by James Somers
Levi thought a moment, shrugged, then pulled himself up the tunnel another two feet. “What is this stuff anyway?” He sniffed. “It smells like a sewer in here.”
Seth smiled in the dark. “It’s sewage.”
“It’s a good thing you can’t see the look on my face right now.”
“I have a good imagination,” Seth answered. “We do what we must in the service of the Lord, Captain, and to help of our friends.”
Levi sighed again. “True enough, but knowing that does nothing for the smell.”
The trip through the drain tunnel had been slow going over the last hour. Seth and Levi had to slog through the muck on their bellies almost the entire way due to the size of the tunnel.
Levi pulled his hand back suddenly. “Seth, I felt something wriggle across my fingers…what’s in this stuff?”
“Nothing harmful…other than that, I doubt you really want to know.”
Levi considered it. “You’re probably right.” He swallowed hard and then reached for the next handful of filth, pushing his fingers down several inches until he felt the slime covered grooves in the stones. These they used to pull themselves along inches at a time.
A draft of air filtered down the tunnel around them. Seth immediately stopped. Levi grabbed his shoe as he continued his progression. “Why did you stop, Seth? What’s wrong?”
“Listen.”
The ground shook with a sudden tremor followed by a bellow of air and a booming sound. Another quickly followed and another on top of it.
“What in the world is that?” Levi shouted. “Almost sounds like cannons!”
“Almost,” Seth said. Then he listened again as the thunder continued.
“We had better keep moving,” Levi said.
“Wait, there’s something else.”
Levi tried to discern what Seth was referring too. Then he heard it. Mad screeching from animals, only multiplied a thousand times and soaked with panic.
“Is that?”
“Lie down as flat as you can, Captain, and be sure your clothing is pulled tight to your back. Cover your nose and mouth with your hand and try not to breathe unless you absolutely have to!”
The thunder pounded through the tunnel walls even more oppressively. Levi wanted to be out of this hole now. The panic flooding down the tunnel only added to his own anxiety. He pressed against the walls, trying hopelessly to turn himself around. He had to get out of here now!
“Captain, do as I said and we may get out of this alive!” Seth pressed his body down flat into the slime and lay perfectly still.
The screeching grew in volume and intensity as the pounding continued. The pulses of air blasting through the tunnels carried the added stench of filthy living things. Things about to pour through the place where Seth and Levi lay trapped.
“Lord Shaddai, help me!” he cried and pressed his body down flat. Levi covered his mouth as Seth had instructed, shoving his face reluctantly into the disgusting mire. It squished between his fingers trying to reach his mouth. The filth oozed into his ears, muffling the screeching just before it reached him. Then it happened.
Thousands of tiny, clawed feet stampeded across his body in the pitch black darkness of the tunnel. Rats! Hundreds, maybe thousands, poured through the sewer drain in a panicked attempt to flee from whatever danger was producing all of the noise around them.
Levi fought the sensation to vomit into his hand. He knew it wouldn’t have worsened the conditions, but he still had to have a way to breathe. The tiny claws pricked his skin over and over again until he felt like he might go mad right there in the tunnel. He fought to keep down the urge to flail against the creatures in a vain attempt to kill them and escape the moment. Instead, he muttered a prayer into his grimy palm. He tried to focus on why he was even doing this at all. “Oh Lord, help me to rescue my friends. Please let them be all right. I can’t do this without you.”
He wondered if Seth might be holding his own private vigil ahead of him. The rodents continued to wash over them in a seemingly never-ending wave of terror. After an eternity submerged in the madness and filth, Levi felt a single tapping on his shoulder. The change of sensations almost startled him. Then he heard Seth’s muffled voice calling out to him in the darkness as he shook him with his hand. “Captain, are you all right?”
Levi raised his face out of the slime with a loud sucking sound and took a moment to breathe again. Compared to what he’d been through, the ever-present stench seemed like bouquets of fresh flowers. “I’m all right, Seth.” He puffed a few more times, taking in what little precious oxygen was present.
