catch a punch that broke his nose and clouded his vision.

  He saw the creature reach back and swing the cudgel again. It hit him flush on the chest and the agony in his side spread, becoming a screaming pain in his sternum. It took all that was in him not to fall to the ground; instead he remained on one knee with his sword in hand.

  Another punch found him, sending his helm spiraling away, and Cyrus saw a flash as the red sky turned bloody, a crimson he had seen times beyond number on the battlefield. The stalks of wheat swayed above him and the demon knight filled his vision. There were other faces, too, demonic visages, not like the skeletons he had faced before, but distorted—shades of living bodies, mouths wide and features misshapen, screaming in torment. He could hear them, their cries of agony, and they were everywhere; laying on the ground, suspended in the air, the shouting, screaming creatures of damnation.

  The sky snapped into focus and the red faded, along with the shades, and it took a moment for him to realize he had been healed. He rolled, avoiding the cudgel that was coming down at him, and it struck a glancing blow on his shoulder that made it go numb to the elbow. He pulled up, sword in hand, and surged to his feet as the cudgel came down for another stroke. He fended it off by striking it at an angle with Praelior, causing the demon knight to smash a cluster of skeletons.