Seth smiled. “Then we’d better keep going. It sounds like your friends are in greater danger than we suspected.”
Levi nodded and the two men began their trek forward again.
EXPLOSIVE RESULTS
The demon-possessed soldiers hacked at the barred wooden doors behind them as Ethan followed Gideon. The priests rounded a corner and came into the throne room where they had originally been introduced to King Nichols. Ethan paused while Gideon ran ahead toward the archway where they had entered before.
Ethan searched the shadows. Something didn’t feel right. More demons? He couldn’t place the feeling of imminent danger on any particular source.
At the far end of the throne room, more of Nichols silver and blue clad soldiers poured through the archway. Gideon grinded to a halt then reconsidered and launched into them head-on. Ethan ran toward the fight to help Gideon.
The polished stone ceiling of the throne room exploded downward. Stone and fire fell upon Gideon and the soldiers. Ethan cried out for his friend, then saw the elder priest evade the avalanche only to be swallowed in a cloud of dust again.
Ethan noticed a low whistling sound coming from outside through the damaged ceiling. He saw several small projectiles arc through the sky toward the castle. He didn’t know what they were-only that they were extremely dangerous. He followed the path of one that would enter the throne room and reacted.
Ethan flung the physical sword in his hand precisely into the objects path. Only after he had let go of the weapon did he wonder if it had been the wisest course of action. The projectile managed to fall just beneath the shattered roof when Ethan’s sword struck it.
The weapon exploded. A fireball raced out across the room with a shockwave that pummeled everything in its path. The soldiers, still visible in the dust from the first explosion, fell like wheat to a scythe. Ethan crashed through a heavy wooden chair and tumbled across the stone floor.
He remained conscious, but now he had no idea where Gideon had gotten too. Had his fellow priest even survived?
Ethan tried to catch his breath to shout Gideon’s name, but his feeble effort was swallowed up by a thunderous cacophony of explosions assaulting King Nichol’s castle. He found the strength to stand again. Great pieces of stone fell from the ravaged ceiling of the throne room amid a thick veil of dust and smoke. “Gideon!” He cried, but there was no response.
Soldiers broke through the doors behind him. Only the inhuman shrieking of demon voices through mortal vocal chords pierced the terrible noise of the attack coming from outside. He couldn’t see any way to go in the direction Gideon had gone. The demon-possessed would see him in the physical or the spiritual.
Ethan realm shifted anyway and flew to the pile of rubble left from the first explosion. Ethan searched frantically for a body, but Gideon was gone. The soldiers came into the other end of the throne room, apparently caring nothing for the collapse of the castle all around them. They spotted Ethan and tore through the chamber after him, some running perpendicular along the face of the stone wall while others bounded over and around the rubble.
Ethan still had the advantage of phasing through matter. He leaped through the wall as the soldiers attacked. Their swords bit into the stone after him.
Ethan came out into another room he didn’t recognize. Massive alcoves had been carved out of the castle here by the explosive attack. Many b
odies littered the ground, some partially buried under wood and stone.
Two demons shot through the walls at Ethan, forcing him to defend himself. One struck at him before he could retrieve his weapon. He dodged the attack and locked his arms around the demon’s arm, then wrenched the weapon away. He released the brute and thought to use its weapon, but the spiritual sword evaporated in his grip, reappearing in the demon’s hand again.
“You’ve much to learn about this realm, warrior!” the demon snarled.
Ethan’s blade flew from his side to his hand, then morphed into a triple jointed staff. Both demons leaped at him. They struck furiously with their swords, but Ethan blocked with the middle section of his staff, then attacked with both ends.
The demons came again, but more cautiously. Ethan flourished with the staff, then spun around as the weapon morphed into two swords in his hands. No longer did the nightmarish legions of Mordred frighten him. His priestly training had done much to quash the childish fears.
They circled him and attacked yet again. Ethan defended between the two and managed to strike one in the chest. The creature reeled back and disintegrated like wind blown sand. The other demon growled at him. “It’s not over yet, Deliverer.”
Ethan brandished his swords, ready for another attack. The torches still burning in the room snuffed out and, despite the sun beaming through the gouged walls of the castle, an oppressive darkness crept in around them.
Ethan gasped for breath as though he’d been punched in the stomach. But he wasn’t breathing in this realm. Something else had happened. The demon lowered his weapon and smiled. “The master comes, boy.”
Ethan grimaced. “I’m not afraid of Mordred, you Hell-spawn.”
The demon’s eyes flashed with rapturous glee. “I do not speak of Mordred.”
The demon fled through the wall again, leaving Ethan alone. He felt choked by the encroaching shadow. Fear enveloped him. He materialized in the physical realm and ran away from the ruined walls toward the inward parts of the castle. Laughter followed him, dogging his heels as unrealized terror gripped his heart and took control.
Ethan remembered this fear and its source. The demon Jericho-the one who had beaten him and left him scarred for life-painful wounds that ached when the demon came near. His flesh screamed at him now to run for his life. Like a frightened rabbit, he obeyed its voice.
Jericho stood as still as stone, focused on the castle of King Nichols of Macedon. General Hevas Rommil stood attentively beside him on the ridge. The Mortar batteries maintained their campaign against the stone edifice in the distance.
Jericho allowed only Rommil to see him. This much was necessary. The Wraith General could handle it. The common man rarely could without overwhelming fear, sometimes to the point of madness.
Jericho smelled his prey upon the spiritual plane. He alone, among the demons allied with Mordred, held a connection with the boy. His blade had pierced the boy in a way no earthly weapon ever could-straight to his very essence.
Terror permeated the air-the fear of men under Nichol’s command thinking themselves allied to Rommil. Now they understood the treachery involved as the general’s shells cascaded down upon them.
Jericho surged outward with his power, feeling for the Deliverer in every crevasse, along every wall, like a living shadow. He taunted the boy’s spirit, causing him to flee through the broken ramparts in the distance. There is no escape, Deliverer…no escape from me.
“Now, General.”
“My Lord, the Deliverer is present?” Rommil asked.
“Yes, and in no condition to fight now,” Jericho said. “Take your men and storm the castle. Take him alive if possible.”
“Forgive me, my Lord. Can the boy be contained?”
Jericho turned his head, leveling his steely gaze upon Rommil. The General swallowed hard. “I control his fear and, with it, him. My kind, dwelling within your men, will take charge of him. We can hold him in either realm now.”
Rommil bowed to the demon. “Yes, my Lord. It will be done.”
He turned and ordered his men off the ridge as he mounted his great black horse. The soldiers obediently abandoned their posts at the mortar stations, took charge of their weapons, and stormed down the hill after the Wraith General.
FEARFUL
Ethan ran as hard as he could to escape the encroaching darkness, but it only grew. Deeper into the ruined castle he fled. The corridor, illuminated only by scant torchlight, seemed endless. The laughter followed him everywhere like a ball and chain.
Where can you go? There is no escape. You and your friends will all die. None can save you. You have not the strength to defeat me.
The voices echoed from every direction. The floor seemed to change. He fell to the ground, but the stone was soft, gooey. Ethan looked back at his foot anchored inside miry clay.
Ethan pulled with all his strength until the foot came loose. He scrambled to his feet again, desperately trying to break into a run, but the floor grabbed at his every step. Behind him, the torches mounted upon the corridor wall flickered and went out one by one.
Ethan felt the weight of the demon’s power press upon him. How could he hope to defeat such an enemy? He fell again, then clawed at the floor, trying to gain ground. Ahead, Ethan noticed the torches going out there, too.
Ethan saw eyes appear in the mounting darkness. Hundreds of pairs of blood red eyes ran down the corridor in his direction. Huge, black rats flooded into the remaining light.
Ethan screamed as the voices laughed again. He found a reserve of strength and floundered into a run in the opposite direction. He entered pitch blackness again with the surge of rats following.
The pairs of red eyes glowed and spread out so that they ran along the walls and even across the ceiling. A torch flashed into view. Ethan slammed into someone at full speed. The torch spun away and hit the wall sending out a flurry of cinders.
Two horrible slimy monsters stood before him. The smell wrenched his nose making him want to vomit. He tried to claw his way backwards as the monsters approached. The rats flooded around them, and Ethan screamed again. The voices laughed and Jericho’s face seemed to fill the corridor with multiple views of the Demon Lord.
Levi shook Ethan by the shoulders as the boy flailed frantically in his arms. His eyes were drawn to something unseen in the corridor. Seth picked up the torch and brought it near. “I don’t know what’s wrong with him, Seth. He’s not responding to me at all. Ethan!”
“I don’t think he can hear us right now. He may be under a spiritual attack of some kind,” Seth observed.
Levi shook him again, but his expression remained frozen in terror. “Ethan, wake up!”
“Listen,” Seth whispered. “The shelling has stopped.”
Indeed, only the mournful cries of the wounded and dying could be heard echoing through the castle corridors now.
“That means Rommil will be marching his men into the castle soon,” Seth said.
Levi watched Ethan. “What about the boy?”
“He needs prayer. Only the Lord can break this attack.”
Levi watched the young blind warrior as he called out to Shaddai, asking for his intervention. He prayed earnestly. Silently, Levi added his own prayer to Seth’s.
Ethan’s tense, shuddering body began to relax quickly. Bonifast watched his face and soon saw signs of real consciousness. Ethan blinked. His gaze settled on Levi’s face.
“Ah!” he screamed.
“Ethan it’s me,” Levi said hastily, remembering what he must look like after their trip through the sewer pipe.
Ethan calmed at the familiar sound of his voice, then reached up and rubbed some of the slime away from his friend’s face. “Levi?” He sniffed, then curled his nose. “You stink! You smell like a sewer. Where in the world have you been?”
Levi smiled. “A sewer, where else?”
Seth moved the torch closer. “Gentlemen, I think it’s now time to leave. The general’s men will storm th
ese ramparts within moments.”
“Who are you?” Ethan asked, noticing the young man for the first time. “I remember seeing you on the street begging.”
“Yes. My name is Seth. I was sent to Macedon years ago by The Order of Shaddai.”
Ethan blinked again, trying to remember. “The Order…Gideon. Where is he?”
Levi looked puzzled. “We assumed he must be somewhere here in the castle with you.”
“We got separated after the explosions hit the castle. We’ve got to find him.”
“Impossible now,” Seth said, standing to his feet. He helped Levi get Ethan up on his feet.
“Look, Seth, we can’t leave Gideon here,” Ethan said.
Seth moved closer so that he stared blankly at Ethan’s face. “Deliverer, I know I speak for Gideon when I say, we must not risk your safety any further. General Rommil will enter the castle soon, and we’re going to have a tough time getting out of here as it is. Now, we must go.”
Ethan stood still, refusing to budge. “What makes you think you can speak for my friend?”
Seth stopped. “Because he was my friend long before he was yours. Now, act like a priest of Shaddai and do what is necessary and not what you feel.” He took off down the dark corridor toward the inner parts of the castle.
Levi squeezed Ethan’s shoulder. “As much as it pains me to say it, lad, he’s right. Let’s go.”
He had to tear the young man from his spot, but Ethan gave in and followed them down the hallway. Levi called up ahead to the blind priest leading their way. “Where are we going, Seth?”
In the darkness, Levi ran right up on three of King Nichol’s soldiers. They spun around, two carrying torches, another holding a sword. Their clothes were tattered and stained with blood, probably their own. They spotted Ethan and reacted.
“The Deliverer!”
As Ethan came up behind the Levi, the soldier with the sword lunged at the boy. Ethan didn’t have time to react. Seth appeared from the shadows blocking the strike at the soldier’s wrists. His left foot snapped up to make contact with the man’s chin, chest, and groin in turn. Within a fraction of a second, the blind priest held the sword, while the soldier lay in a heap on the floor with his companions watching in astonishment.